Disclaimer: this is an old romp of a writing. written sometime in 2008ish. An attempt of my then adult mind finishing her critical thinking adventure in grad school, to understand the magic that occurred after my broken human girl woman self landed in the golden realm of the fae. (Fairies). A weaving if you will, through words and storying, of the archaic war between fairies and humans, or Self/mind, or perhaps, soul/mind, or rather, living imagination and embodiment body/mind.
The Authority of a Pixie
It got adult mind this far. And this is what adult mind says: It spins a lot. The mind twirls and whirls. That which doesnât make us stronger, may kill us. Direct contact with reality is both dangerous and amazing. It was easier with child mind. Adult mind wants to figure everything out. I know now why I split child mind from adult mind. Adult mind is dangerous. Adult mind doesnât know how to have fun. Adult mind is afraid of going crazy. Adult mind has this thing called critical intelligence, memory and ghosts. Child mind has imagination and possibility, non-linear dream tending and beingness.
This is what happened: it started with a one time ecstasy trip gone wrong. Adult mind mustâve done it on purpose. Figured, annihilate itself. Off with her head, says the Queen of Hearts for a reason. Get into the heart one way or another. Iâm too sensitive for drugs. It must have been laced. It catapulted my body and senses into overwhelm, overdrive, sensory overload for months. Years. It had to do with blasting off into space. and the long winded healing journey back home to the body. Bioenergetics was a doorway back home to myself. As was five rhythms dance and rites of passage. And writes of passage. Story medicine was the only way through. The drug somehow catapulted me onto the Great Story web, of all stories, mingling and cohabitating, beating and dying. It was too much to process. I could only do it little by little, without going crazy. The greatest gift, was the healing journey home into my body. Somatic tending is important for these times, and for finding oneself on their destiny path.
The only way I learned how to navigate the process was to become the process. You know how Yoda says, âdo or do not, there is no try.â Live and be. Youâd be surprised how much the mind can do to avoid being. And youâd be amazed at what happens when the mask falls off. You see the cracked face and then you look inside the cracks, deep inside the dark places. And you navigate that for awhile. You navigate shadows and insanity. In order to find truth, thatâs what you do. Confusion is a gift. It eventually leads to clarity.Â
It started with confusion and then a satin slip and a vintage garter and blue fairy wings. I painted caterpillar green swirls on my face and painted âjoyâ on a sign. And the word 'Imagine.' She was born out of the heart, not the mind. She said to adult mind. âyou are going to have to stop it now. Iâm tying you up. and I donât care how you feel about it. so there.â So she tied it âadult mind and adult me âup. in a room in the labyrinth of my psyche, somewhere between the cracks, where I couldnât find her. I âthe masked me, scared-y cat me, try-to-control-it-all-me -- was tired of the show ...it âmind MIND MIND --was trying to run. Or ruin. Nuts and bolts, matter of fact, in control mind is good at ruining a perfectly good show. So she, --or I âum, pixie me --said, âyou want a show, here. watch this.â And she âum, âŠI, âŠshe made me, âŠit, âŠsigh
âŠwe jumped out of my car. From the liminal to the center of civilization.
With a bright green hat with a tall pointed tip. For real. There were sunflowers and poppies on the hat. And a fucking birdâs nest. And I had my multicolored pixie dress. You know, the one with slits that the wind blows open. Blue, green, burgundy, yellow, fire, panther, feathers. And the red velvet cat pants beneath the silk slip with the garter over the top. Abso-fuckin-lutely ridiculous. And wonderfully sane. Lots of Glitter. Which I, âŠsnarfy mind âŠhated! It was revenge by my elf self to my mental self. I had discovered somewhere during my bioenergetics get into the body healing journey, that my inner self was quite possibly an elf.
 OhâŠdonât forget the pointy elfin tip shoes I made myself during a moment of delight that critical rigid me neglected to see. Every good story has to have a clever hero and an even more clever antagonist. Place: Pearl Street Mall. Good place for whatever-ness. Never did street theater before, so why not abduct myself and freak myself out. Forget drugs. Get lost in imagination. Best drug there is. Imagination.
A homeless man was the first to see the pixie. He came running awkwardly up to her, me, um...us âŠand handed us an unopened bottle of water. Which was good because I was damn thirsty from the terror of not knowing what was going to happen next and he said, âWhereâd you come from? And⊠what are you?â and I heard it, right then and there, the thick brogue which came out of my mouth, and the words, which I couldnât swallow backâŠas adult mind watched, frozen stiff, embarrassed to be seen with me.
