not native fruit

octavian nothing

A friend of ours, who teaches junior high Spanish, recommended this book to us.  I can hardly imagine that this book is intended for kids in that age group or even high-schoolers, not only because of the arcane language and, in some cases, concepts of the books - two volumes - but also because of the intensity, and at times, darkness of the events in the book.  People tell me, however, that the young are getting exposure to all sorts of darkness, so maybe it isn't too much for them after all.

It is seriously a good book, dealing with many things - the underpinnings and implications of 'science,' the differences among literate and illiterate cultures in early America, and I particularly like the parts in volume 1 about the Revolutionary War, and in volume 2 all the material about the community of mixed Africans aboard Lord Dunmore's vessel Crepuscule. 

This latter section reminded me so much of the reading I did when researching my African dna-implied ethnicity.  After all, my grandfather considered himself to be 'a Moor.'  I learned so much by reading Ivan van Sertima, Jose Pimienta Bey, and others about Africa.  A lot of that is present here although expressed in the desultory manner of fiction.  I prefer the straight history myself, but I'm just mentioning it because I know that he has got his data straight.

Worth reading if you're an adult.  I don't know about kids reading it.

One aside: the first person narratives by Octavian Nothing himself are very believable.  I must note one remark he makes about his mother, because I feel this was true of my mother too - the lie she bequeathed to him was his 'great inheritance.'  Too true.

colloquial english

a friend was characterizing what we used to call 'appalachian speech' (not sure if this still exists today) "colloquial."  The example we were using was 'this here' as in 'this here chair," indicating a particular chair.  Well, I have read in various sources that of the original European immigrants, including the British, some were attracted by the native american lifestyle and emulated it, often crossing over through marriage, eventually forming bands and clans of their own, and (famously) moving south and west into the Appalachians.  (Some pretty much stayed put, even when their tribes were 'removed.') Well, I found this interesting when I learned, through my study of Lenape, that there is a word/phrase that means 'this here.'  It's a way of assigning particularity and a kind of inclusiveness.  Lenape has a way of inferring these qualities grammatically, as distinct from the English tendency to use tone of voice.  I just wonder how many other examples of 'colloquialism' might be Indian uses adapted to English.

I grew up in a neighborhood full of immigrants, and I heard them making all sorts of leaps from their own languages straight into English, and getting laughed at for it too.  (It was not a kind environment; the same thing happened to the native remnant too.)  So now that I'm learning Lenape, I wonder how many Native American expressions I will discover in American English. 

I feel there are so many cultural borrowings from Native American into American culture that go unacknowledged.  First of all, many of these borrowings will be found among the descendents of white/European people (in earlier times, not always equivalent terms) and native americans, and these people, from the git-go, have been undervalued.  First called 'half-breeds,' now called 'wannabes,' they don't get much respect on either side.  As far as I can tell, most white-Indians don't want anyone to know, and I can see why.  I'll say more about that later.  First I want to emphasize that while some people may have felt ashamed of their Indianness, I think in most cases silence was meant to be protective.  It had to be kept a secret or the whole family could be stigmatized, and in small agricultural communities this would be quite a serious consequence.  After all, these people were white, too, and usually Christian and wanted to be a part of their community. 

Lots of other people have come to America and gone through a process of assimilation that has been difficult, but few seem to persist in denying their heritage the way the descendents of the early European-Native Americans do.  I include a link to another web-site that shares a family story on this theme as well. 

It would be interesting to see how very very many influences, traits and contributions to American culture have been made by Native American culture, if only we could take the blinders off and start acknowledging the truth. It will be difficult for this to happen, however, because there are plenty of white people who still want nothing to do with Indians, and plenty of Indians who want nothing to do with white people or other immigrant people.  So the rivalry would appear to continue.  I certainly can't blame native people, as their lands and resources are still at risk.  But I would prefer to take a path of friendship and learning about each other, acknowledging injuries but also acknowledging positive cultural contributions.

geriatric dementia

Someone asked me the other day, "What difference does it make whether I take my 87 year old aunt to the tea-room on one Tuesday and to the cafe the next Tuesday? She doesn't remember anything!  I might just as well take her to the same place every week, or even not take her out at all!"

My answer to this question - or rhetorical question really - is that: She Has A Good Time While It's Happening !  So what, if she doesn't remember?  Someday we're all going to be dead and then none of us will 'remember anything' - so why not just skip our whole lives? 

Were you planning on doing something fun over the weekend?  Well, just skip it because someday you're not going to remember it anyway.

What is this big emphasis on remembering?  I'll bet none of us remembers three-quarters of our lives anyway - all those moments getting in and out of the car, walking up or down the stairs, commuting, taking a shower, etc - do we remember all of those moments? 

