Notes From Coyote
Q & A on the “Debates”
Is there one scintilla of doubt that the Republican nominee for the Presidency will be Mitt Romney?
Of course not.
What is the purpose of putting all these people on TV?
It is an attempt to make someone, anyone, on the Right interesting to the voting public.
Do any of them stand a chance to get the Republican nomination?
Only one. Romney/
What is the point of the “debates”?
There is no
point…or at least, there is no point to “debating”. They are simply a
ploy to keep Republican ideas and philosophies in the news everyday
without having to pay for broadcast time or print space….and equal time
for “rebuttal” is not required. It is Republican PR and it keeps the
media occupied and the populous, those who buy into it anyway,
entertained. It’s not even “Reality TV”.
Can Romney beat Obama?
Not on a “level” playing field.
What would make the playing field “level”?
If race were not an issue.
Will race be an issue in the 2012 election?
Race is always an “issue” in this country…..and in every other white dominated country.
Can Obama win despite this assumed handicap?
Maybe. It depends on how many educated and motivated voters turn out.
What if Romney wins?
The country will
remain in the grip of the Right and lower and middle class Americans
will make no progress. The rich will get richer. Much, much richer.
Will this be bad for America?
Perhaps not in
the long run. It might stimulate a popular revolution that may result
in a Progressive take over of Congress in 2014.
And if Obama wins?
If enough of the
Right wing Republicans can be tossed out of Congress in 2012 the
country will be spared the upheaval noted above and we may even get our
medical situation in order with a single payer system by 2014. The race
issue will take a hit and we may get further along the road to making
it more and more of a non-issue.
Might revolution, as Jefferson, be a good thing for the country in the long run?
Jefferson was an
armchair revolutionary; he was quite willing to talk revolution but did
not want to get his hands “dirty” when it came to the blood and death
it would entail. Revolution in this country would be destructive for a
long period of time and, as usual, it would be the poor and the middle
class who would suffer most. In the end, the same people would wind up
in control, and that control would tend toward a more totalitarian
government….to “keep the peace” of course. The revolution we need is a
more Centrist Supreme Court and the removal from Congress of the
ideologues spawned by both the demigods of Right Wing talk radio and
the Tea Party.
Overdone, Overblown, Over……..
I guess
we’re stuck with it as a society. Every level of our experience is so
crammed full of “hype” that subtlety and nuance have gone the way of
all those things that once contributed to making our lives more
pleasurable; sincerity, honesty, romance, compassion, trust, faith,
civility, I could go on…
This line
of thought was triggered in me by of all things, a little piece CBS
“Sunday Morning” did on country music star Brad Paisley.
Now, I am decidedly not
a fan of country music, but the interview of Mr. Paisley showed him to
be an intelligent, witty, insightful, and honest critic of life in our
country today. So much so that he is controversial amongst country
music fans. Why? Because he supports President Obama for one. For
another, he kicks the supports from under that favorite companion to
the whole whine and twang genre, BOOZE as the companion and, temporary
at least, antidote to loneliness and an essential part of living an
authentic “country” life. Yes, he calls a spade a spade in his
lyrics….really good stuff. At least I THINK it must be “good stuff” I’m
basing that assumption on his character as revealed in the interview.
The CBS
piece caught his act on the road and it is a huge, make that a GIGANTIC
undertaking. 18-wheeler after 18-wheeler, I counted about five of them,
just to cart all the paraphernalia to make the show go! Stage, monster
TV screens, lights and lighting effects, very high tech audio
equipment, even quick set-up souvenir booths to sell the flotsam of
memorabilia, all of it in order to present Mr. Paisley at his best. So
to speak.
The
problem? Due to all that “high tech audio equipment” few of the words
to the songs Mr. Paisley has gone to the trouble and use of his talent
to create can be discerned in the over-amped blasting of two story
speakers surrounding the audience and then add in all the “effects”
going on during his performance and the simple earnestness of his
version of “country” is lost, deeply buried in something that comes
across as a run of the mill, simple-minded rock concert noise.
He means
well. As a creative artist and again, I’m guessing about this, as a
poet in his own right, he really deserves to be heard. This guy seems
to have something to say that is far beyond the usual
diein’-sighin’-cryin’ country pap. But unless you have heard a lot of
his stuff on CD and/or can begin to intuit what he’s singing about, you
will not be able to get it at all. (Unless part of the high tech
includes follow-the-bouncing-ball lyrics on a screen display somewhere)
and isn’t this just a reflection of the fact that our experience of our
culture these days has become closed off to the opportunity to feel
anything besides the head whipping cacophony of do it BIG! and do it
NOW! that is everywhere sold as living-life-to-the-fullest?
Oddly
enough, as I was gravitating beyond “Sunday Morning” towards the
relative peace of a Packer game I came across a channel with Glen
Campbell singing his old classic, “Southern nights”. It was simple
beauty. Same instrumentation as the Paisley show, but easily listened
to. And you could actually hear the lyrics. Wow! Something to think
about!
Of course
the audience for each was markedly different too. Paisley fans were all
standing in a vast mob and hyperventilating, doing all those things
young rock aficionados do at a concert. They certainly weren’t all
sitting in nice rows, moving slightly and gently tapping their feet
like those at the Campbell offering. No, those folks were the older set
and probably appreciated that their hearing aids weren’t being
over-driven by 21st Century digital electronics.
I’m sure
that this spiral downward into unlimited volume hell began when the
audio people determined to mike drum sets. If there is any instrument
in a band that decidedly does NOT need amplification, it’s a set of
drums. With that the “amp war” began in earnest and the guitars,
already electrified of course, could not accept being out blasted and
upstaged by amplified drums, so they now began to be Super Amped as did
the electric base and, of course, the ever present electric keyboard
people had to have their opportunity to shout, if not scream with added
Special Effects. Once every instrument in the band was milked dry for
ULIMATE sound the only thing left was to make the entirety even louder
and throw in fireworks and smoke. And so deafness and distraction
became the aim and to hell with lyrics….after all, no one wanted to
believe in anything the lyrics, if any, might be selling so what’s to
listen to? “I love you, yeah, yeah, yeah…..” (followed by endless
repetitions of the latter). Poetry, once inextricably interwoven with
music like a fine and beautiful tapestry, became irrelevant, out bid by
what a rock fan told me Rock was all about, “Energy!” he said.
“Energy!” Well, I thought, but did not say, so is an explosion but it’s
not something that speaks to my soul. (Obviously I’m with the
foot-tapper crowd). But poetry, left out in the cold by music, would
not die. Instead “slams” were created so that the words, though now put
in a position of having to defend themselves to critics who would not
allow any time to chew and digest and perhaps even consider….poetry
lives on…though it may, under the circumstances, fall on nearly deaf
ears.
All’s well that ends well.
At least
none of this artificial audio enhancement is happening in symphony
orchestras….but beware. If you spot a mike anywhere near the guy with
the triangle the slow creep has begun.
Sun Spots?
The week began with
our middle daughter’s complaint that a CD was stuck in her iBook. I
went into Google to discover what to do and came upon a site that step
by step showed how to take the computer (a laptop) apart to get at the
optical drive. Thirty-seven steps, and a few hundred teeny screwss later,
and after much prying and bending of strange metal “shields”, I
finally came upon the CD, a total piece of junk which she had described
as “….a little scratched.” ! It looked like it had been used as a
coaster on a sand table. I then went back over the thirty-seven steps,
in reverse of course, and put the laptop back together. Guess what; it
started up! Amazing. Problem is, it was so traumatized that it just
wouldn’t boot up.
Then, after
a series of at home tests I finally reached the conclusion that
my expensive, “Image-stabilizer”, auto-focus, 75-300 mm telephoto
lens was defective. I have been struggling with this issue for about
two years, taking it into camera shops where I was told that it seemed
to be okay but I shouldn’t be buying a lens on eBay, implying that I
had betrayed them somehow….sending it off to be examined and calibrated
to some place in Pennsylvania to the tune of $85 and then getting the
same fuzzy results when it came to shooting anything that was further
away then ten feet or so. I would keep telling myself that maybe it was
the camera,….or maybe I should use a tripod, though being told that the
image-stabilizing system made using a tripod unnecessary and in fact I
shouldn’t even turn it on if I were going to put it on a tripod, or
maybe this or maybe that….or maybe a Canon was inferior to a Nikon,
despite all those Canon’s I’d see being used by the news pros at
football games and nature shoots. Finally last week I just shot one
thing eight times in every configuration I could think of and the
results were all the same….fuzzy. Conclusion: bad lens. Period.*
Then my
Epson printer refused to print anymore. This has been a reliable
printer and one I really liked because refilling the ink cartridges was
so easy. But in the middle of “hell” week, it gave me an “error”
message and refused to snap out of it. Calls to repair people confirmed
that nobody repairs an Epson. Don’t ask me why. Only apparent option?
Dump it.
So, I
bought a new Canon printer, a wireless, very nice, but refilling ink
carts may be a problem. I’ll know about that in a few weeks.
Then my
computer suddenly refused to download pictures from the memory card.
After about an hour on the phone with a very helpful guy from Canon, we
got it to work. Neither of us could figure out why…..it just suddenly
began to function after any number o f “Try this’s.” and “ Try
that’s.”.
Then
Elizabeth’s point-and-shoot camera stopped being able to take pictures.
Just up and quit. Couldn’t make that work at all. Option? “Parts”
according to eBay. Too expensive to repair.
Then my CD
recorder decided it could no longer record. I’m now convinced that this
ability to “decide” is an option that is built into some of this stuff
in the mysterious world of electronics.
By
the time the week was over, the CD recorder had recovered from its
pique and decided to work again, Elizabeth’s camera has not however and
the new telephoto hasn’t shown up yet (yes, I bought another one on
eBay) and the iBook is still not functioning and shows signs of
terminal illness.
However, I
am quite proud of the fact that I was able to take it apart and put it
back together again. I mean I have to feel that I have SOME control
over these events.
I do have all these little parts left over though……..
*Got the new lens...another "problem" solved! It's fine.
In Heaven…
the mechanics are German
the chefs are French
the police are British
the lovers are Italian
and everything is organized by the Swiss.
In Hell…
the mechanics are French
the police are German
the chefs are British
the lovers are Swiss
and everything is organized by the Italians.
