Chapter 1: Escape, Eviction, Exile

The beginning of a mythic journey through exile, memory and the mercy that waits within loss.

It is, it always will be, and it certainly was an inconvenience to be evicted.¹
I had once again escaped to the Land of the Young, that island across the Great Waves, and there, just the day before, I was alone in the Stonecutter’s cottage by the sea.

As I pretended it was my home, in that creative leap time slipped again, and I remembered something that would happen. I would be here in the Land of the Young telling my story quite soon.

The next day—on the holy day when the followers of the Lady of Light mourn the crucifixion of their savior—an official from the government of the City of Illusions called to tell me I had been evicted from my home of almost exactly fifteen years on the enchanted lane of Gay Street.

That was it. The door was locked, and my 200-year-old fairy caravan in the sky was to be destroyed, all the magic along with it.

The floor has fallen away beneath me. Last I heard, it’s still dropping fast. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to return to the City of Illusions—and if I do, whether I’ll survive being there. I barely made it out the last time.

Some of the First Born there call it Turtle Island, and still I see it swimming away. I’m wheels up, wheels down, wheels all around now, and exile is a promise to go nowhere fast. You’re in the village, but your face is pressed against the glass—even when you’re let inside.

I follow what happens in my homeland closely, as if that will change anything at all. It’s like baking: you put into the bowl what you put in, and there’s no taking the ingredients out once the timer’s up. We still turn on the oven light and stare at the rising flour, willing something other than disaster. (I’m a terrible baker.)

Somewhere in the staring through glass my mind gets squishy again, and I cannot tell what began all this.
So I do the only logical next step—
I hear a song in my head:

Just before the dawn of the modern age
And the coming of the printed page—
Was the time of the trees.

From the Atlantic to the Mississippi
A squirrel could jump from branch to branch
Without ever touching the ground.

Among the Sagamore, Hickory and Maple
Were the Firstborn to this brave new world.
Neither black nor white,
With skin as warm as the golden sun and
Hair as rich and soft loam
Among the canopy of the woods they lived
With roots for food, and as food for roots.

Then, one day, from across the great ocean
Came to the Two Sisters
One with hair as fair and beguiling as the dawn
And the other, locks as dark as nightshadows.

Exiles seem to begin with someone else’s exile, doesn’t it?
Someone leaves their home, and now you have to lose your home. Then someone else must lose theirs, until the survivors are all homeless in each other’s houses—organs and artists looking for landscapes that aren’t there.

Maybe this would not be such a problem if it weren’t for the fact that a few generations on, people tend to forget where they are, lose where they’ve been, and break where they’re going. Experts will keep debating this, but for now I remember a journey that began a long time ago.

I come from a people who remember comings and goings, and we’ve been (t)here since the beginning. When the Two Sisters came with all their children—their sons of woe—we slipped into the forests with the Firstborn, but even that did not last. Some hungers are never sated. So here we are, still stuck in that first bite. Many good people were swallowed whole…

Now, I am ready in that stone cottage by the sea to tell you where I’m going from where I am to where I’ve been.
I cannot believe it all myself, and I suppose there’s no need.

It’s all a story.
No—
It’s all a dance.

This is the story of how I learned to be a Timedancer, how I learned the Mercy of Trees.

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This is the first chapter of a living story unfolding on Timedancers.org and the Timedancers Substack. New chapters arrive as they’re written—each one a step deeper into exile, memory, and the dance of time.

1. A nod to the opening lines of my favorite solo show, Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein.