For ChaBongo

Sometime ago, I visited your blog and found you (understandably) freaking out about the difficulty you'd had in finding another job after getting laid off. I've been there, I know that panic feeling. Responsible folks like you and me, we hate being faced with the idea of becoming one of "those people"--you know, one of those people who are behind on all their bills, owe everybody money, scrambling to keep the utilities turned on while putting food on the table, robbing Peter to pay Paul (creative credit card management--until the credit runs out). Without a paycheck, it seems that becoming one of "those people" is inevitable--yikes!

I left you what I hope were encouraging words, and I hope that you weren't offended by my comments because I'm going to basically give the same advice here again now, only in a lot more detail. (If I recall, the theme was "Think Outside the Box.")

First of all, "those people" are born that way, they are not created from simple financial misfortunes like getting laid off. Even if you fall behind on your bills--even if your electric gets shut off, your creditors have developed the persistent desire to speak with you on the phone, and you have to visit a food bank for groceries--you're not one of those people. You're just broke, that's all. A temporary condition and not one to be ashamed of. I've been broke. It sucks, but it does make you appreciate not being broke when you finally unbreak yourself.

I hope I don't sound insincere or condescending to give advice in this regard, since I do have a job. Easy for me to say your glass is half full when my glass is running over. But, as I see it, your glass is no where near empty, and I believe in your ability to fill it up again.

You're not the only friend of mine struggling to find a job, I have a few. And I always have the strangest feeling of envy when I think of your circumstances. Envy, yeah. Weird, huh? Remember, I said I've been there--earlier this year, in fact, I was laid off right after buying a new house for which I had spent all my savings on the down payment. So not only did I have a house payment to make now (a rather big one--twice as much as my rent had been), I had no cushion to fall back on to tide me over to another job.

Yeah, okay, envy wasn't what I was feeling then--I was freaking out!

For a week or two. Then I caught my breath and started to put together an emergency plan. I came up with several ideas to bring in some cash and/or reduce expenses, and I implemented those. I began the job hunt.

Fortunately, my job field has an excellent market in this city, so I was unemployed only a month, then it was back to work, vacation over.

Or unfortunately.

See, I'm not kidding when I say I envy you the position you're in--unable to access the easy road back to the land of the regular paycheck. Being forced to turn to other roads you otherwise would not take. I believe if you're not getting job offers in your field after, I don't know, some reasonable length of time, some number of interviews, then you probably don't have the right combination of things that you bring to the table to successfully compete with whomever else is out there getting those jobs. Continued effort and failure will only frustrate you more. Take a break. Change direction.

Scary part is over--lost the job, can't get another one, oh hell, I'm broke, oh shit!

Now comes the exciting part! You have nothing to lose! You get to start over and point yourself in any direction that makes your willy wiggle. You are not limited to opportunities listed in certain search keywords on Monster.com. You're not married to your resume.

If I had been unable to get my job back this spring after maybe two months (maybe three) of interviewing, I would have flushed my technical resume and pointed myself at editing/writing full time. I would have reduced my standard of living down to dirt-poor college student levels--no spending, no cable TV, no luxuries, no free time, no travel, etc. and altered my budget in various ways, such as renting out my spare bedrooms, selling my sports car and getting a clunker, canceling my cell phone, taking a low-pay PT job, etc. Maybe I would have even defaulted on some credit card debt or filed bankruptcy.

You're wondering why it was "unfortunate" that this didn't happen? Because I would have been a full time editor and writer. I would have found new, exciting literary opportunities and projects that I can't pursue now because of my regular job. I would have made new contacts in the literary and publishing world. I would have finished my novel--and being broke would have been a hell of an incentive to get that sucker sold! By this time next year, I bet you I'd be a little less broke. And even less the year after that.

As much as I want those things, would it be worth consciously sacrificing what I have now to be broke? Well...no....I'm so fond of spoiling myself and having money is much more fun than not having money...I would only have the opportunity to do this with my life if I had no choice, nothing to lose, nothing to give up in order to get it.

Or--you know, another thing I've always wanted to do is open a bookstore. Maybe that's what I would have done. Throw my every resource into opening a store, and then work my ass off to sell books!

But, you see, I'm tied to the safety net of a chubby paycheck. I will never get to try something new. I'll never find out whether the heart of a natural born bookseller/shopkeeper beats in my chest...gods help me, I'll probably never even finish the damn novel because my financial survival doesn't depend on it.

