I wanted to fly, to be brilliant and brave.
So I drank the full moon instead,
and all the stars around it,
In the black, black and black of the sky.
In went the shimmering winds,
And the scatter of white plumeria.
I swallowed it down, the whole of it,
even the neighbor’s nuisance dog.
I was desperate and sad with all that yearning
I couldn’t stop it, not even there.
I took it all in, every leaf, sigh and shiver.
There was nothing that could be done
For all that ragged churning.
It went down so easy, all of it,
I started thinking I wanted more.
But not even this had stopped the punch
Where the heart of my heart was leaking.
I was back where I started, at the end of it.
The moon laughed from the sky with the stars.
The winds scattered the white-faced plumeria,
And the neighbor’s dog barked even more.
I still wanted a drink so bad.
All my words gathered to meet me,
What I’d thought or done
Made a place for me by the water.
It was the longest night of the world.
For Pam Uschuk
c Joy Harjo June 21, 2005 Honolulu
6/22/05
Benediction, draft of a poem
Benediction
When darkness appears everlasting
And we have set up camp beneath the stars
Moved into night like an animal hibernating for a season
When we’ve become a distant memory, like the migration north from southern fires
And before the ancient canoe journey by winds ands stars
When we’ve forgotten we are caught in the weave of myth:
And no longer see Rabbit leap between joy and sadness,
Or Eagle perch and watch,
And the canoe traveling between dusk and dawn is lost in the rough waters.
When enemies destroy us; and we give birth and grow nations
Beneath the dark mouth of the upper world
When raw loneliness besieges us with terrible hunger
And empty pots hang over the ashes
A compassionate being climbs down once again in the dark
Bearing new fire and light in their hands.
We are fed and can see everything new again.
This is the song of beginning.
And this is the benediction of the birds at 5 AM
Because the star returns to us again
To break the hungry dark.
C Joy Harjo June 22, 2005 Honolulu
When darkness appears everlasting
And we have set up camp beneath the stars
Moved into night like an animal hibernating for a season
When we’ve become a distant memory, like the migration north from southern fires
And before the ancient canoe journey by winds ands stars
When we’ve forgotten we are caught in the weave of myth:
And no longer see Rabbit leap between joy and sadness,
Or Eagle perch and watch,
And the canoe traveling between dusk and dawn is lost in the rough waters.
When enemies destroy us; and we give birth and grow nations
Beneath the dark mouth of the upper world
When raw loneliness besieges us with terrible hunger
And empty pots hang over the ashes
A compassionate being climbs down once again in the dark
Bearing new fire and light in their hands.
We are fed and can see everything new again.
This is the song of beginning.
And this is the benediction of the birds at 5 AM
Because the star returns to us again
To break the hungry dark.
C Joy Harjo June 22, 2005 Honolulu
6/19/05
A Take on the Peruvian Saga, and Racing
Every time I scanned my flight schedule for the whole of my South American trip there was always a glitch of energy, a paling of ink at the Aero Condor flight we were scheduled to take from Lima to Iquitos. I didn’t pay it too much attention as the perception was minor and I boarded the flight with the rest of the passengers. This was the first flight on which my traveling companion and I appeared to be the only non-local tourists. The eight boxes of roosters crowing in the airport, stacked next to a passenger checking in at the next counter might as well have been on our flight. The man with the roosters fit perfectly with the mix piling into the plane. Iquitos is a border town, which means it's a the uneasy edge between Indian country and white civilization and the passengers reflected the rough mix of adventurers, prospectors, and visitors deigning to see the rowdier elements of their families. We took off in the plane that most airlines would have grounded, or at least spent a little to tuck in the stuffing and cover the scrapes of wear with a little paint. I half-dozed as I’d been up since four a.m. for enough time to check out of the hotel in Miraflores and get across the coughing city of Lima to the airport and check in for the 6:45AM flight. But couldn’t sleep. I wanted to see the Amazon and have anticipated this journey all of my life, since the third or fourth grade when I obsessed over the Amazon and did every assigned report on Amazonian animals. Even my recently deceased diva pet angel fish who grew from fingernail size to the size of a large hand in my ten-gallon aquarium was native to the Amazon. She was smart, perceptive (not always the same thing) and moody. She knew what carrying bags to the living room to pack meant. And she would sulk and not respond to me until I returned from my trip. Once a month she'd get moody and cranky, bump the glass walls of her home with fury. Usually the next day there'd be a white thread of eggs to show for it. She'd protect them until she ate them.
I wonder what captures each of us, for instance, how someone from Belgium will fixate on a tribe thousands of miles away, even while in diapers, and make it their life study, or another will work untiringly to understand a few years in history of a particular dynasty in Egypt, though they grew up in a small-town in Michigan. Our sources of information are often faulty or romanticized. Most education, I venture, is propaganda, culled from texts written by so-called conquerors or other translators of human events with narrow points of view that are usually both linear and hierarchical. (The linear and hierarchical are inherently constructed to topple.) Most knowing isn’t rote information, and most doesn’t necessarily come over literal wires of communication. Of course we need the literal as a time map in this world, and for structure, but the rest of it has been discounted. Sort of like the trinity held sacred in most Christian religions doesn't include a female component. How are you going to create anything? Doesn't work that way here. Just look at the natural world, just use common sense.
At a young age I was intrigued with the Amazon that flowed through the most immense garden in the world. There lived the world’s largest snakes, various kinds of monkeys, caiman who were related to alligators, and uncountable birds and insects. I knew that the area was populated mostly by native people as was Oklahoma (according to my point of view.). I didn’t know then that hunting Indians was still a sport there, or that when I would eventually make my way there, and that it would be over forty years later. The wise knowing part of myself that surfaced now and then like a caiman lurking along the edge of the waters, believed in the possibility of being able to get to the Amazon, though it was most likely an impossibility because I was barely coming up through the cracks in a breaking home. I lived in chaos. I was the oldest of four, and female and the pressure was already unbearable. I found refuge in the imagining of such a place as the Amazon. Everything I loved was contained there. Maybe this was when I first started trading jeans and boy’s shirts for dresses. You couldn’t walk around the Amazon like one of the girls whose only goal for their lives was to be a bride. It would never work.
It was a relief to ascend into the sky and be able to see the sky. Lima had no sky, only a low level belching atmosphere, a constant shade of ashy gray. Soon, the staggering vista of mountains turned to green, lush vistas. The cart made it around with Coke and Inca Kola, nd then the plane jerked , a noticeable strange lurch and we began descending. Something felt off. We banked then landed at a small airfield in a place called P_______, not Iquitos. Bright squares of laundry were laid out on the runway to dry. We touched down. We discerned through limited understanding of Spanish and body language that we had to disembark and wait until a mechanic was flown in to fix the engine.
