Stragglers

Posted on December 9, 2010 by Deborah

Lightening and thunder startle me and the dogs this morning just as a grey dawn breaks the day open. It’s almost winter, and the rain is torrential, the temps are in the 50’s…by 9 a.m. or so, the sky is blue and sun streaming makes the forest steamy. Huh?. . .by 1:30 pm, wind is scuffling more leaves from the sky, which has darkened again. 3:45 and it feels like dusk, dark, pitch dark by 4:30, and by 9 p.m.rain is pouring again. Huh???

Many trees and bushes are budding here in the Northwest which makes no sense given our cold spell and snow two weeks ago.

The hope for returning salmon is fading. It’s probably too late in the season to see them now, when we haven’t yet, but passion keeps us slogging out there anyway. But for the one carcass we found early in the Fall, we’ve seen nothing to suggest that our creek has returning fish.

The creek today is exciting, fish or not. We had a lot of rain last night and the creek is higher than we’ve seen it. I say to Eleanor, “It’s such a shame the fish aren’t here to enjoy the creek when it’s so full. Can’t you just imagine them? They wouldn’t even scrape bottom.”

New rivulets, a new small pond or two, water streaming from under banks where it’s never streamed before, a thread thin sluice turned into a full-on waterfall – raging even though it’s only a foot high – the water flows and surges, gurgles and growls in ways we haven’t seen or heard before. Everything is altered and it’s exhilarating.

At one of the crossing points, we recognize that the water might be higher than our knee high boots. Usually it’s ankle deep. I find a stout stick and poke it in, finding bottom with a bit of difficulty as the current tries to drag the stick downstream. Water level is several inches higher than our boot tops so we find another way to go.

Seeing no sign of salmon, we arrive at the end of our 1000 foot reach. The culvert sluices water in a raging torrent which eddies and swirls and fills the pond to the brim.

What had been a squeezed and nearly dry exiting passage for the pond is now a many water-falled span of rock and wood debris. Wondrous. Can you see the brown ribbon of water cascading out of the culvert in the background? That’s where we’re heading.

As I stand near the culvert, gazing back at the pond, the corner of my eye is shocked by perception. A dark, oblong shape has just leapt UP the waterfall. NO WAY. I doubt myself – all of this happening in a second…doubting mind thinks it must have been a leaf, but rational mind says, “That couldn’t be. It was falling UP.”  Sit down and watch is my immediate instinct and I shout over to Eleanor. We agree to give it ten minutes. We get so entranced by what we witness that when I ask how many minutes have gone by, she reports, “ Sixteen.” ( I may be making that number up, you understand. )

“Oh, I’m not ready to leave, are you?”

“No. Let’s give it another ten.”

“Well, maybe we should make it a nice even number, not 26 minutes but 25. How’s that?”

Doesn’t even matter who said what, does it?

So we watch and count. Total of 18 fish in 25 minutes. We realize that we might be recounting some but I see only one fish sluice back down the waterfall, so most seem to be making it as they leap airborne into the culvert’s mouth. The little silvery one I captured in the photo below is on the top edge of the water toward the bottom of the falls still immersed in his/her watery domain.

Three quarters are about six inches long and most are black in appearance. But a few shimmer  quintessentially silver. Four fish hit the culvert and belly flop into the foam, leaving the imprint of their body, like the outline of a dead person on a sidewalk, but lasting for just a moment. If you look closely at the photo below, you’ll see on the left a wee dark shape near the bottom of the culvert. Droplets appear to be falling into the shape. That’s where the fish flopped on its side…

A few fish are closer to 8” or 9”. One rivets me – 11 to 12’ long and nearly 3” in the mid-section and clearly marked with dark above and light below. Who is that???

Mysteries and Marvel: who and what and how many lie below the surface or hide in cracks and crannies? We puzzle over not noticing any fish during our walk along the stream. Did we miss seeing their parade along the creek because our perceptions aren’t keen enough? Or did we simply miss the parade?

Postscript: I leave today for a four day weekend, the last of the sessions for the Living Myth, Living World course, last written about under the titles relating to Trickery – see posts during the week of Nov 11 – 19. I probably won’t be able to post and may not get any place holders scheduled before leaving. Housework and packing and a meeting take precedence.

Don’t forget me in the meantime because I will be back!

