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.
Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
Rumi
April 17, 2008
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?
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.
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.
We entered a secret gate on Longview Fiber timberland. Our club president had permission to enter and the key. Still, I felt a little bit like we were sneaking in. I helped dig for carnelian for about an hour. I found one good specimen but soon lost my motivation. I retired to a warm car to observe a wood filling with snow. The trees, mostly Douglas fir and second growth. Impressive size. I had three hours to make this drawing, watch the snow fall, listen to the melting snow rustle and plop all around me. I took a long walk, taking care not to get lost on the many branching roads. No worries, my size 8 boot tracks were the only ones for miles. Except two sets of deer tracks, very fresh. I had the distinct impression they were peering at me. Also some other tracks, possibly cougar but not so fresh.
We made it home by 11 pm. Tom was so charged up over his booty that he took the time to clean each specimen. His hard work with a shovel produced many fine crystals and one really spectacular palm size red carnelian. One red carnelian, one nice drawing and a quiet day in pristine woods. No people except the rock hounds. A very good day.
I just spent the last week caring for my two grandchildren, 8 and 10 years. This chance to spend time with them during their regular routine is pure gold. Not a special occasion, just a regular school day while their parents take a much deserved second honeymoon. A miracle, really.
With the children off at school all day I suddenly realized that I did not have to actually “do” anything. For the first time in my life I felt that I had all of the time in the world. I gave myself the first day of spring by visiting Snoqualamie Falls and viewing Peregrine Falcons nesting on a cliff by the falls. They chose a pile of logs and sticks, seven feet across – an old eagle’s nest? The male hovering, meeting his mate in midair to pass her a bit of meat, a small bird most likely. She is off the nest each hour for 45 seconds only. She depends on her mate for her life.
But I digress. Time. I let the kids free swim for 45 minutes at the pool. So what dinner is late? I just watched them swim. I kept remembering the hours in the water – I was so intent on learning to swim, perfecting the underwater flips, learning to dive. Good memories – I was a kid once.
I return to my everyday life of making art, of selling art, and I feel that a certain time elasticity has been restored to me. It feels like more space inside my head and chest. This sketch is the skyline view of the Cascades from their home, the maple tree, the aspens and the valley filling with mist. No longer winter in spite of the heavy snow, but not quite spring.
This mandala is cut off at the bottom because it is my first foray into drawing on a larger piece of paper–this is 12 x 12 and textured.
I never know what I’m going to draw in a mandala because I like the idea that they are soul maps, and an avenue for the Wonderful One Within or the Secret Partner to speak to the day or the cycle or to its own truths.
It seemed to me that this was a self-portrait and that the release of leaves, which seems out of sync with the external season, is what happens at the end of an intense quarter for Teecher. In this case, I am also shedding two classes and an entire school, and perhaps the way of life associated with that school. Of course, all the students have been graded and they are falling away from me like leaves.
I have lots of projects I am growing, but it looks like I can hold all those branches in the air waiting for blossom time to come again.
March 20, 2008
