not native fruit

lenape nation of pennsylvania/writings of Mabel Dodge Luhan

Reading essays from "At Home on the Earth."  Discovered Meridel Le Sueur, whose essay "The Ancient Peoples and the Newly Come" was very moving to me.  I haven't read much about the mid-west.  It's always amazing to me that people often think I'm from the mid-west - and it's true my father was Scandinavian, but not a farmer, rather a seaman from Denmark, and he wanted to keep as close to the sea as possible! - was not a land-lubber at heart by a long-shot.  So he settled along the Delaware River, near its mouth in Delaware Bay.  He liked the semi-indigenous people of that region.  By the way, if you'd like to see a wonderful video produced by the University of Pennsylvania about the Lenape people, called the Prophecy of the Fourth Crow, click here.  It's a YouTube kind of thing and lasts about six minutes.

The people pictured would be the native people of our area.  I cannot become a tribal member because I can't prove my ancestral relationship to the tribe, but that is all right.  There are many of us who can't make the paper trail connections, but we know what our heritage is.  Even if I didn't have ancestors from the local native american mix (Nanticoke, Powhatan, Lenape, Shawnee, Mohawk, Seneca, Susquehannah, etc) I could still be a 'Friend' of the Natives because it was the culture I grew up in.  I could not agree more with the motto of the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania, "Lenape Culture - The Root of Pennsylvania."  For me, this is true.  For me this is the root of the culture I was brought up in, although we labored to assimilate into what we thought was white culture.  We had a sort of 'dual' culture, but the root culture was Indian.

Yesterday, I remembered a doll that came briefly into my hands.  Let me tell a little story here: in our neighborhood a number of my friends had cloth dolls that were black girls on  one side and white girls on the other.  Or dolls that you could turn upside down to make black or white, each with a different pretty skirt.  My husband says he's never seen a doll like that, but he didn't have sisters.  I'm just assuming these dolls were all over, but maybe not.  Who knows? Did you have a doll like that?  Do you still have it?  Anyway, I told my mother I wanted a doll like that, and she said she thought she might have something like that on hand - not exactly the same, but similar - and she produced a small, poorly made cloth doll that frightened me.  On the back of the doll's head, if you pushed the hair aside, there was a small brown face.  It really scared me!  I didn't like the doll, and after not too long a time, it disappeared from my stash.  Don't know what happened to it, but my mother seemed keen on 'getting rid' of things that related to the other cultures we were part of. 

Anyway, can you imagine my surprise when I read about the first doll pictured at the University of Pennsylvania exhibit on the Lenni Lenape?

Anyway, the realizations, etc, keep coming although at a slower pace.  I've begun studying the Lenape Language - also a feature offered by the Lenape Nation of Penna website.I think I've mentioned before how much my mother loved the various native words that were part of our street names, etc, in Philadelphia, and I have found that the sound of spoken Lenape resonates inside me very deeply.  I'm thrilled to have found a venue to study it more.

I've been thinking of my father, and how he fell in love with the people of our area, and married my mother and produced me, when I just happened to read another essay in "At Home on this Earth," this one by Mabel Dodge Luhan who was a wealthy back-Easterner - she felt great discontentment with her own 'native' culture and went through three marriages before she discovered New Mexico, fell in love with a Pueblo Indian named Tony Luhan, married him and lived with him there for forty years until her death.  I love some of the things she writes about the Pueblo, because this is exactly what I found in so many of the people I grew up around: "The Indians all fell into their own soft speech together, a language that was a blending of outdoor sounds, like running water and the wind in the trees, but that was particularly musical from the kindness in it, often falling into tenderness that was very caressing to the ear.  There always seemed to be this loving kindness in them, not sentimental at all but the expression of the smooth concord of their lives."

Mabel Dodge Luhan struggles in this scene to experience the world 'directly,' not through the mediation of the 'great works of art' that she felt sepated her from her own experience of nature.  She writes, "It had begun to appear to me that there had always been a barrier between oneself and direct experience; the barrier of other people's awarenesses and perceptions translated into words or paint or music, and forever confronting one, never leaving one free to know anything for oneself, or to discover the true essence in anything.

