And all this time we’d been building a stone circle. Inch by inch over slow grass from pile to track to hole in the ground, the rise and fall of the moon marked in rock. A year and a bit, from Beltane to Summer Solstice, the last weekend of every month. In sunny weather crowds came, through winter hardly anyone at all. One wet and miserable December with only twelve of us up there we’d put in three stones because we’d got that good at it, because we’d learnt it was less about strength than coordination. And fewer people meant less chat. Over the building of the circle my marriage was born and broken. Jesus, who I saw one last disastrous time, had served his purpose, there was no relationship there either. My husband had said go and I had gone to London to meet him and find out what all this electricity was about but without the robes and forbidden touch there was nothing. I came home and the commune gathered and we orchestrated the end like the beginning. Beneath every stone were prayers and artefacts that meant something to us, and beneath the last stone we put our rings. I remember that day, standing at the brink together, the stone ready to tip, the Megalithic Giant beside us, others gathered about, I’m not sure who we’d told, or even if we’d told. Angel man and me, we took off our rings and earth covered them and the rock was heaved and fell and stood upright. That night we had a party, a full regalia dress up, hundreds gathered to mark the completion of a stone circle built by hand, and the next day, or soon after, he left. He took the mixing desk and went to stay at my mother’s. He sent an enormous television, delivered to the foot of my bed which felt like a recrimination. I remember the sudden void of him, how I quickly I cried and just as quickly stopped, how the day felt simple. The stone circle was finished, the commune was three years settled with families, children were going to school, there was no reason to think it wouldn’t carry on except now I was alone, no one to share it with. Did we fall apart after he left? Sort of. He was the only member of the commune who everyone loved. He unified us. It took a little time and someone coming down the line who would shatter all of it, but without him the fractious projective dogma grew stronger. And in the midst of it was a Wiccan woman in love with a carpenter who told us she knew what she was doing, and every day grew thinner.
Discussion about this post
No posts