So ask yourself--what would you do if you could? And then figure out a way to do it because--you could!

I leave you with a true story:

There was a young man who learned to juggle in high school because he correctly saw this as a way to impress chicks. Soon all the girlies wanted him to teach them how to juggle, and lots of fellows did too. Juggling became such a habit for him that he carried juggling items around with him (bean bags, balls, whatever) and juggled just about any time his hands were idle. In college, he'd pass the time waiting for the professor to arrive in class by juggling.

Well, it would tend to draw attention, wouldn't it? So quite often the professor would find his students all clustered around the juggler in the back of the room as he showed the basic moves--this is how you do it, it's real easy once you get the rhythm.

Not wanting his informal juggling lessons to disrupt his classes, he typed up the basic juggling lesson, drew some crude illustrations, made copies, and began handing them to those who approached him about learning his clever skill.

The rest of the story should seem obvious by now. Soon, demand for his little instruction manual made him pause to consider...is there a basic "how to juggle" manual out there in print? Because he was finding that just about everybody "always wanted to learn to do that!"

So, yeah, he polished up his little booklet, researched the market enough to realize that he'd have to add something more to it in order to charge an amount that would be profitable, and he packaged the book, Juggling for the Complete Klutz, together with a set of three beanbags so that people would have everything they'd need to get started (assuming they had two hands).

The company became Klutz, and they offer hundreds of clever books, activities, and crafts, sold in stores but especially marketed through schools in book fairs and catalogs.

In our home, we have at least ten Klutz products, including Juggling for the Complete Klutz, which I bought for myself. (No, damn it, I have not mastered the skill yet--that's probably something else I'd have had time to do if I'd stayed unemployed!)

So what have you got? If the corporate world keeps saying "no thank you" to what you bring, what else you got, and who can you offer it to? You have something someone wants. You're funny? Hmm, I wonder how hard it would be to break into stand-up comedy...might not be as hard as you think, and wouldn't it be exciting to try? Got a sexy voice? I bet you'd get a kick out of doing voice overs and radio spots. Are you really good at teaching aerobics class or yoga? What if you could turn that into--opening your own gym and tanning salon? Put a spin on it, make it clever, unique. What have you got?

Made in America

This is a fascinating book I'm reading now: Made in America by Bill Bryson. I find it so compelling, I had to share some of it with you. You'll probably be bored with it, but if you're odd like me, enjoy.

First, this interesting lexical fact: Have you ever noticed the strange way we conjugate the verb "to be" in English? Specifically, the singular conjugation (past and present tense) of the verb is "is" and "was." That means, a pronoun that is singular will use the form "is" or "was" for this verb. "He is." "She was." "It is." The plural conjugation is "are" and "were." A subject that is plural uses these forms. "Y'all are." "They were." "She and I are." So you would expect that the conjugation of "to be" for the subject "you" (singular) would be "is/was." "You is." "You was." As you know, we use the plural conjugation for the "you" form, even when the subject is singular. "You are." "You were." Why do we do that?

Turns out, we once had another word for "you" which was singular, while "you" was itself strictly the plural form of the pronoun. The singular form was "ye." So the proper way to say "You are a goddess," was "Ye is a goddess." To pay the same compliment to a group of women, you'd say "You are goddesses." At some point, the word "ye" dropped out of usage and "you" became both singular and plural, but the habit of tying the plural form of the verb "to be" to the pronoun "you" stayed with us.

See what I mean? Is it quirky that I'm so turned on by information like this that I feel compelled to tell you about it? I know, I know, but maybe the rest of this will be of interest.

How America was born.

Between December 1606 and February 1625, Virginia received 7289 immigrants and buried 6040 of them. Of the 3500 immigrants who arrived during 1619-21, 3000 were dead at the end of that time period. To become a colonist in the New World was effectively to commit suicide.

For those who survived, starvation and terror was the lifestyle faced here on American soil. When the Indians discovered that the European colonists tended to repay the Indians' kindness with enslavement and hostile attacks on peaceful Indian villages, they grew rather surly. Being tomahawked in one's bed was a real fear the early Americans lived with. On Good Friday, 1622, an Indian chief sent delegates to some newly planted Virginia settlements, presented as a goodwill visit. Some of the Indians even sat down to breakfast with the colonists. Upon a given signal, the Indians seized whatever implements happened to come to hand and murdered every man, woman and child they could catch--350 in all, or about a third of Virginia's total population.