I am still caught or transfixed by a couple and their daughter, passengers on that downed plane. They have become a metaphor of memory for me. I still see them there as we waited in that in that humid bare waiting room for a mechanic and problem that could take a few hours to fix or a day or even two--there was nothing we could do....so we resigned ourselves to it. The husband/father was tall, gawky and rough, the same kind of non-Indian who shows up in the farthest reaches of Indian country because they are on the run, are a criminal or have had some kind of scuffle with family or the law. (People wind up far from home for many reasons. We had people like him teaching at Indian school.) He could have been a missionary's child sent from Oklahoma.
TO BE CONTINUED
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Nothing like a summer rainy night in Honolulu. The chukking of a gecko. Earlier today I got to race in my first regatta with Hui Nalu Canoe Club, out in the beautiful waters of Nanakuli. We won in the senior masters women's division. What a high--
I was never that athletic as a child though I loved moving to music. Eventually my body connected with my head....It's all about rhythm. In a canoe race you match the rhythm of the boat moving through water, lean into it, go with it. Sort of like performing music.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I wonder what captures each of us, for instance, how someone from Belgium will fixate on a tribe thousands of miles away, even while in diapers, and make it their life study, or another will work untiringly to understand a few years in history of a particular dynasty in Egypt, though they grew up in a small-town in Michigan. Our sources of information are often faulty or romanticized. Most education, I venture, is propaganda, culled from texts written by so-called conquerors or other translators of human events with narrow points of view that are usually both linear and hierarchical. (The linear and hierarchical are inherently constructed to topple.) Most knowing isn’t rote information, and most doesn’t necessarily come over literal wires of communication. Of course we need the literal as a time map in this world, and for structure, but the rest of it has been discounted. Sort of like the trinity held sacred in most Christian religions doesn't include a female component. How are you going to create anything? Doesn't work that way here. Just look at the natural world, just use common sense.
At a young age I was intrigued with the Amazon that flowed through the most immense garden in the world. There lived the world’s largest snakes, various kinds of monkeys, caiman who were related to alligators, and uncountable birds and insects. I knew that the area was populated mostly by native people as was Oklahoma (according to my point of view.). I didn’t know then that hunting Indians was still a sport there, or that when I would eventually make my way there, and that it would be over forty years later. The wise knowing part of myself that surfaced now and then like a caiman lurking along the edge of the waters, believed in the possibility of being able to get to the Amazon, though it was most likely an impossibility because I was barely coming up through the cracks in a breaking home. I lived in chaos. I was the oldest of four, and female and the pressure was already unbearable. I found refuge in the imagining of such a place as the Amazon. Everything I loved was contained there. Maybe this was when I first started trading jeans and boy’s shirts for dresses. You couldn’t walk around the Amazon like one of the girls whose only goal for their lives was to be a bride. It would never work.
It was a relief to ascend into the sky and be able to see the sky. Lima had no sky, only a low level belching atmosphere, a constant shade of ashy gray. Soon, the staggering vista of mountains turned to green, lush vistas. The cart made it around with Coke and Inca Kola, nd then the plane jerked , a noticeable strange lurch and we began descending. Something felt off. We banked then landed at a small airfield in a place called P_______, not Iquitos. Bright squares of laundry were laid out on the runway to dry. We touched down. We discerned through limited understanding of Spanish and body language that we had to disembark and wait until a mechanic was flown in to fix the engine.
I am still caught or transfixed by a couple and their daughter, passengers on that downed plane. They have become a metaphor of memory for me. I still see them there as we waited in that in that humid bare waiting room for a mechanic and problem that could take a few hours to fix or a day or even two--there was nothing we could do....so we resigned ourselves to it. The husband/father was tall, gawky and rough, the same kind of non-Indian who shows up in the farthest reaches of Indian country because they are on the run, are a criminal or have had some kind of scuffle with family or the law. (People wind up far from home for many reasons. We had people like him teaching at Indian school.) He could have been a missionary's child sent from Oklahoma.
TO BE CONTINUED
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Nothing like a summer rainy night in Honolulu. The chukking of a gecko. Earlier today I got to race in my first regatta with Hui Nalu Canoe Club, out in the beautiful waters of Nanakuli. We won in the senior masters women's division. What a high--
I was never that athletic as a child though I loved moving to music. Eventually my body connected with my head....It's all about rhythm. In a canoe race you match the rhythm of the boat moving through water, lean into it, go with it. Sort of like performing music.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
6/14/05
John Burnside's new book of poetry, The Good Neighbor
John Burnside is one of the finest poets of our age. I met him at Riddu Riddu, a music festival held every year north of the Arctic Circle in Norway. He was on assignment from the BBC to do a piece on the festival and interviewed me. He promised me a book, The Light Trap arrived and I was entranced. Yesterday his new book, The Good Neighbor, Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Random House arrived at the bottom of three weeks of mail. I opened it first and stopped for poetry and was stopped. From "The Good Neighbor": "...and when he lays his book down, checks the hour/and fills a kettle, something hooded stops,/as cell by cell, a heartbeat at a time,/my one good neighbor sets himself aside,/and alters into someone I have known:/a passing stranger on the road to grief,/husband and father; rich man; poor man; thief."
6/13/05
GREAT NEWS:
Native Joy for Real was featured by Alan Cheuse today on NPR. You may also order the CD from WINGS PRESS at:
http://www.wingspress.com. While you're there check out Bryce Milligan's other titles. He runs a fine publishing house out of San Antonio.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
ADVICE: Do not respond personally to negative press, blogs, to any attack in print or other media. To do so gives dignity to a maker of opinion.
REALITY: You will be tempted to respond especially when you are at your most human, that is, laden with frustration, exhaustion, struggling to find footing in the middle of your next creative project or otherwise battling doubt.