"Tir Na Nog,â was the reply that came out of my dusty throat. I donât even know what the fuck Tir Na Nog was at the time, but it sounded exactly right. He asked my name, and I laughed like a tinkerbell as it came rippling out of me. Adult mindâs eyes opened wide like a gold fish. âPoppy the Pixie!â  I said. I asked him what he was. That was what Poppy-me wanted to know. What is a homeless human and what does HE know that she doesn't? He ignored me. And asked again, because he couldnât tell if Tir Na Nog was a town in Iowa or maybe Nebraska or maybe he'd drank to much, so just to be sure, âWhere ya from?â" and I said, âYou know, âTir Na Nog. Itâs that place in between places. Neither here, neither there. Over near Ireland. Sort of. Fog, mist, enshrouded in mystery, that sort of thing.â
He stared at me. I put glitter in my hand, told him to âClose your eyes! Make a wish!â And I blew him a kiss. The pixie in me loved him with ferocity. Every cell in her body was exploding like a dandelion skeleton bursting in sky. And then it shuddered. My legs and my pelvis-heart split from my head and that stupid good for nothing figure-it-out mind. One part expanded. And the other part contracted.  We were at war with one another. Imagination and Critical thought. Play and reason. Adult self and elf self. It had happened earlier, much earlier, but weâd been unconscious of it.Â
That day, it was declared. Pixie me was strengthened. She broke me out of adult mindâs perfectly defined boring, black and white, matter of fact and damaged reality. She, me? Us? We figured, screw the new age. Screw the workshops. Screw the library and the books. Screw Authority! The spiritual books and people were saying, âbe here now. be present.â And folks pay a shit-load to ...get this...figure it out. But you silly old mind-fool, you have no idea, do you? The only way to get a big old foolâs attention is to to make your elf-self way bigger. Especially if you are only a pipsqueak pixie.Â
What about âto be or not to be?â To be what? And it was like that for a good few many seasons. About the time it takes a tree to grow three times bigger. It âpixie elf self âseasoned me good. Until the next crisis sent us underground to the realm of the goblins. You think Iâm kidding. Iâm not. Captured by a troll we were. But, I donât want to give away too much too soon. Each time the moon went from full to new and new again, a new pixie was born. The sun moved into a new constellation, and a new pixie came flying out of me, all the while, adult self was tied up in a trunk. They turned me into Beanie Brownie, Ester Star Fairy, Poppy Pixie, Sunny Shee, Stella the Pointsetta and Red of the Oaks. These pixie parts facilitated magical living story adventures for children and adults in the Boulder area for awhile.
We (the inner fae and me) wore icycle crowns and acorn anklets, kissed 70 year old men on a month long adventure in San Miguel de Allende, on the streets of Mexico, and whispered, âDonât ever forget to dreamâ en Espanol. and when the police eyed us sideways on the streets, we skipped around them, blew them kisses and big fat iridescent bubbles in their faces.Â
Black and white Authority can be officious and dull. Pixies are mischevious and alive. You know what though? As good as it was, and as contradictory as it happened to be (expand/contract)...butterflies eventually die.Â
Freedom. Flight. Love. Wound. Humanity. Bam! Right in the kisser. The kingdom of heaven is right here now. And it's what you make of it. Paradox and all. The pixie lost her wings. She passed out. Adult mind took over. It was too much, too fun, too ridiculous, too mythic, too magical. And then because adult critical mind is an army of red ants, it had to find and figure it out, step by step, piece by piece. Uncovering every rock. it took over. The mind was a mental mouth eating everything in sight. And...the whole show ended up in pieces ⊠in a trunk. Circus over. It âthe broken falling apartness of things --shoved me (elf-self/soul self/pixie outfit) in a trunk, deep in the darkest reaches of someplace without a name and left me there! It âmind army,âheavy in its own boring predictable gravity âsat on the trunk and gave a good thwump. It whispered with an annoying syrupy voice, âDonât worry honey. Iâll take over now.â
Donât ever trust black and white adult mind. Itâll go from one synapse to the next over and over and over. For the benefit of the doubt, I might say that adult mind was âfiguring some things out.â Critical thinking. Critical essay. The meaning of life, I suppose. The oh too clichĂ©, âWho am I?â Oh God, please, not that! It wanted an explicit answer not some two bit pixie show on the side of the road. It didnât believe it could be so easy as being present and simply diving into the moment. Play is a damn good thing. Nope, it had to be more important. There had to be some kind of reward. Someone needs to see me doing this thing, it thought. It canât be this anonymous pixie act just doing for the sheer joy of being, selfless and honest. Nope.  Adult mind needed a certificate of approval. M.A. in play. As if. She needed a mission statement. A glossy resume. A fucking name badge. The correct pronoun. The perfect book. Something that declares âI went from a to b to figure out x = something minus w, of course.Â
Adult mind wants to number the stars and put âessencesâ in bottles. How perfectly awful. Adult mind was busy, busy busy with its thinking thinking thoughts. âHow do I explain this âstorytelling elf creatureâ and the art of living? How do you explain the magic of imagination? Definition destroys sometimes. You know what they say about a cocoon. Donât open it up. Forget the ultrasound. Let it be. Adult mind knew âitâ was nothing but trouble. She put âitâ --the art of living --in the trunk. It happened during my MA process. During a January moon. She dreamt she was in a cave showing women different angles of the moon from a hole in the rocks. The moon was beneath them. An army of ants entered the cave to destroy everything. We watched it. Chewed it all to bits. I âŠwise woman selfâŠtried to say, âWhy canât you let those women simply see the moon for what it is. Let them have the moon finally!â Bruce Lee spoke, "Donât point your finger to the moon, lest you get lost on the finger!â Adult mind wanted to go to an authority for an analysis. Because by this time, it was clear that there was a schizopolous.Â
