Ascension Cup

The Trinity - Shadow, Transformer and Dream Queen with the Son at her feet

The Garden

This morning I woke up dreaming of a garden. The scenery unfolded calm and dreamlike. Shafts of milky sunlight illuminated flowers blowing in a light breeze, and I knew it was the end of summer. I felt every petal and blade of grass intimately, the sounds of life heightened. Behind me, my grandmother with her head bent modestly, an errant lock of  hair caressing her right eye as always, the faint smell of lilacs and egg white on her warm, white skin. She tells me how it is that the poppies grow and she points to the yarrow for it's qualities of healing. Her words are only rhythm, like listening to a babbling brook of water gliding over stone. I understand everything and nothing at the same time.

Why is grandmother here on this day of remembrance? On this day, I am in a space where I find myself  wishing to move on.  Yes,  I will say a prayer for the dead -  but let me go, let's all go further than that one place of sorrow and shock.She wants me to unlock the secret of the garden. How?

Grandmother was a witchy woman (she is crossing herself now, appalled that I would use this word to describe her) and she knew her herbs, the folklore wisdom of old Bosnia inside her, whether she would admit  it or not..

I go deeper to look for a  meaning.  I want to know why she is whispering to me in my sleep about Poppies, which I don't remember her liking and Yarrow flowers which grew abundantly around her house.

Achillea Millefolium - the Yarrow. She used to bring back bunches of it and spread it on newspaper on the kitchen table to dry along with other roots and stalks from her daily walk. From the dried pieces, she would make tinctures and pomades, wraps and powders. Tiny little pieces of white paper with abbreviated names indicating prescription. These were written in German but with Serbo Croatian accents over 'sh' and 'ch' sounds, as she was only patient with some things and not with others.

When we had bruises, stomach ache, head pain, cuts and fever she would rub and knead and administer with cloths or droppers her magic potions and heal us whole.

As a young man, Achilles the famous soldier/hero of ancient times was schooled by Chiron the Centaur.  Chiron was versed in medicine and the healing arts and supposedly passed his powerful knowledge on to Achilles. In his turn, Achilles the leader/prince taught his troops to use yarrow flower to stop the bleeding and hemorrhaging of wounds received during their epic battles. Hence the Latin name for Yarrow: Achillea.

Soldiers, Hero's, War, Magic, Wisdom.

Poppies likewise live deep in our psyche as a symbol of sacrifice and memory. Somewhere there is a poem about fallen soldiers and poppies that spring up around their unmarked graves. In Greek and Roman myths, poppies were used as offerings to the dead and by the Christians as a symbol of resurrection.

Red, Christ, Blood, Dreams and Memories, Acceptance  

Today  is not about mourning soldiers or wise men or herbologist Centaurs, I know. It's about ordinary citizens on that day, the 11th of September, going about their business of life one minute and then dead the next. I think about them in the city and the skies and at the same time, I think about all the others too -  the people caught in between ideologies and fantasies, dreams and delusions.I think about soldiers on foreign soil and how unbelievable that is, to me.  Ordinary people going about their business of life one minute and then dead the next.

What were the words she said that would unlock the meaning of the dream, unlock the meaning of the jumble that is life and death, war and peace, forgiveness and acceptance?

Mother of the Earth

...Mother Earth...look at her straddling the world...the world that comes from between her legs!

Of Queens & Sons

Cup of the Week

Who is that boy?

Garden of Eden

 

And here it is..the weekly Bosnian Coffee Art Pic - Imagine away..

Energy

What do you see?

The Third Man

The Third Man

Religion

Religion

Balance

Balance
What do you imagine when you see these symbols?

Coffee Rituals

I have thousands of pictures - images and stories  played out in coffee cups.
Often as I look over the pictures I see the symbols but sometimes the subconscious synergy that was present at the moment of understanding is no longer and I'm left with just ..coffee grounds. Looking over the pictures makes me realize that this ritual of drinking coffee- and drinking together - is what we take away as our heritage. We carry it in our suitcases far away - a pound of coffee, a pound of sugar, a dzezva.  It is rooted deep in the fabric, the socialization of generations of Bosnians, sitting around a table and drinking small vessels filled with sludgey coffee. We all carry the memory, irregardless of what area we come from or what we call ourselves.  I like introducing this ritual  to others who don't know it. I look at it like throwing a pebble into a clear and still lake. Moving things around. I like to get people talking & using their imagination.

When I think of coffee I see a typical Bosnian family: hospitable, likable, with deep roots of tradition that often conflict with the image presented. In the coffee rituals I hear tales, bons mots intertwined with laughter, smoke, mirth & hints of bitter chocolate.

Drinking Rituals

I drink Bosnian/Turkish coffee every day at 6am, often at 11:30 and then at 4:30 with the Queen when I get home. Sometimes I drink coffee in between, if I visit my Bosnian friends or if I happen to be home and not working and friends come over. Most of them are not American. I wish they were though, Americans are much more fascinated with the coffee and the story telling than people who do this coffee drinking all the time and have it in their blood. Which is to say, almost all Bosnians and including my family aunties, all of grandmother's neighbors, my gaggle of Slavic/Middle Eastern/Greek friends in town, the friends I've made in the refugee and immigrant community. We all drink Bosnian/Turkish coffee and have (seemingly) meaningful conversation while we do, smoke a lot of cigarettes and then we turn over our cups and tell the stories that we see appear out of the coffee grounds. We read each others because reading your own doesn't seem to work as well, the imagination runs dry. (even though we all try).

I've taken cup pictures for years and so I thought it would be an interesting subject for a 'Weekly Photo' here on the blog.

When I was fourteen, I moved to Italy with my family. I started drinking coffee at sixteen I suppose, the same time I started drinking wine. Living in Italy, espresso was de rigueur for years. Bosnian coffee in Bosnia, but that was the exception and I hardly ever went there because who wanted to go to Bosnia when you could go to Paris, Ibiza and Rio? I had not found my Bosnia passion yet and it was long before the shock of the war pulled me in deeper.

Then, right after Dayton when the refugees started streaming in from the camps and the broken hamlets, the ruined cities and the bloodied Drina -  I drank coffee in each and every home every day that I visited in my capacities as a case manager at a Resettlement Agency. Often twice.Often from morning till midnight. I became a Bosnian coffee addict. Long after, around 2003, my friend M from Sarajevo, who is deaf and a whiz at reading cups inspired me to do more with what she was teaching me during our afternoon coffee cup readings. Her old husband gave me 'secret information', typed up on an old typewriter they found somewhere and handed it to me with a grave stare, like he was giving me the holy grail. And indeed, maybe he did.
I started trusting myself, noticing interesting pictures, recognizable symbols and I began my documentation. T

The Princess & the Unicorn