The Furious Spinner

This morning I happened to notice a woodpecker fly up to the circular window in the apex of the church across the street from where we live. I had not seen a woodpecker—in this case, a flicker—in this town before. So I watched it (not sure if it was female or male) as it peered at the window and poked around at the sill. It seemed important for me to watch this beautiful bird. Many years ago I had gone to a shaman a friend had recommended to me. She had told me the Woodpecker was my helper spirit, and I should call on it to help me get well.

I remember thinking, "A woodpecker? This white woman went and had a vision about me and came back with a story of a woodpecker? Don't I need something more powerful? Like a bear, mountain lion, dinosaur?"

I never quite trusted her vision because, frankly, she was white. Anglo. Of European extraction. And because she told me my totem was a woodpecker. (Even though I liked woodpeckers, I kept thinking of Woody Woodpecker, and I knew he wasn't going to make me well.) But I enjoyed listening to their thok, thok, thok when I was out in the woods. They were different kind of drummers, using their mouths (or rather, their beaks) as a stick to make a beat against wood instead of leather.

As it turned out, woodpeckers were revered by many Native American nations and showed up in Roman mythology relating to the forest deity Silvanus who was a lot like the Greek Pan. For the Plains Natives, woodpeckers were related to the thunderbeings and associated with rhythm and drumming, their tapping on the trees an imitation of the heartbeat of the Earth.

Mostly I didn't believe what the white shaman said about the woodpecker because I didn't get well.

This morning, it felt strange seeing the woodpecker—significant. Do you ever get those feelings? You can't really explain why something seems important. In fact, you hesitate to talk about such things—because talking about something you believe might be sacred (or special) feels almost profane. Or stupid. "If I say this outloud, someone is going to tell me I'm crazy, which I secretly believe I am, or else they'll agree with me that it sounds weird and wonderful and I'll remember I don't trust their opinion anyway because they're a little flaky themselves."

So I watched the woodpecker, quietly, until she flew away under the eaves of the Methodist Church.

Later, Mario and I drove to Eagle Creek to take a quick hike in the break in the storm. It was cold and windy. I remembered walking here just three weeks ago when it was still in the 70's and huge yellow leaves drifted from the vine maples with each gust of wind, cluttering the path like falling stars, sizzling with beauty as they settled into the earth and became part of a colorful mosaic for our feet. Mario and I had watched the sweet light make its way through the autumn-colored trees and mist that rose like frosty exhales from the giant Douglas firs: we were speechless.

That day, we stopped at the creek and watched the salmon struggling to get upstream to spawn, their bodies blood-colored, undulating with determination to go up, up, up. Sometimes they leapt into the air, and they were all motion and stillness at the same time, and my knees weakened to witness the beauty of it all.

That same warm week, I returned to Eagle Creek alone, carrying brand new rubber boots I had bought at the hardware store in town. I walked carefully down to the creek near where the salmon were spawning. I started to step into the water when I noticed these rose-colored beads at the river's edge. Bus loads of children had been here each time we visited, so I thought someone's necklace had broken, and the beads had fallen into the clear cold water. I crouched closer to the water. Or were they pieces of candy? They were different colors. Rose. Pink. Light orange. And so perfectly round. Exquisite. Gems. I wished I had a necklace made out of them. Some were salmon-colored. Maybe even most of them.

Salmon-colored? Wait a minute. I stood and looked into the middle of the creek. These salmon- and rose-colored pearls were scattered all over the creek bed. They were salmon eggs! Wow. Watching my step, I went into the shallow water. After a few feet, I stopped and watched the salmon all around me. Most now were white and red, raggedy, falling apart after their long journey. One salmon swam up next to me. Part of her flesh was falling off of her tail, and I could see her tail bones. Another fish, about a foot from me, kept turning on her side and wiggling. After she did this, another salmon came and undulated over where the first salmon had been. I assumed I was witnessing the laying and fertilizing of the salmon eggs which would lay at the bottom of the creek, some to become food for other creatures, some to become salmon fingerlings in the spring.

