(no subject)
Jun. 30th, 2009 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ferineI studied the impressive and complicated array of thunderheads in the sky. Not menacing, they were bulbous and white. Staring at them as we drove, my thoughts went to the Greek pantheon. I had read an article the previous night in the U.K. magazine Pentacle about a modern Greek pagan (a Helleniste?). He mentioned that he had relationships with five deities, and dealt with others when he needed to.
This is so different from my, albeit limited, realm of experience. As a pre- and adolescent, in the height of my Greek mythology and pantheon studies, I felt no connection to any deity or figure other then Artemis and dryads. The others frankly scared me. In actuality, so did Artemis; I felt unworthy of her because of my physical ineptitude.
Only now do I understand the Greek pantheon and mythological beings in a less (or more) than literal context. Funny, as I grew up reading Joseph Campbell--one would think I'd have known better.
Then I pictured the various deities and beings in the clouds. It was thrilling; frightening in neat and inhuman way. There were Maenads, the imagining of which terrified me most and lingered at the edges of my brain-pan.
Maenads have been on my mind lately due to my current favorite HBO program, True Blood.
After some research on-line I gleaned what a character was.
After an early dinner, we returned home. As we drove, I looked beside the highway at the marshes and lakes where birds love to congregate. And I thought to myself, damn, this area is awesome. Even beside a highway birds-of-prey and various waterbirds live. Undoubtedly foxes, coyotes, and owls too. Even the parking lots at nearby grocery stores are frequented by seagulls or crows, and of course by sparrows.
This area, this land, is amazing. It's not mine. I started to think of it that way, after ten years of being here and tending to the 104th Trail and the Adams County Fairgrounds Nature Preserve. But to consider land as mine is wrong. It's egotistical. I have no right to claim ownership of something because it affords me pleasure, or because I love it.
I am a steward and a guardian of this area. Given such time and frequency spent here, I feel a deep-rooted and symbiotic connection.
This is so different from my, albeit limited, realm of experience. As a pre- and adolescent, in the height of my Greek mythology and pantheon studies, I felt no connection to any deity or figure other then Artemis and dryads. The others frankly scared me. In actuality, so did Artemis; I felt unworthy of her because of my physical ineptitude.
Only now do I understand the Greek pantheon and mythological beings in a less (or more) than literal context. Funny, as I grew up reading Joseph Campbell--one would think I'd have known better.
Then I pictured the various deities and beings in the clouds. It was thrilling; frightening in neat and inhuman way. There were Maenads, the imagining of which terrified me most and lingered at the edges of my brain-pan.
Maenads have been on my mind lately due to my current favorite HBO program, True Blood.
After some research on-line I gleaned what a character was.
After an early dinner, we returned home. As we drove, I looked beside the highway at the marshes and lakes where birds love to congregate. And I thought to myself, damn, this area is awesome. Even beside a highway birds-of-prey and various waterbirds live. Undoubtedly foxes, coyotes, and owls too. Even the parking lots at nearby grocery stores are frequented by seagulls or crows, and of course by sparrows.
This area, this land, is amazing. It's not mine. I started to think of it that way, after ten years of being here and tending to the 104th Trail and the Adams County Fairgrounds Nature Preserve. But to consider land as mine is wrong. It's egotistical. I have no right to claim ownership of something because it affords me pleasure, or because I love it.
I am a steward and a guardian of this area. Given such time and frequency spent here, I feel a deep-rooted and symbiotic connection.