This is so important to remember when working with the elderly.  It doesn't 'not matter.'  Just leaving someone to sit day after day in the same room is not going to create the quality of experience that taking them out for a change of scene once in a while - even though it is something of a drag for you - will do for them.  No, they won't remember, but they may just have a nice feeling inside for a half an hour or so.  Is that too little to count?

My experience is that they 'do' remember - while they're there.  When I take my aunt to the downtown tea-room, she remembers the fun times she had meeting 'the girls' from the office there on Wednesdays - it kind of broke up the work-week for them, gave them something to look forward to, and she recounts different reminiscences of her friends.  She comments on the fashions the office girls today are wearing.  She analyzes their facial expressions, their makeup and hairstyles.  She makes witty remarks and we both laugh.  Then she goes back to her room at the old-age home.

The next week we go to the cafe out on the avenue and she admires the trees, notices the birds and flowers when we find a nice table outdoors.  She enjoys seeing the mothers with their babies in strollers who are also meeting at the cafe.  She laughs at the teenagers at the next table, awkward and gawky, looking and sounding like teenagers always have done, when they are acting and feeling so grown up, drinking coffee after school at the cafe.  It's an entirely different experience from the tea-room, and from the old-age home too. 

These experiences lend some texture to her days.  She has plenty of peace and quiet and vistas of nature at the home.  It's a good place, a nice place full of good, nice people.  But sometimes my aunt just wants to remember that once she had a life, wore high fashion, was a mother with a baby in a stroller, was a teenager stopping for a treat with friends after school.  Even though she forgets again very soon, at least she could remember for a little while. 

homesickness and finding home

i'm learning lenape, the indigenous langauge of pennsylvania, via the lenapenation's free language lessons online.  Speaking this language feels natural to me and helps me to feel more connected with something.  And just what is that something?  Home.  I think it keeps me feeling connected to home, and home is Lenapehocking.  It's something that I can't put into words, it's something very deep back there in southeastern Pennsylvania, beneath the cobbled streets, beneath the asphalt, the trolley tracks, the crowds of pedestrians and cars, the buildings - something in the air and in the soil, in the trees and in the rivers.  I call it Lenapehocking, and I think those qualities are what gave the land this name. I feel the language expresses the qualities of Lenapehocking. 

Home is something I've carried with me here to Berkeley, California.  It's inside me, it's something I feel in my partner who is also from Lenapehocking.  We are having an adventure in a new place, and we are enjoying it very much, but part of what makes it doable for both of us is that we have 'home' here with us - because we are together, and we know how to create that energy in our house. 

Nevertheless, sometimes I feel homesick.  In the 1990's, I visited Lenapehocking five times.  I haven't been there for eleven years.  Time to go back for a visit, I guess. 

I was talking to a friend today about how Lenape is an oral language, and when I shared that someone has written some poetry on a Lenape Lit site, she teased me saying, 'I thought Lenape was an oral language!'  Well, the languages we know, like Spanish and English, have a tremendously long history as written languages, and Lenape doesn't have that.  I don't know when it was first written down, but at the very earliest it would be about five hundred years ago.  Whereas the roots of English and Spanish are in Latin with a written history of what?  at least 2500 years.  And it flows out of the written language tradition of the mediterranean and middle east, going back to sanskrit in India and the Vedas.  How long ago was that written?  Algonquin is not related to that streambed.

Speaking Lenape has a different effect on me, and after speaking it for a while, I find English rather dull and heavy afterward.  But I do want to say this: my mother was proud of her Lenape heritage - too proud to cast it before those who would ridicule her about it - but she was also proud of her heritage of English literacy.  She came from at least one line of literacy, her paternal grandfather's, and her giftedness with words and literacy brought her her daily bread and supported her family.  She was hardly a pulitzer prize winning writer - just a secretary - not someone of any note among the important people of the world - but she loved literature, appreciated plays in particular - I think because plays focus intensely on one or more issues and address the emotional and ethical dilemnas of life.  She was interested in personality and (moral) character in particular. 

Some of her appreciation for literature was of the sort found among those who are not really from a literate culture.  It's a kind of admiration for something that seems rather beyond one.  But she understood a lot more than that statement would seem to imply, and that's the subtle point, (like the yod, or 'finger of God') that is important to get.

