Saturday, November 20, 2004
The Balance of Good and Evil
We went into the forest to collect princess pine to bend into wreaths and sell to our neighbors. Circles honoring someone else's religion. But before it was their symbol it was ours.
The forest was damp and mysterious in wisps of mist. Sounds were muted except for the scolding of a raven.
My brother, Raven. Trickster. What do you have to teach today? I hoped the lesson would not be too difficult.
Eyvonne wandered one way and I another. Unconsciously we always stayed within sight of each other. It would be easy to get lost in the tendrils of fog, especially following raven's voice.
I picked and picked until my bag was almost full. I was standing in a depression formed long ago when a tree fell. There was nothing left of the tree, only a hole with a slight rim where its stump had been. Big rocks had either fallen in or eroded out. They were surrounded by pine and brown, withered stalks of summer ferns that had sheltered them through the hottest days.
I marveled at how Creator wove the world together, how each created being depended on another until all were interconnected by one relationship.
My feet were buried in leaf loam. If it were summer I would never step here. Snakes like to hide under the ferns in the rocks from summer’s heat just like the pine.
"Come over here," Eyvonne called. "I found a plant I've never seen before!"
I walked slowly toward her. I don't run in the forest any more. I plant my feet deliberately. Even a year ago I would have run. I feel too tired for this morning.
But the sight of the green veined leaves Eyvonne had discovered energized me. She was gently clearing leaf litter from a ring of rattlesnake weed. It grew like a crown on the mound of a tree stump mostly decayed away. A wreath of dark green leaves laced with white on the forest floor.
"What is it?" she asked.
I bent down, mindtouching el. He knew more about medicinal plants than any of us. He mindtouched the information and I spoke it. "Rattlesnake weed. It's a powerful medicine plant.”
"When you called out I was standing in a place I wouldn't dream of stepping in the summer. Too snakey," I said.
"Look how close it is to the snakey spot," Eyvonne noted.
Creator nearly always grows an antidote near a poison. Jewelweed grows near nettles or poison ivy, yarrow and heal-all near the sharp leaves of sawgrass. Plantain, a plant yuppies fight epic battles to remove from their lawns provides a number of helpful medicines. In the old days the plant was called "White man's foot". Brought here as a 'sallet' green by settlers it quickly escaped the boundaries of the garden. Our people used every part of it has healing properties. Perhaps Creator saw it as healing for hurts the settlers wrought.
Known locally as rattlesnake weed, the plant Eyvonne discovered was officially called rattlesnake plantain. Later we looked it up in our medicinal plant book. It has become too rare to harvest.
I sighed. It seemed a potent symbol of Indian life. One small circle too rare to harvest. The exacting niche environment it requires to thrive has been uprooted by extensive lumbering.
“It’s probably a cure for cancer or AIDS or something worse lurking out there we don’t even know about.” I mourned.
Or maybe those attributes are contained in a more common plant like the humble plantain that grows or tries to in almost every yard and field. It’s so common if it doesn't thrive in a particular place I wonder what horror of pollution was perpetrated there in the past.
Once at a pow-wow we were attending a small child among the spectators was stung by a bee. Wizened Grandfather Ash heard her crying and left the dance circle to help. He plucked a leaf of plantain, rubbed it between his fingers and applied it to the sting. The child stopped crying. Her mother was gratefully amazed.
Soon afterward it started to rain. Most of the spectators left. Dancers wearing expensive regalia sought cover but Grandfather Ash kept dancing followed by a gaggle of children laughing and having a good time.
Grandfather Ash carried a great deal of knowledge forward from the past. When I realized Lillie and I did too we started teaching anyone interested. If we didn’t share the knowledge it would be lost. We also started asking elders to share what they knew with us. We love the scent and textures of herbs we gather in the woods and fields. We love how drying herbs makes our house smell. The rooms fill with the essence of mullein, pennyroyal, Oswego tea, spicebush, everlasting, coltsfoot, sages, comfrey, lavender and the peppermint, spear mint, applemint and lemon balm which grow right up to the doorstep of our house.
