Apologies for the sound quality; best that could be done on such short notice.

All in all, the day’s events were wondrous and spectacular. I shared a ride to the venue with a pair of Morris dancers, some traditional African musicians and a guy with one sweet guitar.

As a highlight, my daughter and I got to ride on the carousel together. Thing is, it’s an original: a real, 1921 Dentzel menagerie; the only surviving ride from the site’s amusement park. It features 52 hand-carved animals, all original and maintained by the national park service. There are very few of its kind.

Beyond grateful for you lot here, and the folks who invited me to participate. As perfect days go, I can say I’ve had at least one.

Fear not, friends, both the story and the accompanying essay are in the audio for this week’s post. I’m just on the road yet again, so while all is accounted for, it’s just found in the recording.

Here’s something I’d love to hear from you about, though, if you can spare a comment: what are the knights like as you encounter them in the story? How do they look to you, and what are they like to be around? I’ve my own thoughts about that, but I’d love to hear from you.

I did a very strange thing some years back.

I was still a kid if we’re being honest; about two years into my third office job. It was in a K street high-rise, or what passes for such in downtown D.C. The place screamed “beige open office layout,” and the journey home consisted of a crowded 45-minute metro ride followed by a 20-minute drive from the station. Usually, I’d sleep during the metro leg of the trip. But then The Feeling started creeping in.

No real way to describe it other than to say I had ants in my pants. Some generalized anxiety that I had to DO something, and I had to do it NOW.

Every afternoon on the metro, The Feeling would return. In a few days, I couldn’t even sit down while on the train. After about a week, I’d shuffle in place because the unclassified discomfort became unbearable.

So here’s what I did:

I started taking my lunch breaks in the building’s basement, in an old storage room its rusty door couldn’t keep me out of. I went down there because it was quiet, no one could hear me, and I still had cell reception. Then I went through the directory I put together of every single bike shop in the city. I called up a fair many before I found one that was still hiring for the season.

This particular one wasn’t ideal. For one, it was located on the opposite end of town. Shifts also started at 3pm, which meant I’d have to leave at 2 to get there on time. But, it was a flagship store. And for reasons I couldn’t articulate, it’s what I needed to do. So I applied and started working.

My new routine was a delicate operation. On days I worked in the shop, I would have to sneak out the side entrance of my office building with a gym bag. The side entrance sat near a Starbucks, which provided a bathroom to change out of, along with a seldom-used elevator down to the metro station. I’d be able to change into my alter ego and catch a train with minimal worry about being discovered by my office colleagues.

There was still the problem of what would happen if anyone came looking for me between 2 and 5pm, but this was during the Great Recession and journalism’s total implosion. It was commonplace to visit the offices of co-workers and find their stuff had been cleared out. Those looking for me might just figure I, too, had been laid off. It was also likely to happen for real by the odds of it, so what was there to lose?

Nine to two Monday to Friday, I was in my office. Afternoons, nights, weekends and holidays, I was working in the shop. It was a grueling schedule, but I saw some things. There’s a guy whose latest movie you likely saw this month who also got sized up by me for some shoes and pedals. Also helped a handful of Senators’ aides get kitted up so they wouldn’t get dropped by their bosses. One particular afternoon, my boss showed up in the store van, which we never used. He tells me to help him unload the back. I was thinking surplus tires or something.

“You’re going to want to be very careful with what you pull out of there,” he said.

The only thing back there was a bike. But it had the Presidential Seal on it. (The urge to ride it was overwhelming, but I never did.)

Distance and understanding

Part of the reason fairy stories no longer speak to us like they once did is because we insist on distancing ourselves from them. It’s hard not to do.

If our great-grandparents heard about young Hans in the forest, they could feel the bugs buzz their ear as they followed the fisherman’s son into the shady dark. They’d smell the bear droppings that told them danger was closer than they’d wish. Today, we say, “oh yes, oh yes, the quintessential Call to Adventure, indicative of the western Hero’s Journey motif.” We think the distance provides understanding, but I happen to think it cheapens the experience. It prevents us from taking it seriously. Others might simply consider Hans and his journey a nonsense way to pass the time before the world was smart enough to invent Hulu. Either way, we’re loathe to leave the lecture hall or living room.

There’s a lot Hans could tell us, though, if only we took him at face value and walked the woods with him awhile.

For a start, he’s hungry, right? Hungry on a one-way trip to the wild elsewhere with no support. Passing up a meal when all future meals aren’t guaranteed isn’t a plot conceit. It’s taking a massive risk.

