Jack Frost's Silver leaf patterns

In response to "In Search of Jack Frost" Shirley Yee sent me one of her black and white photos of frost designs outside her window last year. In this one, our artist, Jack, used his window canvas to decorate a barren winter tree with the most joyous flying leaf patterns. Ah, Jack you do love to uplift the spirit!

Jack Frost's signature

You have to look hard to see it and in truth he does not Always sign his work. But lately I have discovered the telltale marks. A dashing line at the bottom of some of his finest etchings. It is not a scribble such as doctors are said to make when they hastily scrawl their names. No! It is a DASH - a long one----- as in Dashing! I think Jack is pleased that I found it.

Winter Meditation 2016 "In Search of Jack Frost"

Jack Frost- Second Installment! I am still in search of him, who he is and where is he from.... He is the most eloquent of artists with crystal tipped brush and the swiftest most delicate strokes. His laughter crackles as though the thinnest layer of ice is breaking. For aeons he studied the world of nature. Tracing every shape in silver and in the process opening our eyes to every natural SHAPE. But I believe that his greatest joy came when we created windows. For at that moment we gave him his canvases - a place to create his original work.



This morning he did a quick sketch of himself on my dining room window, well at least a sketch of his clothing and his long and winding hat! You can see the hat twining up the left middle of the window. Curiously he left his face blank. Does that mean that he is invisible? Or is it that he prefers to remain anonymous? Ah, Jack, the search continues...

In Search of Jack Frost

Jack Frost Design 1_8_2016

Who is Jack Frost?? I've been wondering for some time. A few days ago Jack's first winter paintings appeared on our windows and I marveled at this dexterous and obviously brilliant A.D.D. artist. I began writing about him, imagining his crackly laugh that sounds like the rapid shattering of the delicate ice on deeper pools. I wondered where he lived, what he looked like.

This morning I was rewarded! If I believed in magic, I might say Jack knew I was writing about him!  My car was frost-designed with an intricate flowery pattern while all the other cars were a simple sheet of grey! Ah, Jack! It is going to an enjoyable hunt trying to pin you down!!

In Search of Jack Frost

Library as Labyrinth

Decided to take my own advice on rambling through books to see if fortune and serendipity would smile on me. I was in downtown Boston, so entered the Boston Public Libraries lions and marble staircase up to the research wing of the BPL trying to find my way to the "hidden stacks." The hidden stacks of books that you must call up into the light of day. I've long wanted to peruse the Ethnographic studies of the folktales and folklore of the Native American people- I know they are in the "stacks!" I was sent along from info desk to info desk - like hearing from the Doormen in the Wizard of Oz... deeper and deeper into the heart of the research area and then catapulted out into some other unusual area, led by the whispers of polka dotted librarians, past the research books on folktales and folklore. And finally, after scooping up a travel book that I hope will lead me to the Monarch migration in Mexico I found two writers who spoke to me. Nan Phifer's "Writing your Spiritual Autobiography" (she takes prompts to such an articulate level) and Thomas Moore "The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life."  His writings on sacred space and nature were immediately close to my heart. When a book is well-written it is like meeting a kindred spirit who can shed light on your search and companion you in your work.

New Year's Synchronisity!

A few years ago I had a "First Night" storytelling event where I wanted to tell not just any story but at least one story specifically related to our current New Year's Eve. I had never recalled seeing anything like that and was pretty sure I wouldn't find something old and traditional considering the relative "newness" of this focus on January 1st being the New Year. Still I went in search- the old fashioned way!!
 
Thinking to myself that perhaps I would find the right story if I let my "fingers do the walking," I went over to my bookcase of collections of traditional tales. Ran my fingers over the volumes I had perused so many times, finally lingering over "A Thorn in the King's Foot: Scottish Traveling Tales." I pulled out the book, closed my eyes and opened the book to the story "Auld Father Time and the Henwife" the only traditional New Year's tale I have seen before and since! In it Father Time grows younger and younger till at last he is a baby! Truly a New Year's story with the archetypes we associate with the New Year. The old man and the baby.

Carl Jung said, "The greatest number of spontaneous synchronistic phenomena I have observed have a direct connection with an archetype."



See related previous post on "Soul and Old Wooden Spoons"

Soul and Old Wooden Spoons

At one of his wonderful presentations on poetry and the inner life, Robert Bly once said, "Soul resides in old wooden spoons." And doesn't it though! Soul, character, life, years of being stirred of being handled. As a storyteller in the internet age I say, "Soul resides in books," and I want to encourage tellers to still look for stories there. Grow their collections- don't give up that path. When we search for our stories via internet or through a storytelling email group we are asking for the stories in order to fulfill a topic or a need. Already we have prepared the wrapping, the binding that may keep the story from saying what it truly would like to say to us. In that way, what we find may not give us what we need, even though it is a need-based search! 'I need a story that teaches violence prevention.' or 'I need a story that I can use from the Chinese culture.' The search then takes place with that lens in mind and on internet sites where the stories are splayed and displayed and digitally categorized. If you are lucky, the stories will still have some earth clinging to them, there will be notes about the sources and more variations you can track down. But I still believe in looking for stories over decades, 'book-hunting' in barns, cast-off collections at yard sales and finding stories in random odd places. Turning them over in the hand and then the mind and wondering what they might hold. What they are saying...who warmed them with their breath over time? "Soul Resides in Books."

See my related blog- New Year Synchronicity