When we were younger we dreamed of making a living from things we could gather and turn into useful or decorative products. We knew how to gather without destroying and we offered tobacco in thanks. At this time of year we still gather princess pine to bend into wreaths and sell to our neighbors. Circles to hang on doors honoring someone else's religion. But before it was their symbol it was ours.
The activity is an economic barometer of our family fortunes. In good years we make wreaths as gifts. When things aren’t going so well we make more and sell some to help pay for Christmas gifts. In bad years we sell them to buy food. This year it’s mostly gifts for the kids that drive us. No, it’s not our religion, nor is it our holiday, but we’re infected with it anyway, the tree, candles, and food. Did I mention the food? It’s a winter solstice feast sanctioned by the dominant culture. And the presents are fun. In our family they can tend to be a little strange. Who else would love a stuffed Armadillo?
Earlier today we felt the forest call. Eyvonne and I set out to gather pine. It was damp, trees mysterious in wisps of mist. Our voices were muted unlike the scolding of a raven.
My brother. Raven. Trickster. What do you have to teach today, I wondered. I hoped the lesson wouldn’t be too difficult.
Our bags were full but we weren't done with the forest. Some of our l'ilones peeked out awed by the hush of pre-winter woods. They didn't stay. They found summer with creatures and the promise of berries far more interesting. We adults needed these greens and browns and grays to settle something in our souls. Eyvonne found a rock covered in concentric rings formed by lichen that grew in black dots. There are rock glyphs that look similar. Spirals are carved into rock all around the world. Some archeologists call them meanders and associate them with water.
Not rivers, pathways. The pathway, el mindtouched.
We meandered through the woods, breathing in restoration, accepting gifts. Eventually it was beyond time to go back. We'd lingered long. Images of rocks and medicine plants would help us through the coming winter.
We have a growing sense this winter will be difficult. There seems little we can do to prepare for it beyond cutting a splitting more wood and storing up earth wisdom.
On the way home we're quiet. I'd not yet told Eyvonne about my close encounter with our newest Q. I sensed she was waiting to tell me something too.
"So have you met him yet?" I finally ask.
Eyvonne nodded pulling her arms into a self-hug.
"He cuddled with me last night. He's bigger than you," she hesitated. "His hands are bigger. He put his arm around me but he was very tense."
"I met him too. Driving Thunder's car brought him up."
"I know, I read about it in your blog. That's a heck of a way to find out." She was teasing but I still felt terrible.
"There just wasn't time to talk," I said.
"I know," she said wistfully.
We were quiet a moment too long before Eyvonne broke the silence.
"He has trust issues. He held my wrist as if he thought I might hurt him," she said.
I think I'm ready to face this stuff. I think we've been through it enough times now I can handle it no matter what. And then it's in my face and I feel like running, or maybe breaking something into little bits.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"We all have trust issues. What concerns me is how he's going to handle his," I said.
"You’re going to handle it,” Eyvonne said.
In a few days or weeks I might know that. Right then I didn't.
I wondered where Pleiades hid outside the system. How long had he been hiding? Why was he surfacing now?
"Why does he look so much like me?" I whispered.
"Shel," Eyvonne said, catching my eye. "It will be all right."
Right. And the check is in the mail. Another deep breath and I wasn’t worried any more. Being dissociative has its advantages. One is we rarely dwell on emotionally painful things very long. We may obsessively come back to fret over them but it doesn't last and in between you'd never know anything was bothering us. The strategy has major disadvantages too. Things take longer to resolve.
The worst thing about being dissociative is our response to pain. We tend ignore it until its massive, sometimes until we're in real trouble.
When you have a toothache you probably go right to the dentist and he fixes it. When we have a toothache we ignore it because we have things to do and not enough money. Every time it gets a little worse we ignore it more. Eventually we're spending a lot of energy keep the pain from bothering us.
We thought we'd finally learned to allow pain. I didn’t think we’d ever learn to embrace it. On an intellectual level we knew pain served a function.
"Pain is your friend," Dr. Dwon used to tell us. "Without pain to warn you something's wrong you can get into real trouble."
We knew he was right. Most of the time we were seriously ill before we noticed. Like now.
Back to the toothache example. Last spring it became evident we'd had a toothache for a long time. We knew that because Ian complained about it. I knew it needed attention but I kept putting it off because we were broke. By the time I could feel it we needed root canal and even I couldn’t ignore the pain. So we went to the dentist. He told us we needed an antibiotic for two weeks, and we’d have to pay him half up front before he'll start.
The bad thing was I wouldn't have the money until the following month when my clients paid up. The good thing was this happened before the government used a statistical eraser on our medical card. So we could get the prescription.
So. After like eight visits and constant pain the dentist decides the root canal is completed.
“It still hurts,” I say as I fork over $137.50.
“It will hurt a while,” he said.
Maybe I should have told him not to say something so open ended to me. I had no idea how long the pain should last. A month went by and we still couldn’t chew on that side. Two months and I was wondering how long ‘a while’ ought to be. We had a fever and chills, sore throat, swollen glands and a stuffy nose for a couple of weeks. The tooth hurt as much as before we saw the dentist in the first place. We’d shelled out $275.00 and it was no better.
We went back to the dentist. He took an X-ray. Wow, I thought, why didn’t he do that last spring? The film showed the abscess never went away it just took a new path. It had eaten through the bone and was spreading into my sinus.
“Is that why the whole side of my face hurts and I have a massive headache?”
“Yes,” the dentist admitted. “The infection must be a resistant strain.”
He prescribed a new antibiotic. One probably developed to fight germ warfare. It comes in bright blue capsules the size of the ones I had trouble getting our horses to swallow.
And now that we’re now middle class, even though our income hasn’t gone up one cent, we need to pay for it ourselves. If we did so, we wouldn’t have food or gas money until Eyvonne got paid next week. I put it on a credit card. When I whipped it out to pay, the pharmacist said “Don’t you have insurance?”
“Nope.”
He charged me $5.00 over his wholesale cost. I saw the paperwork. At least there are some people left with hearts. They’re not dentists. I guess it would skew the balance of good and evil if dentists or lawyers had hearts.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot
The forest was damp and mysterious in wisps of mist. Sounds were muted except for the scolding of a raven.
My brother, Raven. Trickster. What do you have to teach today? I hoped the lesson would not be too difficult.
Eyvonne wandered one way and I another. Unconsciously we always stayed within sight of each other. It would be easy to get lost in the tendrils of fog, especially following raven's voice.
I picked and picked until my bag was almost full. I was standing in a depression formed long ago when a tree fell. There was nothing left of the tree, only a hole with a slight rim where its stump had been. Big rocks had either fallen in or eroded out. They were surrounded by pine and brown, withered stalks of summer ferns that had sheltered them through the hottest days.
I marveled at how Creator wove the world together, how each created being depended on another until all were interconnected by one relationship.
My feet were buried in leaf loam. If it were summer I would never step here. Snakes like to hide under the ferns in the rocks from summer’s heat just like the pine.
"Come over here," Eyvonne called. "I found a plant I've never seen before!"
I walked slowly toward her. I don't run in the forest any more. I plant my feet deliberately. Even a year ago I would have run. I feel too tired for this morning.
But the sight of the green veined leaves Eyvonne had discovered energized me. She was gently clearing leaf litter from a ring of rattlesnake weed. It grew like a crown on the mound of a tree stump mostly decayed away. A wreath of dark green leaves laced with white on the forest floor.
"What is it?" she asked.
I bent down, mindtouching el. He knew more about medicinal plants than any of us. He mindtouched the information and I spoke it. "Rattlesnake weed. It's a powerful medicine plant.”
"When you called out I was standing in a place I wouldn't dream of stepping in the summer. Too snakey," I said.
"Look how close it is to the snakey spot," Eyvonne noted.