"This landscape made me think of a painting by Constable with its thick, soft, faraway clumps of trees, and then I was impatient because I did not want to connect this new world with the old.  I wanted it to be itself alone and not a part of any past I had ever known.  I did not want to be reminded of old familiar things.

"The grassy banks of the ice-cold pale water were as untouched as though no one had ever been there before; no footprints, no vestige of humankind, marred that empty hermitage.  Tall trees stood with their trunks plunging deep into the grass and white violets and wild strawberries were thick in the cool shade.  Everything in this garden was composed like poetry, and romantic like poetry may be.  'Shakespearian,' I thought, and then quickly dismissed the analogy.  Was one to be forever reminded of something else and never to experience anything in itself at first hand?  My mind seemed to me a waste-basket of the world, full of scraps that I wanted to throw away and couldn't.  I longed for an immersion in some strong solution that would wipe out forever the world I had known so I could savor, as though it were all there was to savor, this life of natural beauty and clarity that has never been strained into Art or Literature.  No - everything in the world outside had been distilled into art, defined by ruthless, restless, wordmongers, or other artists in transformation, and they had used it all up.  I did not want that old world any more.  I knew unless I found a new fare I would admit 'actum est' and give up."

Interesting to me, because I went through this exact same phase when I was younger and discovered the wastes of the California desert east of the Sierra, and of Nevada.  I associated this 'awakening to what is' with a spiritual change in myself, less as an aesthetic change, and also interestingly, I associated this change with my husband, whom we had reason to believe was part-Indian (Lenape, like me), and with the natural environment of California with its empty miles of seacoast, its grassy hills, granite mountains and its high desert terrain.  His consciousness seemed already capable of appreciating an environment that to my mind, distorted as it was, was nothing but empty desert or wilderness.  (My mind was 'distorted' by the stereotypes of the mainstream culture of my time, which had no appreciation for desert-terrain, thought it was okay to blow up atomic bombs in it, even though there were people living nearby, not to mention animals and plant eco-systems.  During this period, I lived a kind of 'double life' - what I really felt inside, and what I felt obliged to express and engage in in the outside world.)  I'm finding that as I embrace my innate Lenape cultural-consciousness - and flesh it out by familiarizing myself with the culture as it has been preserved by those who never forgot their true identity - I feel more 'oneness' within myself. 

Well, I hope you can see how the flow of this post holds together.  Wanishi! :-)

wood horse

  
Monday, April 20th, 2009, was a Wood Horse Day - and it was just about the busiest, cheeriest, talky-est, most optimistic and fun-loving day I've experienced in a long time!  It's neat to realize that Wood Horse people share these characteristics. These old Chinese wisdom systems are so 'character' based.  They are thoroughly focused on virtues and also on those areas where you need 'advice,' which they offer with a wry sense of humor.

One of the things I love about 'reading' the Chinese Element/Animal portaits of my various friends (and some few selected celebrities) is that I learn more about these 'Animals' (qualities of time, space and personality).  It's a fact that the people I know who have Wood Horse somewhere in their Four Pillars all do indeed share these qualities.  They are very sunny, busy, sociable folks.

This is so much fun, learning a whole new way to see people and time!  Even MORE FUN than all those on-line questionnaire puzzles, like 'What Kind of Fruitcake Are You? 

If you want to read more, you can visit my other website.

mocassins, parkas, passwords

I'm reading the autobiography of Mourning Dove, whose English name was Christal Quintasket.  I don't think I've ever heard a prettier name in my life.  I love her book, but I realize that what she describes as her Indian life is not the same as my recent ancestors who knew themselves as part-Indian.  Our people are more accurately described in 'Strong Medicine Speaks' by  Marion Gould and Amy Hill Hearth.  The 'Indians' I knew were those who managed not to be removed, those who had assimilated to at least some degree, enough to pass as 'white' or 'colored' back in the day.  (Please excuse the use of terms.)  Strong Medicine's people had stuck together as a cohesive group enough to claim ancestral lands in southern New Jersey and achieve tribal status.  Our people were more of a remnant.  They may not have lived in tipis or long-houses, or lived surrounded by the skins of animals, etc, etc, but they kept some of their values, knew they were outsiders by the standards of the mainstream culture, and celebrated their difference to varying degrees.  Strong Medicine does a good job of communicating that in her book.  In the case of my mother's father's people, they called themselves 'Moors' and that's what set them apart, or 'represented' their identity as native americans.  As it turns out Spanish ships were in the waters of the Chesapeake - that's why Jamestown was settled forty miles up the river, so it all makes sense, even without the pirate-theories.  My grandfather took the Moorishness quite seriously, but the people today don't seem to.  Even my mother questioned the connection to Moors, but the DNA test certainly seems to support it.  

