not native fruit

beautiful berkeley...and conversation

  This is what I think of as a typical Berkeley house of the type I particularly like.  Note the lapped siding, painted simply, with some sort of faux-corinthian decoration, bay window, small porch with somewhat overgrown bougainvillea - all of this is quite typical of the older homes of the area.  I'm wondering if these kinds of houses are rentals to students, perhaps graduate students, as they have a certain 'unlived-in' look; they often look almost abandoned.  The fence in front is not typical of Berkeley, but home-made fences are not uncommon.  Note also, please, the branches of a large spreading tree arching over the street and house in the upper left-hand corner of the picture.  Large trees lining the streets and overgrown shrubbery are also typical of Berkeley, and this look hasn't changed much since I first moved here thirty years ago.

This type of housing perhaps led me to believe that Berkeley was going to be a place of personal reflection and intimate conversation, but it hasn't turned out to be that, at least not as much as I expected it to be.  Or perhaps it's simply the case that I haven't located as many connections at that level as I expected to.  I think, though, that the  real explanation is that Berkeley is such a transient place.  People come here to study, usually with the specificgoal of advancing their careers.  They may be here for ten years, studying, but then they leave.  I've met many very ambitious people while I've lived here.  And while they are here, they are busy thinking, talking, reading, writing about whatever subject they are studying, and perhaps leading some sort of personal life among their own colleagues and friends.  More often people are here for shorter periods of time, a year, two or four.  Sometimes I think Berkeley represents something new, intense or different for folks, so people are coming here for novelty, not for greater intimacy.

I've always been a journaller.  Hence the appeal of the weblog.  People who keep journals, who engage in spiritual practices such as meditation, contemplative prayer and so on, are interested in relationships of intimacy - with nature, with themselves, with 'God' or some spiritual dimension of life, with other people.  Most of the friendships I've enjoyed here over the years - often with people who are now gone away from the area - included a great deal of conversation, one of my favorite things in life, and often some degree of spiritual orientation and exploration.  I shouldn't make it sound like there has been 'no conversation' here for me, because that would be a huge lie.  I've had some of the best conversations of my life here in Berkeley.  I've also been alone here enough to have had some very interesting conversations with myself, with various books, with flowers, animals and so forth.

I came here from philadelphia, a place I experienced as having a high intimacy-quotient.  Friendship and sharing seemed to hold a high value there, probably not unexpectedly given it was founded by the Society of Friends . Maybe I thought that kind of valuation was going to be common throughout the world.  We almost always make the assumption that the values we take for granted are somehow universal.  But I haven't really found the same value system here in Berkeley.  There used to be a very strong radical political orientation here, and while I have watched that change over the years, I would say that people's consciousness here is still very much ideological, although the ideologies have changed since the 1970's.  I would imagine that these ideologies bring people together so that they share on a personal, reflective level around those ideologies.  That's been true for me, too, as I've moved through the different stages of my own spiritual odyssey.  There has to be some organizing principle that brings people together.  maybe the organizing principle for me in philadelphia was that we were all from philadelphia, were doing very well in school, and it was, after all, an 'epoch' in time, the vietnam war era.  the organizing principles for me here in Berkeley have been different, mostly arranged around education, spiritual orientation, and personal preferences, like enjoying walks in the hills and writing.

anyway, i've enjoyed the novelty and intensity of this area, too.  For me the novelty was the discovery of nature in the west, and the intensity is part of the weather and climate here.  Part of the terrain.  And part of my experiences too: intense personal and spiritual experiences. 

I do love it here, but I sometimes get tired of feeling like a stranger.  I'm a stranger among strangers, as far as I can tell, and I suppose that is some kind of commonality after all.  What I know is, that the building pictured above calls me, draws me to solitude, reflection, mesmerization by roses, tea and conversation, pillows near the window with a book.  Yeah, Berkeley.  It's been beautiful to me. 

So, what have I learned by writing this post?  I've learned that even though I thought I was perhaps somewhat out of step with Berkeley, because of my penchant for solitude, my not belonging to the more popular ideological movements (for example, while I read Buddhist texts and did some buddhist practice back in the early 1980's, I haven't 'espoused' a buddhist path despite the popularity of buddhism in berkeley today; when feminism was happening, I was a married feminist, a supposed anomaly, did not long for a career, etc etc; am not developed as an artist, etc), it has turned out that I am more in synch than I realized, since my life here has been characterized by novelty and intensity.  I've enjoyed solitude and yet had many opportunities for the kinds of conversation I have desired: intimate, personal, spiritual and contemplative.

 

art and me

i've been going through something of a retrospective lately - well, i'm always involved in a retrospective, but just of late my process has intensified, and the memories have been coming thick and fast. as usual, i'm writing some poetry in response, but also, in addition, i've begun a watercolor class with kate b. weese here in berkeley, and putting brush to paper, like so many other actions of the body not performed for a long time, the activity seems to be awakening a whole raft of stirrings, memories, and longings long suppressed. 

i realize there are large numbers of people for whom artistic activity is as natural as breathing.  they've had scores of classes, workshops, exhibits.  sounds really nice.  i hope to join their numbers.  the whole process for me became suppressed or rather sublimated into spirituality.  there's no reason why the two can't travel along together, however.  i've realized that for a very long time, nevertheless it's been difficult to make a return to forms of art which involve my hands beyond the use of a keyboard or a pen.  there was some sort of inhibition involved.  but now the inhibition seems to be removed.

it's disappointing to see how primitive the results of my efforts are.  nevertheless, it is a deeply rewarding and satisfying process.  i'm fortunate in that a good friend is setting out on this journey with me, and she has had no previous artistic experience whatsoever.  she is a scientist.  (well, a scientist who has spent long hours observing nature in her life, especially along the coastlines of the Pacific Ocean, which is what drew her toward a career in science in the first place.)  anyway, the two of us are about equally matched in terms of ability and skills-level, so that feels very comfortable for both of us. 

we realize that our interest in taking up this 'pastime' is to focus our attention even more on the present moment and to create 'keepsakes' of those moments.  cathy johnson, who wrote "Painting in Nature" for the Sierra Club's books, takes this approach.  it's very nineteenth-century, very contemplative, naturalistic, private, personal, and i love it! 

many stories

as i continue to read and do research in the area of my family history, i realize more and more just how many and varied the stories are, yet to each of us it seems as if our own story is 'the' story.  Whether it's the stories of former slaves, of the various native american tribes, of the 'mulattos,' and probably even of the oppressors, there are unique experiences in every region.  back east, there must be unique experiences about every twenty square miles.  i am finding it fascinating to read all these different accounts, often finding something i can relate to, or that applies to my family.  of course, i am mostly reading about the east coast where my mother's people are from.

i now realize that my mother's father's people, in particular, come closest to what used to be called 'free people of color,' or sometimes 'the intermediate class.'  dr. pauli murray, a harvard graduate, writes a great deal about free people of color and also about slave-mulattos (the progeny of white slave-owners and their slaves) in her book 'proud shoes.'  one of the most poignant, for me, stories in the book relates to how much the offspring of the family that endowed or founded the university of north carolina longed to partake of its education, but could not, because of their color-status.  even dr. murray was turned down by the institution when she applied, and she had to take her undergraduate degree elsewhere.  she chose a good school, but still the pain of applying to a school created by your own direct ancestor and being rejected despite her excellent qualifications - i'm sorry, but that is just totally dysfunctional to say the least.  later she graduated from harvard law school, no mean feat.  

i'd like to share with you a site dedicated to a people i feel are very familiar to me.  it's called 'the minqua people of the welsh mountains of southeastern pennsylvania' and here is the link.  these are some lovely, gracious people, people i know both of my parents respected to the nines because of their excellent values and manner of living, and my mother felt herself and her family to be a part of.  i hope you'll enjoy the site as it gets rolling.

berkeley love

i'm just feeling once again how much i LOVE berkeley.  to love berkeley means you have to love books, learning, and a university environment.  you have to love young people, but also fusty old scholars as well.  to love berkeley means you love pedestrians and people on bicycles, expressives - there is a 'tun' of art going on here - and introverts as well. and also you must love mucho much diversity.