Posted in mystery, wonder | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Surprise

Posted on December 8, 2010 by Deborah

Oh my I have missed writing for you, missed imagining that you are reading my words and resonating – like harp strings across this globe.

I have been deflected. I guess that’s obvious.

And I’m thrilled by the reason I’ve lost my writing ways.

I heard back from an art gallery that I had applied to in March…I’d forgotten all about it since I had not heard back from them. Out of the blue ( where did that expression come from? ), the chair of the membership committee contacted me in October to tell me they’d found my application and were interested in me and my work. But again there was a long wait for an interview to be set up. Finally, that appointment was made, the day and time arrived and I showed them samples of my art. That was nine days ago.

The chair told me she’d call that same evening. She didn’t. But along about 10 pm I checked my email one more time. I was accepted.

I danced around grinning and shouting with glee to the consternation of my two dogs who’d been peacefully sleeping. It’s been years since I’ve been a member of an art gallery, I’ve hardly painted since I moved in September 2009, and I was nearly overcome with delirious, delicious joy. A reason to paint, a reason to paint…

HOWEVER, the next morning, I was shocked to learn that they expected me to hang my first exhibit yesterday. Glory be! I never dreamt my participation would be immediate.

I didn’t even know what images I still had since they’d been packed away and stuck in random spots, many of them wrapped in shrink wrap, sheets or pillow cases for protection. I hadn’t thought to keep a written inventory. So I had to dismantle closets and the filing slots under my two art tables, turning my bedroom into a maelstrom of bits and pieces, dust and clutter.

Made the dogs nervous. They probably thought we were moving again.

I spent much of this last week in two pursuits – rounding up my old work, cleaning glass, refurbishing frames, making new business cards, printing note cards, “rebagging” and repricing my prints, redoing the accompanying text, collaging my art work onto handcrafted journals from my favorite supplier, pricing treasure boxes made from my imagery, the list goes on.

That’s one pursuit!

The other was actually painting. I only had one new image so I had to get to work. Such a joy to be back at the table. I began two new images. The one I finished now hangs on the featured artists’ wall at the gallery. Experimental mixed media, I painted watercolor first and then collaged bits and pieces of Japanese origami paper, adding a tiny bit of oil pastel for highlights on the raven. All of that is applied to a board painted with bright white, slick clay surface. First time, I’ve tried this product and I like it. The pigment slithers and slides and lifts so I can play in ways impossible on paper. Check out the company called Ampersand and their clay board.

Here’s the image, titled “Waiting for the Future.” The whole family of Corvids entrance me. They’re ubiquitous, urban survivors and happily populate the skies of our minds.

You can get a feel for the gallery by visiting them on the web. I look forward to seeing my face there!

I want you to know that writing this blog has become a meaningful part of my life.  This simple act of stringing words together on a screen seems significant in ways beyond measuring, so I don’t intend to let it go just because I’m painting again. I may be a bit more sporadic, but this new art affiliation may lead us in even more abundantly creative directions.

Here’s to possibilities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in mystery, wonder | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Taking a Break

Posted on November 26, 2010 by Deborah

Ten years ago, Emma Restall Orr wrote a very readable book called: Ritual – A Guide to Life, Love and Inspiration.  “ Ritual is the fine art of taking a break,” she says on page 4.

My family and I experience that kind of ritual yesterday, the grand day of giving thanks in all our various ways here in North America. For many the break is hunkering down before the TV to watch not one but many football ( American football, not soccer) games. For some it is the fine art of planning the attack for grabbing the best sales tomorrow. Discussions rage about whether to camp out in front of the favorite “big box store” which opens at 3 a.m., literally 3 a.m., or sleep at home and get up at 4:30 a.m. for the more conservative 5:00 a.m. opening elsewhere. In the past, customers have been literally trampled to death on this biggest shopping day of the year. For the last few years, this day has been called Black Friday.

Members of my family do not discuss shopping plans, but members of my family do make jokes about the people in other families who spend time planning their merchandising attack.

Back in the day when more of the extended family lived nearby and others visited from far away, our clan was larger. Yesterday we number only ten – about half. Four of those are kids, between nine and two. Fortuitous, this small group, because we end up having to squeeze into my wee cottage in the wood. The power outage, an empty propane tank, and an extensive home remodel, make it impossible for either of the two other families with larger homes to host.

