THE RUSSIAN GYPSY, A SHORT-SHORT STORY

[photo: www.marshsfreemuseum.com/pages/history.html]

I'm an American "mutt," being Irish/with some English on my father's side and German/Polish/Russian Jewish on my mother's side. This sixteen year old story felt at the time as if I'd channeled it directly from an actual Russian ancestor. I'm not sure exactly how much I believe in channeling, i.e. the jury is not in yet on this point for me. However, I have had experiences that I would describe as channeling.

I clearly recall sitting down to write with no idea about what, and having the first line of this piece "fall out" of my pen. The subsequent lines trailed smoothly behind. This is highly uncharasteristic of how I write. Another reason it felt channeled is how very little editing it seemed to need. Which is also rather unusual with my writing (prose or poetry). Lastly, although I tend to "see" whatever I write, the scene in this story was, and still is, a more than usually vivid mental image.

Ah, well, I didn't set out to make a case for the piece having been channeled. I only wanted to share a bit of background on a story that connected me to a distant part of my heritage, if only in fantasy.

THE RUSSIAN GYPSY

My great-great-grand Aunt reads tea leaves by lantern light. The bright colors of her clothes conspire with the twilight to hide her tatters. The lantern sways in the fall wind, swiping at the dark. Her husband calls angrily from their wagon and startles her customer. The name he slices the air with is never her real one, her proud Jewish name. The name she does not even whisper to herself when she lies pressed beneath the night, like flowers between the pages of that book she had once owned. When she was young. And still very beautiful.

She had enjoyed sharing her body then. Especially with that sweet young man who gave her the wonderful book she could not even read. But she knew, as she had always sensed what the tea leaves and Tarot cards said, that there were stories there to die for, to live for. And when her sister's family pulled their roots out of starving Mother Russia for that golden land across the seas, she did not hesitate. As she had not hesitated to give her body for the book, and she passed it on to her shy sister. Surely children raised in that rich young land, far from famine and war, would work miracles with such a book!

My great-great-grand Aunt reads tea leaves by lantern light. From their old wagon her husband yells again into the night that name she answers to but has never owned. She nods reassuringly to her anxious customer. The lantern swings, casting light, then dark, then light across her carefully bland face. She completes the naming of her customer's future. Then rises, once again, to forget her own.

* * * *

Oh, and I just realized there is an unintended -- though probably unconsciously urged -- minor connection between this post and the post to my Tarot blog today (link at bottom of this post). The "Resource" I listed for today is by the Russian occultist P.D. Ouspensky.

Resource: Facade.com, for free "fortune telling" readings, including Tarot and Runes.

‘til next time, keep dreaming,

Roswila
[aka: Patricia Kelly]
****If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”)****My other blog: ROSWILA’S TAROT GALLERY & JOURNAL.