Rite of passage

Rites of passage are an integral part of life. Usually they are celebrated at birth, at puberty, marking man- and womanhood and finding one's place and task in society, when marrying and at the end of one’s path. In communities where initiations are the rule (like Hopi or masonry) these rites are executed upon acceptance into the fold of the priesthood or brotherhood and when raised to a higher station. Often in these rites the past has to be revisited and some archeology of the soul has to be done, digging to the core of self. Having left the old behind, the new insight and knowledge opens new trails to explore.
So too on this New Years Eve, a secular rite of passage from old to new - from darkness to light one may hope - is organized world wide. With the change of calendars come the long lists of highpoints (mostly low points) of the last year on radio and TV. The world is still in bad shape. We need to clean up the mess we made, the dirty tracks we left after stepping in a puddle.
For that there is a hazy, hard transition time - four, five weeks. Having finished up the old chores, the empowering new light and horizons fill us with the plans to work on, enjoying the fact that we cleared the rubble of the past, so the road ahead is vibrant, free and unencumbered. That is my wish for every New Year’s Child. Love and light to all.

Small town

A mishap in a small community affects all members. The shock and fear felt by the victim, becomes the fear of a group. Gossip and theories sprout on porches and at night the doors are locked for a few days and the dogs called in. Suspicion circles and nobody talks to the sheriff.
Grief too affects all members. In town four people died since September. In a big and bustling city only family and friends, coworkers and neighbors would notice. These people would end up being statistics to the not involved. Not so here. I know all four, am aware of snippets of their lives, their dependencies, their sexual preference, their warmth or cold, the color of their hair and the color they changed to. They are not personal friends, but part of the woof and weft of what holds this group of people afloat, yet I too realize that the town has become poorer, lost character, lost togetherness, lost fun in the bar. Of course there are new people in town, who came for the special atmosphere, the specific sense of place. However, with each ‘old timer’ who disappears, the specific cohesion or discord that they created vanishes. So a part of the town dies with them. Strangely here where nothing ever changes, but where one cycle resolves the next, change is most noticeable. Looking around, I wonder who are the new characters, the new eccentrics, the new rich, the down and out. Is it the lady, who casts some of her spells at the graveyard and who noticed that six angels had been beheaded… Is it the Saturday noon actor whose pride and joy is his 1964 Harley… Is it a friend following a dream? The town will be maybe less quaint, cleaner, with just a few pockets of past but change may bring healing, a new sense of community and a new burst of creativity ad joy.

Arrivals

Travel holds its uncertainties and surprises. That is almost a reason to trade venues, to seek the road and learn what you are made of.
Then there is the arrival; meeting, loosing, missing people; kindness and people who’ll never know how to be kind; stories of breakups and break-ins.
Then there is the storm, internet but no electricity.

Stepping out the door, a coyote morning song greets the day. The sky is clad in grey, lead and blackish clouds. Two ravens silently perch up high and observe as a light morning veil hushes the world. The rest is earth in all her muted tones. The shrubs and trees are but line and form, etched it seems against the subtleties of light. A quietness lays over the land, the stillness, of the last breath before the storm.

Then it rattles and rages. The northern wind takes it’s time, plays on the roof, steals the heat from the house. The drapes move, the beams groan. The tin roof drums a beat of wild chaos. Doors are blown open. No lock can keep this breath of life from reaching you and then the storm breaks, plays out, plunges the town in a cold darkness. When the light breaks through, seeps through the clouds, I embrace the day.

On the road again

Nomads usually walk in groups following their flock and carrying their wealth upon their person, as seen in the beautiful Bedouin jewelry. A vertical trek is transhumance, the seasonal long walk begins when the weather turns and the grazing grounds are empty, near overgrazing, near desertification, but if left alone for a while these lands will grow back into the abundance of nourishment. This defines the moment when the place of departure is revisited.
So it is also for the lone nomad. After a while a place can no longer provide sustenance and for fear of never again feeling full and at ease in that place, the nomad moves to another transient home. There is no escapism in the seasonal or cyclical wandering which is no tourism. More time needs to be spend than just a short get away break. Nomadism is a way of being. Sometimes, sadly one isn’t there when needed for friends and family. People can’t keep track of where one is, so there is also some loneliness. But with the best part of your life, time and place doesn’t matter too much. All-important people become arrivals with embraces and always sad goodbyes.
I too shall be on the road again taking my flock of two dogs with me and carrying my wealth as a laptop. From a bustling city I am going to a monochromatic desert. I’ll post again when I have a connection.

We live in violent times...

The first bombers flying their deadly charge over to Iraq for their presumed precision strikes passed over my garden. This is what I felt:

Vigil

How many candles did I not burn for you
for peace
The engines on the flight path
of evil
boom
in the corners of the room
cramp the heart
In the silence of the house
I learn the language
of a new general
with a word in mind
for death of every kind

Love and hope
are lost in smoke

I felt disempowered by the loss of so many lives. I felt horror at the dismembered children. I couldn’t believe my eyes when the soldiers allowed the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad, part of the earliest cultural heritage of mankind being carried away to be destroyed or sold to private collectors. The same feelings I have every time a species disappears, be it a plant short lived or 1600 years old or an insect, bird, fish or mammal… every time a part of our collective memory disappears. “Destroying species is like tearing pages out of an unread book, written in a language humans hardly know how to read, about the place where they live.” wrote Holmes Rolston III, professor of philosophy (1932- ). Landscapes and biodiversity are dying, being destroyed at an unprecedented rate, just as the cultures and livelihoods of indigenous peoples are being eradicated. Their fundamental human right to live as they choose or have to because of their tradition and the place they live, and our fundamental human right to try and live as far away as possible from the dollar economy is trampled. The unalienable rights of all are still just the rights of a few. Human rights are meant to empower, not the privileged often rich and heavily polluting but the voiceless who have to fight daily for the integrity of their body and mind and spirit.

