The Other Worlds of Glastonbury

Fairy wings flutter in the audience as the “burlesque fairy” at the front of the room blows kisses of green glitter. In the crowd are pirates, flower fairies, and even geishas as well as aficionados of Steam Punk style (think Victorian in goggles a lá Jules Verne). A man in moon boots and a woman in a tutu, are dressed all in white with strands of blue LED lights. In a corner, two mermaids are combing their long tresses, flapping their tails, and showing the few children in the room their treasure box of shells. The band comes on, the blonde lead singer in black leather opening with an Irish jig that gets the crowd moving, and then switching to hard rock that keeps them dancing until the clock strikes midnight. Welcome to the sold-out Avalon Faery Ball of 2012 in Glastonbury.

A mid-sized English town, west of London, in the Somerset Levels on the Salisbury Plain, Glastonbury is best known for its eponymous music festival. Every other summer, thousands of young people camp on a field outside the town, braving mud and rain for a chance to hear some of the best contemporary bands. Late at night the recorded music, spun by one or another of the DJs simultaneously performing, is piped through special headphones, so the dancers move to different beats in silence.

But on this weekend just before Halloween, we are here not for the music, but for the fairies. Also known as All Hallows’ Eve, this night before All Saints Day is a time when the veil between the worlds, the living and the dead, the human and the fey folk, is thought to be at its thinnest. What better time to visit this New Age center with ancient roots, a place where belief in the otherworldly springs like indigenous flora from the land itself.

For in ancient Britain, the Somerset Levels would flood, and the North Sea was much closer then than now, so that Glastonbury, with its sprawling Abbey and Tor hill, appeared to be an island shrouded in mists. The Lady of the Lake supposedly lived in the waters; she was the Faery Queen who gave King Arthur his magical sword, while a plaque in the Abbey ruins marks the graves of the legendary king and his lady, Guinevere.

Our first day in Glastonbury, we woke before dawn to climb the Tor, a grassy hill topped by St. Michael’s Tower, the only remains of a nunnery that thrived here before King Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, including the great Glastonbury Abbey. After breakfast at our B&B, we attended mass in a small, whitewashed Anglican chapel with frescos of early Saxon saints on the grounds of the Abbey.

In the afternoon, we entered Chalice Well Garden, named for a goblet found in Victorian times, supposedly of ancient Near Eastern origin. Some believe this same cup was used at the Last Supper and that it is the Holy Grail of Arthurian legend. This garden also houses the spring of iron-rich water that flows over the rocks, turning them red. The fount of the Red Spring is covered with a lovely glass-and- oak lid, decorated with two overlapping ovals, a design known as the Vesica Pisces, which has become a symbol for Glastonbury itself. Given its illustrious history, I somehow expected something grander than the manicured lawns and flowerbeds of this rather small property.

But the biggest surprise of the day was the White Springs temple, although I had never even heard of it before coming to Glastonbury. The small, nondescript white-washed building that houses the calcium-rich White Spring  is around the corner from Chalice Well Garden, on a side street leading up to the Tor. The only indication that this is a special place is the tree outside decorated with a multitude of colorful ribbons, presumably representing prayers or thanks to the spirits of the place. Whereas Chalice Well Garden is peaceful and airy, the White Spring temple is chthonic and dark, a place of palpable earth energies, lit by candles and adorned with natural offerings.  Both springs are known for their healing properties.  At the pipes on Wellhouse Lane,  we filled a bottle with water from each spring.

On this, our second visit, the weather was cold and wet, and we had head colds, leading us to spend much of our time indoors.  At the annual Faery Fayre in the converted town hall,  a score of artists plied their wares. One painted my face with green vines and silver glitter. From another I bought a silk scarf hand-painted with a petulant fairy poking her head up through the flowers. Meanwhile, my partner, Michael, found a claw-shaped pendant recycled from a piece made for one of the Harry Potter films - a perfect gift for a friend who loves the Hogwarts crew.  (Love this!!-S.)

We wandered the high street of Glastonbury, browsing in shops selling Buddhist Kuan Yin statutes, Wiccan chalices, and Native American dream-catchers. There were crystals, herbs and incense galore. But best of all were the bookstores. We spent the last rainy afternoon going from one to another.  The bookstores were filled with used and remaindered as well as new books on everything from the I-Ching to Stonehenge, from goblins to Mary Magdalene. I found the hilarious  Wood Nymph Seeks Centaur,  a “mythological dating guide” by Francesca Lia, which left me wondering if I am more of a wood nymph or a fairy or even - yikes -  a banshee.

As we boarded the bus back to London the next morning, laden with our books and containers of water from the Red and White Springs , we looked forward to our return to Glastonbury, with its unique mix of legend and history, archaeology and magic. 

Note: This piece first appeared on the travel blog, epicaro.com. 

