(Part 1), Rabbit In The Grass: My Secret Life Revealed

Rabbit In The Grass is a new section I'm adding to my blog. It contains gleanings from the magical side of my life - a life, which, until now, I've kept secret from everyone, except my close friends. Rabbit is about true magic - not fantasy. Everything I will write about actually happened, although certain names, and other identifying details will be changed for the sake of privacy. It's important to note that there is an inextricable link between my creativity, and my spiritual life, especially my painting. That connection, however, will not be elaborated on here, but only on the sites where my art is being shown.

When I began this venture, I took a casual tally of all the mystical experiences I've had, and the knowledge I've gained about navigating in the spiritual realm, and I soon realized I had a lot of material. So much, in fact, that I wondered if my mundane life were ,merely, a footnote on my spiritual life, and not the other way around.

Rabbit In The Grass refers to one of my childhood past times. When I was around ten years old I used to spend whole afternoons exploring a huge field of tall grass across the street from my home. One day while I was threading my way through grass as tall as me, I spotted a rabbit. It was in a little, circular clearing - a grass-less oasis, created by a shallow outcropping of rock. Every day, thereafter, I set off in pursuit of that rabbit, which, to my child's mind, was a mysterious being from a world about which I had no knowledge. What I didn't know at the time, was that I was really chasing my magical self. The story I'm going to tell you, took place twelve years later, during the first year I lived on Cape Cod. (Again - This is not fiction. It really happened.)

During summers on the Cape you work your butt off. When winter comes, there's no work available, so you have plenty of time to drift, and dream. I developed the habit of getting up in time to catch the sunrise over the bay, and with only a little cloth sack filled with nuts and dried fruit, set off from there on a day long trek. My journey encompassed the entire town at its outermost points. The area through which I walked is called the Provincelands. It's comprised of vast stretches of sand dunes, dotted with sunken forests, that have small, fresh water ponds, where turtles clamber over floating logs. Along the way, the sea is visible from the tops of the taller dunes.

One warm sunny day in late September, after the tourists had gone home, I was out in the middle of the dunes, when I spotted some rabbit tracks. Falling back into my childhood habit, I decided I would find the rabbit to whom the tracks belonged. As I climbed up and down the sun bleached dunes, under a brilliant blue sky, I had the odd sensation that I was connecting with a part of me that had once lived in ancient Greece. [That connection to ancient Greece is something I'll discuss in future blogs.] Suffice it to say, that day on the dunes, I knew I was on a spirit quest.

I spent the whole day in the Provincelands and didn't find the rabbit. At dusk, I was back in our quaint, little downtown, walking into a health food store. I went there to talk with my friend Jeannie. When I entered the store she was standing on a step ladder with her back to me, reaching for a jar of dried herbs, set on a high shelf. Standing next to me was the customer on whom Jeannie was waiting. She was an exceptionally tall woman. For some reason unknown to me, I never looked up at her face. However, I knew she was a woman, and very tall, because, a.) There was a pocketbook on the counter in front of her. And, b.) When I turned toward her, my nose was even with the bottom of her shoulder.

While I stood there waiting for Jeannie, I saw the woman's hand retrieve something from her pocketbook, and place it on the counter in front of me. She said: "Would you like this?" I picked it up. It was the blank side of a postcard. When I turned it over, I saw a photograph of the famous painting of a rabbit by Albrecht Durer. It's the picture I now use above each installment of this series. I got my rabbit, after all.

I know I should have been awestruck, but I wasn't. I just remember feeling very complacent as I pocketted the picture, and walked out the door. This incident was one of several similar experiences I had that were related to rabbits. I expect I'll talk about them, also, in future installments. You might find it interesting to know what a Native American medicine woman at Lake George had to say about the story I just told you. Well, that's all for now. Until we meet again. Good luck, and stay in the flow. Glen

Personal and Confidential

Jazmin, I hope one day when your surfing the blogosphere you'll stumble upon this message. This blog is for you, my dear mentor, you who used your considerable, feminine, wiles to trick me into doing things I never imagined I could do. It is you and you alone who can take the credit for my third career. (We won't discuss the second career. Those were difficult times. One does what one must do to survive, as you know only too well - GISELA - my comrade in sin.) Ah, ha! You didn't think I'd ever learn your real identity -Did you? You see, I too have connections. So, GISELA, are you still masquerading as Jazmin, or are you using some other alias. There's still much I have to learn about your checkered past, but let me tell you what I do know about you. You were born in Villaneuva de la Jara, Spain - a charming village famous for its mushrooms. Your mother's name is Magdalena del Peso y Henao. When you were two months old your father Fernando, ran away with Miguel, the groom, a brooding twenty-three year old with a gambling addiction. At age fifteen you were given into the care of the Poor Clare Sisters whose convent was in the norther part of Spain. For three long years, you struggled to suppress your lusty impulses. Finally, when you could no longer endure the constraints of convent life, you began to plot your escape. Then, one stormy, moonlit night in December, while gale force winds lashed the ancient walls of the convent, you and Antonio, the dashing, young, Jesuit you defrocked, slipped out of a second story window, and lowered yourselves to the ground on a rope made from the love - stained sheets of your bed. Fulfilling a childhood fantasy, you moved to Java to live at the edge of a lava pit. You and Antonio married there, and had two darling children, Catalina and Javier. Antonio made a good living running a trendy spa whose clientelle consisted mainly of stressed-out, execs working on Wall Street. You, GISELA, became a painter, and a fortune-teller. The accuracy of your prognostications made you something of a local celebrity.

On the last of several visits to your native, Spain, you decided to make the famous, 500 mile pilgrimage known as El Camino de Santiago. As you made your way - one bloody knee at a time - to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, dressed only in a burlap sack tied with a bit of string, you were spotted by a gypsy prince. Unable to erase the image of your smouldering beauty from his mind, he returned in the dead of the night, to the place where you lie sleeping under the stars between Antonio and your beloved children. For hours he watched under cover of darkness - his flaming loins a declaration of love for the dark-eyed GISELA. Then, a miracle occured. It was the chance he had been waiting for. You awoke in the night to answer the call of nature. As you entered some bushes at the edge of your campsite, the prince snuck up behind you. You turned around with a look of surprise, but before you could react the prince held his outstretched palm in front of you, and blew some magical, gypsy powder into your face. In an instant you were rendered unconcious. The gypsy prince then placed you in the back of his gypsy wagon, ( a tour de force of design, and a superb example of gypsy folk art), and sped away through the mountains into France.

Little is known of your life during the years immediately following your abduction, for there the trail went cold. However, I was able to ascertain, with certainty, that you were indeed, the infamous - Min, of Jazmania. As to why the adjective 'infamous' was always affixed to your name, noone can say, or rather, none dared to say. Whenever inquiries were made about you, the people responded by grasping their amulets, and making strange hand gestures which they tried to conceal behind their backs. Apparently, whatever threat you made to the Jazmanian peasants to guarantee their silence, worked. We also know that for a period of roughly two years, you passed yourself off as Min of Minotopia, the charismatic, medicine woman who hid her face behind a black veil. Your specialties were painless midwifery, fertility, and wart removal.

Many gaps remain in your biography, but I know that you eventually made your way back to Java as a stowaway aboard a slow boat returning from China. When you got to Java you learned that Antonio's business had gone bankrupt, and that he was forced to accept work in the United States. A week after arriving in Java, you travelled to Connecticut where you were finally reunited with your family. It was during your first year of living in Connecticut that you and I met at a class you were teaching in gypsy dance. For the next couple of years we were inseparable friends. But, then one day, (I remember the exact date because it was Michaelmas, and I had gotten my second chest hair), I went to visit you at your home. When I got there you and your family were gone. Your entire house was emptied of furnishings. As of today, it is a year and one month since you dropped off the face of the earth. GISELA, what caused you to run away, and why did you conceal your identity? What was the meaning of all those aliases, and why didn't you return, immediately, to your family once you had escaped from the gypsy prince? Most important of all, when my dear, when, if EVER, will you return? GISELA, if God wills that you should find this blog - I beg of you, Please! Please! Contact me.

Your devoted friend, and grateful student,
Glen