ADVICE: Don't.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
from Buenos Aires journal:
When I travel through this world, in airports, on the streets of American cities, in the countryside, in stores and universities and hotels, on planes and in cities and small communities around the world, I keep my eyes open for those who shine, those who have opened to perception and knowing beyond the mundane perception of usual human reality. I usually detect it first in an attitude about the body. There’s integrity, cleanness of intention. It’s difficult to describe. It might be the compassion in a hand gesture; it might be the angle of a hat, the unassuming graceful step in a mad knot of commuters. The movements are ever humble, and those bearing this knowing do not ever call attention to themselves. I watch the dip and sway of energy, and attempt to adjust my vision beyond my own need to see what might not be there. I used to allow myself to be deceived because I naively wished to assume the best in everyone. Oddly, to be more discriminative means to open up the vision. This allows more light and perhaps more vulnerability. And paradoxically, there is this shine in everyone. For most it’s heavily protected, behind walls of religions, beliefs, rules and fears. For some it appears in a flash, with the opening of the soul in a laugh, or compassionate tear. Few walk about the earth in utter awareness and focus. They give off light and when you are near them you feel closer to the earth, closer to the sky, to yourself, all at once.
The final proof is in the eyes. They will tell you everything from the condition of the soul to the emotional weather of the moment. You can travel thousands of years in a mythic journey in which you are renewed or be stabbed in the back in a mere second by others. When you look into someone’s eyes you peer close to the soul. To do so holds sacredness. That’s why myAunt Lois Harjo warned me about photographs. They can hold a piece of the soul frozen until the paper and solution disintegrate.
(We are holographic in mind, body and spirit. This is the trinity, also called the Upper, Middle and Lower worlds.)
I rarely see this level of being. And cannot predict a sighting. They are beyond hierarchy and appear in every particularity of economic class, sex, nationality, and educational system. They don’t belong solely to hierarchies of time and place. As we walked Florida Street in Buenos Aires, still recovering from a grueling schedule in San Miguel de Tucuman, jet lag, and worn with maneuvering with a crippled Spanish I was concerned with ducking hawkers, watching tango dancers perform for the swarms of tourists, listening to street musicians who ranged from children forced to sit with accordions they couldn’t play (they were of the age and inclination of my grandchildren who were concerned with the tricycles and dolls) to genius and much lesser talents singing or playing for coins for rent or food, and a flood of tourists followed by beggars and pickpockets of all sorts, all in my search for family gifts, and for the perfect leather jacket. (The dollar is good here.)
In this midst of this human soup I found Martin, or his eyes found me. The shine was unmistakable. I did not have to look twice or even question what I saw there. No pretense, no walls, no distance between me and the creator of light.
We had been up since dawn, still confused between the sudden transition between summer and winter, north and south, the trade of one country for another. We had breakfast that morning in the generous buffet at the hotel and went out into the neighborhood to see the sights, including the cemetery, especially Eva Peron’s sepulcher. A controlling and angry spirit inhabited the northwest corner of the cemetery. We got out of his section quickly. I noted that each section had it’s own cat guardian. One was very friendly and accompanied us from border to border of its territory. The next cat watched alertly but did not follow us. Another watched from a distance…all the way through the cemetery.
We had lunch outside at an expensive tourist café across from the walled cemetery. The light was perfect. The noon sun cut the winter shadows of the morning. We ambled back, stopping for a dessert of ice cream, through a neighborhood that reminded me of St. Germaine de Prix in Paris and then crashed at the hotel, still exhausted from travel and performing. That night headed back to Florida Street . It was there I caught sight of Martin. His eyes shone and called me over. According to the society of money he had no reason to live, let alone shine. He was parked in his wheelchair, hunched and curled with cerebral palsy. To speak he had to use a stick in his mouth to point to letters and words written on a board. We spoke for awhile. Made jokes and laughed in the border between Spanish and English. What he gave was immense gift of joy. It immanated from his bright, black Indian eyes. They made a compelling humble light. When I eventually turned and joined the throngs I looked back and could no longer see him. But I do still see him there, now. I want to write that I will not forget him, but I may, because though I am committing this memory to paper, or virtual reality, writing doesn't always securely attach to the long distance memory of the heart. What does? I don't want to forget the way back.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sandra Cisneros, the University of Iowa Crew and Me after the taping of the Garrison Keillor Literary Friendships Show in Minneapolis, May 15-2005
Native Joy for Real was featured by Alan Cheuse today on NPR. You may also order the CD from WINGS PRESS at:
http://www.wingspress.com. While you're there check out Bryce Milligan's other titles. He runs a fine publishing house out of San Antonio.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
ADVICE: Do not respond personally to negative press, blogs, to any attack in print or other media. To do so gives dignity to a maker of opinion.
REALITY: You will be tempted to respond especially when you are at your most human, that is, laden with frustration, exhaustion, struggling to find footing in the middle of your next creative project or otherwise battling doubt.
ADVICE: Don't.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
from Buenos Aires journal:
When I travel through this world, in airports, on the streets of American cities, in the countryside, in stores and universities and hotels, on planes and in cities and small communities around the world, I keep my eyes open for those who shine, those who have opened to perception and knowing beyond the mundane perception of usual human reality. I usually detect it first in an attitude about the body. There’s integrity, cleanness of intention. It’s difficult to describe. It might be the compassion in a hand gesture; it might be the angle of a hat, the unassuming graceful step in a mad knot of commuters. The movements are ever humble, and those bearing this knowing do not ever call attention to themselves. I watch the dip and sway of energy, and attempt to adjust my vision beyond my own need to see what might not be there. I used to allow myself to be deceived because I naively wished to assume the best in everyone. Oddly, to be more discriminative means to open up the vision. This allows more light and perhaps more vulnerability. And paradoxically, there is this shine in everyone. For most it’s heavily protected, behind walls of religions, beliefs, rules and fears. For some it appears in a flash, with the opening of the soul in a laugh, or compassionate tear. Few walk about the earth in utter awareness and focus. They give off light and when you are near them you feel closer to the earth, closer to the sky, to yourself, all at once.
The final proof is in the eyes. They will tell you everything from the condition of the soul to the emotional weather of the moment. You can travel thousands of years in a mythic journey in which you are renewed or be stabbed in the back in a mere second by others. When you look into someone’s eyes you peer close to the soul. To do so holds sacredness. That’s why myAunt Lois Harjo warned me about photographs. They can hold a piece of the soul frozen until the paper and solution disintegrate.
(We are holographic in mind, body and spirit. This is the trinity, also called the Upper, Middle and Lower worlds.)
I rarely see this level of being. And cannot predict a sighting. They are beyond hierarchy and appear in every particularity of economic class, sex, nationality, and educational system. They don’t belong solely to hierarchies of time and place. As we walked Florida Street in Buenos Aires, still recovering from a grueling schedule in San Miguel de Tucuman, jet lag, and worn with maneuvering with a crippled Spanish I was concerned with ducking hawkers, watching tango dancers perform for the swarms of tourists, listening to street musicians who ranged from children forced to sit with accordions they couldn’t play (they were of the age and inclination of my grandchildren who were concerned with the tricycles and dolls) to genius and much lesser talents singing or playing for coins for rent or food, and a flood of tourists followed by beggars and pickpockets of all sorts, all in my search for family gifts, and for the perfect leather jacket. (The dollar is good here.)