I've been thinking about other aspects of growing up in our neighborhood.  For one thing, as a child one of the few things I was given that was brand-new were a pair of beaded mocassins.  These were, I was told, very important - they were *my mocassins.*  They used to slip off my feet, however, which annoyed me, and so I said I didn't like them.  Here's this little alien blonde girl, and my mother says to my grandmother very seriously and with some note of disgust, "She doesn't like her mocassins."  I think my mother just decided I had to be raised as white.  Hence she began correcting her mother, "Remember, Mother, you are not to say Kittatinny.  You have to say Blue Mountains from now on."  And my grandmother slid her eyes in my direction with that resentful look.  I guess I think back on all this stuff because when I look in the mirror, I too have a doubt about my native american ancestry.

I look so European, and my father was direct from Europe.  But he wasn't an immigrant.  He didn't belong to any immigrant community.  He didn't have any relatives in this country, or even country-men, with the exception of one cousin who moved here in 1957 and married an American.  He was a seaman and could have settled anywhere.  His top choices were: Brazil, Hawaii, New Zealand, and the Delaware River Valley.  Anyway, I think I've written all this before.

Saying you were German, Irish, English, or Scotch were like 'passwords' in our neighborhood and behind them you could hide your native american blood.  But many of us wore mocassins at home.  We all wore parkas and duffel coats - even my mother gave in and bought me a parka.  Plenty of the kids played lacrosse, whatever their ancestry.  All the little boys carried knives.  I suppose these were holdovers of the old culture in the new, because after all Philadelphia grew up in the context of a Native American community that was not exactly wiped out by the newcomers.  For many years, the two communities existed side by side, mixing at many points, but with the native community moving out onto the fringes, gradually moving further and further into the mountains, mixing it up with other Native communities, whether through cooperation or warfare. The European kids did not usually wear parkas, mocassins, etc., another clue to ancestral identity among those of us who did.  Also, our boys had a higher rate of being carted off to 'reform school' than any other group.

Since I've been engaging in this process of research, I've become much much more aware of the huge loss involved in the Americanizing of the Americas.  It can feel really quite overwhelming at times, but I am heartened by the attitudes of many Native American leaders today who are definitely taking the high road of forgiveness, embracing a sort of mutual-assimilation process (which has been the case all along much more than we generally acknowledge), and have a beautiful vision of a new creation - or a re-creation - of the Native American peoples.

martin luther king jr, golden earth dragon

Our Celebrity of the Month is Martin Luther King, Jr, born January 15, 1929, a Golden Earth Dragon.  In some ways, this is the most powerful Animal in the Chinese Zodiac, yet despite his charisma, compassion, unusual level of receptivity - for a Dragon - and his supportive, helpful nature, the Earth Dragon often experiences set-backs in energy, luck and plans. His awareness of this vibrato in his tone makes him very careful and also very humble.  He is supremely attractive and needs to be careful of relationship entanglements, excesses of indulgence, and addictions.  So say the books, anyway.  For myself, in looking at MLK, Jr - at least as far as we, the public, are able to do so - I would have to say that I see the attractiveness and charisma, and also the peace-loving, peace-making side of the Earth Dragon, generously willing to suffer for the sake of others.  Dragon is an Earth Animal, and Earth Dragon is Earth doubled, with all its receptivity, willingness to receive whatever is offered to it, and ability to digest whatever comes and transform it into pure Gold.

