the first telling

‘The Woman With No Hair’

NEW / OLD MYTHOLOGY
by Maija Liepins

I found myself at the entrance to the crystal city in a place that’s neither here nor there…

There was a gate, at the entrance of the city which was made of a deep emerald green crystal the shape of a heart, and I put my hands against it and phased through like it was a portal – into the city: sparkling, with clear white crystal turrets and rooftops. I really felt quite uneasy, it was a strange environment. But I found myself drawn to an oblong pool. It was a large, shallow pool with a mosaic visible at the bottom through the clear water, and fountains with statues of women holding vessels, through which the water poured, splishing and splashing into the pool.

So I stepped into the pool, and quite quickly the city faded and was replaced by a dark, dark forest. Now I was standing in a natural pool in a shadowy forest and I breathed easier. At this point, I can’t quite remember what happened next, it all went dark, all black like the dark behind your eyelids, but I was much more comfortable, it was a sensation like falling asleep. When I woke up, the next thing I knew was I was walking up some wooden stairs in a tower in the crystal city. And at the very top of a tower I discovered a woman, alone in the wooden room. She was seated against the far wall and there was one window in this room. I was quite startled because I suddenly realised, looking at her shaven head that she had cut off her hair, and not just trimmed, really shaved it off. She was completely bald and the stubble was growing back slightly, and she had big bright blue eyes, a clear-eyed challenging stare. And here she was in this tower writing on parchment, long, long sheets of parchment which she would drape down out of the windows with her words on, and this was her only contact with the outside world these locks of paper. It wasn’t that she was unable to leave if she wanted to, I’d just come up some stairs! I approached her and she handed me a ghost shell, an ammonite spiral fossil.

Also on this visit to the city I found an old man in a simple grey waiting for me in a small room and seated on a narrow bed. He had been waiting for me a very long time that is why he was so old. Next to him, laid out on the bed was a white simple dress, so I put that on and let out my hair as I follow him to a little but very deep pond amidst some trees, with water lily’s growing in the shallow end. I dived into the fresh water and swam down, down, down until I got to a gateway, a doorway, an entrance. The ammonite spiral was the key that granted me passage through it. I went though, and I find I am floating on an invisible floor in the dark inside an egg. I climb out of the petal lined shell, breaking through the top of the egg like a bird, and clambering out into a familiar clearing. My breathing is ragged. I’m in a stone circle near the stone altar. Underneath is a big cavern where I had once been welcomed into a new chapter of my life. So I ran down through those halls and approached the door behind which I knew there was a beautiful bath set in black black rock and fed by a waterfall that made the rough black rock glisten, and beyond that a cavernous room lit by glowing embers in the wall and a big bed. But when I pushed open the door I got a shock because there was someone in the room. I felt the energy rather than seeing who was there. Red, forceful, wanting, desire-energy. Whoosh! Not expecting to find anyone else in this space which I considered to be mine, I fled immediately. I found myself in the dark a familiar place within worlds and I called for help, an exit. Down through the darkness came ribbons of yellow like tendrils of vine, like hair, like rope to lift me up. And I came back to here which is not the space that is neither here nor there, here where my name is Maija. And I wondered what I had been so afraid of and why Rapunzle had no hair.

This was a retelling of a dream, recorded in my dream journal on 4 February 2018

“The Heart wants what the Heart wants”

OLGA DONVAR

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ARTIST’S NOTES

I desire, I dissent!

As a teen I internalised a culture of fear, the fear of my forefathers and mothers.

Fear of the power of a sexually awake woman.

Fear of judgement.

Fear of the physical power of men with closed hearts.

Fear of desire. Of wanting.

Fear of needing anything at all.

I internalised a culture that says desire is selfish, harmful to the “other”.

Dissenting thought: I am allowed to know what I want.

Dissent Manifesto ideas 2

DESIRE

1. I give myself permission to be honest with myself

Speak from the heart

2. Know thyself

Consciously enjoy and commit to your desires

3. Shed conditioned beliefs

Re-write your story and become a culture hero/heroine#labofdissent2019

— Maija (@LitlLinden) November 9, 2019

The Chrysalis

DEFINITION of ‘Chrysalis‘
1. the hard outer case enclosing a chrysalis.
“the splitting of the chrysalis and the slow unfolding of the wings”
2. a transitional state

4. Share your mythology through symbolic art

Co-create with collective consciousness

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