On Fifty Shades

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Emerald may have been declared the color of  2013, but the color I’m seeing everywhere,  from sweaters to bed linens, is grey. Fifty shades of it, to be precise.  In this year between the novel becoming a bestseller and the movie’s filming Fifty Shades of Grey, has clearly become a cultural reference.

I bought the book the summer before last at Heathrow, hoping that the erotic tome would distract me from the inevitable bumps of transatlantic and transcontinental flight. Suffice it to say that ten hours later, I had only made it through the first 70 pages.

 The fact that it took 70 pages to get to the first kiss suggests that author E.L. James was aiming to write a mainstream book.  However, this reader could not suspend her disbelief long enough to step into what novelist John Gardner called “the dream” of fiction. Take the characters, for starters. Christian Grey is not only drop-dead gorgeous, but, at 28, a billionaire. Not a millionaire, which would require only a stretch of the imagination, but a billionaire. Like a younger Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook merged with Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgard of True Blood fame. Or perhaps Ian Somerhalder, whose character Damien Salvatore in The Vampire Diaries smirks nearly as often as Christian Grey. In fact, Grey reminds me of nothing so much as the current spate of fictional bad-boy vampires, with their rock hard abs, ancient wealth and tortured souls.

And then there is the protagonist: Anastasia Steele, a college senior who is not only a virgin, but one who has barely been kissed. Anyone old enough to remember Leonard DiCaprio carousing  with models after the success of Titanic will find it hard to believe that a young, handsome billionaire would choose a girl who trips over her own feet to be the object of his desire.

Ah, but there’s the crux of the matter. For the reader (female) is meant to identify with the clumsy, innocent naïf.  Despite it’s S/M overtones, the Fifty Shades plot is all too familiar: beautiful girl is lifted from her ordinary life into the stratospheric world of the rich and powerful-- only this time the prince not only sweeps her off her feet, he also ties her to the bedpost. 

At least she doesn’t have to cook.

Waiting for Grandbaby

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Waiting, in a liminal space, on the threshold, betwixt and between. This is where I find myself now, in mid September, waiting for my first grandchild to be born. His due date is the 22^nd, ten days away. The doctors thought he would be early, but he is in the safe zone now. Every time the phone rings or beeps with a text message, I jump, wondering if this will be the call from my son, telling me that labor is underway. And then I will return to waiting, for news about his wife and the birth,  for when I can catch a flight to England to meet my grandson, my next generation.

Chilling Out in Stockholm

Each winter, deep in the boreal forests of northern Sweden, a hotel is built anew, all of ice. Reindeer hides cover the ice beds, where guests are ensconced in down sleeping bags. There is even a wedding chapel, akin the Snow Queen’s palace in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale. Or so I imagine, for the touch of frostbite I got at the Norwegian Olympics in 1992 has left me with little inclination to sleep on ice, no matter how well insulated.

However, I was still curious, so I did the next best thing and visited the Ice Bar in downtown Stockholm.

“Your feet will freeze,” the attendant said with a laugh, looking down at my sandals. The weather in Stockholm was unusually warm, 80 degrees and no wind, practically sweltering by Swedish standards. But we were about to leave all that behind, as my 26-year-old daughter and I pulled on blue hooded ponchos that hung below our knees with attached gloves - but no foot coverings.

Nonetheless, we walked through the double doors. About a dozen people were standing around, including a group of women from Southern California. The room lived up to its name: the bar was made of ice; the shelves behind were ice; there were blocks of ice topped with reindeer skins to sit on and more blocks of ice forming alcoves and walls. Some of the blocks had designs carved into them. And yes, my feet were rapidly cooling.

The first drink was included in the entry fee, and the beverages fit the theme, with such evocative names as Torne River (a version of a lemon drop named for a northern waterway), Wolf Paw (lingonberry jucie and lime with Absolut 100), and Snow Flake (vodka with coconut, peach, pineapple and cranberry juices). All but the three virgin drinks were based on Swedish Absolut vodka. Tina had the Husky Sledge (vanilla vodka cinnamon, and apple), while I went for the Northern Light (raspberry vodka, crème de cassis, lime and raspberry puree).

The drinks were rather strong. That, plus the prices (95 or 125 Swedish per drink , depending on whether you retained the same glass, or about $15 and $20 at the time) and the cold kept us to one. Despite my lack of appropriate footwear, I enjoyed our brief sojourn in a winter wonderland. We walked through the exit, returned our ponchos, continued past the gift shop, and back out into the still-warm summer twilight. 

This piece first appeared in the travel blog, e-Picaro  (http://epicaro.com/hp_wordpress). Please check it out. 

Japanese Tea and Sweet Potatoes

In one of the most elegant and minimalist shopping plazas in Kyoto. a city of elegant and minimalist Zen architecture, a city known for its tea shops serving mochi, traditional sweet rice cakes, is Chaimon, a restaurant devoted to tea (cha) and sweet potatoes (imon).

My 20something daughter, Tina, and I were visiting Kyoto several years ago when we happened upon Chaimon. As soon we stepped inside, we noticed the two piles of sweet potatoes, one golden, the other purple, beside a grill, along with a display case of delicate petit fours. Tina and I were led to a table along the back wall and handed two menus. The table was edged in dark wood, with a square metal hot plate in the center. The menu was entirely in Japanese, and although I had studying nihongo for over a year, the only word I could make out was the ideogram for “tea.” There were no plastic models in the window and the couple of tiny pictures on the menu were for decoration rather than explanation.

When the server came to take our order, I indicated in my halting Japanese that I would have the same as the woman at the next table, although I wasn’t entirely sure what she was eating. Having already decided that she wanted a whole sweet potato, Tina led the server back to the front to make her choice. When the waiter asked what we wanted to drink, I answered tea, but had no idea how to reply to his follow-up question of which kind. I racked my brain but the only two types that came to mind were matcha, the bitter bright green powder used in tea ceremonies, and genmaicha, a low-caffeine green tea with roasted rice kernels. The waiter suggested sencha, a high-quality green tea, and reached under the table to turn on the heating element connected to the metal plate, which would keep our cast-iron teapot warm. To drive away the chill of the early spring evening, I also ordered a glass of  the lovely, fuschia-colored liquid I had seen on the counter, which turned out to be shochu, the Japanese equivalent of vodka. Although made with sweet potatoes, this shochu didn’t taste at all of the vegetable, but instead had the same roughness as other grain-based alcoholic beverages.

Waiting for our food to arrive, Tina and I noticed that the walls of the cozy jewelbox of a room, painted the color of garnets, were subtly adorned with sweet potatoes, painted a slightly darker shade of red-violet, an unexpected touch of humor.

The waiter set down a selection of delicate sweets in front of me: a small pile of candied, matchstick sweet potatoes, a scoop of off-white ice cream, and two little wagashi, the Japanese cakes usually made with beans but in this case, with sweet potatoes. One of the cakes was golden and topped with a fresh cherry blossom in honor of the season, the other dark pink; all were delicious. Tina’s single oval, purple sweet potato, carefully placed on the diagonal of a square, matte black plate, was more refined than any I have encountered before or since. I don’t know if this unusual café is still in business, but for me Chaimon encapsulates, as clearly as any Zen temple, the Japanese aesthetic, developed over the centuries in the ancient city of Kyoto.

Note: This piece first appeared in the travel blog: http://epicaro.com/hp_wpordpress/

Personal Branding?

I’m a sucker for quizzes and questionnaires, from the serious Myers-Briggs and silly ones on Facebook. The only problem is that I usually come up as a little of this and a little of that. Equal proclivities for being helpful and wanting to be in control, for being an artist and being an intellectual. Introvert and Extrovert. When it comes to fashion, I’m a mix of casual and romantic, bombshell and rocker, with a little gamine thrown in for good measure. My home is even harder to categorize although eclectic comes closest to describing my mix of classic modern Scandinavian, friends’ cast-offs, and Crate and Barrel furniture, accessorized by textiles from far-flung travels and dog paraphernalia.

So when I found “Style Statement,” a book with nine questionnaires that held the promise of distilling my style down to two words, I couldn’t resist. The questionnaires covered everything from body image to money issues, from dream travel destination (Easter Island) to what you would wear to the Oscars (strapless lavender silk gown).

But after taking all the questionnaires and reading all the profiles, from authors Carrie McCarthy (“Refined Treasure”)  and Danielle LaPorte (“Sacred Dramatic”) to their clients (“Timeless Constructive,” “Genteel Vitality,” etc.), I still felt a bit lost. I re-read the explanations of the “foundation words,” which represent your 80% “core identity,” as opposed to your  20% “creative edge.” The second word came fairly quickly: allure, which in my mind includes playfulness and feminine mystery. But I couldn’t settle on a foundation word that encompasses my intellectual and creative sides, my practical, cut-to-the-chase directness, love of travel and propensity to nurture. Was I “Feminine” or “Sophisticate” or “Genuine”? Genuine Allure sounded pretentious while Feminine Allure seemed redundant.

 I like the description of “Elemental” as being interested in the mysteries of the universe, but I wasn’t sure that I could live up to the quality of making everyday life magical. “Elemental Allure” did have a nice ring to it, plus the dot com address was available. The authors encourage readers to use their style statement as a tool in everyday life, which led me to wonder what kind of enterprise I could launch as Elemental Allure? (Hand-carved wooden furniture and jewelry with raw gemstones came to mind.) How would my life, or just my wardrobe, change—if at all—were  I to adapt this as a motto of sorts? 

