Sometimes, those rare instances show up when something catches our attention from the corner of our eye--suspends us out of time--soaks us with a profound sense of recognition, connection, our only then knowing that sense of something lost--found. What has been unseen, disregarded, dismissed or gone torpid in unuse thrusts up and breaks surface--something that you didn't even notice was gone until that instant, until it stands there before you.
Under the glaring fluorescent lights at Walmart, surrounded by gaggles of noisy kid families about their shopping, out of place, at eye level, I flashed on the arresting image of a Blu-ray/DVD cover: a red-haired elfin teenage girl lifted in the arms of a svelte, boneheaded man--long elegant horns atop a canine skull. Reminiscent of Beauty and the Beast--it was something more. I stood transfixed--every hair on my body rising in a mysterious sense of joyful, other-worldly recognition. I was looking at a copy of Kore Yamazaki's anime, volume one, of The Ancient Magus' Bride.
On the spot, entranced by the image, I laid down my long-standing psyche pattern--the huntress with her "bow and arrows." As the "archery equipment" fell to the floor at my feet, my immediate takeaway was that I felt "filled." The acquisitive hungry ghost that haunted behind my fires of creative fervor and lurked in the luscious binges of engrossing conversations with friends, the want factor receded from me; shadow chased by sunlight. . . . I felt myself scooped up, on the spot, and held close, like the red-haired girl in the picture before me.
I felt found, seen, visible--wide awake, wide open--filled with a sense of possibility, mystery, intrigue--reclaimed by something--guarded and protected by a fierce, present, dragon energy--this, even while respectfully regarded and inquired--and mysteriously beckoned. To my sense of wonder, I stepped from inner shackles into an inner clearing.
All of this from a glimpse of an anime cover? What I had unknowingly sought stood magnificent before me--the anime image capturing an ancient archetypal story of a lonely mage and homeless young woman now become apprentice to this powerful, reclusive magus; and in turn about, sometimes she the teacher, his having lessons of his own to learn.
I stood looking at a star constellation in the night sky, recognizing it as my own. Why? Where from? Don't know. Don't care. Doesn't matter. Restored something in me--a sense of depth value, an inner confidence that had been definitely on walk-about--recall of connecting with a being not unintelligent by any means, but at the same time not acculturated to the status quo of our embedded social and cultural structures with all its attendant restrictions: Whoosh: breathing space--kind, if sometimes baffled, inquiry into Other, plumbing internal depths that had faded from sense and sight.
This is the story of Chise Hatori and Elias Ainsworth, and a full cast of characters spanning numerous realms; a story about the cultivation of empathy and self-introspection--seeing through to a person's quivering vibrant core and the ownership of emotions, choices and consequences; inquiring into integrity and ethics—not about the ownership or suppression of another person; rather, ownership of relationships and a deep regard for sovereignty, even as we are the challengers that trigger growth and change that sometimes takes us on separate paths.
I'm still receiving this new sense of being filled up, from within. Meeting moments of peace and equanimity before this, in the rich complexities of encounters with self and in exchanges with others, they've been fleeting. This brings a base shift; new glasses and new eyes.
Barnes and Noble, https://www.barnesandnoble.com, features an anonymous quote:
We lose ourselves in books. We find ourselves there too.
Kore Yamazaki has captured, in her magical manga and anime, a story etched within the very hollows of my bones, where the marrow lives: an Archetypal Presencing that has threaded my entire life--so often relegated, dismissed, as chimerical fantasy. Enter the ancient thorn mage and the courage of a young girl as they together leap into their own depths and darkness to find the light within both of them.
From want of use, since my late husband's passing, this archetypal pattern within me had slipped into torpidity. Blessed with rich, close friendships, and surged with cyclic creative fire manifested in a passion for writing, and in a wider arc, enamored with drawing/sketching, this part of me, a very active, vibrant and interactive part of me, had languished--a psycho-spiritual vitamin deficiency, costing me significant portions of my native verve, sauce and juice. A marathon session of watching season one and two of The Ancient Magus' Bride anime brought the lights back on! I felt alive as I had not in many years. Who knew!!!
Ms. Yamazaki! Self-described in the September 2017 Forbes Magazine interview as only knowing "how to draw manga" -- for me, you are a magician scribe revealed in this Ancient Magus' Bride story that spun out of you, renewing me to a deep sense of magic, of re-trusting the Universe, and myself, in my native ways of sensing and egaging my world--ways that over the years had gone bone dry in me--bones left to bleach and brittle, slivering in the sun--now moist again with quicksilver in my marrow, my psychic flesh sewn back onto them--my huntress' "bow and arrows" now a rubble of dust on Walmart's floor.
ありがとうございましたArigatōgozaimashita, Ms. Yamazaki
天の恵み Ten'nomegumi (Heaven's Blessings)
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