Walking to Mercury -- fiction by Starhawk.
(New York, Bantam, 1997).
A Self-Interview with and by Starhawk
April, 1997
In February, my latest book, Walking to
Mercury, was published. Mercury is a story
about following a vision -- and how ambiguous
and slippery a vision can be over the course
of a lifetime. For those of you who know
The Fifth Sacred Thing, Mercury is a prequel
-- the story of Maya Greenwood's wild youth
in the sixties, her attempts to come to
terms with her mother's death in her late
thirties, and her long relationships with
Rio and Johanna. In some ways, it is also
a book about the sixties, although it is
just as much a novel about relationships,
about sex, magic, race, politics, and a
philosophical dialogue between Paganism
and Buddhism.
I've been travelling around a lot doing readings and booksignings, and
often I get asked certain questions, so I thought I'd interview myself here
and answer a few of them:
Q: Is Walking to Mercury
autobiographical?
A: It wasn't, but I fear
it has become so. The events of Maya's life
do not correspond to mine -- in fact, she
often does things I thought about doing,
but in my own life, thought better of. However,
at this point her life is a lot clearer
to me than mine. I remember her experiences
and often can't remember what actually happened
to me.
Q: Are you Maya?
A: No, (see above), except
in so far as an author must be all the characters
in a novel. I am just as much Rio, or Johanna,
or Maya's father.
Q: Why did you turn to
writing fiction?
A: Weakness of character.
I tried, but couldn't seem to Just Say No.
Q: What's the difference
between writing nonfiction and fiction?
A: In writing nonfiction,
you work very hard marshalling arguments
and evidence to pursuade people of something
they are often reluctant to believe. In
writing fiction, no matter how many times
you tell people that it is not autobiographical,
that the characters are not portraits of
other real people, and that you made the
whole thing up, they persist in believing
that it must be true.
Q: When do you write? Do
you have a regular schedule?
A. I don't have a very regualar life, so I write whenever I can, or
whenever I must to meet a deadline -- preferably early in the morning, in
bed, on a laptop, with a nice cup of tea by my side, or after dark when the
world is not quite so distractingly beautiful as it is by daylight.
Q: What are you doing politically
these days?
A: In September, I went
to the Headwaters forest to demonstrate
against the clearcutting of old growth redwoods.
I have been very involved with Reclaiming's
El Salvador Friendship project, and went
to El Salvador in January to visit the programs
and co-operatives we've been supporting.
I also just got back from the Nevada Test
Site -- a case of life imitating art, as
that is where Maya ends up in Mercury. I
was honored to lead a ritual there for the
Healing Global Wounds action on Easter Sunday,
together with Corbin Harney, the Shoshone
elder and leader who has been the heart
of the movement for many years. Now that
we are not actively testing, many people
seem to have turned to other concerns, but
the issues of the transport and dumping
of nuclear wastes, and the appropriation
of Shoshone land still remain. We met international
people from Tahiti who told of diseases
and death among test site workers there,
a woman from the Philipines who had been
tortured for her opposition to U.S. bases,
and Japanese survivors of the bombing of
Hiroshima. Essentially, I realized that
nuclear war is not just some future horror
we must struggle to prevent, but has already
been going on for fifty years, mostly waged
against indigenous people around the globe.
We need to push strongly for a worldwide
abolition of nuclear weapons by the year
2000!
I was also thrilled to lead a ritual at the Temple of Sekhmet, a Goddess
temple near the Test Site built by Genevieve Vaughan in fulfillment of a
vow she made years ago to build the Goddess a temple if she had a child. It
is a beautiful shrine, built of stucco-covered straw bales that look like
ancient adobe, with open arches in the four directions. We had a fire
circle outside the shrine, and with the comet blazing behind us, I felt
like I'd wandered into a place truly between the worlds, outside of time.
Q: What do you do for fun?
A: I've developed this
gardening obsession. I like to shovel manure,
stare at the daffodils, and plant things.
Q: What are you working
on now?
A: As far as writing goes,
Reclaiming's anthology on death and dying,
edited by M. Macha Nightmare, will be published
as The Pagan Book of Living and Dying by
HarperSanFrancisco in October. I've been
cowriting a book on raising children in
the Goddess tradition with Anne Hill and
Diane Baker. Circle Round will be published
by Bantam in the spring or summer of '98.
As far as other projects, I've been working on a documentary film about the
life of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas with director Donna Read, who made
Goddess Remembered, The Burning Times and Full Circle for the NationalFilm
Board of Canada.
I teach many weeklong summer intensives ("Witch Camps") each year with
Reclaiming, our collective and the name for the branch of the Goddess
tradition I practice. In March, we had the first-ever meeting of teachers
and organizers from the U.S., Canada and Europe to share skills and attempt
to find some sort of structure for the amoebalike entity we've become. We
experimented with a consensus process that included the option of dropping
into altered states of consciousness, had the elements represented by
holders of masks who sat in trance throughout our meetings, and learned a
whole lot which I'm sure will help our community grow in a healthy way. We
face the challenges, now, of developing an organization that doesn't become
a bureaucracy, of expanding without becoming a hierarchy, and of shifting
our focus from personalities to principles.
I'll also be co-teaching a Permaculture course in May. I'm excited about
that, as I find more and more that where I draw my inspiration from is the
real-life earth, the actual air and fire and water and how they interact
with life.
Q: What would you say to
America's youth?
A: Find out what is sacred
to you -- what is most important, what evokes
your passion, what you would risk yourself
for or take a stand for. Then devote your
finest life energies to the service of what
is sacred to you. Don't allow yourself to
be intimidated or deflected. Find out what
support you need, and ask for it. Remember
that no life is clear or simple, and everybody
who takes interesting risks will make mistakes.
Remember that human beings are resilient.
Have fun.
Q: What questions are you
asking yourself lately?
A: There are three big
questions I've been asking, not just of
myself, but of others as well. They've become,
for me, the soil test and reality check
on my own spirituality. They are:
How does my spiritual practice and daily life serve the earth?
How does my spiritual practice and daily life affect the poorest third of
humanity?
How will my spiritual practice and daily life affect the generations to
come in the future?
Copyright © Starhawk 1997, all rights
reserved.
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