i love the physical environment of berkeley.  it's full of wonderful old trees and berry bushes, bougainvillea, all sorts of sprawling unkempt-looking shrubs and plants, uneven sidewalks pushed up by large tree roots, old houses and fences slumping or spiffy, eaves, porches, cottages and bungalows, all painted different colors, most of the paint pretty good, some of it shabby. 

this year, the new crop of students seems energized in a way I haven't seen for a very long time.  Not only that, they are all smiling!  At each other, at me.  My friend Gary says it is due to the influence of Mr. Obama.  Thank you, Mr. Obama!  Enough with the super-serious, I'm mad at the world attitude.  That attitude has been appropriate and effective, but it has made its potential changes, and it is time to move on to a place where we come together more again.  Togetherness and positivity can also be a very potent place for change.

the train

at the end of august i took the amtrak train overnight from Berkeley to Portland.  i was to visit a friend from circa age 25, whose family i watched being born, raising up, and now married and on their own.  younger son and wife have recently moved to portland, mom (my pal) was visiting, soon to be joined by dad who was delayed by "work" that onerous bane of personal time. 

well, long story short, i had a great time - we saw mount hood, the columbia river gorge, multnomah falls, astoria and the seacoast.  also powell's city of books and the portland rose garden.  spent personal time together, sang all 85 of the Beatles' Number One Hits in the car.  met the pets.  no, seriously, it was a party!

but one of the star attractions of my trip, which shall not go overlooked, was The Train.

I enjoyed the train immensely, despite not getting as much sleep as I might have hoped. But it was a marvelous beast, and i was in its belly for seventeen glorious hours.  It creaked, it shuffled, it sped up, it slowed down, it changed tracks wrackingly, it hummed in the night, it submerged itself into pitch-black caves and re-emerged into the light.  it passed mountains and lakes, lumber mills and towns, farms, woods, overlooks, and the ocean.  it was archetypal.  everyone should take the train once in a while, just to remember their own process of birth.

on the surface the cars were modern - air-conditioning, sleek, arrow-designed - but on another level they were ancient - clanking, worm-like, crawling and shifting like sections of a centipede.  We passengers passed each other in the narrow halls, shifting side to side, bumping into one another ingraciously - inglourisously, one might even say - and we sat down together, strangers meeting and engaging in long conversations in the dining car, the parlor car, the sun car.  Then returning to our seats, engaging with the view, with our books and laptops, or with ourselves.

i have a history with the train, perhaps that accounts for why i love it so much, and long to experience it again and again.  either that, or my love for the train represents my personal inchoate rejection of the present, of instant air-travel that eschews the sight of land and waters passing by, of state lines, the names of tiny towns, whistle-stops, Chemult. 

Ever since those slow, painfully slow, early trips up into the Pennsylvania mountains on the old coal line sidings, in tiny cars papered with fringed maroon velvet, wainscoting and upright upholstered wooden seats, in the company of my mother and grandmother, proper in modestly plumed hats, scarves, gloves and pocket-books, traveling away from the grime and smoke of the city out into the light and green of 'the countryside,' i've been an amateur of the train.

how long will the love-affair last?  perhaps as long as i can hear the musical song of the 'coast starlight' and the 'capitols corridor' blow longingly through the fog rolling in from the bay over our hillside home.

poetry of ancient/indigenous language

shelly de paul, a teacher of the lenape language in pennsylvania and online, has said that she finds the ancient languages powerful.  Words have power.  And that she began her study of lenape in order to write poetry. 

this is a sentiment I can definitely get behind.  i've also been wanting to find my poetic music in lenape.  i'm sure it will come.  in fact, it's already happening.

also, i've had a breakthrough in terms of communicating my feelings about my connection with the lenape.  i've been a bit sensitive to intimations on the part of 'others' that i may be a lenape wannabe, etcetera. 

what i've realized is that i've realized how much more our native heritage meant to my mother and my grandparents, and their parents.  it meant a lot to them, enough to keep it a secret from me, but to enjoy the secret secretly among themselves.  i've realized how much more it meant to me than i ever recognized or acknowledged, surrounded as i was by the land and the community of the lenape remnant in the philadelphia area. 

i can't not acknowledge that. 

not only have these realizations, recognitions and awakenings filled in many of the blanks in my story, but they have reduced my anxiety and my need to please others.  there's some way in which this experience has made me more whole, so it must be good.  therefore i will continue on this path.

that's simple, that's clear.  this clarity helps me.

