You must leave your home and go forth from your country.
The children of Buddha all practice this way.
---The thirty-seven Bodhisattva Practices
I stand firmly on the ground on the other side of the Veil. Here, loneliness is transformed to honed and solitary awareness. Here, longing is transformed into the path to my own door. Here, places are re-named. A people reclaim themselves.
My friend and I head for the Olympic Rain Forest. We never arrive. Somewhere around Sequim, he feels the northwest pulling him as far as it will be possible for two humans to go. Beyond that point there are cormorants and orcas. There is a blue-black horizon and light fading down into the sea. There is air vibrant with salt.
We stop along the way to the last stop. I go down to water’s edge. I scoop handfuls of liquid mineral. I touch my forehead, my heart and belly with my wet fingers. I take away my cool wet touch, and a gray-white pebble flecked with mica.
At the Makah Cultural & Research Center, I learn that the people regard the knowledge in that place as “a canoe” carrying them and a “war club” shattering assumptions and prejudices. I learn that their real name is kwih-dich-chuh-ahtx which means People who live by the rocks and the seagulls. Makah is a name given to them by another First Nation. It means Generous with food.
My friend and I walk through the exhibit that is a canoe and a war club. Much of the weaving and pottery, toys and weapons, cooking and burying objects were found during the excavation of Ozette Village. We look into the cases together. We say little.
We sit in a reconstructed cedar longhouse. It is dark and fragrant with cedar. There is silence except for soft chanting from the hidden stereo speakers. Later, my friend says, “I was there.” I nod.
We drive out to the trail that will take us to the furthest northwestern point of what never really was The United States of America. We walk through prisms that break the gray light into particles of green. Then, we stand on a cedar platform a hundred feet above dark sandstone and silver spray.
You will not find the kwih-dich-chuh-ahtx name for this place on any map. You will find, instead, “Cape Flattery” and when you research the name you will find this:
...on Sunday, March 22, Captain Cook saw, between a low cape and a steep island just off the cape, “a small opening which flattered us with the hopes of finding an harbour”. The hopes lessened as the ships drew nearer. Cook decided that the opening was closed by low land and turned the ships away. He named the point of land Cape Flattery...
...Cook’s activities at Nootka actually had a far greater impact on the future history of Washington than his brief excursion past Cape Flattery. He and his crew were able to trade with the Nootka Indians for sea otter furs, which were highly coveted by Asian and European merchants. When Cook’s expedition finally returned to England following his death...news of the wealth available on the Northwest Coast inspired the fur trade that brought many more Europeans and Americans to the Pacific Northwest.
I look down on the dark fingers of sandstone, on the cormorants gliding in and out of the darker caves. There is a dwarfed cedar to my right. Salt spray beads on its boughs. I know I will write about what I see. And I know I will write that the fur trade brought genocide. I know I will not be able to call the place “Cape Flattery.”
The day after we return, I e-mail the Makah Cultural & Research Center. I ask to know the kwih-dich-chuh-ahtx name for the furthest northwestern point. A woman writes back:
I hope I understood your question right and that you are asking for the word in our language that describes or names Cape Flattery. If that is the case, the name kwih dich chah uhtx IS the name we use to loosely mean the area of the Cape. ---Vickie B.
The people and the place have the same name. The people and the place are the same.
You must leave your home and go forth from your country. The children of Buddha all practice this way. The kwih dich chah uhtx go forth from “Cape Flattery”. They travel in a great canoe. They carry war clubs of knowledge. They circle out from “Cape Flattery” and back into their home. The kwih dich chah uhtx come home to kwih dich chah uhtx There is more than one way to practice.
Note: When you look down from the furthest northwestern point in kwih dich chah uhtx, you might see this: http://www.outventures.org/photos/old/2005/FlatteryCaves.jpg
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Veils 2
It is one thing to step through the veil. It is another to take my place on the other side. There is no turning back. Those of you who step through know. If you try, you see that the veil is gone. Only a new world that seems to be the old world surrounds you.
And then, as you move into this new lost world, you are shaken by what has always been around you. Inside you. Hidden.
The licorice ferns grow from the bark of the red cedar. An eagles’ nest sits in a tree at the edge of the Skykomish River, perhaps a half mile from the four-block Monroe strip mall. A brown bat circles above me on the trail at Wallace Falls. The greens are not more green. The rill of a stream is only the sound of snow melt moving. The bat is not a messenger but a creature hunting food. I have been open to all of this for years.
What I have not been open to is my huge loneliness on the other side of the veil. I’ve blurred it for five years---with anger and compulsion. Here, on the other side of stepping through, I live each moment with the steady physical ache of having not been touched for every day of those five years. Yes, there have been the rare comradely embraces of my brothers and sisters. Yes, those have been the only touch. Yes, they are not enough.
I talk with a friend about my loneliness. He listens and he says the perfect words, “I’m sorry.” There is no pity in his voice. He gives no advice. Later I write him: Thank you for your response to my loneliness. So often well-meaning people (especially those happily partnered) either give useful advice on how I can meet a partner or regard me with ill-masked pity. Loneliness is an honorable emotion. It has been relegated to shameful in our world and times. It is far too honorable to be pitied or fixed.
I send this same message to my oldest and closest friend, M. He calls. “I’m sorry you’re feeling so sad,” he says. “Loneliness is not fixable or dishonorable. It’s a condition of being open.”
A few days later, I talk with I. who is my true sister. (I am not writing Rasta here, I only protect my friend’s privacy.) “Loneliness,” she says, “is crushing. You and I seem to find it often. I think it is an edge from which to explore. I hate it.”
Grace to have these friends. Grace to know that not only the single are lonely. Grace to be on the other side of the veil, refusing to blur or fix the ache. My efforts to not feel what I was feeling had nearly killed me.
So, for you, one request. Honor my loneliness. With it and without it, I am a woman blessed.
And then, as you move into this new lost world, you are shaken by what has always been around you. Inside you. Hidden.
The licorice ferns grow from the bark of the red cedar. An eagles’ nest sits in a tree at the edge of the Skykomish River, perhaps a half mile from the four-block Monroe strip mall. A brown bat circles above me on the trail at Wallace Falls. The greens are not more green. The rill of a stream is only the sound of snow melt moving. The bat is not a messenger but a creature hunting food. I have been open to all of this for years.
What I have not been open to is my huge loneliness on the other side of the veil. I’ve blurred it for five years---with anger and compulsion. Here, on the other side of stepping through, I live each moment with the steady physical ache of having not been touched for every day of those five years. Yes, there have been the rare comradely embraces of my brothers and sisters. Yes, those have been the only touch. Yes, they are not enough.
I talk with a friend about my loneliness. He listens and he says the perfect words, “I’m sorry.” There is no pity in his voice. He gives no advice. Later I write him: Thank you for your response to my loneliness. So often well-meaning people (especially those happily partnered) either give useful advice on how I can meet a partner or regard me with ill-masked pity. Loneliness is an honorable emotion. It has been relegated to shameful in our world and times. It is far too honorable to be pitied or fixed.
I send this same message to my oldest and closest friend, M. He calls. “I’m sorry you’re feeling so sad,” he says. “Loneliness is not fixable or dishonorable. It’s a condition of being open.”
