Blog o’ Gnosis

That’s PantheaCon, for those of you jaded enough to think something else. Yes, the much-ballyhooed annual Pagan gathering is commencing this Friday, held in the splendor of a downtown San Jose hotel, and will run all through the long President’s Day weekend.

My crew and I will be at the Serpentine Music booth just inside the front entrance to the vendor’s room, playing all kinds of Pagan music, and selling CDs, songbooks, and DVDs. This year I have teamed up with the excellent Jason Pitzl-Waters from over at the Wild Hunt Blog and A Darker Shade of Pagan radio. Jason suggested some great new music to carry, and I managed to get his very favorite in stock. (If you come to the booth and give the secret blog-reader handshake, you can see his whole top ten list.)

We have had a break in the constant rainy weather of the past few weeks, but this was the first clear day that dawned with no wind. My dog was in desperate need of a bath and I was in desperate need of a walk in the sun, so off we went to walk on [...]

I have heard from several friends in other states and countries since the tiger mauling at the San Francisco Zoo happened last December, killing one young man and injuring two others. Aside from inquiring whether the victims were anyone I knew, there was a decided strain of “what the hell is wrong with you people?” in my friends’ voices.

Back in the early 90s I came across a really amusing article in an obscure little magazine. The article was by this guy who had always wondered what the lyrics were in Manfred Mann’s version of the Bruce Springsteen song Blinded By The Light. You know, the part where they sing “Blinded by the light/wrapped up like a…” or “revved up like a…” What the heck were they singing, anyway?

It was the author’s method of finding out what the lyrics were, in those pre-Google days, that made the article so amusing. He went to the Rainbow Cattle Co. bar in Guerneville one evening and, yelling to be heard over the blare of dance music, asked several of the patrons what they thought the lyrics were. The resulting mini-interviews were hilarious, and the best part is that he never did answer his own question.

We had a couple great blustery rainstorms this week, breaking the long sunny spell of late November. I love watching storms come in here on the coast. Each one is different, but there comes a time in the hours preceding the first downfall when I instinctively head outside to make sure everything is covered that needs protection.

This morning I woke at 5 am and could not get back to sleep. I lay in bed for an hour verifying the fact, then rose and walked quietly through my dark house. I was drawn to the windows facing west, which were filled with moonlight. Looking out I noticed with surprise that the sky was perfectly clear; gone was the overcast of previous mornings.

Today I took a much-needed break after weeks of teaching, travelling, and working hard. I had been getting progressively more tired as the weeks went by, but I didn’t realize how bad off I was until I heard myself suggest to a friend that she take a day off to recharge. It was one of those moments when realization finally breaks through the fog: I am giving someone the exact advice I need to take.

Do you remember Ronald Reagan’s first Secretary of the Interior, James Watt? The guy was a real piece of work, a fundamentalist Christian (oh, how we have become inured to religious extremists in public office since then!) who shocked the nation by his crass attitude toward the environment, and also to other people.

My favorite quote by him (and he is eminently quotable) comes from a source I can’t remember, but it was an interview somewhere, I believe after he left office. Someone asked him what his biggest fear was about environmentalists, and he said he feared that all of them were secretly Pagan.

Another early morning walk, this time along a trail in the Laguna de Santa Rosa. The trail meanders through the remnants of one of California’s major freshwater wetlands, with wide paths strewn with fallen grasses and dust. In the morning it is all tamped down with a light coating of dew, so the dust stays low and the air fresh.

One long stretch follows a series of ponds and waterways, the edge of the water choked with willow and briar, poison oak and Himalayan blackberry. The berries have been ripening steadily for the last few weeks, and these bushes so close to the trail have all been picked clean by a constant stream of visitors. I love a luscious, ripe blackberry as much as anybody, but I don’t even try to find one in this stand.

My eye is drawn instead to the opposite side of the trail, where out of the jumbled grasses rises a tangle of wild rose canes. The blooms are long gone, pink as I recall, small and lightly fragrant. Even the leaves are turning and falling, and what remains are thin clusters of tiny red rose hips scattered among the briars.

One morning last week I drove out to Bodega Head for a hike. The day had dawned clear and still, another instance where sweltering heat inland gives rise to a spectacular day on this wild coast. Though it was not particularly early, the parking lot was empty save for two elderly beachcombers. I had the headlands to myself, and took the south trail toward the very tip of the land.

To walk along the head is to traverse a slice of Los Angeles that has migrated north over a long stretch of time, thanks to the San Andreas Fault. The cliffs are ribbon striped in long diagonals of rock that heave skyward as though the promontory itself were craning its neck to see what lies farther north.