Midir

Midir is a member of the Tuatha De Danaan; the "People of Danu". People who get paid to study such things believe that the "Danu" in question is also the being that the Danube river is named for. A lot of old goddesses are associated with rivers, but that's probably another post for some far future day. Most people who are interested in such things believe that the Tuatha De Danaan are gods. Strictly speaking, they are literary characters with very unusual attributes, not classical gods in the Greco/Roman sense, but not exactly mortal beings, either. There are many, many such beings in Celtic myth.

A few years ago, I was quite the Celtic Kookball (or maybe "Cuighbhall") according to my children. I immersed myself in the various cycles of Irish mythology and some of the Welsh. Midir was an interesting character to me for some reason at the time, and I developed a fondness for him, but there really isn't much in the mythology about him. He's sort of a peripheral character who occasionally pops up to steal someone's wife or to foster someone, not the focal point of any really key stories. One remembers the main characters: Lugh, the Dagda, the Morrigan, Brigit. Midir is one of those characters that it is very easy to forget, and so I did.

Then, a few weeks ago, I remembered that there was a particular character that I had a fondness for back in the Kookball days and that he had been the foster father of Aengus Og, and I just couldn't recall his name. It bugged me that I couldn't remember it. Every so often, I'd struggle with it, and it just wasn't there. You know how it really just nags at you when something like that happens? You can't remember the title of a song or the name of some obscure movie, and it just bugs you.

Fast forward to this past weekend. The Sig and I were camping on the very beautiful and isolated mountain acreage of a friend, and having a very pleasant time. I also used to do quite a lot of camping, and I've always been a bit of a survivalist at heart, so it was comforting and relaxing for me to be out in the middle of nowhere with Sig and our friends. Now, we knew that our friends were thinking about selling a house that they no longer feel they can live in due to extended family obligations. We also know that they love the house, and they never did put it on the market, so despite the fact that we are kind of "looking" for a house all the time we didn't really have this house on our radar because it seemed like their attachment to it was strong and that they probably wouldn't be able to realistically price it even if they got around to ever putting it on the market. But it seems they have now determined to sell it, and they are increasingly anxious to sell it, and they feel that what they have decided to ask for it is incredibly reasonable. I did detect a change in the way they presented the story, almost as if they had noticed how many properties up in their neck of the woods were on the market and were not selling. And they seem to have accepted their new digs, and they are doing a lot of improving of them, and are moving more of their belongings to their current house from their prior house. This isn't the usual "move up" situation, where they actually bought a new house before they sold their old one. It's more of a familial obligation that they feel bound to fulfill, and probably rightly so, but it has plucked them away -- not seduced them away. We are very familiar with their current lodgings, but we've never been to their prior house. They haven't lived in it for a year, although they still maintain it. And in a very diplomatic way, they made it clear that they are interested in us moving into that house. We could rent it, we could buy it, we could rent it for a while and then buy it.
Well, obviously, the whole idea is kind of alarming. I can think of no quicker way to ruin a friendship than to bring money into it. So, the logical part of my brain is steering very clear of the offer. But the seed was planted, and the emotional part of my brain began to steer back towards it. Our friend had spoken to us of some improvements he had invested a lot of his time and creative energy in, back before they knew we were looking for a house and before they were really ready to sell it. And they are just the kind of things that we would have dreamed of doing, if we'd had the skill. And other aspects of this as yet unseen house have been brought up in random snippets of conversation: the large basement, the cellar, the fruit trees. Perversely, as the economy has gotten worse and fuel has gotten more expensive, I find myself once again feeling the urge to move further away. This is another of those logical brain vs. emotional brain dilemmas. I love my job, and I do not want to give up my pay and benefits. I'd probably try to make the commute. If it came down to it, I could get a job in a hospital much closer -- really close. But it would mean a pay cut, I'm certain. And it would mean giving up my seniority and my vesting in my current pension.
So, Sig and I are sitting around the campfire and I'm looking up at the brilliant Milky Way and I'm feeling things. I have a strong intuitive streak. When life keeps heading me in a certain direction, I tend to think it might be good for me to stop struggling and just go with the flow. Life has been leading me in the direction of the Sierra for years. First, old friends who purchased land up in the mountains and came up from the LA area several times a year, during which we'd all camp on their land and tell stories and think about trying to preserve the place for our kids and grandkids. But eventually, they realized that they weren't ready to build in the mountains and they found what they were looking for in Southern California. We are still close, but our dream of a viable, actual community is gone now. One of our group has made such a life for he and his wife in Willits, and has given gentle advice from time to time on living closer to the land in a smaller community in a more purposeful way. I thought about moving to Southern Cali, and I thought about moving to Willits, and it would have been lovely to have moved closer to the closest friends I've ever had -- but it didn't seem right. Life was not pulling me in that direction, but it was definitely telling me that the times were changing and decisions had to be made soon.
When Sig and I discovered our new community and made new friends, I really didn't think it was going to work out so well. I thought it would be another shallow disappointment, leading nowhere.
Nothing could be further from our life in the past year. We have had such fun, and been made to be so welcome. Every shared experience just makes us that much more interwoven into this group of people that have come to be like family to us, and in such a short period of time.
I used to be very cavalier about friendships. When you have less time to grow them, they suddenly become that much dear to you, I've discovered. Our friends in LA, by necessity, we only see for a week or so every year. Sig's friends from back East we host at a BBQ for a day when they're here for a sporting event. Friends are different than family, because you are bound by common interests, and not birth. It is a different kind of love, and it is very necessary for your mental and emotional well-being. Your kids, and your partner, can't provide the kind of sounding board that friends provide. This past year I feel that we've been absolutely flooded with friendship, and we've become physically and emotionally healthier for it. And the roots of it are in the foothills of the Sierra, once again. Only this time, the friends belong to the land and aren't traveling to it to try to make it theirs. I can't help but feel that life has led me to this place, and that I'd better consider any offers very carefully, no matter how alarming the notion of them is. There is something deeper going on here.
So, sitting looking up at the stars, this obscure Celtic supernatural being again came into my mind, for no known reason. He didn't have anything to do with mountains, or friends, or community or houses. But I couldn't think of his name, for the life of me. So, I threw out a challenge to the Great Beyond. If this is really something that I should pursue, the name of that being would be given back to me that weekend. Now, this doesn't mean much, scientifically. After all, I did know his name, I'd just forgotten it. For years. But it was buried in my own mind, just like all those algebra formulae and the names of all the bones in the human body that I could no longer remember, either.
That night, I dreamed of deer in the meadow. Or maybe they dreamed of me.
And in the morning, as I woke up, the name was given back to me. Midir.

Where do we go from here?

It's not like we're at a crossroads where we are forced to make a choice.....yet. But lately I've been thinking a lot about the future, given the increasingly high cost of fuel and food. Of course, opinion is somewhat divided as to whether these costs will continue to rise, but it seems to me that a prudent and safe presumption would be that they will.
So, the question becomes, in a future of increasingly limited resources, what will our communities look like? James Kuntsler believes that they will look an awful lot like villages did prior to the Industrial Revolution, and that big cities are doomed, as they will lack the resources to provide for their population. Others believe that with limited resources, people will need to live in cities due to jobs and distribution centers (in other words, it will only be economically possible to ship food to limited "ports" -- no more trucking avocadoes from Mexico to Maine).

In the past year, we've formed some bonds locally up in the foothills of the Sierra, which is a bit mystifying to me. It all started because we wanted a yard for the dogs. The whole process which began over 2 years ago and has now culminated in us becoming a part of a community that we never dreamed we would fit into, is almost metaphysical and to question whether it is practical seems a bit like rejecting guidance from the Numinous. And that seems very ill-advised.
On the other hand, it is entirely possible that I am letting my emotions have dangerous control over what should be a more practical decision. It's not like human beings are unknown to make poor decisions based on misguided spiritual beliefs and emotional attachments, after all.

In the last few years, I developed a real admiration for modern design, because it is clean and simple. And that has led me to become fascinated with modern housing architecture, and to almost exclusively track a particular type of mid-century modern tract house built in the Sacramento older suburbs by the Streng Brothers. If the New Urbanists are right, then living in an older and established suburb in a Streng home would be perfectly workable, and in many ways ideal. There would be nearby public transportation, shops and parks. It would be much closer to my current work territory. Additionally, my chosen career path is heavily dependant on driving and as the cost of fuel becomes more prohibitive, I don't see that my employer will have any choice than to limit services to higher population density areas. If Kuntsler is right, then it would be better to move even further away (but closer to our social circle who live mostly in the Placerville region). My job prospects would be less appealing. I could probably find work doing pretty much what I'm doing now, but it would pay a lot less and yet rent and food would remain around the same cost. Where we live currently is at a border area, literally. We live right on the border of Sacramento and El Dorado County, right on the border between urban and rural. We are neither here, nor there.
The Armstrongs, my Scottish clan, were a borders clan. The borders of Scotland were a wild and crazy place, of nearly constant warfare and invasion. People lived in modified towers, basically, in which they could draw up the ladder to the second floor and have some defense against casual opportunistic foes. Just thinking about the daily lives of my forbears makes me anxious, and while my borders are nowhere near as tumultous as theirs, the resonance of the borders as a place in space and time does seem apt and descriptive of where I find myself.