A few days later, I talk with I. who is my true sister. (I am not writing Rasta here, I only protect my friend’s privacy.) “Loneliness,” she says, “is crushing. You and I seem to find it often. I think it is an edge from which to explore. I hate it.”
Grace to have these friends. Grace to know that not only the single are lonely. Grace to be on the other side of the veil, refusing to blur or fix the ache. My efforts to not feel what I was feeling had nearly killed me.
So, for you, one request. Honor my loneliness. With it and without it, I am a woman blessed.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Veils
Where there is no doubt, there is no understanding
Where there is little doubt, there is little understanding
Where there is great doubt, there is great understanding.
---Buddhist teaching
My friend and I climb to the top of the old stone tower on Mr. Constitution. I look down. Orcas Island lies below me---cedars and fir, mottled green, oval patches of cobalt water. The San Juan Straits are malachite, the other islands lesser green.
I am barely present. I feel as though I stand before the veil into a new world. My friend seems to be on the other side of the veil. I cannot imagine how it would be to be him, to move through life with trust.
My friend laughs. “There’s one,” he says. I know he means an eagle. He is a man possessed. Eagles come to him.
I’m a different bird. Ravens have accompanied me for days, but from here I see none. They were with me on the road, looping in each time I had thought This is a mistake. What if the charm that held my friend and me is undone? What if the task of fitting my words with another’s is impossible? The ravens would streak across the road, turn somersaults, arc against the light and disappear.
My understanding should be great if the Buddhist teaching is correct. I am a skin sack of doubt. Still I manage to watch the eagle spiral in great curves up from the tree-tops. Two others rise into the air on the east side of the tower. A third joins them.
My friend gazes past me toward the south. “There are two more, three, five, six.” I turn and look up. My eyes are older than his. The sun glares through the cataracts. Cataract. Veil. I see two eagles, no more than that.
I feel damaged. Inept. A woman much nearer exponential losses than her friend---though he has lived through a cancer that might have taken him all the way into nothing. A man from my past comes to mind, a man who became necrosis.
My friend watches the people below us. “They just don’t look up,” he says. “They’re missing so much. Why don’t they look up?”
“Habit,” I say. “Fear. My last partner could not look up…or maybe it was me who couldn’t.”
My friend looks past me. His eyes are cool. “They’re gone,” he says. “All those eagles in the south just disappeared.” He looks at me. I’ve not seen his gaze this intense. I look South. There are no eagles. I know in that instant why the eagles are gone. I believe he knows. I feel ashamed. I want to descend from the tower. I want to go home.
I manage to stand my ground. Something greater than shame holds me in place. I shouldn’t have talked about that man,” I say. I breathe hard out into the cool bright air. “There,” I say. “That’s finally out of me. Never again.”
I’m turned away from my friend, but I hear him laugh. “The eagles are back,” he says. “They just reappeared from nowhere.”
Later, we talk for a long time. I tell him that I had believed he was chastising me for being careless, and when I stood my ground to find my own knowledge, I understood something about him and the eagles---and a great deal more about myself.
“I went through a veil,” I say. “I have come up to that crossing again and again in my life. I’ve never crossed over till now. I still don’t know exactly how to be here on the other side. I won’t know for a long time.
“I do know this: you did not judge me in that moment. You were only telling me what was important.”
Even later, I open my e-mail and find the daily message from Word-A-Day:
diaphanous
MEANING:
adjective:
1. Transparent, light, or delicate.
2. Vague or hazy.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin diaphanus (transparent), from Greek diaphanes, from diaphainein (to show through), from dia- (across) + phainein (to show). Ultimately from the Indo-European root bha- (to shine) that is also the source of beacon, banner, phantom, photo, phosphorus, phenomenon, fantasy, and epiphany.
I forward the entry to my friend with this message:
In Vietnam during the American war, one of the most feared weapons was burning white phosphorus. It would char down to the bone.
I think of our book as I write this. It will be a book with more than a few words that will char down to the bone, written so subtly that most will never smell the smoke.
Where there is little doubt, there is little understanding
Where there is great doubt, there is great understanding.
---Buddhist teaching
My friend and I climb to the top of the old stone tower on Mr. Constitution. I look down. Orcas Island lies below me---cedars and fir, mottled green, oval patches of cobalt water. The San Juan Straits are malachite, the other islands lesser green.
I am barely present. I feel as though I stand before the veil into a new world. My friend seems to be on the other side of the veil. I cannot imagine how it would be to be him, to move through life with trust.
My friend laughs. “There’s one,” he says. I know he means an eagle. He is a man possessed. Eagles come to him.
I’m a different bird. Ravens have accompanied me for days, but from here I see none. They were with me on the road, looping in each time I had thought This is a mistake. What if the charm that held my friend and me is undone? What if the task of fitting my words with another’s is impossible? The ravens would streak across the road, turn somersaults, arc against the light and disappear.
My understanding should be great if the Buddhist teaching is correct. I am a skin sack of doubt. Still I manage to watch the eagle spiral in great curves up from the tree-tops. Two others rise into the air on the east side of the tower. A third joins them.
My friend gazes past me toward the south. “There are two more, three, five, six.” I turn and look up. My eyes are older than his. The sun glares through the cataracts. Cataract. Veil. I see two eagles, no more than that.
I feel damaged. Inept. A woman much nearer exponential losses than her friend---though he has lived through a cancer that might have taken him all the way into nothing. A man from my past comes to mind, a man who became necrosis.
My friend watches the people below us. “They just don’t look up,” he says. “They’re missing so much. Why don’t they look up?”
“Habit,” I say. “Fear. My last partner could not look up…or maybe it was me who couldn’t.”
My friend looks past me. His eyes are cool. “They’re gone,” he says. “All those eagles in the south just disappeared.” He looks at me. I’ve not seen his gaze this intense. I look South. There are no eagles. I know in that instant why the eagles are gone. I believe he knows. I feel ashamed. I want to descend from the tower. I want to go home.
I manage to stand my ground. Something greater than shame holds me in place. I shouldn’t have talked about that man,” I say. I breathe hard out into the cool bright air. “There,” I say. “That’s finally out of me. Never again.”
I’m turned away from my friend, but I hear him laugh. “The eagles are back,” he says. “They just reappeared from nowhere.”
Later, we talk for a long time. I tell him that I had believed he was chastising me for being careless, and when I stood my ground to find my own knowledge, I understood something about him and the eagles---and a great deal more about myself.
“I went through a veil,” I say. “I have come up to that crossing again and again in my life. I’ve never crossed over till now. I still don’t know exactly how to be here on the other side. I won’t know for a long time.
“I do know this: you did not judge me in that moment. You were only telling me what was important.”
Even later, I open my e-mail and find the daily message from Word-A-Day:
diaphanous
MEANING:
adjective:
1. Transparent, light, or delicate.
2. Vague or hazy.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin diaphanus (transparent), from Greek diaphanes, from diaphainein (to show through), from dia- (across) + phainein (to show). Ultimately from the Indo-European root bha- (to shine) that is also the source of beacon, banner, phantom, photo, phosphorus, phenomenon, fantasy, and epiphany.
I forward the entry to my friend with this message:
In Vietnam during the American war, one of the most feared weapons was burning white phosphorus. It would char down to the bone.
