Sometimes A White Stage Is Just A White Stag

When Sometimes A White Stag Is Just A White Stag…
I am a big fan of the white stag. It has a sort of magic about it. I have long since and ever thought with every fiber of my being that the white stag was strictly a mythical creature verging on the plausible blending from fantasy to reality like most myths tend to do. Just like King Arthur and the reality of his whereabouts- we love to muse on the various possibility of his story and various versions thereof. Along with all the other mythical beasts and different accoutrements of the dreams of our collective consciousness, we have the stories that hold them in their own backdrops. These stories have these creatures within their tales that hold sway with us by themselves alone, adding further speculation and assumptions of their false existence (however erroneous that may be).
This elusive animal however real has lived within our legends, hunted in vain by King Arthur and the Kings and Queens of Narnia alike. Granted King Arthur was born in legend by our own Anglo culture and the Narnia royalty was born of the mind of a rather brilliant author but this lends no help to the credit of the white stag’s authenticity.
I’m the greatest skeptic on this beautiful beast- at least I was until today, ridiculously and undeservedly so as I found out today. Yes just today, I learned much to my joy, that they are actually real beasts that reside on our very own planet and roam and frolic in the fields of Essex and Gloucestershire England. I was shocked, yet again still confused as I was on the sometimes seemingly invisible thin borderline between the two worlds of fantasy and reality as it was from an article on the making of the new Narnia chronicles movie, ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’. I suppose this confusion is rooted in the sadly “sheltered” life of some of us Americans. We only have deer where I live- no white stags to hunt here. Coupled with this I can’t forget that it was young Harry Potter himself who had the ability to muster up from deep within his soul a mightily bright petronus to shoo away the very negative and ugly, bad bad baddie Dementors on the banks of Hogwarts Castle’s lake. The very visage of the animal is what made his patronus one of the strongest charms of his wizarding community.
Now I guess I’ll just take heart that some things on our very real and often times ugly world are just as wonderfully fantastical and surreal as the worlds our most gifted authors can bring us out of their minds and into our own. Maybe this could mean we could summon a patronus of our own and manifest something greater than the sum of ourselves from a place that can hold such a power.
I believe that to be true, along with all the other mythical beasts and different accoutrements of the dreams of our collective consciousness we may find ourselves one day to stumble out of a wardrobe of our own and see a fantastical land we have created for ourselves by that very power from within.

Paths of a coin


Today, while I was eating my broccoli soup watching Kathy Griffin on the Bonnie Hunt show, my dad came in placing in front of me on the table a whole dollar coin- a 1972 coin. He said he kept it because of the date (my birth). I was taken aback. First of all no one uses whole dollar coins anymore and a silver dollar of any year is sure something. But instantly, my mind flashed to the ethereal, of course.

I mused that which was my birth year but also this was three years before the sudden shocking death of my grandfather Morgan; the same man who refused to wipe my three year old hand print smudges from the large livng room windows- the same windows which would see me grow up and see eleven Thanksgivings, Christmases, Easters, countless sleep overs with friends, hundreds of movie nights, my high school graduation, and the traumatic last day of my closing the door before I was to leave for my summer job at Walt Disney World changing my life permanently forcing me onto the journey that would make me the man I am today. Those were the same windows I looked out through to the vast green yard and hailed our legendary Ponderosa pine that my great, great grandfather Peter planted as a lil’ sapling. Through the next hundred years, that tree grew far above our house and partially sprawls over the entire roof and is now the most visible tree from where I live now. Little did I know it was planted on a home now forbidden to me through the cruel reality of money, timing and apathetic people. I read once somewhere that trees have souls. That ponderosa proves that fact to me. I knew him well and he did indeed love me in return.

Those were the same windows I would gaze out of in the summer and on one occasion saw my dog Sarge sauntering across from the other house on his path which he had wore down over the years venturing back and forth between homes, bearing my new little petite-cat buddy Charcoal on his back. She was a stray I found in the bushes by the orchard one day getting the mail. I was so happy when I would see her ride that loveable gangly bony mutt. They were my two best friends during those years. They still are; present company excluded of course. I mused that all of this was stemming from what 1972 means to me.

It’s much like “Life On Mars”, the series where Sam the cop gets hit by a car and seemingly transports back to a very real 1973. He’s in our reality in a coma but can’t escape the reality he lives in on the television show. It is an amazing show. It shows how strange the brain can be. Like Eli Stone. A simple wad of clotted tissue in his brain makes him see prophetic visions and tell the future. I understand this strange tour the brain can take you on. This last year I was and am still having a bout with something called Encephalopathy. My right leg gradually lost it’s strength and I was rendered unable to walk without aid. Before all this hell happened- my mind was doing some weird things. The biggest example is one time, driving home at night from Lincoln; a trip I’ve made many times over the last ten to fifteen years, suddenly without warning, I had no idea where I was going! I knew where I came from, where I wanted to get to- but I had no idea what road I was on. Nothing looked familiar. I was scared. I kept driving to see any familiar landmark. I found nothing but a strange small town bar with some people hanging outside it. Now I was terrified. I now know what an elderly person feels when suffering from dimensia! In a panic, thank GOD for cel phones, I called home to my folks who kindly and lovingly laughed at me (though later they admitted they were frightened by my sudden confusion) explaining how to navigate me back after I told them what the nearest highway sign had said. Soon as if I clicked the heels of my ruby slippers together three times, good ol’ highway 77 was visible in front of me leading into Fremont then home once more. Wow, I was way off. I seriously wondered thereafter if I had been abducted by aliens; the first time I’ve ever seriously – really- seriously considered that as a real possibility. Once I got my diagnoses during that terrifying time when we all had no idea what was wrong with me and I just was not me- looking through some kind of filter where nothing made as much sense as it used to, I’m thankful I was too out of it to really remember that time era with clarity. From the fall of 2007 thru 2008 was not my year. But during this time, some of the most miraculous things happened, all of which are too personal for me to express here- but it was a ride; a ride that rivals that of the haunted mansion at Disney World and all the repeated rides on Space Mountain or the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. So many times did I visualize me lying under that ponderosa with the pine cones digging into my back with Sarge and Charcoal by my side smelling the cedar falling asleep feeling the safest and most peaceful I would ever feel.

Glancing at my hemi-walker at my side, I thought how grateful I am for my ongoing recovery and the home that I presently have now even if it isn’t the old house my grandfather grew up in anymore. The land I live on is still the same land seeded by my great, great grandfather Peter Morgenson who planted that beautiful tree I love so much that I am no longer able to see everyday. I’m amazed that this one silver dollar could spark such a reverie over my soup and moisten my eyes and make my throat clench in suppressed weeping for joy. Like the feather in Forest Gump- floating around to finally land in on a predestined spot out of any place in the world. This one simple underused & forgotten coin came to me. So, next time you get some change, think about where it’s been and its journey it has endured; the souls it touched, the people and relationships it has played into and been a part of. Lastly, remember we are all basically coins dancing around in a sense being played out by our spirits and affecting each other in countless combinations in transactions of love.