AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

THE MADWOMAN IN THE ATTIC: The Many Faces of Fox

Well, I guess when you lack an ancestry.....you just make one up!

I certainly have!

The Madwoman in the Attic

~Why being crazy is better!

Have fun!   xox

http://collagepirate.blogspot.com/2011/12/madwoman-in-attic-faces-of-fox.html

100 Yuletides

My Mom, who thought to bring me home from Germany, lo' those many years ago.

This will be her 100th Christmas!

Merry Christmas, Mom.  I love you!

***************

A Blessed Christmas E'en......

I spent my first Christmas in Germany......

I wonder what it was like..............?

**************************

Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is

softer and more beautiful. 

~Norman Vincent Peale

A very Merry Christmas to all my wonderful friends!

love,

Fox, Yellow Dog, Pooter, Darla & Lizzie

Let's Start at the Ver-ry Be-gin-ing....a Very Fine Place to Start.........

My Passport photo

Hey-ho Fellow Travelers!

Given that I have absolutely no idea as to what I'm doing, or how to progress in this endeavor, for that matter, I though that I should start at the very beginning of what I know the beginning to be to set out some of the few tangible items I recall from  my early childhood that relate to Germany.

 And, couldn't you figure it, the very first thing I remember is:  Garb! 


Yes, garb.  (If you know me and/or follow my other blogs you are laughing right now.)  Apparently, the first clothing I was to own (more or less-I'm pretty sure I left the Kinderheim with a diaper and blankie.)  (That's a joke, by the by.  Me new Mum was an avid shopper and I was quite the well dressed lass....up to, and including in years to come, the Mother-Daughter matching dresses from Sears!)  But, from my earliest memories I recall her dragging out the wicker basket of authentic German costuming and telling the story of her flying into Ireland with me, her pockets stuffed with baby bottles and, apparently, her suitcase containing some really cool costumes!

(To digress, my Mum was really into costuming.  Me.  Never herself.  My first Halloween memory is of being Little Red Riding Hood.  Oh, what I would give for that cape now!  And it went on.  Cowgirl, pirate, gypsy, movie star, Indian, Cinderella.....and more.  And costumes weren't just reserved for Halloween.  They were a part of the everyday play-box.  The wee six-shooters were the best!  Cinderella never left home without them!  And a tiny Derringer which, Mum said very primly, a lady carried in her purse.  Good to know.  Uncle Whitey was always good for a game of Bang-Bang You're Dead.  He took a bullet most convincingly.  But then, Uncle Whitey was good for absolutely anything you could dream up, up to and including lighting the wooden match when I wanted to see what happened if you set fire to the gunpowder in the Derringer caps.  But, now I'm really digressing.  And I promise to come back to Uncle Whitey.  He deserves his own blog.  And, quite possibly, sainthood.  I love.  Love.  Love my Uncle Whitey.)

But, back to garb.

To my knowledge, there do not seem to be any existing photos of me in said garb, but it has existed, nonetheless, in that same wicker basket and has dutifully moved with me to every new closet.

I'll share with you today some of what, apparently, was to be a part of my destiny for the rest of my life.  It's no secret that I much prefer the magic of dress.

During my search I turned up the following beauties.  Books my father had set aside for me.  They are now so old yet so wonderfully preserved.  Inside, a few had inscriptions which I will include here.  And, quite intriguingly,  two pressed flowers in one of the books.  Perfectly set.  The remaining detail after 50 years is amazing.  I wish them to last another 50 more.  If anyone can identify them I'd love to know what they are.  My wish is for edelweiss.  And also to know how and why them came to be there.  They have a story.....but clearly they aren't talking..........    Enjoy. 

These flowers have a secret........

 This photo always spoke to me.  It said:  Orphanage.

(Very Dickensian of me, eh?)   ;)

Such sincere thanks to my Readers for agreeing to gypsy travel with me.

~Mimi

ps.

A photo taken of edelweiss taken from the internet.

I think I may be right.  :)

The Ancestral Winds

I'm not sure what it is.

Perhaps it's the Autumnal winds tugging at my soul at a time when the Veils are very thin and the Ancestors try and make themselves heard.

And perhaps it's the Serendipity of having made so many new and wonderful friends and 'sisters' in this past year of my serious blogging.  The Sisterhood of the Goat has gifted me with such strong, female connections that have oft' been missing in my life.

What e'er it might be......I am most grateful.

Since I can't imagine me having a plethora of information to post on my ancestral search I here by open Sea Gypsy to the posts of others so that we might all share in the comfort of the old.

Please take a wee peek at my sister Teresa's lovely post.  She's right:  Treasures are a most wondrous thing to discover!
http://edenhills.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/ancestors-and-antiques/#comment-13040

Love to you all....so very glad to have found you............

Hugs-
~Mimi

BLOOD

I wanted to put these words down before I lost them.  ~Mimi

 Tchalai says: "We have learnt a great deal, in a painful act of balance between maintaining and blending in. Between self respect and survival. Add to this that there remains in our chromosomes the old conviction that, having descended from the stars we shall go back to the stars. No one will ever be able to translate the profound melody of blood and memory. It has to be shared. It cannot be MADE to share."

I like that-"the profound melody of blood and memory."

