This mask derives from an old memory.
When I put the mask onto this heap of mulch, I remembered once again the buckeyes I carved into goblin-heads one autumn twenty or twenty-five years ago while camping up near Napa. Sugarloaf, the place is called. Lots of dry country, hiking trails through hilly terrain, the larger hill of Sugarloaf providing sightlines and guidance in the days before GPS addictions. Every autumn I yearn for the countryside, preferably beside river or lake or ocean, but that year I needed to get away and yet stay close, so much work to do in those early days of graduate school, so Napa country fit the ticket. Maybe stop at a winery on the way. Now--writing this--I remember the big old Ford truck I had then with the tent and other gear in the back, so this must have been before graduate school. Memory, especially an otherwise good, full one, is a tricky thing that often needs warming up, grease and supplications, to work best.
Buckeyes, fist-sized and -shaped, soft enough to work, hard enough to hold the carving. I started with one, cutting slanted eyes and a crooked mouth, and then picked up another and another, working to catch the shifting trickster images flittering though my mind. (I don't recall ever carving such heads before, or carving much of anything as an adult other than sticks for grilling trout or marshmallows.***) After a dozen or so, I stopped, wondering what to do with the set of heads. There are lines in Hamlet: "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will." Something like that. These heads were certainly rough-hewn. Primitive, lacking the marks of skill, but still expressive. Or, in the best other words, I liked them.
What to do with them?
What to do with these buckeye-heads, goblin-featured? Take them home? Wouldn't they rot pretty quickly? Leave them? Piled like a Celtic fane, the pyramid of victory--I'd been reading Caesar's Gallic Wars-- or lined up monkey-see-no-evil- monkey-do-no-evil by the firepit? As I said, I liked these little leaf-daemons, as I started calling them, and didn't just want to throw them away, to abandon them. I considered burning them, consecrating them to the spirits of the land, but in my mind they'd only just begun to live.
Finally, I set the leaf-daemon heads in the trees looking down on the camp. All around the camp. Witnesses. Protectors.
Hope the next campers didn't get freaked. Hope they noticed, though.
P.S. "Woad" is my name for this mask--and the creature behind the mask. Woad is also the plant-source for the pigment the ancient Celts used to color their bodies blue, either by painting or tattooing. Such blue markings would have been ceremonial; tribal and idiosyncratic; as preparation for journeying, in life or death, or for battle; and for love and luck.
***Note: 11/3/12. Of course, I carved Jack O'Lanterns year after year after year, and those goblin-heads were somewhat like junior jack o'l's. Also, frankly, was that truck a Ford or a Chevy? Really? Memory is a very tricky beast; I once thought my Memory was very dependable and loyal, but who really knows? Pondering to be done.
***Note: 11/3/12. Of course, I carved Jack O'Lanterns year after year after year, and those goblin-heads were somewhat like junior jack o'l's. Also, frankly, was that truck a Ford or a Chevy? Really? Memory is a very tricky beast; I once thought my Memory was very dependable and loyal, but who really knows? Pondering to be done.
