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Michelle Mangini*

Title of Work:      Himself Medium:              Mixed media: plywood, charcoal, acrylics, pastels Date Created:     Spring 2008 I= I am living in a rustic cabin on the Vermont land with my daughter and my husband.  We decide that we shouldn't sleep in our cabin that night so we spend the night at Cara's in the main house.  I go home by myself the next morning at dawn.  The sky is lit with all the transition colors of early morning... that rosy glow.  I walk into my house and see that it's been ramshackled. I think, "Thank God we were not here-- we would have all been stabbed in our beds."  I realize quickly that he was looking for our magic-- our secrets.  In my mind I picture him:  He looks like a cross between peter pan and a Native American scout. However, I identify him as a Druid. He is not human but a spirit from another realm.  His body is shaped like pan- he moves like pan, but his hair and skin color is native.   He wears a small black pointed hat and black cloth shoes that are tied on around his ankles. I leave my house to follow his path.  I take a right around my house.  There is a lake to my left and a mountain to my right.  The sun is coming up behind the lake and sparkling through  the autumn yellows of the trees. As I look towards the lake,  I see what looks like shimmering stars, sparkling and going out-- like bright white fireworks hovering just above the water.  I think, "aaah, the others are coming.  This must be how they get here."  I understand that these others are faeries from the Faery realm. I understand they have news and they have concern for us and what we are doing on this land. This feels slightly worrisome to me but also feels like a good spirit of collaboration-- not as threatening as the Druid ( he is from a different realm). I hesitate a brief moment curious to watch, but I do not stay to see the fairies cross over.  I feel they will know to go up to see Cara. I know the druid went to a cave in a cliff on the mountain.  I follow his path around a huge boulder at the base of the mountain.  As I get around to the back I see where the Druid used footholds to climb up to the cave.  These are way up high over my head.  I do not have the power to leap up there the way he does but somehow I manage to get up there. I do not feel threatened by following him because I know that he's not in the cave anymore.  He's gone back over. There is something that is not threatening about he, himself anyway, just his initial purpose. I want to see the cave with my own eyes-- even though I have no desire to enter it enough to cross over into his realm. The next thing I remember I have started back down the cliff. I am hanging from the very last foothold.  I think, "Ok I just have to let myself drop. The Druid must have had to drop from a greater distance than this (like 3 or 4 feet more)."  I drop and I am OK.  I think, "That was just right for me but if I'd had to fall 3 or 4 more feet it would have been very, very dangerous."   I understand that I would have been severely hurt if the distance had been greater. Next Scene: I am driving in a car with Curt.  We're in his station wagon and he is driving me to Goddard College.  We pull into a parking space by a building.  I get out and go in.  I walk up a flight of stairs to a landing.  There's another flight of stairs that continues from the landing to the next floor.  At the landing, there is a charcoal painting on the wall (I did this on another occasion when I visited the school). I stand there contemplating it for a moment; feeling there is more to this painting, the physical feel of wanting to create more with it aches in my arms and over my heart.   The painting is a black outline of a man crouched down on his feet, but sitting up so his chest is exposed. There is a serpent plant rising behind him.  On his chest I've painted his spine and rib cage in white.  It seems to glow in the center of his dark chest. The director of the Health and Healing program walks up beside me. She looks at the painting with me and says trailing off, "it is somewhat crude but... "    She’s suggesting that it needs work but has great potential.   I tell her “I know, there is more….” She heads up the flight of stairs to the next landing and I run back down to the car saying there is something else I want to show her.  I get to Curt's car and it's been blocked in by other cars.  (SUV types with mountain bikes tied to them).  Curt's not in it, he's off exploring the grounds. I somehow manage to grab the scroll I wanted to show her.  It's a long piece of brown shipping paper rolled up.  I've started another painting on it.  I join Suzanne on the stairs and I'm telling her there's something I want to explain before I show it to her.  But the wind keeps grabbing hold of it and unrolling it into the air above me.  I can see the charcoal outline of my lover's naked body. She looks at it contemplating a moment but she doesn't comment.  She doesn't pay much attention to it or me.  She says something to me over her shoulder as she's hurrying off.  Someone else joins her, showing some paperwork on a clipboard and they go up the rest of the stairs to the next floor looking at these papers together.  I stand there as the wind pulls at the painted scroll. Next scene: I'm back in my rustic cabin, picking up a bit from our early morning visitor.  My husband isn't there. My 3 yr old daughter, is there and I'm playing with her- paying a lot of attention to her.  I look down and realize there is a baby in a cradle at the side of my bed.  She seems happy. Then she looks up at me and mouths the word, "HELP"   But I hear it loud and clear-- as if she'd actually said it in her big girl voice.  I kind of have the impression the druid left her there for me, I've never seen her before but somehow she is still mine. I go to her, sit on the bed and hold her in my lap.  She's about 7 months old.  She has light brown hair that flips up in little curls on the ends.  She has two bottom teeth and soft brown eyes.  She smiles brightly up at me.  My 3 yr old is playing happily on her own for a minute.  I see her out the corner of my eye. She's walking/bouncing across the top of the bed and smiling. The baby and I smile at each other. I say to the baby, "there now, you just needed your mama, didn't you?"

Title of Work:      Herself Medium:              Mixed media: plywood, charcoal, acrylics, pastels Date Created:     Spring 2008 I was working on "Himself" when I looked across the room at a bare piece of plywood leaning against the wall---and I thought "aaah, I see what goes there..." images popping out at me from the woodgrain...haha!  I'd been having dreams of pink light, protective, soft, warm, nurturing, healing.  Pure feeling and light-- no dream story to go with it.

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