As I stood in the water amongst these sacred creatures, I wondered if I was one of the returning salmon, on my last fin, so to speak, or one of those pearls of wisdom on the sandy bottom of the creek waiting for a new beginning. Were we all ending and beginning constantly?

Today, Eagle Creek roared over the dam. I could not walk into the waters without getting swept away. The remaining salmon stayed close to the shore, away from the white water. Mario and I walked the muddy trail, talking about poetry, chants, enchantments—and the rhythm of them all. Why do some chants catch on? Why do some enchantments make us weep, believe in magic, or inspire us? Something about the rhythm, I believed. I wondered if the words actually mattered at all—maybe it was just their beat. As we walked this beautiful winding trail above the swollen creek, we tried to figure out the beat of various chants and poems we had memorized. Many were unstressed, unstressed, stressed, which surprised us. Mario assumed they would have been iambic pentameter—unstressed, stressed, unstressed, stressed—the heartbeat of poetry.

We drove to Portland afterward, but I couldn't get grounded. Everything seemed to bother me. Stressed me. On these kinds of days, I can't be in the city. It was time to go home. I lay my head on Mario's shoulder on the drive home and tried to sleep. I wished I wasn't so sensitive. I wanted to be like everyone else—or how I perceived everyone else was. I had always been sensitive, although it had gotten much "worse" in the last fifteen years. As a child, I was shy, born into a big Catholic family, but I was also a survivor; I figured out at a fairly young age that shy didn't wouldn't work in a big family. So against type, I jumped back into the world as a different child. No longer shy, I talked, talked, talked. Became the leader of the pack. Fought with boys. Faced down bullies. Did what I had to do. At home, I had terrible nightmares, and I watched the ceiling spin around as I lay in bed, saw strange women in white floating around my house at night, sometimes left my body and hovered on the ceiling, and heard unfamiliar voices in my house after everyone had gone to bed. Needless to say, this concerned my parents who took me to all kinds of doctors who took all kinds of tests. They didn't find anything wrong with me. Eventually I learned to keep my mouth shut when strange things happened to me.

My nightly 'mares continued until I met Mario, after which they became less frequent and less aggressive. When I was in my 30's the ceiling started spinning again: I was diagnosed with vertigo. The woman in white was probably part of my dream state, and the voices were some quirk of summer sounds. The rest of the weird things were just things that happened to most children, I believe, until they are taught that they should be afraid of anything that is not "normal."

Fortunately, my mother seemed to understand that not everyone was meant to be "normal." My mother became ill in her thirties. People and doctors hinted that her illness was in her head, back before doctors understood asthma, allergies, and environmental illness. Naturally it was difficult for her family to watch her be sick. She changed so dramatically. When I thought about it later, about my mother before her illness, I saw her as this beautiful vivacious woman—colorful. Dancing, swearing, laughing and telling strange stories to scare the neighborhood children. Red lipstick. Thick straight black hair. A flower. Illness deflowered my mother. It was as though someone came by and painted her over in black and white. Or gray. She faded away.

Despite her struggles, my mother was able, at times, to understand what a creative sensitive child needed. She hung reproductions of famous paintings in the hallway by our bedrooms so that every day we passed by great art, mostly by women artists. She gave me Emily Dickinson's poems to read. And I still remember the day she showed what I thought was a poem. I was young, maybe even a preteen. She wanted to make certain I read this poem, to make certain I understand it. I don't know if she was trying to explain herself to me—or myself to me.

The poem turned out to be the quote from Henry David Thoreau: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

She probably explained to me that "man" in this case meant women, too. I stood in an upstairs bedroom when she gave the quote to me, the room was semi-dark and I was looking for something—I don't now know what it was. I remember her insistence that I understand what Thoreau meant, without her really explaining it to me. I felt impatient with her yet thrilled by what she had given me. After being this strange being for all my life, it was thrilling to hear that I was not the only one! I had a tribe out there somewhere.

