ancient ones

A young Anasazi girl shared her wind note vision.

My name is Kokopelli the humpbacked flute player. I am 1,000 years old. My image is found on petrogyphs or rock carvings near here. My image is also on rock paintings or pictographs in kivas, ceramics and woven baskets.

The ancient ones, the Anasazi, regard me as a symbol of fertility, a roving minstrel or trader. People also call me the rainmaker, a hunting magician, trickster and seducer of maidens.

In the Pueblo myths my hump carries seeds, babies and blankets to maidens. I wander along the upper Rio Grande between villages carrying seeds and bags of songs on my back.

Because I represent fertility I am welcomed during the corn planting season and sought by barren women but avoided by maidens. If you listen well, you will hear my flute music echoing through canyons playing traditional songs.

She disappeared along fault lines in long undulating dry washes full of sagebrush playing her flute near rainbow mesas strewn with geological strata.

bali Aga ikat

Katut knew kamben gringsing.

It took five years to weave the muted colors of reddish brown tones, eggshell and dark blue or black colors into a piece of magic cloth. In the beginning his mother gathered sunti roots and mixed them with indigo to make dyes. His father made narrow back strap looms from trees.

The women spun cotton cloth by hand. According to tradition the yarns were soaked in candle nut oil and wood ash water. They were stored for 42 days in an earthenware jar covered with a checked black and white cloth. The strands were dried for 42 days and covered with open hibiscus flowers to protect them from witches. 

Warp threads were woven up and down. Weft threads woven left and right on different frames for dyeing. Geometric stars, small crosses and flowers were woven into the threads and a very careful matching process tied or bound the different threads together to form intricate designs and patterns. 

Kamben gringsing patterns contained combinations of 14, 24, 37 or 40 fields to make healing garments for men and women in Tenganan. Katut knew there were over 20 basic designs of the cloth. His mother’s main concern was how the cloth was used in the village.   

She told him a story as they walked toward the mountain.

“The word gring means 'illness' and sing means 'not' she explained. “It is the most important social and sacred cultural symbol for the people in our village.”

Katut listened and understood kamben gringsing was their way of life. Kamben gringsing created a social identity, a relationship for their people. Ikat protected them from impurities and danger.

It allowed them to make transitions across boundaries in life’s journey. The villagers used kamben gringsing when they participated in rituals and rites of passage from birth to death.

spilled Ink

After they cut out my tongue I started writing script.

I found a compressed black Chinese ink stick with yellow dragons breathing fire. I added a little water to a grey stone surface and placed the ink in the center. 

Then, using my right hand, as Master Liu in Chengdu showed me, I turned the stick in a clockwise motion. Black ink ebbed into liquid as a drop of water rippled a pond.

After collecting ink I picked up my long heavy brown brush. Pure white hair. After soaking it in water for three minutes to relax it’s inner tension I spread out thin delicate paper.

I placed my right foot at an angle, left foot straight, my left palm flat on the table with fingers spread. I dipped the brush in the recessed part of the stone to absorb ink then slowly dragged it along an edge removing excess. 

I savored the weight and heft. My brush has it own personality and character. There are at least 5,000 characters in my written language. I have much to learn and a long way to travel with this unknowing truth.

The Midnight Court

I entertained visitors, fished the Glen Malure river in complete solitude, peeled potatoes and carrots for stews, painted watercolors, discussed road adventures with vagabonds, wrote and played chess by firelight. 

Pawn takes pawn as players attempt to control the middle of the board attacking and defending positions simultaneously. It was about position and material. We made the necessary sacrifices after the beginning game through the middle game to the end game. 

Andy, a German visitor said India was once lost in a chess game between two kings. We played in the dark of night illuminated by fireplace light as peat fires roared their way up the flue. Quick moving violent storms pummeled the place.

“That’s a dangerous move,” he said as my knight escaped a pin.

“Yes, but it’s elegant.”

“We destroy ourselves eventually.”

“Yes, as long as we enjoy the process. Your move.”

In the morning Susan related a dream from literature she was reading, by Brian Merriman, a merry man while doing her nails near the river.

“Have you heard about The Midnight Court?” 

“No,” someone said. “Tell us.”

“It’s about a fellow who falls asleep and has a dream where he is taken before a court of women who condemn him to be punished for all the men in their knowledge. How women should have the right to marriage and sex but often meet with disappointment and rejection by men who could easily have become their lovers and husbands.” 

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.