Synopses & Reviews
These are the true-life adventures of a woman who ranges over four continents, endeavoring to go beyond the limits of ordinary life. Recovering from an accident, she goes to Glastonbury, where she finds energy portrayed in ancient earthworks as a snake coiled in concentric circles around a hill. To walk this spiral is called threading the maze, which means both to ascend and to go deep within. This becomes a guiding emblem of her pilgrimages to sites of female spiritual and temporal power, from the Irish countryside to the Amazon jungle to the high mountain cultures of Nepal.
Janine Pommy Vega, Beat Generation writer, performer, and musician, is the author of twelve books. For many years she has worked with Poets in the Schools, and she is a member of PEN’s Prison Writing Committee.
Synopsis
At the age of fifteen, Janine Pommy Vega left home for New York where she joined the Beat Generation poets and artists. A few years later, after the devastating sudden death of her young husband, she began to explore travel as a means of healing. On a pilgrimage to ancient European sites of female power worship she visits Chartres Cathedral, the high hills of Ireland, and Southern England. In the Peruvian Amazon, she lives at a penal colony and visits people in the jungle who invite her to a yage ceremony. On a trek through the Andes she learns from the wisdom and skills of her companions; and in the Himalayas she discovers how complex myths illuminate the everyday realities of the people of Nepal.