Creator nearly always grows an antidote near a poison. Jewelweed grows near nettles or poison ivy, yarrow and heal-all near the sharp leaves of sawgrass. Plantain, a plant yuppies fight epic battles to remove from their lawns provides a number of helpful medicines. In the old days the plant was called "White man's foot". Brought here as a 'sallet' green by settlers it quickly escaped the boundaries of the garden. Our people used every part of it has healing properties. Perhaps Creator saw it as healing for hurts the settlers wrought.
Known locally as rattlesnake weed, the plant Eyvonne discovered was officially called rattlesnake plantain. Later we looked it up in our medicinal plant book. It has become too rare to harvest.
I sighed. It seemed a potent symbol of Indian life. One small circle too rare to harvest. The exacting niche environment it requires to thrive has been uprooted by extensive lumbering.
“It’s probably a cure for cancer or AIDS or something worse lurking out there we don’t even know about.” I mourned.
Or maybe those attributes are contained in a more common plant like the humble plantain that grows or tries to in almost every yard and field. It’s so common if it doesn't thrive in a particular place I wonder what horror of pollution was perpetrated there in the past.
Once at a pow-wow we were attending a small child among the spectators was stung by a bee. Wizened Grandfather Ash heard her crying and left the dance circle to help. He plucked a leaf of plantain, rubbed it between his fingers and applied it to the sting. The child stopped crying. Her mother was gratefully amazed.
Soon afterward it started to rain. Most of the spectators left. Dancers wearing expensive regalia sought cover but Grandfather Ash kept dancing followed by a gaggle of children laughing and having a good time.
Grandfather Ash carried a great deal of knowledge forward from the past. When I realized Lillie and I did too we started teaching anyone interested. If we didn’t share the knowledge it would be lost. We also started asking elders to share what they knew with us. We love the scent and textures of herbs we gather in the woods and fields. We love how drying herbs makes our house smell. The rooms fill with the essence of mullein, pennyroyal, Oswego tea, spicebush, everlasting, coltsfoot, sages, comfrey, lavender and the peppermint, spear mint, applemint and lemon balm which grow right up to the doorstep of our house.
When we were younger we dreamed of making a living from things we could gather and turn into useful or decorative products. We knew how to gather without destroying and we offered tobacco in thanks. At this time of year we still gather princess pine to bend into wreaths and sell to our neighbors. Circles to hang on doors honoring someone else's religion. But before it was their symbol it was ours.
The activity is an economic barometer of our family fortunes. In good years we make wreaths as gifts. When things aren’t going so well we make more and sell some to help pay for Christmas gifts. In bad years we sell them to buy food. This year it’s mostly gifts for the kids that drive us. No, it’s not our religion, nor is it our holiday, but we’re infected with it anyway, the tree, candles, and food. Did I mention the food? It’s a winter solstice feast sanctioned by the dominant culture. And the presents are fun. In our family they can tend to be a little strange. Who else would love a stuffed Armadillo?
Earlier today we felt the forest call. Eyvonne and I set out to gather pine. It was damp, trees mysterious in wisps of mist. Our voices were muted unlike the scolding of a raven.
My brother. Raven. Trickster. What do you have to teach today, I wondered. I hoped the lesson wouldn’t be too difficult.
Our bags were full but we weren't done with the forest. Some of our l'ilones peeked out awed by the hush of pre-winter woods. They didn't stay. They found summer with creatures and the promise of berries far more interesting. We adults needed these greens and browns and grays to settle something in our souls. Eyvonne found a rock covered in concentric rings formed by lichen that grew in black dots. There are rock glyphs that look similar. Spirals are carved into rock all around the world. Some archeologists call them meanders and associate them with water.
Not rivers, pathways. The pathway, el mindtouched.
We meandered through the woods, breathing in restoration, accepting gifts. Eventually it was beyond time to go back. We'd lingered long. Images of rocks and medicine plants would help us through the coming winter.
We have a growing sense this winter will be difficult. There seems little we can do to prepare for it beyond cutting a splitting more wood and storing up earth wisdom.
On the way home we're quiet. I'd not yet told Eyvonne about my close encounter with our newest Q. I sensed she was waiting to tell me something too.
"So have you met him yet?" I finally ask.
Eyvonne nodded pulling her arms into a self-hug.
