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Saturday, April 26th, 2003
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9:54 pm - Last Week of the Year
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As I write, I am aboard a human vessel from one of the major isles, headed towards the Continent. While stopping in a port town last week I overheard talk of the Year Festival, and how it would be so great because of the anniversary (of the destruction of Mandala, but they think of it as a glory) and so on, and I knew that the currents were leading me there, that I wanted to go see this festival.
I am curious. I know so little about Gainsboro, this solar capital. My studies are of old Mandala, of the lunar empire and those people. I know the humans of the Isles, but I know so little of those living on the Continent now. It will certainly be a different experience--few elves seem interested in visiting the Continent. But few elves journey the way the Morgancie do, either.
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9:49 pm - First Week of Fall
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Well, I was right about not being able to journal much this summer. Still, I have plenty of scribblings in my notes and plans that if I ever want to reconstruct this summer I will be able to. For now, I choose to let it go. One term was enough, now it is time to move on.
Fall turning was a beautiful ceremony, and it reminded me far too much of my first home. The leaves and the trees and the priestess of Silvrea kept fading to memories of mother performing the same ceremony in years past. I thought briefly about returning home, yet I realized that I am not done journeying. The sea still calls me. I have surrendered my path to the tides and they are surely washing me off this shore as they once washed me onto it. I shall go back to journeying the isles this fall. I will move southward, to avoid some of the winter cold.
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9:45 pm - First Week of Summer
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The waves have led me back to the university. I think I will stay on this isle awhile, but not as a student. It is high time I taught something. I doubt I will have much time for journalling, teaching is a consuming activity.
What do I teach? Elven folklore. I look forward to completing the circle I began as a student here.
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| Tuesday, February 25th, 2003
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12:18 am - Third Week of Spring: Labyrinth
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I have not kept up with my journaling as I would wish, yet Para knows very well how mischievious the waters of creation are. Indeed, I have thought much in the last three weeks, but little has lent itself to words. First, perhaps, I will recount actions, to lead to thoughts.
We arrived in the Morganciel isles a week ago, after several sidestops along the way. No wonder Father's people understand pilgrimage so well, for every journey on the sea has some of the aspects of a pilgrimage. Always Para is directing us where she wishes--which only sometimes coincides with where we wishe--and often we reap unexpected benefits from this changed journey. Is this not the essence of pilgrimage, that it is the journey's elaboration that benefits us far more than its end?
I have only once before visited these home isles of Father's clan. In truth, Father's clan spends far more time at sea or in other people's ports than on the home isles, so I have met many more of my relatives at our own dock than anywhere else. I was welcomed (greeted and feasted) warmly by my grandparents, who have only retired to a contemplative land-based life in the last decade. They lamented my lack of Morganciel upbringing ("What can one dock teach you compared to the ocean?") and proceeded to fill my head with tales of famous alleparas and sea-lore. I had heard much from father, but indeed, the grandparents of the Morganciel are the true holders of tales and religion.
It was grandmother Ulanaltha who blessed me in Para's and Lutania's names and led me through the symbolic labyrinth which grandfather Lavereniel had bult out of sand on the East beach. Once I was in the center of the labyrinth, Ula left through the path as I contemplated my journey for the appropriate time. (Like all other Morganciel definitions, the appropriate time is circular, it comes when you know you've reached it.) The experience of walking a labyrinth is like and yet unlike the forms of prayer we use to Kano and Silvrea. The Morgancie love the labyrinth, for like any sea-journey it is the essence of pilgrimage, which I come to see more and more as the essence of the sea-folk's way of life. A labyrinth is full of twists and turns and a path which seems to lead to center only to back out again, much like the diversions of a pilgrimage, yet in the end it leads you to center, home, self...
In seated prayer at the center of the labyrinth, after concentrating my thoughts throughout its twists and turns on my life's journey until now, I meditated on these thoughts of pilgrimage, on the land and sea and sky around me. I found my thoughts turning to the dual nature of my beliefs, the conflicts that I still felt about journeying from home. From my mother's clan I have learned to love the land, the trees, Harmony and Song, and especially the stability of home. Yet from father's clan I have always sensed this love of pilgrimage--although not really understood how deep it is with them until now--and always wondered what else could be learned from journeying. Hence I left to study at human universities and now left for true journeying. Yet until then I still felt conflicted, between the reminder of home encircling me and the call of the Sea. Raised with the Chandrakants, even while I journeyed I had trouble letting go of my first physical home and Beginning...
Here my prayer approached the mystical, and thoughts became inner experience hard to describe. As another wave of the encroaching tide disturbed the edge of the labyrinth, I felt and saw all with utter clarity. I was the tide, eagerly sweeping up over the sand, no inimical design on my constructed labyrinth, yet beginning to dissolve it nonetheless. I was the sand particles floating back with tide, traveling through the seawater past fish and beasts to be washed up on another island. I was the grit from the beach on a squirrel's paw, eventually ground into dirt in a clearing by a buried nut trove. I was a nut, ignored come spring, that grew into a little sapling and into a mighty oak, whose leaves decomposed and fertilized a sycamore sapling. I was a bird perched on the sycamore taking wing over seas and isles to return to catch a fish from the tidal pools left near my labyrinth.
I was myself, in a circular pattern of complexity in a circular world of higher complexity attempting a circular journey of utmost complexity.
I was all those circular, interwoven, complicated paths, transliterated into a labyrinth of fleeting sand.
Breath.
Understanding.
Breath.
I was myself.
I was wet, and a little cold as an early evening breeze blew in from the ocean. My knees ached a little from the cross-legged position and my right hand was clenched so tightly around my pendant that my fingers hurt, my left hand meanwhile was buried in the sand to the wrist. Another wave was just retreating, and soon the sea-side of the labyrinth would be unrecognizable.
I walked the outward path back into reality. Not contemplating, for I was beyond that. Indeed, so far outside of thought that awareness almost hurt. Instead, I concentrated on breath, on my surroundings, on the feel of the wet sand on my feet and the breeze in my hair. By the time I exited the labyrinth--hand still clenched on a lump of sand--I had barely managed to pull myself into my own skin and senses.
Only when I was out of the labyrinth did I think to open my left hand, and there, after the sand had sifted away, was a small piece of green ocean-polished glass. I have saved it and twined it into my necklace alongside my pendant, as a reminder of that first true day of my pilgrimage.
The next day (today) I gathered my possessions and set out in my own boat. I sail now where the wind wills, knowing that I will always tread the circular path between land and sea, and yet always be at home.
Sung to the Harmony of Life,
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| Monday, February 24th, 2003
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11:51 pm - First of Spring: Beginnings
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Today my journey, my alllepara, began.. Father and I first talked of this journey last summer, but it has taken me seasons to say goodbye to Chandresh and Kano's Isle. Although I have journeyed out of Changresh before, in my studies of the Lunar Empire and "ancient" human culture, I have never truly left "home." These isles were still home while I was away studying, but I do not know if they will be when I have finished this journey. I must learn to carry home with me. (Father reminded me, in his farewells, that all of life is in allepara, even if we end our pilgrimage at home.
We set sail as soon as the tide permitted after first light today. This allowed me to be with my family for a brief observance of the First of Spring underneath Kano's tree at the center of the isle. Mother gifted me with a novitiate's token, a simple interlace tree in a circle on a green cord. She said she had prayed to Kano and Silvrea all night on what token of home would be best, and this is what she found. Until she put it over my head, I had still felt nervousness and a small amount of uncertainty at my decision, but the circle around me neck and on my breast seemed to enclose me in comfort and certainty. I knew as sure as they had been there talking to me that Kano and Silvrea were telling me that as long as I honored the land anyplace would be home.
Father had no such token, but when we arrived at the dock he splashed me with sea-water quite suddenly. I turned, curious and annoyed as he laughed--and father has quite a booming laugh, so all of the sailors had paused in their tasks to glance over. "What was that for?"
"To surprise and annoy you."
"Why?"
"Para will."
By that I knew what he meant. Para and the sea are fickle patrons, and father had just reminded me, the pilgrim's journey is under their lore. However much the stability of home is carried in my heart, I must also remember the unexpected nature of the journey at all times. I then bade him good-bye and jumped in the boat, quite eager to be on my way.
I now sit in my cabin, after my first day at sea. Nothing momentous has happened since we left, and I have been at sea plenty of times before, but simply my awareness of this journey makes the voyage more real. Every sight and sound seems amplified.
We are journeying first to the Morganciel's isles, where I will leave this trade ship for a much smaller one and let my wandering start in earnest.. Father asked that I start my journey with a stop at his home for the official blessing of his clan, but I also thought it wise to start by journeying to a known place before setting off willy-nilly for a new place.
My candle dies, so I will leave this journaling a while.
Sung to the Harmony of Life,
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| Saturday, February 1st, 2003
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4:22 am - Intention, The Last of Winter
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In my father's clan, who are primarily seafarers, they call it allepara, "following the sea." When you come of "of age," you feel the urge to let the sea take you where it will for a few years, until you find your way home. (Coming of age is defined by when you feel the need to follow the sea.) Home could be back to the fishing village you were born in, or--like father--a new island and a family from a different clan.
My clan--mother's clan, the Chandrakants--has no such ritual. The Chandrakant worship Earth before Water, and they worship Water in the fearful way an islander prays the sea will not reclaim their home. They see no reason to leave the home grove for long, except perhaps for study.
So when mother remarked that I had been restless and inattentive lately, it was father who understood--before me--what was going on. Mother had always wanted me to train my magick and/or study to replace her as our priestess of Kano. (The two weren't necessarily exclusive, for we believe that as the gods give us the power to channel magick, those who can are more eligible to intercede between gods and mortals than others, not less.) Religion, magick and study used to hold my attention just fine, but I found myself looking out to sea in the evenings wondering if I owed Para more devotion.
This will be my journal of my allepara, wherever the waves lead me.
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| Thursday, March 21st, 2002
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5:39 pm - Signed on the inside cover
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May Gayan bring you the harmony that upholds Silvrea's woodland melody,
so that you never forget Kano's words to the Song.
-Tinilmaniela Chandrakant
May Para's mischievious smile favor you,
and guide you forward through Lutania's labyrinth.
-Dainagonthiel Morgancien
Luck and love, sister.
-Metilavry
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ferona's journal