Twenty-two years later, in 1644, the same chief did the same thing, killing about the same number of people. By this time, the 350 deaths represented more a brutal annoyance than a bloody catastrophe, putting a mere dent in the colonists' population. What had changed in that twenty year span of time to assure our survival on this continent?

Tobacco.

It was a Spanish word, taken from the Arabic tabaq, signifying any euphoria-inducing herb. After a visit in 1565 to a French outpost in Florida, John Hawkins brought some tobacco back to England with him, where it caught on in a big way. Wonderful powers were ascribed to it. Smoking was believed to be both a potent aphrodisiac and a marvellously versatile medicine. Soon it was all the rage and people couldn't get enough. The barely surviving Virginia colonists began planting tobacco in the second decade of the seventeenth century, discovering to their joy that it grew abundantly. Suddenly, fortunes were being made in Virginia. That, combined with the persecution of the Puritans in England which drove them to settle in New England, secured the success and future of our nation.

Another lexical fact: the distinctive New England twang we hear in the accents of those from the northeast is said to be a descendant of the "Norfolk whine" of England, while the Southern drawl is attributed to the Sussex accent at its root.

And did you know there was a British war called the War of Jenkin's Ear which started when Spain cut off the ear of an English smuggler named Edward Jenkins?

Oh there's lots more cool stuff about the Revolutionary War, but I'll save it for another blog.

Throat Yogurt?!

Sometimes it becomes difficult to just "let go" of old relationships. As an example, read on about this guy who writes to his old beloved. It will bring tears to your eyes.

Dear Mandy:

I know the counselor said we shouldn't contact each other during our "cooling off" period, but I couldn't wait anymore. The day you left, I swore I'd never talk to you again. But that was just the wounded little boy in me talking. Still, I never wanted to be the first one to make contact. In my fantasies, it was always you who would come crawling back to me. I guess my pride needed that.

But now I see that my pride's cost me a lot of things. I'm tired of pretending I don't miss you. I don't care about looking bad anymore. I don't care who makes the first move as long as one of us does. Maybe it's time we let our hearts speak as loudly as our hurt. And this is what my heart says... "There's no one like you, Mandy."

I look for you in the eyes and breasts of every woman I see, but they're not you. They're not even close. Two weeks ago, I met this girl at the Rainbow Room and brought her home with me. I don't say this to hurt you, but just to illustrate the depth of my desperation. She was young, Mandy, maybe 19, with one of those perfect bodies that only youth and maybe a childhood spent ice skating can give you. I mean, just a perfect body. Tits you wouldn't believe and an ass like a tortoise shell. Every man's dream, right? But as I sat on the couch being blown by this coed, I thought, look at the stuff we've made important in our lives. It's all so surface. What does a perfect body mean? Does it make her better in bed? Well, in this case, yes. But you see what I'm getting at. Does it make her a better person? Does she have a better heart than my moderately attractive Mandy? I doubt it.

And I'd never really thought of that before. I don't know, maybe I'm just growing up a little.

Later, after I'd tossed her about a quart of throat yogurt, I found myself thinking, "Why do I feel so drained and empty?" It wasn't just her flawless technique or her slutty, shameless hunger, but something else. Some niggling feeling of loss. Why did it feel so incomplete? And then it hit me. It didn't feel the same because you weren't there, Mandy, to watch. Do you know what I mean? Nothing feels the same without you, baby.
Mandy, I'm just going crazy without you. And everything I do just reminds me of you. Do you remember Carol, that single mum we met at Mt. Sinai Baptist Church? Well, she drops by last week with a pan of lasagne. She said she figured I wasn't eating right without a woman around. I didn't know what she meant till later, but that's not the real story.

Anyway, we have a few glasses of wine and the next thing you know we're shagging in our old bedroom. And this broad's a total monster in the sack. She's giving me everything, you know like a real woman does when she's not hung up about God and her career and whether the kids can hear us. And all of a sudden she spots that tilting mirror on your grandmother's old vanity. So she puts it on the floor and we straddle it, right, so we can watch ourselves. And it's totally hot, but it makes me sad too. 'Cause I can't help thinking, "Why didn't Mandy ever put the mirror on the floor? We've had this old vanity for what, 14 years, and we never used it as a sex aid." (Some of this I thought about later.)