Staring at Reality
Driving through the
chamisa-lined canyon towards home (chamisa is a long stemmed plant
unremarkable until autumn when it bursts into a bush filled with
mid-tone yellow flower heads and fills the fields and road sides with
beautiful surprise). The cottonwoods are turning from pale to bright
shades of yellow to gold and then copper as they near leaf dropping and
as I climb through altitudes from Albuquerque’s mile high toward our
seven thousand foot hill top. I’m listening to a love song on XM and
can even sing a few bars in a strong tenor, though probably just a bit
off-key. And who is there to criticize? Just me if I’m feeling
self-conscious. But alone I can belt with shower stall confidence that
I am getting it just right and besides, it feels, no; not “it”….I feel
good to be alive and well and in love with my woman, my place in the
world, my life all ‘round.
This time I don’t tune the music out so that I can be “informed” on NPR
or CNN or “Left Radio”. I really don’t need to be made anxious about
Wall Street, Afghanistan, will-the-Right-take-over-our-country, can
Obama win in ’12….? etc, etc, etc. etc., etc. ad infinitum.
Can I, in any way make the death of my second wife
any easier for my former stepson? Can I assure my self that the wacky
neighbors will cause us no further “difficulties” in the future? Can
the President make it to a second term with a progressive majority in
Congress? Can I live to one hundred and six in good health? Will we all
have to endure yet another “the sky is falling” hysteria as 2012 comes
and goes? (Hmm, we’ve only been doing this about every other year
since….ummm “Harmonic Convergence”, “Planetary Alignment”, “Mars Larger
than a Full Moon” headlines (writ large in the heads of the gullible)
“2000 computer disaster! Planes falling out of the sky! All life as we
know it will stop!” ETCETERA!
I’m facing it, I really can’t save anybody and
probably won’t make it to 106, but I am shooting for the latter while
giving up on the former. Meanwhile that love song plays and I am
hitting all the right notes…..as far as I can ever know….and that, by
God, is good enough!
And! A mountain lion has come to drink at the water
dish which we leave filled for birds, occasional coyotes, deer, and our
resident squirrel….but a mountain lion! That’s a once-in-a-lifetime
event…I reserve the word “awesome” for the likes of Grand Canyon and
Half-Dome in Yosemite and the like, but trust me, I’m using some of my
savings stash in that wonder-loaded word on this one; a mountain lion
about twenty-five feet from our kitchen window….yeah, that’s AWESOME!
…..and then some.
Wish I could remember the lyrics of that love song I
heard while driving through those flames of autumn leaves, but I guess
it’s enough to remember how good it felt and feels to be alive in all
of this. Yes, it’s quite enough to simply be in love with Life just as
it is.
One more draft on that bank……yes, it’s awesome! …and
still enough juice left in that one for all that is to come.
For Want of a Coach
Every time I see a
minor league baseball game going on I wonder if I might have been out
there for the first quarter of my life. I was a good fielder, error
free both in the outfield and at first base and I loved the game. I
played and/or practiced every single day from the time I was ten till I
graduated from high school and then went off to the Army and my first
marriage.
There was one problem with my skill set however. I couldn’t hit.
I don’t mean I seldom hit, I mean NEVER.
And I
couldn’t figure out why until one day, two years after I was out of the
Army, so I was around 22 or 23 and as I was walking by a batting
practice in the little Michigan town I lived in at the time, I came
upon a pitcher and catcher warming up for a game and asked if I could
take a few swings. I got a welcome and hunted around for my favored bat
size and weight. Well, they didn’t have my usual 35 ounce bat so I
grabbed a lighter one, don’t know what it was now but maybe a 30, and
stepped into the batter’s box. I hit everything I was thrown…and hit it
well…..and long for the most part. And then I knew what the problem had
been. I never had a coach….and I always thought that since my heroes
were the slugging home run hitters of the day that the way I could “be
them” was to use the kind of bat they used, a long, heavy bat.
My heroes
were the heavy hitters of the late forties, Ralph Kiner with the
Pirates and Johnny Mize with the Giants. I sort of overlooked the fact
that these were big guys, much heftier than me by a long shot….but I
was “aspiring” after all.
It’s
possible that if there had been a coach around, a baseball mentor, to
quote Bud Schulberg’s line from “On the Waterfront”, “I coulda been a
contenda.”
And then
what? Well, having had the occasion to play against some very
talented people in Chicago, baseball and football, let me tell you, in
case you haven’t had that experience, the good ones are so good they
seem to be from another planet. There was no way I would have ever been
able to get much higher than AA ball. If that. And there I would have
remained, playing in Slopbucket, Arkansas for beer money and selling
used cars in between games to eat till the next almost-good player
moved into my spot.
Shades of “Bull Durham” (without the major league shot) that would have been my early life. And then what?
Well, like
so many high school and minor college “heroes” I would have lived on
those flimsy memories and could have been quite a tragic figure for the
rest of my life.
Thank God for the road not taken…and the coach who never showed up.
The Game
Here’s how it works,
there are forty plastic ducks floating in a tub each one with a number
from one to forty painted on its bottom. It costs you a quarter to pick
a duck and if the duck you pick matches the number on one of the prizes
on the shelves in front of you, you win.
There are four tiers of shelves, on the lowest are
stacked the “slum”, the cheap give-away junk like plastic worms,
miniature whistles, Chinese handcuffs, etc. the next one up is stacked
with the stuffed teddy bears, dogs, cats, etc, these are called “the
plush” in the “Game” trade. On the next highest shelf there are
arranged some attractive watches with pseudo brand names close to but
not quite those you would recognize like, “Bulova” and “Timex” but
these are “Boliva” and “Timix” etc.. These items are called “the
flash”. Eye catching and tempting, they are hardly the quality they
mimic.
On the top shelf are the electronics, DVD players,
GPS units, perhaps an i-Pad. To win anything on these top two shelves
you will have to be very lucky indeed. In fact, you would have to be
quite fortunate to win a single item on any of these shelves (except
for the “slum”) because the “Game” is designed so that you will win
very little and lose everything you have with you. That’s the message
of Peter Fenton’s book, “Eyeing the Flash, the Education of a Carnival Con Artist”.
Let’s explore the game to see how the built in
seduction and the futility of the pursuit works; why would you play
this game in the first place, well it looks so easy, a slam-dunk….and
the first try is “free”! Sure why not give it a try, might get lucky
right? So, having been called in by the “agent”, the person who’s
running the Game and is so friendly, seeming to care if you win or not,
celebrating every victory, commiserating with each loss, “Wow! This
could be THE day for you!” the agent exclaims when the duck you pick
gets you a bubble gum cigar. The next try isn’t free but “cheap” enough
at fifty cents, so you go for another duck, and get number 6, a one
inch by one inch plastic American flag. But you ARE winning….”Close,
you’re on a roll here!” he says, “No point in quitting while you’re
ahead right?” The next try costs $1 because, “The numbers of ducks are
diminishing and the odds of winning big are moving in your favor, so
we’ve got to be fair here or you’ll put me out of business.” he pleads.
(By the way, you have been informed by a sign on the very top shelf
that the BIG WINNER duck is number 28.)
The next duck is number 26….now you have another
piece of “slum” but, “You’re on a hot streak here pal. I can smell a
big win coming!” Now the diminishing duck population causes another
escalation in the pay-to-play and we’re at $2 a shot….but after all the
odds are increasing in your favor and look at all the stuff your
winning……and the next duck could get you to shelf number two or even
higher….though each successive duck choice doubles the cost to play and
in no time at all you’re shelling out 32, 64….and yes, the Promised
Land seems to be coming closer and closer to attainment, you may even
be clutching a stuffed bear by now, $138 for yet one more duck isn’t
that big a deal considering the ultimate payoff…….but that elusive duck
#28 has yet to show up……
…….that would be because there is no duck 28, at least that duck has
been held back, so that, just in case some investigating “official”
should be called to check for the “legitimacy” of the Game, it can
suddenly be “released” to be found floating free just out of reach.
The “mark”, has been kept in the Game by the
powerful seductive pull of getting ever closer to the (unattainable)
goal. This is a game which is designed so that “winning” is never
possible. Not for you. Not ever.
“The Game”, in this case called “The Duck Pond” has
many variations and is set up to present a very minor challenge to
players who are prone to get their egos involved and seems so easy to
win that anyone who has a lick of common sense can outwit the good
natured fool who’s running them. Of course underneath all that
“simplicity” all of them just keep you engaged in that fruitless and
ever more expensive pursuit for as long as you continue to believe it’s
possible to win. Or until you are sucked dry. Cleaned out.
These games are found at every County and State Fair, traveling
carnival, addictive relationship, and on Wall Street and in the Middle
East…..and you…and me, the “marks” will never beat them.
That’s the reason they persist. That, and the fact that we continue to fall for the “con”.
An Issue of Trust
New Mexico has a
problem with we “Golden Oldies”. I went down to the Motor Vehicle
Department last week, having discovered that my driver’s license was up
for renewal. I took the usual eye exam and was happy to note I could
pass it without any seeing aids, got my picture taken and opened my
checkbook, even had the check mostly made out, when the clerk said,
“Oh! This is only renewable for one year.”
“What?” I uttered, “Don’t they trust that we can totter along for longer than that?”
She had no
comment. I suspect she concurred with any state policy that came
floating down stream, as well she must of course. At least officially.
So for a year at
the time I must be monitored to make sure I am not rapidly diminishing
to a point where my license might have to be denied. Damn! It reminded
me again that I am getting “older”. (I put that in quotes because I
don’t quite believe it myself even if the State does.)
I read a memoir
by Dick Van Dyke last week where he said of we older folk, of course
he’s MUCH older than I at eighty-three or more, “We’re down to circling
the drain.”
I guess I know
I’m in that spiral, can’t really deny it, though I don’t mind doing so,
but I really don’t feel that I’m in that orbit…..yet. As I mentioned in
an earlier article (“What’s it Like?”) if someone asks me how old I
feel my answer will be based upon the circumstances. If I’m sitting
down at the time I could answer, “Oh, around 30.” If I’m hauling a
wheelbarrow full of dirt up our trail to the house, a moderate incline,
I might say 50. If I look around at the kind of society being created
and reported upon by TV and radio news, maybe 100…..but I don’t know
how to be 76.
My father’s
father was dead at this age, but he appeared dead much earlier as I
recall. My father made 84 in good health and never, or at least most of
the time, seemed “old” to me. I do have a picture of him where he looks
old, but that was a rare occurrence and may have reflected the kind of
day he was having with my mother.
