Madonie Mountains, near Cefalu, West central coast of Sicily. Monday, May 7.

Madonie Mountains, near Cefalu, West central coast of Sicily. Monday, May 7. 

The Birth of Pegasus

Dear Trail Friends,

I am sitting up in bed in this ancient Abby in the Madonie Mountains, just inland of the coastal town of Cefalu. After two nights in Palermo - and a visit yesterday morning to the Palermo archeological museum followed by a day of rest, and not feeling very well, for both Chris and me - our bus left Palermo this morning, stopping for a brief tour of the old Norman cathedral at Monreale, then on to the coastal town of Cefalu (where a few of us hiked to an overlook above the town), and then on and up to this old Abby in the mountains where we enjoyed another lecture by Chris (this one focused on myths related to the volcano, Mt Etna, particularly the artist/blacksmith god Hephaestus whose forge was said to be there, the one-eyed cyclops who was blinded by Odysseus who lived there, and thr god Typhon who tried to overthrow Zeus and was cast there (and whose struggles to escape were said to cause eruptions). 

Judy came to my room before the lecture and we did our contemplative drawing. I didn’t get a photo of her drawing (but will tomorrow) it was a little white dog she saw and photographed in Palermo that looked a lot like a dog of hers (no longer living). I loved how alive it looked and especially the eyes that seemed to gaze lovingly into my eyes from the drawing. My own drawing seemed to be related to the Medusa theme - when I read about Medusa I noticed a lot of feminists identified Medusa with women’s rage (Freud identified her with the maternal vagina and men’s castration anxiety inspired by that vagina, and it’s lack of a penis, so that the many snakes were like a proliferation of penises as if the presence of many somehow reflected anxiety about the missing one, and the “turning to stone” related to causing a hardening or erection and a reassurance that the male member was still intact and functional. Like so many of Freud’s interpretations it seems far-fetched taken literally - but if played with to explore the fears and desires related to a child’s simultaneous fear of and desire for the mother, the longing to merge with her and be one with her and the contradictory longing to be one’s separate autonomous self, it can be a rich platform for associations. ) I also found Medusa related to anxiety about gender uncertainty by Marjorie Garner, who put together a Medusa Reader that I ordered. 

I thought of Medusa in relation to my issues with rape and the unfairness of the gods, and also to my rage which was intense in my childhood and early adulthood. I have learned to temper it in my marriage since learning that Chris was not accustomed to direct expression of anger (even low key, and mine was not low key) and I very rarely explode anymore. But I can certainly become angry and oppositional. 

As a child I thought of myself as a monster. I was afraid of my anger and my own destructive power. I don’t think this is unique to me. I had a lot of snake dreams in the first few decades of my life. I could imagine my head in those days surrounded by a tangle of venomous snakes coiling, twisting, and hissing. 

So I went to the archeological museum Sunday morning curious about images of Medusa and spent some time contemplating the relief of Perseus beheading her with Athena standing by (photo 1).

When Judy and I drew I studied the relief and drew a colorful variation. I became aware of a coldness in Athena’s face and presence and in what seemed to me to be Perseus’s closed eyes. But what really struck me was the baby horse that Medusa, as she was being beheaded, held to her breast as a mother would hold her child. Indeed several versions of the myth associate the beheading of Medusa with the birth of the winged horse Pegasus. In the variant of the myth in which Medusa is raped by Poseidon, Pegasus would be the child of that rape. 

I was one of those little girls who loved horses, who spent a good deal of my girlhood in fantasy riding a winged horse. Later I associated Pegasus with poetry and my passion for writing. In my twenties I experienced a flashback to a rape memory, a very disturbing and traumatic memory that I never could decide whether it was an actual historical event or an imagined event. 

In her lectures Chris talks about the fact that there are many different versions of myths, and that many of the stories are contradictory. AND THEY ARE ALL TRUE, she says. 

And so I have different stories of my life - one where the rape literally happened, one where I imagined it. One where I am a victim of neglect and abuse and failure to protect, one where I am a monster expecting impossible perfection and punishing all those who can’t measure up. 

It touches me to see the tenderness between the monster Medusa and the baby horse born of her beheading (and rape). Photo 2 shows the drawing I made. 

I cannot make much sense of this except to say that it feels important to me. Today’s drawing was inspired by a tie of lion’s heads (from the same museum in Palermo, photo 3) and my discovery that their tongues functioned as waterspouts and gutters to lcollect and release water That would otherwise collect of the roof. 

As I drew my picture - photo 4 - the lion emerged as a figure of strength and rage (and so, for me at least, related to Medusa and Pegasus). 

What is this all about and why am I staying up late writing and asking you to join me by reading all of this thrashing around with thoughts and feelings that don’t make a whole lot of sense? I see my task at this stage of life as making peace with myself and my life. I see myself wanting to see my life, with all its brokenness and ugliness, as also beautiful and whole and to bless and embrace it in both aspects. 

Chris talked tonight about Empedocles the philosopher from Sicily (who according to legend died by casting himself into Mt Etna so that people would believe he had disappeared and become divine). She spoke of the great German writer Holderlein who wrote three versions of the death of Empedocles and was never able to discover the way he wanted to write the death. Empedocles himself saw the universe as based on two opposing and balancing forces: love and strife. 

I laugh a little at myself as I write this. I think of myself “striving” with this late night writing and all my writing projects to “make” peace with my life and I sense the aggression in that enterprise and realize how ambivalent my whole project is. Chris mentioned that Freud, a decade after he introduced his concepts of death drive and Eros, realized that he had learned them long ago from Empedocles. Speaking of which, yesterday was Freud’s birthday and as has been our custom for decades I read his short essay on transience aloud to her. 

I know I am fascinated by bringing together contradictory things and trying to make something whole of them. I love the gods in ancient Egypt and Greece who are part human and part animal. When we went out to dinner last night, I saw a ceramic candle holder that was a big white fish with the face of a human woman and prickly pear cactus leaves for fins (photo 5). I loved the incongruity of a plant adapted to desert aridity being part of a fish moving through water. 

I found the dinner itself very disappointing in both quantity and quality (as did many others, although some liked it very much, a reminder to me of how diverse we humans really are in our tastes and experiences), so the woman-fish-cactus hybrid was one of the high points. 

Another high point was sitting across from Elaine, who talked to me about the many trips she has taken all over the world - Borneo, Wales, Tibet, Napal for a few examples, planning one to Thailand - always having the trips focus on walking adventures. This going into different cultures and languages strikes me as far nor dangerous and daring than my walks in the US (which I am as you know quite happy with and proud of) and I found it exciting and inspiring to hear about them. Photo 6 is Elaine and the interesting view out the window behind her. Elaine was Chris’s student as Douglas 50 years ago, the first year Chris taught. Chris’s teaching changed her life and sparked a lifelong interest in myth and fairy tales (you can find her book, Fairy Takes for Women Who Have Been Through the Mill by Elaine Auerbach on Amazon). 

Conversations with Elaine’s daughter Alisa (musician, poet and playwright) have been a source of richness and inspiration on the tour from the beginning. It was fun to connect more deeply with Elaine. I wish I could write about each person in the group in a way that would capture a bit of their magic and how they enrich my life in this tour. 

But now I need to move on. Not much time or energy to tell you about today, the beautiful “templo d’oro” - the cathedral at Monreale just above Palermo with its mix of Byzantine, Arabic and Roman design and its brilliant mosaics making so much use of real gold. I felt sad about how shut down I get, how my heart and senses close, in the presence of crowds. I counted a dozen tour buses either parked or loading or unloading there. I wish I weren’t so aversive to crowds and so contemptuous of the whole tourist industry. But I think it does package and commercialize and objectify places and the people who visit them. It makes it hard to enter a place and make soul contact. I offer a collage of images (photo 7) wistfully. Wishing I could open my heart and senses fully to them, and offer them to you in a way that would help open yours. 

When we drove down to the coastal village Cefalu I opened so easily. I think of a poem by Ravindranath Tagore that I loved when I was a teenager. 

No: it is not yours to open buds into blossoms.

Shake the bud, strike it; it is beyond your power to make it blossom.

Your touch soils it, you tear its petals to pieces and strew them in the dust.

But no colours appear, and no perfume.

Ah! it is not for you to open the bud into a blossom.

He who can open the bud does it so simply.

He gives it a glance, and the life-sap stirs through its veins.

At his breath the flower spreads its wings and flutters in the wind. Colours flush out like heart-longings, the perfume betrays a sweet secret.

He who can open the bud does it so simply.

When we got to Cefalu a group of us hiked up to the top of “La Rocca,” a rocky promontory above the town, with remains of a castle and a “temple to Diana” which we preferred to think of as a temple to Artemis since we are focusing on Greek mythology in this tour. 

Photo 8 is a collage from the walk up the mountain and photo 9 is the Artemis temple with part of our group (Ben, Kiki, Yvonne and Joy). 

Okay. I’m exhausted and you probably are too. But I need to say “Grazie mille” again - thank you for climbing up to the top with me, for sharing the view, for all the support you give me just by being there, motivating me and helping me to do the hard work of honoring and reflecting on the beauty and ambivalence of this journey. This journey to Sicily, and this journey of being human. 

Tomorrow we go to Mount Etna and look into the mouth of the volcano.