"He cuddled with me last night. He's bigger than you," she hesitated. "His hands are bigger. He put his arm around me but he was very tense."
"I met him too. Driving Thunder's car brought him up."
"I know, I read about it in your blog. That's a heck of a way to find out." She was teasing but I still felt terrible.
"There just wasn't time to talk," I said.
"I know," she said wistfully.
We were quiet a moment too long before Eyvonne broke the silence.
"He has trust issues. He held my wrist as if he thought I might hurt him," she said.
I think I'm ready to face this stuff. I think we've been through it enough times now I can handle it no matter what. And then it's in my face and I feel like running, or maybe breaking something into little bits.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"We all have trust issues. What concerns me is how he's going to handle his," I said.
"You’re going to handle it,” Eyvonne said.
In a few days or weeks I might know that. Right then I didn't.
I wondered where Pleiades hid outside the system. How long had he been hiding? Why was he surfacing now?
"Why does he look so much like me?" I whispered.
"Shel," Eyvonne said, catching my eye. "It will be all right."
Right. And the check is in the mail. Another deep breath and I wasn’t worried any more. Being dissociative has its advantages. One is we rarely dwell on emotionally painful things very long. We may obsessively come back to fret over them but it doesn't last and in between you'd never know anything was bothering us. The strategy has major disadvantages too. Things take longer to resolve.
The worst thing about being dissociative is our response to pain. We tend ignore it until its massive, sometimes until we're in real trouble.
When you have a toothache you probably go right to the dentist and he fixes it. When we have a toothache we ignore it because we have things to do and not enough money. Every time it gets a little worse we ignore it more. Eventually we're spending a lot of energy keep the pain from bothering us.
We thought we'd finally learned to allow pain. I didn’t think we’d ever learn to embrace it. On an intellectual level we knew pain served a function.
"Pain is your friend," Dr. Dwon used to tell us. "Without pain to warn you something's wrong you can get into real trouble."
We knew he was right. Most of the time we were seriously ill before we noticed. Like now.
Back to the toothache example. Last spring it became evident we'd had a toothache for a long time. We knew that because Ian complained about it. I knew it needed attention but I kept putting it off because we were broke. By the time I could feel it we needed root canal and even I couldn’t ignore the pain. So we went to the dentist. He told us we needed an antibiotic for two weeks, and we’d have to pay him half up front before he'll start.
The bad thing was I wouldn't have the money until the following month when my clients paid up. The good thing was this happened before the government used a statistical eraser on our medical card. So we could get the prescription.
So. After like eight visits and constant pain the dentist decides the root canal is completed.
“It still hurts,” I say as I fork over $137.50.
“It will hurt a while,” he said.
Maybe I should have told him not to say something so open ended to me. I had no idea how long the pain should last. A month went by and we still couldn’t chew on that side. Two months and I was wondering how long ‘a while’ ought to be. We had a fever and chills, sore throat, swollen glands and a stuffy nose for a couple of weeks. The tooth hurt as much as before we saw the dentist in the first place. We’d shelled out $275.00 and it was no better.
We went back to the dentist. He took an X-ray. Wow, I thought, why didn’t he do that last spring? The film showed the abscess never went away it just took a new path. It had eaten through the bone and was spreading into my sinus.
“Is that why the whole side of my face hurts and I have a massive headache?”
“Yes,” the dentist admitted. “The infection must be a resistant strain.”
He prescribed a new antibiotic. One probably developed to fight germ warfare. It comes in bright blue capsules the size of the ones I had trouble getting our horses to swallow.
And now that we’re now middle class, even though our income hasn’t gone up one cent, we need to pay for it ourselves. If we did so, we wouldn’t have food or gas money until Eyvonne got paid next week. I put it on a credit card. When I whipped it out to pay, the pharmacist said “Don’t you have insurance?”
“Nope.”
He charged me $5.00 over his wholesale cost. I saw the paperwork. At least there are some people left with hearts. They’re not dentists. I guess it would skew the balance of good and evil if dentists or lawyers had hearts.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot
