Those mystical moments at conferences
A few years back at the WCCD in Rome, I met Baba Ziad. A clear connection, both sides felt despite not really being able to explain. Tales of White Robes and ancient temples. Baba, Samsara ey? Yes. Not explicitly, but letting myself be drawn in instead of overstanding. I owe you an update, despite not having donned my white gown, and recent events below again make me wonder.
Another similar but dissimilar situation at eLA just gone.
A man familiar to me from previous encounters stops to talk. His long white beard and stooped composure makes him a sight out of the ordinary at this gathering. He walks past and stops to mid-path to converse with me. My name inspired him to stop, and meander over mental paths to arrive at a monologue hinting at the role of muses in painters' art and life struggles, via black and white film history that caused him to accuse me of cinematic ignorance, to the ill-fated piece of cinematic history I, Claudius , another from Alexander Korda's hand, and onward to places, images and names I had never heard before. With the bustle of conference comings and goings around me, listening to him produce facts and anecdotes of topics so far removed from our collective matter-at-hand, I let him induldge in his flights of fancy, touched yet removed from his emotion that came over him when talking of the role that Saskia played in Rembrandt's life. A cheeky grin indicating that he knew he was taking me to far removed themes, and expectantly yet playfully watching for my reaction. He left me standing with many stories fed into my reality, all left dangling and incomplete.
The evening of the next day I found him on the terrace of my hotel, a little lost and inebriated, but whether from alcohol or his natural unearthly state, I don't know. He sat me down seriously for a few minutes, recalled our previous day's encounter and the momentary yet strong wave of emotion that had come over him while speaking with me.
He started speaking of Robert Grave's The White Goddess, and the power that some women carry, often unconsciously, that inspire men to great works - think Saskia van Rijn for Rembrandt, think Merle Oberon for Charles Laughton. He alluded to many things, and simply asked me to ponder over what our encounter brought up in him, what has been said, and what might resonate, regardless of discipline. It need not be a romantic liaison, it could be in friendships, in development work..
He shook my hand, said that I might remember what he has told me a few years from now, and took his leave.
And I went back to the matter-at-hand. Integrating ICTs in Teaching and Learning.
I tend to ignore what synchronicity brings me, fearful of its potential revelation.
Yet this seemingly unlikely encounter, adding on to synchronicity's history with me, will be pursued, at least in passive absorbtion form - as literary explorations of mythology and Godess history has come across my path time and again. Uncanny it is. Maktub.
The White Goddess
All saints revile her, and all sober men
Ruled by the God Apollo's golden mean -
In scorn of which we sailed to find her
In distant regions likeliest to hold her
Whom we desired above all things to know,
Sister of the mirage and echo.
It was a virtue not to stay,
To go our headstrong and heroic way
Seeking her out at the volcano's head,
Among pack ice, or where the track had faded
Beyond the cavern of the seven sleepers:
Whose broad high brow was white as any leper's,
Whose eyes were blue, with rowan-berry lips,
With hair curled honey-coloured to white hips.
The sap of Spring in the young wood a-stir
Will celebrate with green the Mother,
And every song-bird shout awhile for her;
But we are gifted, even in November
Rawest of seasons, with so huge a sense
Of her nakedly worn magnificence
We forget cruelty and past betrayal,
Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.
Robert Graves
P.S. Baba, your name is Greek for Muse?
