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ar_wahanIf you remember last time (but you don't! :P), I was remembering a horrific event involving the death of my older brother on a boat somewhere in North America.
To go there:
http://ar-wahan.livejournal.com/41499.html
I ended up arranging for a past-life regression. In as small a nutshell as I can manage, I discovered we were not Irish immigrants (as my logical self in this life supposed), but Welsh, although the kids who bullied us with taunts and rocks as we came off the boat in Maine took us for Irish and called us "Papists!" (On the regression tape I protest aloud, "No, we're not! We're Methodists!")
In the regression, I saw where we lived in Maine. I had never been to Maine in this lifetime, but "knew" where we had been before. I had an almost frantic need to go there. I went twice -- and found that the area I was pulled to, now nearly uninhabited and reverting to forest, had been home to Irish families at about that time. As I drove past the foundation of what had been a one-room schoolhouse (I didn't know it was the schoolhouse until later), I suddenly had a flash of a Christmas dance (the Protestants at that time would never have celebrated Christmas). I also saw an adolescent girl in a white dress smiling and waving to me -- Allison Fitzgerald. (I think I know her today.)
On my second visit, I went back to that schoolhouse site and explored up the hill from it, since I sensed that's where we'd lived. I was having trouble finding the homestead. The landscape has utterly changed. As is here in western Masschucetts, denuded hills have reverted to second-growth forest. I found a shallow bed where a stream had once flowed behind our house, but there was no stream now. And being so disoriented, I could not find the house.
I was full of doubt, despair, disillusionment. Feeling like I was crazy and full of shit.
Then I saw a tree. A very big tree. I hate to admit I don't recall the type of tree (this was 20 years ago). I suspect a maple. But I laid my hand on its trunk.
*I felt a laugh.*
"I remember you," said the tree, chuckling in a wonderous ripple of energy that I still remember with longing. And then, somehow, it sent me a picture of a white farmhouse in a clearing that was (in 1986) still there, but empty. Somehow, the tree told me the farmhouse had burned down in the 1940s.
While this weirdness was going on, a friend who was with me had spotted one of the few folks still living in these parts. He was coming up to see us, curious about strangers in his midst. I had already decided to say I was exploring based on the "diary of an ancestor."
My friend covered for me, while I continued my drop-jawed communion with the tree.
I finally got back into myself, and gestured toward the clearing. "Was there ever a dwelling here?"
"Oh yes," said the local. He pointed to the very part of the clearing where the tree had shown me the farmhouse. "There was a house there, but it burned down in the 40s."
I wonder if that was where Allison had lived. For my sense is that the Fitzgeralds were leaders of our small community.
After this experience, I ended up making the trip to Wales, where I found the house where my parents, brother and I lived briefly (my paternal grandfather's house) when we were forced during a depression in the 1820s (since documented) to leave our own little home, and before we sailed for Maine.
I will tell that story at another time. My calling at this moment is to serve dinner.
To go there:
http://ar-wahan.livejournal.com/41499.html
I ended up arranging for a past-life regression. In as small a nutshell as I can manage, I discovered we were not Irish immigrants (as my logical self in this life supposed), but Welsh, although the kids who bullied us with taunts and rocks as we came off the boat in Maine took us for Irish and called us "Papists!" (On the regression tape I protest aloud, "No, we're not! We're Methodists!")
In the regression, I saw where we lived in Maine. I had never been to Maine in this lifetime, but "knew" where we had been before. I had an almost frantic need to go there. I went twice -- and found that the area I was pulled to, now nearly uninhabited and reverting to forest, had been home to Irish families at about that time. As I drove past the foundation of what had been a one-room schoolhouse (I didn't know it was the schoolhouse until later), I suddenly had a flash of a Christmas dance (the Protestants at that time would never have celebrated Christmas). I also saw an adolescent girl in a white dress smiling and waving to me -- Allison Fitzgerald. (I think I know her today.)
On my second visit, I went back to that schoolhouse site and explored up the hill from it, since I sensed that's where we'd lived. I was having trouble finding the homestead. The landscape has utterly changed. As is here in western Masschucetts, denuded hills have reverted to second-growth forest. I found a shallow bed where a stream had once flowed behind our house, but there was no stream now. And being so disoriented, I could not find the house.
I was full of doubt, despair, disillusionment. Feeling like I was crazy and full of shit.
Then I saw a tree. A very big tree. I hate to admit I don't recall the type of tree (this was 20 years ago). I suspect a maple. But I laid my hand on its trunk.
*I felt a laugh.*
"I remember you," said the tree, chuckling in a wonderous ripple of energy that I still remember with longing. And then, somehow, it sent me a picture of a white farmhouse in a clearing that was (in 1986) still there, but empty. Somehow, the tree told me the farmhouse had burned down in the 1940s.
While this weirdness was going on, a friend who was with me had spotted one of the few folks still living in these parts. He was coming up to see us, curious about strangers in his midst. I had already decided to say I was exploring based on the "diary of an ancestor."
My friend covered for me, while I continued my drop-jawed communion with the tree.
I finally got back into myself, and gestured toward the clearing. "Was there ever a dwelling here?"
"Oh yes," said the local. He pointed to the very part of the clearing where the tree had shown me the farmhouse. "There was a house there, but it burned down in the 40s."
I wonder if that was where Allison had lived. For my sense is that the Fitzgeralds were leaders of our small community.
After this experience, I ended up making the trip to Wales, where I found the house where my parents, brother and I lived briefly (my paternal grandfather's house) when we were forced during a depression in the 1820s (since documented) to leave our own little home, and before we sailed for Maine.
I will tell that story at another time. My calling at this moment is to serve dinner.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-08 03:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-08 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-08 07:52 am (UTC)not crazy at all
Date: 2006-06-08 09:00 am (UTC)I can hardly wait for the installment where you share the past life/lives we've been in together.
thanks for sharing all of that!
Re: not crazy at all
Date: 2006-06-08 04:12 pm (UTC)Or do you know things I don't? (In this regard, I mean! :P ) If so, clue me in!
Re: not crazy at all
Date: 2006-06-15 11:04 am (UTC)I am curious to hear your list of signs.
Do you know that my Edwards' side of the family came from Wales?
Re: not crazy at all
Date: 2006-06-15 07:10 pm (UTC)Then I read your user info and saw a lot of similarities in interests, work histories, etc. I wrote to you with the subject line of something like, "Hello, stranger -- or sister?" I was startled, and flattered, to have you tell me (if I understood you correctly) that you had been following my journal already!
Then there were all the other similarities in our lives that we have discovered since then.
You did mention your Edwards' side, but at the time I misunderstood it and thought you were saying "my Edward's side" in reference to Sweetness. I thought this meant his name was Ed. :( Sorry...
I don't have time right now to write about the life that *may* have been one in which we were "sisters" in some way (perhaps only by calling,not by blood -- but perhaps both), *and* comrades in arms, but not arms of a military nature. But briefly, it was in the region that today includes northern Wales and some plains in England a bit north of there. It seems to have been just as the Celts were coming into the area. We were of the people they vanquished/absorbed. So this would have been long before Boudica.
Another Wow added to the mix
Date: 2006-06-08 11:31 am (UTC)Also I want to take the time in this comment to let you know you are in my healing thoughts too... I have been reaidng but have been time porr in commenting as I would normally do.:)
Re: Another Wow added to the mix
Date: 2006-06-08 04:09 pm (UTC)You'll have to backtrack quite a bit to read the "previous episodes" of my tale. The first two are on April 25, another three are on April 26. Then I say (in the last April 26 entry) I will write more on this "tomorrow," but... I lied! ;)