Huginn/Muninn

Huginn-Muninn was started in March 2009 as a means to a number of ends.  After nearly ten years at home with children and another few years working with 3rd and 4th graders I felt I had lost the ability to communicate.   Although I spent a great deal of time thinking about “stuff”, when I sent my mental runners out, they came back tired and lacking the right vocabulary.  I had a lot in my head but it was stuck there.  I wanted to be writing more than I had been (which was rarely; in my case the flesh was willing, but there was some residual weakness of spirit) and knew that putting pressure on myself was the best way to do it.  Knowing my mom or a friend or two would be checking the blog for updates meant I couldn’t ignore it completely.  My posts are less frequent four months into the endeavor than they were at its inception, but that is partly because there is more to do outside and partly because, reading over the posts of the last few months, I realize I am too verbose and don’t want to bore the hell out of everyone.  Balance is key.

My brother, otherwise known as Ephemera, is an infrequent contributor unfortunately.  He’s got a lot going on in Southwestern Colorado and  his thoughts here are a welcome, though rare, sight.  I asked him to share Huginn-Muninn with me when I put it together back in March as a way to stay connected for the two of us, but also as a way to connect the two pieces of land which we inhabit as they could not be more different.  We both have an abiding and almost ridiculously close relationship with outside, but we come at it from different angles and bring different things back from our time spent there.  We do have this in common though; at any given moment we each may be at our respective rivers at the same time, thinking our own river thoughts.  We’re separated by roughly 1400 miles but our spirits drag us to the same places. 

I have had requests from friends and others to offer photographs for sale.  I thought about this for a long time, made preparations to take some prints to a local shop, and promptly ended the thoughts/actions there.  I can’t sell stuff.   I don’t feel good about it so I post my pictures here as the only way I am comfortable showing them off.    I give them to a few close friends but that’s about it.  Actually putting a price tag on them and selling them to regular people is something I don’t know if I will ever work up to. For now, the Through the Lens page is where I add new stuff.  I hope Ephemera will add some of his at some point down the line.  If he does begin posting photos people will quit asking me to sell mine and start asking him–he is the photographer I hope to se someday.

Finally, a note on Huginn and Muninn…..they are dream birds, in essence.  Both are ravens. Huginn is translated as thought and Muninn as memory, but the implications of each encompass the entirety  (as I view it, anyway)  of the human psyche.  Huginn is will, cognition, perception, intent, desire, and consciousness.  Muninn, on the other hand, is the subconscious, the collective memory, the genetic memory, the unintended, and the contemplative.   Each is his own particular brand of wisdom perched on the shoulders of Odin, who gave up a lot (an eye, namely) in the pursuit of knowledge.  They are sent each morning on information gathering missions and called back each night to whisper their discoveries into his ear.  The way I see it, we each have our own Huginn and Muninn, but don’t always remember to listen to them…or possibly we listen more to one than the other.  Again, it’s all about balance. 

This blog (my mom hates that word–she refers to it as a journal ) is my balancing act, my bridge, and the culmination of everything from the natural world which has been whispered into my ear.  My ravens are busy indeed.

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