Spanish Oranges in Candle Light

Just wanted to share our romantic Friday evening with you all….

by Miki

A new proverb

 

“There’s nothing wiser than a sleeping cat!”

I came out with this gem last night; not at all sure where it came from but it has a certain ring of truth about it.

The two little sketches above are of two of my cats. The one on the left is Robin, my white and black ex-tom, and the one on the right is Clara, my dark tortoiseshell queen. Clara was a cat we rescued and while I loved her dearly, I didn’t mourn her when she died, two years ago. She suffered, we are sure now, from feline dementia and while she lived to a grand age of 16, she was not “all there” for many of the 8 years she lived with us. She did however have a great gift that continued despite her mental decline; she could make any guest feel special and privileged. She would approach someone sitting in our home and be so sweet and friendly that it put people at their ease, unlike my beloved Watson who various of our friends and relations were frankly terrified of. If Clara came and sat on your knee, you felt like a small furry angel had descended on you; if Watson sat on you, you didn’t move a muscle in case he turned into a tiger and ate you all up.

But I had a bond with Watson that I never had with Clara. We knew each other, warts and all. Watson sat with me through some of the hardest times in my life, a few feet away so as not to intrude on my pain, but close enough so I knew he was there. I sat up with both of them as they lay dying. Watson passed while I slept next to him, dozing off exhausted. Clara kept me by her side until the last moment, when, uncharacteristically, she bit me. I think I was the first and last person she had ever bitten.

I have no idea where this post came from or where it goes or what it means, if anything, other than I miss my cat still.

Test to Destruction

Test to destruction

 

My mascara has not run,

But it seems to have gone.

I like to put things

Through their paces:

Test to destruction.

My heart has not broken

But it seems to have cracked.

I like to put things

Through their paces:

Test to destruction.

My faith is not destroyed,

But it’s certainly frayed.

I like to put things

Through their paces:

Test to destruction.

My God is not tarnished,

But he seems to have vanished.

I like to put things

Through their paces:

Test to destruction.

Heyokah Blues

“When everyone thinks something is good, it becomes evil”- Lao Tzu, Chinese sage, fourth century BC

Lest anyone think I am being pretentious quoting Lao Tzu, I should explain I found this quote at the start of what I hope will be a very enjoyable pulp fiction read, Kingdom by Tom Martin. I read the first few pages last night before succumbing to tiredness and conking out.

The recent discussions on the various comment threads, and also Psychscribe’s very moving essay this morning have brought me to try and explore both my disconnectness and quite why this is actually a very valuable function in this world.

I’ve been involved in certain aspects of Native American spirituality now for many years, but not as a plastic Indian, rather as someone seeking to make sense of the now through the eyes and the understanding of another culture. One of the aspects that struck me the most forcibly is the role of the heyokah in NA culture. There isn’t an easy or concise way to explain what the heyokah actually is; you can call them sacred clowns or fools for god, or jokers or tricksters and they are all that. Sometimes they are described as people who do everything backwards, upside down, the wrong way round, inside out. I must say here this is NOT by personal choice. A heyokah is CALLED; sometimes they are called by the Thunderbeings. Those who are struck by lightning and survive often become heyokah. My friend Alice, half Cherokee, half Blackfoot and all medicine woman has a cousin who is heyokah. She tells me he’s a pain in the ass; he eats with his back to everyone at table, laughs when everyone cries, cries when everyone laughs, dresses in light clothes when there’s snow on the ground, and complains of being cold when there’s a heat wave. She also tells me he cannot help this; he would like to stop but cannot. It is how he is and mostly this is tolerated and often even revered. They see him a someone touched by a kind of divine madness and his acts and speech are viewed as messages from God. The interpretation of the messages is often difficult, but in their culture the heyokah is valued and important. I shall leave you to try and understand why for yourself.

My trouble is that in certain senses, I was born Heyokah in a culture where this is not welcome. The heyokah is often apart from the society in certain ways; they are sometimes shamans, often some of the most powerful and feared medicine people. Here, in the West, people like me are not welcome. We’re seen as partypoopers, oddballs, weirdos, mavericks, individualists, lone wolves and above all, a threat. I’m the one that says, “Hey, the Emperor is wearing NO clothes and boy, does he have a tiny todger!” I’m the one who gets the giggles during solemn moments, or laughs out loud at funerals.  I’m the one who cries when a small bird dies on the road as I walk to work. I’m the one who won’t dance at parties and then embarasses everyone by dancing under the new moon on the way home from work. I’m the one who you dread meeting when you’re with your new boyfriend because you know there’s a risk I will say or do something that’ll make you cringe.

And I can’t help it. Foot-in-mouth disease? Incurable case here, guys.  There’s no hope for this one.

The thing is, I’ve begun to realise that the role of people like me, even where the concept of the heyokah is shunned and reviled, is essential for a society to remain whole and healthy. Lao Tzu doesn’t mean that something everyone believes to be good becomes evil instantaneously; becoming is a long process. If you do not have a few arbiters who retain independent thought and are able to stand clear of popular opinion, then there can be no true freedom. If you let yourself think about the Third Reich and how everyone allowed themselves to believe it was good, then the role of the heyokah becomes clear.

We stand as guardians of something none of us truly understand, but we stand nonetheless, and stand firm even when the personal costs of loneliness and isolation and even hatred from the community seem overwhelming. We stand because that is who we are and we can do no other than what we do.

That’s why I’m blue, I guess.

To My Everlasting Shame

I did not stay at my father’s bedside, to be with  him until he passed. There he was, right upstairs in the bedroom, while I hid like a coward downstairs and out of sight. We knew it would be that night. The doctors had called the family in and said so. 

All his brothers and sisters, the aunts and uncles I grew up with,  had been pretty much staying at my parents’ house for those last weeks.  The pasta pots were always boiling. They brought Italian bread and provolone cheese and sweet salami with big green olives. Most importantly,  they brought the black humor which is our family trademark , especially during our darkest hours.  It sustained us and carried us.

And yet, there was an age regression that took place for me. At age 32, they were still the grown ups and I was like a child again. That’s just how the dynamics morphed. When it was soon to be time, my favorite aunt had a talk with me and asked me if I really wanted to watch my father die. She explained to me, 32 going on 8, that dying was not like in the movies. It was quite a frightening thing to see.  She encouraged me to have my quiet time alone with him, now in a coma, and say my good-bye. I did so. Then I walked out of the room and all his siblings and my mother went in and the door was firmly closed.

And so he died with his wife, brothers and sisters all around and me nowhere in sight. They later said it was an awful thing. Blood and God knows what everywhere. Even his brothers were shaken by it. It was not something I should have had to see, they told me. As if they had protected me from something.

But not long after, I realized it was my own father’s awful thing. I should have been there. I allowed myself to be shielded by my beloved and well meaning aunt with childlike trust.  I should have been there. I was not a child. I was not, in truth, protected or shielded. I was written out of the last line of the last page of his life.  No, we wrote me out. 

And I am so ashamed, sorry, and regretful… What if my father knew or sensed I wasn’t there, right through the invisible walls of his coma? My shame is this: that I, his oldest and most responsible child, should have  accompanied him on the final stage of his journey. I should have been there. 

No tidy ending to this post. I should have been there.  

(This post was inspired by a poem by Cordie entitled:  If I had it to do all again)