Eating the fish would have been more than reasonable, given his circumstances. I notice, too, that no one applauded his conservation efforts after he threw back his catch. No pat on the back from his brothers, no thank-you letter from the World Wildlife Fund. No one even saw him do it. It’s seldom anyone witnesses the act of kindness that can help change everything.

Speaking of his brothers, I’m way too much like the oldest than I’d feel comfortable admitting to. Petrified by questions I couldn’t possibly answer that keep me where I’m at. Oh yeah, I’ve had analysis paralysis alright. Our good friends Google and Siri make it easier than ever to slide into that. I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that LLMs end their output by asking you more questions.

What do you make of the bird outside the abandoned castle? And how about the princess’s gift? Why was it so important that Hans keep it to himself?

One of the reasons I love stories like these is because you could fill whole books ruminating on the images. I’d love to hear what you saw in it, or about your own jaunts through your particular forest. If you’ve had one or two yourself, let me know where they took you.

My two favorite knights, meeting at last.

As chivalric friendships go, this one’s highly irregular. Then again, you have to remember that neither of these two are O.G. members of the Round Table. You could call these guys part of the New Class; the Warriors of the Realm’s brat pack.

One, the Hawk of May, is in all respects a city boy who grew up under the glow of Camelot. He had to make a great deal of sacrifices (and learn a few unkind things about himself) to step out from under his family name and become his own person. The other, whose name means “to pierce the valley,” well… he couldn’t be more different.

What strikes me most is that as contrasting as these two are, they didn’t seem to see it.

Ted Gioia has mentioned that in his former life, when his job required a lot of tense negotiations and international travel, it would take an average of five conversations to go from being seen as “The American in the room” to “Ted.” My experiences in Australia support this, as likely do so many of those who have moved to America from elsewhere.

Sometimes, though, I suppose you just know. When I met my landlady in Oz, we both had our reasons for being a little cagey, but I had an early hunch we’d get along anyway. I still consider her my closest friend.

This story’s also got another distinction: between the men of action, and the men of words and wonder.

Sagremore and Kay are cetainly of the former. And don’t get me wrong, we need people like that. When the patient is choking and going into a seizure, you need people in the room who know how to use an epi pen, not write missives about the state of modern healthcare. But I wonder how well we understand the need for the wanderers and daydreamers, too. It’s all too easy to see what happens when those folks leave your camp. We mock their silly notions at our peril; they’re the ones who keep the fear, suspicion and finger-pointing at bay.

The following wasn’t the first time I met George, although in the past he’s insisted that it was: it was a hot, late spring day and he bolted through the dorm, sweaty and flushed from hoofing it several blocks in the heat. “Does anybody have a bike I can borrow? I have my math final in 8 minutes and I can’t make it without a bike!” Sounded serious, so I unlocked mine and told him the combination was still set on the lock. Later, he said he made it on time and he passed.

George and I would go on to have a great many adventures in school, many of which I cannot talk about as I am not as conversant about statues of limitations as I should be. About a decade later, we met up while he was at Walter Reed. (He was getting what was at the time the precursor to LASIK.) We drank, hung out and talked the old talk until very early hours. He reminded me about the bike incident.

Hearing his stories, it seemed that his life diverged greatly from my own after college. Only one time did he speak about his military experience. “Man,” he said, “it’s so nice spending time with a guy who would never think to call me ‘sir.’”

I called these “black sheep stories” when talking to Jon Murphy about them earlier.

The religious elements can turn some folks away while the fantastical elements tend to make some Christians uncomfortable. I’m fully aware of this.

Other strikes against them: they aren’t the Bible, they offer up something else besides moral takeaways, and their purpose isn’t as clear as a bulleted list.

It’s not really my intent with these to be preachy, nor is it to bring wooey superstition through the back doors of belief. I do, however, think that Christianity has become a bit monochromatic out there on the digital wires, and it’s no bad thing to revisit abandoned voices. If our ancestors appreciated such stories, what does it say about us and our sensibilities if we find them threatening or ridiculous?

Saint Collen lived in an Ireland divided amongst itself. The country by his time was overwhelmingly Christian in terms of belief, but its folk followed customs that long predated conversion. Priests would remind you regularly of Jesus and His Disciples; grandparents would tell you tales of Cú Chulainn and Manannán mac Lir. This tension is evident in Collen’s story.

Speaking of, Collen didn’t get his wish entirely, did he? Despite his strong notions and insistences, it wasn’t for him to decide how rational the world actually was.

