Kayapuya

I am an old dialect of Kalapuya tribes. I respect spirit energies.

I hear with my eyes and see with my ears.

I understand your love for the spirit power guardian. I am an ancestor speaking 300 languages from our history. Now only 150 dialects remain.

A hunting gathering people speaking Pentian, we numbered 3,000 in 1780. We believe in nature spirits, vision quests and guardian spirits.

Our shamans, called amp a lak ya taught us how seeking, finding and following one’s spirit or dream power and singing our song was essential in community.

I speak in tongues, in ancient dialects about love. They are 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 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 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 spreading 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 a 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, hot sun and four seasons.

I am yellow, purple, and red, blue, and orange flowers from brown earth.

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 with respect, dignity and mindfulness.

a Japanese friend translates a poem

We met in Bhaktapur, Nepal three hundred years ago.

He has a famous beard, laughs a lot and writes haiku.

His wife is known for her oils and watercolor paintings with a touch of fantastic harmony and mystery.

Every morning we sat near a Hindu temple when a man rang a huge iron bell at 7:30. Exactly.

Ame ni mo  Makezu (Be not Defeated by the Rain)

standing against the rain,

standing against the wind,

standing against the snow,

the intense heat of summer

keeping a strong body

free from desire

free from anger

regardless, smiling peacefully

four bowls of brown rice

miso, a few vegetables, enough for a day

putting myself aside in everything

taking care of others first

watching, listening carefully to the inner meaning,

appreciating

never forgetting

beside the pine forest in the field

sitting in a little thatched roof house

hearing news about a sick child in the east

I go and nurse him

hearing news about a tired mother in the west

I go and help her, rice bundles on my back

hearing news about a man on his death bed in the south

I go and comfort him

hearing news about a quarrel or lawsuit in the north

I go and tell them not to be so petty

weeping with them in a drought

aimlessly wandering around with them in the cold summer

being called useless by others

never being praised

never receiving complaints

such a person

I want to be Ame ni mo makezu (Be not Defeated by the Rain[1]) is a famous poem written by Kenji Miyazawa,[2] a poet from the northern prefectureof Iwate in Japan who lived from 1896 to 1933. The poem was found posthumously in a small black notebook in one of the poet's trunks.

Pleasures

Pleasures
First look from morning's window
The rediscovered book
Fascinated faces
Snow, the change of the seasons
The newspaper
The dog
Dialectics
Showering, swimming
Old music
Comfortable shoes
Comprehension
New music
Writing, planting
Traveling
Singing
Being friendly

 - Bertolt Brecht

Tomas Transtromer - Noble Prize Literature

The Half-Finished Heaven

Cowardice breaks off on its path.
Anguish breaks off on its path.
The vulture breaks off in its flight.
The eager light runs into the open,
even the ghosts take a drink.

And our paintings see the air,
red beasts of the ice-age studios.
Everything starts to look around.
We go out in the sun by hundreds.
Every person is a half-open door
leading to a room for everyone.
The endless field under us.
Water glitters between the trees.
The lake is a window into the earth.

The Tree and the Sky

There’s a tree walking around in the rain,
it rushes past us in the pouring grey.
It has an errand. It gathers life
out of the rain like a blackbird in an orchard.

When the rain stops so does the tree.
There it is, quiet on clear nights
waiting as we do for the moment.

The Couple

They turn the light off, and its white globe glows
an instant and then dissolves, like a tablet
in a glass of darkness. Then a rising.
The hotel walls shoot up into heaven’s darkness.

Their movements have grown softer, and they sleep,
but their most secret thoughts begin to meet
like two colors that meet and run together
on the wet paper in a schoolboy’s painting.

It is dark and silent. The city however has come nearer
tonight. With its windows turned off. Houses have come.
They stand packed and waiting very near,
a mob of people with blank faces.

Tomas Transtromer

apsara

The dancing hall at Preah Khan is where dancers don't smile. They dance. They are slave dancers.

They dance for the king. He is the god-king. He has resurrected his desire and fury creating new customs and new decrees for dancers. They dance for the mighty and powerful. They dance Khmer stories about war, conquest, harvests, seasons, sun and moon. 

They are submissive dances of life/death. They dance to celebrate life. They dance the celebration of tranquility. They dance or die. They wear tinkling bands of gold around wrists and ankles. They wear diamond diademed crowns and shimmering silk clothing. They do not smile. Their faces are frozen in the trance of dance.

One dances to escape the tyranny. She's danced all her short, sweet life.

The hall of dancers is surrounded by columns, portals and broken jumbled green moss stones. Thick gnarled silk-cotton tree roots crawl toward dancers. They dance through roots, past Shiva and Vishnu. The preserver and destroyer of life. 

Dance movement is motivated by emotional expression. Dance is about itself. The freedom of creation. A playful approach to meaning. Dance allows the viewer to interpret.