nanowrimo madness

I think we’re going deaf. It’s no big surprise. We Qs have what my mother called “Burgess family ears”. We were prone to earaches as a child. If we had a cold we got an earache. I miss hearing some things, like owls calling in the woods. I can still hear them if I go outside, but I remember being comforted hearing them as I lay awake in bed.
I thought about going deaf this morning because the dog ran off into the bushes. I know, you’re wondering about that connection. It’s not as far out there as it seems. I stood in the doorway sipping my coffee and Merlot disappeared into the mist. I knew if he were on a deer track he’d never hear me call him off because he’s pretty deaf. He’s the only dog I’ve ever known who lies down next to drums when Owl’s band practices. For a while Owl worried Merlot’s loyalty cost him his hearing. I doubt it. I think he was born that way.
Merlot is also selectively deaf. He’s learned to use his disability to manipulate. It’s so human. We had a horse that learned the same trick. He went lame out on the trail. He’d pitched a shoe. We had to walk him down out of the mountains. Ever after when he wanted to go back to the barn he executed a convincing limp.
Conscious manipulation requires higher thinking skills and an orderly thought process.
First the animal must remember the circumstances that fit what they want to accomplish. Then they need to display behaviors that will turn events their way. It’s human training 101. Pretty sophisticated if you ask me. Since their brains are awash in the same chemicals as ours it shouldn’t be such a surprise.
If Merlot doesn’t want to do something you can shout the command right in his face and he just turns his head away with that little smile dogs get when they laugh at humans.
Having pets is really important to us. Like the people we love they help anchor us in this reality. If we lived alone we’d still need to remember to come out here in the physical world to feed and walk the dog. Of course that requires coffee, which leads to food, which is how we start each day. We feed Merlot and remember we need to eat too. Isn’t dissociation fun class?
It opens up a whole new industry: companion pets for dissociatives. Even fish would work. Actually plants aren’t a bad choice either if they require regular watering. Cacti wouldn’t work so well.
You’d think a routine would help us maintain the balance between inside and outside life. Maybe for some multiples that is a good tool. Like always doing laundry on Mondays, or taking trash out on Fridays. But in reality sometimes you run out of socks on Saturday or the trash overflows on Wednesday. Being flexible is better. Routine only makes our obsessive alters obsess to a greater degree.
We do have some techniques to keep things moving forward. el records deadlines, meetings and appointments and lists our personal goals and projects and those underway for each client. We have a family message board where everyone can record things we need to know, like “Owl works Monday and Tuesday”. This avoids us asking six or seven times what days he’s working. Lately we forget an answer right after we get it. I’m not sure why.
Everyone in the family assumes it’s because each of us asks the same question and we don’t share the information. It’s easier for us to let everyone to blame it on that than it is to try and figure out what is actually going on.
Welcome to another fun aspect of dissociation. Sometimes you just have no clue. Or worse, you don’t even notice it even after someone points it out because it’s too scary to examine. So you ignore the concept that you’re ignoring stuff.
Lately I tend to blame it on Pleiades. Why not? If he won’t communicate he’s an easy scapegoat. Besides, he pulled a really annoying stunt today that I have no desire to discuss in detail. Suffice it to say Eyvonne and I finally successfully eluded the sex police and were having a great time. Suddenly Pleiades slammed me on the forehead, took ops and locked me out. I could be really pissed off but what’s the point? It’s actually kind of funny, Pleiades as the sex police.
So you may well wonder what I did the rest of the day. Because you see, time does not stop inside because we’re blocked from the outside. el thinks we could be dead a week before we’d all notice.
I fumed for a while. Then I imagined what fun it might be to bludgeon Pleiades for oh, perhaps an hour or so and make him promise never, ever, to do that again. Then I remembered how much he looks like me, but bigger. It would be like beating up myself. Besides, I might lose. And fighting among us seriously disrupts the system.
I went to el’s place and sat down on a supremely comfortable tattered armchair. A good therapist could do an entire dissertation on el’s abode. Why a tattered armchair? And for that matter, why a library? It was at least enclosed by a house now. For years it was just a library with one wall missing. Now he has a house with porches and steps leading up to them. There are lots of other rooms in his house, a second floor, and even an attic. But sometimes I miss the old days when you could just look in and see what he was up to. Another point for that dissertation.
Today he was reading. Usually if he isn’t reading he’s writing.
What’s up? he mindtouched me. His glasses slid down his beaky nose. Now there’s another thing. Why would you wear glasses inside where you could have 20/20 vision?
Do you know what Pleiades did to me today? I mindtouched.
el tried very hard not to smirk, I’ll give him that. Yeah, I know, he said.
You just think it’s funny because I used to do it to you, I said.
el nodded. Makes you wonder how long he’s been hiding.