In a way, the whole day feels like a ritual. My daughter in law comes over early with her two little boys. Their home is freezing without the furnace working. The wood stove is going at my place, the kitchen is warm because I’ve already baked the creamed onions and the corn pudding. She gets the turkey prepared, the oven reheats, the stuffing with fresh herbs is tossed with melted butter and onion and sausage. My two dogs lie nearby sharply watching every move. We wash dishes, find bowls, wipe dust off glasses. My daughter arrives with her two daughters, a sack of potatoes, fresh thyme and parsley, more butter. I get the real pumpkin pie filling ready – real because back in October the girls and I chose the pumpkin from the farmer’s field around the corner, roasted it, smashed it, added spices and sugar, then froze it to wait for today. Ahhhh yes. I haven’t done that in years and years, maybe, to be honest, NEVER.

The little boys are playing with the marbles and beach glass from the bowl by the wood stove…pushing them through the wicker seat of the old heirloom kid’s chair with which I grew up. The girls are in my bedroom art studio painting watercolors. The boys get out my steel drum and hammer away. The five year old pirouettes while singing her own version of the nutcracker.

The two Dads and brother-in-law show up. The one without heat and hot water at home heads for my hot shower. The other two bring out the beer and turn on the TV while also patting the dogs and tumbling with the kids. It is mayhem and miracle. In this tiny space, we cannot all sit at the table, so some do and some don’t when the food is served.  The children, especially the girls, fly into their mounds of potato, meat and gravy. Some adult says, “Wait, we have to give thanks.”

We’ve been through this before as a family and some one else reminds us, “No, we’re ok. We’ll stop mid-meal and say our thanks individually. Remember how we did that last year at our house?” And we do remember and the memories are warm. And so we do that again. As the elder in the room, I hear all but the youngest pay homage to the gift of life, express gratitude for the hardships this week that have made us aware of our love for each other and of how glad we are to live near. I am full.

This experience may not be exactly the kind of ritual that Emma had in mind but this “fine art of taking a break” does happen once a year and I remember it as ritual, tell stories about it, make plans to ensure it will happen again.

Emma goes on to say: Pausing on this trodden path of everyday life, we give ourselves the time to see where we are walking. We delay our journey to gaze around, to contemplate, . . .to realize the extraordinary beauty and potential of the world around us…ritual reconditions our perspective. It is the practice of reminding ourselves of the value and power of living. It is that moment in which we stop and, looking around, understand that life is sacred.

We nailed it!

Posted in generations, truth | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Out of the Closet

Posted on November 24, 2010 by Deborah

What’s a blogger to do when hit by the proverbial writer’s block?

This one comes up with myriad excuses:

*Nov 18th gets used up by babysitting my grandson all morning, an afternoon of meetings and then an evening spent socializing with YES magazine folks and the sneak preview of a new movie called: Fixing the Future which aired on PBS last week.

*The 19th disappears into “beach seining,” an adventuresome volunteer research opportunity to identify the marine life near shore and relate that to the health of the waters. I’ll tell you more about that soon. I’m bushed afterward, thoughts won’t cohere, and I gather myself before the TV and drink a glass of wine.

*another day unravels as I sit at my painting table designing four new images. Bushed afterward, must sit before TV, drink wine.

*family gathering and helping out at the local winery and farmers’ market gobble up Sunday the 21st,

*and then, and then, on Monday the 22nd, the winds rise, temperatures plummet, snow falls – 3 to 4 inches fall – on temperate Bainbridge Island and the electricity goes off and stays off. No Comcast, no computer, no phone…. Hardest hit in the region, many in our county still have no power after more than two days. The inconveniences and cold, though, spark my aliveness.

Any reader worth her salt, knows this list, though true, is not the reason I didn’t blog.

What’s really at stake here is my identity!

By revealing my experience with a deeply involving ritual, I’m opening my own closet door. I don’t realize it will feel that way until after I’ve published what I do…ooooops, what now? I wonder how to redeem myself. I suddenly realize there is nothing to redeem. I am fully standing in my shoes and this is a deeply felt consequence of the ritual itself.

You know that expression: “on the one hand this and on the other hand that?”

