A Wayward Pilgrim Returns

[cilldara@mail.utexas.edu]

The push and the pull of it all... after an absence of more years than I
could have imagined possible, here I stumble, back to the world of She Who
Never Tours, But Is Always There When You Need Her... Kate Bush is God, and
I am back where I belong, and I believe!

It's been an interesting digression, full of new adventures and
experiences, musical and otherwise... the reasons for stepping off the path
are diverse and better left unsaid.  I have, if not worshipped at the
altars of false gods, at least been drawn to the music of others...
wandering aimlessly from Tori to Loreena to Alanis (the shame!) to Natalie,
to even the Sisters of Mercy and Siouxsie Sioux, learning more about Celtic
music and even playing it myself now... but all the while Our Lady of Kent
has watched over me and mine (literally, still, all 5.5 feet of her on the
wall -- in poster form, that is), and, sometime in the last month or two, I
had an epiphany.  It started slowly, on a rainy day, when Lionheart was the
only thing that would do for watching the wipers squishing the leaves away.
But I was lonely, I was lost, without my little black box... Soon, I
opened it... the black cube with the strange red and gold markings on its
top... and let the wonderful weirdness back into my life.  It all spilled
out like so many fantastical creatures from beneath a goddess' sky-colored
skirt, filling me up with the shivers and quivers.  There they were, all my
old friends -- Cathy, Heathcliff, Gurdjieff, James and his cold gun; Peter
Pan, Kashka all the way from Baghdad and Emma, all with coffee
(homeground); the lord of the reedy river and that handsome cabin boy doing
a ran-tan waltz; Nicky and Bill and Babooshka and Delius and everyone on
that damned wedding list, breathing away to night-scented stock; Houdini
and Rosabel and Edward G. sitting in my lap, treating the gelicnite
tenderly, and never never never getting out of my house again; running up
that hill with the hounds of love and leaving with the big sky (that cloud
*does* look like Ireland, yes it does); stepping out to where the water and
the earth caress, through the fog to the curve that is her smile and the
cross that is her heart down the line that is my path, a rubberband
bouncing back to life.

Mmh, yes.

Then off I went, in search of deeper understanding... yes, I turned to my
computer like a friend and found echoes of the past -- now *is* the place
where the crossroads meet, and written in my hand like an old memory
were... the archives!  I had been born again into the sweet morning fog,
and spent hours suspended in the wonder that is Gaffaweb.

Well.  After those many hours -- just completed, I should mention -- I
couldn't stay away.  I've been out before, and it's much safer in.  I don't
even know if there's anyone here that would remember me from those many
years ago, back when we waited with bated breath for The Sensual World to
come out, and Ed was typing in all those interviews and Vickie and Chris
were turning us on to Happy Rhodes and IED... well, was IED.  I'm not an
apostate... nor am I even a wacko (although this post might give the lie to
that).  I'm just really, *really* glad to be back.  (But I guess that's
obvious...)

Okay, I think I'm calm now.  I'll sit back and see what's going on.  But
boy, am I glad to be back.  She really is, you know.

Look at me go with my tail on fire...

Susan Harwood Kaczmarczik

cilldara@mail.utexas.edu
"Our words must seem to be inevitable."  --  William Butler Yeats