I had an annoying urge to laugh.
How old am I? I asked.
el shrugged. I assume you’re not talking chronological age. So maybe mid-thirties?
No, I mean how long have I been part of the system? When’s the earliest you remember me?
Shel, I never remember a time without you. What are you driving at?
This guy not only looks like me, he feels like me. Remember my dream?
el nodded thoughtfully. How long do you think he’s been around?
A long, long time, I said. He slipped into driving that car like a pro. He’s either got complete access to what we all know or he’s driven a lot.
Ian peeked around the door. Private bitch session? he asked.
No, come on in, I answered.
Since ‘e still ‘as a lock on ops I might as well, Ian mindtouched. He looked at me closely. So why aren’t ya freakin’ out Shel? Don’t ya care wha ‘e’s doin out there?
I started to sweat. Ian was right. I wasn’t doing my job. I should be fighting to get ops back. What the hell was wrong with me?
I leaped toward the door. el put his hand on my shoulder. Wait Shel. Think this out a minute. I don’t think Ian meant you’re doing something wrong. I think he’s asking you to take a closer look at this, el said.
Ian nodded.
I don’t think confrontation is a good idea with this one. Let me try. I’ll just ask him for ops and see what happens, el suggested.
Can you mindtouch him? I can’t find him, not ever, I admitted.
Don’t worry about that now. Just let me see what I can do, el said.
el appeared to be concentrating intensely. He reached his hand up and then he had ops. I knew he did. I could feel it.
So did he just hand off to you all nice, just like that? I asked.
el sighed.
No, he bailed as soon as he realized I could reach him.
I felt my fists contract in frustration. Ian slipped his arm over my shoulder. Give ‘im time, he advised.
That’s rich coming from you Ian, I pointed out. If I’d given you time we’d be dead.
‘e’s had plenty a’chances to do that if ‘e wanted too, Ian said. I dinna ‘ave a clue when I came into the system. ‘e knows what’s goin’ on.
He’s been hiding a long time Shel, el said. He’s a Protector. Having trust issues goes with the territory. Once he’s sure we’re OK he’ll come in.
I wanted to believe that. I wanted to believe it in the worst way. But all I could think of was that not being able to mindtouch Pleiades felt like being deaf. He certainly didn’t seem to hear me.
It reminded me of a time when none of us in the system could mindtouch anyone else. We panicked. It was like wandering around in a pitch blackness. I shuddered just remembering my terror.
Terror. It had been someone’s fear that caused it.
Was Pleiades afraid? Of me? Was that what this was about?
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

We’ve had a series of close encounters lately. Not with aliens but with birds. When birds and animals come forcefully into our lives we feel it’s best to pay close attention.
It started with a hummingbird late this summer. He decided Lillie was more interesting than the feeder. He flew repeatedly to within inches of her face and hovered there, regarding her with seriousness only a bird can achieve. His black eyes mirrored her image. The backwash from his tiny wings caressed her cheeks. He made those characteristic chittering sounds.
“What’s up little brother,’ she asked.
He cocked his head at a rakish angle, chittered some more and sped off to a nearby twig where he sat regarding her for nearly a minute. A minute is a long time for a hummingbird to remain still.
We pondered the hummingbird’s message for days. Lakota people regard the hummingbird as the most powerful of the avian world. Although tiny, it is the only bird capable of hovering in place and flying backwards. Lillie said the hummingbird blessed us.
Our next encounter was with an owl. His hooting in the woods below the house pegged him as a great horned owl, the largest resident owl in our region. I wondered why he was making such a racket in mid-summer. It certainly wasn’t mating season that takes place when the snow cover is deep.
As I stood listening one night he flew so close I felt his wings. Ghostly silent he glided into a tree nearby to regard me. I might have been a mouse my heart pounded so hard.
I knew great horned owls exert hundreds of pounds of pressure per square inch with their talons. We regarded each other for timeless moments. When he flew he was gone in a blink. I felt blessed, especially since he hadn’t grabbed me. Trust me, he had my full and undivided attention.
el has always had a special relationship with hawks. When we were small he learned to call them close. He didn’t need to whistle or make a sound although sometimes he mimics their high-pitched calls. He can sense them and attract them from beyond a mountain ridge to circle over a pow-wow dance circle.
One particular hawk nests in our woods each summer. She’ll sit in a tree near our bedroom window and call until el goes outside and acknowledges her. Sometimes in mid-day she circles the yard calling and calling until he goes outside to talk to her. When we lived on the other side of the state I swear this same hawk went with us she is so attached to el. He was up on the trailer roof spreading that gunk to seal leaks and she came from across the valley screaming to hover over him. He smiled a lot that day. You might find this a stretch to believe, but it’s true. It’s how we got our first Indian name: Calls Hawks.
