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Tamara Rendell Biography

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“THE ROAD: The road is paved with heavy stone and carved along its tender edge are memories of healing and of rage so wild and free and cruel it took no remorse it threw itself into the flames and rose so high I never thought I’d see another sight so cold with truth. And memories of healing held themselves apart, they wouldn’t stand to see themselves by the light that gives no remorse to anybody other. The road goes on and on it leaves you with no clue of end it leaves as it stretches to the distance and at some point, some random stone I fall into my heavy bones and look upon the tender edges carved with memories of healing and of rage so wild and free and cruel it never turns away the truths that are accepted by no other.”

“River with no border the forgetful hand of man Gather harvest from the fallow land Take all memory from it to speak of lonely travellers who hopelessly took orders From armies lined within them marching over fields and valleys As though they were a river not a woman nor a man not a place for which to answer but a cold and shapeless journey from the sea”

“SELKIE Alone, the cold body of the selkie man lay upon the sand, so like the drowned one the widow had called for. For her longing, he was hauled upon the sand, exposed to the moonlight. The selkie strained in fraught movements and human form broke from the gleaming seal fur. Undeniably he bore the image of the widow’s lost husband and spoke with the sounds of the dead man’s voice. She hailed back from the rocks. Shadows accumulating beyond the moon’s ability to reform. Colours were washed from sight and silver crashed through her, colder than snow dreams of being. In the dark, the ocean became the rolling flanks of a great beast drifting back across the horizon. Out deep soon, the land’s drop sharp.”

“as though to reach past the azure mist, out into the deep sky pierced with stars. They who watch our path as surely as they did our ancestors, as surely as they shall our descendants: watching all the small stories weaving across the vast journey of time. What can the Sun and the Moon and the stars tell us that they did not yet know to tell our ancestors? What do the great souls of the mountains learn as their bodies change, as they meet with the rivers and the sands of the ocean? And what of the knowings of the Earth – the cloth of Lahana’s own body – the layers of time within the flesh, reclaiming body and form after body and form. The Earth changing with each life lived out within her.”

“The night like ink it stains the surfaces it spilt across the words as though some poet bearing veins of indigo they asked you once by day to bind before the night like ink dissolved within them and the words returning to their wordless state become the beats that take all paths leading from the heart returning to it the night dissolved like ink in the veins of any poet”

“The late afternoon Sun threw amber and gold across the deep body of the ocean, breaking into unseen luminance across the horizon. She listened to the crashing distance in the waves: formless and curving into the Earth, reaching for the wide basin of the sky. The ocean’s longing to embrace – not understanding stillness or the way others might be tied to the ground.”

“THE STAGE: The stage is empty, and you watch as the figure of Medusa steps into the gas-light. Her body is dressed in a crimson traversed by the golden branches of willow trees, colour and light held into shape by sharp black borders. Lifting languidly her hands, she reaches towards you. Her emerald vipers, in the cohesive movements of unseen mechanisms, weave loops about her head. Music is beginning, and from the shadows off-stage the narrator speaks. “Medusa had a beautiful name and a lovely voice, though no one cared to listen; seeking only the gaze of those famous eyes.” Perseus walks onto the stage, cloaked as though he were the blazing sun. Now what you have to understand is his voice – it is like nothing you could tie down. It feels peaceful to hear it, to see him flow into the song with his fine, clear looks and his finer, clearer voice. Is the head quite forgotten? Not quite but the horror exists alongside the beauty and they flow like twin rivers, and neither is able to wash the other from you.”

“They each beheld the changes to their lover’s face. The places – at the corners of the eyes and lips, across the pensive brows – where Time had left its tracks like a traveller across the snow. The markings of a life together and all the experiences that shaped them. They knew the laughter and the tears that had all made those lines – could read them like maps of the lives they cherished and thanked the Ancient Ones for granting them. Their fingers reached out and entwined into the silk of hair so beloved by Time that it had begun to seek the colours for its own garment, leaving as payment threads of silver, bright and shining.”

“a gathering of women and men linking hands in a circle. The full, bright circle of the Moon rising bone-white above them. The group lifted their joined hands to the sky, reaching for the Moon. “O Lady of the Mirror and the Scythe. She who walks the paths both seen and unseen – finding that which is known, that which is yet to be known.” In unison, they turned to face the eastern horizon. “O Lady of the Sun,” they called. May you nourish us within your warmth, nourish the valley and the forest. We praise you now, as you shine on your sister Moon: retrieving her from her wanderings into the world of the unborn and of the dead.”

“I feel as though the ocean longs to hold me.” She looked up at Keelan, trying to read his attitude. “I long to touch the ocean. I look at the sky and yearn to be within the vapours and colours that it exists within, and I feel that it calls for me also. I push my hands into the soil, and I feel that the Earth wants to take me in – like a seed or a cutting from a tree – and grow me.”

“She felt her body disperse, her structure release into elemental and shifting from fire to air, to water to earth. And then there was no Earth, and it was far beyond the Sun’s keeping of years. And all was a matrix of sound. Lahana lost hold of time and became as a song lilting upon breath. Then a great longing, a longing to transfigure. The song became a dance, and touch was like a celebration of life. And life opened to a richer song. A longing for the intensification of elemental division. For the beauty of division in symphonic harmony. Lahana felt pulled with the others in her dance, gathering matter and weight and solidity. She felt time catch hold of her and an emergent cosmos. Time awakening her as she submerged into the fabric of this still young cosmos. Becoming fire shifting to air, to water to earth. Her spirit dancing with the Earthlight that began to reach through the tumult of the elements. Earthlight pouring into the spinning particles of matter and seeking harmony of flesh with spirit – with as much longing as Lahana felt. Lahana saw time awaken the evolving awareness of the Earth Spirit – embraced within the evolving awareness of the Universe. And both these, Earth and Cosmos, embracing Lahana’s own journey, offering her the garments of their flesh, offering her the sustenance of their bodies. Then a deep breath ran through her, slow and complete. And she woke . . .”

“Let always flow into you, your memory of where you are from. Feel the awesome power that called you into being when your soul first awoke and cried out your true and only name. All other names are garments. All other lives are garments. We put them on, and sometimes they bind with stays and ties of hard cord. And other times they flow like silk around us, and we dance freely moving our souls in beautiful harmony with the flesh.”

“I feel you calling, in the autumn sweet transformation. I have reached my brightest green to the gold burning sun. I have folded my colours into the wind, bright colours taken to the sky. My silk has gone to moisture in the rising atmosphere and I am your colours again, deep and warm. I hear your calling and I answer, I come back to you, to slip inside the dark. Will I be found by the decaying things? Will I be found by the roots and drunk by tree and flower? Will I slip and mingle and roll along, find my way to a river and with it dance, and give myself in a sigh to the ocean? Will I scatter, a few fragments of sand – my body to glisten beneath a caress of moonlight as I make my way towards no more as I find my way to forever”

“The lights of the town distant across the harbour I am one of those who were unable to sleep – the sentience of Time beneath a shoreless sea of drifting stars while you were woven to the moon And you – You were the ocean and we were the land You lay down unflinching You lay down forgetting And you were the ocean and we were the land”

“Such visions,” she said, “will always be tested. For this is the order of the most Ancient Ones who shape our destiny awaiting the day that we stand by their side as equals.” “I find myself far from that day,” Sha’han said with an effort at lightness. “Oh,” mused the Oracle, returning his smile with the greater ease. “It is not far from them to cherish and love that which is a treasure to us. It is only the fear and the anger that drags us away into the shadowed lands. We have to accept that heartache is the twin of love and that it is a good thing, in its own way – for it too reveals the greatness of our connections.”