When trying to conjure up older notions about autumnal holidays, we often say that our ancestors believed in a “thin veil” around the time of Halloween or Samhain. This is new language. To those in Collen’s time, there was no veil at all. Reality itself held a spiritual dimension every bit as real as what could be held in the hand. Our reality is no different if we’re honest about it. When viewing children belly-laughing over pizza and soda at a birthday party, you don’t need a PKE meter to notice that there’s love present in the room. It’s also no mere metaphor to say that there’s grief darkening a house that had just lost a loved one.

I recently visited my folks down in their retirement house. After a serious amount of searching, we were able to find a collection of family photos that spanned the years before my birth to the early 2000s. My mom insisted they were physical things that only took up weight and space in the closet. Yet she still kept some, and held some to her heart as she came across them in the pile. To me, those sentiments carried a weight every bit as real as the glossy paper they were printed on.

Earlier, when we were home, my daughter was looking at some polaroids she had taken. She didn’t find them particularly interesting and wanted to throw them away. I told her that she’s going to want to hold on to those. “Photographs get funny over time,” I told her. “They become more valuable the older they get. You’re going to wish you had those as an adult.”

Nothing in life is unilateral. We never get to decide such things anyway.

Sometimes you don’t want to do it:

You’re tired and just want to rest;

The ideas haven’t come and inertia has won,

So you sit there alone and depressed.

But that’s when you need to remember:

The magic won’t happen by chance;

It’s for you to find—and it’s rude to decline

When the universe asks you to dance.

Every child has known God,

Not the God of names,

Not the God of don’ts,

Not the God who ever does

Anything weird,

But the God who knows only 4 words.

And keeps repeating them, saying:

“Come Dance with Me”

—Hafiz

Still down the old dusty trail this week, but technological limitations aside, I wanted to share with you this story. I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit as of late—likely due to so many confluences between my current events and those of the story—but I’d be interested to hear what it meant for you.

Please let me know, and thanks for bearing with me these couple weeks on the road.

Yeah, bush souls. Ever met up with yours?

If you have, you’re lucky. Truth is, the modern world has forgotten how. Never mind St. Anthony’s cave; we only get about 20 minutes to ourselves a day if BLS numbers are to be believed. Meanwhile, we spend several hours daily staring at magic rectangles.

As a result, ours is a culture full of people who are not quite themselves.

Let’s try to define that, then get back to Sisoes. He might be able to help us fix this.

Seclusion & Society

Steely-eyed Patrick would rise alone before dawn and greet the day “come hail, rain or snow.” His monks would climb mountains barefoot, traipse through old-growth forests and kneel on the moss beneath ancient rowans to recite the psalms. They’d row to the Hebrides and the Faroes and spend hours, days, weeks at a time in total withdrawal. Theirs was a life of constant shifting between the shoulder-tight claustrophobia of communal living and the remote seclusion of the wild.

I’d like to make a case for how important this is as a practice. In particular, there are three things we can find out there that are hard to come by in our apartments, houses, offices and coffee shops.

Psyche, Spirit and the Bush Soul

The first is our psyche. I mean the internal stuff: following the downward path toward memory, shame, identity, grief and regret. Psyche is all about confrontation.

I think most of us would rather get a root canal from a rusty knife than make that trip. It’s part of why we reach for our phones at night, turn on the Bluetooth speaker in the shower and fire up our favorite podcasts on our commute—any distraction to keep from “dwelling on things.”

Even worse, sometimes we treat what we find down there as embarrassing. The past was the past, we were stupid back then and there’s no point in dragging it back out again.

None of that is healthy. It’s very important to hear our psyche out and be brave enough to regularly square up with her. If we don’t, she’s just going to come back later with Mid-Life Crisis, Grief or some other unwanted houseguest, and we’re not going to be able to get rid of them so easily. Far better we set aside time and space outside our routines to give her our due attention.

The second thing we can find out there is spirit. In some ways, spirit is psyche’s opposite. While psyche leads us inward and downward, spirit goes up and out. Where psyche brings confrontation, spirit brings connection. The unity you feel staring into early morning dewdrops. The fleeting understanding between you and the doe you meet in a spring forest. We can’t participate in these things just by talking about them.

The third, “bush soul,” is a term I’m borrowing from John Moriarty. In American culture, we know who we are in the office (even if some of us don’t like that version of ourselves very much). We also know who we are among our friends, and which part of us comes home to our families. But who shows up after several days of having the trees and the bugs as our only companions? Who are we and what are we like when really, truly, no one is watching?

