Iguanas seem to be everyone’s pet in Mexico. This guy had the run of the restaurant and Ricardo, the bar tender let him take dainty bites from the wedding center piece.
At another tiny bar, deep in the jungle next to a beautiful fresh water cenote, the proprietor kept a 3′, bright green iguana on the bar for the delight of the customers. Never mind that the iguana received better tips than the rather taciturn bar tender. In Mexico, not everyone could speak English but most everyone would smile. At the Tulum ruins, an man did nothing but pose with a 5′ iguana and pass the hat to the French tourists for taking his photo. He had enough money in the hat to feed his family or buy a large round of michiladas for his friends.
Tulum, Tulum. In the jungle, on the Carribean, an hour and a half south of the big city Cancun. For me a week in Tulum means that I will remain connected and engaged there for the rest of my life. Many years ago in my mid 20’s, a psychic told me that I experienced a past life as a Mayan artist and priestess. I neither believed or disbelieved it but my sense of connection with Mexico has run like an underground river through my psyche since my first visit to Mexico when I was 16. Here are the images I managed to produce during my full time in Tulum – more to follow.
Our guide, Pablo explained to us about the sacred palm. We were hiking in the jungle of Sian Kan, the biosphere park reserve near Tulum. ” The palm is sacred to the Mayan people. The palm is their roof, their shelter from the heat, the hurricane and the rain. A good palm roof can last up to 30 years if the palm is properly harvested on the full moon. At that time the sap is running and the plant is full of protective minerals. If the palm is cut at any other time and the sap is low, the roof will last three years, no more.”
The beautiful aboreal gold green Vine Snake eats mostly lizards; lucky for the nesting birds and thier eggs. I did not spot this well camofloged snake. I tramped through the Yucatan jungle and wisely stayed on the trail, keeping a sharp eye out for scorpions or snakes. Thor Janson’s book Maya Nature made me aware of the presence of pit vipers including the formidable Fer-De-Lance.
Map of the Journeying of the Ancestors Back to the Dream-time
I thought about how it is that as I grow older, I feel further and further away from my childhood and who I was as a child. If I think about it in a certain way, I feel lost, and that makes me realize what people mean when they say they are lost, that they don’t know who they are anymore.
In this picture, I am lost in a maze of trees, looking for my way back to who I am supposed to be, what I am supposed to be doing. In this picture, I am going the wrong way on the road back to the Dream-time. An ancestor grandmother in a long skirt is on the road back to the Lake with the Bluest Eye, and before her is a Conestoga wagon with our ancestors of yet the more previous generation. The Lake with the Bluest Eye is at the foot of the Mountains of Memory. Today, at sunset, the Dream-time Mists have cleared for a moment, and the light of the most distant sun lights up snowfields and meadows.
Since I drew this, the sun has set, the Mists have risen from the marsh around the Lake, and I am once again alone on the Cedar Trail.
I am working with a book I got at Manzanita News in Manzanita Beach called Crone Trekking in Coyote Land: A Storymaking Book by local Nehalem author Gwendolyn Endicott. She retells the famous story of Coyote and the Cedar Tree. After I read the story, following her suggestion, I made a list of the images that I remembered from the story, chose one and drew it.
Later, when I did this with my 18-21 year old students, not one of them listed as an image Coyote trapped in the Cedar Tree calling out for help, and six out of sixteen of them drew the beam of light from outside the tree going down the little hole to Coyote. This still startles me, as I believe it is symbolic of each of our generations.
I understand what it is to be Coyote, caught in a jam of his own making, held unmoving in the grasp of a situation where the only remedy is to dismantle the self limb by limb, push the parts through the hole and to have to reassemble myself on the other side.
But what does it mean to be the age where I am the beam of light shining down the Woodpecker’s breathing hole to Coyote?
Raven Steals Coyote’s Eyeballs
The second image I did working with this story was Raven stealing Coyote’s eyeballs. This strikes me as macabre and funny; I always see Raven as some trickster shadow of death. Raven is gallows humor. Interestingly, three of my students also drew this image, but I’m already guessing they did so attracted by some very different energy than that which I perceived.
White Sea Otter Woman Brings the Gift of Eternal Life to the Nehalem People
The next story was “Ice and White Sea Otter Woman” in which Nehalem fishermen paddle to a spirit world, enter a shining lodge, find a beautiful woman, and the youngest asks her to come home with them. “And the woman came with the man willingly, carrying only a small, woven basket. She held the basket on her lap as the men made their long journey homeward, back toward Neahkahnie.”
I was drawn by that pure moment of willingness. She is sitting happily in the canoe and all is promise. She is bringing a wonderful bride gift to her new family.
Of course, this story doesn’t end well. Like Pandora’s box, the men get to thinking it might be a food box. It is trickster Ice who tears the box from her hands even though the others warn him, “Do not bother her; you do not know her.”
He sees with revulsion little living human beings in the basket and throws it overboard. Of course, she dives in after it saying, “Those are my lucky lifetimes,” the gift of eternal life she had been bringing to the people, lost now, and Ice and his buddies cursed to paddle forever. “The men paddled and paddled, but the harder they paddled, the further they drifted from Neahkahnie.”
At the beginning of Spring Break, the outer persona slips, and the soul named NightWinds is surprised in the act of thinking her mysterious, cave wall thoughts.
During Spring Break, the spiral that was so clearly front and center only a couple of weeks ago has become a left hand moon. Vast quantities of energy flow out of the prescribed circle of my life out into another universe.
March 31, the new term begins and the whole structure of multiple classrooms is thrown into an uncertain construction zone. The spiral has slipped in a puddle of blue water to become an underground lake. Three feathers are back at center, with a fourth and a fifth new friend coming in from the wings. Moons, seeds, centers of self-propelled energy are making their way through the still ill-defined labyrinth to find their place in the Great Mandala.
This drawing is a name I made up. It is a meander. I put my pencil on the page and do not lift it until I am ready. It differs from a contour drawing in that I am not looking at anything except my own memories.