The idea that two words could make sense of my past, help me in winnowing out what no longer works in the present and choose more wisely in the future is incredibly seductive. And certainly for someone working in the design field, especially as a consultant, like the author and many of those profiled, a style statement could help differentiating oneself from the competition and develop a kind of brand identity. But for the rest of us, the idea that any person, even oneself, can be summed up in a single phrase, a personal brand if you will.  is just a little disturbing.

The New Vampire

Remember Dracula, the Transylvanian villain who gradually drained young women, including the hero’s fiancé, of their life force, in the book by Bram Stoker? This vampire may have been wealthy, clever and suave as ancient nobility, but there was no question as to his basic nature: he was evil personified.

In contrast, Angel, the vampire star in the TV series by the same name, is the good guy. He’s not unblemished—he killed hundreds of men, women and children in earlier years—but he is repentant; he has been cursed—or blessed—with a soul. He struggles against his basic vampire nature to drink the blood of living humans and instead subsists on bottled pig blood, warmed in the microwave. He still kills, but this time it’s the undead whom he stakes to save individual humans. He is capable of genuine love, for his miracle son, for his beloved, for his friends, making him almost human.

Despite lacking breath and a pulse, Angel is hot. Tall, brunette, and handsome, with a buff body and a brooding nature, he is the strong, silent type, a man of action rather than words. Played by David Boreanaz, Angel is a knight without the armor, literally saving damsels in distress from the deadly attentions of vampires and demons, seeking nothing, not even gratitude, in return.

But Angel is only one example of this new breed of vampire. Edward, the heart-throb of the “Twilight” movies is another. Tall, handsome and fair, he is also a strong, silent type. He, too, has integrity, drinking only animal blood and killing only to protect his beloved Bella from another vampire. Bella pleads with Edward to turn her into a vampire so they can be together forever, but he refuses, unwilling to risk her immortal soul. Unlike other vampires who literally catch fire in sunlight, those in the “Twilight” series merely glitter.

In “Daybreaker,” Ethan Hawke plays Ed, a hemotologist turned vampire by the younger brother who can’t live without him. Although Ed says he can’t remember what it was like to be human, he dedicates his life to finding a cure for the bloodlust that is destroying both humans and vampires. Made in Australia, where the Earth’s ozone layer is dangerously thin, the movie also portrays an entire society for whom the sun is death, albeit not the comparatively slow demise from metastasized melanoma but  immediate immolation.

And then there are the vampire romance novels, such as the Black Dagger Brotherhood series by J.R. Ward. Here, too, the vampire males are strong, silent, types who form a bond with their beloved which can only be broken by death. Once a vampire has found his mate—which can take a century or more-- he will protect her with his life. If she dies, perhaps in childbirth or at the hands of an enemy, he is like as not to walk into the sunlight and certain death. Not only is he incapable of hurting his mate, he can’t cheat on her either. The female struggles to maintain her independence in the face of her mate’s protectiveness, but she recognizes that he’s hard-wired that way. Besides, between their chemistry and his stamina and size, the sex is out of this world.

Angel, Twilight, the Black Dagger Brotherhood books-- all can be seen as 21st century fairy tales for adult women who still long to be swept up in a protective embrace and passionate love-making by a male who is capable of committing for eternity.

And then there are the two television series "True Blood" and "Vampire Diaries"; the central plot line of both is two vampire males fighting for the attentions of the female lead. These stories explore the archetype of the sociopath-- charming one moment, sadistic the next-- and the possibility of redemption, by power of love, specifically the love of a good woman (be she human doppelganger or telepathic fey). In an era of terrorists and serial killers, these stories can also be seen as morality plays posing the question of what it means to be truly human.

But beyond the sex, love and violence, there is another layer to these narratives. Although we are manifestly at the top of this planet’s food chain, we don’t seem particularly comfortable there.  We want there to be other forms of intelligent life among us, whether alien visitors from outer space, demons from another dimension, soulful vampires from this one, or angels from the great beyond. Nor is this desire necessarily a reflection of a more secular culture: look at the  succubus and  incubus of the Middle Ages,  demons who took the blame for unlawful sexual encounters. Even the saints, who intercede with God on behalf of a particular individual, can be seen as another form of unseen but intelligent beings who keep us company. The fact that all of these beings are largely invisible means their existence cannot be disproved; it remains a leap of faith.

As science discovers more about the size of this universe and other daughter universes, perhaps our human need to not be alone, with or without our Maker, is intensifying. Perhaps we are looking for a more intelligent being who will not judge us, but who will save us from ourselves, not only as individual sinners but as a species. Perhaps these other beings can reverse environmental degradation and restore our planet to some semblance of Eden-- or at least unite us in a common cause.