Well, on one hand I’m an educated, well-read, articulate, friendly,  respected and respectful, elder woman not given to vulgarity or unseemly conduct. On the other hand, I’m a creative wild thing, a capable and risk-taking adventurer, playful and spontaneous, given to flights of vision and mystical communion with the other, both empowered and humbled by her engagement with an animated earth.

I sketch myself to illustrate the wholeness of me. The Two-in-Oneness of me. . .which relates to the myth we acted out in the ritual.

I realize as I am finishing the sketch, that this ME is the gift of the ritual I described to you. I am both/and, completely and utterly and so probably are YOU…We urban folk have simply forgotten our indigenous nature. No longer born into the waiting arms of babbling brook, dappled sunlight and bird song, we struggle with honoring our animal nature, our body’s rhythms and our need to connect with more than a virtual fire, waterfall or forested trail.

True ritual supports rites of passage, effects real change in our psyches and roots us in the mysterious current carrying our lives.

Our modern culture makes little room for such experiences and my New Oxford American Dictionary illustrates that. These are the only definitions of the word ritual and they surprise me with drabness:

*a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order.
*a series of actions or type of behavior regularly and invariably followed by someone.
*arising from convention or habit.

That’s it! These definitions cleave to religious institutions and institutional pomp and circumstance. In a mild sense, I can relate to the word habit. Habit describes the “mini” ritual I use when embarking on anything specifically creative. I light a candle and ask my ego to remember s/he is not in charge but simply an assistant to the bigger source that wants to come through my particular body/mind/hands. The mystery of combustion and flame makes that awareness real to me.

But habit, prescribed order, solemnity, invariability, convention, none of those descriptors approximate the ritual trickery I just experienced that honed my sense of self and connected me to the living mythos of my own life.

I will write more on this topic. I leave you for this evening, though, wishing to hear from you about the role of ritual in your own life. For instance, how will ritual wind its way into giving thanks tomorrow – tomorrow being the day in the USA called Thanksgiving? Like Christmas, Turkey Day has lost much of its meaning and for many is a ritual of habit with uncertain origins. For instance, I just learn yesterday that “they” may not have even eaten turkey, but rather venison!

Chuckle on…

Posted in truth | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

The Trickery Continued

Posted on November 17, 2010 by Deborah

The hag cracks my head open with the stone. She slices me vertically from stem to stern, splitting me in two, metaphorically speaking!

I’m liberated. Opened up. Free.

The hag says, “Go, go out into the world, but be mindful of the wobbles.”

I don’t feel the least bit wobbly. I lurch a little, to see if I can pretend to be off centered, but that’s the opposite of how I feel so I stop that and walk steadily toward the fiercesome figure who stands before me. She blocks the arbor under which I must pass to enter the ritual space. Garbed in a cloak with an animal skin draped around her shoulders, she holds a drum before her face – a drum painted with the visage of a growling bear.

I suspect I’m in trouble when she asks me something about the pain I must be feeling.

“Huh? I’m feeling no pain. I’m feeling expanded, exhilarated.”

“Go take a walk down that driveway. Return when you’ve considered your answer.”

I start to defend but change my mind and do her bidding. Amanda is heading back from the same walk, hugging her upper body tight and acknowledging me with the barest of nods. At least I’m not the only one who’s been told to take a hike.

But I am annoyed. I know we’re all playing “make-believe” here, but I want it to feel real. How do I stay true to my inner experience and still get through the arbor? As I turn to walk back, I notice that Amanda has made it into the circle. I see Jonathon heading for the mandorla. Oh good, he finally made it past the first gatekeeper. I get close to the bear again. I stand silently waiting. She says, “What is your purpose for coming here?”

“I want to introduce my drum to its drum stick.”

“Is that all?”

Mmmmmm I ponder…” I want to empower myself to play them together.”

“How will you do that?”

“I’ll, I’ll … I’ll believe in myself…….” I’m fishing here. There’s almost a question in that statement and I know the bear woman hears it.

Her voice gets growlier…”Go deeper, give me something more real than that.”

A slight tremor of deep feeling surfaces. I say with more conviction, “I’m surrendering to this process. I know I’m meant to be here, to play my drum.”

Bear woman softens a wee bit but she’s not done with me yet. She says something like “Think, think more deeply. Surrender…Surrender TO WHAT before you die?”