She, on the other
hand, aged rather consistently but if it hadn’t been for the dementia
that subtly robbed her of her wit, she might have seemed physically
younger as time went by.
Anyway, I really
don’t know how to be “old”….perhaps I’m acting it and not acknowledging
it, but no one has mentioned it to me. Of course they know I’d have to
kill them if they did. But here was the MVD telling me that I might
just be on the verge entering the tidal pull of the “drain” so I’d have
to be checking in every 365 days. It’s a nice large number but not one
I’d wanted to have my attention drawn to.
The next statement from the clerk was meant to be a consolation; “But it’s free.”
I think I would
have preferred the option of a note from my doc assuring New Mexico
that I was still worthy of “investment” good for at least 3650 days.
At least.
I put my checkbook away….and tried to feel grateful.
The Underground River
The other day I listened as two PBS commentators, one a Republican the
other a Democrat and both agreed on one thing, that they didn’t like
the President’s style when he got “preachy”.
“Preachy”. I wondered at the time if, when
Dwight Eisenhower, the hero-general of WW ll become-President when he
strongly cautioned America about the specter of the
“military-industrial complex” (the original draft said
“military-industrial-Congressional complex” but the “Congressional” was
deleted by whom we don’t know) I wondered if anyone would have
characterized that warning as “preachy”?
Did anyone characterize then President Jimmy Carter’s speech on the energy crises in America as preachy?
How about JFK’s famous, “Ask not what your
country can do for you……..” anybody say that statement was
“preachy”?
I don’t remember a single instance of any
commentator, Left or Right, making that kind of observation about any
presidential pronouncement in my lifetime. I haven’t heard every single
critique of course, but this one stood out for me because that’s not
something you usually hear as a comment about a presidential address.
“He sounded preachy.” It stood out for me because there’s that
association with black preachers that is inescapable. And there’s that
feeling I have, call it a “smell” of something I’m sensitive to, the
odor of racism…..it’s associated with the sense of white folk not wanting a black man telling them what to do.
I know that if I were a black man, or woman,
bringing this up I would be accused of being paranoid…..but I’m a white
man and I tell you I “smell” it. It’s something that seeps up through
the relentless attacks on policy, on birth certificate issues, on the
red herring of “socialism”, on basic competency….these are not “issues’
that have EVER been “issues” about any other President but this one.
This BLACK president. Yes FDR was accused of being a “socialist”….and a
fascist at the same time, and, oh yes, he was “accused” of being Jewish
as well. That was the last racist attack on a President I can recall. The only one I know of preceding that was on Lincoln.
We’re not going to get anywhere this country, not going to grow beyond this societal sickness
until we solve this one, and it can only be “cured” by acknowledging
that it’s there. We are a racist country, we whites are racists, some
more than others to be sure, but even in our liberal, “progressive”,
accepting, selves….it’s there, hiding under all kinds of denial, it’s
there…and until the day we accept that it’s true and we are responsible
and we apologize for ALL of it, and recognize the harm this thing has
done to our citizens of (every) color here in America who make up the
largest population of our ghettos and jails, until we establish our own
public “truth and reconciliation” process we will not be done with this
social cancer.
Barrack Obama is being undermined by this
underground river that continues to eat away less at his Presidency
then at the very foundations of what America is supposed to be about.
Sure, this destructive stream may result in his being a one-term
President, but that is far less important in our long-term history then
the damage it continues to do to us as a nation. Of course the world
sees through the colorful smoke and mirror of American pop culture
we’ve erected to obscure this truth about us but this self-deceit rots
our country from the inside. Insidious and pervasive it keeps reminding
us that we are deeply cynical and hypocritical when we speak of
“melting pot” and “…one Nation under God with Liberty and Justice for
all.” It exposes the “American Dream” as a lie.
Is anybody going to say anything about this naked kingdom?
Is “Outrage” the Right Word?
There
are certainly enough idiocies and idiots in the world to give anyone
enough ammunition to feed large caliber blasts of full out anger and
disgust….but I’ll tell ya, our New Mexico Game Commission and their
lackeys the State Game and Fish Commission who keep themselves busy
kissing up to the trapping and ranching lobby go beyond, way beyond my
ability to try to ignore being fed up. Bad enough we have to tolerate
elected officials in D.C. who won’t listen to the will of the majority
of us (and act as if it’s “statesmanship” on their part….after all,
what do we foolish voters know anyway? ……….something they will find out
more about come 2012)….yes, bad enough we have to bide our time about
that issue, but this last gambit by that ring of Governor appointed,
arrogant egoists in overriding the will of most of the people of New
Mexico by expanding trapping in our already backward state was an act
that leaves me, and most of the rest of us, sputtering in disbelief
and….well, what’s left……..outrage.
Yeah, I’d say “outrage” is as “nice” a word as
I can use right here. Anything else wouldn’t get printed in our tame
and “reasonable” community newsletter.
Here’s a bit of the story from the Albuquerque paper:
“ALBUQUERQUE — State game commissioners on Thursday approved a
recommendation from wildlife managers to end a trapping ban in
southwestern New Mexico, where federal officials have been working to
reintroduce the Mexican gray wolf.
The commission voted unanimously in favor of the state Game and Fish Department's proposal during a meeting in Clayton.”
Clayton? Why would the Commission hold a
meeting affecting all New Mexicans in the miniscule berg of Clayton?
Oh, never mind. I forgot how the thing really works.
Just for a minute there I was under the impression that the public
should be able to attend such a meeting. The general public that is,
not just the trapping and ranching public. And I forgot that this
meeting was held by the GAME Commission. That should have been the
first hint that there might be a “game” going on.
The story continued:
“The vote disappointed conservationists, who
had sent thousands of emails and letters to the commissioners in recent
weeks to support keeping the ban in place.”
“…..thousands of emails and letters…..”, now
wouldn’t you think that all that input would have some effect? I, for
one, sent one of those emails and I wish I had the copy of the
condescending reply I received from one of the commissioners. I
couldn’t believe it. It opened something like this; “I hate to burst
your bubble but perhaps you’ve never seen what a predator does to prey.
It’s not a pretty picture….” And then this commissioner went on to
describe just how horrible a thing it was that predators killed things
out there in the wilderness. I’ve searched and searched my “trash” but
just can’t come up with it but I assure you it was so inane, so….well,
let me be kind, ignorant, that I shared it with the president of Project Coyote
as an example of the kinds of people who have been appointed to
positions of responsibility in our state. Not as a “proud” example by
the way, just as a stunned reporters example.
It’s hard for me to know how to write about any
of this. Should I play “unbiased reporter” and just talk about the
“facts”? Or should I be an incensed citizen angry about being played
for a sucker by those vested interests who can buy and sell government
in our state?
This is the only “fact” I am certain of, most
informed people in our state, those who know what trapping is about,
really about, and oppose it, far outnumber those who know what it is
and support it. The former are not a bunch of tree-hugging zealots,
they are people who have nothing to gain from trapping and much to gain
from co-existing with the wildlife here. The latter are from and
entirely different “camp” and have vested self-interest in maintaining
the status quo of free-range, no limit trapping everywhere in our
state. They profit from it and this profit is taken at the expense of
our wildlife trying to exist on our Public land. But the “public” has
no say in any of it.
That fact alone causes me outrage.
It’s all I have after all, outrage. No vote, no representation, no voice….no power.
"Organic"
After years of driving by cattle feeding lots with
the vent setting on inside, cursing the kind of consciousness that
allows this treatment of animals to continue unabated, I, we actually,
have moved into “organic” entirely. No, neither of us will entertain
going “vegan”, the taste of a good sirloin is much too enticing to
abandon.
What put us over
the edge was the viewing of the film, “Temple Grandin”, the story of an
autistic girl grown into a wise and intelligent woman who has pioneered
and championed the humane treatment of cattle in slaughter pens. How
“humane” and “slaughter” can be reconciled becomes the core of the
story, though the subject of autism and how it is viewed and treated by
her determined mother and the treatment community is important too.
The “over the
edge” part for us was the coming to terms with the fact that we still
wanted meat in our diet, but cannot countenance supporting an industry
that cares nothing about the entire process of bringing animal products
to the consumer table. Yes, we pay more, but we eat less and we do it
knowing that with the money we spend we are, in direct effect, voting
for what we want and believe in when it comes to the humane treatment
of the animals that serve to feed us.
This is what we
look for; labels that assure that the animal in question has been
raised “cage-less” and on feed that is appropriate (for chickens). For
beef, the “organic” label has to do with grass fed, no antibiotics.
Right now we have no way of knowing what the slaughter circumstances
were, I wish we did. We can only assume that if the animal was well and
appropriately fed that its end was consciously chosen as well. So far
I’ve been unable to ascertain a means by which all of these
considerations can be addressed. At least, not in our part of the
country. There are “traveling slaughter” companies that actually go to
individual ranches and farms in the East and slaughter animals in
humane ways, but these are small operations and limited to that section
of the country. Out here, and, it seems, everywhere west of the
Mississippi, feed lots are the rule and the usual, sadistic would seem
the best description, killing of animals prevails.
Yes, I agree it
seems a stretch and incredibly self-serving and a gross rationalization
to tease out some “humane” method of killing in order to please a
palate. And what about the fact that it takes a huge toll on the
environment to raise cattle, sheep and pigs to begin with? All of that
taken into consideration why not simply choose vegetables? All
true. But under the circumstances, most of we omnivores are not going
to become vegetarians in support of principle so we may as well accept
the fact of that and at the very least, honor the main providers of our
protein, honor them as not only food sources but as life forms that
co-exist on the planet mainly for our gastronomic pleasure. Dogs, cats,
domestic birds, fish in aquariums….so many of our fellow creatures are
treated better by us for far less reason then these who, in real terms,
serve us. In life and in death we owe them, at the very least,
respect.
ps, An email from "organicranchers.org" assures me that they are indeed
following Temple Grandin's recommendations. Their per pound prices are
a bit too steep for us....but they are being responsible.
Welcome to “Heroic” Juarez
When
I found myself biting down on a tooth that shouldn’t have been loose in
my bite of organic hamburger a few nights ago I knew I was in trouble.
Sure enough one of my mouthful of crowns had broken loose. “Well”, I
thought, “Just go to Walgreen’s and get some dental glue and that will
solve that problem. But there was something familiar about the episode
that was telling me that it wouldn’t be that simple.
After procuring said “glue”, following the
directions and not eating for three hours, sleeping fitfully through
the night, somehow fearing that I’d awaken having swallowed the, again,
loose tooth….I did awake to find the thing wasn’t any more secure than
it was the day before. The “hints” were growing stronger that that
something was amiss. “I think I have to get down to the clinic in
Juarez to get this thing fixed.” I told Elizabeth. Just before this I
had called the local dentist office to get a professional glue job.
Next available appointment: in three weeks.
“Well, if you really think you have to.”
“Yeah, I think it’s a worse case thing. I have a feeling this is a broken tooth not just a glue situation.”
Off I took and halfway to my destination, it’s 250
miles from our house to the vicinity of Juarez, i.e., El Paso, I became
more convinced that I was on the right track when, as I was driving, I
took another quick perusal of the tooth shard and was sure I was
seeing, not residual glue but the top of a broken tooth inside the
shell of it.
The rest was the usually routine as far as getting
dental work in Juarez is concerned. I was picked up in El Paso by the
dental office van and driven across the border to the office in Juarez.
It was determined that, yes, indeed this was a case of broken tooth,
the “fix” would be to grind down the remainder and put in two crowns,
one on the sheared stump and one to support it on an adjacent tooth.
$400.
OK, those are the “nuts and bolts” of the dentistry
thing. But what about the fact of Juarez, the most dangerous town on
the U.S. border? What’s that like?
It’s probably as close to an experience many are
living with day-to-day in the Middle East, well armed military are
everywhere, redundant check points at every corner, private company
security vehicles are not just civilian cars with badges painted on the
sides, they are armored sided, thick-glass custom jobs that look like
they could withstand a grenade attack. Most shops on the main street
closest to the border have no display windows; everything has the look
of being bunkered.
It may have been the time of day, around three in
the afternoon on both days I was there, but the streets, with the
exception of the military, seemed almost deserted. I asked my van
driver if business had fallen off and his immediate reply was, “Oh yes,
very few people come over these days.”
In the midst of all this the El Paso morning paper
headline read, “Juarez to add ‘heroic’ to name”. Seems that the state
of Chihuahua, or the Mexican Federal Government, I’m not sure which,
has officially designated a name change for the city adding the word
“Heroic” to its name. So from here on out, no matter what the nature or
extent of murderous chaos in the streets, when referring to Juarez,
Mexico please add “Heroic” to its name.
Meanwhile, people are leaving the city in droves,
the streets are emptying, the stores are struggling, many of them
shuttered and many empty, and life, though still there, goes on,
hunkered down and tight-lipped like the drivers of the dental vans I
traveled in. “How are things here?” I asked, “Oh, it’s quiet right
now.” came the generic reply.
Riding over the first day with another dental
journeyer who lives in El Paso I got another jolt of border reality,
“Yeah, my aunt and her five nephews were killed this year.” It was so
matter-of-fact a statement he might have been talking about a change in
a bus schedule. “They told them to stop dealing, and they kept doing
it, and they told them to stop and they kept on, and they told them to
stop…..and that was it.”
I talked to a dental tech, the one who translated
for the Anglos who came from all over the U.S. to get work done. She
had been working at the clinic for ten years. “How do you cope?” “Oh,
it’s not too bad. I just get my truck searched a lot.”
It seems that the killing here has become so
commonplace that no emotion need be attached. Like the pervasive
poverty it’s all so matter of fact to not be remarkable and emotional
attachment is a luxury reserved for those of us who don’t have to cope
with this reality. Being a Mexican and living here means you accept and
endure.
In all honesty, I don’t know how to write about any
of this. I’m not a war correspondent. I have no experience with real
hopelessness. All I feel like doing is weeping. “Heroic”? God help
them.
Please.
Redundancy
When
we are on the road we don’t usually stay in motels that are much above
the “Super 8” cost level. “Motel 6” we usually avoid feeling that we’re
not quite that bad off.
This is a minor delusion which we accept as our due.
But this last trip we took, to work at the Pueblo,
Colorado Psychic Fair was an exception. As the fair ended a huge early
spring storm came roaring in off the Rockies and we had to evacuate
Pueblo post haste so that we could avoid a potential worst case;
driving our ground hugging front wheel drive car through a snow packed
Raton Pass. So off we went planning to stay in the town of Raton just
over the pass and about three hours from home.
As we pulled off the interstate having been blown
through the pass by gale force tail winds, we spotted a “Super 8” and
just in front of it a “MicroTel”. These are always more expensive, but
we had worked hard at the fair we reasoned, and plunged for the
up-scale. Cost us about $20 more than usual but it was a once a year
indulgence so why not?
Delusions cost more but feel good.
Indeed, we did feel indulged. Very nice
accommodations befitting our desire to pamper ourselves. And along with
the room niceties two brand new Schick “5 Blade Razors”. Well, why not?
So the next morning I took one on a test drive. No doubt about it, a
very nice shave. Smooth and easy. And not one whisker better than my
1950’s era single blade Schick Injector that’s been my “road razor” for
well over twenty years. But there it is, the latest product of
progress. Each “5Blade” refill costs around $2.50 and up. Refills for
my old single edge, yes they are still available, run from .71 to $1.00
a blade. Granted, these Schick Adjustable razors are hard to find on
eBay. They seem to show up in shoals. Nothing for months and then
suddenly five or six all at once as if a cache of them has been
uncovered behind a wall in a deserted farm house in central Illinois.
When this happens you can usually get one for about thirty or
thirty-five dollars. But sometimes they can go as high as eighty. Thing
is, once you have one you’re done shopping for a good razor. You will
have it for a lifetime.
But why bother right? With plenty of throwaway
razors on the market there is no need to make a fetish over what one
shaves with. That would be the most practical way to think about it I
suppose. But for me, this small indulgence (yet another one) is worth
the effort and the price. After all, I spend everyday in close contact
with this finely made instrument and from my way of thinking it ought
to be at least as well made as my watch…..which cost me about $25 six
year ago and runs as well as any Rolex knock-off. Not that I’ve ever
had a knock-off anything.
A couple of days ago I found another Schick
Adjustable on eBay. A minor tide of them had rolled in and the price
was at a low start so I bid it up to around $14. I didn’t expect to
win, just “kicking tires”. Of course sometimes I get hooked and my
competitive spirit gets me to indulge in a bid war. I won it at $25.
But not bad since the next highest razor floating in on the tide an
hour before went for $65. It’s an “investment” and I’ll await the next
surge and maybe make $10. So go my rationalizations for this sort of
thing. (Yes, this can get me in trouble like the time I wound up buying
Subaru in South Bend, Indiana. It was a good price though and luckily,
a good car. But I shudder to think of what it might have turned out to
be.)
Anyway, maybe I’ll keep this Schick as a “back-up” in case I live another twenty years and need a new one.
Anybody interested in a good used Subaru?
The Avatar Antelope
If you don’t live around antelopes you probably don’t know that they
won’t cross fence lines, at least they won’t, like deer, jump them.
They will go under a barbed wire fence but they will not jump over one.
They prefer to crawl under them like a dog might. I’ve even seen them,
unwilling to jump over a fence that was down to one low wire in the
middle of a vast prairie, squeeze under the lowest wire though it was
only inches above ground. So the way to keep antelope on, or out of
your land, is simply to put up a fence of whatever height and you’ve
got ‘em.
But I have seen the future and there may be change in the wind.
A few weeks ago I was on my way to town and not more
than two miles from our house as I topped a low hill there stood a herd
of about ten antelope smack in the middle of the road. There being no
one coming the other way and no one behind me, I stopped and, since all
of us were surprised, stared at one another for about twenty seconds.
My surprise was based upon the fact that while I knew there were
antelope in the area they had never left the hundreds of acres in the
field to my left in all the time we’ve lived here. I imagine their
surprise amounted to the same realization.
Then suddenly the spell was broken and they all
began to move off the road and toward the field. It was then that
something extraordinary happened. All of the ten dutifully began to
duck under the barbed wire fence…except for one very healthy looking,
large buck, he jumped over the fence.
I don’t recall that the rest of the herd still
outside the fence was necessarily starteled by this even, I don’t think
any one of them took particular notice because all the remaining group
did what antelope always have done, scuttled under the fence. But
something new had happened. Never before in antelope life had one of
the herd set a precident. Not until now.
I’ve always wondered what would happen if one of
them should get the idea that they could do what deer do routinely, and
now it has happened. A shift is in the wind, now to see if this
“hundredth monkey” behavior will be remarked upon in antelope circles
and more importantly, acted upon. These are magical times.
What’s it Like?
“What’s it like being 76?” Asked my 27 year old.
Pause while I thought about it. “Well, it’s like being any other age.” I replied. “What’s it like being 27?”
Now, this might have evoked all kinds of stories
about whatever twenty-somethings experience these days, not much
different than what twenty-somethings experienced over any length of
recent history I imagine, but that’s not what the question was meant to
call up. It was meant to be, and received and responded to as, a query
about how any age feels to a person. And 76 “feels” like any other age
I can recall.
Sure, I’ve had a lot of experiences I haven’t had at
earlier ages, all the physical stuff over the past twenty years, most
of it accidental and incidental; the post-colosotomy hemorrhaging I
went through a few years ago, a bout of colitis….but anyone could have
gone through any of that at any age.
I don’t awaken with aches and pains, I don’t have
anything I can chalk up to the process of aging other than weight I
don’t seem to be able to lose and the hair and memory I can. Other than
that…….
Uh; I just thought of one thing, the noises I make
when getting up to a standing position. Not quite a groan it’s a sound
of effort in an exhalation of breath. Maybe this is just a bad habit.
I’ll check that out.
Ah…and there’s the thinking-of-death thing.
Yeah, really can’t deny that. I’m sure I never went
down that road a decade ago any where near as much as I do now. And as
my 70’s go on those thoughts seem to intrude more and more often. I’ll
bet I never thought of death at all until around sixty something.
That’s another bad habit I’ve got to break. It comes up so subtly
though. Yesterday when our water heater suddenly sprang a leak and
soaked the underside of the closet and dumped about a hundred gallons
of precious water under the house that old intrusive thought wended its
way into my consciousness, “How will Elizabeth deal with this when I’m
gone?”
I really prefer denial as a strategy when it comes
to this kind of thing. “I’m still here.” is my preferred response.
I do have things “in place”, but I don’t want to
dwell on every potential problem that will or might come up. In fact, I
prefer to determine that I will just live forever.