In this midst of this human soup I found Martin, or his eyes found me. The shine was unmistakable. I did not have to look twice or even question what I saw there. No pretense, no walls, no distance between me and the creator of light.
We had been up since dawn, still confused between the sudden transition between summer and winter, north and south, the trade of one country for another. We had breakfast that morning in the generous buffet at the hotel and went out into the neighborhood to see the sights, including the cemetery, especially Eva Peron’s sepulcher. A controlling and angry spirit inhabited the northwest corner of the cemetery. We got out of his section quickly. I noted that each section had it’s own cat guardian. One was very friendly and accompanied us from border to border of its territory. The next cat watched alertly but did not follow us. Another watched from a distance…all the way through the cemetery.
We had lunch outside at an expensive tourist café across from the walled cemetery. The light was perfect. The noon sun cut the winter shadows of the morning. We ambled back, stopping for a dessert of ice cream, through a neighborhood that reminded me of St. Germaine de Prix in Paris and then crashed at the hotel, still exhausted from travel and performing. That night headed back to Florida Street . It was there I caught sight of Martin. His eyes shone and called me over. According to the society of money he had no reason to live, let alone shine. He was parked in his wheelchair, hunched and curled with cerebral palsy. To speak he had to use a stick in his mouth to point to letters and words written on a board. We spoke for awhile. Made jokes and laughed in the border between Spanish and English. What he gave was immense gift of joy. It immanated from his bright, black Indian eyes. They made a compelling humble light. When I eventually turned and joined the throngs I looked back and could no longer see him. But I do still see him there, now. I want to write that I will not forget him, but I may, because though I am committing this memory to paper, or virtual reality, writing doesn't always securely attach to the long distance memory of the heart. What does? I don't want to forget the way back.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sandra Cisneros, the University of Iowa Crew and Me after the taping of the Garrison Keillor Literary Friendships Show in Minneapolis, May 15-2005
6/12/05
Sunday night in Alewa Heights
Sunday night. The neighbor's dog is barking incessantly at one of the other's neighbor's exccessively numerous cats. Another neighbor is harping her blooming preteen and teen daughters to change the station they are watching or turn the television off. I have been at Kailua Beach all day for a regatta, one race after another since 8AM, in relentless winds and blowing sand. I didn't get to race as punishment for being away for three weeks... Now two other dogs are answering the first dog's frustrating yap. What kind of network of meaning is this?
I remember dusk at Machu Picchu and the calling of a small bird who shared the ending of one world and the beginning of another with me. It was not of the grandeur of a condor, not brightly colored or flashy, just a small, humble bird with an honest voice, a good singer. It stood on the corner stone of the fabulous Inca architecture and sang out over a deep, sonorous valley. Another of his kind answered from somewhere on the other side of the mountain, and then another and another. And so they went until dark, making a lattice-work of song. Night came like that.
That's what stays deeply with me from my journey to San Miguel de Tucuman, Amaicha, Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Lima, Cusco, Machu Picchu, Iquitos and the Amazon, in Peru.
Also two other images: 1- from the train window heading to Machu Picchu from Cusco, a black pig running down a dirt road with a rope dragging behind him, and 2-5 A.M. in the Lima Airport domestic check-in area as I stand in line, half-asleep for a flight to Iquitos: eight cardboard cartons and two plastic totes of roosters, and the unmistakable sound of crowing in the airport.
Now suddenly quiet: no anxious parent quarreling with children, no barking, but the chuk chuk of a gecko and the tap tap of the computer keys.
The earth can teach us everything we need to know.
I remember dusk at Machu Picchu and the calling of a small bird who shared the ending of one world and the beginning of another with me. It was not of the grandeur of a condor, not brightly colored or flashy, just a small, humble bird with an honest voice, a good singer. It stood on the corner stone of the fabulous Inca architecture and sang out over a deep, sonorous valley. Another of his kind answered from somewhere on the other side of the mountain, and then another and another. And so they went until dark, making a lattice-work of song. Night came like that.
That's what stays deeply with me from my journey to San Miguel de Tucuman, Amaicha, Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Lima, Cusco, Machu Picchu, Iquitos and the Amazon, in Peru.
Also two other images: 1- from the train window heading to Machu Picchu from Cusco, a black pig running down a dirt road with a rope dragging behind him, and 2-5 A.M. in the Lima Airport domestic check-in area as I stand in line, half-asleep for a flight to Iquitos: eight cardboard cartons and two plastic totes of roosters, and the unmistakable sound of crowing in the airport.
Now suddenly quiet: no anxious parent quarreling with children, no barking, but the chuk chuk of a gecko and the tap tap of the computer keys.
The earth can teach us everything we need to know.
6/4/05
From the Faraona Hotel in Lima
Tomorrow it's to the Lima Airport for a plane to Iquitos at 4 AM. Tonight it's a mediocre keyboard-organ player in the restaurant of a tourist hotel here in Miraflores whose sound permeates the hotel. When Americans arrive he plays themes to American shows. The rooms are built around a courtyard about five stories up. At least he's a musician who has a job. That matters. Sound travels: a light motorbike revs up and disappears, couples walking the street, a bus load of Austrian tourists checks in. I arrived a few hours earlier from Cusco and the ever-presence of Inca architecture and spirit. There's more, much more and I will backtrack write as I can. All I know for now is that I didn't sleep much last night in the bare but warm-spirited Hotel Los Ninos in Cusco. The high altitude headache was partly responsible, and the pondering over the day's journey through the Sacred Valley. Nothing much changes at all.
More later.
Sleep now.
More later.
Sleep now.
5/17/05
Never Give Up on Anyone
May 16, 2005 St. Paul, MN
Up in the LAX Radisson at 3AM Hawaii time. I pray, wash and stumble around to dress and repack what little I’ve taken out in the six hours I’ve been in the room. I used to say each moment is ripe with possibility, but this morning I understand some moments are overripe and drop to the ground, other moments are dry and already crumbling to dirt or ash. Some are stillborn. This morning it’s a full suitcase, a small bag for overruns, my carryon and sax bag. It’s relatively easy to checkout, catch the shuttle and run the airport security gauntlet to my gate. I felt sorry for the terminal 1 passengers. Their check-in line ran all the way to terminal 2. Must have been a security breach as the news channels were getting the story.