Anyway, this particular day we were photographing a hill near the New York State border. Locally it’s called Spanish Hill, or Carantouan. It’s past is the stuff of legends. In Native American oral tradition it’s a sacred place. A Manitou lived there when the Susquehannocks hunted this land.
The first time we saw the hill we almost wrecked our car. At that time we had no idea it was locally famous, the subject of mystery. We just knew it called our soul. We drove all around the little arrowhead shaped hill. We searched out its history. It was linked to Stephen Brule a Jesuit sent by Champlain to scout the region. Mormon founder Joseph Smith stalked it with a seer stone seeking Spanish gold reputedly buried there.
One day while we were photographing the hill a large hawk flew into view. el acknowledged her. She circled closer and closer until she hovered directly overhead calling. She was as large as an eagle, the biggest red tail hawk we’d ever seen. She stayed until we left. Then she flew in a straight line disappearing behind the hill.
In almost every picture taken that day there is a hawk. Some are dots in the sky where you’d expect them to be. But there hawk shapes and shadows in the leaves of grass too.
Last spring we mowed a labyrinth into the grass in what was once our pasture. There’s a dead tree on the very edge of it. el’s hawk comes in and sits on the very tip of that dead tree when he’s out there.
Labyrinths date back more than four thousand years. They’re found in nearly every spiritual tradition around the world. Labyrinths are different from mazes. A maze offers lots of choices a labyrinth only one: to enter or not. Ours is a left-handed, unicursal labyrinth. That means the entrance path turns first to the left and the single path that leads to the center. Ours has a 60-foot diameter. It's a qurter mile from the entrance to the center, so walking it in and out is a half mile workout. It’s based on classic seven-circuit Dine (Navajo), Hopi and Pima designs and is similar to labyrinths found in Crete and Ireland. The path winds back upon itself, tricking you into thinking you're almost to the center when a turn later you're back on the outside edge. We thought creating it was our idea. We should have known better.
“It will call people to itself,” a friend said.
That sounded way too new age to me.
“Like field of dreams huh?” I said and laughed
She turned and gave me the look women give moronic men. I quickly wandered off and found something productive to do like breaking sticks into small pieces.
She was right. Eyvonne and I thought we were building the labyrinth for our family. By the time we had half its arcs completed and it was already pulsing with power. It was kind of scary.
Although Labyrinths aren’t confined to religion, experiences within them are often spiritual and healing. Walking a labyrinth is supposed to promote right brain activity fostering creativity. Some doctors recommend walking a labyrinth for stress relief. We thought it would be good for us to walk it regularly.
but a labyrinth can be a trickster. Just when you think you have your goal in sight, something unexpected happens and you’re off in a completely new direction. It seems random but it isn't. It's like a graphic of the choas theory. Every time you walk it it's different. We learned so much from it in just a few months.
So we finished the labyrinth we found it a powerful place to meditate. Word spread about what we’d done. People started calling to ask if they could come and walk it a dawn, or at dusk, or spend some time there to work on a specific emotional or physical issue. People who were greiving came to walk. A family with a disabled child walked together. We nenver turned anyone away. Our friend was right. Who was laughing now?
Since so many people seemed to need what the labyrinth offered we put a small notice in local papers. Within days our labyrinth was featured on a public radio segment. That led to an inquiry from a TV station. The next thing Eyvonne and I knew we were walking the labyrinth with a regional celebrity as we were interviewed on camera. Aerial shots were taken from a helicopter. Owl was on break at work two miles away. Everyone noticed the helicopter.
“Look it’s channel five. Wonder what’s going on?”
“They’re filming my backyard,” Owl said. His co-workers laughed.
Since we don’t get TV we watched the segment at a local bar. We ate wings and drank beer and generally enjoyed ourselves. A guy at the bar next to Eyvonne looked from the TV to her and back several times. Finally he asked “Is that you?”
We were accidental celebrities and a local phenomena for weeks. I told you labyrinths are tricksters.
Like el with hawks, I have a personal relationship with crows and ravens. Tricksters. Did you know if crows or ravens gather together they’re not a flock? They’re a murder. Crows hate hawks and owls. One crow will chase a hawk or an owl shrieking out a raucous alarm. Crows from everywhere heed the call and mob the predator. Once we heard a murder of crows after something in our woods. Instead of a winged predator they were diving at a huge bobcat.
If I see three crows or ravens I pay attention. This past week or so they’ve been everywhere. This morning three ravens stood in a line across the road staring at our house. My thoughts drifted to Pleiades. He seemed like a trickster himself, capable of shape shifting and the whole gig. Were they warning me about him? Or were they just having some fun at my expense?
© 2004 M. S. Eliot