Yeah. So you see how it is at 76.
A “Classic”
For me a definition of “classic” would be, something
that continues to evoke a feeling. That “feeling” is not limited to an
evocation of the time in which the piece was created or encountered,
but it also brings the present more alive. In other words, it
transcends time and place.
One of the most powerful understandings I’ve had of
this was when we visited the Lincoln Memorial in D.C. last year. I
always thought that I would be greatly moved by being in the presence
of that wonderfully majestic sculpture of Lincoln. Every time I see it
pictured whether in full sun or shadow or beautifully lighted at night,
I always feel a fondness for it. But once in the Memorial itself I
hardly looked at it. Instead, it was the words of the Second Inaugural
carved into the granite of the walls to the right of the statue that
drew unexpected tears and such strong emotions in me that I concealed
them as I stood there reading. I had read and heard these words many
times over the years of my strong interest in all things Lincoln, but
for some reason, nothing I can make clear to myself even now, seeing
those words written in stone I suddenly knew them in a way I’d never
known them before. I “knew’ them in the sense that I felt them whereas
previously I only understood them.
This was totally unexpected. I was not more
emotionally “hyped”, in fact, I was surprised that I didn’t feel what I
expected to feel as I entered the Memorial. We were in a crowd of
people, it was mid-morning, “Glory, glory Hallelujah” not playing, so
when I turned to my right and began reading those words, I was taken
off guard by my response. Those words were, ARE….”classic”. The last
paragraph of the speech reads; “With malice toward none, with charity
for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right,
let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's
wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his
widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just
and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
But reading them here isn’t the same. Not even for me. When I read them
there I understood and felt their power. The printed page does not do
them justice. They belong thirty feet high and carved in granite.
Martin Luther King’s words, which I have edited here for space but
tried to keep most of the content for their power have that same
impact:
“…………..even though we face the
difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream
deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this
nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
“And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:
“My country 'tis of thee, sweet land
of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the
Pilgrim's pride, From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
“And when this happens, when we allow
freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet,
from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day
when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the
words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
That one still gets to me every time. That speech
changed my way of seeing the world. Up to just before Dr. King made
that speech I had been persuaded that he was just a “trouble maker”.
That race relations were not too bad. That all this “stirring up of the
negro was pointless.” (That’s my father talking.) From that day forward
I began to see much more clearly what was going on in our country.
This morning I awakened with John Kennedy’s words in
my brain, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can
do for your country!”
Time to make that statement again I think.
But it’s not just the powerful words of great
speeches that fall into this definition of “classic” after all. Leonard
Bernstein, upon the fall of the Berlin Wall, brought together the New
York Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Kirov Theatre
Orchestra, the Dresden Children’s Chorus, Bavarian Radio Chorus, and
more….all for Beethoven’s 9th, which, for the occasion he re-titled
the, “Ode to Freedom”. An incredibly moving concert which even
transcends the music of Beethoven…if you can imagine such a thing.
Classics in music can be listened to over and over
again, not in an obsessive way but in order to hear nuance and
experience new depth and beauty in the perfection of the piece. Any
listener of good jazz will cite “All Blues” by Miles Davis as an
example, or any track in that album for that matter. I can list a
hundred in this category but I will, as in a;
trapped-on-a-desert-island theme force fit only ten. (I was about to
say “five” but just found that way too limiting.)
In no rank order these ten would include: Shelly
Manne’s “Summertime”, Count Basie’s “Dickie’s Dream”, Dave Brubeck’s
“Georgia on my Mind”, Woody Herman’s “What are you doing the rest of
your life?”, Oscar Peterson’s “Nighttime”, Stan Kenton’s “Fuego
Cubano”, Patrick William’s “Mr. Smoke”, Miles and “Summertime” (yes,
again) Ella Fitzgerald’s “Our love is here to stay” (ballad version),
Pavarotti’s “Nessun Dorma”, Kathleen Battle and Jessie Norman’s “He’s
got the whole world in His Hands”,
OK, OK, that’s eleven but I was just getting started and already edging
towards a top twenty list. Man, that was hard! (Yeah, it was twelve
counting the “Ode…”)
Sue me.
Moving on to movies, again in no rank order and just
ten that I could (and have) watch over and over: “It’s a Wonderful
Life”, “Treasure of Sierra Madre”, “Casablanca”, “Dr. Strangelove”,
“Harvey”, “Pleasentown”, “A Face in the Crowd”, “Brigadoon”, “The
Wizard of Oz”, “The Last Temptation of Christ”, “Sergeant York”,
(I’m having a hard time following my own rules here.)
TV series (just five here): “Rome”, “Foyle’s War”,
“Mayberry RFD” (not “deep” but beautiful) “West Wing”, “Hill Street
Blues”. (Many “sub-categories here but this will do for now.
Books: well, as a rule I don’t re-read but I do keep
a lot of books I’ve loved. I don’t know why I don’t read them again,
probably because there are so many more to read. Of course I could say
the same about music but there’s the time involved and so forth. But
here’s a “forced list” of five of my favorites: “Hummingbird’s
Daughter” (Urrea) “House of Sky” (Doig) “Alone in the World” (Bode)
“Song of Heyoekah” (Storm) “Velveteen Rabbit” (Williams).
I know, seems an odd lot, but these I would read
again. In fact, I’m going to start on “….Heyoekah” this week.
Well, that’s it. I could go on and on with this
“Classic” list making but this will do. And now you know more about me
than before I started this exercise.
Come to think of it, so do I!
Faith and Yearning
“A
sure sign that a generation is passing is that it is judged as becoming
more and more 'unfashionable' in every way. This isn’t limited to
clothing styles and music or, as the New Yorker is fond of noting, not
possessing the “right” watch.
At a more profound level, the way Life itself has been explored and
explained becomes more and more passé according to the newly arrived
“experts”.
“I note that I am
way out of step with how the generation just behind me, my own children
sees the world of “faith” for example. And the generation behind them,
their own children, don’t connect with how their parents see. A kind of
“revenge” for grandparents.
“I don’t know if
this is just a product of education. I have been moving away from “that
old time religion” for a long, long time now…and yet, today I found
myself weeping over passages in a book relating the experiences of six
young Croatian girls who claimed to have seen a vision of the Madonna.
I don’t connect with any version of a “Madonna” but what I do connect
with is the intensity of the experience. And I long for it.
“There......I admit it, I long for it. For the intensity of that experience of faith founded upon something concrete…something real.”
I wrote all the
above a few weeks ago as I became submerged in what I can only describe
as a “crisis”. I haven’t added “spiritual” to that description because
I can now see that I’ve been in a spiritual crisis for years, a state I
was unaware of until I came to consciousness about it which could only
happen when I wrote the above and found myself emerging from it! And
the cause of my emergence was that I was smack in the middle of reading
“The Spiritual Detective” by Randall Sullivan and was experiencing huge
emotional upheaval(s).
What drew me to
this book was that I was trying to find out if anyone else was having
doubts about spiritual experiences and had those doubts been resolved
or not? And if not, why not? And if so, how?
The nature of my
own “crisis” was simply that my rational, logical brain was giving me
hell over my decision, or perhaps desire, to believe. To be invested in
faith.
And……as it turns
out, these experiences of dark passage are necessary precursors to what
ultimately resolves the issue. Let me see if I can lay out the road map
of events, all of which I now see were pieces of the awakening I
sought.
To you, being
outside of these events, they may seem mundane or even products of a
kind of madness, but frankly Mz Scarlet, I don’t give a damn! These
things were real, not imagined, occurrences and they moved me to where
I am today. Without them, I would still be floundering so I give them
value because they changed me.
From this point
on I will not apologize for anything I say that I might imagine you
will think is “crazy thinking”. I will lay out the facts:
A few weeks ago I
noticed that my adjustable razor was always out of adjustment. This
razor is an old Schick adjustable which opens from one to ten. I keep
it adjusted at the number 4. That’s a comfortable shaving adjustment
for my face. I have been using this razor for about forty years. I
ALWAYS leave it adjusted to the number 4 when I finish shaving and put
it away.
Always.
So, you can
imagine that my attention was drawn to the fact that suddenly a few
weeks ago, that razor was, when I picked it up to shave in the morning,
adjusted to around 7! At first I chalked it up to my own faulty memory.
Thought I had just misjudged the adjustment the day before. No big
deal. No “deal” at all.
But this went on
day after day. So now I began to pay attention on how I put it away.
I’d make sure it was set at 4. Next morning, 7!
I thought
Elizabeth, knowing what a creature of habit I am, was playing around
with me. “Did you change the setting on my razor?” I asked.
“What? Why would I do that?”
No trace of “playing around”. She wasn’t involved.
Next day, same
thing. And for several days after. Finally I had to admit to her that I
suspected that either I was going crazy or we had a poltergeist. A
friend of ours who had experienced poltergeists said, “No, they are
generally destructive or trouble making.” This didn’t seem to fit that
description. Besides, I’m not sure I believe in poltergeists.
One other
possibility, besides suspecting I WAS going crazy, was that a spirit
was trying to contact me and using something that would get my
attention.
So, I got myself
a notepad for journaling and began a process I had used before to open
myself, I call it “interactive journaling”. It’s sort of like automatic
writing, I write the date on a piece of lined notebook paper, then
write out my question. Then, beginning outside the left hand margin of
the paper and writing in between the lines as fast as I can trying not
to think but to allow whatever comes up, I write as fast as I can.
Forget legibility and spelling, just GO! And what happens is that I get
a clear communication about the question I have asked. This is never
something I could have imagined or made up. It is a clear response,
something clear of ego or desire. It answers the question better than I
might or would have.
As I say, that’s what I did this time. And what came up?
Well, it was not
what I thought, as usual. But it was something that had lain deep in my
fearful soul, it was the old “worthiness” thing again. I thought that
one had died. Of course it had in my brain. But not in my heart. So
here it was again, I did not feel worthy of God’s love. There it was
spelled out on the paper before me, the assurance over and over that I
was indeed worthy and had to come to know this as Truth!
I put the journal
down and went to sit in the kitchen. This is something Elizabeth and I
do each morning. We sit at the kitchen window and watch the drama of
the birds feeding outside. This was mid-afternoon. No big bird action
going on, most of the seed had already been grazed away….and then
suddenly a huge hawk flew into the window in front of me, not just
once, not just a glancing, accidental blow, this hawk banged into the
window over and over again in front of me and then, veering off to my
left and around the corner of the kitchen, began the same assault on
the glass doors. This went on for about two minutes and then he flew
off to one of the two chairs under the juniper in front of the kitchen
about twenty feet away. He sat on that chair finally flying off about
an hour later.