'weli kishku' ~ have a nice day!

grandmother's gift / nostalgia

my grandmother katie, gnarled with arthritis, sat in her rocking chair - orange-painted in the moorish style - on our front porch nearly every evening in the summertime and on, into the early fall.  She gently rocked herself just a little bit, looking pensive, sometimes bitter, and always very far away.  Loud sounds, sudden movements, racket from the neighborhood children could disturb her reverie.  

after i'd grown up, i sometimes wondered if she had been mentally ill or just plain mean, but after i did some work with an emdr therapist, i realized that she was simply more identified with an earlier time and place in her life, and she wished to 'be there' in reverie so much that she was very much put out when she was brought back to the present by one of us.

this realization led to the awareness that both she and my mother were very much identified with the mountains, with the people there, and with all their secrets.  at any rate, ever so much of my mother and grandmother's reality was kept a secret from me, but being a part of them, i could feel a lot of it, just couldn't put it into words.  out of frustration at my constant feeling of exclusion, i tried to reject them.  at different times in my life, i've realized that i can't reject them, because they are just too much a part of me.  they belong to me, and i belong to them, and i might as well accept that fact.

and now, wonder of wonders, i find myself feeding on nostalgia in my later years, just like grandma.

to help me understand my own experience, i'm reading a book about nostalgia called "Yesterday's Self" by Andrea Deciu Ritivoi (Philosophy, Sociology, Literary Studies).  the author considers how nostalgia may play a role in helping us to integrate our ongoing identity especially when there has been a rupture of some sort in our process like becoming a refugee, a war-bride, an exile, or experiencing a trauma in relation to immigration or some other major change of place. 

at one time nostalgia was indeed considered to be a medical (psychiatric) condition, at another time it indicated that you were a person of superior sensibility, an artist perhaps.  the book goes on to discuss all sorts of interesting aspects forming the notion of identity.  can you believe there are people spending their lives thinking about 'identity' and getting paid to do so? 

i've only read the first couple of chapters, but in them the author promises to share with us from the stories of two women who immigrated to the united states from poland after the second world war, one of whom felt that her identity was indissolubly linked with poland and with the person she had been there, while the other woman finds links in her new american life with the self she once was in poland, thus carrying her polish identity forward into its new form in america.  sounds like this comparison will be interesting.  the author loves literature and wishes also to look at two literary figures, odysseus and robinson crusoe, to further explore the notions of identity and nostalgia. having been, at one time in my life, a philosophy major at uc berkeley when the mind-brain identity theory was hot, i find this book riveting.  i will keep you posted.

blended culture and sequelae

interesting conversation with a friend yesterday. Her family is from Kentucky and Ohio and has no memory of any native american ancestry, but as i shared with her my idea that because our white ancestors shared a history with the native peoples, some intermarriage and also a shared lifestyle, we have a different cultural development from what is euphemistically called the 'dominant white culture.' 

reading about native americans enlightens me as to the values and world-view of my own ancestors who were not primarily european-based in their orientation, neither were they 'indian-haters' or any other kind of 'white-supremacists.'  I still feel the person who has come closest to articulating who my ancestors were is Brewton Berry who wrote, "Almost White."  i see my ancestors as a blend of european-american and native american.  For example, we did not value autonomy as some kind of measure of maturity or character-development, but valued our kinship-based community first.  we adopted people into our families.  I remember a european-immigrant friend becoming absolutely livid that my cousins, aunts and uncles couldn't possibly be my cousins, aunts and uncles because they were not blood relatives.  Hey, we were short of blood relatives, so this seemed good to me, and i just accepted it as the way things were.  Yet something about it really offended my friend.  In her eyes, it was some sort of act of dishonesty.  As for my friend, I think maybe she and her family were confronting their own issues as immigrants, fears of no longer being 'a people.'  Nowadays they make annual trips back to the old country. 