My mother never got better (yet). She marched to the beat of a different drummer, but it wasn't her choice. Maybe none of us has a choice? I see people trying to act the same all the time, making an effort not to acknowledge what is happening in the world around them. They seem to believe if they pretend everything is all right, everything is all right. I understand the logic. No one else is noticing. No one else is talking about what is wrong. Why should I? It is much easier to pretend. It is much easier not to notice. I can ignore that sound in the background, you say, I can ignore that rumbling, I can put my hands over my ears—then the truth cannot find me.

Did you know the bodies of dead soldiers no longer come back to the U.S. in body bags? During the first Gulf War in 1991, they were renamed "human remains pouches." Now, not only is the press forbidden to take photographs of the returning dead, but their containers are called "transfer tubes." Does any of this remind you of 1984 and doublespeak? I guess if they keep calling the containers "transfer tubes," then they won't actually contain dead soldiers?

The truth is the world is full of beauty and horror. Denying one does not make the other go away. The challenge is learning to live with both of these realities, to live with the truth that beauty and horror exist simultaneously. In the Western traditions, we're raised to think dualistically: things are black or white. Good or bad. Traitorous or patriotic. In reality, life is rarely that black or white, so to speak.

If you can understand this concept of beauty and horror existing side by each and find yourself in tears one minute and laughing with joy the next, you are not crazy. You are normal. Just because the rest of the world accepts insane behavior as normal, that does not mean it is not insane behavior. Do you know what I mean? We are told not to feel. We are taught not to speak out. Well, this is what I say to that: feel it, speak it. And even if you can't find your tribe close by, even if you feel as though your tribe has been wiped out, defeated, as if your tribe is sick and tired, know that the rest of us are out there. Listen for the beat of that different drummer.

After we got home from Portland tonight, I went to my room to check my email. I kept hearing this strange music. It sounded like flutes, or something, with the laughter of children in the background. I got up and checked to see if I had left the stereo on: I hadn't. Then I stepped outside. For a moment I thought I heard the flutes—or whatever it was—and then it was gone. I went back into my room. There was the music again. I was annoyed that someone was invading my space with their noise. I called Mario into the room, and he heard it, too. He went out the back door to see if our new neighbor was into sprightly flute music. The neighbor was not home, plus Mario could not hear the music once he left my room.

I couldn't hear it either unless I was in my room. I sat at my chair wondering what I was hearing. I thought of the woodpecker peering into the window across the street. Lately I have been singing, dancing, swimming with the fishes, listening and talking with the Winds, and now I was hearing strange flute music. I immediately thought of Pan, then Kokopelli, the hump-backed flute player of the Southwest. He often represents fertility and is said to come into villages and fertilize the gardens and the women. I wondered if it was his music I was hearing. If so, what did it mean? I didn't know a lot about Kokopelli, so I looked him up in one of my many myths books and discovered one story that was immediately interesting to me.

Kokopelli accompanied the People as they began moving around the world. They climbed a mountain and discovered an Eagle. Kokopelli asked the Eagle if the People could live on this magnificent mountain. The Eagle said it would test the people first, which the Eagle did. The People passed the tests. Then the Eagle shot an arrow into Kokopelli who immediately started playing his flute. His body was soon healed and stronger than it had been before. The Eagle was impressed and allowed the People to live on the mountain. And this is why the People sing to their sick children to this day: they understand the healing power of music.

I thought of my mother and wondered if I could sing her illness away. Could I sing mine away? Perhaps there is a song for each of us, like the Great Song I wrote about yesterday. We just have to learn it, listen for it, find it, go toward it. Find the beat of a different drummer.

The flute music stopped, taken away by the winds, I suppose. I was glad I had heard it. It reminds me to keep going. To keep on marching. Or dancing. I like that better: dancing. Marching sounds so military. I'm going to keep dancing to the beat of a different drummer. Or flute player. And when I feel as though I'm all alone and I can't find my tribe, I'll remember that you're all out there, too.

Thanks for that. 0 comments

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.