Something trying to get my attention I wondered?
Next I went into
my office and suddenly just ten yards or so in front of my office
windows, a red tail hawk sailed across the field about three feet off
the ground to a spot under a pinon pine and began to feed on something
there. Immediately a raven landed in back of him and began to peck at
his tail. The annoyed hawk kept turning on the raven to chase it away
but finally when another raven landed and joined in the red tail took
off to the top of a tree nearby. The red tail was my first “totem”, the
first spirit animal I took to be important to me as I began my own
spiritual journey more than thirty years ago.
Something going on?
I went into the
bathroom to shave and midway through, still puzzling over all of this
hoopla, a tiny fly buzzed by and suddenly I got it. A fly, an unlikely
presence in the middle of January, and the center of the “Coyote” card
in the Tarot. The fly which represents “bugging ones self” over little
things, which is, of course, what I had been spending my time doing. As
quickly as that realization dawned I laughed at the sudden knowing, and
note that the tiny presence, the fly, had died. Dove into the water in
the basin and was gone in that moment. And just as suddenly, in the
same instant I heard the strains of Stan Getz on the radio I'd left
playing in the living room, it was the beautiful melody; “A Time for
Love”.
Yes, I GOT it.
All of these
things were addressing what I was going through. Each and every
occurrence was calling me to attention, drawing me away from inner
turmoil to a larger realization. It WAS a “Time to Love”…..my self.
Two days later on
the road to pick up Elizabeth after her journey to Texas, a time of
being apart for too long for both of us, while driving I pulled out my
Tarot deck to see what card would come up to “speak” to me about what I
had been going through. Years ago when I had come upon “interactive
journaling” as a discovery of a healing tool for my self and other, I
had been asked in that writing if I would like to “….see the face of my
‘teacher’” Answering “Yes.” with trepidation the writing counseled me
to “Cut the cards!” and there, staring directly at me was “The High
Priestess”, a female figure clothed in blue who held the Truth in her
hands and whose feet rested on Intuition.
In reading “The
Spiritual Detective” I was being exposed over and over again to people
who were experiencing the vision of “The Immaculate Conception” also
identified as “The Mother”, and “The Virgin”. None of these concepts
were part of my own spiritual iconography. But I was having, as I
noted, a strong emotional reaction to what these people were
experiencing and what Randall Sullivan was writing about. I couldn’t
figure out why, but I knew it was real for me.
So, these many days later as I drove
across Texas I was about to cut the cards and asking to see that card
that had meant so much to me so many years ago, the “High Priestess”. I
picked up the deck and tuned it over in my hand and there at the bottom
of the seventy eight cards she was.
Yes…..I laughed.
I laughed in the knowing.
Weeks have gone
by and I am more alive in my own faith than I have been in a long, long
while, and today I happened upon a book lying on a table at a friends
house. It was an old Time magazine dedicated to Mother Teresa and
towards the back of the issue was the story of the years of spiritual
struggle she reported in letters written towards the end of her life.
Of how often she knew only “darkness” and “emptiness” in her spiritual
life, and yet how she continued and persevered in her work….and was all
of that, in the end, resolved?
As the priest who
wrote the narrative in that magazine observed; “ Was the darkness Jesus
went through in Gethsemane or on the Cross resolved?” In the end
he is said to have uttered the words, “It is finished.” The
message is that every one must pass through these darkness’s in order
to come to the this truth, that in order to have faith one must
determine to make a choice, to decide, in the face of doubt, that faith
is the answer.
As courage is an act undertaken despite fear, so Faith is an act undertaken despite doubt.
For me it comes
down to something as simple as this: Roger Welsch a writer who used to
do CBS Sunday Morning reports called, “Postcards from Nebraska” was
told by his granddaughter that because he often wrote and told stories
about spiritual matters that were not easily explained away by rational
thought that he was a “…..member of the Church of There’s Something
Going On Here.”
I’m a member of that congregation.
Rattlesnake on a Stick
by
Winter Prosapio
What I was given by my father can be summed up in the moment he handed me a rattlesnake.
He wasn’t the kind of person who handled snakes in
religious ceremonies or anything like that. He was, at the time, an
avid hiker and amateur nature photographer. The kind of person who
didn’t see rattlesnakes as a danger to be eliminated and didn’t see a
12 year old as a child who had to be wrapped up in protective covering
from every danger the world posed.
He was, and still is, the kind of person who melded
into the natural world, who is most comfortable around a fire ring and
by a stream, lit best by sunlight through pines, lightest in boots that
headed up mountains on miles of switch back trails.
I, by contrast, was a scrawny and sickly girl, with little athletic
ability and virtually no endurance. But I had a deep connection with my
father that drove me to try to keep up with him on long hikes we took
together after my parent's divorce. It was our “bonding time.” My face
would go beet red from exertion and the hiking boots I wore felt like
boulders on my skinny legs. Throughout the hike he would wait for me
further along the trail, waiting for me to catch up, never complaining
about my slow pace. At each stop he’d gently remove bottles of water
from my pack I’d insisted on carrying because I wanted to do my part.
Soon all I was carrying in my blue backpack was my pad and sleeping
bag, and still I could barely make it up the mountain.
It was right after a brief stop on the trail when it
happened. I was still just a few yards behind him when he
signaled me to stop. He took his walking stick and went over to the
left side of the trail. That’s when I heard it – the shimmering buzz of
a rattlesnake. It was curled up in a crevice next to the trail, nearly
invisible in the shadow of the rock and dirt. It had raised its head
and tail in a double exclamation of irritation.
My father slipped his walking stick beneath it
somehow and there it was, an angry animated rope draped over the end of
the shiny, varnished bamboo walking stick. It was rattling with a
vengeance and eyeing my father as if gauging the striking distance. He
lifted it through the air and walked over to me.
“Here, hold this right here. I want to get a picture,” he said, handing me one end of the stick.
Assuming he wouldn’t hand me an angry rattlesnake on
a stick if it weren’t safe, I took it and held it for the few minutes
it took him to get his camera out of his bright orange backpack and
take a few pictures. As the shutter clicked under his fingers and the
film whirred, the snake never stopped rattling and swaying its head,
clearly perplexed about being in the air with no ground to slither
against.
Once the camera was packed up, I handed him back the
snake on a stick. My father walked carefully across the trail and set
the snake down on the other side of the stream where it would be safe
from other hikers. And that was it. We never really talked about it
again. It didn’t seem to be a big deal that I had held a poisonous
snake at the end of a five-foot stick. Somewhere in my 12 year old
brain I knew it was dangerous, I knew my mother would have had a heart
attack if she’d seen it, and that it would probably be best for all
involved if I never, ever, told her about it.
I had known at the moment he handed me the stick I
had to be careful. And he knew I would be. He had utter confidence that
I wouldn’t panic or shrink away.
That’s what my father gave me. His belief in my
ability to handle things made me realize I could handle things. I
realized that despite my size, despite the illnesses that knocked me to
my knees with great regularity, despite my skinny legs and clumsy
nature, I could handle things as well as anyone. I could stand up in
the presence of intense anger and find calm, face what could make
others run, believe in myself with the same confidence he had when he
handed me that snake.
I still have that gift he gave me that day; I can
still hold a rattlesnake at the end of a stick, when I need to. It’s
been a good skill to have.
end. Winter Prosapio
"Ranch" Wranglin'
You probably don't have these little adventures where you are. Pity,
what tales will you spin over the warmth of the hot air register next winter?
So, I start up our truck (a Toyota Tundra V-8) in preparation for a trip
to the wilds of the National Forest about 200 miles south of Albuquerque
and the "Check Engine" light goes on. This never promotes a warm
feeling, but our consultations with our neighborhood Toyota "whisperer",
a retired chief mechanic for the firm, has comforted us with the fact that
this is usually just an emissions thing and will not really threaten the
mechanical well-being of our vehicle or necessitate the postponement of
our trip. So, off we go, only a little apprehensive.
We encounter no problems. The truck runs just fine.
When we return, further consultations encourage a trip to the dealer,
"I don't have the electronics to check this thing out." says the
Whisperer. So to town we go, secure in the idea that it won't take much
to just turn the light off.and perhaps, tweak a "thingy" or two.
Turns out a pack rat, one of our least favorite forms of furry wildlife,
has eaten a small wire in the engine called the "knock sensor".
"Do we even need this thing?" we ask the Whisperer.
"Well" he equivocates, "maybe yes, maybe no."
The message seems to be, might as well get it fixed. It's only about
$25 in parts anyway.
.and around $600 in labor.
This teeny wire is under the manifold which means the top of the engine
has to be taken off to get to it, and..
So, one day later the "Check Engine" light is off and we are
$712.26 poorer.
Ah, but Wait! as they say in those terrible TV commercials, There's More!
So we begin the pack rat "strategy", keep hoods open on our
two vehicles, put out live traps and two trays of poison.
The next morning I go out to check the traps; empty. But so are the two
trays of poison! And our neighbor LaJuana's dogs are walking away.
Oh, oh. I run to their house and break the, possibly, bad news. "I
think one or both of your dogs has eaten the rat poison I put out last night."
A quick call to "Poison Control".
"Pour hydrogen peroxide down their throats until they barf it all
up." is the advice.
We start with the "easy" dog, a funnel down the throat and
pour the stuff in. Immediate barf, no trace of poison. It's the other dog.
The "difficult" one.
About thirty eye dropper loads later, he is no fan of funnels, up it
all comes, and despite his protests we have saved his butt. (The vet also
advises a course of "vitamin K" to treat potential internal bleeding
and stress.)
Two days later there is the sound of turmoil around the live traps. Upon
investigation I find the traps have been overturned, and the same survivor
dog has dragged a now beaten to death pack rat out and left its body next
to the trap.
Problem is, the poison, which had been left on top of the engines so
the dog would not get into it, is gone. Did the dog also eat that along
with the bedraggled rat?
Since he's still on the vitamin K regime he should be OK.
We hope.
We get rid of the martyred rat and get ready to run errands, this time
with the car which is parked next to the truck. We start it up.
The "Check Engine" light goes on........
The (Biological) Facts of Life
Fact: The more coyotes trapped and killed, the more coyotes will breed.