That's what America is.Â
Adult mind grabbed the saddle, and bucked the pony. It declared war on fairies, pixies, elves, mother teresa, mary, jesus, ancestors, saints, archangels and demons. She told jesus, âyour story died on foreign soil. What the hell they planting it here for and makinâ a war out of it? â Mind told Persephone she no longer ruled the underworld. Just a bunch of soil and minerals and worms down there. Hot hot core when you get down low enough.  She de-mystified butterfly maiden. Told the trees they no longer talked. Stopped listening to the voices of the wind. Refused to hear the grass sing. She butchered the gods and the goddesses, from Hecate to Athena, Hades to Eros. Psyche was just a dead word inside, and it no longer spoke riddles in dreams. Mind stood proud on rocks and stones and screamed their names dead in blood. She drove them out as if they themselves were demons haunting her. She scattered their stories like ashes and gave them away, not even as memories, but rather, soot, to the wind. she trampled them with a thousand wild ponies. She mashed them until they went from multidimensionality to nondimensionality.Â
Fuck the non-linear, said mind. She turned them into lines that went from a to b. âThey âa small, unspoken authority that doesn't give a shit about Authority --told me that good things come in small packages.  Acorns for example. Adult mind was too busy trying to understand the scientific composition and significance of an acorn than to actually hear the story of the unassuming acorn. And the importance of the acorn cap cracking open to the long slow process of becoming an Oak tree. Adult mind was too busy making a racket killing everything in sight through definition. It rejected everything...mystery. butterfly. simplicity. external authority. Whose authority? What authority? I donât know. Some guy. Some teacher. Some guru. A beautiful woman with a ph.D.Â
Adult mind kept looking for answers. But somewhere, somewhere, below the below of the within..pixie is still breathing! She's stronger than mind me, albeit invisibly, and she's inner self...inner elf...and she's still breathing and beating her delightful tap tap tap on the trunk. Sheâs like, âYoo hoo, down here! Hey you! Wake up! Beat, beat, beat, beat. Hey, wake up! Sometimes through supposed nonsense you'll find the meaning that is true!â
Adult mind had become clueless and busy doing some âvery important researchâ into the nature of the human condition. Round and Round. B O R I N G. Round and round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows. Adult mind finally decided after a long boring think, that thoughts are the authority, that mind is in control! and when these thoughts have been written in a book, they becomes law for all eternity.
Who came up with this bullshit? Where does this authority come from and how does it know what I need? How can anyone else come up with the map for my âme-nessâ? Adult mind was busy trying to come up with some reason for my existence. She was sure there had to be some reason that I existed. Isn't that the question? Do you exist or not and how do you prove it? I guess we both had to die in order to live together again. That day on the street it began in innocence. âWhen it's dark in the sky and all you can see is a single star, well, make a wish.â Said the pixie. Have fun in the non sense? It is such a nuisance, if you ask mind. The only way to find and embody joy like that is to walk directly into the present, where there is pain and suffering too. To find a personâs hidden joy, you sometimes have to eat your way through the pain and suffering.  To become a butterfly, the caterpillar has to eat its entire former self. The whole mushy thing.
Imagination is not a chemical disorder. It isnât just an escape. It's also a living tool. Especially when embodied and aligned with critical thought. Living thinking. Adult mind should know by now that good alchemy is good chemistry, bad alchemy is bad chemistry. If adult mind would just get some beakers and experiment a little rather than trying to find âlifeâs instruction manual written just for meâ or better yet, âlifeâs instruction manual written by meâ, then things would probably work a little better in here. and out there. If you want to see the change, be the frickinâ change already!
It is a good thing that pixies are patient. It is good to know, in case you are wondering, that sometimes, by the grace of god (whatever that is), adult mind will actually come to its senses by making no sense, and laugh for no reason. When that happens, several things are possible: the acorn cap that you think is a protective crown will break open and you will pop out accidentally from the trunk of your own boring story-adult mind goes crazy temporarily and you are free to do whatever the hell you please --mystic or madman? You and adult mind will meet face to face and look at one another with bewildered faces. both of you will continue to be stuck in your separate realities until something called divine intervention breaks through and takes matters into its own hands.Â
The way it happened for me was that adult mind went crazy for awhile. Stasha who was Stacey at the time, lost her bearings. And so, the body took matters into its own hands, sewing the split pieces together again, acknowledging the beauty of the massive continental divide. It is crazy. Life is crazy. I'm crazy and you are crazy. Pixies are nothing but insanity embodied. And it makes perfect sense. And you do it anyway in order to be alive every moment. You die to the story and you make up a new one as you go and it is terrifying and beautiful. Every single fucking atomic moment. What if your inner self was simply an elf? What if your story died right now and all you had left was a blank page? What would you write? What would you do? Who would you be if all that you knew was dead and gone? What happens when the STORY, the big boring story, comes to an end? Then what?Â