Mythic Life
On Friday, after I dropped my two youngest at school, I went to get gas and pick up my groceries. Going into the store where I went on frequent grocery shopping dates with Edmond is too much, so I have been ordering my groceries to be delivered to my trunk.
On my way, I passed the laundromat that is part of a strip of shops that recently had a makeover. The storefronts are now a whitish color. The laundry is on the corner on the right nearest the road just before the grocery on the other side of the street. As I approached the grocery, I glanced up to notice a tall older gentleman with long white hair, a long white beard, wearing white overalls with a white shirt underneath. He was standing in front of his old white pickup truck in front of the backdrop of the white laundromat. Hands in pockets, he was staring off down the road like he was waiting for someone. It was a stark and still image in front of a place for clean laundry. It seemed superimposed upon all the other colored vehicles and people movement in the parking lot and along the street. I half wondered if I was seeing a ghost or something my grief-stricken mind had created.
In Greek mythology, Kharon (Charon), an underworld spirit, ferries the dead in his skiff through the waters of Haides to their resting place in the Underworld. The Underworld, contrary to what modern culture has conjured, is not hell or a terrible place. It is a place for the souls who no longer inhabit human/physical form. Those wishing to have transport to this underworld paid Kharon a singe coin that loved ones placed in their mouths upon burial. Without this coin to pay Kharon, the souls were left to wander the earth as ghosts.
Kharon has been described and depicted as an old, not so attractive, white-bearded man. His nose is crooked, and he often wears a white tunic.
Mythology are the stories that transcend time, space, and culture. They tend to morph into what the current culture needs. I wonder if the man I saw in front of the laundromat is the modern Kharon waiting to receive a soul from Hermes and take them to the Underworld in his white pickup truck (skiff).
I wish I’d had a camera or been able to stop and capture this image of this white on white on white image of old bearded man and his truck. It was beautiful, mystical, and still. It burned in my mind as I filled up with gas. The man and his truck seemed out of time and place.
I feel out of time and place waiting for Edmond to come up the road, this man of white waiting with me. I keep wishing I would have turned back, to see if I could catch a ride to where E might be. Impossible, but my imagination has always been my place of refuge and eventually healing.
When I work with clients, I use the word myth as a stand-in for whatever word feels most comfortable for each person. Some prefer God, or Spirit, Mind, Consciousness, Universe, or Buddha or The Light. Whatever that entity or idea is that keeps us connected to something greater than ourselves—even if the word of choice is Community—can be captured in the word myth. Using a more neutral word permits clients to bring in their own belief system as support, even if they are atheist or agnostic.
When we participate in our own healing through ritual action, we enter the zone of creativity, where time and space shift into the liminal. When we remain in this place of possibility and potentiality longer than we think we can, we meet myth. Myth is the epiphany, the thing that occurs that we have not yet imagined or known before that very moment. It is a prayer answering the question why. It is a new vantage point that widens our view that can become so narrowed in grief states. With support, deep states of presence and ritual action allow us to meet myth. It is the way through and of transformation.
It is my hope that I can continue to write, to enter the zone, to find my way in the darkness and meet myth. Little footholds and stepping stones, I pray they will continue to appear. Painting right now seems too cumbersome, takes too much energy, and is too much color in a place that feels quite dark. I will begin more ritual actions, lose myself in liminal time, allow myself to be reshaped and reformed into some being I cannot imagine yet. Sometimes, blurry and without any details, I can only imagine that I can imagine the next day.