It's become clear since arriving home that experiencing a story and telling it are two vast and varied worlds.
The first thing Juliette and I did after parting ways in Dublin three weeks ago was to each take a few vacation days and shake off the road dust, laugh with old friends, make a few new ones, and generally inhale before compressing back down into our American worlds like Djinn going back in the bottle (or so I presume to guess). Since then we have been alternately jet lagged, hyper inspired to go back through our recordings, and sick, but today under yet another full moon we gathered to start conjuring up this mysterious and tantalizing phenomenon called a podcast.
There are so many stories to share. It will be impossible to make them all fit into hour long episodes. Like the time we walked through sheep fields to stand just a few hundred yards from the underwater resting place of Arianrod's castle. The sheep bleeted, cautious and discontented by unfamiliar faces, running away from us up a hill and over to the next field, showing us a gap in the fence that couldn't be seen at a distance, and was the best way to go. We saw so many rainbows in Wales - several every day, and in the plane flying out over the mountains of Ireland I looked down at the clouds and saw one that was a perfect circle. I've heard about those sometimes being glimpsed in waterfalls or clouds. Rainbows are special enough, but that was particularly meaningful.
I feel so blessed to have Juliette's incredible artistry to guide the process of storytelling. She's a master at creative flow, detailed perception of juice, and the true heart of a narrative. We both agreed that there are five or six ways either of us could organize this podcast, and none of them would be whatever will come out from both of us together.
Steady, like the leaves falling only a few at once, we rest, process, listen, talk, and begin...
I'm glad to have this fire burning. I don't have a hearth in my little home, and it's cold this winter. The time change combined with sunsets at 3:30pm have added a kind of slaming shock to the abrupt halt of movement coming home.
I didn't realize it at the time, but I learned a great deal about the sacred flame on this trip. Now it's on my laptop screen. Now it's a fire to tend inside my heart.
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