How It Came To Be: Or When the Bear Challenged Me

Here's the truth -- with not one lick of shame. 

I am not really much of a story teller. Not really. 
Once in a while, I can achieve a line read so spot on that it's damn near impersonation. Not always: but when I nail it, I nail it like a pro.  

 
I learned how to do this early on.  Say somewhere around 12.  
Because my innate parrot-like ability to imitate -- or get the laugh persisted, I kept it as a survival technique. And I collected voraciously.  

So yes, I admit that many of my best lines and "stories" have been shaped and sometimes blatantly plucked from the collective "spinning" of a select set of rogues artists, seekers, poets, painters, waiters, ministers, dancers, drummers, tarot card readers, runners, chefs, street people, shop keepers, cab drivers, singers, rabbis, humanistic visionaries, massage therapists, actors, Krishna devotees and random odd balls who I have stumbled upon along the way.

Not to mention the various roommates and lovers who have peppered the chapters of this comedy too. Oy.

Jesus, keep a set of friends for 30 years you'll soon have shared stories that intermingle or which have morphed into new stories that belong to no one but are repeated by everyone.  

Therein Myth is Born --
And in these 50 years with the characters I draw to me: a veritable smorgasbord!!

It is here that I begin it then. The spell that sets the scene.
A story about an everyday witch.  Because yes, there are witches in the world. 

Thus, this first chapter starts in the middle.  
Beginning here in my 50th year: and journeys forward and back without end.

Because that's what witches do. Right?  Time travel. 
A witch watches.  Learning how to read behaviour.
A really talented witch will feed you, too.  If you're lucky.

Since I'm a'cooking Witch.  You can bet your ass that there will be a recipe or two along the way to season a tale.  Recipes being a sort of "conversation" that is shared through food.  

A Witch worth her salt will definitely show you how to watch for the signs. 

And some aren't subtle.

So when the Bear aka UNCLE BEAR - told me passionately to get off my ass and follow hir lead last month. It most certainly was a sign. A sign that said "Dare."

It is precisely a month to the day that Uncle Bear gave me the instruction to follow the path ahead and unleash the spirit I have been hiding.   

I wonder -- did it take me half a lifetime to figure out the story only unfolds the minute you dare to tell it? In that breath, that dawning? 

Art/Chance are intricately woven.
[[Dare]]

I know this: the Bear ain't shitting me. It's time to crack open the shell and let the dark torrent matter of longing and desire show. It is time to plant these seeds.  It is time to stop running (symbolically) from the deeper journey.  

Time to go down the rabbit hole.  No better time than this Summer Solstice. 

The Bear reminded me too that most of the tools I really need are right in front of me. Like Dorothy.  No shoes required.  I'm already here. In Rogers Park. The Land of Witches of Spiders. And it is from here that everything has sprung forth.
[[Why?]] 

Wondrous things happen in the city all the live long day, 'tis true -- but odd things are more apt happen up here in RP.   

Why this is, I do not know.  

Rogers Park is not a "usual" sort of place. Rogers Park has always had a freak flag contingent, an edge, a hippie vibe - with historical markers like the Heartland Cafe/No Exit -- to demonstrate that non conformists have always lived here.  
We stayed/or came back because we found ourselves needing space to breathe - and no matter how we fought it, the beauty of the place always beckoned. 

I meet countless folks who have moved away only to come back. I am one of these myself. I was mugged and badly beaten once at the corner of Glenwood and Pratt.  Broad daylight, after an acting class at Center Theatre.  

I swore to heaven I would part ways with this hood forever. This turned out to be a lie. 19 years later, I bought property here -- knowing in some strange way it was all predestined.

After two decades of wandering, I came back to stay exactly where I started. I have not regretted it once. 

It has been a ceaseless wonder and privilege to walk these shores at 22 and return fat in the middle chapter of my life to witness it anew: taking in all the changes that have occurred, all the stories that have been collected along the way.

There is a rhythm in knowing a place so intimately that it has been your companion. It is sensual. And often surreal. Oh these beaches where I walk with myself and my past continually. Everything a reminder. 

For the better part of the last seven years now, I have kept most of this pent up creative rambling to myself. A snippet here or there in a note or a halfhearted story on Facebook. 

But never with any real effort. 

The wealth and fury of my feelings, the stress from work. All the negative energy I was holding - it frightened the shit out of me. I had shingles twice in a year.  And I was afraid, petrified.  On fire from the inside out: burning with something I could not comprehend or compute. Till finally I became so heavily depressed there was nothing to do but get help or vanish.  Most of this year has been digging out of this pit. And seeking help. Help being anything that made me feel alive again. 

OOOOOOOOOOOOOO'Uncle Bear!

For you and all the sundry and various players I may describe or elaborately quote within -- 

this space now exists. 

NOTE: this title is an ode to a line (LONG STOLEN FROM) one of the Haldiman sisters - Someone asked why our friends Tara and Sue didn't followed the pack and land in Rogers Park with the rest of us. The answer was "because Rogers Park is filled with Witches and Spiders."  

For anyone who lived up here in the early 90's, Rogers Park boasted one of the best neo pagan bookstores in the city. Isis Rising on Lunt! When I first moved here -- RP was a gathering spot for wiccans craving instructional books/posters and yes -- metaphysical jewelry.  A habit I still indulge.  Better still, Isis Rising was just three doors down from my very first apartment in the city. I lived at that bookstore when I had nowhere else to go.
It was there at Isis Rising that I decided I must be a witch.  
Isis Rising is no longer here but this witch is. 


As for the spiders -- with 100 year old trees that create a dense canopy of leaves -- trust me when I say spiders thrive abundantly. They spin quietly in the background each spring -- crocheting elaborate webs. This year the spiders have been especially prolific - which I take as a sign. We joke to this day that the sun will rise on glistening webs one morning and we'll shriek to discover that our names have been woven into the webs -- "Surrender Breisa!"
Let's just say I have surrendered to Uncle Bear's wisdom and will begin to tell the tale.

What I am is a chronicler. I take a snippet of something I heard and I try to faithfully "tell it." Or act it out. Mostly out of a Gemini craving to share/to entertain. Because yes -- it has and will always be the best way to get a laugh.

This will/shall be my coming of age story.
A story of a crone-to-be. Some soft shoe. A lesson or two on altar building.

So many signs!!!  

Nowhere else to go but through..............

  

I like to think that Rogers Park is the free swim of humanity. The people who thrive here are fiercely independent, eccentric, proud, and unapologetic for their connection to the water. We are also the most diverse of neighbourhoods which gives us a sort of level-headed, no bullshit approach. We who claim Rogers Park, claim it because it claimed us when we fit in nowhere else. Many of us landed here because it may have been the one place we could afford when we were tenderly young and first moved to the city to make our way.  

And then we went away to Portland. And we saw Uncle Bear. 

I feel often that she popped out of my heart, like Athena must have popped out of Zeus' head. Something so bright: so whimsical -- so alive. Being in her presence is heady/like altitude sickness. The air around the Bear is so pure, so light - you have to grow accustom to it. And in that dizzy state, Uncle Bear called me out and challenged this witch outright to stop the charade and actually get to work.  So it is from this vantage, I will begin the tale - and let the web spin. 

So there you have it. 

I DARE YOU.