Duende

She had duende, a fundamentally untranslatable Spanish word, literally meaning possessing spirit. It signified a charisma manifested by certain performers—flamenco singers, bullfighters, elves, seers, weavers—overwhelming their audience with the feeling they were in the presence of a mystical power.

The Spanish poet Garcia Lorca produced the best brief description of duende: “Years ago, during a flamenco dance contest in Jerez, an old woman of eighty, competing against beautiful women and young girls with waists as supple as water, carried off the prize by simply raising her arms, throwing back her head, and stamping the platform with a single blow of her heel; but in that gathering of muses and angels, of beautiful forms and lovely smiles, the dying duende triumphed as it had to, dragging the rusted blades of its wings along the ground.”

Little Wing followed a tribal trail to Lacilbula, where, after weaving morning pages she returned to the Rio Guadalete river below the pueblo flowing from the Sierras to Cadiz.

The battle of Guadalete was fought on July 19, 711 when 7,000 Yemenis and Berbers led by Tariq ibn Ziyad defeated the Visgoth King Roderic.

Rio needed cleaning. Thick autumn yellow, green and brown leaves trapped between rocks clogged river sections. Liquid backed up to mountains beneath fast gray storm clouds. Using her walking stick, she clamored down a slippery slope and slowly worked her way up the Rio clearing sticks, leaves and stones blocking the flow. One leaf could do a lot of damage.

There were green maple, silver aspen, brown oak leaves. Old black water logged decayed colors danced with fresh green and orange pigments.

She was the unimpeded flow. A child playing near water and rocks in her dream world. Serenity and sweet water music. Rocks, stepping stones. Small pools and meditation zones of where she felt peaceful. Bird music darted up the canyon.

She cleared leaves long past twilight, staggered up the muddy incline facing the Rio in silent gratitude and performed healing chants next to a bare Aspen tree. She passed a ceramic Virgin Mary statue illuminated by melting red candles in a rocky crevice behind a locked gate.

Mary’s blood flowed over jagged dolomite gray stones flecked with green moss. She collected a hemoglobin sample for future weaving, crossed a stone bridge and returned home. She lit candles, started a fire, relaxed in her favorite chair enjoying a deep breath before bleeding word rivers to dye loom fabric.

The loom was her instrument of transformation and wool the hair of the sacrificial beast which women, by a long and cultured tribal process, transformed into clothing. This suggested how weaving skirts the sacred and the violent. Why her power at the loom was both derided and dreaded, transformed, like giving birth, into a language and symbol, a metaphor with new, positive ends.

Kalapuya

Children watched everything from a council bluff where Native American tribes of their nation gathered for a Ghost Dance ceremony. They shared a spirit vision of a Northwest tribe called the Kalapuya.

A hunting gathering people speaking Pentian, they numbered 3000 in 1780. They believed in nature spirits, vision quests and guardian spirits. Their shamans, called, amp a lak ya taught them how seeking, finding and following one’s spirit or dream power and singing their song was essential in their community.

An ancestor spoke to the tribes. “I speak in tongues, in ancient dialects about love. Dialects of ancestors who lived here for 8,000 years before where you are now. In the forest near the river all animal spirits welcome you with their love. They are manifestations of your being.

“I am blessed to welcome you here. You have walked along many paths of love to reach me.

“My dirt path is narrow and smooth in places, rocky in others. I am the soil under your feet. I feel your weight, your balance, your weakness and your strength. I hear your heart beating as my ancestors pounded their ceremonial drums. I feel the tremendous surging force of your breath extend into my forest. Wind accepts your breath. 

“I am everything you see, smell, taste, touch and hear. I am the oak, the fir and pine trees spread like dreams upon your outer landscape. I am your inner landscape. I see you stand silent in the forest hearing trees nudge each other. ‘Look,’ they say, “Someone has returned.’

“I love the way you absorb the song of brown body thrush collecting moss for a nest. I am the small brown bird saying hello. I am the sweet throated song you hear without listening. At night two owls sing their distant song and their music fills your ears with mystery and love.

“I am warm spring sun on your face filtered through leaves of time. I am the spider’s web dancing with diamond points of light. I am the rough fragile texture of bark you gently remove before connecting the edge of an axe with wood. You carry me through my forest, your flame creates heat of love. I am the taste of pitch on your lips, the odor of forest in your nostrils, filling your lungs. It is sweet. 

“I am the cold rain and wet snow and hot sun and four seasons. I am the yellow, purple, red, blue, orange flowers out of brown earth. 

“I am an old dialect of Kalapuya tribes. I respect the spirit energies. I hear with my eyes and see with my ears. I understand your love for the spirit power guardian. I am the ancestor speaking 300 languages from our history. Now only 150 dialects remain. Language cannot be separated from who you are and where you live. 

“I say this so you will remember everything in this forest. I took care of this place and now your love has the responsibility.”

May 1, 2007

It is early before dawn on May 1st. Today. Wild birds sing in trees, geckos slurp sounds. A snail carries it's shell through a garden. I open an old Moleskine at random. The entry is May 1, 2007 in China.

The entry reads: "188,494 A Century is Nothing edited down. 5-6,000 words "cut" since March. It may be ready to throw the monster out into the world...perhaps another? fine line edit to fine tune the beast with objective detachment...?

White winged flock, distant green hills, big formation. Wing further light. Floating white, green, orange sunset, quick trail bike ride, white moon, cloud dancer, east light, dusk

no words

vision

obscured visible

in-out breath

moon lovers

Metta.

Monkey Forest

“I know where Monkey Forest is,” she said.

“The bull is placed under a cremation platform (bale pabasmian) constructed of bamboo with a white "sky" cloth and gold tinsel roof. Reeds secure the bull on four corner poles and music stops.

“It’s like a party,” I said. “Women work the crowd selling water and soft drinks in searing heat. Tourists replace film and run videos.”

“Men cut the bull's back open with a large knife under sky pavilion and remove a section. Music starts and the body is lowered from the tower accompanied by cymbals, drums and clanging instruments. Women carry offerings and lead an honor procession three times around the bull.

“All the men are hot, tired, sweaty, and laughing. They lift the body up and pass it to a group along the bull. They place it inside. The widow places family heirlooms on the corpse as forest monkeys swing and chatter through overhead jungles. A black and white butterfly dances.

“A Brahmin priest in black stands on scaffolding with the family singing and chanting prayers over the body. They cut a string binding white cloth, pour holy water from clay pots on the body and pass pots to a family member who smashes them on the ground.

“Then the priest takes a flowering plant and sprinkles soil on the body. Another man adds yellow silk. People hand them family items wrapped in white cloth to be placed inside. Clay pots are emptied and smashed.

“A family member takes a photograph of the body. An effigy of reeds and tinsel is dismantled and placed on the body before the lid is replaced on the bull and secured with a long piece of bamboo lashed diagonally across the corners. Someone lights the fire.

“The bull and flowers burn quickly as wood, bamboo and rattan sends smoke and ash circling into sky. Cloth shells flame away as heat jumps to the tinsel and golden roof.

“Italian and French film crews work close to the fire.

“The crowd evaporates. The ground is littered with plastic water bottles and ashes. The widow sits by a path in the shade eating, drinking and talking quietly with her family and friends aboutsekala, what is seen, andnisekala, what is unseen.”

“Wow!” Michiyo said when Smith finished. “Amazing!”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s about impermanence and perception. When people change their attitudes they change their perceptions.”

“Is that all that happens?” She wanted to know.

“Well, it’s about connections on many levels, you see. When people change their attitudes it affects their values and changes their belief window.”

“What’s a belief window?”

“How you see things. Some cultures think with their heart instead of their head.”

“I see.” Our laughter shattered the calm silence. Wild cranes lifted from the rice paddies into blue sky slashing their shadows through light. The sky is the same color no matter where you are.

Metta.

Visionary Vet

She was an angel looking down on the human world from a great height. She floated where material concerns and possessions did not matter in the big picture. 

She remembered standing at attention at basic training in another century with Senior Drill Sergeant Roger That screaming in her face, “You’d better keep the big picture in mind you bunch of dumb shits. What I’m telling you may save your sweet ass.” They practiced eating dust, killing ghosts and lethal hand-to-hand combat. The quick and the dead.

It was one of those crucial survival messages she was blessed to receive in her short sweet life. Before they packed her off to a hot humid Asian jungle where she gobbled rice with her hands, moved with the speed of a reptile, swam with leeches sucking her blood, connected all her senses into a single bright sharp clarity, maintained her ironic detached sense of humor and kept her mean machine clean. 

She’d rotated out of the jungle and just kept on going. 

They pinned medals on her in sweltering Saigon, she caught a freedom flight, confronted bitter cold in thin tropical khakis dashing across an Alaskan tarmac, then flew to the City by the Bay. A sergeant offered her a steak dinner. 

She muttered, “Screw the steak, give me a fresh dress green uniform and I’m back to Colorado.”

Airborne, airmobile to Denver she became an exile with a degree in Silence and Cunning. Surrounded by the living dead. Wandering Ghost material.  She’d evolved through the first of many metaphysical windows. It was impermanence; one life, no plan and many adventures. Restless was her masterful mistress. Movement and silence. 

She eased out at the Spanish summit to breath deep - receiving freezing cold gray and black clouds. They gave her the threads she needed then and there in the wilderness. They were a security blanket around her shoulders and she weaved them into a fine piece of work. 

She started descending toward the Penon Grande mountains above Lacilbula where she’d sit down doing her winter weaving travail. 

Immediately after arriving at her small space it started pouring. Coming down. Reminded her of Nam monsoons. Nature’s rain turned to violent hail, welcoming her to a new sanctuary in the old Roman pueblo. She welcomed the transition.

Inch deep hail accumulated on patio plants. She’d been warned it had the highest rainfall in Andalucia. The weather turned bitter cold for a week. 

“Unseasonable,” said a woman neighbor near a rose bush outside her cobalt blue Moorish door. 

She settled into an intimate furnished two room space with plastered stone walls, no central heating, a patio with 20 plants and delicious orange and lemon trees. Simplicity, serenity and sanctuary.

Metta.