I thank you for your comments on the last blog post.  I do so love you all.  :)

Worry not, for I am not afraid.  And I'm quite positive that I don't want to meet up with my birth parents, especially in some Jerry Springer/Dr. Phil-style drama.  I care naught for her reasons or his excuses.  Decisions were made and I hold no ill will.  Absolutely none.  And, being the loner and wanderer that I am I have no desire to bring another set of people into my life.  I seek no relationships.  My quest here, is to go back further.  Way back.  To the blood and bone and heart and soul of my heritage.   To know my past.
I just don't feel (and never have) that I am who others say I am.  I want to say:  "My great-great-great grandfather stood here."  For me, it's all about the blood.

How will I do this?   Probably quite passively.  I believe the Universe has a way of taking you exactly where you need to be.  And I'm going to trust in that.  Sometimes the less we do....the more we gain.  But I do know this-it will be a wondrous journey!  Thanks for your willingness to share it with me.

Where do we go from here?  The sky's the limit!  Come fly with me!

xox
~Mimi

TZIGANE TAROT & THEN SOME

I haven't, quite yet, decided exactly where I'm going with this Sea Gypsy blog but I thought this might be a good place to start.

If you follow my Pirate Girl blog, you know that I am adopted.  Moons and moons ago in Heidelberg, Germany.

As a child, I never gave much thought to my heritage.  But as I've grown older and my love for history has grown stronger I can't help but wonder about my blood.  Clearly my Ancestors date directly back to castle days and all that I hold dear.

I'm told I'm of German heritage.  Both parents.  Like a "Thoroughbred" by Father used to say.
(He, himself, fond of saying he was "Heinz 57.")

But my skin tans well and my hair, if left to its own devices, is near to black and I don't feel as though I look German at all.  I remember a neighbor lady constantly telling me how "dirty" I was.  She would try to wipe the dirt off my arms and legs.  It wasn't dirt...it was my skin.  I would scrub in the tub at night but I could never get clean enough to suit her.  (And yeah, I know, her problem not mine....but, when you're 7...........)

I feel such a disconnect from German culture.   (Of course, Nature vs. Nurture plays into this but that's a topic you can spend a lifetime on or at least another blog.) 

It was probably this, and my love for the Rom, that brought me to research the reign of the Third Reich as it concerned the Sinta and Roma Gypsy communities.  It was during this research that I happened upon the Dokumentations-und Kulturzentrum Deutscher Sinti und Roma, a cultural museum set up in Heidelberg, Germany to highlight the often forgotten crimes committed against the Sinta and Roma Gypsy communities in Europe during the reign of the Third Reich.

Around a half million Gypsies are thought to have been murdered, with many more tortured, imprisoned or deported.  The museum documents what happened during this period, and the histories of many involved.  It also documents the cultures of the Sinti and Roma Gypsies.

And why does this excite me so?  Ok, this is going to sound dumb as dirt......but I didn't think there were gypsies in Germany.  (Ok, so sue me.  I was sent to Catholic school.  Not a lot of talk about gypsies.  Or the Holocaust, for that matter.  And what passed for art class was torture for me. And now that I think about it, Jesus was a gypsie, but they didn't like to talk about it.   But I digress.)

Anyway, I was excited to find this museum exists not only in Germany but in Heidelberg, Germany.
I'd dearly love to visit one day.

And so, I'm left with my odd creativity-which sticks out in my family like a white elephant in a chicken coop.
My wanderlust, which has always rendered me incapable of living what, my family at any rate, would believe to be a normal life.  (read:  the superior normal life)  And the (sometimes evil) thing inside me that begs to know who I really am.  And who out there really belongs to me.  My blood.  The red stuff that I bleed.

I think it's an honest request.

And funny, I actually came here just to post a poem that has been tugging at my soul for quite a while now.

And this came out.

I started by saying I don't know exactly what I want to do with this Sea Gypsy blog (originally I had one of my adult stories I thought to post here in installments) but now that I've taken the time to write all this......maybe I do.  Maybe I'll use it to find out who I am.  Blogging:  Much cheaper than therapy, eh?  ;)

I hope you'll come with me.  I'm probably going to need a few hands to hold.

love-
~Mimi

The poem I found that started it all:

My Brothers
They had eyes dark as night, my brothers
As if cut in black diamond.

They had moon-woven hair, my brothers,
Glistening blue in endless mist.

And teeth, like wolves' teeth, my brothers,
Joyous teeth clenched tight on their hungers.

The voice they had, borne it was from the stars
Fascinating and misunderstood.

The hands they had, fearsome hands, my brothers,
And the world was drunk at their fingertips.

Gone are they on all the paths, my brothers,
They were warm like fire and fresh like the wind.

Let me touch your hair your brow your lips,
Scrutinize the palms of your hands.

I'm only searching for my brothers everywhere around,
To live is to know how to love.

Gone they are on all the paths, my brothers,
But in every mirror I find them again!

~Tchalai
(taken from the preface to the Tzigane Tarot-tarot of the Rom)

UNDER CONSTRUCTION
(aren't you intrigued?)

In the meantime, please stop over and say hello at one of my other blogs:

http://www.mimifoxmorton.blogspot.com/
http://www.thegoatborrower.blogspot.com/
http://www.collagepirate.blogspot.com/
http://www.yellowdogmagic.blogspot.com/