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)