You know what I mean? What happened to our spontaneity? You get so caught up in the routine of a marriage and you just lose sight of each other. And then you lose yourself. That's the saddest part of all for me.
But I keep thinking we can get it back. I know we can, because I only want this stuff with you. Saturday, your sister drops by with my copy of the restraining order. I mean, Shannon's just a kid and all, but she's got a pretty good head on her shoulders. She's been a real friend to me during this painful time. She's given me lots of good counsel about you and about women in general. (She's pulling for us to get back together, Mandy. She really is.)

So we're drinking in the hot tub and talking about happier times. Here's this hot girl with the same DNA as you (although, let's face it, she got an extra helping of the sexy gene) and all I can do is think of how much she looks like you when you were 18. And that just about makes me cry.
And then it turns out Shannon's really into the whole anal thing and that gets me to thinking about how many times I pressured you about trying it and how that probably fuelled some of the bitterness between us. But do you see how even then, when I'm thrusting inside the steaming hot Dutch oven of your sister's cinnamon ring, all I can do is think of you? It's true, baby. In your heart you know it.

Don't you think we could start over? Just wipe out all the grievances and start fresh? I think we can. I keep thinking that I think if you'd just try it, I wouldn't have to pressure you so much. Because who needs all that bitterness, Mandy? It just tears us apart. And I can't be apart from you.
Because I love you, God help me but I do.

Seven Souls

The ancient Egyptians postulated seven souls.

Top soul, and the first to leave at the moment of death, is Ren, the Secret Name. This corresponds to my Director; He directs the film of your life from conception to death. The Secret Name is the title of your film. When you die, that's where Ren came in.

Second soul, and second one off the sinking ship, is Sekem: Energy, Power, Light. The Director gives the orders, Sekem presses the right buttons. Number three is Khu, the Guardian Angel. He, she, or it is third man out . . . depicted as flying away across a full moon, a bird with luminous wings and head of light. Sort of thing you might see on a screen in an Indian restaurant in Panama. The Khu is responsible for the subject and can be injured in his defense-but not permanently, since the first three souls are eternal. They go beck to Heaven for another vessel.

The four remaining souls must take their chances with the subject in the Land of the Dead. Number four is Ba, the heart, often treacherous. This is a hawk's body with your face on it, shrunk down to the size of a fist. Many a hero has been brought down, like Samson, by a perfidious Ba.

Number five is Ka, the Double, most closely associated with the subject. The Ka, which usually reaches adolescence at the time of bodily death, is the only reliable guide through the Land of the Dead to the western Lands.

Number six is Khaibit, the Shadow, Memory, your whole past conditioning from this and other lives.

Number seven is Sekhu, the Remains. I first encountered this concept in Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings and saw that it corresponded precisely with my own mythology, developed over a period of many years, since birth in fact.

Ren, the Director, the Secret Name, is your life story, your destiny-in one word or one sentence, what was your life about? Nixon: Watergate. Billy the Kid: Quien es? And what is the Ren of the Director? Actors frantically packing in thousands of furnished rooms and theatrical hotels: "Don't bother with all that junk, John. The Director is on stage! And you know what that means in show biz: every man for himself."

Sekem corresponds to my Technician: Lights. Action. Camera. "Look, boss, we don't got enough Sek to fry an elderly woman in a fleabag hotel fire. And you want a hurricane?" "Well, Joe, we'll just have to start faking it" "Fucking moguls don't even know what buttons to push or what happens when you push them. Sure; start faking it and leave the details to Joe."

Look, from a real disaster you get a pig of Sek: sacrifice, tears, heartbreak, heroism and violent death. Always remember, one case of VD yields more Sek than a cancer ward. And you get the lowest acts of which humans are capable-remember the Italian steward who put on women's clothes and so filched a seat in a lifeboat? "A cur in human shape, certainly he was born and saved to set a new standard by which to judge infamy and shame."

With a Sek surplus you can underwrite the next one, but if the first one's a fake you can't underwrite a shithouse. Sekem is second man out: 'No power left in this set" He drinks a bicarbonate of soda and disappears in a belch. Lots of people don't have a Khu these days. No Khu would work for them. Mafioso Don: "Get offa me, Khu crumb! Worka for a living!" Ba, the Heart: that's sex. Always treacherous. Suck all the Sek out of a man.

Many Bas have poison juices. The Ka is about the only soul a man can trust. If you don't make it, he don't make it. But it is very difficult to contact your real Ka. Sekhu is the physical body, and the planet is mostly populated with walking Sekhus, just enough Sek to keep them moving. The Venusian invasion is a takeover of the souls.