Sisoes the Great knew who exactly who he was. But that came from knowing who he was on the mountain, and on his bed. He spent 72 years getting to know the former; I don’t think we can claim the same level of self-knowledge if we’re investing only 20 minutes a day. That’s not nearly enough time to confront psyche, reconnect with spirit and rekindle our bush souls. For that, we need a lot of space, silence and stillness.

I escaped from my own nixie just this week.

Made moves to, anyway. Gave notice that I would be leaving my well in a few weeks’ time and that neither flax nor bucket nor blunted axe will ever be touched again. I just don’t want to heft those things anymore. And I don’t want to take them with me.

What that means for me will be different for you, of course, so let’s not muddle the message with Jungian archetypes, imaginal symbolism or any dry treatment of mature ideas. I’d rather we talk about what it means to climb out of the wells that trap us.

Let’s understand this first: The siblings didn’t sign up for their predicament. This wasn’t a dare and they weren’t exploring the well as part of an urbex adventure. They slipped and fell. It was an accident.

Or was it? I’m no expert on nixies, but I find it suspicious that this one decided to set up shop in a location ideal for capitalizing on others’ missteps. It’s one of many details in this story I wonder about.

No telling how long those two were down there in that well. What we know is that eventually, the kids realized that they had enough. It was time to bust out.

Isn’t it weird that this evil, maligned, mythological nixie goes to mass on Sundays? I picture her wet, scaly face covered up in a bonnet, mouth hissing between her jagged teeth as she says, “peaccccccce be with you.” Some aspects of the universe remain constant, it seems, fairy tale or no.

What stops me in my tracks, though, is the escape. The nixie chases the kids. It’s not enough to scramble out of the well—the trouble you found there is going to follow you no matter where you go.

Unless.

Look at what the kids leave behind: a brush, a comb, a mirror. These aren’t traps or roadblocks as we would understand them—they’re tools of appearance. Items to attend to one’s personal and social sense of self. How interesting that these are the things that must be sacrificed to keep past oppressions from catching up with us.

The mirror, of course, is the most potent, the one that finally does the job. Reflection can’t be so easily navigated by the shadows that mean to stalk us.

There are still plenty of images in the story that elude me. I wonder what it means for the girl to both start and finish the laying of the obstacles. I think it has something to do with the jobs the nixie foisted upon them.

That’s the great thing about old stories, though; they’re never fully done counseling you. The key is to not try to think your way through them; they aren’t to be treated as crossword clues or some kind of literary criticism mad libs. How the images spark your imagination is really the thing. What each scene looks and feels like, and what suspiciously sounds like timeless truth whistling through its teeth to get your attention.

Anyway, here are a few snapshots I took this past weekend, following along Sister and Brother’s escape route. Who would’ve guessed they’d send me through the Blue Ridge Mountains?

The various Lives of Ciarán of Saighir share varying degrees of detail and information, but one thing I feel fairly certain about is that Ciarán’s bell was very small.

In his time, it would have been relatively easy to keep it handy and wait for its announcement that you have found the Place You Were Meant to Be.

So small, it would have been easy to lose.

These days, our own bells have to compete with modern equivalents. And the former are terribly overmatched.

Modern life moves a million miles a second. We’ve found a way to completely deprive ourselves of the stillness and quiet we need to properly assess any present moment. When I think about this, I’m often reminded of the Ents, and Merry and Pippin’s impatience with Treebeard. We think that scene is funny because Treebeard talks so slowly. The joke, however, is on us. Sit yourself down underneath an old-growth oak or maple and wait for it to speak and you’ll see what I mean. Theirs is the proper pacing.

In addition to the bell, I also think about the foundation Ciarán was laying. Ciarán likely didn’t complete any feasibility studies, go through public facilities ordinances or submit any application to a planning board. He went where God sent him and enlisted the help of animals. Aside from the concrete, this lays a very different kind of spiritual and communal foundation that today I think would be very hard to replicate.

These stories are sometimes depressing to me, in a way. I wonder the extent to which we’re even capable of navigating the world in this way. To do so would do us a world of good, but our pocket rectangles have done wonders for our myopia and solipsism.

At the same time, though, I’m reminded of what Ciarán and his contemporaries did to combat their own distractions. They didn’t live in the monastery, nor did they live in the forest. For them, proper living involved a back-and-forth tension between Severance and Return, never staying too long in one or the other. That’s something I think we can all manage to practice.