As for me, I kind of went for the literacy side of things hammer and tongs - scored in the 690's on the SAT tests, back in the day, before tutors attempted to help students score high, I just happened to - and I loved poetry, etc, learned huge amounts through the facility of my head, and still love to read, right now especially history.  But there is something else that seems to transcend literature in terms of power - it's an experience, and it's as difficult to put into words as it is to describe what it is about the Lenape language or about Lenapehocking that makes it so special.  It's That Experience that is the real beauty and essence of life. The best art offers us a kind of simulacrum of It.  The Lenape say, "Everything begins and ends with the Creator" - and It has something to do with that, whatever It is.  

I'm really glad to know that this is how I really feel.  I've had so many chances to go further with literacy in my own life - to develop it more, to make it my career, and so forth - and yet I've always turned away from that.  So, now, at last, I know why.  My aim was just a little off, but that made a huge difference.  Now my aim can be more true. Doesn't mean I will or won't write more, develop my scholarly side or whatever.  I know what's important to me now, and if it can be expressed or furthered through increased literacy, so be it, and if not, then not.  Do you understand?

earth snake month begins

This month's image comes from the Aromatherapy Conference 2009 brochure.  Isn't it great?  It's called "Die Medizin" by Rolf Deininger.  (The proceedings of the Aromatherapy Conference are available here.) One thing that makes this image so meaningful is that it makes visible the digestive process that is so much a part of the nature of the Earth Element.  (Snake's natural element is Fire.) It makes sense that this image is applied to 'medicine' here, because all 'learning' is a process of assimilation and absorption that is represented by the Earth Element. 

This month's Earth nature, added to our Earth Ox Year, gives us an excess of Earth element to deal with again this month. Lots of attention to detail, lots to think about and consider, lots of conversations, mediations, reconsiderations, judgments and discriminations, syntheses, interpretations, integrations and harmonizations ought to be happening again this month.  But this month will be quieter, more reflective and conservative.  Mercury will be retrograde during most of our Earth Snake month, so this will be a good time to finish up loose ends, organize what you have on hand, clean out files, and review work already done.  Earth Snake month begins on May 5, 2009 and ends on June 4, 2009.

Success is very possible during Earth Snake month, especially if we keep our humility out front and don't resort to boasting or bragging to get what we want.  Also success is most likely to come in small ways or in the context of a small setting or community.  Make it personal, be charming but self-effacing and self-contained, restrain all avaricious thoughts, and the way will be smooth for your sinuous advancement during this time period.

While Earth Ox and Earth Dragon were somewhat at odds with one another, creating a note of conflict and struggle in the ethers, Earth Ox and Earth Snake create the Metal Trinity together, helping all of us to straighten up and fly right.  Our Principles will come to the fore to guide us to make wise plans for the future and will help us to solve even our most intransigent problems, so put on the old Thinking Caps during this month.  The best days for planning and problem solving will be May 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28 and June 1. 

 

 

the five elements and the sweatlodge

Reading Christal Quintasket's - Mourning Dove's - memoir of her life as a Salishan Indian in the late 19th century.  She describes the children's traditional spiritual training - which was carried on simultaneously with their Catholic upbringing - in detail, especially how they went out at night to find their spirit-guides, beginning at age 5 or 6.  She says the most powerful Spirit Guide to connect with was the spirit of the Sweat-lodge.  It had a 'ribbed, conical shape' and was composed of the same Five Elements we find in Chinese Daoist cosmology. 

Mourning Dove writes, "No other guiding spirit could ever overcome this power because 'it' had five special strengths: wood for ribs, fire for heat, stones (chinese: metal) for stamina, earth for support, and water for cleansing.  In all, it was a symbol of combined strengths, much more than the abode of any animal or spirit."

All of these elements are 'interpreted' basically in the same way as the chinese interpretation.  Metal means 'minerals' and is good for structure, organization and upright posture.  Wood is often symbolized as beams, columns or posts, because it is the element of 'manifestation,' ie birth, growth and development.  The other elements seem self-evident and don't need explanation.  In comparison with European and also with East Indian cosmologies, Wood is equivalent to Aether (the space that allows things to happen, allows movement to occur, etc), and Metal/Mineral is equivalent with Air.

The Five Elements are a picture of 'wholeness,' they represent archaic science's understanding of the composition of Creation.  None of these words are really adequate, however.  'Archaic' is not quite right, rather what is meant is the kind of science that preceded what we now call 'modern science.'  String theory may relate to this former scientific theory when viewed from a creative standpoint.  *smile*  Also, Creation is probably not the correct term either, but I don't think we really have an adequate term for 'this experience' we all concur that we are having, both in its consensual forms and its non-consensual aspects.

Anyway, I find the Five Elements 'poetic' and enriching in the way that poetry is: sensually, imaginatively, insightfully.  Therefore, I like to dabble with them.  See my other website for more info on one of the ways I am doing that.