What can I do, a woman, a daughter and mother, a sister, a friend? I can mourn. I can bear witness about the threat not only of one overheated loud heckler, but also to the violence done to all and all our relations. We must remember and remind, speak out, write. We can’t be standing at the sideline and be impartial. We must remember Wounded Knee, the Trail of Tears, the Long Walk, Dachau, Darfur, Chenchnya, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dresden. We can’t forget the The Rainbow Warrior destroyed in the harbor. We should honor the Old Growth trees and those who risked all to protect them, felled for profit and left to rot in the clearcut… Don’t forget all lives in all that is. You are the universe and the plants are our relations, the water our sister or brother, the animals and the earth are part of you, are you being part of the universe. So what you think, what your culture thinks, becomes universal and no religion or cosmology is better than another. They are all tales to show a way of living well within a given place and time. Our age requires rules to be caring and non-violent, giving each man and each women and child their dignity as citizens. You have all the right to ask questions. Do think and question. Ask hard and difficult questions and try to be aware of the perversions of the language of power, a language, which in itself constitutes a violation of our mind and is in itself violent. The state owns or pretends to own the right to violence. It are the United States of America who have and use Weapons of Mass Destruction, it are the United States of America who launched a preemptive strike against perceived enemies or fabricated enemies and violated the international laws invading Iraq. Violence is also imposing the death penalty on thirteen-year-old children, on men and women and pretending to be pro-life. Violence is also the market economy, with its superfluous ugly, shoddy plastic consumer goods. Violence is also materialism barely hidden under a veneer of religion in which a god speaks directly to the ‘leader’ at the exclusion of all others. Massculture and monoculture are both an overexploitation of human and natural resources, driven by the unholy opposition of nationalism versus universalism, imposing our values and obliging others to produce what we need.

We are a small group and we walk in the margins of the big news stories. Yet we are many small groups working, writing and walking in many margins. Daily we are in the now of life and connectedness, longing for a just world with freedom, health, education, a decent livelihood, respect and caring for all and sometimes we are touched by love and light.

May there be peace on earth.

Lies

Wishes, lies and dreams is a wonderful book helping children to love and write poetry. Poetic license can be a fine and appropriate tool to foster fantasy and creativity. The use of conscious lies gives the freedom to think and imagine just any wild or far fetched idea. The next step is storytelling. Factual, true stories are often embellished because 'an interesting lie is better than a boring truth'. These raconteurs do not really fable their own lives, do not necessarily aggrandize their feats, but they polish the telling for laugh or wonderment, to grab and hold your attention.
Life, however, would be a bit more problematic with a habitual Pinocchio, lying about minute details, about things they said they would do, did and then pretended not to have done, about money, about just anything. They often think themselves smart, streetwise or apt in the art of manipulation. Of course most people do realize the other is at it again. This may make them feel ill at ease, slightly annoyed. The one who lies, looses respect and incredibility.
Obviously the worst lies are state lies, presidential lies, ministerial lies. The world was lied into the war in Iraq by Bush and Cheney. The world was lied to by Putin about Chechnya. No freedom of coverage from Chechnya is possible to date. Anna Politkovskaya tried to expose the lies and got shot for writing. Many writers are imprisoned because they hold beliefs not in line with their government. Many journalist get killed for telling the truth. There will be a worldwide action on March 20, 2007: The Second Anniversary of the Political Lie.

Impending

35 years the ugly green carpet had gathered dust and dirt and grime. She hated it, just as the seven clocks he had put in the living room and the four TV’s blaring, glaring each a different game. A concession to her would be to turn off the noise. Guns and newspapers,stuff everywhere, not a nail, a bolt or a screw got ever thrown away. He had hoarded all his life till now he hoarded in his body the malignant cells of anger and overbearing harshness toward her. She was old and frail and her heart worn.

Never had she cooked what she liked,invited the children she preferred. He would buy and buy. 14 flyswatters lay around the house.

Of course she took care of him when the pain became excruciating. Gave him medication, fussed and wept for the impending loss. Was he afraid? He never spoke of it. The tyrant of years in him went on commanding, demanding, putting her down if she, with broken bones that were mending, was not fast enough. Four deep freezers he kept filled in every chamber of his heart. He was a hard and unattractive man. Since when. What had made him so.

When she could cope no longer with his care, the guilt teared her eyes, tore at her heart. Yet when it became evident he would not return home, she removed his chair from the dining table and drove her house wheelchair to that spot. “I should always have sat here. I can see the door, I can pick up the phone, I can look outside and watch the deer when they are drinking or feeding, or the quail with their covey of chicks.” It was indeed the best spot that had viciously been denied to her. She remembered some good times and forgave him. She remembered the bad times and removed the desk that had been in the way for her wheelchair for years now.

She spend almost all her time in the nursing home where he tried to run away, threw the food to the ground, shouted and screamed to go to his rightful place near her. He was angry for his pain, but signed the papers put before him. She planned what she would do after this was over, after the passing that was to come and the terrible immanence of freedom.

She buried him, tore out the carpet, put in clean, clear tile, sold the junkyard and three of the TV’s, got rid of two freezers,maybe three and of all the clocks. Nobody was going to bind her to his time again.

Hammers, tractors, drills, boats, saws, backhoes, years of newspapers and magazines, she made it go. The auction took a day and a half. Others like him buying, collecting, hoarding as a remedy against what? When she had purged herself from him, she painted the house slate gray with bright and cheery trim, shut of the wells and put in city water so that she need not pump and bend.

With courage Angela turned 77 and took her place as the mistress of her house and switched from Pepsi to Coca Cola.