I think everyone knows that line, from whatever or wherever they may have come across it. It’s biblical in origin, but it has come to signify something beyond spirituality for me. It reminds me of New Bedlam, which is definitely through the glass for me, and it is most certainly dark. Perhaps I’m taking it too literally, perhaps not. I don’t care.

I did something last night that I haven’t done in a long time, a very long time. I sat in front of my mirror, and spoke to it (or them, if they have indeed followed the mirror on it’s journey). I honestly can’t remember the last time I did that. I closed my eyes and let myself drift mentally, attempting to attain that level of relaxation that will let me go traveling. I couldn’t do it, but from the edges of that place in time and space I caught four short lines of poetry. Was it my mind, my imagination, my muse that came up with the lines? I don’t know. I’d like to believe it was the people in the mirror. In fact, I’m going to go with that. Nevertheless, the quatrain will be making an appearance in one of the New Bedlam novels. Speaking of… I’ve mapped out my para/horror/thriller/mystery series, which means that at least nine novels in total will take place in, around or near New Bedlam.

The tie-in with my grandmother is amazingly strong, not just through the mirror, but also in the rhyme that spawned the series. I remember her whispering it at certain times, but I can’t recall the where or why. I found it written on several pages of her old cookbooks – sometimes in its entirety, sometimes not. There are other scraps of sayings and old-wives tales, recipes for herbal remedies, how to plant a garden and when… Occasionally I think it was my grandmother, more so than any other, that was the witch. The direction of my path may have come from my uncle, but the basis to a lot of the studies I’ve chosen came from her. I find myself missing her more and more as time passes. She has been visiting my dreams lately, giving me a message I seem to have forgotten during the day. I know she is dead while she speaks to me – even in dreams where I am still a child. I know she’s visiting only, and not staying. Perhaps that is what causes the intense feeling of loss that I can not shake in the light.

I’ve been waiting for something, anything, to drag me out of my rut lately, and I think these dreams, the urge to seek counsel from those gone beyond were just the beginning.

My priestess’ husband gifted me with a tiny statuette the other night; I can never thank them enough for all that they’ve done for the girls and I in the past six years, I mean absolutely. They’ve been far more parental to me than my own. This small, enigmatic bird made of wood and bone, has tied off a lot of loose ends, and is what I hope to be the first of many concrete signs.

I bow to the universal, take her hand, and proceed.