actually, i find that the people most sympathetic with my point of view tend to be african-americans who seem to have no problem 'getting' that i have varied racial tributaries in my background, that I may look white but am not exactly.  even when i was a kid the african american kids would say things like, 'you don't seem white to me,' or 'you look white, but you don't act white.'  anyway, if i deny my native american ancestors it seems disrespectful to them.

i think part of the reason this is particularly a problem for me now is that i live in a different world from the one in which i grew up - and the older i grow, the more i realize i will be living in this world for the duration - a world in which there are a lot of upper middle-class whites, and a large number of asian-americans, hispanic-americans, african-americans, and both immigrants and foreign students (UC Berkeley) in that order.  by default it would seem that i ought to belong with the upper class whites, yet these are people whom i feel i do not understand.  so this is my problem. i'm supposed to belong to a group with whom i have nothing in common - my appearance places me there, and probably also my address.  my original family, both blood-ties and adopted, are for the most part deceased or live far away, so i am struggling to understand myself in this environment.  i feel so fortunate to have my partner who is from a similar background to mine and also from the same regional world.  we've carried our origins with us through being able to share our values, place- and people- memories, and so on.

right now i'm reading 'native american postcolonial psychology' by eduardo and bonnie duran.  they outline the importance of taking culture into consideration when working with native americans, and i find that what they write would apply to our people too.  this book is really helping me understand why i don't connect with so much in terms of the dominant expectations of behavior and thought in our world, even though I am perceived by most people to be white. 

My mother's mother's people were from the mountains of Pennsylvania, a former stronghold of native americans in our region.  I was brought up to believe they were Irish, but there is one of those 'Cherokee great-grandmother' myths floating on that side of the family that there is native blood.  However, I have only the most circumstantial evidence supporting that claim.  there is something to it, but just what, i don't know.

On the other hand, my mother's father's mother was definitely descended from the remnant of the Unalatchtigo Lenape people whose identity was watered down (and disguised) as 'Moor.'  'Moor Indians.'  Apparently the Unalatchtigo dialect was very similar to the Unami Lenape dialect that is currently being taught online out of both Oklahoma (land to which the Lenape were removed) and Pennsylvania (where a remant remained, marrying in with each other and European-Americans, accounting for why these Lenape look less Indian than the ones in Oklahoma who primarily married other native americans of varied tribes).
 
In any case, I am enjoying learning Lenape because it helps me to feel my connection to that land back there where I'm from.  I feel some kind of very deep connection to it, it's sort of like a language in itself to me, and the Lenape language feels to me like the original speech of the world - but maybe it's only like that for me and a smattering of other people, not for the whole world.  hard to believe, but possible.  *smile*

I'm also reading another excellent book called 'Yesterday's Self' about nostalgia, and how it can either hinder or help a person's adjustment to a new environment, as in the case of refugees, immigrants, exiles or people who, for whatever reason, have left an environment and culture that was very meaningful to them, for another new world that offers multiple difficulties in terms of identification and assimilation.  It's just really helpful to me to read a book that addresses issues of identity, since this is so up for me in this lifetime.

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?

songbird

I need to hear you sing,
Songbird.
Your note cuts through
To the other world,
Where I live inside,
The green world,
O songbird.
Your green rind sound
Pierces
My upper heart
To remind me
Of the echo of rain-storms
On the moon.
That’s how far I have to go,
To find home.
Your note travels to me
Over a great distance,
Through the loneliness
Of the missing world,
The absence of relatives,
The disappearance of kin,
Other than you
And all the green world
Which holds me,
Lovingly.
Within myself,
The modern world
Of cars, and people and houses,
Falls away
And I am on the hillside
Of bracken
All the way to Grizzly Peak.
I am isolated
In the loneliness
Of the secret half-breed.
The values of
My grandmother
Speak to me
Fluently
Within,
But these words
Cannot be heard
By outsiders.
And that’s almost everyone.
Songbird, sing your green song,
please.