Her arrow finds its mark in my soul. I plummet. I surrender into acknowledging my desire to fully inhabit my own shoes before I pass out of this world. With a tremor in my voice, I tell her that.

“Ahhhhhh,” she says. “Go forward and remember the power of mouse to help you after you pass me.”

Shit, that reference to mouse almost undoes me. I’ve been mousey too much of my life and I certainly don’t want to go back to being that…Thinking she wants me to be mouselike, I crouch in order to squeeze by her. That’s as far as I’m willing to go.

I stand up and walk the remainder of the path toward the circle. Those ahead of me are already drumming their drums with big smiles on their faces. But I still have two more gatekeepers, one of them an owl, the other a man wearing a red hat . . .

***************

Entering the circle begins another chapter in this story and I won’t share that here.

Tomorrow, though, I’ll share some observations, draw some conclusions. In the meantime, I invite you to consider how this ritual might have affected you and I’d love to hear your comments.

Posted in vagaries | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Trickery Redux

Posted on November 16, 2010 by Deborah

I open the door and follow the path to the right. I’m greeted by a corpse like figure whose face is green black with ash. Though I know who it is, when he tells me he is the ghost of my dead father, I feel the enormity of actually meeting my Father face to face like this… Because I didn’t really “know” my Father until I accompanied him during his dying process many years earlier, those simple words spring tears to my eyes.

The ritual begins to take on such profound aliveness that the details and facts don’t take root in my brain. The story that follows is my imaginative re-creation.

The voice of my dead Father asks me why I am walking on this path, something about purpose. I wrack my brain for a significant answer, the “right” answer, so I can pass by this gatekeeper. Whatever my response, it is ONLY good enough to elicit another question. I stand on shaky ground and tell myself to get more real – act as if my life depends on my answers, which in a certain way is truly true. Whatever I say next is closer to the mark and after a moment of consideration, the voice asks another question. My answer creates a palpable shift between us. My dead Father nods toward goose egg sized, molten rocks sitting on a ledge next to us. “Choose one and blow your power into it.” I think he then says, “Suck the rock’s power into you,” and so with exaggerated emphasis I both exhale into and inhale from this rock held in my hands, this rock from the roiling fire at the center of the earth.

“Go,” he commands me, “Go.” His head gestures toward the mandorla.

So go, I do, carrying the rock in my left hand.

Opening the door flap of the mandorla, I’m confronted by a hag sitting on a stump…I instinctively kneel before her and with a life of its own, my left hand, open, palm up, offers the rock to her. It’s an immediate, fluid motion, instinctively driven. I’m stunned with the hag’s response. With a croaky, witchy voice, she rasps something like, “Well, look at this sweet thing who so willingly offers me the gift of her power. I will accept that gladly.”

I am encased in a shimmering bubble of surprise. It hadn’t occurred to me that I was giving away my power…Oh well.

I remain silent, wondering what next. She jabbers on, I listen. I am aware of not being aware of what she is saying – almost as if she speaks in a foreign tongue or I listen with ears not tuned to her frequency –

I am aware of not worrying about this. Instead, I am suffused with the warm trust of living this experience engaged with EAIRTH.

“Are you ready?” she asks, as she slowly and creakingly stands, raising her hands above  my head. She clutches the ancient, heavy rock I have just given her. I flash on the myth Danny had told us two nights before. Ahhhhhhh, we’re enacting that story of the grandmother splitting her grandson in two with an axe. Only when he is two-in-one can he communicate with all the world(s) around him, save his mother, honor his murdered father and kill the grinch. Ahhhhhhh.

“I am ready.”

*****

Once again, I leave you on the edge. I’m not intending to do this, but the power of this living story demands my sharing it. It requires more words than I imagined it would. Harking back to the lessons of polyphony, I don’t yet know how this set of posts will conclude, but I’m trusting there are lessons to be discovered, for both you and me. We’ll get there!

And a reminder about EAIRTH for those of you who have just found my blog. You can learn more on posts written in September, especially the one written on Sept. 11th, titled: Considering Earth.

You can also write Eairth into the search blank and click. A number of related posts will show up.

You can find additional relevant perspectives on David Abram’s website.

Posted in mystery, truth, vagaries | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

The Trickery

Posted on November 15, 2010 by Deborah

I do apologize for leaving you hanging yesterday but I want to spare you from too much reading in one sitting.

So there we are, the seven of us, finally ready to send our emissary to the third year group. She’s gone quite a long time. She takes the list, checks it twice I’m sure. When she returns, she tells us the elder group suggests a couple of changes. We should stand over THERE not HERE and make sure we’re in a nice arc. We should also thank our teachers with some kind of honoring. We probably take another half hour to decide how to do the latter and FINALLY we’re ready to get into our ritual regalia. Some of the women dress in beautiful garments. I hadn’t thought to bring ritual garb but because it was Halloween weekend, I had brought a colorful, arty-cloak that I had made years before for another purpose. I wrap that around me.

One of the guys dresses as a gal and one of the other men simply dons a red, white and blue horned Viking hat.

Strikingly the horns have led lights at the tips! Though we don’t discover that until afterward when Jonathon surreptitiously robs Danny’s remote of its batteries and turns on the horns at dinner.

We are certainly a ragtag group of contraries. But we are READY!

The emissary comes to lead us into the yurt and tells us with utter sternness to wait here until we’re called. He leaves us alone and slams the door! Ooooooops, we all look at each other and feel a tingle of excitement…We sit solemnly on the floor in a circle wondering what’s going to happen next. We vacillate between silent introspection and giggling chatter.

From far away, a disembodied male voice intones, “Send the first one out!”

Andrea says she’ll go, partly because she carries the bowl of cornmeal for sprinkling in a spiral path.

Long moments pass, and the voice intones again, “Send out the next person!”

Jonathon hops up. It seems like only seconds and he lunges back through the door. We all scream, “ What? What are you doing back here?”

He’s laughing so hard he sputters, “They wouldn’t let me pass!”

We’re all asking questions simultaneously, but we’re all asking the same thing, really. “What do you mean they wouldn’t let you pass?”

“I’m not going to tell you what they said, but they asked me a question and I guess they didn’t like my answer. I gave them what I thought they wanted, though, you know from the questions in the myth we read.”

We are all dumbfounded.

When the voice calls for the next one, Jonathon goes right back out and comes right back in.

“Oh my god, I really don’t know what they want…”

We all begin giggling and nervously jabbering. Someone wisely suggests that Jonathon let someone else go next. Make them think he’s taking this seriously and reflecting for a few moments.

Mona goes next.

She doesn’t return.

“Crap,” Jonathon explodes,”What are they looking for? This is totally wild!”

I suggest maybe it’s his shoes. I think I heard Andrea say that we need to take our shoes off. I know she and Mona had. So we all tug off our socks and shoes and grumble mightily because the ground is damp, chilly, stickery and slimy-ish with mud and gunk and we all think how terrible it will feel on our bare feet to be standing around as night falls and it gets colder and oh woe is me and sorry us…

Jonathon, barefooted, goes out again.

He quickly returns.

We put our shoes back on.

Amanda comments, “You know my heart is racing. This is really exciting.”

And it is. We are all being quickened by “the not knowing…”

Cliff heads out the door and doesn’t return.

Sonia heads out the door when the call comes again…and after what seems a long while, comes back in, confused and a little “miffed.”

Amanda goes next and doesn’t return.

With the next shout, I open the door…

Posted in mystery, truth, vagaries | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Royal Trickery Redux

Posted on November 14, 2010 by Deborah

Two weekends ago, Danny Deardorff , founder of Mythsingers, played a trick on his students of magnificent proportions. Truly Royal with a capital R.

I’m participating in a course called Living Myth, Living World which meets for five long weekends during the course of a year. Each session illuminates the season, an element, a creative process, and a topic related to our mythopoetic souls. Everything we do is in a hands-on, blood and mud kind of way as we sit in a small canvas structure called a mandorla around a fire started with flint and striker.

I have to tell you how much I love my fire kit. The flint comes from England, and my striker looks like a dragon which must make my northern European ancestors smile. The wee silver box they’re kept in has a magnifying glass embedded on the top and is a replica of those used by my pioneer, Daughters of the American Revolution, ancestors. How mythic is that? All my ancestors dwelling in one swell fire starting kit.

Kept small purposely, the group feels like family or clan. We range in age and have widely varying life experiences. Singing, crying, laughing all feed the fire. Functional creativity abounds. I’ve noticed that’s one of the things our modern culture has lost…functional objects made one by one with artfull expression in mind. Whether it’s wearing apparel or bowls from which to eat soup, most plates and coffee mugs are massed produced, often ugly and common. Though our group hasn’t worked with clay, we have used fabric, wood, paper, plaster and leather to make Crane Bags, drums, rattles, masks and both prayer and drum sticks…each item uniquely expressive of its maker. . . and inherently useful.

Rich themes evoke focused growth. In August, the theme “Stringing the Harp” took us into the bowels of a sweat lodge to explore the roots of our authenticity and then high up into the mountains on a mini-vision quest to call for the empowerment of our authority. I heard the earth calling for me, calling for my individual voice that only I carry this lifetime. I committed to making something of this blog right after that! Notice that I began blogging at Solstice nearly a year ago, but fumbled and faltered and got irrationally SHY about sharing my thoughts in this public domain.

(Recently, another blogger, Kate Shrewsday has inspired my thinking about the importance of expressing who we are and standing comfortably in our own shoes. She offers lively reminders for all of us.)

Back to Royal Trickery. The twelve of us present that weekend split into three groups for most of the daylight hours. Our separate work is to design a ritual that will make an impression on our souls. The purpose for this particular ritual is to introduce our drum to its drum stick. For the last nine months, we newbies have been playing our drums with our hands only. Which has been wonderful…I’ve learned quite a few finger tricks, and different qualities of hand “slaps”. Several of us have experimented with singing into our drum and finding where it resonates. I would not have taken the time to get to know my drum so well if I’d jumped immediately into drumming with the beater.

Our two mentors go into the house and stay out of our sight most of the day.

The three advanced students retire into the yurt, traipsing back and forth occasionally to the mandorla, checking in with us periodically. We know they are planning something.

And we also know they are meant to do our bidding…we are to give them jobs to do to make our ritual more meaningful. I suggest they need to ask us questions, three questions determined by them so it’s a surprise for us.

Painstaking hours go by as we gather ideas and map out details. An emissary from the other group asks “How soon will you be ready?”

“Another hour at least,” several say. I groan inwardly.

The attention to detail is beginning to make me want to scream. Politely I offer that we need to relax into this process and remember that events beyond our control will take over the ritual once it begins. But the micro planning and the list making continue.

An hour passes. The emissary returns. “Ready yet?” he asks hopefully.

I blurt out, “Yes,” while several others override me with, “No.”

“Well, when you are ready, send one of you to check in with us in the yurt, OK? Do not go into the mandorla. Got that?”

More planning, more details. I suggest, quite decently I thought, that we won’t remember all these specifics and that we need to trust each other…If I forget my piece, someone else will remind me.

Emissary returns. “Guys, it’s moving toward dark and rain clouds are gathering. Aren’t you ready yet?”

And here’s a trick of my own. I’m leaving you here . . .

Posted in mystery, vagaries | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Royal Trickery

Posted on November 11, 2010 by Deborah

 

 

5:30 AM and I wake to titles for posts swirling around my brain. Royal Trickery grabs me by the eyeballs and won’t let my lids close back over them. I wonder about that word, “royal.” It suggests power to me. I have just learned that a good trick, played splendidly, changes the course of lives. That’s certainly power. So royal trickery makes sense to me.

It didn’t always, though.

In the early days of serving as a psychotherapist, a colleague shocked me by suggesting that I needed to be more manipulative, more calculating with my clients. She suggested that trickery should be in my arsenal of therapeutic weapons. She says, “You might call it “manipulation”, Deb, but sometimes you have to trick people in order to get their attention.”

“Hogwash” I say.

“No way,” say I with true blue, straight arrow, goody-two-shoes conviction.

“Never,” say I again to make sure my stance is absolute.

I change my mind as years of experience flow under my feet.

Far away from home only last weekend, I miss a ferry and have two hours to wait for the next one. I whip out my seldom used cell phone and call my daughter. My granddaughter answers.

“Oh, good, Gemma, you called right back,” she says.

“I did?”

“Yeah. Aren’t you calling because you got our message? We called you only a minute ago.”

Don’t you love it when stuff like that happens?

“No, Pol, I didn’t know you called. This is soooooo cooool that we knew it was time to talk. But why did you call?

“ I have a friend who wants to commit suicide,” she says mincing no words. “Mom, suggested I call you.”

