Colette Obrien

I’ve put the latest Yucatan article up on the site in the articles section titled,”Travels in the Yucatan.”

Preparing for the next workshop June 1^st on feminine archetypes, we’ll be focusing on the dark side of the Great Goddess. Not a favorite subject but an important one, and one that personal experience has taught me, had best be attended to or She will demand attention and that is NEVER a good thing, as Sleeping Beauty and other heroines and heroes have learned.  She goes by many names through time and space, essentially representing loss of consciousness, whether that means physical death or ego death.  If truth be told, no matter what story we may tell ourselves about either of those options, it is truly terrifying or so She has the power to frighten us. There is NOTHING maternal about her.  She is not ambivalent but entirely horrible. The Indian goddess Kali best represents Her in modern time when, in western culture she’s been sent back to the unconscious. As I mentioned earlier, that is not a good idea. One can wonder if our current world crises may have something to do with our denial of death.

The series of non-fiction articles I’ve been writing for the magazine Ancient American has been great fun; an opportunity to speak directly about the classic Maya. The latest edition Vol 12 Number 78, just came out and is available on the newsstands at Borders, Barnes and Noble, etc. In that issue the second article in the series of six further explores the Mayan’s spiritual beliefs and the way they were woven into daily life.  There are several color photographs of the region of Sayil and Kabah; ruin sites on the western end of the Yucatan peninsula.  The next article will be about Uxmal, also in the western region, but much larger and more well known than Kabah and Sayil. All are wonderful and well worth a visit. I hope to get the article up on this site soon but in the meantime please pick up a copy of the magazine if you’re interested.

I must revise my previous statement about best moments for I now have a new favorite “best” moment. Or I should say best hours. Last night’s book launch at Book Passages was more than I could have hoped for.  The eager faces of many friends and family members was like looking into a sea of love and with that support, telling the story of writing Time & Transformation and reading excerpts from it, was a pure delight.

Thank you, thank you all so very much.  The years of sitting alone struggling to bring the story into a coherent form are now totally worth it. There are times that I love being alone but I must admit to having felt a bit deprived of human contact these last years. I’m encouraged and inspired to pursue the promotion of the book and to have many more best moments and hours sharing the work with the world.

For those of you who get nervous when someone gets too bubbly, never fear, I was trained by a mother who was always on the lookout for too much happiness and would squish it like a bug when she saw it appear. I know better than to be too happy. But I am going to indulge in it for a little while before coming back to the ground and the day-to-dayness of life. Pure happiness is so rare.

The next reading for the book is Saturday, May 17^TH at the Orinda Bookstore at 1PM. For directions go to Orindabooks.com.

The marketing and promotion for the publication of Time & Transformation has eaten up my time for the last two months, and happily, I’m now able to come back to other things; to smelling the roses and writing for myself and friends. The book launch party is tomorrow night and beyond that, who knows where it will go, but once launched the book will have to travel of its own volition. The writing and caring for it have been a great joy, and at one level I’m sorry to leave the world of the Maya and my dear heroine Balamka, but there are other things to do; other lands to explore and characters to discover.

At home Joie the dog and Sophie the cat are doing as well as a brother and sister of another species might. They have moments of play and others where they’re not so sure of one another, but how different is that than any relationship? The gardens around the property are becoming truly magical thanks to the joint efforts of myself and Heather and Mike.

My favorite moment this spring was late in the day after hard work planting, when I sat in my newly developed grotto garden hemming a dress while Heather and Mike continued down below putting in a new yellow rose bush. The sound of their conversation and laughter mixed with the sweetness of bird’s songs in the otherwise silent world of the mountain.  The sun was low in the sky with no wind and now and again Sophie would dart by with her huge bushy tail held high. Joie would not be far behind.  Such a moment seems to imprint on the soul in such a way that it is eternal. I don’t know why one moment is so and the other millions of moments are not, but it seems true. Since then, I often remember the experience and am grateful for it as well as awed by how simple the truly important things in life actually are. I suppose we must do those other things but frankly if I could choose whether to write a book and go to stores and do readings, or go to a party, or travel to a distant land, or sit once again hemming my dress with family and garden around me, I know what I would choose.