While still in college, MLK began to reflect on the nature of self-sacrifice in bringing about societal change.  According to his biographer, Lerone Bennett, "Another lecture, this one by Mordecai Johnson, then president of Howard University, thrust further thought upon (King). Johnson, a graduate of Morehouse and a powerful Baptist preacher, had returned from a 1950 visit to India with a deep conviction that Gandhi's tactics were applicable to the race struggle in America.  After his return, he delivered several evangelical sermons on nonviolence and the redemptive power of love and unmerited suffering. Satyagraha, Gandhi wrote, 'is the vindication of truth not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but on one's self.'"  (What Manner of Man, p.37) This approach would have great appeal to the Golden Earth Dragon.

"Suffering and self-sacrifice were at the heart of Gandhi's philosophy.  'The government of the day,' he said, 'has passed a law which is applicable to me.  I do not like it.  If by using violence I force the government to repeal the law, I am employing what may be called body-force.  If I do not obey the law and accept the penalty for the breach, I use soul-force.  It involves sacrifice of self...'   Reading these words and others of similar tone and texture in 1950, King, then twenty-one and at a crucial turning point in his own development, was impressed despite himself."  (p.38)

Other features of MLK's Four Animals include the warm, loving, and 'good' upbringing typical of the Wood Ox - an Animal he shares with Michelle Obama - which predisposes people to take on responsibility with a genuine willingness to help others.  His Metal Monkey Day Stem and Branch give him lofty aspirations and high-mindedness - a markedly spiritual cast to the mind - while his Water Horse makes him very emotional, somewhat rebellious and extremely hard-working.

Martin Luther King lived only a short time on this earth, dying at age 39 - on April 4, 1968 - at the gunpoint of an assasin, but he was able to bring about a sea-change in his nation, as only a transformative Golden Earth Dragon could do.

singing birds

   Our neighborhood is full of warblers this Spring.  Besides our usual Mourning Doves, California Jays, Crows and Seagulls (with their raucous cries), we've had a very active woodpecker, and a number of true warblers.  To the best of my birding ability, I found out from my neighbor that I am identifying an Oak Titmouse, and a Black Phoebe among them.  I've also spotted American Goldfinch and the beautiful, elegant Cedar Wax-Wing, as well.  We are also being treated to the song of the mockingbird (day and night!)

To identify bird-songs, visit Cornell University's excellent site.  Another good one is www.whatbird.com.  And also www.enature.com/fieldguides is a great source too.

The picture is taken from a greeting card out of Germany: Scissor-tailed Flycatcher by Charley Harper, 2006.  Available from Te Neues Publishing Company.

earth dragon month begins

  April 4th marks the start of Earth Dragon Month.  Combined with Earth Ox Year, this Dragon brings us an excess of Earth, which means thoughtfulness, consideration of matters of all sorts, good common sense and the ability to digest and assimilate changes, facts, new information or lifestyles, but may also bring us depression, obstacles and a feeling of stuckness, especially in the presence of Ox, and the first day of the new month is also Earth Rabbit.  Life may slow down in terms of the important changes that need to happen while still keeping us busy with juggling details and tasks.  Earth is the element of transition and transformation, but changes will be happening, if slowly. 

The Earth Dragon is a loving, generous dragon, good-humored, helpful, and attractive.  In my book, I describe the Golden Earth Dragon: "The Dragon is surely the most powerful Animal in the zodiac, yet the Golden Dragon is like gold refined in a furnace, which means that at any moment her power may be lost or reduced suddenly, and this knowledge of inherent limitation tempers this Dragon’s lust for power. Sudden changes in levels of power are not necessarily explainable or predictable, and may sometimes be due to the jealousy or envy of other people.  That’s why this Dragon must learn how to be confident without being arrogant, to reach for the stars without overreaching or taking  away from others.  Often the sudden withdrawal of fortune or power may be due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, in which case, it can be viewed as karmic in nature.  The Golden Dragon learns to artfully yield to these changes and roll with the flow of events." 

The ride may be bumpy, but the intent is good, and Earth Dragon is capable of great things, so let's all remain hopeful that this month will bring us good things. 

The porcelain jar pictured above is re-on-yellow glaze from the Ming dynasty, pictured in 'The Art of the Dragon,' by Yang Xin, Li Yihua, Xu Naixiang, Shambhala Press, 1988, page 91.