The Dark Mother's Apprentice
Pending creative project
In May 2019 (at my doctoral graduation) I asked a spontaneous question, “Why did the Returning Woman choose the Dark Mother?” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realised I had signalled to creativity that I was open to have a conversation about a fourth story. I was about to begin getting Letters to a Missing Woman ready for e-book and soft cover print, after which I wanted to extract “The Return” from my thesis to publish. For ten months duration prior to May 2019, I had been working on a third story (see below) I had promised myself I would write once I had submitted my thesis. I wasn’t ready for a fourth story, there did not seem room in the crowd of creative life I was already fostering. However, I started to muse and even play with possible titles for the story should I write it. It was too late, the question had taken root and the story was murmuring itself to me, and I was the scribe. Unwittingly, when I had written “The Return” as part of my doctoral thesis I had created a parenthesis in the narrative. The Returning Woman understands she is to set sail with the Dark Mother, and they take a voyage together. The Apprentice says (in my thesis), “In that journey my vision became clarified as I learned by the Dark Mother’s side.” A sparse paragraph later, after the vast voyage is complete, I describe how the apprenticeship is fulfilled and the woman is sent off into her larger life. But what happens on that voyage? How long is the Apprentice’s sojourn? What is it that she learns? I did not have answers to these questions at the time, but the story seemed to carry on without my attunement. Initially it spoke to me in images I was inspired to create in 2020 and then the narrative followed as teasing vignettes.
The Apprentice and the Dark Mother traverse the Subterrestrial Seas and Dead Lands. It is a journey of remembrance for the Mistress of the Dark, whose story is told for the first time. Meanwhile, the Apprentice learns the art of navigation as a lived lore of being the signs. The seven-year voyage will test each woman to her limits before they can set eyes on the shores they departed from again.
"An Unnamed WYRD" - Visual Novella
Pending creative project begun in 2018
Initially this was going to be story No.3, however, in 2019 "The Dark Mother's Apprentice", as an idea, asserted itself and bumped this one into the No.4 position.
"SUBTEXT: A Pulled Out Thread
There was a book in the Dark Mother’s cave, aged by time and use. It was filled with the most beautiful images, poetry and lore about the Phoenix Woman. I fell into fascination and even though meeting her set me on a journey with a companion I was most unwilling to take, fascinated I still remained. The years have passed since our first meeting in the Heart of Hearts and many times I have returned to the Dark Mother’s cave and sought out the book to look upon her face. Pouring over the ancient pages I have tried to piece together her story. Sometimes our visits would coincide and we would heartedly discuss all my curiosity and questions. It was her suggestion that I write a new book drawing on the old lore, the parts of her story she disclosed and what my imagination conjectured to fill in any gaps about how she came to be a fire WYRD. For in the beginning of her life the Phoenix Woman inherited a loss and an estrangement with fire. And once something has been lost it cannot always be found again in the way it might have been had it not disappeared beneath the surface of things... This is the story of how the Phoenix Woman became a fire WYRD set in a time and place to which she was born. It was her task to recover the uninitiated fire within that had been buried under the weight of a history she did not begin. Like the buried flame, she too had to be drawn up from underneath in order to weave with fiery intention deeds in present time for some future hope of unanswered destiny she perceived might be hers. Perhaps she too could have disappeared, been a pulled out thread for all the fearful warnings she was fed and there would be no story to tell."
From the introduction of "An Unnamed WYRD" by Maree Aldridge December 2018.
This story began to be written on scraps of paper and in journals 2016/2017. Finally in 2018 I made a way to spend time to travel and write for a few months. While the narrative is finished in first draft form there is still much to do. Most of 2019's WYRD's creative focus was spent creating images for this story. Then there was a set back at the beginning of 2020 with an external HD crash and the loss of images and layout drafts. Fortunately I email images to myself and post them on Facebook. I lost a couple of images in the process and two layout drafts. It was a blow, yet in the creative process there is often a silver lining, some good outcome from mishaps. Like the Phoenix Woman, the story has gone through it's own fire and has to rise from its own ashes.
Some of the unfolding writing process (and how it was intersecting with my life) of "An Unnamed WYRD" is described in the blog posts on this website.