Time does collapse and expand. One moment I’m standing on the lanai in Honolulu , the next I’m deplaning in LAX, and soon I’m checking into the St. Paul Hotel in Minnesota. Isn’t that how we experience and know time? It becomes memory.
Along the way met Wayne Bergeron, trumpet player, an LA studio musician on his way to Grand Rapids, MI. He’s played with everyone from Paul Anka to Queen Latifa. Check out his new album, You Call This a Living? , from Wag Records, available at his website: www.waynebergeron.com. . Great horn. Sassy and elegant. Soars. Wonderful human being, too at the center of it. That isn’t always so. Great art often comes through lousy human beings. Go figure. Proves it’s beyond us.
May 17, 2005 St. Paul, MN
It’s always a question about where to start and end on these missives from the road. No sun this morning. It’s there, behind mist and clouds. The Mississippi River appears touchable from the window. It is. Where eyes alight an energy exchange occurs. It’s a reciprocal act. The Café in the hotel is new:, flat and unimaginative decor, tables and booths set down in a seminar room. The food is decent and the company even better. Sandra and I visit for the first time in a few years. She’s still as beautiful, her eyes compassionate and sharp. We’re both dragging from the travel, and we’re both dressed in black this morning. Funny how the challenge of the Iowa writing workshop urged us to our own visions of what it means to be artists. We’ve gone on to forge our visions from our community experience. And what we carry with us to the table this morning is the struggle for home, within our souls, within the writing/artistic community of America. We talk of family, community regeneration and phobias. Here we are, thirty years later, almost thirty years exactly since that sojourn in Iowa City. Today we will discuss all this with Garrison Keillor from 8-9:30 PM in the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. I’m sure tickets are still available if you’re anywhere near this city that always reminds me of Meridel LeSueur. Otherwise, check your NPR radio station(s).
Below is a Suzan Harjo story forwarded to me by Indian Country Today. I’d heard out the re-appearance of the chvkvulv from my cousin George Coser. We are all taking note. There is a larger cultural movement in the works. It has been building in the heart of the people all this time. And the vision consists of the visions of birds, other creatures, the plants, planets and souls of the elements.
Harjo: Never give up on anyone
© Indian Country Today May 12, 2005. All Rights Reserved
Posted: May 12, 2005
by: Suzan Shown Harjo / Indian Country Today
The honorable ivory-billed woodpecker has returned from the dead and is living in a wildlife refuge in the Big Woods of eastern Arkansas. It seemed to disappear in 1944 and was long presumed extinct.
This spirit bird's reappearance 60 years later reinforces a wise instruction by Native elders: ''Never give up on anyone.''
From time immemorial, the handsome, broad-shouldered bird thrived in the bottomland forests and bayous of what is now the southeastern United States. After 50 years of developers clear-cutting old-growth trees in its habitat from North Carolina to Texas, the ivory-billed woodpecker was left with few places to live.
In recent decades, the federal government and private parties have declared certain ecosystems as Important Bird Areas. The ivory-billed woodpecker re-emerged in one of these areas, which should encourage the Bush administration - whose strong suit is not environmental protection - to establish more such safe places for the homeless.
John James Audubon painted this bird in the early 1800s, comparing its stylish chiaroscuro markings to a ''great Vandyke'' painting. Audubon described it as 21 inches long, with a 30-inch wingspan and three-inch bill, and a ''dark glossy body and tail ... large and well-defined white markings of its wings, neck, and bill, relieved by the rich carmine of the pendent crest of the male, and the brilliant yellow of its eye.''
Muscogee artists have been depicting this bird for thousands of years. A flurry of e-mail and voice messages spread the word among Muscogee people that the ivory-billed woodpecker lives.
My friend Rob Trepp, a Muscogee researcher, sent three images of the bird that Muscogee artists etched on shell and in clay over 2,000 years ago. He says the bird ''is found in many iconographic settings, sometimes pictured alone, wings spread; other times pictured in fours, heads only, at the four cardinal points around an inner image.''
I had lots of questions about this important bird. Rob checked with Muscogee cultural experts George Cosar, John Fixico and Ed LaGrone; and I asked my dad, Freeland Douglas, who's always my first call on Muscogee language and cultural matters.
Here are their consensus answers about the ivory-billed woodpecker.
Woodpeckers - toski in the Muscogee language - are medicine birds, respected for their persistence and power to ''pull things out.'' Singers of toski songs ''take on the power'' and gain the ''ability to pull things out of their patients.''
The largest and strongest of the toski is cvkvlv, the ivory-billed woodpecker. Traditional Muscogee medicine practitioners still use ''songs about cvkvlv.'' Its own song was recorded only once, in 1935. Prior to the release in April of video footage from one year ago, the last documented sighting of cvkvlv was in 1987 in Cuba.
Cvkvlv is pronounced CHUH kuh luh - ''kind of like chocolate, if you need a mnemonic,'' wrote Trepp. The word is a ''progressive contraction'' that references the ''fine feathers at the back and the color of the bill.'' Cvkvlv is preserved in a Muscogee/Cherokee family name, Chuckluck or Chuculate.
Cvkvlv is called a rather rude name by scientists: Campephilus principalis, which is Latin for grub-eater. Audubon observed that its main food consists of beetles, larvae and large grubs, but it eats ripe forest grapes ''with great avidity,'' along with persimmons and hagberries.
He also noted that the ''ivory-bill is never seen attacking the corn.'' I think this respect for sofkee (corn) must have further endeared cvkvlv to Muscogee people.
I never met cvkvlv, but I feel as if an ancient, beloved friend has come home after a long absence.
I had a similar feeling 10 years ago, about a butterfly. I had checked into a conference hotel and turned on CNN to see what news I'd missed during the flight from D.C. to Albuquerque.
The news anchor was saying that scientists in northern California were elated at the re-emergence of the formerly extinct teal blue-tailed butterfly that disappeared from the Plains in the late 1800s.
This caught my attention for several reasons, not the least of which was the phrase ''formerly extinct.'' Now that is news.
But the big news to me was that the teal blue butterfly was real. During my first Sun Dance in South Dakota, the ceremonial leader told me to listen carefully to the messages of the blue butterfly. I looked for blue butterflies for years and finally decided they were magic beings, and maybe I'd see them and maybe not.
Hearing that they vanished for a century made me imagine that the blue butterflies saw what was happening to the Indians and the buffalo on the Plains and said, ''We're outta here.''
