Dragongate Genesis

Snowberry bushes grow on the slopes of the rocky knoll behind our house. Common as dust, nondescript green during the summer, in winter they are bare sticks covered in white berries. On cloudy wet days, thousands of white dots hover above the dark sodden ground, a kind of Milky Way that reaches as high as my belt. That starry image drifts into my mind unbidden and I welcome it with an inner smile. This trick of mind that opens the gate of perception runs like a background program playing with words, images and the associated ideas that jostle and elbow each other seeking a new life, a new amalgam.
Dragongate, emerged typically as an almost accident: typing in several possible blog titles and finding them taken, I drifted into the image of the wooden dragon I had created and placed on the lintel above my entrance gate. Success! Like the dragon himself springing to life from a piece of driftwood, the name became a presence, a daemon, that stands at the gates of perception.
The dragon is a potent symbol in western culture. Like fire itself, the dragon is both a destructive and a potentially creative entity. Pillaging and burning, guarding a treasure hoard locked up in the dark primordial earth, it is also the creature we must go through to regain the sequestered treasure that we must have if we are to constantly renew and revitalize the world. I remember the Dragon ships of the Vikings. These too were a force that gnawed at civilization, civilized thought, the accepted world view and were in the process an agent for change and renewal. I could not have thought of a better symbol for the power of the creative process if I had tried.