That is the way coyotes protect their populations.up to a point. Coyotes
breed once a year and in a litter of up to twelve only twenty or thirty
percent survive.
Fact: Pack rats give birth to litters of up to fourteen every forty days.
Fact: Mice give birth every nineteen to twenty-one days. Litters can
be as many as ten.
Fact: Rabbits give birth every twenty-eight days and litters can be as
large as seven.
Fact: The top predator of each of these here in New Mexico is the coyote.
We don't have enough bobcats, mountain lions, or foxes to come close to
dealing with these populations of rats, mice and rabbits. Yet, the State
of New Mexico, and many other states, Florida for example, has an "open
season" on coyotes. In other words, coyotes can be killed the year
'round, every year and forever. The State, the Fish and Game Department
in particular, maintains a war on the only predator that can keep the most
damaging rodent pests at bay. What kind of sense does this make?
This is a wrong-headed philosophy born in the 1800's that led to the
elimination of most of the important predators in the west, the bears, the
wolves, the foxes, and it persists today now focused on the coyote. You
would think this kind of thinking would have gone out with the awakening
to the dangers to the environment of DDT and the crazy idea that toxic waste
dumping could simply be ignored, but there persists this blind knee jerk
thinking that there are wild things we can do without and ridding ourselves
of them has no effect on the balance of nature. One coyote catching and
killing one pack rat wipes out the potential for the birth of around seventy
three more pack rats a year. Of seventy mice, of seventy three rabbits.
(These are conservative figures.) We're just figuring on one mother each
here.
On our little patch of ten acres there are at the very least three pack
rat dens, uncounted numbers of mice and a herd of cute little cotton tail
rabbits getting less cute and more numerous week after week. And we haven't
seen a coyote in months. This is a problem.
There are seasons on every other predator in our State. How these seasons
are determined is based upon breeding habits and assumed populations. That
word "assumed" is important. Nobody really knows how many bobcats,
mountain lions, deer, bears, or foxes there are in any given area. We have
some ideas of the range it takes for each animal to survive, but we don't
know how large the populations are. Nobody is counting. It's just business-as-usual
as the bobcat, fox, and mountain lion slowly get wiped out. And as for coyotes;
they are lumped into the same category as pack rats. Who cares? There are
plenty of them. Yet they are the one remaining predator upon which we must
rely to keep some semblance of balance in the environment when it comes
to the rodent population. They are what is called a "keystone"
predator. Eliminate or diminish them to a great degree and the entire environmental
system gets thrown out of whack.
In areas where domestic and feral cats are allowed to roam, bird populations
plummet. If cats are controlled by coyotes, birds survive.
A cold but effective fact.
When one of our two cats was eliminated by a coyote, the remaining one
got a lot more careful about going outside to hunt. He took down a few birds,
not many mice and a couple of gophers in his lifetime. Coyotes are much
better hunters than cats. And they don't go after birds.
It's time to work to put the natural world back in balance. The Sioux
phrase; Mitakyue Oyasin translates; "We are all related." This
has always meant that we are related to all of life. The native people knew
the importance of this truth. Without respect for it, our world begins to
careen quickly towards another native, this time Hopi, truth; Koyaanisqatsi.
Life out of balance.
Not long ago a trapper said to me; "Don't you want me to manage
the wildlife?"
"Manage the wildlife?" No, I want to manage the humans. We
as the top predators on the planet have done more damage locally and world
wide than any so-called "varmint".
("Varmint or varmit is an American-English colloquialism,
particularly common to the American east and South-east within the nearby
bordering states of the vast Appalachia region. The term describes farm
pests which raid farms as opposed to infest farms - mainly predators such
as foxes, weasels, and coyotes, sometimes even wolves or rarely, bears,
but also, to a lesser degree, herbivores and burrowing animals that directly
damage crops and land." Wikipedia)
This pejorative has been used to dismiss all wildlife as a nuisance.
Something to be rid of. Look at this definition. Once the first three are
gone those that "damage crops and land" are home free. And the
top five noted here do neither. Once we eliminate them it's pesticide time.
Does it make sense to poison the Earth to make up for the lack of natural
pest control afforded by nature?
We cannot continue to treat the natural world with the same kind of arrogant
disregard our ancestors evidenced in wiping out the buffalo, the passenger
pigeon, the ivory billed woodpecker and thousands of other species directly
and more thousands indirectly through ignorance of the interrelatedness
of all of life. It is time to wake up to the fact that on spaceship Earth,
all life is important and sacred, that means we owe them due respect. Yes,
coyotes included.
We haven't begun to know the importance of each in the vastly complex
web of life but just because we don't know what the consequences of our
ignorance may turn out to be doesn't give us a license to kill without regard.
It is time to care for "all our relations" and work to bring what
is left of the gift each offers on our Earth back into harmonious coexistence
with us. Surely we must know by now that our hubris has been leading us
to an environmental dead end. Literally.
Existential New Mexico
They really take this "Land of Enchantment" stuff seriously
at the New Mexico Highway Department. Here are the latest entries in the
weird road signage category: "Dust Storms May Exist".
In Colorado, a more pragmatic state I've noticed, the above sign would
read; "Dust Storm Area, Use caution." But in our state we are
not sure that we can rest on the assumption that dust storms do exist, hence
the hedging.
This sign was followed about fifty feet further on by, "Zero Visibility
Possible".
It is true that there is a high school nearby and this sign may refer
to the inability of teenagers to grasp the long range effects of current
behavior. This is, of course, pure speculation on my part, but then these
signs do promote that kind of open ended thinking.
In fact, I have often been aware that "Zero Visibility....."
is "Possible" even probable given the myopic nature of
prediction when it comes to making life choices. Take my marriage to Elizabeth
for example. When we married I took on the parenting of three young children.
"No problem." was the phrase I uttered when the proposition was
laid out before me. Now right there was an example of "Zero Visibility......"
for sure. In fact, neither of us could see very well at the time as I recall.
There wasn't any warning sign about ".......Storms May Exist"
either, but then what does one do? We drove merrily on and were none the
wiser until well after we had survived the crashes.
The signposts of life, they're posted, but not always succinct.
What Happened to Romance?
The other day I asked Elizabeth what some of the current pop music lyrics
are about. I can't bring myself to listen past the "noise" to
plumb those depths. "It's about anger and how screwed up the world
is, that sort of thing..unless it's 'alternative' and then it's like the
60's and about how we should make the world a more wonderful place, etc.,
etc."
What brought this question up was that I was listening to the lyrics
of something from "The Great American Song Book" (the collection
of music, mainly from the 30' and 40's, by composers like Porter, Gershwin,
Rogers and Hart, etc). This, in case you are not familiar, is music which
is about human relationships so you'll hear, "Love is just around the
corner." or, love sought or lost, "Stormy weather", "Blues
in the night", or "Black coffee"......and so many, hundreds,
more. But today none of this language is heard.
Here's a lyric that just occurred to me which would be totally out of
the question to be sung by any suitor today, "I took one look at you,
that's all I meant to do, and then my heart stood still....." the only
response that might elicit would be a 911 call. This, it seems to me, means
that the language of love has been so coarsened that there is no beauty
left in it. And a whole generation, maybe two, of young people consider
that their only meaningful relationships are made up of silly, and "safe"
flirtations on, "Face Book, or "Twitter". Flocks of boy-men
are still living at home at 30, while girl-women don't bother with "commitment"
but dither about spending all their time suiting up for some undefined something.
Neither can admit to their true hearts desire, they can only experience
this as a "virtual reality", a kind of computer game about sitcom
love. Not having the experience of romantic love at a young age, when it
begins to amp up and supply most of its juice, they plod along into adulthood
and settle for approximations.
Elizabeth believes that all of this is a result of kids who were raised
by others while both parents worked so the kids never really bond or learn
to trust love as a constant and as a foundation for themselves. The concept
of love becomes a myth, a fairy tale as real as Santa or the Tooth Fairy,
something that can only be found in a "Lord of the Rings" fantasy
but certainly not a genuine or even an important part of real life.
The idea of romantic love began, history says, in the Middle Ages, and
was the stuff of poets and balladeers who built upon stories of knights
and fair maidens, of dragons and castles. These tales found fertile ground
then because they tapped into a yearning that was beginning to be felt in
our psyches. Once we figured out the food- shelter-clothing thing we wanted
something more in our relationships besides the fulfillment of sexual need
and physical security. We wanted the luxury of being wanted for ourselves
by another. That would be the "sociology" of it at least. Then
there's the psychology and mythology, all built upon the biology after all.
Well, back to the music; right now I've got Billy Holiday singing a very
painful version of "Sweet and Mellow" with a poignant tenors played
by Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young echoing her words. I've listened to
this track about fifty times over the years, it was recorded in 1957, but
this time it has taken me to a deeper level of listening and feeling. Billy's
failing voice, a thin, raspy sound brought on by too many years of booze,
heroin and persecution transmits so much of the suffering a lost relationship
causes that, though I no longer am in the midst of that kind of angst, I
can still connect with the memory. Maybe that's the thing young people today
are fleeing, and maybe Elizabeth is right, perhaps this current avoidance
of all things romantic is based on the original pain of abandonment felt
when a kid is left in the care of someone else for most of its formative
years and it is now totally suppressed so it has become a knee jerk reaction
to anything that approaches the possibility of a heart involvement.
Is it "Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at
all."? I'd like to be able to beat a retreat here and say, "Who
knows, maybe we're better off." But the drug and alcohol use in our
society, the loss of civility, the general tenor of things, the meanness,
the worship of things over the well being of people......I know we're a
materialistic society, but it seems to me, and maybe it's just the selective
memory of age, but it seems things have gotten a lot worse in our
society despite all the opportunities via communication to make them better.
Though I don't get involved in it "Facebook" and Twitter"
and all the other so-called "social networking" venues seem to
only be about self promotion, a seeking after that illusive "15 minutes
of fame" rather than any genuine sharing of thoughts and feelings about
anything more than current events and "who's hot?".
I guess the short of what I'm saying here, is that the concept of romantic
love, as a value, has fallen on hard times and we are the poorer for it.
In order to be totally free and independent it seems most people are fleeing
emotional involvement to avoid any possibility of loss and pain and instead
have only invested in the superficialities of being human.
Oh well, that's just the "romantic" in me thinking that the
World should trust the heart again instead of placing all trust in the head.
Obviously a bias.
How Raven (Elizabeth) Believed Her Name
It began simply enough, I had given Elizabeth the name, "Raven"
not long after we met. Both she and my then youngest daughter Winter carried
it. Physically there was the black hair of course, but the name fit them
because of much more than that, though Elizabeth remained unconvinced. Raven,
like "coyote" is the trickster-teacher in the spiritual world
and the wise-bird of legend and real life. It is also the one bird that
seems to experience being a bird as much more than just a daily effort of
hunting and gathering. Watch any raven for awhile and you will see a bird
who is having fun while going about the business of living. This bird has
a lot to teach.
One day, not long after sunrise, a few people arrived at our place to
set up for the "Sun Dance" that was to begin later that day. They
parked in our lot and went down to the dance circle site to begin preparations.
About an hour later as they were returning for supplies and I stepped
outside to greet them just as a flock of ravens flew overhead. Suddenly
one peeled out of the bunch and circled down to land on one of the parked
cars. The owner walked to it, opened the door, and the raven hopped across
the roof and perched on the door and began preening. The man held his hand
open and the raven dropped a feather into it. Right about then I figured
there was something out of the ordinary going on.
I ran inside the house and grabbed my camera as Elizabeth walked over
to the car and held her left arm out to the bird, which jumped onto it,
walked up her arm to her shoulder, nipped her on the left ear, then hopped
across her back and nipped the right. Then it hopped down her right arm
and flew off into a pine tree nearby.
There are many more details to this story that Elizabeth is prone to
add, but these are the bony facts of it. Now I will add all of the
"disclaimers" to please the scoffers; thirteen miles away, as
the raven flies, there was a raven that hung out in an equipment yard. I
don't know how long that bird was there, but it did seem to not be bothered
about the proximity of people.
That's it.
So let's consider the odds, it's Sun Dance time and a flock of ravens
flies over, what are the odds that one of them might be that people "friendly"
raven? There were maybe ten ravens, so perhaps 10-1. What then are the odds
that this particular flock would fly over this area? Given all the points
of the compass they could choose, let's say, arbitrarily, 360-1. That they
would fly over on the morning of a Dance we'd have to add 365 to that so
725-1. And add to this that this particular bird would select to land here
and walk up the arm of a woman who sought confirmation of the name "Raven".
this is such a long shot that I'd have to give it lottery odds. A million
to one shot. And I'm sure a real statistician would add permutations
which would add to this number considerably.
I think it would be a much harder sell to convince anyone that all of
this was pure chance. I mean, it would at least instill a glimmer of doubt
in a professional doubter's structure of belief would it not? But in fact,
when I tell this story, and/or the one about the coyote skull (see "A
Story") to a committed skeptic I know they think I am telling a story
that is primarily a metaphor, or that I am outright lying.
Or maybe that I'm simply a nut case.
If there is a confirmed skeptic reading this I can only say this; these
are not manipulative tales told to attempt a conversion. They are
not metaphors created to "teach", and lastly, they are not lies.
What they do for me is to take me down to the foundations of my own spiritual
belief they tell me that I don't have to make a great leap-of-faith or put
on hold my own reason and logic to believe that there is more to this mystery
of life than the marshaling of "odds" can resolve.though the worship
of pragmatic explanations can dissolve just about anything that is
inexplicable by any other means of understanding.
Besides; I am a skeptic.....and they certainly convinced, and continue
to convince, me.
I know that these things did happen.....happened to people who
were neither gullible nor innocent of life experience. They were simple
occurrences to be sure, no Lazarus raising, no fishes and loaves, but impactful,
and quite to the point of what was needed.
So Elizabeth's name is Raven! Of that she is very much assured.
Me too.
A Story
I'm a jazz fan. It's the music that brings me home to my self. If I've
been exposed to a day of really bad music, on hold for minutes that seem
to be stretching into hours, and it's been Kenny G, or rock ("Classic"
or not, I can't take much of it) or the boring and predictable Bam! Bam!
Bam! accompanying the rap, hip-hop noise emanating from our 16 year old's
room, after a time I need my head and heart cleared and jazz is where I
go.
Sometimes I will find myself needing to explore an old piece that has
drawn my attention once again and I will play the same track over and over
and over, hearing something in it I haven't ever heard before, though I've
listened to it a hundred times. Miles Davis and "All Blues" will
catch me like this on occasion.
Some poetry is like that for me too and I will re-read a piece again
to recapture what caught me the first time, or to hear it afresh to awaken
me to what I missed in the first go 'round. "The Road not Taken"
is one like that.
I have a story of my own that I re-tell now and then because I think
it will help others to hear it, even though some I know have probably heard
it ten times over the years. In reality I tell it more for me, because I
need to re-visit the emotions that were present when the story was born
into my life those many years ago. It's a "touchstone" of sorts,
a place to which I return to reawaken faith and hope.
This is the story:
But first.....just a bit of background. This story didn't spring entirely
from the moment, there were many "tributaries" that fed into the
stream of it. It's often true that a spiritual awakening, or a "miracle"
happens when the ground is already prepared for it.
Not always, but mostly.
To be brief I will just say that I had been looking for a way to understand
and believe that there was more to life than our just being, as my brother-in-law
contended "animated pieces of meat". But I was deep into "proofs"
about this. I wanted the facts not just hopeful leaps of faith or
assurances from people who burned a lot of incense and meditated all the
time. I wanted to be convinced!
I'm still that way about most politics and "Best apple pie!"
claims.
I had come north from my apartment near El Paso to the mountains outside
of Albuquerque. I'd come to visit friends and to gather some shreds of cedar
bark from the trees that grow in the area,. I was using six to eight inch
lengths of it to create small smoldering fires for the daily ceremonies
I was committed to performing at the request of a medicine man I was working
with. This was part of my personal spiritual quest. One of the "tributaries".
He had taught me a little ritual to perform with the trees in order to
gather the bark in a "conscious" manner. This was simply a process
of taking a pinch of tobacco up to the tree selected and offering a prayer
about why I was gathering the bark and that I would be using it for good
purpose, and wouldn't be taking much.
This seemed to me to be a nice way of keeping a person aware of conservation
which is what I figured it was really all about.
I like to keep things "rationally" based.
Another tributary was this; I had been seeking a name. I wanted
some sort of spiritual identity and through a series of very odd
events occurring over the preceding months I had come up with "coyote"
a name which carries many levels of understanding.....but this is another
story.
The events which led me to this name could be considered "magical"
by some, but for me, they might have simply been random occurrences and
I thought I might be making more of them than they deserved. The real dilemma
was that I was the one doing the "interpreting". Since I didn't
trust anything I might come up with as coming from "The Source",
my interpretations didn't amount to any kind of proof I could consider
valid.
So to prove that; the name was real and therefore purposeful,
and thus, that there really was a Creator spirit running this show
and all of this ceremony and ritual was worth the undertaking, my criteria
was this; someone, unbidden, would one day hand me a coyote skull as a gift.
That would be the proof I would need.
Kind of a tall order but not unusual for a skeptic.
The scene was set.......and there I was doing my obligatory ceremony
with the tree of my choice, one chosen at random from among thousands of
possibilities in the Cibola National Forest at the foot of the Sandia mountains.
In the midst of this undertaking I was suddenly struck with this thought;
"This isn't the right tree."!
This was a very uncharacteristic response for me because I'm a point-A-to-point-B
kind of guy. I don't reflect much on "feelings" about right
or wrong trees. I was just doing a ritual after all. But there
it was, and the feeling of "wrongness" persisted until I looked
around at the forest of cedar trees and picked one that, and this is my
memory of it, was "greener" than all the others.
I walked over to it and began my ceremony again, feeling "right"
this time.
But midway through something in the branches, deep inside and right up
close to the trunk, something glowingly white, caught my attention.
I moved some branches aside and stepped inside the shade and saw, hanging
in the fork of a main branch, a skull.
A coyote's skull.
All these years later I can still feel what I felt then though time has
lessened the impact. Tears flooded my eyes and my legs could not hold me
up. I could only cry and say, "My God! It's all real! It's REAL!"
My shock at that realization was only equaled by the guilt I felt that I
could ever have doubted......and then came the pure joy of the reassurance
that this tangible gift represented.
Then I wanted to tell someone, anyone......to reassure them, to spread
the news of this experience. But there was no one near to tell and, after
I sat with all of it for a time, I determined that keeping it all inside
seemed important. Letting it permeate every cell to purge the doubts felt
like the best use of this miracle. And I had no doubt then, nor do I have
now, that that's exactly what this was.
I have chosen to tell this story again now and then but only when I felt
the time was right to it revisit that feeling, to bring it back to life
in me and share it with those who need it. There have been many other "miracles"
since then, but nothing so clear-cut, so out of the "could be explained
away" category. And of course, I could, if I worked very hard at statistics,
probabilities, and permutations, explain even that one I suppose
Well, considering the odds, maybe not.
Sometimes, when I am feeling unloved, or more accurately, unlovable,
I will finally whittle all of those who might possibly love me down to my
daughters of whose love I am absolutely sure and then I stare at a picture
I have of my wife Elizabeth and, once again captured by her warm soul eyes,
I will be brought back to my center. From there I can rebuild to a place
of balance.
This coyote story never fails to ebb the tides of doubt which rise as
hours of facts begin to overtake my moments of faith. Just
as the sure love of my daughters and my life partner, the poetry of jazz
and the depth of prose bring me back home to sanity, it reminds my doubting
brain and my cautious heart of what I came upon in that forest of cedar.
It was not something imagined or dreamed, it was a tangible gift I could,
and still do, hold in my hands. A reality that brings me spiritually alive
once again and without the specter of doubt to cloud my hope.
And this is also true; I know, that despite my strong intent it is impossible
to convey the power of this story to another to instill the same response
I had to this experience. How can I paint a sunset so that you can see it
or send my experience of deep love to you so that you can feel it? The Bible
has never convinced me of virgin birth or resurrection and though Carl Sandberg
has told me of the "Wilderness" he cannot take me there, I will
have to put on my own hiking shoes for that. And so it is for "miracles".
All I hope to do by telling this story is say that it is possible for any
human being, searching for something to believe in, to find it.
The method is simple; fight to keep your own mind and heart open to all
the potential for magic. But don't wait for it, actively seek it out.just
as it has been said: "Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be
opened unto you." It takes work, whether that be doing the ceremonies
and rituals or just walking in the woods, to overcome the inertia, but the
rewards for those efforts, if you believe in the worth of hope, are priceless.
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