The news that they traveled to the West Coast and were presenting themselves to elated scientists made me laugh and cry at the same time. I felt as if I were greeting a familiar stranger with an important message. I could hear my respected elders saying, ''See why you should never give up on anyone.''
Then and now, I think how Native peoples have been pushed out of our natural homelands and how long we have lived at the edge of extinction. The Native population hemisphere-wide was over 100 million in 1491. By 1900, it was under 1 million.
In the U.S. at the turn of last century, there were fewer than 240,000 Native people. The good news is that there were 2 million American Indians by 2000 and that Native populations are increasing in every country.
It is a miracle of survivance that there are Native people alive in sufficient numbers to assure a future as Native people.
It still is touch-and-go for Native heritage languages, traditional religions, sacred places, salmon and myriad other precious treasures, but no one should count them out.
Native people are revitalizing heritage languages as fast as humanly possible, even some that have been pronounced extinct for 150 years.
More and more Native young people are living within traditional religions, one ceremony at a time.
Native sacred places and salmon remain viable, despite the best efforts of government and developers to destroy them.
So, hail, cvkvlv. Hail, blue butterflies. Hail, all the formerly extinct living beings that refuse to die and stay dead. Never give up on anyone.
Suzan Shown Harjo, Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee, is president of the Morning Star Institute in Washington, D.C., and a columnist for Indian Country Today.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
So wherever you are on this day, know that what matters, what has meaning will continue to emerge when we need it.
JH on-the-road
Up in the LAX Radisson at 3AM Hawaii time. I pray, wash and stumble around to dress and repack what little I’ve taken out in the six hours I’ve been in the room. I used to say each moment is ripe with possibility, but this morning I understand some moments are overripe and drop to the ground, other moments are dry and already crumbling to dirt or ash. Some are stillborn. This morning it’s a full suitcase, a small bag for overruns, my carryon and sax bag. It’s relatively easy to checkout, catch the shuttle and run the airport security gauntlet to my gate. I felt sorry for the terminal 1 passengers. Their check-in line ran all the way to terminal 2. Must have been a security breach as the news channels were getting the story.
Time does collapse and expand. One moment I’m standing on the lanai in Honolulu , the next I’m deplaning in LAX, and soon I’m checking into the St. Paul Hotel in Minnesota. Isn’t that how we experience and know time? It becomes memory.
Along the way met Wayne Bergeron, trumpet player, an LA studio musician on his way to Grand Rapids, MI. He’s played with everyone from Paul Anka to Queen Latifa. Check out his new album, You Call This a Living? , from Wag Records, available at his website: www.waynebergeron.com. . Great horn. Sassy and elegant. Soars. Wonderful human being, too at the center of it. That isn’t always so. Great art often comes through lousy human beings. Go figure. Proves it’s beyond us.
May 17, 2005 St. Paul, MN
It’s always a question about where to start and end on these missives from the road. No sun this morning. It’s there, behind mist and clouds. The Mississippi River appears touchable from the window. It is. Where eyes alight an energy exchange occurs. It’s a reciprocal act. The Café in the hotel is new:, flat and unimaginative decor, tables and booths set down in a seminar room. The food is decent and the company even better. Sandra and I visit for the first time in a few years. She’s still as beautiful, her eyes compassionate and sharp. We’re both dragging from the travel, and we’re both dressed in black this morning. Funny how the challenge of the Iowa writing workshop urged us to our own visions of what it means to be artists. We’ve gone on to forge our visions from our community experience. And what we carry with us to the table this morning is the struggle for home, within our souls, within the writing/artistic community of America. We talk of family, community regeneration and phobias. Here we are, thirty years later, almost thirty years exactly since that sojourn in Iowa City. Today we will discuss all this with Garrison Keillor from 8-9:30 PM in the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. I’m sure tickets are still available if you’re anywhere near this city that always reminds me of Meridel LeSueur. Otherwise, check your NPR radio station(s).
Below is a Suzan Harjo story forwarded to me by Indian Country Today. I’d heard out the re-appearance of the chvkvulv from my cousin George Coser. We are all taking note. There is a larger cultural movement in the works. It has been building in the heart of the people all this time. And the vision consists of the visions of birds, other creatures, the plants, planets and souls of the elements.
Harjo: Never give up on anyone
© Indian Country Today May 12, 2005. All Rights Reserved
Posted: May 12, 2005
by: Suzan Shown Harjo / Indian Country Today
The honorable ivory-billed woodpecker has returned from the dead and is living in a wildlife refuge in the Big Woods of eastern Arkansas. It seemed to disappear in 1944 and was long presumed extinct.
This spirit bird's reappearance 60 years later reinforces a wise instruction by Native elders: ''Never give up on anyone.''
From time immemorial, the handsome, broad-shouldered bird thrived in the bottomland forests and bayous of what is now the southeastern United States. After 50 years of developers clear-cutting old-growth trees in its habitat from North Carolina to Texas, the ivory-billed woodpecker was left with few places to live.
In recent decades, the federal government and private parties have declared certain ecosystems as Important Bird Areas. The ivory-billed woodpecker re-emerged in one of these areas, which should encourage the Bush administration - whose strong suit is not environmental protection - to establish more such safe places for the homeless.
John James Audubon painted this bird in the early 1800s, comparing its stylish chiaroscuro markings to a ''great Vandyke'' painting. Audubon described it as 21 inches long, with a 30-inch wingspan and three-inch bill, and a ''dark glossy body and tail ... large and well-defined white markings of its wings, neck, and bill, relieved by the rich carmine of the pendent crest of the male, and the brilliant yellow of its eye.''
Muscogee artists have been depicting this bird for thousands of years. A flurry of e-mail and voice messages spread the word among Muscogee people that the ivory-billed woodpecker lives.
My friend Rob Trepp, a Muscogee researcher, sent three images of the bird that Muscogee artists etched on shell and in clay over 2,000 years ago. He says the bird ''is found in many iconographic settings, sometimes pictured alone, wings spread; other times pictured in fours, heads only, at the four cardinal points around an inner image.''
I had lots of questions about this important bird. Rob checked with Muscogee cultural experts George Cosar, John Fixico and Ed LaGrone; and I asked my dad, Freeland Douglas, who's always my first call on Muscogee language and cultural matters.
Here are their consensus answers about the ivory-billed woodpecker.
Woodpeckers - toski in the Muscogee language - are medicine birds, respected for their persistence and power to ''pull things out.'' Singers of toski songs ''take on the power'' and gain the ''ability to pull things out of their patients.''