I think of our book as I write this. It will be a book with more than a few words that will char down to the bone, written so subtly that most will never smell the smoke.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Cameras
I rarely take photographs. I tell my students that using a camera short-circuits the pathways that fix an image in my memory. And, a picture cannot bring in sound or scent, taste or dawn warming my back as I pray: For the furthering of all sentience beings and the protection of earth, air and water. I trust what surrounds me. I trust I’ll retain what I will someday need for the Work.
Not all memories make it into writing. Those that do rest dormant until a cue from the imperative to write brings them out. Here is how it works: I walk out the dirt road to the Joshua Buddha. Much streams in through the body into mind, loops through the heart and down the arm to the fingers on these keys: Sunset clouds, rose-gold herring bones against the blue dark. Soft air. A small wind brushing my skin. Saffron light just above the mountains. Coyotes screaming in the east.
I stop near the broken dry well in which lie more than a few of my words. One pewter-light day in December, I carried four journals to its rim and dropped them in. They were the record of a time when “much” was code for love, a time when I didn’t know that code is not necessary for love. I am learning. Clouds, light, wind and coyotes come into that emptied moment.
In four days I will begin a drive north. In the last two months, my life has spun into a new location, a new book and new hope. Jeff Guidry and the eagle Hanble Okinyan touched their story to mine and this circling began.
Come with me. http://eaglewalker1.blogspot.com/ Jeff took the photos of Hanble in her bath. He is a living camera. How else to explain water exploding off the jubilant eagle into spirals and auroras and splinters of diamond ice?
Jeff flies to Denali tonight. “I’ll send you pictures,” he promises, “I’ll have two cameras with me.” I am a camera. I think as I listen to him. So many gifts. I think as I imagine him standing on the glacier. He’ll be wearing old work boots. Standing on the glacier with all your heart is work. Being a camera is work. Light and pure cold and the glacier’s voice will be streaming into him. He’ll raise the camera to his eye and capture. He’ll leave the camera in his pack. And capture.
Later, we will swap stories. I’ll see his words. He’ll see mine. They will stream into our minds, loop through our hearts and emerge in the book we are making. The eagle, Hanble Okinyan will keep us honest. She demands beauty.
By then, I will have driven north on Route 395. I will have stepped into Warm Creek, felt the sand shift under my feet, crouched where the hot spring bubbles up. I will have parked my car at the base of Glass Flow and pressed my hands against the sun’s touch on the brilliant obsidian.
I will have met a friend in Reno. As I come into her presence, my mouth will be dry, my heart pounding---because I will not have brought myself into the presence of neon as brilliant as a Mojave sunset, and jackpots as elusive as a desert mirage, and the descent into what I still long for so often. I don’t know how I will drive past the casinos. Perhaps I’ll be a camera, nothing more.
Then, there will be the dirt road to a low butte. There will be obsidian needles shining in the sand. I wonder if I’ll take one. I have learned a different way to capture. Pages in the bottom of a dry well, clouds become a radiant fish, love shaping and re-shaping itself. Michael, A., Chris and Chris, you know.
Two days later, I will arrive at an unfamiliar house I can already see. My friend has sent me photos. He will step out his front door. He will have seen me from the window of the upstairs room in which he has been making his half of our book. I already know what will be in our eyes.
Laughter. Friendship. And the willingness to go further into the mystery of making.
************
Lightning Glass
I began to see that, when it comes right down to it, we are nothing until that nothing becomes so dedicated that it
is like a vessel through which good things can move, an instrument for receiving knowledge and sharing it with
others who might be in need.
---Bear Heart, with Molly Larkin
Bear Heart
Eighteen years ago, three trucks drove up the dirt snake of the Moqui Dugway. The road rises 1100 feet on a 10% grade. The ascent can take your breath.
The first time I had driven it alone. It was 1982, I was forty-two and it was the first time I had spent longer than three days alone. A new friend had given me directions. You approach from the south and drive across flat desert toward what seems to be an impenetrable cliff face. Keep going. I followed his instructions. Suddenly the road curved east and I had no choice but to go up hair-pin turns, cliff-face on one side, drop-offs on the other. I remember keeping my foot steady on the accelerator of the rental car and thinking, “If I can do this, I can learn to do anything.”
Eight years later I was passenger in the lead truck. I was not alone. We were perhaps a dozen women and men and we were friends, lovers and strangers. Our trucks were loaded with river gear. We were headed for a trip on the San Juan River.
We topped out and headed West. As abruptly as any human change of heart, thunderheads moved in. There was no rain. The man I now think of as Dead Bill---no longer with rancor, but with affection---drove. I sat in the passenger seat and opened his beers for him.
Lightning slammed down into the pinon-juniper a few miles ahead of us. A thread of smoke rose. By the time we came to the strike, there were no flames. Only smoke rose from the little juniper. Some of us jumped out of our trucks, walked to the juniper and began to pile sand around its charred base. We waited till there seemed to be no more smoke. A soft rain – the Dine call it Female Rain began to fall. We climbed back in the trucks and went on.
It would be years before I would learn that sometimes a lightning strike in the desert makes glass. By the time I looked into a desert museum display case, saw a non-descript chunk of jagged glass labeled fulgurite and found it far more beautiful than the slab of emerald and cream malachite to its right and the wine-red chunk of garnet to its left, I was no longer the woman who had piled sand around the base of a smoking juniper. Had that woman known that there was lightning glass, she would not have asked the group to wait while she searched the ground for a glittering shard. She would have deferred instead to her lover, to his need to get back on the road and to his beer.
She is gone. He is gone. The group is gone, not so much dispersed by lightning, but drifted away on currents of alcohol, pot, betrayal and lies. The woman would herself disappear for five years, carried deep into loneliness by her own addictions and lies.
She would once have said that the disappearances were nothing but loss, and that our behaviors were cruel and tragic. Now, I understand the nature of juniper, lightning, smoke and glass. I see that addiction, lies and betrayal may be no less alchemical than the action of unearthly heat and sand. Now, my favorite chain of words has become: I don’t know.
I don’t know has transformed me from a woman who once would have googled lightning glass and ordered a piece from an on-line store, to a woman who walks the abundant Mojave, under skies from which lightning rarely descends, her eyes often on the ground, hunting for a glint of nondescript glass, knowing she may never find it.
I don’t know moves these words out of what sometimes feels like nothing, a nothing that is both frightening and welcome. I am a vessel formed by dedication, a vessel made from lightning glass.
Not all memories make it into writing. Those that do rest dormant until a cue from the imperative to write brings them out. Here is how it works: I walk out the dirt road to the Joshua Buddha. Much streams in through the body into mind, loops through the heart and down the arm to the fingers on these keys: Sunset clouds, rose-gold herring bones against the blue dark. Soft air. A small wind brushing my skin. Saffron light just above the mountains. Coyotes screaming in the east.
I stop near the broken dry well in which lie more than a few of my words. One pewter-light day in December, I carried four journals to its rim and dropped them in. They were the record of a time when “much” was code for love, a time when I didn’t know that code is not necessary for love. I am learning. Clouds, light, wind and coyotes come into that emptied moment.
In four days I will begin a drive north. In the last two months, my life has spun into a new location, a new book and new hope. Jeff Guidry and the eagle Hanble Okinyan touched their story to mine and this circling began.
Come with me. http://eaglewalker1.blogspot.com/ Jeff took the photos of Hanble in her bath. He is a living camera. How else to explain water exploding off the jubilant eagle into spirals and auroras and splinters of diamond ice?
Jeff flies to Denali tonight. “I’ll send you pictures,” he promises, “I’ll have two cameras with me.” I am a camera. I think as I listen to him. So many gifts. I think as I imagine him standing on the glacier. He’ll be wearing old work boots. Standing on the glacier with all your heart is work. Being a camera is work. Light and pure cold and the glacier’s voice will be streaming into him. He’ll raise the camera to his eye and capture. He’ll leave the camera in his pack. And capture.
Later, we will swap stories. I’ll see his words. He’ll see mine. They will stream into our minds, loop through our hearts and emerge in the book we are making. The eagle, Hanble Okinyan will keep us honest. She demands beauty.
By then, I will have driven north on Route 395. I will have stepped into Warm Creek, felt the sand shift under my feet, crouched where the hot spring bubbles up. I will have parked my car at the base of Glass Flow and pressed my hands against the sun’s touch on the brilliant obsidian.
I will have met a friend in Reno. As I come into her presence, my mouth will be dry, my heart pounding---because I will not have brought myself into the presence of neon as brilliant as a Mojave sunset, and jackpots as elusive as a desert mirage, and the descent into what I still long for so often. I don’t know how I will drive past the casinos. Perhaps I’ll be a camera, nothing more.
Then, there will be the dirt road to a low butte. There will be obsidian needles shining in the sand. I wonder if I’ll take one. I have learned a different way to capture. Pages in the bottom of a dry well, clouds become a radiant fish, love shaping and re-shaping itself. Michael, A., Chris and Chris, you know.
Two days later, I will arrive at an unfamiliar house I can already see. My friend has sent me photos. He will step out his front door. He will have seen me from the window of the upstairs room in which he has been making his half of our book. I already know what will be in our eyes.
Laughter. Friendship. And the willingness to go further into the mystery of making.
************
Lightning Glass
I began to see that, when it comes right down to it, we are nothing until that nothing becomes so dedicated that it
is like a vessel through which good things can move, an instrument for receiving knowledge and sharing it with
others who might be in need.
---Bear Heart, with Molly Larkin
Bear Heart
Eighteen years ago, three trucks drove up the dirt snake of the Moqui Dugway. The road rises 1100 feet on a 10% grade. The ascent can take your breath.
The first time I had driven it alone. It was 1982, I was forty-two and it was the first time I had spent longer than three days alone. A new friend had given me directions. You approach from the south and drive across flat desert toward what seems to be an impenetrable cliff face. Keep going. I followed his instructions. Suddenly the road curved east and I had no choice but to go up hair-pin turns, cliff-face on one side, drop-offs on the other. I remember keeping my foot steady on the accelerator of the rental car and thinking, “If I can do this, I can learn to do anything.”
Eight years later I was passenger in the lead truck. I was not alone. We were perhaps a dozen women and men and we were friends, lovers and strangers. Our trucks were loaded with river gear. We were headed for a trip on the San Juan River.
We topped out and headed West. As abruptly as any human change of heart, thunderheads moved in. There was no rain. The man I now think of as Dead Bill---no longer with rancor, but with affection---drove. I sat in the passenger seat and opened his beers for him.
Lightning slammed down into the pinon-juniper a few miles ahead of us. A thread of smoke rose. By the time we came to the strike, there were no flames. Only smoke rose from the little juniper. Some of us jumped out of our trucks, walked to the juniper and began to pile sand around its charred base. We waited till there seemed to be no more smoke. A soft rain – the Dine call it Female Rain began to fall. We climbed back in the trucks and went on.
It would be years before I would learn that sometimes a lightning strike in the desert makes glass. By the time I looked into a desert museum display case, saw a non-descript chunk of jagged glass labeled fulgurite and found it far more beautiful than the slab of emerald and cream malachite to its right and the wine-red chunk of garnet to its left, I was no longer the woman who had piled sand around the base of a smoking juniper. Had that woman known that there was lightning glass, she would not have asked the group to wait while she searched the ground for a glittering shard. She would have deferred instead to her lover, to his need to get back on the road and to his beer.
She is gone. He is gone. The group is gone, not so much dispersed by lightning, but drifted away on currents of alcohol, pot, betrayal and lies. The woman would herself disappear for five years, carried deep into loneliness by her own addictions and lies.
She would once have said that the disappearances were nothing but loss, and that our behaviors were cruel and tragic. Now, I understand the nature of juniper, lightning, smoke and glass. I see that addiction, lies and betrayal may be no less alchemical than the action of unearthly heat and sand. Now, my favorite chain of words has become: I don’t know.
I don’t know has transformed me from a woman who once would have googled lightning glass and ordered a piece from an on-line store, to a woman who walks the abundant Mojave, under skies from which lightning rarely descends, her eyes often on the ground, hunting for a glint of nondescript glass, knowing she may never find it.
I don’t know moves these words out of what sometimes feels like nothing, a nothing that is both frightening and welcome. I am a vessel formed by dedication, a vessel made from lightning glass.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Eaglewalker
"We don't so much create threads between ourselves and others, we find that existing threads have become luminous." A friend once told me that. In the last few months I have been granted illumination from connections to the Northwest, to an eagle and the man who both loves and is loved by her.
Meet Freedom and Jeff. Click on Eaglewalker in my links.
Meet Freedom and Jeff. Click on Eaglewalker in my links.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Now Is
Temple Cats
Americans are obsessed with the notion of control. The control is just an illusion.
---Lee Barnes, writer
Bean, the 10-month old gray tabby, is possessed to leap up on the old dresser that serves as the center for my faith in what little I know of Tibetan Buddhism; and all I am learning about the nature of impermanence---a knowledge both unwelcome and irresistible. The dresser top is more accurately an altar - a flat-topped block used as the focus for a religious ritual, esp. for making sacrifices or offerings to a deity.
There is no demanding god here. There is no religion. There is only the sacrifice of most of what I once believed was permanent. There are offerings, not to be consumed in flame or carried away on a river, but objects and images to remind me of what matters. Each reminder has its own place, its own proximity to another.
There is a book of Tibetan photos and words. Behind it, a picture leans against the mirror: two Chinese soldiers walk away from the body of Kelsan Namtso, the Tibetan Buddhist nun that have just murdered. She lies in the snow. The only color in the picture is her saffron robe. All is else is the snow, gray boulders and the black figures of the soldiers.
There is a postcard of Tibetan Buddhist monks singing. A Black Hat dancer wears a ceremonial apron embroidered with the terrible and gracious visage of Mahakala, the deity who eats that which is in the way of joy---if you regard joy as knowing you will most certainly die and, therefore, this moment is the best in your life.
Two books of collaborative art and poetry (made by poet Gail Wade, his students and me) lie on top of a photo of the black and white crippled cat Stretch. He is not the only ghost cat on the dresser. There are tatters of brindle fur that once belonged to my good cat Harold. Rumi, my a 12-step book, the Witches’ Almanac, and my journal lie in front of the collaborations. Beneath them is the 1948 edition of the Classics Illustrated Arabian Nights, the comic book that opened my way out of dark cave after cave after cave; below lie more photos of my beloved dead.
A gray pyramidal rock with a black dot in one side, and a Northwest Raven medallion hold the Tibetan book open. Today’s reading from Sogyal Rinpoche: Why, if we are as pragmatic as we claim, don’t we begin to ask ourseles seriously: where does our real future lie?
There is more on the dresser: a baby spoon engraved with Mary, a broken heart-shaped dish my mom gave me, a lace agate shaped exactly like a woman’s yoni , a tape of chanting by the Gaden Shatse monks, a photo of beloved Harold (who was eaten by a coyote eight months ago). There is the wristwatch that stopped on 9/11/01. There is the grooved rock in which I put a chunk of cookie for Mahakala when I ask his help in ripping out my hard heart.
Mr. Toad from Wind in the Willows sits on top of the mirror. He wears a red-striped frock coat, blue pants and a blue bow tie. My velvet prayer beads bag hangs below him. It contains the string of twenty bone beads on which I count my morning prayers: for the furthering of all sentient beings and the protection of earth, air and water.
I murmur the prayer as Bean mounts his ninth assault on the dresser. He tries to capture Toad. I go toward the dresser. Bean leaps off. As soon as I settle back to my prayers, he leaps in my lap and grabs the beads.
We both hang on. In that instant, I imagine a temple altar. The monks or priestesses or rabbis or imams responsible for the altar believe that in order for the Holy to be present, the sacred objects must be placed and aligned with precision. The work of tidying and arranging the altar has just been finished. All is ready.
A mouse races across the shining tiles of the temple floor. One of the temple cats is within paw’s reach. The mouse scurries up on the altar. The cat follows.
********
What Falls Into the Absences
---for M.
The only sure antidote to oblivion is the creation. So I loop my sentences around the trunks of maples, hook them into the parched soil, anchor them to rock, to moon and stars, wrap them tenderly around the ankles of those I love. From down in the pit, I give a tug, to make sure my rope of words is hooked onto the world, and then up I climb.
--- Scott Russell Sanders, Staying Put
The Invisible guitar
Fullerton train station
guy playing guitar
with right hand
withered left hand
from very visible was
playing to a
chair covered seat
and a bench
covered blanket
Invisible audiences
listening to a distant
guitar...
6/1/02
had been written on the back of a Vanity Fair subscription card tucked into a copy of Delicate, a collection of short stories I wrote in the early Nineties.
Delicate was inscribed:
Rosie
I “met” this
woman thru NPR radio
She writes about real
women on real journeys.
Enjoy - Janet
2001
There was also a 3X5 file card in the pages. On it was written todolopuedo.ina.nel Password EBIZ I googled todolopuedo.ina.nel It does not exist.
A few days later, I walk east across the desert. The setting sun dusts the creosote with gold. Shadows are gray, then purple, then indigo. A jack-rabbit startles out of a tangle of downed Joshua branches. I follow my footprints from the day before. They carry me past the white couch that is settling back into the earth and the backless shelves my son and I left next to the couch. Each day I put something on the second shelf that I am ready to lose. Once it was how I scare myself, another time it was imagining I have a damaged brain---there is a theme here.
My footprints disappear from the road and curve through more creosote and Joshuas and groves of yucca. I follow. I stop at a yucca which has split into three equal sections. I press my hands against each section, then link the broken pieces with my splayed fingers. I have no idea why I do this. It just seems right.
I reach the old Joshua Buddha just as the light goes rose-gold. I bend down to the stump that is also the form of a seated Buddha. I lean my head against it and I say, “I’m back.” I touch the tiny white spine tucked into the bark of the fallen trunk and sit next to the delicate bones. I plant my feet in the sand. There are dark mountain ranges in the northeast and perhaps a mile away, the county land-fill.
Gate gate paragate. Gone gone gone to the other side
I remember my most recent talk with M. We spoke of aging. We spoke of loss. We spoke of what has fallen away---and what hasn’t. I told him that I no longer was able to destroy myself. I told him I came to that inability not by my own choice.
“I don’t know why I had to give up what I loved so much,” I said to M. “There are layers and layers of emptiness in me now . It’s not time to fill them...if they can ever be filled.”
The sand is no longer pale gold. The shadows fade. I drink what’s left of the water in my bottle, touch the Joshua Buddha stump and head home.
I’m a few minutes away from the light that burns outside my cabin door when I see a sheet of paper caught in a clump of dried grass. There is writing on it. I pick it up and carry it home.
I wait till after dinner to read it. The words are carefully printed in a child’s hand on lined paper.
12/11/07
Dear Isaaih,
I hope you have a merry christmas and may all your wishes come true. Thank you for playing games with me.
When we play monopoly we have fun. Monopoly is one of favorite game. Hve you ever played monopoly video game. It’s fun, isn’t it.
When I grow up I will keep you in my hart. When both of us grown up we can both hang out.
Love, Angela
********
A Murder
When you pass through the fire
you pass through humble
You pass through a maze of self doubt
When you pass through humble
the lights can blind you
Some people never figure that out
You pass through arrogance you pass through hurt
You pass through an ever present past
and it's best not to wait for luck to save you
Pass through the fire to the light...
---Lou Reed
Magic and Loss
Rain for three days. Heart-shredder wind. This morning dawn is soft and clear. A winged shadow moves up the tangle of Joshua branches. A raven follows. The bird drops to the top branch. She, he, it, shakes out a wing. The breast feathers ruffle in what is left of the banshee wind.
Dawn reflects off the shining black beak---or a crumb of corn chip from the handful I scattered last night for the resdent coyote. More ravens soar and dive above the dirt road to the west. One, two, a dozen, a murder of them.
The raven at the top of the Joshua Tree watches, lifts and takes off. The shadow follows and is gone.
In the last week, I have found myself beginning to drift from the path I have been making. Imagine you could step by step move to the side of a trail of your own footsteps, a trail that is not easy, but a trail that carries you in and out of beauty, in and out of fear, in and out of wonder. Imagine that you imagine something glowing a little off the trail, something that you know might draw you toward damage, not of the material, but of the spirit. Imagine that you imagine that the damage might be worth standing in the glow...and maybe this time that sweet light would never fade. Imagine you take one step in that direction, then another.
As you pass through the fire
your right hand waving
there are things you have to throw out
That caustic dread inside your head
will never help you out
You have to be very strong
' cause you'll start from zero
over and over again
And as the smoke clears
there's an all consuming fire
lying straight ahead...
I called trusted friends. “It’s happening again. He is so like the one before. Where did he come from? I didn’t ask for this.” I wanted to be amazed. I wanted to be better than the rules. I wanted to believe that Something that most resembles a huge raven or a desert twilight or the bark of a dead Joshua Tree has given me a second chance at Big Love.
My friends reminded me that in one crucial area, “he” is so like the one before---he is not free. I wanted to smack my trusted friends. I wanted to smack my own trusted knowledge.
They say no one person can do it all
but you want to in your head
But you can't be Shakespeare
and you can’t be Joyce
so what is left instead
You're stuck with yourself
and a rage that can hurt you
You have to start at the beginning again
And just this moment
This wonderful fire started up again
I ran my sales pitch. “But, he is this and this and this...and I felt as though we had known each other for centuries and he feels the same way and and and...” My most long-time friend listened. “Yeah,” he said. “It is such a good drug.”
I didn’t smack him. I felt how stale my words were. There was something about my long-time friend’s perfect responses and how we laughed that pulled the pin on the potentially rhinestone-encrusted (little Zappa there)grenade.
I slept with nothing but the banshee wind. When I woke, I was grateful for my long-time friend. We had always referred to our drugs as toys. One time, one of us had lost a bundle on the slots. “The toy is broken,” we said. This morning I wrote him: “I/you can always try to fix the toy or get another one. But when the toyness goes out of the toy and I know that another toy might be fun the first time I play with it, even the second or third time, but ultimately the toyness will go out of the new toy---then, the gig is up.”
When you pass through humble
when you pass through sickly
When you pass through
I'm better than you all
When you pass through
anger and self deprecation
and have the strength to acknowledge it all
When the past makes you laugh
and you can savor the magic
that let you survive your own war
You find that that fire is passion
and there's a door up ahead not a wall...
I wrote my friend: I feel grouchy and gray this morning. I read the newspaper. The comics and the pop horoscopes. The important stuff. One of my horoscopes says: ‘Knowing when you have had enough might be important. Think carefully about a decision that could impact your daily life. What you feel could possibly be wrong. Give yourself the gift of time.’
And a second horoscope: ‘Your artistic mind is keen, your creativity set to fire off at any moment. You are in the right place with the right tools to enable you to capture the kind of fleeting moment that you wish could last forever.’
And I had already had---before I read the horoscopes and wrote you---a fleeting moment I wished could last forever Here it is:
A Murder
Rain for three days. Heart-shredder wind. The early sun this morning is soft and clear. A shadow moves up the tangle of Joshua branches. A raven follows...
As you pass through fire as you pass through fire
try to remember its name
When you pass through fire licking at your lips
you cannot remain the same
And if the building' s burning
move towards that door
but don't put the flames out
There's a bit of magic in everything
and then some loss to even things out.
********
Lightning Glass
I began to see that, when it comes right down to it, we are nothing until that nothing becomes so dedicated that it is like a vessel through which good things can move, an instrument for receiving knowledge and sharing it with others who might be in need.
---Bear Heart, with Molly Larkin
Bear Heart
Eighteen years ago, three trucks drove up the dirt snake of the Moqui Dugway. The road rises 1100 feet on a 10% grade. The ascent can take your breath.
The first time I had driven it alone. It was 1982, I was forty-two and it was the first time I had spent longer than three days alone. A new friend had given me directions. You approach from the south and drive across flat desert toward what seems to be an impenetrable cliff face. Keep going. I followed his instructions. Suddenly the road curved east and I had no choice but to go up hair-pin turns, cliff-face on one side, drop-offs on the other. I remember keeping my foot steady on the accelerator of the rental car and thinking, “If I can do this, I can learn to do anything.”
Eight years later I was passenger in the lead truck. I was not alone. We were perhaps a dozen women and men and we were friends, lovers and strangers. Our trucks were loaded with river gear. We were headed for a trip on the San Juan River.
We topped out and headed West. As abruptly as any human change of heart, thunderheads moved in. There was no rain. The man I now think of as Dead Bill---no longer with rancor, but with affection---drove. I sat in the passenger seat and opened his beers for him.
Lightning slammed down into the pinon-juniper a few miles ahead of us. A thread of smoke rose. By the time we came to the strike, there were no flames. Only smoke rose from the little juniper. Some of us jumped out of our trucks, walked to the juniper and began to pile sand around its charred base. We waited till there seemed to be no more smoke. A soft rain – the Dine call it Female Rain began to fall. We climbed back in the trucks and went on.
It would be years before I would learn that sometimes a lightning strike in the desert makes glass. By the time I looked into a desert museum display case, saw a non-descript chunk of jagged glass labeled fulgurite and found it far more beautiful than the slab of emerald and cream malachite to its right and the wine-red chunk of garnet to its left, I was no longer the woman who had piled sand around the base of a smoking juniper. Had that woman known that there was lightning glass, she would not have asked the group to wait while she searched the ground for a glittering shard. She would have deferred instead to her lover, to his need to get back on the road and to his beer.
She is gone. He is gone. The group is gone, not so much dispersed by lightning, but drifted away on currents of alcohol, pot, betrayal and lies. The woman would herself disappear for five years, carried deep into loneliness by her own addictions and lies.
She would once have said that the disappearances were nothing but loss, and that our behaviors were cruel and tragic. Now, I understand the nature of juniper, lightning, smoke and glass. I see that addiction, lies and betrayal may be no less alchemical than the action of unearthly heat and sand. Now, my favorite chain of words has become: I don’t know.
I don’t know has transformed me from a woman who once would have googled lightning glass and ordered a piece from an on-line store, to a woman who walks the abundant Mojave, under skies from which lightning rarely descends, her eyes often on the ground, hunting for a glint of nondescript glass, knowing she may never find it.
I don’t know moves these words out of what sometimes feels like nothing, a nothing that is both frightening and welcome. I am a vessel formed by dedication, a vessel made from lightning glass.
Americans are obsessed with the notion of control. The control is just an illusion.
---Lee Barnes, writer
Bean, the 10-month old gray tabby, is possessed to leap up on the old dresser that serves as the center for my faith in what little I know of Tibetan Buddhism; and all I am learning about the nature of impermanence---a knowledge both unwelcome and irresistible. The dresser top is more accurately an altar - a flat-topped block used as the focus for a religious ritual, esp. for making sacrifices or offerings to a deity.
There is no demanding god here. There is no religion. There is only the sacrifice of most of what I once believed was permanent. There are offerings, not to be consumed in flame or carried away on a river, but objects and images to remind me of what matters. Each reminder has its own place, its own proximity to another.
There is a book of Tibetan photos and words. Behind it, a picture leans against the mirror: two Chinese soldiers walk away from the body of Kelsan Namtso, the Tibetan Buddhist nun that have just murdered. She lies in the snow. The only color in the picture is her saffron robe. All is else is the snow, gray boulders and the black figures of the soldiers.
There is a postcard of Tibetan Buddhist monks singing. A Black Hat dancer wears a ceremonial apron embroidered with the terrible and gracious visage of Mahakala, the deity who eats that which is in the way of joy---if you regard joy as knowing you will most certainly die and, therefore, this moment is the best in your life.
Two books of collaborative art and poetry (made by poet Gail Wade, his students and me) lie on top of a photo of the black and white crippled cat Stretch. He is not the only ghost cat on the dresser. There are tatters of brindle fur that once belonged to my good cat Harold. Rumi, my a 12-step book, the Witches’ Almanac, and my journal lie in front of the collaborations. Beneath them is the 1948 edition of the Classics Illustrated Arabian Nights, the comic book that opened my way out of dark cave after cave after cave; below lie more photos of my beloved dead.
A gray pyramidal rock with a black dot in one side, and a Northwest Raven medallion hold the Tibetan book open. Today’s reading from Sogyal Rinpoche: Why, if we are as pragmatic as we claim, don’t we begin to ask ourseles seriously: where does our real future lie?
There is more on the dresser: a baby spoon engraved with Mary, a broken heart-shaped dish my mom gave me, a lace agate shaped exactly like a woman’s yoni , a tape of chanting by the Gaden Shatse monks, a photo of beloved Harold (who was eaten by a coyote eight months ago). There is the wristwatch that stopped on 9/11/01. There is the grooved rock in which I put a chunk of cookie for Mahakala when I ask his help in ripping out my hard heart.
Mr. Toad from Wind in the Willows sits on top of the mirror. He wears a red-striped frock coat, blue pants and a blue bow tie. My velvet prayer beads bag hangs below him. It contains the string of twenty bone beads on which I count my morning prayers: for the furthering of all sentient beings and the protection of earth, air and water.
I murmur the prayer as Bean mounts his ninth assault on the dresser. He tries to capture Toad. I go toward the dresser. Bean leaps off. As soon as I settle back to my prayers, he leaps in my lap and grabs the beads.
We both hang on. In that instant, I imagine a temple altar. The monks or priestesses or rabbis or imams responsible for the altar believe that in order for the Holy to be present, the sacred objects must be placed and aligned with precision. The work of tidying and arranging the altar has just been finished. All is ready.
A mouse races across the shining tiles of the temple floor. One of the temple cats is within paw’s reach. The mouse scurries up on the altar. The cat follows.
********
What Falls Into the Absences
---for M.
The only sure antidote to oblivion is the creation. So I loop my sentences around the trunks of maples, hook them into the parched soil, anchor them to rock, to moon and stars, wrap them tenderly around the ankles of those I love. From down in the pit, I give a tug, to make sure my rope of words is hooked onto the world, and then up I climb.
--- Scott Russell Sanders, Staying Put
The Invisible guitar
Fullerton train station
guy playing guitar
with right hand
withered left hand
from very visible was
playing to a
chair covered seat
and a bench
covered blanket
Invisible audiences
listening to a distant
guitar...
6/1/02
had been written on the back of a Vanity Fair subscription card tucked into a copy of Delicate, a collection of short stories I wrote in the early Nineties.
Delicate was inscribed:
Rosie
I “met” this
woman thru NPR radio
She writes about real
women on real journeys.
Enjoy - Janet
2001
There was also a 3X5 file card in the pages. On it was written todolopuedo.ina.nel Password EBIZ I googled todolopuedo.ina.nel It does not exist.
A few days later, I walk east across the desert. The setting sun dusts the creosote with gold. Shadows are gray, then purple, then indigo. A jack-rabbit startles out of a tangle of downed Joshua branches. I follow my footprints from the day before. They carry me past the white couch that is settling back into the earth and the backless shelves my son and I left next to the couch. Each day I put something on the second shelf that I am ready to lose. Once it was how I scare myself, another time it was imagining I have a damaged brain---there is a theme here.
My footprints disappear from the road and curve through more creosote and Joshuas and groves of yucca. I follow. I stop at a yucca which has split into three equal sections. I press my hands against each section, then link the broken pieces with my splayed fingers. I have no idea why I do this. It just seems right.
I reach the old Joshua Buddha just as the light goes rose-gold. I bend down to the stump that is also the form of a seated Buddha. I lean my head against it and I say, “I’m back.” I touch the tiny white spine tucked into the bark of the fallen trunk and sit next to the delicate bones. I plant my feet in the sand. There are dark mountain ranges in the northeast and perhaps a mile away, the county land-fill.
Gate gate paragate. Gone gone gone to the other side
I remember my most recent talk with M. We spoke of aging. We spoke of loss. We spoke of what has fallen away---and what hasn’t. I told him that I no longer was able to destroy myself. I told him I came to that inability not by my own choice.
“I don’t know why I had to give up what I loved so much,” I said to M. “There are layers and layers of emptiness in me now . It’s not time to fill them...if they can ever be filled.”
The sand is no longer pale gold. The shadows fade. I drink what’s left of the water in my bottle, touch the Joshua Buddha stump and head home.
I’m a few minutes away from the light that burns outside my cabin door when I see a sheet of paper caught in a clump of dried grass. There is writing on it. I pick it up and carry it home.
I wait till after dinner to read it. The words are carefully printed in a child’s hand on lined paper.
12/11/07
Dear Isaaih,
I hope you have a merry christmas and may all your wishes come true. Thank you for playing games with me.
When we play monopoly we have fun. Monopoly is one of favorite game. Hve you ever played monopoly video game. It’s fun, isn’t it.
When I grow up I will keep you in my hart. When both of us grown up we can both hang out.
Love, Angela
********
A Murder
When you pass through the fire
you pass through humble
You pass through a maze of self doubt
When you pass through humble
the lights can blind you
Some people never figure that out
You pass through arrogance you pass through hurt
You pass through an ever present past
and it's best not to wait for luck to save you
Pass through the fire to the light...
---Lou Reed
Magic and Loss
Rain for three days. Heart-shredder wind. This morning dawn is soft and clear. A winged shadow moves up the tangle of Joshua branches. A raven follows. The bird drops to the top branch. She, he, it, shakes out a wing. The breast feathers ruffle in what is left of the banshee wind.
Dawn reflects off the shining black beak---or a crumb of corn chip from the handful I scattered last night for the resdent coyote. More ravens soar and dive above the dirt road to the west. One, two, a dozen, a murder of them.
The raven at the top of the Joshua Tree watches, lifts and takes off. The shadow follows and is gone.
In the last week, I have found myself beginning to drift from the path I have been making. Imagine you could step by step move to the side of a trail of your own footsteps, a trail that is not easy, but a trail that carries you in and out of beauty, in and out of fear, in and out of wonder. Imagine that you imagine something glowing a little off the trail, something that you know might draw you toward damage, not of the material, but of the spirit. Imagine that you imagine that the damage might be worth standing in the glow...and maybe this time that sweet light would never fade. Imagine you take one step in that direction, then another.
As you pass through the fire
your right hand waving
there are things you have to throw out
That caustic dread inside your head
will never help you out
You have to be very strong
' cause you'll start from zero
over and over again
And as the smoke clears
there's an all consuming fire
lying straight ahead...
I called trusted friends. “It’s happening again. He is so like the one before. Where did he come from? I didn’t ask for this.” I wanted to be amazed. I wanted to be better than the rules. I wanted to believe that Something that most resembles a huge raven or a desert twilight or the bark of a dead Joshua Tree has given me a second chance at Big Love.
My friends reminded me that in one crucial area, “he” is so like the one before---he is not free. I wanted to smack my trusted friends. I wanted to smack my own trusted knowledge.
They say no one person can do it all
but you want to in your head
But you can't be Shakespeare
and you can’t be Joyce
so what is left instead
You're stuck with yourself
and a rage that can hurt you
You have to start at the beginning again
And just this moment
This wonderful fire started up again
I ran my sales pitch. “But, he is this and this and this...and I felt as though we had known each other for centuries and he feels the same way and and and...” My most long-time friend listened. “Yeah,” he said. “It is such a good drug.”
I didn’t smack him. I felt how stale my words were. There was something about my long-time friend’s perfect responses and how we laughed that pulled the pin on the potentially rhinestone-encrusted (little Zappa there)grenade.
I slept with nothing but the banshee wind. When I woke, I was grateful for my long-time friend. We had always referred to our drugs as toys. One time, one of us had lost a bundle on the slots. “The toy is broken,” we said. This morning I wrote him: “I/you can always try to fix the toy or get another one. But when the toyness goes out of the toy and I know that another toy might be fun the first time I play with it, even the second or third time, but ultimately the toyness will go out of the new toy---then, the gig is up.”
When you pass through humble
when you pass through sickly
When you pass through
I'm better than you all
When you pass through
anger and self deprecation
and have the strength to acknowledge it all
When the past makes you laugh
and you can savor the magic
that let you survive your own war
You find that that fire is passion
and there's a door up ahead not a wall...
I wrote my friend: I feel grouchy and gray this morning. I read the newspaper. The comics and the pop horoscopes. The important stuff. One of my horoscopes says: ‘Knowing when you have had enough might be important. Think carefully about a decision that could impact your daily life. What you feel could possibly be wrong. Give yourself the gift of time.’
And a second horoscope: ‘Your artistic mind is keen, your creativity set to fire off at any moment. You are in the right place with the right tools to enable you to capture the kind of fleeting moment that you wish could last forever.’
And I had already had---before I read the horoscopes and wrote you---a fleeting moment I wished could last forever Here it is:
A Murder
Rain for three days. Heart-shredder wind. The early sun this morning is soft and clear. A shadow moves up the tangle of Joshua branches. A raven follows...
As you pass through fire as you pass through fire
try to remember its name
When you pass through fire licking at your lips
you cannot remain the same
And if the building' s burning
move towards that door
but don't put the flames out
There's a bit of magic in everything
and then some loss to even things out.
********
Lightning Glass
I began to see that, when it comes right down to it, we are nothing until that nothing becomes so dedicated that it is like a vessel through which good things can move, an instrument for receiving knowledge and sharing it with others who might be in need.
---Bear Heart, with Molly Larkin
Bear Heart
Eighteen years ago, three trucks drove up the dirt snake of the Moqui Dugway. The road rises 1100 feet on a 10% grade. The ascent can take your breath.
The first time I had driven it alone. It was 1982, I was forty-two and it was the first time I had spent longer than three days alone. A new friend had given me directions. You approach from the south and drive across flat desert toward what seems to be an impenetrable cliff face. Keep going. I followed his instructions. Suddenly the road curved east and I had no choice but to go up hair-pin turns, cliff-face on one side, drop-offs on the other. I remember keeping my foot steady on the accelerator of the rental car and thinking, “If I can do this, I can learn to do anything.”
Eight years later I was passenger in the lead truck. I was not alone. We were perhaps a dozen women and men and we were friends, lovers and strangers. Our trucks were loaded with river gear. We were headed for a trip on the San Juan River.
We topped out and headed West. As abruptly as any human change of heart, thunderheads moved in. There was no rain. The man I now think of as Dead Bill---no longer with rancor, but with affection---drove. I sat in the passenger seat and opened his beers for him.
Lightning slammed down into the pinon-juniper a few miles ahead of us. A thread of smoke rose. By the time we came to the strike, there were no flames. Only smoke rose from the little juniper. Some of us jumped out of our trucks, walked to the juniper and began to pile sand around its charred base. We waited till there seemed to be no more smoke. A soft rain – the Dine call it Female Rain began to fall. We climbed back in the trucks and went on.
It would be years before I would learn that sometimes a lightning strike in the desert makes glass. By the time I looked into a desert museum display case, saw a non-descript chunk of jagged glass labeled fulgurite and found it far more beautiful than the slab of emerald and cream malachite to its right and the wine-red chunk of garnet to its left, I was no longer the woman who had piled sand around the base of a smoking juniper. Had that woman known that there was lightning glass, she would not have asked the group to wait while she searched the ground for a glittering shard. She would have deferred instead to her lover, to his need to get back on the road and to his beer.
She is gone. He is gone. The group is gone, not so much dispersed by lightning, but drifted away on currents of alcohol, pot, betrayal and lies. The woman would herself disappear for five years, carried deep into loneliness by her own addictions and lies.
She would once have said that the disappearances were nothing but loss, and that our behaviors were cruel and tragic. Now, I understand the nature of juniper, lightning, smoke and glass. I see that addiction, lies and betrayal may be no less alchemical than the action of unearthly heat and sand. Now, my favorite chain of words has become: I don’t know.
I don’t know has transformed me from a woman who once would have googled lightning glass and ordered a piece from an on-line store, to a woman who walks the abundant Mojave, under skies from which lightning rarely descends, her eyes often on the ground, hunting for a glint of nondescript glass, knowing she may never find it.
I don’t know moves these words out of what sometimes feels like nothing, a nothing that is both frightening and welcome. I am a vessel formed by dedication, a vessel made from lightning glass.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
I am the Rabbit
Forty years and 2500 miles ago, I hauled myself and my three kids free from Welfare when I found work in a nursing home in New York state.
Recently I learned I didn't get a job in the little Mojave Desert town where I live. I had already applied for everything else that was available. At sixty-eight, I found myself hauling my tanking credit cards and drained savings back to welfare.
I am not alone in any of this. This fierce stretch of rural California may be a microcosm of unemployment, mortgage foreclosures, and inflated gas prices. My neighbors are lower middle-class, working-class, working poor
-– AND unemployed in all three categories.
The rich don’t retire here. Cobalt mountains cradle our soft desert twilights. But triple digit temperatures and double digit winds don’t make for Nouveau West cachet.
My neighbors and I swap stories at the gas pump … the jack of all trades in the beat-up El Camino who tells me gas prices have cut his wages in half. The woman who glares at the pump and says, “I’m supposed to be thrilled to pay THIS per gallon. They play with us like mean dogs with a rabbit.”
My neighbors do more than grouse. The grocery clerk, the folks in the Social Security waiting room, the receptionists at the Welfare office … the people of this gorgeous battered place simply ask each other, “What do you need?”
It sounds to me like a blessing, but I wonder why they say it. They have the right to glare at the old guy stalling the check-out line when they’re trying to make minimum wage cover a week of groceries. But they don't.
My guess is that a day at 109-degrees cooks the arrogance out of everybody. A 45 mile an hour scorching wind knocks the starch out of any stuffed shirt.
But more than anything, I suspect, it’s because we all know we are the rabbits. And we don’t want to be mistaken for the mean dogs.
Contact Mary: bstarr67@gmail.com
Recently I learned I didn't get a job in the little Mojave Desert town where I live. I had already applied for everything else that was available. At sixty-eight, I found myself hauling my tanking credit cards and drained savings back to welfare.
I am not alone in any of this. This fierce stretch of rural California may be a microcosm of unemployment, mortgage foreclosures, and inflated gas prices. My neighbors are lower middle-class, working-class, working poor
-– AND unemployed in all three categories.
The rich don’t retire here. Cobalt mountains cradle our soft desert twilights. But triple digit temperatures and double digit winds don’t make for Nouveau West cachet.
My neighbors and I swap stories at the gas pump … the jack of all trades in the beat-up El Camino who tells me gas prices have cut his wages in half. The woman who glares at the pump and says, “I’m supposed to be thrilled to pay THIS per gallon. They play with us like mean dogs with a rabbit.”
My neighbors do more than grouse. The grocery clerk, the folks in the Social Security waiting room, the receptionists at the Welfare office … the people of this gorgeous battered place simply ask each other, “What do you need?”
It sounds to me like a blessing, but I wonder why they say it. They have the right to glare at the old guy stalling the check-out line when they’re trying to make minimum wage cover a week of groceries. But they don't.
My guess is that a day at 109-degrees cooks the arrogance out of everybody. A 45 mile an hour scorching wind knocks the starch out of any stuffed shirt.
But more than anything, I suspect, it’s because we all know we are the rabbits. And we don’t want to be mistaken for the mean dogs.
Contact Mary: bstarr67@gmail.com
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