Ren is degraded by Hollywood down to John Wayne levels. Sekem works for the Company. The Khus are all transparent fakes. The Ba is rotten with AIDS. The Ka is paralyzed. Khaibit sits on you like a nagging wife. Sekhu is poisoned with radiation and contaminants and cancer. There is intrigue among the souls, and treachery. No worse fate can befall a man than to be surrounded by traitor souls.

And what about Mr. Eight-Ball, who has these souls? They don't exist without him, and he gets the dirty end of every stick. Eights of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your dirty rotten vampires: A hundred years ago there were rat-killing dogs known as "Fancies." A man bet on his "Fancy," how many rats he would kill. The rats were confined in a circular arena too high for a rat to jump over. But they formed pyramids, so that the top rats could escape. Sekhu is bottom rat in the pyramid. Like the vital bottom integer in a serial, when that goes, the whole serial universe gone up in smoke. It never existed. Angelic boys who walk on water, sweet inhuman voices from a distant star. The Khu, sweet -bird of night, with luminous wings and a head of light, flies across the full moon . . . a born-again redneck raises his shotgun. . . . "Stinkin' Khu!"

The Egyptians recognized many degrees of immortality. The Ren and the Sekem and the Khu are relatively immortal, but still subject to injury. The other souls who survive physical death are much more precariously situated. Can any soul survive the searing fireball of an atomic blast? If humans and animal souls are seen as electromagnetic force fields, such fields could be totally disrupted by a nuclear explosion. The mummy's 'nightmare: disintegration of souls, and this is precisely the ultrasecret and supersensitive function of the atom bomb: a Soul Killer, to alleviate an escalating soul glut.

~William Burroughs

I'm about to run amuck

This is not my usual blog, y'all, I'm sorry. I just have to rant and bitch a little bit today. You know, if I kept it all in all the time, I'd swell up like a bullfrog and explode. We wouldn't want that, now would we?

Every week I get quite a number of emails, either from strangers or from people on my friends list, emails of a particular kind that are pushing me to the limit of my tolerance. What kind of email is it, you ask, that would test the infinite patience of the most gracious and kind Tess? Obviously, I intend to tell you, just now.

An example of the kind of email I mean is like this: "Hey Tess, Are you having a good day? How was your weekend?" or sometimes it's "How are you today?" Toward the end of the week, it's "Hi Tess, Do you have any fun plans for the weekend?" This being the entire text of the email, in full. Putting me in the position of either ignoring the email, which is not in my nature as I don't like to be rude, or responding with answers to the mind-numbingly dull questions as briefly as possible, which again is rude and not my usual style, or responding with a gracious, detailed, conversational response complete with reciprocal questions regarding the well-being of the other person and the events of their weekend past or future.

I'm flattered and I do understand that these people send me these emails because they want to stay in touch, they want to know me, they want to chat with me. Thank you, that's very sweet. But if you don't have anything interesting to say to me, please don't expect me to say anything interesting back in response to your email! Don't put the burden on me to be polite and stimulating and creative and charming, all on my own! If your email is no more charming than "Hi, how was your weekend? How are you doing today?"--what do you want from me??

And if you're a man hoping to capture my attention and spark up a little sump'n-sump'n with me via MySpace, you must know you gotta try way harder than "Got any fun plans for the weekend?"

One would think that receiving a bland response such as "I'm fine, thanks. No fun plans. Take care." would discourage a person from writing again. Yet, I get the same email week after week from some! The following cycle repeated, week after week:

"Hi, how are you? Did you do anything fun this weekend?" "Hi, I'm fine. No I didn't do anything fun." "Hey Tess, how's it going?" "Hi, it's going fine." "Hi, are you having a good day? Do you have anything fun planned for this weekend?" "Hello, I'm having a good day. I don't have much planned for the weekend." "Hey, Tess, how are you?" "Hi, I'm fine." "Hi Tess, how was your weekend?" "Hello, my weekend was fine."

Does that not make you want to commit an atrocious crime? Does that not numb your mind with boredom to the point of having your brains melt and run out your ears?? Then why do we keep doing it, week after week?

If you want to send me a friendly email and tell me about your weekend, fine. I'll read it and if something inspires me to have a conversation, then perhaps we will correspond back and forth for a bit about what you said. Perhaps I will be inspired to share something of my own with you. Heck, it's even remotely possible, like maybe a fraction of a percentage point possible chance, that we might hit it off so well that I will begin foaming at the mouth and having convulsions over you and threaten to shave my head if you don't meet me right away.

But if you approach me with mundane, boring, generic, chitty-chat questions, please expect to be ignored. I'm thinking of putting together a form letter response, what do you think of this:

"Hi, I'm suicidal today, thanks for asking. I had a fun weekend, swallowed a live cricket. I plan on doing that again this weekend, if I have time. Thanks, /tess."

Goddess of Grace, Inspiration, and the Moon

Legend says that a goddess rides these hills, so swiftly that no horseman could catch her. To invoke her, you need only to call her name.

Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night and wouldn’t you love to love her?

Rhiannon is the Celtic goddess of the moon, a Welch goddess. Her name means “Divine Queen.”

Rhiannon’s myth tells that she was promised in marriage to an older man she found repugnant. She defied her family’s wishes that she, like other Celtic goddesses, would marry one of her "own kind."

Takes to the sky like a bird in flight and who will be her lover?

The goddess Rhiannon fell in love with the mortal Prince Pwyll and grew more restless and anxious as she considered her dilemma. It was bad enough to have displeased her family by turning away the warty old man they wanted her to marry, but to marry a mortal would get her banished forever. Many nights she walked, singing to the moon, calling out her heart’s agony, until she knew that she would have no peace unless he was hers.

Rhiannon appeared to Pwyll one afternoon while he stood with his companions on a great grass-covered mound in the deep forest surrounding his castle. These mounds, called Tors, were thought to be magical places, perhaps covering the entrance to the otherworld beneath the earth. It was thought that those who stood upon them would become enchanted, so most people feared and avoided them.

Indeed, as he stood in the magical place, the young prince was enchanted by the vision of a beautiful woman with flowing hair and midnight eyes, who was dressed in glittering gold as she galloped by on her powerful white horse. Rhiannon rode by without casting him even a glance. Pwyll was intrigued and enraptured, and his companions were understandably concerned.

All your life you’ve never seen a woman taken by the sky.

Ignoring the protest of his friends, Pwyll sent his servant riding his swiftest horse to catch her and ask her to come back to him. But the servant soon returned and reported that she rode so swiftly, it seemed her horse’s feet scarcely touched the ground and that he could not even follow her to learn where she went.

The next day, against his friends’ advice, Pwyll returned alone to the mound and, once more, the Celtic goddess appeared. Mounted on his horse, Pwyll pursued her but could not overtake her. Although his horse ran even faster than Rhiannon's, the distance between them always remained the same. Finally, after his horse began to tremble with exhaustion, he stopped and called out for her to wait. “Don’t leave me! Come back!” And Rhiannon did.

When Pwyll drew close, she teased him gently, “It would have been much kinder to your horse had you simply called out instead of chasing.” The goddess Rhiannon then let him know that she had come to find him, seeking his love.

Would you stay if she promised you heaven? Would you even try?

Pwyll welcomed this, for the very sight of this beautiful Celtic goddess had tugged at his heart and haunted his spirit. He reached for her reins to guide her to his kingdom. But Rhiannon smiled tenderly and shook her head, telling him that they must wait a year and then she would return to marry him. In the next moment, the goddess Rhiannon simply disappeared from him into the deep forest.

Taken by the sky.

She went home to appeal to her family, that they not cast her out for choosing a mortal husband. She begged them to see that she was not whole without him and that she would never be happy with any other. She told them how much she loved them all and that it would break her heart if they rejected her, but she would choose to be with him no matter what they decided. Very quickly, her mother’s heart was touched by the fire in her daughter’s eyes, and she admired Rhiannon’s courage. Over time, her father and the others were won over by her determination as well. They wanted only her happiness. They gave their blessing to Rhiannon, but told her that she could not return to the world of the gods if she chose the mortal path.

She rules her life like a bird in flight and who will be her lover?

Rhiannon did return one year later, dressed as before, to greet Pwyll on the Tor. He was accompanied by a troop of his own men, as befitted a prince on his wedding day. Speaking no words, Rhiannon turned her horse and gestured for the men to follow her into the tangled woods. Although fearful, they complied. As they rode, the trees parted before them, clearing a path, then closing in behind them when they passed.

Soon they entered a clearing and were joined by a flock of small songbirds that swooped playfully in the air around Rhiannon’s head. At the sound of their beautiful singing, all fear and worry suddenly left the men. Before long they arrived at her father’s palace, a stunning abode surrounded by a lake. The castle, unlike any they had ever seen, was built not of wood or stone, but of silvery crystal. Its spires soared into the heavens.

After the wedding, a great feast was held to celebrate the marriage of the goddess. Rhiannon’s family and people were both welcoming and merry, but the festivities were interrupted by drama from an unexpected source. The man Rhiannon had rejected began carrying on, shouting and arguing that she should not be allowed to marry outside her own people.

Rhiannon slipped away from her husband’s side to deal with the situation as discreetly as she could . . . using a bit of magic, she turned the persistent suitor into a badger and caught him in a bag which she tied closed and threw into the lake. Unfortunately, he managed to escape and vowed that Rhiannon would pay.

She is like a cat in the dark, then she is the darkness.

The next day Rhiannon left with Pwyll and his men to go to Wales as his princess. When they emerged from the forest and the trees closed behind them, Rhiannon took a moment to glance lovingly behind her. She knew that the entrance to the fairy kingdom was now closed and that she could never return to her childhood home. But she didn’t pause for long.

The goddess Rhiannon was welcomed by her husband’s people and admired for her great beauty and her lovely singing. Within two years, she delivered a fine and healthy son. As was the custom then, six women servants were assigned to stay with Rhiannon in her lying-in quarters to help her care for the infant. Although the servants were supposed to work in shifts tending to the baby throughout the night so that the goddess Rhiannon could sleep and regain her strength after having given birth, one evening they all fell asleep on the job.

When they woke to find the cradle empty, they were fearful they would be punished severely for their carelessness. They devised a plan to cast the blame on the goddess Rhiannon, who was, after all, an outsider, not really one of their own people. Killing a puppy, they smeared its blood on the sleeping Rhiannon and scattered its bones around her bed. Sounding the alarm, they accused the goddess of eating her own child.

Although Rhiannon swore her innocence, Pwyll, suffering from his own shock and grief and faced with the anger of his advisers and the people, did not come strongly to her defense, saying only that he would not divorce her and asking only that her life be spared. Rhiannon’s punishment was announced.

For the next seven years the goddess Rhiannon was to sit by the castle gate, bent under the heavy weight of a horse collar, greeting guests with the story of her crime and offering to carry them on her back into the castle.

Rhiannon bore her humiliating punishment without complaint. Through the bitter cold of winters and the dusty heat of four summers, she endured with quiet acceptance. Her courage was such that few accepted her offer to transport them into the castle. Respect for her began to spread throughout the country as travelers talked of the wretched punishment and the dignity with which the goddess bore her suffering.

Once in a million years a lady like her rises.

In the fall of the fourth year, three strangers appeared at the gate—a well-dressed nobleman, his wife, and a young boy. Rhiannon rose to greet them saying, “Lord, I am here to carry each of you into the Prince’s court, for I have killed my only child and this is my punishment.” The man, his wife, and the child dismounted. While the man lifted the surprised Rhiannon onto his horse, the boy handed her a piece of an infant’s gown. Rhiannon saw that it was cloth that had been woven by her own hands. The boy then smiled at her, and she recognized that he had the eyes of his father, Pwyll.

Soon the story was told. Four years earlier, during a great storm, the nobleman had been called to the field to help a mare in labor, when he heard the infant’s cries and found him lying abandoned. He and his wife took the baby in, raising him as if he were their own. When the rumors of the goddess Rhiannon’s fate reached his ears, he realized what had happened and set out at once to return the child to his parents.

Pwyll and his people quickly recognized the boy as Pwyll and Rhiannon’s son. The goddess Rhiannon was restored to her honor and her place beside her husband. Although she had suffered immensely at their hands, Rhiannon, goddess of noble traits, saw that they were ashamed and was filled with forgiveness and understanding.

“Oh no, Rhiannon,” you cry, but she’s gone. Your life knows no answer.

In some versions of the legend, Rhiannon was the Celtic goddess who later became Vivienne, best known as the Lady of the Lake. She was the Celtic goddess who gave Arthur the sword Excalibur, empowering him to become King in the legends of Camelot.

The story of the Celtic goddess Rhiannon reminds us of the healing power of tears, grace and forgiveness. The goddess Rhiannon is a goddess of movement and change who remains steadfast, comforting us in times of crisis and of loss.

Dreams unwind, love’s a state of mind.