Shadowdancer #38
The Shadowdancer #38: 4 minute read
My 2008 Coyote dream altered the course of my life. Because of it, I began a relationship with Coyote. I commenced studying the animal at first, then gradually learned of her role in the lives of the humans who had shared this continent with her since the beginning of time. With the reflected light of her mirror, my path grew more visible.
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The Shadowdancer #37: 1 minute read
We’re barreling north on the freeway. Jeff’s driving. I look up from my laptop just in time to spot a vehicle in the lane to my right. It’s a banged-up, dark blue two-door subcompact. Unremarkable, except that the passenger side and entire rear seat are filled to the roof of the car with bagels.
The Shadowdancer #36: 3 minute read
My job as a dog-walker was a real step toward taking my own advice while still getting a paycheck. I did do better on my own. But I still struggled with feeling trapped, a spider in a bowl.
The Shadowdancer #35: 2 minute read
In a corporate training session, recently hired employees read from a handbook cheerfully informing us that we are not important as individuals. Only as a “team,” do we have value to the company.
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The Shadowdancer #34: 3 minute read
My finer qualities being what they are, it might not come as a surprise that I’ve never been able to hold down a job. I could always catch one and wrestle it to the ground pretty easily, but I couldn’t hold it down there for long.
Instead I learned to practice catch and release.
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The Shadowdancer #33: 2 minute read
I enter a basement apartment where I’ve seen Coyote in what I call his Raven-Man form, curly black hair and a jogging suit. Unlike the 1970’s-style basement where I first met him, this place, with its teal sectional couches and Persian rug, seems to be where he lives. It’s a kind of modern shamanic underworld, the archetypal place of magic, intuition and animal guides.
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The Shadowdancer #32: 3 minute read
The chandelier in the formal dining room needs cleaning. To reach it, I must step on a chair, and then onto the table itself. I am careful to lift the tablecloth first so as not to soil it. A man, a pampered senior member of the household, sits on a damask sofa watching me. He is simultaneously impressed and scandalized that I am willing to stand on the table.
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The Shadowdancer #31: 2 minute read
At first I have a sensation of floating, then falling. Then I feel as if I am on my back, curled up with my knees tucked under my chin, poised on the edge of a pool, perhaps. I am not asleep.
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The Shadowdancer #30: 1 minute read
A man and woman stand together with me in the hospital corridor. Behind us winds a stairway long and wide, its ironwork rail painted in pale green. The woman wears an ankle-length black dress with a white hat and apron, a maid’s uniform, or the uniform of a nurse. The man has slicked hair and a mustache the color of mud. The pair regard me with a mix of pity and disdain.
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The Shadowdancer #29: 1 minute read
A single story can have many beginnings.
I am a woman, very young and in a long, dark corseted dress. I and my lover have just emerged from a fraught conversation in the paneled corridors of a steam train’s sleeper car.
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Camilla Wells Paynter 