The largest and strongest of the toski is cvkvlv, the ivory-billed woodpecker. Traditional Muscogee medicine practitioners still use ''songs about cvkvlv.'' Its own song was recorded only once, in 1935. Prior to the release in April of video footage from one year ago, the last documented sighting of cvkvlv was in 1987 in Cuba.
Cvkvlv is pronounced CHUH kuh luh - ''kind of like chocolate, if you need a mnemonic,'' wrote Trepp. The word is a ''progressive contraction'' that references the ''fine feathers at the back and the color of the bill.'' Cvkvlv is preserved in a Muscogee/Cherokee family name, Chuckluck or Chuculate.
Cvkvlv is called a rather rude name by scientists: Campephilus principalis, which is Latin for grub-eater. Audubon observed that its main food consists of beetles, larvae and large grubs, but it eats ripe forest grapes ''with great avidity,'' along with persimmons and hagberries.
He also noted that the ''ivory-bill is never seen attacking the corn.'' I think this respect for sofkee (corn) must have further endeared cvkvlv to Muscogee people.
I never met cvkvlv, but I feel as if an ancient, beloved friend has come home after a long absence.
I had a similar feeling 10 years ago, about a butterfly. I had checked into a conference hotel and turned on CNN to see what news I'd missed during the flight from D.C. to Albuquerque.
The news anchor was saying that scientists in northern California were elated at the re-emergence of the formerly extinct teal blue-tailed butterfly that disappeared from the Plains in the late 1800s.
This caught my attention for several reasons, not the least of which was the phrase ''formerly extinct.'' Now that is news.
But the big news to me was that the teal blue butterfly was real. During my first Sun Dance in South Dakota, the ceremonial leader told me to listen carefully to the messages of the blue butterfly. I looked for blue butterflies for years and finally decided they were magic beings, and maybe I'd see them and maybe not.
Hearing that they vanished for a century made me imagine that the blue butterflies saw what was happening to the Indians and the buffalo on the Plains and said, ''We're outta here.''
The news that they traveled to the West Coast and were presenting themselves to elated scientists made me laugh and cry at the same time. I felt as if I were greeting a familiar stranger with an important message. I could hear my respected elders saying, ''See why you should never give up on anyone.''
Then and now, I think how Native peoples have been pushed out of our natural homelands and how long we have lived at the edge of extinction. The Native population hemisphere-wide was over 100 million in 1491. By 1900, it was under 1 million.
In the U.S. at the turn of last century, there were fewer than 240,000 Native people. The good news is that there were 2 million American Indians by 2000 and that Native populations are increasing in every country.
It is a miracle of survivance that there are Native people alive in sufficient numbers to assure a future as Native people.
It still is touch-and-go for Native heritage languages, traditional religions, sacred places, salmon and myriad other precious treasures, but no one should count them out.
Native people are revitalizing heritage languages as fast as humanly possible, even some that have been pronounced extinct for 150 years.
More and more Native young people are living within traditional religions, one ceremony at a time.
Native sacred places and salmon remain viable, despite the best efforts of government and developers to destroy them.
So, hail, cvkvlv. Hail, blue butterflies. Hail, all the formerly extinct living beings that refuse to die and stay dead. Never give up on anyone.
Suzan Shown Harjo, Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee, is president of the Morning Star Institute in Washington, D.C., and a columnist for Indian Country Today.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
So wherever you are on this day, know that what matters, what has meaning will continue to emerge when we need it.
JH on-the-road
5/11/05
Announcements
Radio Interview with Galway Kinnell, Lawrence Ferlingetti and me will be aired at 2 PM (PDT) on Saturday, May 14. It can be heard live on your computer at www.kclu.org, or on 102.3 FM in Santa Barbara and 88.3 FM in Ventura.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A reminder: May 17th
JOIN GARRISON KEILLOR
as he hosts a brand new series:
he's invited an outstanding group
of American writers to talk about
their friendships with one another—and with one another's work—in front of a live audience. The series promises to be sparkling, enlightening, and possibly contentious.
What really happens when two writers become friends? Literary Friendships features poets, mystery writers, and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelists exploring the solitude of writing and the company of friendship.
Sandra Cisneros and Joy Harjo
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Met in graduate school and became fierce allies
Sandra Cisneros and Joy Harjo met in graduate school in the 1970s at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where both faced extreme skepticism from their teachers and peers: a poetry professor actually refused to include their work in class discussions. Cisneros and Harjo became allies, supporting and encouraging each other and each other's work. A novelist, poet, and MacArthur Fellow, Cisneros' many books include the best-selling The House on Mango Street, which is now required reading in classrooms around the country. She lives in San Antonio, Texas. Harjo, an Oklahoma-born member of the Muskogee tribe, is a poet and saxophonist with the band Poetic Justice. She has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas. Her books of poetry include, most recently, How We Became Human: Selected Poems. She lives in Hawaii.
Fitzgerald Theater / 8–9:30 p.m.
10 E. Exchange Street / Saint Paul, Minnesota 55101 (Map/Directions)
Tickets: Box Office 651 290-1221 or ticketmaster.com
$20 / $17 MPR members / $10 students / Special series price: $75 /
Group Rates: Discounts for groups of fifteen or more. For details, call 651-290-1496.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Announcing new book by Catherine Wald
Author of THE RESILIENT WRITER: TALES OF REJECTION AND TRIUMPH FROM 23 TOP AUTHORS, Persea Books, Spring 2005.
Interviews with Elizabeth Benedict, Mary Kay Blakely, Chris Bohjalian, Wesley Brown, Frederick Busch, David Ebershoff, Bret Easton Ellis, Janet Fitch, Arthur Golden, Joy Harjo, E. Lynn Harris, Kathryn Harrison, Bill Henderson, Wally Lamb, Betsy Lerner, Elinor Lipman, Bret Lott, M.J. Rose, Esmeralda Santiago, Bob Shacochis, Amy Tan, Edmund White, and William Zinsser.
P.O. Box 443
Shrub Oak, NY 10588-0443
914-528-3309
www.writerwald.com
www.rejectioncollection.com
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A reminder: May 17th
JOIN GARRISON KEILLOR
as he hosts a brand new series:
he's invited an outstanding group
of American writers to talk about
their friendships with one another—and with one another's work—in front of a live audience. The series promises to be sparkling, enlightening, and possibly contentious.
What really happens when two writers become friends? Literary Friendships features poets, mystery writers, and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelists exploring the solitude of writing and the company of friendship.
Sandra Cisneros and Joy Harjo
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Met in graduate school and became fierce allies
Sandra Cisneros and Joy Harjo met in graduate school in the 1970s at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where both faced extreme skepticism from their teachers and peers: a poetry professor actually refused to include their work in class discussions. Cisneros and Harjo became allies, supporting and encouraging each other and each other's work. A novelist, poet, and MacArthur Fellow, Cisneros' many books include the best-selling The House on Mango Street, which is now required reading in classrooms around the country. She lives in San Antonio, Texas. Harjo, an Oklahoma-born member of the Muskogee tribe, is a poet and saxophonist with the band Poetic Justice. She has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas. Her books of poetry include, most recently, How We Became Human: Selected Poems. She lives in Hawaii.
Fitzgerald Theater / 8–9:30 p.m.
10 E. Exchange Street / Saint Paul, Minnesota 55101 (Map/Directions)
Tickets: Box Office 651 290-1221 or ticketmaster.com
$20 / $17 MPR members / $10 students / Special series price: $75 /
Group Rates: Discounts for groups of fifteen or more. For details, call 651-290-1496.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Announcing new book by Catherine Wald
Author of THE RESILIENT WRITER: TALES OF REJECTION AND TRIUMPH FROM 23 TOP AUTHORS, Persea Books, Spring 2005.
Interviews with Elizabeth Benedict, Mary Kay Blakely, Chris Bohjalian, Wesley Brown, Frederick Busch, David Ebershoff, Bret Easton Ellis, Janet Fitch, Arthur Golden, Joy Harjo, E. Lynn Harris, Kathryn Harrison, Bill Henderson, Wally Lamb, Betsy Lerner, Elinor Lipman, Bret Lott, M.J. Rose, Esmeralda Santiago, Bob Shacochis, Amy Tan, Edmund White, and William Zinsser.
P.O. Box 443
Shrub Oak, NY 10588-0443
914-528-3309
www.writerwald.com
www.rejectioncollection.com
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Human Being Training Season
In heavy training for spring season at Hui Nalu Canoe Club. As someone said the other night, we’re probably the only club in which the Senior Master Women (50 and over) train with the Open Crews (20’s and up). We have an excellent coach and it’s probably the first time I’ve had real and sustained coaching training. Because the senior master crew has several members who have paddled together for many years, and this is my first training year with Hui Nalu (last year I paddled off-season, which I miss) I often get put in other boats. Last night I was in an awesome canoe of Junior Master women. We flew. The key in all of this is rhythm, moving together, and most of all, being WITH the boat, being WITH the water. And when it’s together, as in a good band being together; you make music. Last night the music spoke of muscle, sweat, mana, grace and struggle. It’s usually dark by the time we return to the shore. Then we carry the canoes up, one-by-one. They’re heavy and require several people to carry, together. Struggle is part of it all. Working together is absolutely necessary.
______________________________________________________________________
Sometimes I think that the U.S. population has been hypnotized by television, Disney and other American filmmakers that each life is supposed to unfold be with little struggle, and whatever happens will all turn out with the perfect ending: the protagonist wins the race, the girl, the man, the country, the fight and is feted for the accomplishment and everyone lives happily ever after. Depression sets in because life doesn’t work this way. Hence, the proliferation of happy drugs to fix the sadness or depression (and if you read the small and getting smaller print, or listen to the fast auctioneer read of the side effects: “…liver disfunction, paralysis and death…” The whole country appears to be depressed. Seems that most of the country suffers from attention deficit disorder. Too many movies, too much tv…
________________________________________________________________________
The stories in each canoe, in each stroke of the canoe carry divorce, histories of cocaine, alcohol or meth addictions, rape, deaths, molestations, self-doubt, and just about any other social and spiritual problem you can find in any community. Politics in the boat can be as lethal and consuming as politics in a university, tribe or other entitiy.
Each stroke with intent, focused rhythm, connection with the spirit of water is an affirmation of what is called pono, a coming together, a fusion of compassion, hope and inner power.
_______________________________________________________________________
And finally from News of the Weird, collected from the mainstream press by Chuck Sheperd, P.O.Box 18737, Tampa, FL 33679 and found in one of my favorite periodicals, The Funny Times, two insights from studies featured in current issues of Current Biology that prove boys will be boys, no matter the species. (Human beings aren’t the only human beings):
“…researchers studying the dance fly and the rhesus macaque monkey concluded that males will be males. The male dance fly was found by a team from the University of Western Australia to sometimes present a female with worthless tokens for the opportunity to mate with her, but by the time she discovered their worth, he had already hit and run. A team from Duke University found that the male monkey will forgo his own rewards (juice) in exchange for being permitted to view pictures of female monkey’s bottoms.”
(Maybe I’d better go back to school…)
______________________________________________________________________
Sometimes I think that the U.S. population has been hypnotized by television, Disney and other American filmmakers that each life is supposed to unfold be with little struggle, and whatever happens will all turn out with the perfect ending: the protagonist wins the race, the girl, the man, the country, the fight and is feted for the accomplishment and everyone lives happily ever after. Depression sets in because life doesn’t work this way. Hence, the proliferation of happy drugs to fix the sadness or depression (and if you read the small and getting smaller print, or listen to the fast auctioneer read of the side effects: “…liver disfunction, paralysis and death…” The whole country appears to be depressed. Seems that most of the country suffers from attention deficit disorder. Too many movies, too much tv…
________________________________________________________________________
The stories in each canoe, in each stroke of the canoe carry divorce, histories of cocaine, alcohol or meth addictions, rape, deaths, molestations, self-doubt, and just about any other social and spiritual problem you can find in any community. Politics in the boat can be as lethal and consuming as politics in a university, tribe or other entitiy.
Each stroke with intent, focused rhythm, connection with the spirit of water is an affirmation of what is called pono, a coming together, a fusion of compassion, hope and inner power.
_______________________________________________________________________
And finally from News of the Weird, collected from the mainstream press by Chuck Sheperd, P.O.Box 18737, Tampa, FL 33679 and found in one of my favorite periodicals, The Funny Times, two insights from studies featured in current issues of Current Biology that prove boys will be boys, no matter the species. (Human beings aren’t the only human beings):
“…researchers studying the dance fly and the rhesus macaque monkey concluded that males will be males. The male dance fly was found by a team from the University of Western Australia to sometimes present a female with worthless tokens for the opportunity to mate with her, but by the time she discovered their worth, he had already hit and run. A team from Duke University found that the male monkey will forgo his own rewards (juice) in exchange for being permitted to view pictures of female monkey’s bottoms.”
(Maybe I’d better go back to school…)
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