“What?” I almost shout into the phone. I’m horrified because we’re talking about 11 year olds here.

“Yeah, she just “texted” me. Cut herself about an inch long and a half inch deep. What should I do?”

We talk about lots of options. I remember a “trick” I used to”play.” When a client said directly, “I’m thinking about killing myself” I’d reply, “Good for you!” They’d look at me like I was nuts, and then I could go on with something like: “I’m so glad you’ve finally gotten sick and tired of living how you have been.” Their horrified expression would morph to curiosity.

As if a mighty wind had blown open a long locked door, we could then walk over that threshold and examine what part of them did want to die so the rest could live more fully.

In the film Mythic Journeys, Michael Meade also describes this phenomenon. The camera approaches a large bridge while Meade tells us that everybody thinks about suicide when they’re young.

“Listen,” he says, “You’re not supposed to die. You’re old enough now that part of you needs to die so that you can have a big life. You think all of you needs to die. All we have to do is figure out which part of you needs to die and we’ll throw that off the bridge. Then you’ll cross the bridge and keep going.”

Sometimes, when we’re curled tightly and all bottled up, we need to let someone else know we’d like their help, an option the snake doesn’t have as it pulls off and wiggles out of its too tight, too dry skin.

Your stories here might help someone else, you know?

 

 

 

Posted in generations, truth | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Beyond Garlic

Posted on November 9, 2010 by Deborah

A stainless steel bowl teeters on my lap. One lip of the bowl balances against the dining room table and the other presses into my plumpish belly. The bowl slowly fills with dry papery skins and stiff, curly threads.

What am I doing?

“Popping the clove,” that’s what I’m doing. Getting the cloves ready to plant as seed before the fall rains come. This is one of the ways I’ve been getting to know garlic. Yes, garlic. I’ve always loved eating garlic, but it never occurred to me, even though I’ve been shopping in organic markets most of my life, that garlic meant more than white cloves bound in a bulb with the stem cut off, – big, bigger and biggest versions of garlic but the same kind of garlic. I never questioned those facts.

Here at Betsey Wittick’s Laughing Crow Farm on Bainbridge Island, veils of lifelong mis-information are being shredded along with the papery skins.

Betsey, who’s been farming here for more than twenty years, plants around twenty or so varieties of garlic with lyrical names describing their birthplaces or characteristics: Chesnok Red, Asian Tempest, Red Rezan, Brown Vesper, Russian Red, Georgian Fire, Rosewood, Lorz Italian or French Silverskin.

I don’t know how agri-business handles popping cloves, but here we sit around a table and chat.  Or sometimes we work in the back of a truck simply because it’s a sunny day in the midst of many rainy ones.

And it’s just old fashioned fun to raise a few eyebrows, spread good will and have fun socializing while doing repetitive work.

At the same time we work with our hands, we drink tea, beer, or wine, snack on homemade yummies, help each other lift loads or finish off a bushel, make decisions about which garlic is market worthy, which can go home with us as a thank you for our volunteer labor and talk about the winter weather predictions, global warming or not, farming practices that are working or not, possibilities for our human futures or not… conversations that touch common ground and deliver some chuckles and spice, conversations which can meander and sometimes lead to surprising epiphanies, conversations impossible to have on Twitter or Facebook.

Garlic entrances me. It demands being tended to. The full on sensual presence of handling garlic – the dirt under my nails, the smell in my nose, the rustling whispers of dried skin, the range of personalities of the different varieties, like the varying energy of various people – all these fill more than my belly appetite. Most important is the promise of tomorrow and my participation in its fulfillment. WOW!

By the by, this past weekend, a woman told me that “wow” is really God’s name. Everytime we say wow, we’re calling on God. “The loveliest thing,” she added, “is that wow spells god both forward and backward.” Sweet, huh?

I’m reading a new book by Mary Oliver, titled Swan. This morning, I found this one which sums up my devotion to garlic:

Beans Green and Yellow

In fall it is mushrooms
gathered from dampness
under the pines;
in spring
I have known
the taste of the lamb
full of milk
and spring grass;
today
it is beans green and yellow
and lettuce and basil
from my friends’garden-
how calmly,
as though it were an ordinary thing,
we eat the blessed earth.

Posted in generations | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments