Stories

There is nothing strange about me, and I can't explain why I can sense people from centuries past talk to me in my sleep and in my waking state. We are born with all sorts of abilities, I suppose, and I wouldn't have known mine was weird if it weren't for other people telling me so.
We use our unlikely gifts the best way we know how, the best way they fit in the normal fabric of reality, which they often do not, and since I'm talking to people long dead anyway, I became an anthropologist.
It is a solitary journey during which you're always surrounded by a crowd, always submerged in its beliefs and convictions, to the point where they drown you out.
People who even entertain the thought mediumship may be possible, and who don't drop me immediately in the crazy or deluded category, often ask, what is the point of speaking to the dead?
What is the point of speaking to anyone, really?

Have you ever drifted into an experience so foreign you lack the means to communicate it and all the rules you relied upon to guide your life become useless?
My sister and I ventured into the boreal night again, only this time it wasn’t dark. In the absence of light pollution, the sky burst open to reveal a profusion of stars, clustered tight along the bright path of the Milky Way.
The night was a lot colder than we had gotten used to. 
The ocean air carries a lot of moisture to the islands, which traps warm air under its cloud cover, but tonight there were no clouds, and the sky was full of stars, which felt close enough to touch, and looked so brilliant.
We can no longer imagine a sky so bright with stars that even on a dark moon it illuminates the earth enough to see its every detail, cast in cool hues.
I looked at Denise and almost didn’t recognize her: she had a light blue halo in her hair, and her demeanor was so serious it made her look wise beyond her years.

While listening to a lecture on postmodernism and influence, a sudden recognition stunned me.  
Of course there are no new stories! Of course everything we think, regardless of our erudition or awareness, has been thought many times before!
We all wade blindfolded through the endless pool of knowledge that is the collective unconscious, fishing out random revelations. 
The human brain is not sophisticated enough to fathom the structure of this giant repository, but that structure must exist, as it is fitting for something this complex. 
Its organization is discrete and too close to be perceived as a whole, but acts with the cohesiveness of waves or prevailing winds.

Sometimes the river of thought flows through rapids, smothering the new born consciousness with the many faces of reality, so rich and thick with meaning you don’t even know if they’re yours, if they even relate to you, if they even exist, whether existence is something tangible, something whose presence you can guarantee tomorrow in this ever shifting unfolding of meaning that surrounds us.
I am confounded and awed, and somewhat eager to alter its course to reach the lazy river made of  sunshine and cozy afternoons where time slows down enough to give us comfort, where reality feels solid again, as if it had never changed. So many thoughts, so many people, conflicting interests intruding upon my life, I don’t even know you, go away! Who are you? Something inside my consciousness asks, and I can’t be sure it’s me, if there is such a thing.

Have you ever drifted into an experience so foreign you lack the means to communicate it and all the rules you relied upon to guide your life become useless?
My sister and I ventured into the boreal night again, only this time it wasn’t dark. In the absence of light pollution, the sky burst open to reveal a profusion of stars, clustered tight along the bright path of the Milky Way.
The night was a lot colder than we had gotten used to. 
The ocean air carries a lot of moisture to the islands, which traps warm air under its cloud cover, but tonight there were no clouds, and the sky was full of stars, which felt close enough to touch, and looked so brilliant.
We can no longer imagine a sky so bright with stars that even on a dark moon it illuminates the earth enough to see its every detail, cast in cool hues.
I looked at Denise and almost didn’t recognize her: she had a light blue halo in her hair, and her demeanor was so serious it made her look wise beyond her years.

I always thought my life would be like the novels I liked to read when I was a teenager, where the heroine’s life was a constantly unfolding drama, replete with emotionally charged moments and anchored in the importance of her actions, where every meaningful event was anticipated well in advance and everything turned out more or less as planned.
Finding you was supposed to be a glorious professional moment, and I daydreamed of basking in the glory of compliments and approval, and savoring the pith of a prestigious career which would be undeniably earned.
And then I found you.
There is nothing more disorienting than a dream come true: all your struggles, your planning, your entire focus, is thus brought to its end. 
Nobody thinks through what they want to do with that fulfilled dream, because unconsciously we don’t believe it would happen.
It never looks like you planned. It feels so alien from your cherished vision you can barely recognize it and it changes you, in ways opposite from what you’d expect. It opens you to the sudden revelation you do not know what you’re doing, and you didn’t when you were sure of your goals either, and the terrifying clarity that life is not what you thought. 

There is an entire obscure half to life, one we avoid, forget, overlook. 
You can’t overlook it in the northern realms, not during winter, when the nights are long, and where people sought refuge underground to escape the harshness of the weather for centuries.
The dark half of the year, finding refuge in the earth, embracing stillness, these customs have been abandoned a long time ago, and because they became unfamiliar, they make us apprehensive.
There is power in this dark half we avoid; it has its own laws, its creations, its wealth of stories told by the fire during the months when there is nothing to do other than cozy up and wait for the sun to return.
The dark is the keeper of stories, songs, and magic. It is the place and time for contemplation and refining thought. It affords freedom from distraction and a cocoon inside which one can turn one’s gaze inwards.
Magic and mystery thrive in the dark half of life, because the latter is endlessly patient, focused and unswayed. 
Refined thought requires silence and solitude, while wisdom is gained away from distractions.

Night falls quickly in Orkney at the end of October, and we drove quietly past the lochs and the stones to reach the Storytelling Centre, braving a bone chilling rain that promised to turn into ice soon.
We advanced through the darkness in silence, lulled by the rhythmic motion of the windshield wipers, like the last two people on earth, who reached the limits of their familiar realm and dared to venture into uncharted territory.
After a while we lost track of time and distance, immersed in an inky darkness whose substance was uniform, unmeasurable, and thicker than molasses, and which closed behind us as we passed through it, like the depths of the sea.
The passing of time is a measure of change, and it does not apply to a medium that stays the same, which shows no sign of differentiation or movement. 
In the blackness of that night we were outside of time itself, traveling to another dimension maybe, I couldn’t tell.

The sunshine was warm and hazy at the equinox, brushing the grassy knolls and the tops of the stones and sparkling on the lochs.
I know you’ve been here so many times, Fiona, that’s probably why I can’t keep away from this place, and here I am again, at the Stones of Stenness, waiting for the equinox like I’m expecting something to happen.
Spend enough time at sacred sites and you start believing in their magic. 
There is a still power in the stones, subtle, like tides, which quietly overtakes you before you take notice, and you find yourself immersed in it, dazzled and bowing to its authority.
You came here at sunrise, with Jorunn, carrying baskets of honey cakes and root vegetables, hoping to entreat the spirit of Orkney and appease the wrath of Gore Vellye, whose fury strips the land bare and disappears whole islands.
It’s cold already, and you are walking against the wind, wrapping the warm furs tight around your body to keep out the chill.
Jorunn walks behind you, respectful, and it takes a moment for me to understand when did this role reversal happened, and then I see the signet ring on your finger, your symbol of authority. You are no longer a person, Fiona; you are the seat of power, a keeper of the royal blood your mentor took an oath to honor and defend with her life.

The clashing of swords was overwhelming, the sky filled with dirt and thunderheads. There I saw them in the lightning, riding their winged horses with their hair in the wind.
In the middle of the battle I saw you too, Fiona, and couldn’t recognize you, as you rode across the field looking very much their equal, cutting a wide path through the enemy troops like a scythe through high grass, with far-reaching, terrifying sway, looking ageless like an idol, and just like it unable to feel sorrow, anger, or hurt.
Your face still lingers in my memory: although it looked young, your eyes were wise and hard, just like Jorunn's. Even in death, she was with you, her courage, strength and fearlessness watching over you.
We have been blest to live in peaceful times, and never experience such a scene, not to mention take part in it, and it was so shocking and terrifying to me I can’t draw breath, Fiona, to see a child like you bear down on the battlefield swinging that giant sword of yours that looked too heavy to lift, like a vengeful angel riding a horse of fire.