Gypsy Secrets

One afternoon, while sifting through the flotsam and jetsam of a garage sale, I spied an old hunter’s coat (not for sale) hanging from a bent rusty nail. Something about its antique quality, its layered pockets and hidden pouches, its faded and frayed history, the way it carried creases like a wrinkled face, made me hurry home to write a story.

From the Gypsy Secrets series, a collage by Rita J. McNamara.

In the story, those shabby pockets sheltered whole worlds, perfumes and sounds. In one pocket, clinking beach glass mingled with the tang of driftwood fires, salty stones and old sea songs. Another hid a magic book whose story always changed depending on the reader. There was a pocket full of acorn whistles and hollow elderberry flutes and their notes smelled spicy and green. A pocket of Chinese fortunes and honey-roasted almonds. Another stuffed with flimsy scented letters and hand-tinted photographs. The old coat was full of tales, endless in their permutations.

Gypsy Secrets collage by Rita J. McNamara.

The things you can’t quite see, spaces inside of spaces where secrets can hide. This spring I worked on a series of tiny scrolls. I called them “Gypsy Secrets” and imagined them containing remedies for all sorts of ailments and ills. A ointment recipe for eyes that had seen too much. Instructions for a fragrant herbal inhalation for those deprived of human touch or those who think they’ve lost everything. An incantation for those who can no longer feel the rain or hear the wind. A cool compress of bruised leaves to dissolve excessive anger. Tea recipes for crying jags, feeling lost, remembering dreams, forgetting dreams, too much hope or not enough. The recipe ingredients are not hard to find. They grow at the edges of yards, in sidewalk cracks, in the vacant lot at the end of the street, in ditches by the side of the road, in the places you forget to notice.