tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20407556573147058242024-02-19T08:01:37.472-08:00+++++++++Wild, Wisdom Highway+++++++++MITZI LINN shares magical and mystical adventures in this memoir--stories, poems, paintings, photos and more from her life as traveler, artist, seeker, healer...Mitzi Linnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05167793497585467643noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2040755657314705824.post-70783872648719922722016-04-18T17:37:00.000-07:002016-04-18T18:36:51.963-07:00Close Encounters with the Virgin of Juquila<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNB6D2i28ATWH7g_VAWG73Ji7GfQa2M_ndxkHewcwDmWX3kuAC-FLEKaBNBmUpG-kMhc72vrhG7TmJ_wKuhD1A3HK3miABN57jCBHl7o1SyKL0umtbKp3NnTmR_3SFUibH6KLmPB61wCOS/s1600/Guadelupe--The+Corn+Dancer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNB6D2i28ATWH7g_VAWG73Ji7GfQa2M_ndxkHewcwDmWX3kuAC-FLEKaBNBmUpG-kMhc72vrhG7TmJ_wKuhD1A3HK3miABN57jCBHl7o1SyKL0umtbKp3NnTmR_3SFUibH6KLmPB61wCOS/s400/Guadelupe--The+Corn+Dancer.jpg" width="327" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Guadelupe--the Corn Dancer.....painting by Mitzi Linn</td></tr>
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The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. That is preceded by a desire to travel. Traveling and living outside the US requires intention, will, courage and curiosity, especially if you are a single woman who is not going somewhere because of a job, or an intimate relationship. Adventure calls to all kinds of people. I found out that if I want to go somewhere, do something, to answer the yearning of finding myself in different environments, I will have to go alone, meeting up with companions as the journey unfolds. So when I decided to go live in Oaxaca, Mexico, around the Day of the Dead in 1988, I was following my heart, my love for that place which I wanted to know on a deeper level.<br />
Spiritual journeys ask more than mere travel. These journeys, planned or unplanned, always test the pilgrim, the seeker, the traveler. The way we resolve the problems encountered in our journey or accept the uncalled for experiences of joy or suffering reveals us to ourselves. Searching for a miracle often inspires pilgrimages to sacred places. A price is paid for the miracle experienced. But given a miracle we are often hard pressed to remember the difficult lessons that went along with it. I might add that not all spiritual journeys result in the miracle you were hoping for. Pilgrimages are often inspired by the need for adventure. For me, a pilgrimage to see the Virgin of Juquila involved diverse motivations, curiousity being the primary one. <br />
Living in Oaxaca off and on for several years, I’d heard much talk of the Virgin of Juquila. Glafira Cruz from Casa Arnel related stories of miracles following the family’s annual pilgrimages to see the tiny brown Virgin in her town Juquila. While walking around Oaxaca I often noticed cars and trucks with pictures of this brown Virgin nestled in flower wreaths attached to their front bumpers. These recently returned devotees drove proudly around the city announcing they’d made their annual trip to visit Oaxaca’s own brown Virgin. They’d sacrificed and prayed and promised Her their adoration and a return visit if she’d only grant them the new house, the total healing, the successful business, a child, the perfect spouse, etc. Hearing this, and always thinking of the Virgins as emanations of the Goddess, I decided I needed to check out this Virgin for myself. <br />
Juquila, the town, lies in the mountains on a road between Sola de Vega and Puerto Escondido, the coastal surfing resort. Sola de Vega, about two hours west of Oaxaca city, claims to have the best mescal in all the state of Oaxaca. It is always properly aged to temper the liquor’s bite. That can make drinking it seem totally benign. Their good mescal gives you the feeling of total clarity, almost omnipotence, even after you are bien baracho or falling down drunk. Mescal has lured many of its unsuspecting afficionados into the abyss. Along with mescal, Sola de Vega is famous for another phenomenon. It’s reported in old guidebooks that witches take flight there weekly. I don’t remember which day the brujos and brujas leave earth to test out the heavens, but they don’t fly out of an airport. <br />
During my first journey to Juquila with Ron, an American artist as he introduced himself, we stopped in Sola De Vega to eat comida around 2 PM. The most appealing restaurant sat on the dusty tree-lined main street. A sad river, almost empty of water, wound along the other side of the street under big, old ceiba trees. The rainy season had not yet begun, even though it was May. Ron had to buy some of this famous mescal before we headed on. The paved road ended outside Sola De Vega. We began a seemingly endless, winding drive over a gravel road in Ron’s pickup towards Juquila, still several hours away. I noted a pyramid base of an old temple in the middle of someone’s field. Hum, those ancient Zapotecs worshiped their gods and goddesses here.<br />
I should fill in some details about Ron and me. I’d met him one night at Los Guajiros, a restaurant and bar on Macedonia Alcala, the pedestrian street in downtown Oaxaca. An incarnation of my favorite band, Mescalito, played there five nights a week. I loved to dance the rhumba, the cumbia, and an occasional bolero, and did so with different men sitting at tables near the dance floor. Often I joined Memo and Pablo Porras, Fernando, Paul Cohen, Lionel, Ruben, Guajiro and other band members at their break, in the back room or at their table. We’d gotten to be friends over the years between their gigs at El Sol y La Luna and Guajiros. <br />
Their straight ahead American jazz and their danceable Latin American favorites from Columbia and Cuba provided us with an unbeatable musical experience. <br />
The late 80’s and early 90’s in Oaxaca was a synergistic period when everything seemed possible. Those magical times ended for most of the locals with the devaluation of the peso in the early 90’s. That devaluation put a crimp in Oaxacaquenos’ wallets and a few years later these hangouts were only affordable to tourists or the rich. In those years I often went out dancing alone, meeting old friends and making new ones as the evening progressed. It was great fun. I felt safe even if I was the only gringa in the place. After Los Guajiros we’d migrate to the newly opened La Candela to hang out with the musicians there. Often, at 3 AM I’d walk home alone along the very quiet streets or get droppped off by Pablo in his 60’s VW van. Sometimes, when I arrived at Los Guajiros at 9 PM, the band’s drummer, Ruben, would whistle the tune, ‘Misty’ (sounds like Mitzi) to catch my eye. We laughed. He ran a farmacia as his day job and was quite funny at our round-the-table interludes between sets. Wanting to know these guys better inspired me to become fluent in Spanish.<br />
Los Guajiros had few customers that weeknight, so when Ron asked if he could join me at my table, I said, “ Why not?”. We flirted and talked overcervezas. He mentioned that he was a sculptor, from Rancho de Taos, NM. His achievement in stone had been collected by the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. <br />
I remembered with great love the times I spent at the Phillips when I lived in Washington in 1968. I sat meditation-like for whole hours in front of Mark Rothko’s abstracts, after which I filled my being with Van Gogh’s, Gauguin’s and Bonnard’s vivid colors and images. I thought it somewhat amazing to meet someone who got their work in that collection. <br />
At two AM the music ended and Ron offered to drive me home, which I accepted. At that point I was living at Rancho San Felipe, up in San Felipe del Agua about 3 miles from central Oaxaca. If I didn’t accept his offer I’d be finding a taxi at the Zocalo. I can’t say I really was attracted to him. About my age (40 something), not particularly handsome, his self-assurance made him interesting in an egotistic way. He didn’t seem to want to leave once he was in my <br />
apartment. That must have been reason enough to invite him to spend the rest of the night. I hadn’t had a lover recently, so I figured “why not”? I do remember that about 5 am, the morning star Venus rose and shown so brightly through the bedroom window that I thought it was the sun rising. The star’s energy vibrated through the room. Our lovemaking left me turned on but unsatisfied. Venus, the star, is the Goddess of Love in Roman mythology but a male diety in Meso-American. He was often connected to making ritual wars in the old cultures. Venus may have been trying to communicate something to me that morning. <br />
I had brought up going to Juquila that night before our first kiss. I reasoned that Ron had a truck and if he wanted to go, it would be easier going with him than by bus, and for me better to go with someone than alone. Yes, I’d gone to Guatemala alone once and even hitchhiked from the border of Mexico and Guatemala to San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas. I’d done long bus rides through Chiapas, and to Puerto Angel and other parts of Mexico more times than I could count on my fingers and toes. <br />
Basically I detested those long, back country bus rides which take ten hours to get one hundred miles. The bus to Juquila promised this. Buses or trucks are the only means of travel across the back country Mexico unless you have a car. Slow, crowded, but more or less reliable, they do stop anywhere you signal on the road. I would be grateful to go to Juquila with Ron if it meant not having to take the bus. A compromised beginning for a spiritual adventure.<br />
The local Catholic myth of the tiny Virgin goes like this. Dominican friars tried to establish the their religion outside the city of Oaxaca, after they built Santo Domingo in downtown Oaxaca and other splendid cathedrals in the Oaxaca Valley. In the wilds of the mountains, far from the city, they built a small church, installing a 12 inch high, white skinned, brown haired, childless Spanish Virgin, dressed in white on the main altar guilded with gold. This little church was located near a waterfall whose pool cured the people who came to bathe in it. There Juquila lived with white priests trying to convert the local brown Zapotecs. It’s probable this place was sacred before the Dominicans arrived, the shrine of a Zapotec Goddess. <br />
What were those priests to do? How to convert these people to the one true faith? Juquila’s myth progresses. One day the small wooden church mysteriously burnt to the ground. Everything burned except the tiny wooden Virgin statue, which survived. Her skin turned brown, and her hair, black. It was the miraculous sign that the locals ought to convert to this new religion. A similar story tells of the appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe. That revered brown Virgin just happened to show herself to Juan Diego on the hill sacred to the Great Mother (Tonantzin) of central Mexico. <br />
The same Catholic church deified both Mary and Guadalupe. Rome, when it became Christian, had temples to all the major dieties, masculine and feminine, from Greece, Egypt and the Near East. Catholicism has historically extended its power base by incorporating the dieties of the conquered land into their pantheon of saints. And through other means, such as declaring “pagans” less than human and murdering them along with any other opposition to the Church.<br />
At the Welty Library in Oaxaca I read that the Zapotecs of the area near Juquila worshipped a Goddess called Coojila (a phonetic spelling based on Spanish) among other dieties. Zapotec Gods and Goddesses often had a town or shrine of origin, where worship of that specific emanation of energy flourished. This was not that different from the Middle East, where, for instance, Diana of Ephesus, was worshipped in southern Turkey, many millenia before the Christian era. You might remember fanatic followers of St. Paul destroyed Her worship when he converted the locals to Christianity. <br />
The Zapotec people built the ceremonial city of Da’ni’baa or Monte Alban over a thousand years before the Spanish arrived. They leveled a whole mountain top by human hand. and built stone pyramid bases for temples to their dieties. It shines above what’s now the city of Oaxaca. Throughout the whole region abandoned ancient sites of overgrown pyramids dot the landscapes. They often look just like hills. The Zapotecs, basically farmers and artisans, presided over a peaceful, productive, sedentary culture for at least a thousand years. They had a well established religion and culture at least two thousand years before the Aztec and then Spanish invasions of their homelands in southern Mexico.<br />
The long drive to Juquila started late. I sang to pass time while Ron wrote down names of all the hamlets, towns and villages we passed through. I reviewed a series of things I was to do, places to go, mostly under the direction of Glafira whose instructions included minute details of the Virgin’s worship. First, we needed to find El Pedimento off the highway, on a mountain top. This shrine housed a version of the Virgin that answered all prayers. Usually, Glafira said, they would walk there, from Juquila, but we could just go by truck. Then, we should go to a mass at the church in Juquila, afterwards I was to go behind the altar and pass under the Virgin’s long white train, spraying some rose scent Glafira gave me and leaving a financial donation. I was to bring back momentos bought there in one of the little puestos that lined the street outside the church. Where to sleep and eat? A little hotel run by their friends.<br />
That it just happened to be full moon and, that I was having a particularly painful, bloody and unexpected menstruation, makes this tale seem like fiction. This was to be a journey of purification, part of the spiritual process, I can say now from this safe distance. But then, the raw experience created little energy for introspection. As we bumped along into higher pine forests with bromiliads growing in tree limbs, I tried to ignore my cramps. Getting into the forests, I felt we were getting closer to the days’ goal. Night abruptly arrives around 6:30 PM at that latitude and, given the usual rumors of banditos, I didn’t want to be out driving after sunset. <br />
As the receding light lengthened tree shadows across the road, we stopped and picked up some local camposinos waiting for a bus. Three men in straw hats and a beautiful woman in an intricate embroidered blouse and beads at her throat climbed in the back. Their warm smiles heartened me. Yes, we were within a few kilometers of Juquila. <br />
A sign appeared along the roadway, ‘El Pedimento’ with arrow pointing at a rutted but dry dirt road lined with huts that sell religious paraphelia. Our passengers got out to continue on the main road. We turned onto the road, and above, I could see that a stuccoed white shrine with open walls sat on the hilltop in the pine forest. Ron parked the truck and I jumped out with my pouch containing copal insence and self-lighting charcoals I brought from the US. On the small platform likenesses of the Virgin and Jesus sat admist offerings of flowers and other gifts. Rows of lit candles lined three sides of the concrete platform. Other pilgrims were lighting candles and praying on their knees. Some had copal too. They marveled at the charcoal in my small ceramic incense burner. They considered this self-lighting charcoal a kind of miracle. I gave a couple women some extras I had. <br />
Distracted by all the activity, and mainly feeling the extreme discomfort of my cramps, I looked the little Goddess straight in the eye, lit a candle, and asked to be content with my life. Perhaps I should have asked for something more material, like the settlement of my pending inheritance or the death of my wicked step-mother who was stealing it, but...... Ron sorta hung out on the edge making his own prayers. I must have prayed for the well being of everyone I could think of. As I looked around, I started feeling elated to be there.<br />
In the authentic traditional pilgrimage the participants often walk from Oaxaca to Juquila. Glafira and Federico did it several times when they were young. Before buses and trucks started creeping along the rutted roads, walking or going by horseback was the only way to get there. Walking took a week from Oaxaca. Camping along the way out under the stars, meeting other pilgrims gave people much to talk about. These old customs attest to the validity of people’s faith, as well as reflect a periodic need to get away from the dailly grind. World wide, most religions encourage pilgrimages to their sacred places. Going to Juquila these days many young people choose to ride their bicycles.<br />
Juquila’s annual celebration happens in November when 10,000 (or more) seekers and believers converge on the small hilltop town. They arrive on foot, by car and bus, by bicycle, on horses.....and some, perhaps on the wings of angels. Being such a hermit I could never go to Juquila during November. I visualize people filling the posadas and hotels and camping out in farmers’ fields. Buses parked everywhere. Imagine how many discarded plastic water bottles would be tossed in the arroyos. The proverbial starving dogs must have a feast.<br />
Completing my prayers at El Pedimento, I looked around. Below, the entire hillside<br />
sprouted little white wooden crosses along with facsimiles and photos of things people came to <br />
pray for. These thousands of crosses acted as thank-you signs, on each written the family name and whatever they received ..... Thanks for the healing, Thanks for the car, Thanks for the baby boy (including photos), Thanks for the house, etc... These people’s prayers had been answered. A testimony to the power of this place and their faith. Perhaps this mountain top had been a shaman’s shrine before the Catholic priests got there. I felt a little spaced out and hungry, but grateful to have made it successfully to the first spot on Glafira’s pilgrimage map. We then drove on to the town of Juquila as darkness closed in.<br />
Little ranchos, one room wooden houses with corrals for animals appeared as the forest opening widened into a green grassy valley with a small river. The town, with the large cathedral in the center, turned out to be a typical small Mexican town, utilitarian, not quaint or charming in international tourist eyes. The locals are ranchers, loggers, farmers and merchants who benefit from the pilgrims’ visits. <br />
The cathedral, built recently out of stone and brick, dominates the town visually. A large, utilitarian basilica-styled, 20th century structure, it will never be like the beautiful old 16th century cathedral you find at Tlaycochuaya. Or like the churches in downtown Oaxaca.<br />
Money offerings made there probably end up in Rome or at Santo Domingo in Oaxaca. <br />
By now, darkness made it hard to see much. Outside the church electric lights, strung along by a series of extension cords, lit market booths selling sacred momentos and other goods. The lights of the general store across the street illuminated campesinos in straw hats and their wives in black ikat rebozos. There were no sidewalks. Paved streets wandered out from the church and plaza. Brick walls, wooden and concrete block houses, mostly unstuccoed and unpainted with tin roofs, stood along the unregulated streets. I noticed hungry dogs waiting in shadows near the taco stands. The town seemed to need a good rain, just to clean up the streets and buildings. <br />
We found Conchita’s Hotel and got a room with two beds and a bathroom. The light bulb <br />
hanging from a wire in the ceiling barely lit the room. The beds seemed clean and solid. The Hotel’s restaurant only opened during the month of November for the annual pilgrimage. We<br />
drove back to the town plaza to find some dinner. I hoped for part of a well-cooked, stringy, <br />
free ranging chicken, some rice and a beer. A few tortillas and salsa, and perhaps I’d forget the menstrual cramps that had gotten worse. After we ate someone told us what time the first mass would be held the next day. Our plan was to go to it and then drive back to Oaxaca, about four hours away. <br />
Ron and I needed our own spaces. I felt terrible physically, with cramps and bleeding. Still, I thought we’d cuddle or something, when we got to our room. He though indicated that he wanted to be alone in his bed and I lay down on other one. <br />
We’d just made love a few nights before. He’d let go and enjoyed it so much that he remarked that it felt like the first time (ever). We hadn’t talked about this experience since having it. I had no idea how Ron felt about me. Or how I really felt about him. I didn’t think about it. I had liked making love that last time so.....I was open.<br />
During our last sexual encounter, I had been practicing a Tantric approach to lovemaking. Imagining myself as the Goddess gave me spiritual focus and energy. In Tantra the sexual/ spiritual connection happens through the heart. The energy moves to groin and head as the couple relax into each others energy field. This creates a shared feeling of being at one with all creation. One lets go of that overpowering sense of individuality. Every act of conscious lovemaking is a like a dance. In Tantra orgasm is not the goal but can become a deep sharing of energies, physical and metaphysical. The dissolution of the sense of self, joining the Other, gives each person a taste of that ‘gone beyond’ state. This deep sharing can be part of a short affair or a long term relationship. It can change one’s life totally.<br />
I found that my attitude about love-making confused most men. Men don’t like undefined relationships. This I learned talking with a widely experienced male friend in my age group. It’s either ‘she’s the one’ or she’s just an object, Everett informed me. Men often decide this before a sexual encounter. If it’s just for fun, they’re in control, not letting down their guard. If they really enjoy making love, seduced into that relaxed no-mans-land where the woman is neither life partner material nor the passive recipient of their desire, most men get confused. Their fears come up when the woman really gets off. Perhaps performance anxiety or fear of committment or both. I still don’t exactly understand men...... <br />
Making love to serve a higher purpose, as an act of worship, is a remote ideal to most people, men or women. Still, some of this kind of archtypal activity survives among Goddess worshipers and Tantrikas. A pretty esoteric group, I must admit. <br />
At Conchita’s Hotel, the full moon illuminated our room. I couldn’t sleep in my bed. Cramps made lying down nearly impossible. I tossed and turned. Finally, I woke Ron and asked if I could sleep next to him. He welcomed me under his sheet. My back pressed to his belly, the warmth melted my cramps and I finally slept. This was a kind gesture on his part but it didn’t make us any closer emotionally. The next morning I did feel better physically.<br />
Ron had a kind of presence, a worldly, experienced and sorta spiritual man. He claimed a recent ex-wife. He’d attended the Krishnamurti school in Ojai. He could be undeniably charming. And manipulative. He knew how to do things on the material plane. Still, like me, communication about intimate feelings wasn’t his strong suit. I hadn’t planned to get overly involved with him anyway. We weren’t discussing our feelings about each other.<br />
We got to the mass. It seemed like any regular old mass there in Juquila’s church. We had bought large white candles to offer. The tiny Virgin seemed remote, high up in her place at the church’s main altar. After the mass, the priest invited the pilgrims to move down the aisle for a blessing. That’s how we got down front with the candles. Many other pilgrims stood around in front of the altar with its huge bouquets of gladiolus. We received gladiola wands that had touched the tiny Virgin. We said prayers, lit our candles and put them in the holders off to the side of the nave. <br />
A young family from Oaxaca approached Ron and asked for a big favor. Would we be the temporary god-parents of their young sick daughter they’d brought there for healing? Ron said <br />
yes and we found ourselves with them and the priest and the girl at the altar for a special<br />
blessing and prayers. I admired Ron’s serious, ceremonial presence as we played our parts. <br />
I can’t remember one name of this family for whom we served as god-parents in this healing. I’ve always wondered why they chose us. Glafira told me later that it was an honor to be invited to serve in this manner. Afterwards they rode back to Oaxaca with us, the mother and child sitting on the front seat between me and Ron and the men in the back. <br />
In order to keep my last promise to Glafira, I found the door to the back of the templo, where I could pass upright on my knees, under the train of Juquila’s white satin dress. The back room was even plainer and darker than the church’s sanctuary. It required some climbing up stairs to a bridge-like ramp where I could pass under her white satin train. This task seemed the strangest of all. On my knees I moved along under the train. The train was much longer than the Juquila was tall. I sprayed the back of her gown with Glafira’s perfume as directed, left the perfume container and coins, all the while praying for the family. Other pilgrims waited. I crossed myself, moved out from under her canopy and made my way slowly down the ramp. The air outside was refreshing.<br />
After passing under the Virgin’s train, I found Ron again to check in about leaving for Oaxaca. Then, I went shopping. Glad to be in the sunlit plaza, I bargained for an ornately embroideried blouse, like the one the woman was wearing in the back of the pick-up the day before. I got some momentos for the people at Casa Arnel. I bought a wooden blue painted shrine box with the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Virgin of Juquila under glass. That should hang in the kitchen when I have one again. <br />
I fed a small stray dog who’d lost all its hair. I cried as he ate the tortillas. He reminded me of the small street dog I had called Luna that I picked up by the curb one day at Benito Juarez Park in Oaxaca. She’d been hit crossing the busy street, victim of a typical macho driver. Still a puppy, I took her home and helped her heal. Now, planning to leave for the US, I’d recently given her away to a good home. I already missed her sweet exuberance. <br />
I had stopped noticing my cramps, the bleeding let up. Back in the truck, returning to Oaxaca seemed to take less time than going to Juquila. We passed through the cloud forest and down into farming valleys. I felt exhausted, my energy spent. The woman and child slept in the front seat between us. Ron and I talked sparsely. I knew we’d no longer be lovers but didn’t exactly understand why. We took the family home, drank a beer with them at their house in Ejido Guadalupe Victoria. When Ron finally left me off, we parted cordially, saying we’d see each other soon. I was grateful to have gone and to have gotten back safely. I doubted we’d see each other soon.<br />
I reported my experiences with the Virgin to Glafira and the other women at Casa Arnel. <br />
I assured them I’d done everything they’d asked. I gave them souvenirs I bought for each, photos of Juquilita, tiny sewn cloth hearts and some specially made thin cardoman wafer bread. I had two gladiola wands from the mass. One I gave to Glafira. <br />
There was alot I couldn’t tell this Catholic family. It took sometime for me to process the trip to Juquila. A purifying experience, if you consider women’s menses to be a monthly “letting go”. Then letting go of another lover and my attachment to sex and practicing Tantra. An important part of the purification process I continually seemed to be learning. Pilgrimages are not meant to be slick and easy. That’s why walking to Juquila reflects the sincerest intention on the part of the pilgrim. I’d wanted it to be easy, in this case, meaning not riding 10 hours in a cramped, smelly bus with windows sealed closed, precaution against getting sick from fresh air. I had not anticipated the emotional difficulties or the unexpected menses. Still, really doing it, going there, and connecting with the small, brown Virgin reassured me that the Goddess’s presence still lives in Oaxaca.<br />
Not really thinking about Ron, a few nights later while walking home in the rain, his pickup turned the corner in front of me. Seated next to him in the front seat was his twenty something Spanish teacher, Miriam. She was an attractive, bilingual Oaxacan woman, educated, talented, and a great flirt. Then I remembered that the last time we’d made love, in his relaxed state, he said that I’d be perfect as a girlfriend if I just spoke Spanish, as my first language. <br />
I saw that in Ron’s eyes he’d found the perfect girlfriend. Over twenty years younger, native Spanish speaker, sophisticated, well-educated.... But knowing Miriam myself for several years, I knew that she would never be anything more than a friend. She was looking for someone, but I knew it wasn’t Ron.<br />
Later in the month, before returning to the US, I had been invited to Sergio Martinez’s <br />
church wedding in Teotitlan del Valle. Teotitlan, the Zapotec rug making town, was settled long <br />
before the birth of Christ. The Teotiteccos take pride in keeping their costumbres , one of which is the 5-7 day wedding fiesta. I had looked forward to going to this, my first Zapotec wedding. <br />
We arrived in time for the 6:00 AM wedding and baptism mass at the Teotitlan church. Abel, a friend from a folkloric group called Quetzalcoatl, drove me and his mother out to Teo that morning. Inside this charming church built on top of a much older Zapotec temple, the visiting Catholic priest married Sergio and Tomasa and baptised their first daughter, Teresa. After the ceremony, and posing for pictures in the old sanctuary’s doorway, the wedding parties headed to the bride’s family and the groom’s family houses for breakfast. Since I was invited by Sergio’s family, Abel, his mother and I followed the marching band, the bride and groom, maids of honor, family and friends to Sergio and Tomasa’s not-quite-finished house. It sits at the foot of Gi’Bets, the sacred mountain. <br />
Cups of hot chocolate, large loaves of pan yema (eggbread), shots of mescal, cervezas, coca colas, turkey in mole negro with tlayudas (plate-size tortillas) formed a sumptuous wedding breakfast. This was served by compadres of the family to guests at long tables on an <br />
earthen patio. Toasts to the bride and groom began the feast. The band played waltzes as we ate. <br />
We happily sat near the family table with otherinvitados from outside the pueblo. Though it was my first Zapotec church wedding, I felt at home. I wished I’d had taken a photo of beautiful Tomasa in her white satin wedding gown nursing baby Teresa under a palapa. Abel and his mother went back to Oaxaca as breakfast ended. Other invitadaos from the village headed home with their green pitchers full of hot chocolate, and baskets overflowing with tlcaydudas, huajalote con mole negro and pan de yema. I moved to sit closer to my friends Richard Enzer, Flaviana (his girl friend) and Michelle Tommi. <br />
As fate would have it, Miriam showed up for the breakfast with Ron. She was working for Richard, the rug designer who started The Line of The Spirit. Sergio also worked for and with Richard. I met Richard and Sergio at El Sol y La Luna one night in February 1988. Richard had introduced me to the rest of this family by inviting me to Sergio and Tomasa’s civil wedding the year before. We’d all become close friends.<br />
I hadn’t seen Ron to speak to since he left me off at Casa Arnel on our return from <br />
Juquila. I felt awkward. But since no one there knew I’d carried on with Ron, I acted as if we’d never laid eyes on each other. Someone introduced us. “Mucho gusto” I said while shaking his hand. Then I rejoined Richard and the others. I thought that was that. But Ron now said he wanted to talk. We wandered away and sat on a stone wall. He said he wanted to be friends. I wondered why? After all he could have told me what was what on the trip. I said I didn’t really want to be friends. He mentioned he could be useful if I ever wanted to publish my writing. He had lots of contacts. I said I would never be friends with him for that reason. I guess then that was that. He politely excused himself, “con permiso” and walked back to the party. I haven’t run into Ron since then. And he has a house on the edge of Teotitlan. <br />
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I had the chance to visit Juquila again a couple years later. This invitation came from Suzanne and Mateo Lopez who wanted me to go with them and their crew from the Posada De Vata in Puerto Angel, when the Posada closed for spring vacation. They made their annual pilgrimage every May 1st. <br />
The second journey to visit the tiny virgin took me to Juquila’s original sacred pool at the foot of the small waterfall that figures in Her myth. Legend says that this was the original sacred site of Juquila from before the Conquest. Mateo, a Zapotec, grew up in Puerto Angel. His family had gone there to pray to the Virgincita long before the Catholic priests decided to build a cathedral in the town of Juquila. The waterfall is located about 15 KM out of Juquila, at a hamlet whose name might be Jamiltepec. <br />
We left Puerto Angel at dawn traveling in a small chartered bus crammed full of people and supplies. Canela, Suzanne’s cinnamon-colored labrador retriever, lounged across my feet most of the way. We rode along the highway from Puerto Angel, through Puerto Escondido, then turned our backs to the sea, headed inland, twisting and turning through the mountains, eventually stopping to lunch along a river. Chefe and Lonya, and the young women crew from the Posada, cooked over a charcoal brazier, delivering fresh grilled fish, tortillas, black beans <br />
and a fruit salad for us to eat. We hung out there in the shade along the river at least an hour longer but still got to the chapel and waterfall by early afternoon. This hamlet lay in a small mountain valley, at the end of a rutted road. <br />
The caretakers of Juquila’s chapel greeted us. They remembered Mateo and Suzanne from the years before. The small adobe chapel located above the nearly dry river served as a shrine for a small image of Juquila. The chapel didn’t seem well cared for or used much. The young women housekeepers from the Posada giggled and sang as we cleaned the chapel. Their teenage smiles and jokes lit up that dark interior. After sweeping the dirt floor we sat on the rustic benches. We created our own ritual putting flowers, incense and candles on the altar in front of the tiny Virgin. The chapel transformed into a cool candle-lit sanctuary where we meditated and made our own prayers. <br />
Outside, the day was hot, sticky, as it often is in Oaxaca just before the rainy season. Suzanne and Mateo always brought fresh tuna in ice and other gifts for the villagers who came from their little farms when the church bell was rung. We rang the bell after our service. Soon men in their palm sombreros and women in black rebozos began appearing slowly from various paths along hillsides. They sat down on benches against the white churchyard wall in <br />
mid-afternoon sun waiting for the fish and other gifts to be given. <br />
After giving and receiving the gifts, we women went down the hill to bath in the sacred pool. Suzanne, Lonya, Chefe and the girls stripped to their bras and slips, then jumped joyfully in the water. It was only waist deep at the end of the dry season. The dry waterfall would come alive in the coming summer rains. Rolling up my jeans, I waded along the edge. I put some water on my head as a blessing. The stagnant water in the sacred pool seemed pretty dirty. This area, which had once been rain forest, now served as pasture for goats, cows and horses. The horses, rugged little descendants of the Spanish Barb, provide transportation across the back country. <br />
After bathing in the Virgin’s pool, we returned to the church yard to get busy making dinner over charcoal braziers. All I had to do was come, Suzanne had said. They provided <br />
everything. By now it was getting dark, I sat with a Mateo, enjoying a cerveza . Stars shone above the church plaza where we ate more fish, tortillas and an organic salad by campfire light. After a delicious dessert we began looking for our place to sleep.<br />
The caretakers occupied a one room, concrete block house with their four children. Their petate s (woven mats for sleeping on) stood rolled up against the wall during the day. The man opened the hamlet’s government building, a small, clean concrete block structure, where we too would sleep on petates on the concrete floor. We all got a blanket and a petate from the bus. The girls (as we called the young women who worked at the Posada) slept together as they did at home. They giggled continuously until the one electric light bulb went dark. Although I had on a sweater, jacket and jeans, and covered myself with a blanket, I never seemed to get comfortable, or warm or sleep much, that night. O well. Many locals there probably don’t ever have enough blankets. What did I say before about the discomforts of spiritual journeys?<br />
The morning sun and hot coffee warmed me up. I looked up at the beautiful mountains. I felt more cheerful but tired to the bone. The long bus ride from Oaxaca to Puerto Angel two days before yesterday’s bus trip came on the heels of a close friend’s unexpected death in Oaxaca in mid-April. Being in charge of Karen Turtle’s funeral, representing her family in Oaxaca, <br />
taking care of her things and finding a home for her cat, Salsa, left me physically and emotionally drained. Susanne and Mateo had arrived in Oaxaca unexpectedly to give me love and support during that time. But Karen’s unanticipated death had put me in a kind of psychic shock. In that dazed state I had had to function at full force anyway. <br />
After breakfast we put our things back in the bus and headed into the town of Juquila for the morning mass. The church was almost empty. Not many other pilgrims arrived for mass that May day. <br />
Sitting with these friends from the Posada and Puerto Angel, I shared some of their high spirits. Suzanne and Mateo’s faces glowed with love and inspiration as they made on offering to express their gratitude for another successful season at the Posada. <br />
Lonya and Chefe, the 20 something Zapotec sisters from a village near Pochutla, would <br />
go home during May. Unmarried, they cheerfully ran the Posada’ kitchen, dining room and housekeeping. Their wages and tips went to buying land and building houses in their pueblo. <br />
Pilgrims often walk on their knees down the cathedral’s main aisle during the mass. On that morning, I watched Lonya and Chefe from Puerto Angel do just that. They made an impressive sight presenting themselves to the little brown Virgin. In their colorful dresses and waist length black hair, with joyful smiles and armfuls of bright flowers, they moved together down the aisle on their knees. All the while, their eyes on Her. Behind them the girls’ beautiful brown faces shone above their new, brightly-colored dresses that Lonya and Chefe had helped them make for the occasion. They blended with the flowers they carried. The girls’ laughs and giggles in the bus, and then, in contrast, their serious manner in the mass, made me smile. <br />
I gazed at the little Virgin and send out a heartfelt “thank you” for these friends from the Posada. Thanks for their love and goodwill, for bringing me once again to visit Her. Sometime later that morning we boarded the bus and wound our way back to Puerto Angel. Canela resumed her place, lying across my feet. I was so tired I don’t remember any of the trip back. I slept very well that night in hot, humid, tropical Puerto Angel under the hum of an electric fan.<br />
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Since that journey to Juquila’s waterfall, the Catholic officials tore down the little chapel. Perhaps in anticipation of this, the caretakers gave Mateo a two foot high wooden carved angel. It was armless, pocked with insect holes and in poor condition. Mateo was delighted and took it to Puerto Angel to make a new home there <br />
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<br /><br />Mitzi Linnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05167793497585467643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2040755657314705824.post-36322862423517093292016-04-18T17:16:00.002-07:002016-04-18T18:17:56.866-07:00Lessons in Speaking Oaxacan: a story about Karen Turtle.... <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mexico I, 1995....gouache painting by Mitzi Linn</td></tr>
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Perhaps you knew Karen Turtle. You could have met her through the Salsa Picante Folkart Store during one of your visits to Oaxaca in the late 1980’s. You might have been a wholesale buyer from a United States gallery seeking colorful, imaginative folkart from Oaxaca’s treasure chest of creativity. The carved-painted animals, the black pottery, the rugs.... Karen would have overseen your order, getting it made and shipped to New York or Chicago or wherever.....If you’d become friends with her, you might have brought some Earl Grey Tea, green granny apples or tofu which she loved and couldn’t get in Oaxaca. You might have taken her out to dinner at the Chinese restaurant since she was a vegetarian. <br />
Or maybe you came from a family of rug makers, or crafts people living and working in the villages around the city of Oaxaca. You might have known her then as a friend, and buyer of your artisanias for the wholesale business she managed. She could have become the madrina of one of your children’s school party or of the wedding cake at your son’s boda. You could have danced a cumbia with her at a pueblo fiesta in San Martin Tilcajete, Santo Tomas Jalieza , Arrasola, or Teotitlan del Valle. You would have welcomed her in a beat-up Volkswagen bug driving up your barely passable street in the rainy season. Or greeted her after she walked 2 miles from the bus on the highway in her plastic huaraches. She was happy to bring you money and pick up an order for one of her wholesale customers. <br />
An American by birth, Karen’s life style in Oaxaca wasn’t the expatriates dream of the fine house, leisurely lunches, servants and happy hour at 6 pm daily. Many ex-pats carefully never learned to speak Spanish so they wouldn’t be able to get really involved with Mexico’s many layers of reality. They moved to Oaxaca to live the good life in retirement, remarking at how cheap everything is in Mexico.<br />
Karen was too young to be retired and had to work for a living. She worked the standard Mexican work week--6 days, with Sunday off. On Sunday she often caught a 5 am bus to get to a wedding or baptism mass at 6 am out in San Martin or Santo Tomas, or Arrasola. She arrived to make tamales wrapped in banana leaves or help the women of the family serve guests in the Zapotec-style fiestas. These people from various towns shared their lives with Karen, a guera, a white American, who they originally met when she came to teach English in their communities. She’d <br />
gotten woven into the fabric of their lives, the births and deaths, work and fiesta.<br />
At those fiestas Karen would drink mescal and joke around with her women friends, then dance with their sons as the celebration continued sometimes for days and nights. She became god-mother to two different girls, in two different pueblos, San Martin Tilcajete and Teotitlan Del Valle. Karen had come to Oaxaca to stay. Every six months she had to cross the Mexican border to renew her tourist visa, usually making a quick trip down to Guatemala, rather than to the United States. She worked illegally, always a little afraid of being denounced and deported. She was a wetback in reverse direction. She stayed because she loved Oaxaca, its rich culture and its indigenous peoples. <br />
Karen’s love and respect for the local artisans was returned. They respected her because she was honest and never tried to cheat them or talk them into a bad deal. She helped make famous the painted, wooden animal carvers of the area by being a source for the writers of a now well-known book. She honored the carvers and their wives and children who painted the animalitos. She treated Teotitlan’s rug makers well. These qualities differentiated her from Mexican shop keepers and wholesalers. Teotitecas, people from Teotitlan, always say they prefer American to Mexican buyers for that reason. They are respected for their art. As the in-between person, Karen presented folkart items at Salsa Picante to be bought at wholesale prices by gallery buyers from the US. Her own sensibility and taste led to new designs and products. She spent days going out to various villages checking on orders for folkart galleries in the United States.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Weaving by Tito Mendoza and siblings..</td></tr>
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I met Karen through a mutual friend in spring 1990. A short, trim woman, she dressed colorfully, in various local traditional styles, almost always, in skirts and blouses, with plastic sandals. She had a jeans jacket and various rebozos for chilly times. Her short, wavy,brown hair and bright blue eyes gave the impression of a American woman in her mid 30’s. She had a fiesty personality and had once been a political radical living in Berkeley. Older than she appeared, her romantic interest was a twenty-five year old Zapotec weaver from Santo Tomas Jalieza. Jorge, the object of her obsession, appeared to be innocent of her desires. I noted his chino eyes and bright smile when she finally introduced us. <br />
Karen was always on the go. Still, she had loved her little apartment in a garden setting in Colonia Xochimilco. She lived there with her three-colored, timid cat named Salsa for several years. About the time we met, Karen has just gotten all her things shipped down from Berkeley, her previous home in the US. This included her state of the art stereo system. She had furniture made in Oaxaca, and bought things like an antique baul (a Spanish-style trunk on legs usually given at weddings out in the villages.) Of course, she accumulated a wonderful, though small folkart collection in her tiny house. Unlike other retired ex-pats, Karen had little money and lived on what she earned in the folkart export business. She’d been in Oaxaca for a number of years. By the time I met her she’d distanced herself from most other Americans living in Oaxaca. She loved the people from the villages, often saying she wished she could live in one of the pueblos. She wanted to marry Jorge and have a baby. She’d be happy to live in Santo Tomas with his family since in Zapotec custom the bride lives with the groom’s family. Of course, she already counted his sisters as friends.<br />
Karen and I had mutual friends out in Teotitlan del Valle--Edmundo and Alicia Montano and their four children, Fidel, Pedro, Antonia, and Lichita (little Alicia). Lichita was her god-daughter. I’d met the family in February, 1988, when I led a small group to Oaxaca on the first of my Spirit and Culture guided adventure. We’d stopped to eat at their restaurant while walking around Teotitlan. We examined their colorful rugs. That day Edmundo was weaving in their patio of well-swept earth. In spite of my limited Spanish and their limited English, they made it clear I was very welcome to come to see them anytime. When I met Karen a couple years later we had great fun going out to spend time with them together. One time we helped make tamales with banana leaves for a fiesta.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Garcia Vigil and Cervantes house on the right....where car is parked..</td></tr>
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In late winter 1992 I arrived back in Oaxaca after being in the US for months, and leading a meditation workshop in Puerto Angel where I met Peter Lamb from Ireland. His partner, Sean, owned an old house in downtown Oaxaca on Garcia Vigil. I’d wondered about that colonial house for years. It sits across from the folkart store ARIPO near the arches of Xochimilco. <br />
Sometimes the balcony doors/windows were open and sometimes not. Large pots of geraniums sat on the balconies across the second story of the house. The house got painted rusty/red at some point with yellow framed windows and dark blue doors. I thought that no one lived there. I was delighted when Peter invited me to lunch with him at the house. We had much in common, him practicing Reiki healing and my reading Tarot and practicing similar healing techniques. When I got back to Oaxaca we hung out together, lunched at the house, traded treatments and became friends. What a sweet man and house!<br />
I was eager to see Karen upon my return that late February. We’d written a couple letters over the months. Both single women in our forties, Karen was my only on-going, American woman friend in Oaxaca. Of course I always met new people, Mexicans and foreigners, but Karen and I had alot in common. Neither of us had much money, we weren’t retired and lived more like Mexicans than other Americans. Neither of us wanted to be part of the American expatriate community. Our politics leaned left of center. Sometimes we’d splurge and have dinner at the Chinese restaurant. I brought her green apples, Earl Grey tea, and tofu as she wished and other small things so hard to get in Mexico at that time. <br />
We both loved baked potatoes. We usually got together for at least one baked potato feast with a fresh salad during my months in Oaxaca. I’d brought down a toaster oven. Karen preferred organic salads which were nearly impossible to come by back then. I invited Karen for a baked potato fiesta, complete with handmade limonada and fresh green salad on Palm Sunday. <br />
By this time I’d come to live as the caretaker at Peter and Sean’s house across from ARIPO. (Known as the Cervantes House.) That wonderful old house had been built by the first Bishop of Oaxaca in the 1500’s. Those walls I’d looked at over the years were three feet thick. Peter’s house had a large permanent gas tank on the roof and hot water in the kitchen sink. That was a luxury in many Oaxacan houses. When I’d begun living there in early March, Peter and Sean needed someone trust worthy and bilingual to take care of the house. Peter explained that recently the housekeeper, Tomas, had ripped off all the tools and any extra useful items that had been stored in the garage. He couldn’t be fired but needed to be encouraged to quit. Tomas had become an alcoholic under the tutelage of a previous British caretaker. Some antique oil paintings and other things still remained in the house, though Peter and Sean had shipped most of the antiques to Ireland. <br />
I noted Tomas’ limp handshake and evasive look when we met. A thin young man, he seemed more like a shadow than a person as he slunk along the corridor wall. At my insistence Peter had the lock changed on the front door, the only door. Tomas had had a key, and god knows how many duplicates circulated in Oaxaca. I didn’t want to be there alone with Tomas having a key. I’d be home and let him in to work, I promised. He’d come and clean. I’d water the many plants in their large clay pots daily. Tomas’ grandmother had been the Cervantes’ (former owner) maid. This position passed down through the family. For some reason after Tomas’ mother passed on none of the daughters wanted the job. Peter paid him $100 USD per month to clean and care for the place. Missing things, well.....<br />
I planned to look out for the house as if it were my own. The third day after Peter’s departure, I found that the yellow bucket I used to water those geraniums out on the front balconies had vanished overnight. I made it clear to Tomas in my functional Spanish that the bucket should reappear the next day or....else. He brought the bucket but then did his best to not appear to clean when scheduled. I’d have to wait around. He didn’t call--phones were not all that common then anyway. He’d show up when I was about to leave. Towards the end of my stay there, he turned the job over to his brother, Rodrigo, a totally different kind of person. <br />
Rodrigo told me his grandmother had frequently seen a ghost in the house. He recalled seeing something when visiting her one time. He wondered if I ever experienced anything strange ? And always, the question, aren’t you afraid living alone? <br />
Rodrigo said he had been a medical student when students protested the Mexican government’s massacre of students in Mexico City. (1968) Hundreds of students demonstrated in the Zocalo in Oaxaca. Army troops attacked students from their nearby base at Santo Domingo Cathedral. This assault left some of his friends bleeding to death in the street. It traumatized him so much he left medical school and never completed his studies. He lived a block away at the family home caring for his old, sick father. <br />
Coming through the street door onto the uneven worn green Oaxacan cantara floor gave me a feeling of peace and security. Always cool on hot days the adobe walled rooms warmed easily on cool rainy evenings. A statue of St. Teresa de Avila, carved from basalt, presided over the medium sized patio on the ground floor. She was half-hidden under a shower of night blooming jasmine vines in front of a defunct fountain. This sanctuary, a private home, and before that, a Carmelite convent, included five bedrooms and two baths, a library, a formal living room on the second floor where the window/doors opened to balconies with pots of geraniums above the street. I lived behind those very doors I’d been scrutinizing for years. Broad stone stairs connected the three floors. Adobe arches lined corridors that opened into various rooms on both floors. Bougainvillea flowered over the arches and up the light peach painted walls. At night, the blooming jasmine perfumed the air.<br />
A formal dining room adjoined the modern kitchen on the ground floor. Its darkly stained long Spanish style table and chairs invited gathering friends for dinner, followed by philosophical discussions about art and politics over mescal and cervezas. Another Oaxacan pastime. While the house was in disrepair and for sale, I was living in luxury. <br />
A monastery sat on the other side of the vine covered wall. Occasionally an inspired a boy would climb the wall and peer over into the vestibule under adobe arches where I spent hours making paintings. Luckily these boys were training to be priests not voyeurs. <br />
Never appear unclothed outside your bedroom. This is my rule of thumb in Mexico. Everyone watches everyone else. Being a blond American single woman in her 40’s made me noticeable enough on the streets of mostly brown-skinned, black hair Oaxaquenos. <br />
From the roof I had an unobstructed view of San Felipe, that shapely mountain north of the city. Sometimes I went up to the roof garden to watch the sky darken as the afternoon thunderstorm came over the Sierra Juarez. Lightning preceded the storms like fireworks. Strong bolts struck the lower hills followed by heavy rain, rushing down and flooding the pedestrian street, Macedonia Alcala. I understood why the ancient Zapotecs worshipped Cocijo, the god of thunder, lightning and rain. This awe inspiring natural phenomenon seemed godlike to me. <br />
That Palm Sunday afternoon I remember Karen sitting in the rocker in the large formal living room looking at a book. The windows opened to the balconies above the street. I snapped a photo of her in the rocker before our baked potato and fresh salad feast. Relaxed, we talked about our lives and the week’s events. She loved the old house too. <br />
By this time Karen worked at a different folk art store located near where I was living. Salsa Picante’s owner had given up his business which didn’t make him much money. Karen had recently moved to a small house in San Felipe del Agua, a house I had yet to visit. Karen, forever obsessing about Jorge, disliked her new working position, though she tried to get along with the owner Angela, a Oaxacan woman friend of hers. She wanted to continue the wholesale business she’d run for Salsa Picante but found it difficult to do with Angela’s way of doing business.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Oaxaca Folk Dancers</td></tr>
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As Karen complained that day about the situation with Angela, I listened and encouraged her to consider going into business for herself, exporting folkart to the US. She had all the connections in both Oaxaca and the US. She had some money in savings still in California. The buyer for Jackalope (a folkart store in Santa Fe) also encouraged her to start her own business. Victor, one of Karen’s admirers and friends, offered to partner with her using his watch repair shop as an outlet for folk art. She didn’t know what to do. The Mexican red tape for foreigners going into business legitimately, including the la mordita (bribe) required, stopped all but the strongest of heart and bankroll. Still, she might be able to carry on as she had on her own, since she never worked legally anyway. She carefully didn’t reveal this to many.<br />
Now she often had to walk a mile or two in those plastic sandals from the bus to get to a artisan's house when she went to check on an order. Before, at Salsa Picante, she’d driven a funky old Volkswagen out on those rutted village roads. She tried to carry on the wholesale business through Angela’s folkart shop. It wasn’t working well. <br />
In two weeks Karen was planning to return to the United States to visit her mother and sister on the East Coast. She hadn’t seen them in quite a long time. As you might have guessed Karen changed her last name to ‘Turtle’ while living in Berkeley, trying to help save turtles. An former school teacher and graphic artist, her Berkeley life included hanging out at La Pena, the Latin American coffee house and supporting various Latin American causes. She often designed their posters. She planned to visit an old friend (another turtle lover) in the Bay Area on her upcoming trip. <br />
We talked alot about the trip to see her family. Her mother had been particularly negative to her as a child, putting her down and undermining her sense of self-worth. I’d identified this during the year before when she participated in one of my workshops in Oaxaca. We talked about her current feelings. Her family really wanted to see her and she wanted to spend time with her sister’s twin boys, whom she’d loved as babies. They all lived in New Jersey. <br />
So passed our peaceful Sunday afternoon, eating baked potatoes, fresh salad and drinking home-made limonada. We made plans to see each other during the week, perhaps take in a movie on Thursday. Thus began Holy Week.<br />
I passed by to see her at Angela’s shop on Monday evening and helped her carry some empty boxes up to the bus stop on Porfirio Diaz where she caught the bus for San Felipe. We hugged good-bye, she got on the bus, and said we’d see each other on Thursday. Meantime, she would be out in the villages on Tuesday and Wednesday, checking on orders for clients in the US. She looked forward to those next days, being out with her friends.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Monte Alban; North Altar..</td></tr>
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<br />
Holy Week progressed with the rains beginning in earnest. On Tuesday I noticed a storm coming in over San Felipe and considered I had just enough time to make it up to Monte Alban to experience it. I rushed down and got the bus up the mountain. I just arrived at the south end of the great plaza of Monte Alban when the storm hit full force. The wind drove the rain horizontally. Alone, I sheltered among the “danzantes”, those mysterious ancient carvings that seem to be Olmec in origin. The ferocious storm perhaps was a premonition of things to come.<br />
On Thursday morning I decided that I really didn’t want to go to the movie that evening. Thinking to change plans, I tried to phone Karen at Angela’s tienda. She wasn’t there. This seemed highly unusual, since Karen normally did what she said she would do. I went there, a block from the house and found out from Angela that Karen hadn’t been at work since Monday. Since Karen didn’t have a phone, Angela just figured she stayed out in the villages or took off early for Easter vacation. Jose Luis Guttierrez, a carver from Arrasola, came in while I was there. He was also looking for Karen. She hadn’t been out to Arrasola. He suggested we try to call someone in San Martin to see if she had been there on Wednesday as she’d planned. As we waited for the return call via the community phone service (la casseta), I began to feel strange. No, her compadre Ventura Fabian said that she hadn’t come by his house that week. <br />
By this time I was worried. Karen went to work with fevers and chills that would keep me in bed a week. I had a bad feeling, wondering if something had happened to her in San Felipe, maybe she’d gotten robbed and hurt or killed....though this wouldn’t be the usual scenario of that small town where she lived. Still, I kept thinking we should go to Karen’s house. Angela thought we should see if Jorge had seen her, so we got in Angela’s pick up truck and went to the Artisanias Market, south of the Zocalo, to see if he’d seen her. From behind stacks of hand woven Santa Tomas backpacks he also said “ No”. He hadn’t seen her in a couple weeks. I then insisted we go to her house. We headed for San Felipe, Jose Luis, Angela and me.<br />
We got to her small, adobe house as afternoon rain clouds lunged over the mountain threatening to burst open. We knocked. No answer. We knocked again and again. Then, we noticed something strange--the black metal door was locked from the inside. (A peculiarity of Mexican locks) She must be in the house. The curious neighbors showed us where the landlord lived so we rushed over to their house, interrupted their comida and asked them to open the door to Karen’s casita. By this time alarm was setting in. The landlords said they really liked Karen and looked out for her since she lived alone. They’d last seen her Tuesday evening. They tentatively unlocked her front door.<br />
Door unlocked, we rushed into the two room house. Jose Luis, first in, found Karen in her bed. A tiny trickle of blood came out of her barely opened mouth. Her eyes, closed, and her face peaceful. She was dead. Salsa, her timid cat, quite upset, ran out of the house. While I’d had that feeling that something awful had happened, it didn’t prepare me for Karen being dead. Right there in her bed, me touching her cold white hand and crying ‘No... No....No’.... unable to stop the wailing sound pushing out of me. <br />
Shock set in. I was glad I wasn’t alone. It seemed to me she had died in her sleep. The landlords called the US Consular, Mark Leyes, who was just about to leave town for the holiday weekend. He came right over. He had to come since Karen had been a US citizen and would need a death certificate. He would have to seal the house, close it with a legal document, which would prevent the local police from robbing the place, in pretext of investigating her death. He called the mortuary and made arrangements with the funeral home. <br />
Through this official American intervention, Mark took me under his wing. I appreciated his kindness. We searched the house for Karen’s address book. I knew her mother’s last name, Karen’s old name. I had to call her mother and sister in New Jersey. How do you tell someone their adult child, their sister and your close friend is dead? I still don’t know what I said. I was numb. <br />
An autopsy was required since no one knew how she died. Karen didn’t do drugs so I assumed she had a stroke with the blood trickle out of the mouth. The door had been locked so we didn’t think she‘d been murdered. Mark made arrangements for the autopsy. She had wanted to be cremated, her sister said when I told her that Karen had died. I had had to pick out her burial clothes in the few minutes after they took her body from her little house, before the house was sealed. A skirt and blouse and her plastic sandals, earrings. I put food and water outside for Salsa her cat. Rain started pouring down on Oaxaca then. It was the evening of the Last Supper. Mark drove me back downtown. Angela and Jose Luis had left when he got there. Her body would be at the funeral home on Independencia later that evening after the autopsy.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">El Descanso.....painting by Mitzi Linn</td></tr>
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<br />
In the car outside the morgue, the ghoulish looking doctor who performed the autopsy invited us to view Karen’s body. I declined. Mark had to go though and returned in a little while looking sick. Ten years later he told me what had happened inside. After watching an intern saw her head open with a dull saw, the doctor had placed Karen’s slippery brain in Mark’s hands to show him the aneurysm. Mark dropped it on the floor. He was having dry heaves when he left the building. This haunted him a long time. He does have to verify deaths of Americans but he said he never got that close again.<br />
Rain spread reflections of street and car lights across the streets that dark night. My life went into slow motion. The Buddhist teaching ‘death comes without warning’ passed through my thoughts. <br />
I don’t remember going home, to the sweet old house that felt like a temple. But I was grateful to have it as a sanctuary. I must have gone to get my rebozo before we went to the morgue. Perhaps I phoned Karen’s family again. The rain had begun shortly after we found Karen’s body and by now, after 6:30 pm, it was dark and chilly. I made an altar for Karen in a nicho on the stairway, lit a large, votive candle and said a prayer. I placed her image of the Virgin of Juquila there along some other small things of hers. How convenient to be living with appropriate altar spaces. <br />
Who took me to the funeral home that night? Perhaps Angela. I do remember we were together, upstairs in a large room with Karen’s body in a simple wooden coffin. Four tall white candles burned, one an each corner of the coffin. White nardos and lillies filled urns in front of her. Karen looked as she did that afternoon, except for an unseemly sewn-up cut in her neck, from the autopsy. She probably died while sleeping on Tuesday night. She would have turned 50 on her next birthday. <br />
Angela left and returned later with a white cloth to cover her body. Jose Luis’s family, good friends of Karen’s, sent a group of resadores from Arrasola. They would spend the night praying for Karen. I needed to supply them with cigarettes and mescal, the traditional payment for their services. I went out and bought them some of both, though not enough probably to pass the night. The funeral home provided hot coffee and sweet rolls. I was supposed to stay with Karen’s body that night. I couldn’t. I was exhausted. Angela seemed to think the resadores only came so they could drink mescal while doing their prayers. I didn’t know. It was all new to me. <br />
That afternoon I had learned I’d be in charge of the funeral. Karen’s sister asked me to take care of things. I was Karen’s family in Oaxaca. Her brother-in-law, Carl, would come on Easter Sunday. I didn’t want to have her body cremated until he got there so the ordinary funeral days had to be extended. Since the body wasn’t embalmed and she’d been dead already two days, it began to smell by Friday night. By Saturday afternoon I had the coffin nailed shut. I still can’t smell nardos without being carried back to the smell of Karen’s deteriorating body. I added new Spanish words to my vocabulary as the days went on.<br />
Have I mentioned I knew next to nothing about Mexican funerals, and in this case, Zapotec customs? In 1989 I’d gone to a Oaxacan funeral home with musician friends when Pablo and Memo Porras’ father died. Middle-class Oaxacaquenos, they had the body at a funeral home rather than the family home which is what is done in the towns around Oaxaca. I sat with Memo and Pablo and their family awhile. Their father was buried the next morning.<br />
I read about local funeral customs as practiced in Oaxacan villages. The family and friends gather for a wake the night after the death of the person. They bury the body the next morning. Often a band leads the procession to the cemetery. I’d heard their dirges in Teotitlan a few times. During the night, the deceased’s family makes hot chocolate, provides food, tamales, and drink for those who come to sit with the deceased. The body lies at home, on sand or a cloth or mat on the floor or on a platform, surrounded by candles, like an altar around which family and friends gather. They bring flowers, candles and mescal. People comfort the family and pray through the night. They all accompany the dead one’s soul on its journey to the after world. They make a procession to the cemetery the next morning to bury the body. I’d admired Felipe Morales’ painting of a skeleton in his death bed with candles at four corners at Gallery La Mano Magica’s exhibition for the Day of the Dead in 1988. But I’d never had to deal with the sudden death of a close friend or family member, even in the US. <br />
It was after midnight when I finally left the funeral home that Thursday night. The quiet city smelled clean and fresh after the rain. I wrapped myself in my black ikat rebozo and walked alone slowly up Garcia Vigil towards the house. Stars shown from a distant heaven. Yesterday seemed like a thousand years ago. <br />
Because of such a strong belief that the body of a deceased person shouldn’t be alone, Jose Luis’s family and others unobtrusively covered the nights after that first one. I couldn’t be there 24 hours a day, I explained. I was the only family member. Usually she would have been buried that next day, Good Friday, but I was waiting for Carl to come before the cremation. There was to be a funeral mass with a priest on Easter Sunday morning before her body was burned. <br />
Good Friday morning I returned to the funeral home. I arrived early to find many people I didn’t know sitting in the large room with Karen’s body. I went around, shaking hands, introducing myself sharing information about her death and meeting these people, her other friends....They represented families of wooden animal carvers, weavers, potters, tin workers and her favorite cab driver, David. Word was spreading about her death. We’d called several people out in San Martin Tilcajete, including her compadre Ventura Fabian, the Fuentes family, and others. I’d called Edmundo and Alicia in Teotitlan as well as the Manual Jimenez family from Arrasola and Dolores Porras and other potters from Astompa. I used Karen’s phone book to call the casseta of each small outlying town. The casseta was the community phone service before individual phone service extended to private homes in most pueblos. I left messages for her friends and clients. I knew word would spread by also telling the family that operated the community phone. Word-of-mouth always works in Mexico. <br />
As Friday dragged on many people from different villages came to pay their respects. Being good Friday made it all the more difficult to get into Oaxaca. Often buses run on very altered schedules, or not at all, on holy days. My friends, Glafira and the women from Casa Arnel, came to do the Rosary that night. They’d just met Karen at my house when I invited them over for tea and cake a few weeks before. My painter friend Humberto Batista arrived with Maggie, my flamenco teacher. Arnulfo and Mary Jane Mendoza came and sat for awhile. I was thankful to be with friends.<br />
Mostly Oaxaquenos came to the funeral home to sit with Karen’s body. Very few Americans came. Perhaps they hadn’t heard about her death. I didn’t really know too many of Karen’s American friends. Weeks later several Americans told me they heard about it but didn’t want to come to the funeral home. Death made them feel uneasy. <br />
Talking about Karen, all the Oaxacan crafts people emphasized that their business wouldn’t be the same without her. Many tried to talk me into taking up Karen’s business. I said clearly that I couldn’t, though I had Karen’s business address book for the United States. I took down names and addresses and directions to her friends’ and houses who came to the funeral home. I had to explain that I’m an artist, a painter and counselor. I couldn’t just jump into her business. Maybe they could work with Angela.<br />
<br />
<br />
Most of these Zapotec crafts people remarked how Karen was their special friend. She remembered their birthday, brought them little presents from her trips to Guatemala. She came to weddings, baptisms, and to their town fiestas. She loved their way of life. She listened to their problems. <br />
I found that Oaxaca valley people are more familiar with death, sudden or expected, than most North Americans. Medical help is harder to come by and people have fewer expectations. Perhaps death is experienced as a part of life. There’s a more fatalistic attitude, or, as most people say in one way or another,--it’s up to God. <br />
I had to be outgoing, moving around the room. I found the women and men very understanding and reassuring. We held hands, hugged, shared our feelings and thoughts as best we could. Sometimes we cried. Spanish is a second language to me, and to many of the Zapotecs, so our communication seemed basic, but from the heart. My Spanish vocabulary expanded to include stroke, ashes, cremation as well as other words I had never expected to have to learn or use in Mexico. <br />
Unless they came from the same village, Karen’s mourners didn’t know each other either. I recounted how Karen died, that she had a stroke, and no, I didn’t know she was sick.....Karen, out of her body somewhere above, must have been happily enjoying this coming together of so many people she loved and was loved by. I tried to explain that she wanted her body cremated and I was waiting for her brother-in-law to come for the funeral before the cremation. Inside I felt frenetic. Outside I calmly listened to Karen’s friends. When I told them about her wish to be cremated, they expressed startled disbelief and explained in detail the traditional type of Oaxacan funeral, the way it should be done. They wondered about customs in the US. Why would anyone be cremated? <br />
Burning up a body and spreading the ashes someplace special wasn’t easy to explain to the Zapotecs. Their royal and rich ancestors buried their relatives in beautiful tombs, with exquisite decorations, including offerings in wonderful ceramics urns of Cocijo and other valley dieties. Even the modern burial with flowers and candles, coffins, crosses and monuments, gives the family a gravesite at which to celebrate the Day of the Dead. There they can commune with the deceased and remember the family lineage. <br />
What would we do with her ashes? Something Zapotec. Bury them in their little box, in a cemetery in a valley town. Would it be San Martin Tilcajete, Teotitlan del Valle, or Arrasola? Each town’s delegation of Karen’s friends and compadres had their reason for wanting her ashes in their cemetery. I had to decide. Luckily for me, Edmundo got permission to bury her ashes in the Teotitlan del Valle cemetery. <br />
He convinced the town governors there was no place else for them to go. She had no family. She was his comadre. She may be the only foreigner whose remains lie buried there in a child-sized grave. Perhaps the only non-Zapotec. For sure, the only box of ashes.... ! Now her little cross still is there with the turtle and another person is buried there also...the owner of the plot...<br />
Early afternoon on Good Friday, deciding to take a break from the intensity of being in the large room with Karen’s decaying body and her many friends, I stepped out some glass doors onto an adjoining terrazzo that overlooked Avenida Independencia, two blocks from the Zocalo. I had forgotten it was Good Friday. I heard noises and looked up the street. Preceded by silent women in black, the large statue of Oaxaca’s patron saint was being carried down Avenida Independencia on the shoulders of devoted men. As the silent, grieving procession came alongside the funeral home, the Virgen of Soledad, her light brown face cast down, seemed to float towards me. The vision of her in that black gown with white pearls and the pearl and gold crown above her serene face dwarfed whatever feelings I had about the situation inside. She reminded me that death and grief are natural and universal. I felt her compassion for the suffering extend to me. Another long procession of women with black ikat rebozos covering their heads created a dark train to Soledad’s black gown. They clasped bouquets of white lilies and candles. People in the procession reflected the anguish most human beings suffer around death and dying. I felt some solace in their passing.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Painting by Felipe Morales....(traditional death)</td></tr>
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<br />
Sudden, unexpected death seems the worst for the survivors. One thing Karen’s death taught me is that the living are seldom prepared for the death of a loved one. Many believe unexpected death, or violent death, is the worst experience for the soul in the after life. Disoriented souls and spirits often live in a psychic no-where until they stabilize and move on to rebirth or heaven or...... Hence religious practices around death including the rosary of the Catholics for nine days after the burial. Roadside crosses are raised to release the spirit of the person killed on that spot. The Zapotecs have a tradition of putting flowers and other offerings on the spot where a traumatic death occurs. The prayers and reading of the Bardo text to Tibetan Buddhist practioners as they die and afterwards helps the spirit, the being, to go on without fear. Spiritual practices related to death help mollify the grieving survivors and give the spirit of the dead something to help it consciously move through the immediate after death-of-the-body experience. I did my Tibetan meditation practice with Karen as the focus, including praying for her fortunate rebirth. <br />
Among the young men who came on Saturday was Alejandrino Fuentes, a wood carver from San Martin Tilcajete. He came without his wife who was pregnant. Pregnant women don’t go to cemeteries or funerals, he explained. There’s a taboo about the spirit of the deceased and the spirit of the baby-to-be-born being in near proximity. Karen had often spoken of Alejandrino saying he was a really good person. She liked spending time with him and his wife. <br />
I don’t remember if Pedro Montano came with his parents Edmundo and Alicia. His wife Karina Santiago, eight months pregnant, didn’t. Pedro and Karina were one of Karen’s favorite young couples. She’d written me that they’d started living together, meaning that Pedro and Karina had eloped. He brought her to his parents’ home to live. They got married by civil law. Karina would soon give birth to their first child. <br />
Other seemingly single young men astonished me by flirting and asking me out. As we helped ourselves to coffee and sweet rolls, a couple of guys proposed marriage. I think they had something less formal in mind. That they were half my age and we were at a funeral home didn’t seem to matter. Jose Luis was among these young men. Their handsome faces and black eyes joked and smiled. Our playful flirting offered some welcome comic relief. They too were Karen’s friends and admirers. I appreciated their ability to joke around when things are grim, that distinctly Mexican way of relieving stress. <br />
Late Saturday afternoon, when I was almost alone at the funeral home with Karen’s body, I sang a Tibetan mantra, out loud, in front of her wooden casket. The one associated with Guru Yoga. I hoped that invoking the emptiness of the Buddhas would help her spirit move on.<br />
During those days at the funeral home, I invited everyone that came to come by Karen’s house during the next week to take away something of hers as her family requested. I drew maps to her house in San Felipe. Furniture, clothes......kitchen things, as well as her folk art collection. Her sister had said to give it all away, except the family silver which I should ship back. I decided that the two families in which she had god-daughters should be the first to take things. I chose some of her things for myself and some for her family and friends in the US. I felt Karen would be happiest if her friends had her possessions. It would be a giveaway, perhaps a kind of guelaguetza . <br />
That Easter Sunday morning, Carl, Karen’s brother-in-law arrived in time to go to the funeral Mass at eleven AM. Few others attended. I remember especially Dolores Porras, the potter. Her loving spirit filled the room. After the Mass we paid the priest and took the flowers to a small open church across Independencia Avenue. We left them at the front altar. Her body went to the recently opened crematorium several blocks away. <br />
Carl, a really sweet African-American man, assured me he came to help. He confided that he was closer to Karen than either her sister or her mother were, that they’d been close friends as well as in-laws. What a relief for me! I had a kindred spirit with whom to share a few days. We went to Karen’s house together that afternoon to look for her passport, any other documents and to start going through her things. We decided to send some things back and he would take some when he left. He paid for the funeral with money he brought and gave me some to use for shipping and other expenses. He’d be there only a couple days. Best of all he played jazz on my little guitar. Sophisticated sounds, never before imagined on that instrument, filled the patio those evenings and mornings. We carried the box with Karen’s ashes from the funeral home to the house putting them on the altar until the following Sunday, when they would be buried.<br />
Another miracle that Easter afternoon. Suzanne and Mateo Lopez happened to come in from Puerto Angel. Suzanne, another American woman friend and spiritual practioner, helped give me the kind of support I needed. I could despair outloud, grieve, complain, and get hugged. The old house was full of love. Early Monday morning an earthquake shook us out of our beds into the patios and corridor with, and without, clothes. It was strong enough to shake that adobe house with 3 foot thick walls. Nothing broke. It was just another earthquake which routinely rumble through downtown Oaxaca. Carl was the most surprised.<br />
Going through Karen’s things, Carl found a piece of paper saying if anything happened to her, to give her stereo system to Edmundo. She wanted KPFA in Berkeley to have her savings account left in a Bay Area credit union. We found her papers in various places in the tiny house.<br />
I’d been most worried about Salsa, her cat. That evening we went back to the house to see if she’d come back around dark. Armed with a bowl of food, I called and called. Finally the timid three-colored Salsa came out of her hiding place. She’d never let me close before. I petted and talked to her. She was OK. I gave her food and water and locked her in Karen’s house with her litter box. By the end of the month everything had to be removed from the house. I knew Karen’s biggest concern would have been what happened to her cat. I decided to see if Dona Maria, who lived in a walled garden in Xochimilco would take Salsa back. Salsa had lived there with Karen for several years, so she knew the house and large, shady garden area. I felt she’d be safe from marauding dogs and cars on streets. Dona Maria was overjoyed to have her live there again. When I checked a month later, Salsa had adjusted happily to her old home.<br />
On Tuesday various people started coming to Karen’s house to choose things. First some close friends that she worked with at Salsa Picante, Carmen and Abel. I’d met them with Karen and spent time with them. Carmen took the kitchen things. Abel claimed the bookshelves he’d made for Karen. Edmundo and Alicia Montano came with Lichita (Karen’s God-daughter). They took Karen’s writing desk, an antique from the area, as well as the stereo system which Karen intended for Edmundo. They didn’t seem to want much. Ventura Fabian and family, the other compadres from San Martin Tilcajete, took the gas stove, small refrigerator, the gas tanks, her bed and mattress. Their daughter, Elena, was Karen’s other god-daughter. They remarked that they could really use these things at their house in San Martin. Since god-mothers play an important role in the god-child’s wedding ceremony including certain financial obligations, I thought in giving them these things I’d be helping complete Karen’s commitments.<br />
Still, Karen’s little house seemed crammed full, books on folk art, long-playing records including all the blues greats, Latin American folk music, clothes, Guatemalan weavings, pottery, painted animals, jewelry--colorful, interesting things she collected while she worked in the folk-art business. I made Carl take a rug that Edmundo had himself woven for Karen, and an interesting painted chest from San Martin. He took some of the carved turtles, from her vast collection. Other family things got shipped to his house in the US. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Banda...carvings were part of Karen's collection ( I forget the artist)</td></tr>
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<br />
I took a large black pottery turtle for her grave. A few Americans appeared to take some things. I gave things to my friends who helped me. Finally, after Carl had gone and most things were taken, I left a painted blue table and some other things for the landlords who thought they deserved something. Didn’t they really own that table anyway, they wondered? They didn’t, I knew. But they would have to clean the house and rent it, carefully not mentioning the recent death there. By Thursday, a week after finding Karen dead in her bed, I never wanted to see that house again. I gave them the key and whatever was left in the kitchen and bedroom. <br />
I had taken Carl out to Teotitlan to meet Edmundo and Alicia and family before he left. We ate lunch together in their patio. Adrian Montano came over to translate the English-Zapotec- Spanish conversation. He’d known and loved Karen too. We were able to share stories and feelings about Karen for a couple hours. I wished Carl could stay another week, through the burial of the ashes on Sunday. But, busy in America selling Mercedes Benzs’ and, on the verge of the break-up of his marriage to Karen’s sister, he had to get back to New Jersey. <br />
I just wanted things to be over. I’d planned to go with Suzanne, Mateo and others on their annual pilgrimage to visit the Virgen of Juquila at the beginning of May. This tiny brown Virgin comes from a town somewhere between Oaxaca and Puerto Escondido. They made this pilgrimage annually during the first week in May when they closed the Posada. In order to go, I had to take care of everything surrounding Karen’s death before I left town. <br />
After the funeral I ran into various artisans who said they couldn’t work with Angela though she’d offered to continue Karen’s work. Armando Jimenez’s was particularly upset trying to deal with her. Karen’s admirer, Victor Vasquez, wanted to take over selling the carved, painted figures through his watch shop on Macedonia Alcala. Later, using Karen’s address book, I went with him to establish connections in San Martin and Arrasola. He’s made a good wholesale and retail business selling the carved, painted figures in his small shop. <br />
On the Sunday morning a week after Easter, Alicia and Edmundo hosted the “raising the cross ceremony” in front of their house altar in Teotitlan. Other friends of Karen’s came from various places. It’s not easy to do since the bus to Teotitlan doesn’t run directly from Oaxaca on Sunday. Most people didn’t have cars. I brought the box of ashes, and the pottery turtle. Alicia was serving hot chocolate as I arrived. It was a terrific to be with friends again. <br />
A wizened old man performed the ceremony in front of the altar. This local resador chanted the prayers, lit the copal incense, blessed the cross brought by Juvenal, and led a short mass for Karen. Then we made a procession to the church, the box of ashes carried on a wooden table. We carried candles and flowers. Inside the tall, arched front door, the resedor lit more copal to bring blessings of the sacred place and its santos into Karen’s afterlife. Down in front at the main altar a wedding was taking place. Here, in the doorway, we crossed our arms, standing, while he offered more prayers for our dead friend and comadre.<br />
From the church, we continued walking to the cemetery. There, quite near the front gate, a child-sized open grave waited. I remember that we all threw dirt on the tiny box of Karen’s remains. After the hole was filled, the cross was raised at the head of the grave, and a small altar built with bricks in front of it. The cross said Karen Turtle, 1942-92. It was plain, black, wooden with white letters. We put the black pottery turtle on the brick altar, and flower vases, filled with flowers, on either side of the cross. We lit Virgen de Guadelupe votive candles. Afterwards we walked back to Edmundo’s house. I promised Karen and the Montanos I’d return for the Day of the Dead that fall to clean and decorate Karen’s grave and spend the Day of the Dead with them. <br />
Later that week I visited the Teotitlan Church to bring flowers to the Virgen de Natividad. Down front at her altar I lit candles and put flowers in vases and prayed that Karen would have a fortunate rebirth, perhaps in some Oaxacan village where she’d be loved as unconditionally as possible. I wasn’t necessarily thinking of Teotitlan. She loved so many of the small towns, the whole Oaxaca area, so much. Mostly I hoped she’d take rebirth where she’d be loved unconditionally. It’s a Tibetan Buddhist practice to pray for a fortunate rebirth based on the belief in reincarnation. I’d long forgotten that during my first tour group visit to this special church, I’d mentioned that anything you pray for there would come true. Two women from that first group I led to Oaxaca later reported exactly how their prayers at the Teotitlan church had been answered. <br />
Over a year after Karen’s death, one starry Sunday night, Pedro Montano gave me a ride in his pickup to the crossroads of the Teotitlan road and the Pan American Highway where I could get a bus to Oaxaca. Waiting out there under the Milky Way, we started talking about Karen and her sudden death. Pedro, then about 25, related in a matter of fact tone that he and Karina firmly believed that their first child, Diana Karina, was Karen reincarnated. Diana was born a month after Karen died. He said that the Zapotecs believe that family members reincarnate in their own family. As they saw it, Karen Turtle had been part of their family. He said, “when I heard Karen had died, I knew that Karina’s baby would be a girl.” Up to that point he thought it would be a boy. This was the first I’d ever heard that Zapotecs believe in reincarnation. Diana, being the first grandchild, had to be one of the most cherished babies I’ve ever known. She is a beautiful, kind and smart young woman. And now a medical doctor....<br />
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************************************ <br />
The fall following Karen’s death I returned to Oaxaca for the winter as I had promised. Lichita Montano (her god-daughter) and I decorated Karen’s grave for the Day of the Dead. The whole family went to the cemetery together, including Troy, their dog. Edmundo and Alicia cleaned up the family tombs, throwing out old flowers and sweeping earthen mounds and white concrete monuments clean. After that they put fresh flowers, food and candles out for Edmundo’s father and Alicia’s mother.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Karen's Grave Teotitlan 1992 </td></tr>
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<br />
After tossing out old flowers and sweeping the earthen mound of Karen’s small grave, Lichita and I took the large black pottery turtle out from under the brick altar, putting it on top. We covered the small earthen tomb with a carpet of marigold heads broken by a cross of white flowers in the middle. We lit small votive candles and placed a plate of tamales with a cerveza and oranges to lure her back from the other world. Stately maroon cock’s combs and bright gold marigolds filled the vases leaning against her cross. As we lit white candles we each spent a few minutes remembering her in silence. Edmundo and Alicia reappeared from the back part of the cemetery also stopping briefly to honor Karen. Then we returned home to clean and decorate the house. <br />
Their home altar transformed into a table of abundance under an arch of sugar cane and large pictures of Sangre de Cristo, and Guadelupe. I’d brought some copal and decorated breads to go with the flowers, oranges, nuts, refrescos, mescals and tamales that were part of the offrenda. We lit candles and then copal incense with which Alicia blessed the altar. Various adults and children fashioned an altar for the children out in the veranda. We gathered to eat tamales wrapped in banana leaves. The church’s bell started ringing at 3 PM and would ring until 3PM the next afternoon. <br />
It got dark while we waited for their compadres Elias and Guadalupe from Mexico City. Visitors (compadres and family) from the pueblo started showing up with their offerings of flowers, candles and bread. Teotitecas do not go to the graveyard that night. They go to each other’s houses. I joined the family in their ceremonial line to receive new visitors in front of their altar. After beautiful words (short speeches) and shaking each new person’s hand with the Zapotec blessing “shaa” and lighting the visitors’ candle, we sat down at the long table, men on one side, women on the other. With offerings of mescals and cerveza and soft drinks we toasted each other and life. The party had begun and would continue all night. As visitors left later their empty baskets were loaded with oranges and apples and chunks of newly made chocolate.<br />
<br />
Day of the Dead<br />
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Teotitlan’s Day of the Dead customs are a bit different than other towns in the Oaxaca valley. After dark, families take baskets with pan de muertos (special bread), flowers and candles to their compadres’ houses’. They do not go to the cemetery that night. Each house has a room with an altar built along one wall where all family ceremonies take place. The altar is decorated and heaped with bread, flowers fruit,nuts...mescal, water candles and food for visitors from the other world and this one. The host family members line up on the left side of the room across from the visitors. The visitors make a little ceremony in front of the altar, placing their gifts of bread and flowers on the altar and then lighting the large candle they’ve brought. After kneeling to say a prayer and kissing the altar, they greet the family and the host says some words, in Zapotec, welcoming them and inviting them to sit at the table. Then the compadres pass along the host’s family line, giving the soft ceremonial greeting (shaaa” in Zapotec) with a special handshake that reminds all they’ve entered a sacred space. Then everyone sits at the long table down in the middle of the room, visitors on one side across from family members. The male head of the family pours mescal in shot glasses which are passed around before a toast. <br />
After the mescal, beers are also given to the visitors, and soft drinks to children or people who don’t drink alcohol. The night is passed talking, laughing and drinking as people come and go. The compadres leave loaded up with oranges, apples and other goodies from the altar. This ritualized party gives people a chance to catch up on how their compadres and comadres are doing, since work and regular family duties take up most everyone’s time. <br />
At 3pm the next afternoon, when the church bell stops ringing, Teotitecas return to the cemetery accompanying their ancestors back to their graves and party into the night.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo of traditional altar for Day of the Dead in Teotitlan del Valle...Felix Mendoza and Antonia Ruiz...</td></tr>
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<br />Mitzi Linnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05167793497585467643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2040755657314705824.post-84835339356897893502014-05-14T17:17:00.001-07:002014-05-15T13:04:36.713-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>The Dalai Lama's Blessing...</b> </span> </span> <br />
by Mitzi Linn<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
When I heard that His Holiness the Dalai Lama was going to be in Seaside OR. to meet with Tibetan refugees living in the Northwest in October1985 I knew I had to go. The news spread through various Oregon sanghas. A friend called me from Ashland. It seemed that the event would be open to whomever showed up, and that Western students could go. No tickets required. The event would be held at a hotel. Friends from the Nyingma sanghas of Ashland, Cottage Grove and Portland planned carpooling. I lived in Eugene and planned to go with my partner.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /> I became a Tibetan Buddhist a year after going to Ashland to see His Holiness Dudjom, Rinpoche, in 1980. Dudjom, Rinpoche was the head of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism at that time. During that first visit and his teachings, he gave a Long Life Empowerment. In his 80’s at that time, this tiny man laughed readily, made jokes and smiled frequently while sitting high on his throne, covered with Tibetan carpets. He led the empowerment exquisitely. This being the first encounter with the Tibetan teachers and not knowing much about protocol, I gave him my three large turquoise Tibetan beads as an offering. Maybe I had a kata which he placed around my shoulders or, maybe I gave him a turquoise colored silk scarf....which he tied up in a bundle with the thin white katas. I don’t remember clearly. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> Passing in front of him as part of the empowerment ceremony, I noted his eyes deep in trance. Being in his physical presence gave me a sense of well being and wonder. Many took refuge with Dudjom, Rinpoche, that day. Still it took a year or so, and a vision, for me to take refuge with one of the other Rinpoches I was drawn to that first day with the Tibetan masters.</span><br />
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Gyaltrul, Rinpoche, distinguished himself from the other Lamas with Dudjom, Rinpoche, by shooting people in the audience with his squirt gun. He clowned around. At a break he came right up to me and said something in broken English that startled me. Perhaps it was "Hello, how are you?” I was standing alone, looking out a window at the gray, rainy day. I should have known then that the teacher I’d asked for had arrived. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> Just a week before I remember sitting on the thick green carpet where I taught classes in Tarot and Psychic Development saying to the Universe that it was time for me to have a guru-type teacher. I said I’d prefer it to be a woman but it must be Tibetan, and OK if it was a man. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> I had been reading about Tibetan Buddhism since the early 70’s thanks to a woman who taught me Tarot, introduced the Western Occult Tradition and Tibetan writings of Trungpa, Alexandra David Neel and more. I practiced a kind of psychic meditation, clearing the chakras and running energy. I was ready for more. It’s a spiritual precept that if you ask with your heart, the prayer is answered. Within a month, after Dudjom’s teaching in Ashland, Gyaltrul, Rinpoche, Sangye Kandro and Lama Yeshe, then a monk, came to stay in my house in Eugene while Dudjom, Rinpoche, was teaching in Eugene. I moved next door for a few days with my partner. We’d gone to see Dudjom together.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
Our houses joined at the carport. His teenage children had the downstairs of his house. We generally ate dinner together in their house. For me it was ideal having my own space, my own house with bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and living room. It certainly served the situation of having Gyaltrul, Rinpoche, and Sangye Kandro and Lama Yeshe become part of our family during those visits. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> The living room of my house was a post and beam construction. This large open room with high ceilings, windows on the west wall and a flat roof was where I taught classes. Gyaltrul,Rinpoche, marveled that it was like a Tibetan temple. Since I’d never seen a Tibetan temple at that point, I had no idea what he was talking about. Later, I saw that Tibetan temples offered the same large open post and beam construction with elaborate decoration covering every nook and cranny. A sacred space created to overwhelm the senses. </span><br />
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My house was more zen-like, sparsely decorated with few furnishings, many plants and a thick green carpet. Still, a temple space with adjacent bedroom and kitchen. There students and clients could comfortably lie on the floor for guided meditations. We often sat in circles on cushions to read Tarot cards together. To this day old friends and students mention that forest green carpet with great affection. The light wood walls added to the grounded feeling. It was a nurturing environment. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> Different teachers including Gyaltrul, Rinpoche, and Chagdud, Rinpoche, gave teachings in that space. I even witnessed Sangye and Yeshe performing secret practices, the tsa lungs , which involved levitating. Sometimes I rented it out for weekend workshops of other teachers. Most mornings I sat in meditation, there on the green carpet looking out the windows at the sky. I always remember Dudjom, Rinpoche’s advice to look at the sky while doing Tibetan practices. The Tibetans had so much sky in Tibet.</span><br />
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I loved that space in a way I’ve never loved a house since. It supported my spiritual growth, and my development as a teacher, healer and psychic reader. It made having a partner and family relationship possible. Given our hectic lives and our relationships, I would have never been able to maintain that ten year relationship without my own space. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> Whenever things between my partner and I were difficult I could just be in my home and wait for the storm to pass. Storms arose frequently in our relationship and then subsided. Our power struggles made me stronger. We never had a chance at real intimacy. Both of us survived abusive childhoods, and trusting each other was tenuous at best. “ Praise and blame are the same” became a personal mantra for me. It seemed either he lavishly praised and loved me or totally blamed me for everything. Perhaps I did the same to him. I’m sure there was middle ground though I don’t always remember it. Anyway this phenomenon fit the Buddhist teaching that encourages non-attachment to both praise and blame. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
In that large temple-like room, I took refuge in the Buddha with Gyaltrul, Rinpoche, after lunch one spring afternoon in front of the Green Tara poster above my altar. He was in Eugene giving teachings at the time. I do remember him cutting a piece of my hair and giving me a red protection cord. I’d had a vision that led me to take refuge. One time driving him, Sangye and Ram Dass across Eugene for lunch I told him about it.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /> I found myself in a very large room in which spiritual teachings were taking place. It was full of people from all different spiritual paths and religions practiced on the planet today. Nothing much seemed to be happening though it was peaceful. A message came to me to go find Gyaltrul, Rinpoche in the next room, and to bring him my lifeline. My lifeline was a pipe that went along the ceiling, like a heating duct, but I could guide it into the next room.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /> I entered the smaller room and saw a white light Buddha sitting and shimmering on a raised platform at the front of the room. The energy level in the room was a much higher frequency than in the other room. The room was not as crowded as the other one had been. Looking around I spotted a small group of Tibetans, among other small groups of spiritual practitioners. I went over to them, noting that I was dressed in maroon velvet short shorts, not in traditional Tibetan clothing. I asked where Gyaltrul, Rinpoche was and they smiled saying he wasn’t there now. Still, there was the Buddha and this high, light feeling. <br /> About this time a thought crossed my mind and I wondered what I’d done with my shoulder bag with my ID and money in it . I wanted to go back to the other room and get it. When I started back I woke up from my dream/vision.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Ram Dass pointed out I would have been enlightened in the vision if I hadn’t thought about going back for my bag. Rinpoche said nothing, though it was his response I wanted.</span><br />
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My relationship with my partner was as much a teacher as everything else. It brought up all kinds of stuff that I couldn’t ignore. One time at the Buddhist retreat land outside Ashland we had graciously been given Gaia and Shandor’s house for a day or two. There in their funky house, I casually mentioned I wanted to attain enlightenment (?????) as soon as possible, or in this lifetime, or something along this line. He became furious. I remember walking with him down to his car, him yelling at me and my feeling ashamed that we were fighting there at the retreat land. Crying masked the shame and resentment I felt. To this day I hesitate to say something like I want to be enlightened for fear all hell will break loose. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> No matter how much I loved that man, no resolution of our underlying problems was ever possible, even with therapy. We never learned to communicate in a non-threatening, non-judgemental way about our interpersonal stuff. About the time I’d try to bring up something in a rational and neutral way, he would erupt and start yelling. I never knew what to expect. His addiction to marijuana made him more peaceful sometimes and more approachable, but not in a reliable way. I stopped smoking marijuana and embraced the personal growth ideal, doing therapy and meditating--trying to know myself and change some of my worst patterns. My pattern is to disappear if things get out of control. </span><br />
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We could be the seemingly ideal couple, hugging and kissing alot in public, or two estranged icebergs ignoring each other. I learned that both people have to really try to make a relationship work, and that no matter how much you may love someone emotionally and otherwise, that’s no guarantee you can stay together and work it out. Learning these lessons was valuable. Perhaps whatever that karma is has been diminished.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
My partner and I embarked on our journey to see the Dalai Lama at Seaside. It was Halloween. I had thought about taking the large quartz crystal on my altar as a present for His Holiness. It had a small crystal inside it and a rainbow. I had rented out my house for that evening. A group met to do some kind of Hallowmas circle. I took an amethyst cluster from my altar as a gift instead of the double quartz crystal. However, it no longer sat on my altar when I returned. I wished I’d given it to His Holiness directly but then maybe it did get to him. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
We drove up the Oregon coast, spending the night somewhere along the way before Seaside. When we got to Seaside the next day for the event, we were engulfed in a feud, and not speaking to each other. We found other people we knew at the hotel, and went to a large basement room where His Holiness would speak. The room filled with Tibetans who sat crossed legged on the floor. We did too, and I remember we ended up near the front of the room in the second row. I marveled at the Tibetan men, all in suits, sitting on the floor. We sat together still not talking. About two hundred people waited in that small underground room.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> His Holiness entered the room, we stood. The very moment the door opened the energy of the room shifted. Unconditional compassion washed over us. He bowed, we prostrated. I felt peaceful and energetic, totally different from what I was feeling a minute before. I’d never experienced such a clear shift of energy in a public situation. He talked about conditions in Tibet to the Tibetans in Tibetan for an hour which flew by. After that he gave several mantra empowerments for practioners. Then, everyone got up, the Tibetans forming a line with white katas in hand. At the front of the room, His Holiness greeted, talked to and blessed each person. Many Tibetans cried. We Western students held back, letting all the Tibetans go first. We too were invited to receive his blessing and got in line.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Then, I was face to face with the Dalai Lama. I can’t remember if I had a kata but I did give him the chunk of amethyst. He touched my hand and mala. I said “Thank you.” His face, inches from mine, beamed. My conscious awareness jumped to a higher frequency. I felt I’d entered Nirvana. Or heaven. Anyway, a higher energy realm. This reminded my being that death, the end of the physical body, is not the end of consciousness or experience. His blessing cleared my mind/heart. It affirmed knowledge and wisdom, as well as the power of compassion. I floated back in a trance to where other sangha friends stood. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /> The line dwindled and I noticed that my partner still hadn’t gone through. I asked, “Aren’t you going to get his blessing?” He answered, “No, because you want me to”. Amazed, I replied without thought, “I wouldn’t let being angry at me stand in the way of getting the Dalai Lama’s blessing” Then he got in line. I couldn’t read his response to the experience. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> Outside it was a beautiful, sunny Sunday. When we drove back to Eugene that afternoon, I sang almost all the way back. I wasn’t sure how to talk about this experience with my partner who still seemed angry at me. I expressed my joy singing. To talk about it anyway would have trivialized it. </span><br />
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Recently I watched, Heart of Tibet, a video tape of the Kalachakra Empowerment in 1989 in Los Angeles with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. On the tape he says that if he can make someone even temporarily happy that’s fine with him. A truly amazing being. I felt his distinctive energy that day long ago-- his infinite willingness to help right in the moment. His genuine loving-kindness gave me what I needed. Om Mani Padme Hung. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">(I am reporting what I remember happened. It was a very hectic time in my life, the 1980's. I discovered Oaxaca too with my partner. For all the hard and beautiful things in my relationship with my X, I am grateful. We had many really amazing experiences together before separating. I can say we loved each other. After a long hiatus, we became friends a few years ago ) </span><br />
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Mitzi Linnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05167793497585467643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2040755657314705824.post-30298871633120595982014-02-27T11:11:00.000-08:002014-03-09T12:38:28.443-07:00It Could Have Been Friday the 13th<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">La Danza de La Pluma en Teotitlan</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> <span style="font-size: x-large;"><i><b>It Could Have Been Friday the 13th</b></i></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"> (a true story involving Teotitlan, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">dedicated to Richard Enzer) </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"> <span style="font-size: large;">by Mitzi Linn</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It seems like a long time ago that this all happened, in a fabled land called Xaguire. There, for awhile, Time and Space intertwined with each other, meandered together along the river in Teotitlan del Valle. They paraded along the town’s earthen paths and cobble stone streets, greeting the gentle inhabitants with kind words beginning with familiar “zaa” sounds. They seemed like <i>novios </i>laughing secretly together. They stopped alongside the creek to kiss deeply for the longest time. Their brown innocent faces smiled at the Sierra Juarez rising north above the hills on which the Pueblo rested. Along the shady paths they heard the shuttle of foot looms, weavers were making beautiful serapes and tapetes to sell to tourists wandering around in their dreamland. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">When they got tired of walking they decided to fly up to visit the cave of Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, hidden under the pointed top of Gi’Bets, the sacred mountain. They recalled millenniums of people living down below along the river. They counted the little corn fields, with their rock walls and copious flowering trees providing shade along the pathways. All seemed tranquil, all appeared to be in its own place and its own time. They sighed, making love, and disappeared into the clouds.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Enter Quetzalcoatl himself. Quetzalcoatl is said to have visited the Oaxaca area sometime in the mythic past. He passed through the area exiled from his original home. He gave up being the ruler of Tulan, leaving in shame after he was deceived into breaking a taboo by Tezcatlipoca, his brother. Tezcatlipoca (Smoking Mirror) and his followers wanted to introduce human sacrifice to the worship of the Gods. Quetzalcoatl was against it. Indeed it’s said that he only wanted sacrifices of flowers and fruits of the harvest, that he was against harming any creatures. When he saw his people turn to worship his brother and sacrifice humans, he left. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Traveling through Meso-America, he taught arts, agricultural and cultural skills and his peaceful vision to people in various places. One of the Quetzalcoatls, the God’s priest or incarnation, is said to be buried under the more than 2000 year old Tule tree in the Oaxaca Valley. That’s only a stone’s throw from Teotitlan. It’s not hard to imagine him meditating in the cave under Gi’bets, or visiting the temple beyond it. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">After spreading his vision through Mexico, Queztalcoatl arrived at the coast of Veracruz and disappeared into the morning star. A long time afterwards, Hernan Cortes arrived at the same place off the coast of Veracruz on the exact day and year predicted for Queztalcoatl’s return. The Aztecs feared that day when Quetzalcoatl would reappear. It was predicted to be the end of their empire. And so it was. The Zapotecs, Mixtecs and many others joined the Spanish to help destroy them. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Enough of the myth/history. Enter now my friend Richard driving on the paved road into Teotitlan one Friday morning in the 1990’s. In front of him a large serpent was crossing the road. Most Teotitecas (people from Teotitlan) went out of their way to run over these striking creatures. They believe that serpents portend bad luck, a result of the Catholic mythology they had to adopt when Hernan Cortes and the Dominicans arrived. Many have forgotten the Feathered Serpent was a beloved being, part of their ancient belief system. Some no longer remember the legend of Quetzalcoatl and that the cave on Gi’bets belonged to him. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Richard, an American rug designer with shamanistic and mythological tendencies, saw the beautiful snake and stopped his Volkswagen van to watch it disappear into a campo. It was Altagracia who later told me about this. Her comment was that she knew something bad would happen because Richard didn’t kill the snake. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It’s likely she said that to Richard too, though he might have just nodded and considered it another local superstition. He was more interested in the dyed wool hanging on the wooden railings near Alta’s dying vats. Richard’s company, Line of the Spirit, used a rich color palate that was mostly red, indigo blue, gold and white. Occasionally turquoise or dark green found their way into the designs. Alta’s family worked for Richard along with Sergio and his brother Cosme. Richard and Sergio worked out designs together and then had other weavers make the rugs. Sergio’s family loved Richard. He’d lived with them over a couple years according to Sergio’s mother. Their work together brought this family a certain level of prosperity. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The Line of the Spirit rugs never hung in showrooms to be sold in Teotitlan. These special rugs made of thick, hand-spun wool from Chichicapa, then dyed with Swiss-made aniline dyes, found their way to upscale American markets. Richard had once sold Persian carpets in New York, then worked with an expert in wool dying in Taos, New Mexico. He studied the designs of the Navaho. Asuncion, Sergio’s mother, said she thought he learned to dye wool in Teotitlan with Zacarias Martinez or Pedro Guttierrez, both masters in the dyeing process. I don’t know eactly how he came to live and work in Teotitlan but he arrived in the 70’s. He learned many new things from weavers in Teotitlan whose weavings predate the Navahos by hundreds of years. He also taught them things he’d picked up in his studies and in his work developing new methods, designs and color combinations while living in Taos.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I first saw these amazing t<i>apetes(weavings)</i> in photos Richard showed me as we flew out of Oaxaca on the early morning flight in spring 1988. I’d met both him and Sergio at El Sol y La Luna Restaurant just the night before. The photos of the rugs amazed me. His combination of color and images delighted me. We talked about the symbols he used in the rugs, unlike anything I’d seen in Teotitlan. I’d been studying and teaching Tarot and other symbolic systems for more than twenty years. He felt like a kindred spirit, a brother. During that hour flight I remember saying to him that I loved Oaxaca and really wanted to live there. He said, “if it’s your destiny, you will.” </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It was my destiny to live in Oaxaca. As fate would have it I rented Richard’s apartment on Constitution near Santo Domingo during the fall of 1988. Sergio and Mito came by to store those beautiful Line of the Spirit rugs in the extra bedroom before shipping them to the United States. Richard left to sell the rugs in Santa Fe, Taos and Denver. Then he was going to Turkey to research making rugs there. I promised to pay Josefina (the housekeeper) to take care of the house, cover the rent and take care of his place. I even ended up caring for Noche, his large black Great Dane, who quaked and shook every time fireworks went off. That was every weekend before Christmas since there is an old church on every block in downtown Oaxaca. All have their regular fiestas, complete with marching bands, skyrockets, dances and processions often starting before daylight.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">His apartment was a great place to live, in an old building close to everything. Richard furnished the place in tasteful but funky Mexican antiques. I had everything I needed. Josefina turned out to be a jewel though I barely spoke Spanish at the time. I paid her the same as Richard and asked her to come only three days a week. We became friends as time went by. I had the place a few months before Richard reappeared. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Richard came back in late January with his Italian girlfriend, Lilia. They stayed out in Teotitlan at a house he rented there. I knew I could not live with Richard and Lilia so I set out to find another place. First, I went to have a chat with the Virgin of the Rosario in her gold leaf chapel at Santo Domingo. I went on a Monday, saying I needed to find another furnished apartment by the next Monday. Something for around $100 USD per month. I sat there entranced as her image seemed to float out and hover in front of me. I trusted that she would attend to my needs. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">That Saturday around noon I ran into musician Paul Cohen at Bar Jardin on the Zocalo. He mentioned that he was leaving for the States the next day. He came and went frequently back then and thought he might want to come back to his apartment in May. I told him I was looking for a place to live until May. Well, his apartment was available as a sublet. Several people said they wanted it and he was waiting to hear. I said I could give him three months rent in travelers checks. He promised to come by Richard’s to let me know before going to play at El Sol y La Luna that night. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Around eight o’clock Paul knocked on my door. I’d gotten the apartment. Then we headed over to El Sol y La Luna on Murgia where he played saxophone with Mescalito, a mostly local group of jazz and Latin jazz musicians. I danced with other like minded rumberos during their sets of Cuban music. Richard and Lilia arrived and joined me at my table. I told them I would move out the following Monday. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">After moving to Paul’s I found myself in new role with Richard, that of healer, counselor and friend. I hadn’t realized that his drug of choice had been heroin since his stint in Vietnam. It was the first time I had ever worked with anyone addicted to hard drugs. Heroin was hardly available then in Oaxaca so he drank alot of Cuba Libres. Or mescal, that smooth, liquid God of agave that permeates the fiesta life of Teotitlan. We worked on his emotional issues around addiction. <span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-family: Geneva; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Richard had a kind of larger-than-everyday-life personality, something like a movie star. Charming and charismatic this blond, blue-eyed, creative, party-loving American always had a girlfriend and usually an entourage of friends. He sometimes lived in a party scene that went on for days which I avoided. In spite of his partying, Richard worked hard in Teotitlan.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-family: Geneva; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">As part of Richard’s healing process, and for the adventure of it, I dreamed up doing a full moon ceremony at Monte Alban. I convinced Richard and Lilia that we should do it that spring. A friend of Richard’s who once sold jewelry outside the ruins at Monte Alban happened to come to town. Alberto knew the night watchmen and the Monte Alban scene, so he came along arranging our safe passage. We bribed the guards and their dogs with a bottle of mescal and a roasted chicken from the first Pollo Brujo in Colonia Reforma. It had been dark several hours when we left the city and drove to the mountain top ruin.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Monte Alban, begun in at least 500 BCE, occupies a leveled mountain top south of Oaxaca city. It has many layers in its physical structure and energy complex. The north and south pyramids have been restored along with major temple complexes, an observatory and ball court on the main plaza. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">This ancient sky city is impressive by day when you can see the Oaxacan valleys a couple thousand feet below and watch clouds hurry across the sky. Now the full moon bathed it in a magical shimmer. Different temple complexes perch on the edges of the huge plaza. Behind them, the earth drops away down the mountain, giving one the impression of floating in another realm. The night amplified the sensation of being in deep space. City lights twinkled like earth stars far below. I often visited the mountaintop ruins in the daytime to meditate and to dream. Being there gave me vision, insight and healing in my own life. I usually went to the pyramid in the middle of the plaza to meditate.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The moon was high in the sky when we four got to the middle pyramid structure in the main plaza. We used one of Richard’s rugs to sit on. We improvised an altar and used an incense burner to offer copal incense to the directions and the attendant spirits. We smudged ourselves with the copal, and sat in silence. Following this I led us in releasing negative qualities from our lives by burning small bits of paper to signify each thing cleansed. Sitting in silence again, the moon drenched night enveloped us. We then lit candles evoking love, peace, harmony and healing for all beings.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">We ended the ritual by making sounds. I toned while Lilia created a dance on top of the ancient pyramid. Richard and Alberto beat out rhythms. Time and space merged. Finally, we thanked the spirit beings who’d been attending, descended the steep steps and finished the ritual by walking around this middle pyramid three times before exiting the plaza. As we rounded the south end, we encountered five young Europeans who’d hidden down below the plaza when the ruin closed at 5 PM. They’d heard our sounds and wondered....? Tripping on LSD they thought we were the Ancients’ spirits. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Getting back to the Friday that could have been the 13th. I was out in Teotitlan wandering around. I had hiked part way up Gi’Bets to meditate. I love that mountain. My presence in Teotitlan was a kind of mystery since I wasn’t a rug dealer. I was noticed though. One man said upon our meeting, “oh, you’re the one that meditates up on the mountain.” Some people thought of me as a curandera as I tried to help relieve pain through hands-on energy treatments, massage and often just listening to people’s problems. Many times what I could do helped. I felt grateful to be trusted and accepted in these ways in the Pueblo. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I remember walking along a back street that day, and running into Richard and Sergio in their van. Richard was livid, showing me a weaving of Line of Spirit design which he found hanging for sale in a weaver’s house on the main street. This was not a weaver he worked with. He had yanked it from the wall, declaring that his designs were not to be copied by anyone. Sergio had waited in the van outside. They were on their way to make a complaint at el municipo, the government, at that moment. That afternoon when Sergio returned to pay the family for the rug, no one told him that a warrant for Richard’s arrest was in the works. It was already too late to stop legal proceedings that began taking place soon afterward Richard’s alleged assault on Soyla, the woman from whom he’d taken the rug.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Soyla declared that Richard shoved her and stole many rugs. The gathering that produced the demanda (warrant) for Richard’s arrest probably took place in Edmundo’s patio. The lawyer, one of Arnulfo Mendoza’s brothers, drew up the legal document. I can imagine the glee some were feeling at being able to finally “get” pinche Richard. Soyla’s uncle, as part of the municipal government, had had to chose to believe Richard, a foreigner, or his niece. He agreed with others that Richard was lying. Richard was to be arrested for stealing and battery, and put in the town jail. None of us knew about this until later.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">A number of Teotitecas probably had grudges against Richard for past pecadillos. (sins) Well, Richard probably did some things that caused these bad feelings. He also had the audacity to send the Line of the Spirit rugs away so they couldn’t be copied in the village. He was a foreign designer with a business exporting high quality weavings. I’m sure this didn’t sit well with the rich, traditional Zapotec wholesalers at that time. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">As a designer Richard’s actual influence on rug making in Teo is substantial. There’s a colorful book called Zapotec Weavers in which this is documented, and where one can see some of Richard’s designs as well as tapetes by other notable Teotiteca designers and weavers.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">That day I don’t remember thinking that anything would come of Richard yanking the rug from Soyla’s wall. I spent the afternoon with Sergio’s family learning some Zapotec words from his nephew Claudio who was five years old. His father had moved to the United States leaving Claudio and his brother Angel to live with their grandmother, Asuncion. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Asuncion, a short, traditional Zapotec woman with her hair braided in ribbons, usually wears the traditional women’s costume, an embroidered blouse, plaid wool skirt and bright pink sash. Communicating in our various ways over the years, we still always laugh about Spanish being each of ours second language. Her first is Zapotec. I used to sit on a kid’s chair and visit while Asuncion and Tomasa (Sergio’s first wife) made tlayudas over a fire on their comal. (a large round flat clay grill)</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Visiting with them often while they made the daily supply of <i>tlayudas</i> (plate sized tortillas) seemed both like a familiar everyday event and an exotic treat. These delicious dinner staples started as corn kernels boiled with lime and soaked overnight. The women kneaded the dissolved corn kernels from a runny paste of crushed kernels into a dough, siphoning off the corn juice. They used a mano, which looks like a rolling pin but is made out of stone. Working in tandem while kneeling on woven mats (petates) , one rolled out the corn dough on a <i style="font-style: normal;">metate</i>, with a heavy <i style="font-style: normal;">mano</i> . Then the other patted the dough into a large thin tortilla and laid the uncooked tlcayuda carefully on the comal balanced on three rocks over a small fire. There it baked, turned by their nearly scorched, but expert fingers. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I tried the routine more than once. Those <i>manos</i> weigh a ton. We laughed together about how inept I was. We laughed about many other things as well. Sometimes we cried together too. Sitting in their patio on a kids chair, being included in their lives, and eating those <i>tlayudas </i> fresh from the comal gave my spirit a new lease on life.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Now to snake our way back to the main theme. Richard had invited me and his many other friends from Oaxaca as well as all the weavers and families he worked with in Teotitlan for a barbecue at his place in Oaxaca that Saturday. This fiesta was in honor of his French daughter Rebecca’s birthday. She and her mother were visiting for a month or so. Altagracia was going to barbecue some young goats. After they were blessed and killed, their bodies would be baked with many tasty herbs and chilies in a deep pit overnight. The meat comes out extremely tender and tasty. It was going to be a Teotiteca fiesta at his new home on Pino Suarez. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I guess the first thing that went amiss in Richard’s patio that Friday evening had to do with the young goats and Alta’s teenage son Jose. It seems he was playing with the chivitos (little goats) and fell from a balcony onto concrete below. Rushed to the hospital, Jose had a concussion. He recovered fairly rapidly but this certainly put a dint in hardworking Alta’s party. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I arrived at Richard’s barbecue Saturday afternoon. Along the bamboo fence/wall sat the women of Teotitlan, many with their trensas (braids with bright ribbons woven in) wrapped around the top of their heads like crowns. Some wore their black ikat rebozos as head dresses, like turbans with the ends draped across their shoulders. They looked like a line of Zapotec royalty, reminding me of stone carvings and clay statutes of their ancestors. In true pueblo custom their husbands sat across from them against a white wall. Each wore his fedora (felt hat) in his own special way. I went over to greet Asuncion and Tomasa and the other women. A man served us mescal. Toasting “salud” I downed a shot. I returned the glass which he presented full again to Asuncion. <i>“T’chi ve’o”,</i> she offered the Zapotec toast making a sign of the cross. I shook hands with the entire line of women and their husbands. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Sergio was talking to Richard in the living room when I walked in the house. Most of the city friends sat in chairs and on the sofa. I greeted Julietta and Rebecca. Josefina gave me a plate of food. I don’t usually like goat meat but Alta’s tasty barbacoa changed my opinion. The party went on with everyone talking, eating, drinking. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">My ex-husband arrived with his girlfriend who lived down the street from me. He’d come to Oaxaca to live also. I wasn’t sure he wasn’t following me. My Oaxacan friends thought so. I couldn’t figure it out. He was downright friendly that afternoon though he often pretended he didn’t know me. After eating and visiting awhile inside, beer in hand, I went back outside to the patio to get some fresh air. I wanted to be with Asuncion and Tomasa and the Teotitecas. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">At some point I noticed that Miriam arrived. She worked as liaison person and secretary with Line of the Spirit. She seemed very serious. She and Richard disappeared into the office together. She came out a little later without Richard. I went over and asked her what was happening. Miriam had gotten a phone call for Richard at her house. Micheal, Richard’s 22 year old son, had died instantly in Denver late that Friday night after crashing his motorcycle, head on, into a cement wall. Drugged or drunk, he was trying to ditch the cops. Micheal was a troubled and flamboyant young man. He’d been in Oaxaca visiting recently. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I found Richard in his office. What does one say on these occasions? I put my arms around him as Julietta, Michelle, and other friends came in. We all held him and each other. Those of us who knew Micheal entered a state of shock. As it got dark we started asking most people to leave, explaining the circumstances, that the party was over. Most of the Teotitecas had begun to leave before dark anyway to catch the last bus home. It started raining lightly. I remember Sergio and his family leaving pretty upset. They considered Micheal a part of their extended family. Asuncion was crying. We were all in a state of disbelief. Now what? </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Micheal’s funeral would be on Monday. Richard had to be in Denver by the end of the next day. Miriam made plane reservations for the Sunday morning flight north. At the house Michelle Tommi and I transformed the party into a wake for Micheal. We made an altar with his picture and began a process of saying good-bye, praying for his soul’s passage, lighting candles, and consoling Richard. The living room glowed. I got really tired and needed to go home. Many others kept Richard company throughout the night. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Josefina, Richard’s devoted housekeeper, stayed too late to catch her bus to the distant colonia where she lived. She had known Micheal well and was pretty upset. She is such a caring person. I sat with her, holding her hand. When she needed a taxi to get home, I gave her my last pesos. Later, I walked home alone to the Colonia Reforma, a mile or so after midnight. My black<i> ikat rebozo </i>wrapped around me felt protective. I never felt afraid walking in Oaxaca at night. I promised to return early Sunday morning to see Richard before he left. I got back just in time. It was a hard morning.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Monday I headed out to Teotitlan as I had planned. I got on my favorite bus, “Amor Sin Palabras” (Love without Words) still mulling over Micheal’s sudden death and Richard’s problems. As we headed out along the Pan American Highway I looked at the Sierra Juarez from the bus window. The bus was noisy with young people on their way back from school in the city. The driver played a tape by his favorite musicians.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">As I got into Teo I stopped at Sergio’s uncle’s house on the outskirts. Andres was an eccentric master weaver. I’d met him and his wife Anita at Sergio and Tomasa’s civil wedding years before. I often stopped to say hello. They seemed more impoverished than others I knew. When I got there, Anita was home alone in the kitchen. She asked me, her eyes dancing with glee, if I’d heard what happened to Sergio? Well, no. It seems he had been arrested on Sunday by the Teotitlan government and put in the town jail, for stealing rugs and assaulting the woman who owned the rugs. O my god. Sergio arrested! I was flying out the door. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Anita’s happiness astounded me. I couldn’t believe someone could be so happy to have a nephew arrested. I left her kitchen and have never gone there again. Anita held a grudge against Sergio for not giving her rides into town when he passed by, he explained later. She always gossiped and he really didn’t like being with her, so he never picked her up. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The next place I went was the Montano house and restaurant, El Descanso. They said Sergio’d been arrested because they couldn’t find Richard to arrest him. He’d been put in the town jail. Sergio was taking Richard’s place. Now there’s real tribal/ Zapotec justice. Perhaps they also told me that Sergio had been transferred to a jail near Oaxaca with serious charges against him. This sounded very dangerous to me. Human rights are disregarded in Oaxacan jails, and anything can happen. I ran out of their patio and hurried out to Sergio and Tomasa’s house at the foot of Gi’bets. I needed to see if I could help or what was being done. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">When I arrived at their house Tomasa told me that Miriam had been working on getting Sergio out of jail, getting a good lawyer and preparing to pay the usual bribe. Miriam grew up in Oaxaca, in a family of white Oaxaquenos who knew everyone, including the judge. Knowing the right people is always considered a plus in Mexico. Another of Richard’s friends, Rafael, was helping. Also a white Oaxaqueno he had many contacts in the Judicial System. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Ah, Rafael. I remember meeting Rafael at Richard’s a year before, and thinking he was a <i>mal hombre</i> , though I couldn’t figure out why I felt that way. He was quite charming. Pablo, a jazz musician who grew up in Oaxaca, told me Rafael and friends are part of the Oaxaca mafia. Sergio never believed that Rafael could be part of the mafia when I mentioned it years later. He had helped rescue Sergio and done them other favors. Rafael’s wife Lupita had a dance studio where I took flamenco lessons. At some point my American flamenco teacher got to be friends with Lupita who wanted to divorce Rafael. She reported that Rafael threatened to kill Lupita daily Lupita was afraid to flee even to the US because he would send someone to kill her. I had gone out to dinner with all of them, Sergio, Richard, Rafael, Lupita, and others a couple of times. I had no idea what was going on. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">By that Tuesday night, thanks to everyone’s efforts, Sergio was out of jail and back home, sick from drinking bad water. He’d been beaten up. Needless to say on Wednesday, when I saw Sergio and Tomasa together I got more of the story. Line of the Spirit bought the copied rug, paid a fine and now waited for Richard to return in a couple weeks. Sergio wasn’t angry at Richard. But he developed a healthy distrust of some of the other people in the pueblo. Some of the very people who drew up the demanda (warrant) for Richard’s arrest, and then had Sergio arrested instead, have on-going bad feelings with Sergio’s parents. An ancient land dispute between neighbors.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">We were all curious just how that rug got to be copied anyway, since these designs were secrets, woven by a group of more or less loyal weavers who didn’t show their weavings to others. The rug that caused all the turmoil was copied from a rug Richard had given his lawyer in Oaxaca. She had a copy woven in Teotitlan. As for trusting those you should be able to trust? I don’t want to appear cynical but.....In Mexico, it is always best to wait and see just who can be trusted and who for<i> la envidia</i>, (envy) will try to destroy you, while greeting you with a kiss.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; font-style: normal;">After Richard got back from the funeral in Colorado he realized that his working collection of photographs of rug designs was missing. (The ones he’d shown me on the plane) He couldn’t remember where he last saw them. Had he left them on a table at El Descanso? Or had they been lifted from the seat of the van, parked somewhere in the village? He didn’t know, Sergio didn’t know, Miriam also had no idea what happened to that stack of photos. Richard’s rightful paranoia was that many copies of his designs would start appearing in the homes of weavers along Avenida Juarez, the main thoroughfare of Teotitlan. Then the other wholesalers would also produce them en masse and this would make his expensive Line of the Spirit rugs alot less valuable in the American rug market. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">This never happened in a big way though rugs with symbols and in styles first used by Richard and Sergio are seen. Altagracia, who still dyes wool for the Line of the Spirit and sells her <i>barbacoa</i> at the market in Teotitlan on Sundays, explained that many weavers don’t really want to do the kind of intricate, non-linear designs used in those weavings. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Now to weave in a few other loose ends as this tale winds down. Richard sold the Oaxaca part of the Line of the Spirit to Susanna Starr who owns Starr Interiors gallery on the main street of Taos, New Mexico. Jacinto, one of Altagracia's sons, now oversees weavers and their work for Susanna. Sergio developed his own rug business turning out creative new designs sold in San Miguel de Allende and the US. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">One time, a couple years later, I actually saw one of the missing photos on the floor of the workshop at another friend’s house. Nothing on his looms resembled anything of the Line though.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Richard left Oaxaca in the early 90’s, not long after these events. I think these happenings in Teotitlan helped him to decide to move his home base back to Colorado. Then, Richard went to Romania to make knotted rugs. I remember having a dream after Richard left Oaxaca. In my dream he waved goodbye as he disappeared through a door into a bright light. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I was happily surprised to see him again in Santa Fe in 1995. He was showing his new rugs from Romania at Packards on the Plaza. He’d built a house on some land in Colorado and gotten clean of heroin, and even given up drinking. I considered this remarkable. He said that Micheal’s death pushed him to change. Perhaps his young, pregnant Romanian wife helped also. He thanked me again for our work together over dinner at a Chinese restaurant with his wife and friends. The beautiful rugs I got in our trade still make me feel wealthy. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Friday the 13th actually happened last November when I was in Oaxaca. I didn’t detect anything particularly strange or dramatic. Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, inspired me to make beautiful paintings and gave me a new career as an artist. Gi’bets, the mountain at whose feet much of this gossip took place, claims my heart. Walking on the mountain again last fall, I heard those ancient lovers, Time and Space, singing in the wind. </span></div>
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Mitzi Linnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05167793497585467643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2040755657314705824.post-56027225062900086372012-10-09T16:34:00.001-07:002014-02-27T10:32:39.188-08:00A Photo and Poem...<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSi7Qxjr4x86mp5svK8_SMlnz3lK_jIVqY6H-UqPZpePz7-TIDBuPCljnqD-O3ZtMzYdOH_CCJfzmN9dBp3u6t56pOysiibZ2yxFLJKzEQuRrr0gTK1zkMOuSm07KVDYFep56e9Vy6xAlc/s1600/Mitzi+as+Hippy+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSi7Qxjr4x86mp5svK8_SMlnz3lK_jIVqY6H-UqPZpePz7-TIDBuPCljnqD-O3ZtMzYdOH_CCJfzmN9dBp3u6t56pOysiibZ2yxFLJKzEQuRrr0gTK1zkMOuSm07KVDYFep56e9Vy6xAlc/s400/Mitzi+as+Hippy+2.jpg" height="400" width="370" /></a><br />
From my hippy daze</div>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
Woodstock </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
The Catskills offer their special beauty in autumn.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Small farms lie in narrow mountain valleys. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Trees decked out in red, lavendar, orange, gold, yellow</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">and bronze cover the mountains. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Leaves wait for the Fall.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Days shorten, cider ripens. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Suns and Moons fill the sky. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
The dry air made me breathless. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">I bit into those forbidden apples behind the house, and</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">flirted with knowledge hidden in magical books.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">I made woodcuts before going to yoga up on Byrd Cliff.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
From our place we could walk to town.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">The Band lived at Saugerties, and Dylan, up the Mountain.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">We listened to their records in our apartment,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> part of an old farm. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />As the cold set in I spent hours staring into the fire,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">listening to the Magical Mystery Tour,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">I played my own mind’s version of reality.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">“Hey Jude” topped the AM radio charts. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
Snow and ice froze the roads.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">I had my first tamales at a Christmas feast </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">with Ernie and Mara. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Ernie, a Mexican Indian, made lithographs at the </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">printmakers workshop where I worked. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Their cabin was cold. Their tamales, sabrosas.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">We gave them firewood.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
Past Hanakah, Christmas and New Year’s,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Woodstock gleamed with new snow.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">I was turning twenty-four. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">My husband’s brittle silence cowed me.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">I didn’t know what was wrong</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">On the weekend I left home to seek out new friends.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
Foundering, lost in unspeakable internal dismay,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">I sought refuge at the Happiness House</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Where some local hippies and artists shared a new, </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">more open, creative community</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
Accustomed to lost souls arriving unannounced for dinner,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">They settled me with a bowl of brown rice and steamed veggies.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">I studied this hippie family around the unpainted table.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">They wore expresssive clothes. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">There were men and women, young and older.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">No one cared that I was still straight, or new to town.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">I was accepted, included. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
When I felt bad about being from a Midwestern nowhere, </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">You won my heart saying that it couldn’t be </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">as bad as being from Great Neck, NY. Could it?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
The exact date this happened faded out years ago.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">I’ve seasoned through thirty winters since.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Through yearly cycles of learning and insights, </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">I gathered inside experiences and memories. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">I hold them with a tender love, </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">precious riches of my soul.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
Still</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">That cold Friday night,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">You invited me along to a party.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">My memory is of music, marijuana and</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Sacred moments. Later, alone together</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">the One emerged from two.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
Someone ancient and wild, innocent, broke loose inside me.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">I felt a new holy woman get up to share </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">the morning’s bath tub.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
Perhaps She, who I’d found in all those Goddess books,</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">came to know herself in me. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">I woke up to direct, unconditioned experience. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">My inner ice world melted.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">A new river of awareness flowed out towards </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">what is still an unknowable destination.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
Eugene 1998</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> </span>Mitzi Linnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05167793497585467643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2040755657314705824.post-5078978071336813512012-03-20T11:51:00.000-07:002013-11-15T11:29:34.027-08:00Oaxaca Journal/Journey (from Mi Querida Oaxaca)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO7j2PKCQkjR8vtUmUiQEFXuzC0QUUFgDRLk82-tbaXM6ZYDWOjkown7LzSMOkIUsU7XjQbDDU4aMQwaWLoT-49YbXieNm6jkHn5muhzplARxASaWX9Bi05sn-2gDltnt95ZGInu2r2Pz6/s1600/calendajpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO7j2PKCQkjR8vtUmUiQEFXuzC0QUUFgDRLk82-tbaXM6ZYDWOjkown7LzSMOkIUsU7XjQbDDU4aMQwaWLoT-49YbXieNm6jkHn5muhzplARxASaWX9Bi05sn-2gDltnt95ZGInu2r2Pz6/s1600/calendajpg.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Following the Fiesta</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> (Journal Entry)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> One of the first nights back in Oaxaca last November, I chanced upon a joyful procession with sky rockets and a marching band coming up M. Alcala, the pedestrian street of downtown Oaxaca. A society of people from the Istmus of Tehuantepec was having its annual fandango (dance and party). Beautiful young women in traditional embroidered, flowered velvet long skirts and tops and gold jewelry strutted their stuff up the street in front of those towering paper-mache puppets, called marmotes. These puppets appear at all these kinds of fiestas, their brightly painted faces smiling high above the parading crowd. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> Without a thought I found myself tagging along behind the last couple saying to a man that I want to be a Zapotec in my next life. The procession found its way to the churchyard of Carmen Alta on Garcia Vigil. This part of the fandango involved paying tribute to Carmen, with various women carrying flowers down the church aisle to Carmen on the front altar. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> Carmen Alta church was built over a shrine to a local, pre-Spanish goddess for whom the Guelaguetza. was staged. This gathering brought together Zapotecs from all over the area. They celebrated for days-- dancing, feasting and trading goods produced in their various pueblos. The guelaguetza is still celebrated annually on a nearby mountain top at the open air amphitheater with beautifully costumed indigenous dancers who throw the audience gifts from their particular area at the end of their exciting dance. Straw hats, oranges, pineapples are just a few offerings throw by the exultant dancers. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> Meantime in the church yard, the band kept playing while the puppets and the young women danced. A large twirling painted ball was held aloft on a long, thick pole, turned by a young man who also danced the traditional jarabe at the same time. He had to be strong and balanced. When the band stopped he rested the giant globe’s pole on the paving stones in the hands of a friend. Another dancer took up twirling the globe and dancing when the band started up again.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> I sat on the rim an empty fountain. I thought I might talk to some of the women but started trading observations with a mature man sitting on the fountain rim near me. He asked where I came from, calling me “chula”. I smiled to still be thought of as attractive. Only in Latin America. A woman came around with a bottle of mescal and tiny shot glasses made from bamboo pieces--the perfectly natural throwaway glass. I toasted “mi querida Oaxaca” to the indigo sky. My companion of the moment, Emiliano, and I toasted “salud” to each other. He said that he lives now at Zaachila, though he came from the Isthmus. A farmer, he related that the summer’s drought had meant no harvest this year for those in the valley’s agriculture production. No money......and no help from the government. I remember him commenting “now begins the suffering” a direct translation from Spanish. Still, given the party situation, he seemed cheerful.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> About ten PM the fiesta began breaking up, and I wafted up Garcia Vigil </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">towards Calle Matamoros to a boarding house where I spent a few days. The mescal left me light headed and, though I know downtown Oaxaca really well, I almost got lost.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> ************************</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> In late afternoon today I joined a protest march to El Palacio de Gobierno on the Zocalo. We are protesting lack of garbage pick up. Trash is piling up along downtown streets and in the Zocalo. Standing there in front of the Palacio de Gobierno, another protester gave me the low down. It seems that a bunch of people who recently moved near the dump site, no longer want it to function as a dump. It smells and it’s ruining their new neighborhood. Never mind the dump’s been there 15 years.....and they just moved in. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> It’s la politica as always. Political garbage. The Governor (Murat), from the PRI party and the Mayor of Oaxaca from a different political party, are at odds. The Governor donated the land outside the City to the 50 families who want the dump closed, never mind a health hazard to the rest of us. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> They shouldn’t have moved there in the first place, says Oaxaca’s mayor, Gabino Cue and los cuidanos. My solution would be take all the garbage and pile it at the Governor’s house still on Ave. Juarez nearby. That would get things moving. My idea provoked a few laughs from other protesters. One sign requested that the Governor drop his bad feelings towards the Mayor (Dejar de sus rencores.......) and get the garbage off the street. </span>Mitzi Linnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05167793497585467643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2040755657314705824.post-20476546323585702802011-12-25T14:45:00.001-08:002011-12-29T16:35:05.898-08:00Winter Passages--Poems by Mitzi Linn<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibfT-kLLzrIUdKOuGX8JroGyP1uicrYAVFme2IoiBPueDNgDmHUUjEOZ8EAlsssw4gKLnAipJ1sjCcx1-YWmpNmrslQvh5Dg627z8-5LpNjBprKtE5RadWXyZ9yQvFpR-uumArM3XNIt4g/s1600/Door--Santa+Fe.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 255px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibfT-kLLzrIUdKOuGX8JroGyP1uicrYAVFme2IoiBPueDNgDmHUUjEOZ8EAlsssw4gKLnAipJ1sjCcx1-YWmpNmrslQvh5Dg627z8-5LpNjBprKtE5RadWXyZ9yQvFpR-uumArM3XNIt4g/s400/Door--Santa+Fe.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5690201041219418290" border="0" /></a><br />Door in a wall in Santa Fe NM. From a card.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;font-size:180%;" > Winter Passages</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span> <span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" > Eugene</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br />Fog wraps the earth at winter solstice. The<br />Darkness wants to settle in for a long visit.<br />Like a former lover’s return, the<br />Fear of his moving in & taking over<br />hides in my accomodating smile.<br />Voicing welcome, but thinking,<br /> ‘O God, not him again!’<br /><br />Darkness sports rain gear in western Oregon.<br />He puts forth gruff but good-hearted intentions.<br />Shouts and rattles the windows,<br />Stomps his muddy feet through the kitchen,<br />reminding me that those dark firs outside are his children.<br />They transform his rain into light green tips on thick branches.<br /><br />They know me. They’re the very children I deserted last year<br />for sunshine, palm trees and bougainvilla.<br /><br />Light boxes, candles for the Blessed Virgin,<br />strings of Christmas lights gracing houses on dark streets,<br />Nothing really puts my fear to rest.<br /><br />Darkness has returned. He whispers, “sleep more”.<br />I wear more clothes, drink hot teas and enter, yes,<br />the waiting time. Should I go passive or flee?<br /><br />He’s like that old lover, the mysterious one who<br />promised to reveal himself someday, but never<br />stuck around to. Or, when confronted,<br />masked his identity behind a surprise storm of angry feelings.<br /><br />I know him and I know me.<br />Summer lies deeply imbeded in my being.<br />I see its light, feel its warmth and<br />know I might fly somewhere to a warm beach tommorrow.<br />I feel the dry warmth of Oaxaca at mid-day.<br />It settled deeply into my bone marrow’s memory.<br /><br />With that strength I can look at the face<br />of this Darkness, not flee, nor go passive.<br />His visit will pass soon enough.<br />We make jokes while I hold the light inside myself.<br /><br />copyright Mitzi Linn 1998<br /><br /><br /><br /></span> <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" > Wolf Creek</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br />Remember Siskiyou Mountain winters?<br />Years without electric lights press my mind.<br />The blaze of kerosene lamps barely lifted<br />the darkness seeping through cabin windows.<br />Dwarfed by Douglas firs, hidden on the forest’s edge,<br />that tiny cabin cradled me through three winters.<br /><br />Night arrived by late afternoon on Winter Solstice.<br />We gathered more than once to chant and sing,<br />to evoke the Goddess and jump her bonfire.<br />We saw ourselves in mythic terms,<br />Made ourselves conscious Goddesses,<br />years before books explained just why we should.<br /><br />Those ancient, living mountains infolded us in natural rhythms.<br />We followed the seasons and the eight points of light.<br />Winter Solstice, Candlemas, Spring Equinox,<br />Belthane, Summer Solstice,Lamas, Autumn Equinox, Hallowmas,<br />Winter Solstice.......again......<br /><br />We rotated the year’s wheel at the Winter Solstice ceremony.<br />Joining hands, we moved circle inside circle,<br />facing each other as we chanted.<br /><br />“The Wheel is turning, the Wheel is turning......<br />what shall we give up tonight?”<br /><br />We shouted out from the circle dance that<br />we’d give up winter and darkness,<br />cabin fever and anger, poverty, sadness, sexism,<br />genocide and the Vietnam War.........<br /><br />Circling the lodge in almost total darkness,<br />Silence finally called us to sit,<br />Feeling warmth from the woodstove’s fire,<br />we lit each white candle to make blessings,<br />We made wishes for all beings’ healing,<br />For wisdom and growth, for new lovers,<br />and fixed trucks, for spring’s speedy return.<br />And for peace on our earth.<br /><br />copyright Mitzi Linn 1998</span>Mitzi Linnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05167793497585467643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2040755657314705824.post-83535907353668046042011-09-09T11:02:00.000-07:002011-09-09T11:05:53.796-07:00Observation--Poem by Mitzi Linn<span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" > Observation</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /> Sunlight glitters through spider webs,<br /> glistens in buzzing wings of small insects<br /> glimmers in movement of leaves, and<br /> bird wings rising.<br /><br /> A breeze quakes the golden aspen tree.<br /> The suchness of an autumn evening.<br /><br /> Shadows of winter cross in my mind.</span> <span style="font-size:130%;"><br /> The dark, the damp, the cold.....<br /><br /> Meanwhile a shimmering light<br /> occupies my eyes.<br /><br /><br /> Ashland, 1990</span>Mitzi Linnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05167793497585467643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2040755657314705824.post-41146008931175327232011-09-09T10:56:00.000-07:002011-09-09T11:01:50.645-07:00August Morning Moon--Poem by Mitzi Linn<span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >August Morning Moon</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br />fall morning feeling<br />august yet<br />yesterday these words were<br />blackberries jewel ripe<br />gems falling from green branch fingers<br />jewels for the mouth’s eyes<br />jewels for making pies<br /><br />and this morning<br />a wood fire burning through see-breath air<br />tomatoes ripening<br />solid green color turning red through minute changes<br />I never cease to wonder at all this,<br />lost in the hum of busy insects.<br /><br />gathering, gathering<br />gathering and then dispersing<br />energy and power<br />seed, flower, fruit, seed...<br />dying again and again<br />in order to feel reborn<br />in order to be free<br /><br />friend of sun and moon<br />my life is just this trip through space<br />rider on the earth planet<br />gone away from sorrow<br /><br />these songs of moving feeling moving<br />on wings too light to hold me forever.<br /><br /><br /> Published “ Womanspirit”<br /> Fall 1975</span>Mitzi Linnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05167793497585467643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2040755657314705824.post-15503673972810446652011-05-31T10:10:00.001-07:002011-06-01T08:43:05.680-07:00Following Southern Stars by Mitzi Linn<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtjrzjJpZAItgnvaUHUGzafd6SWl3BPy7gjM5LGwcE2DG2E50jhNee59hUyXxe2Y1YKYdC4o4S9tVRmNnFgk-K6jMKM48HHDHpUfT17uLVpRi1Mas55OPAhRQgYDI8_3fxBqsDtil1zS0g/s1600/guate+story%253Astars.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 162px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtjrzjJpZAItgnvaUHUGzafd6SWl3BPy7gjM5LGwcE2DG2E50jhNee59hUyXxe2Y1YKYdC4o4S9tVRmNnFgk-K6jMKM48HHDHpUfT17uLVpRi1Mas55OPAhRQgYDI8_3fxBqsDtil1zS0g/s400/guate+story%253Astars.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5612929125399629730" border="0" /></a> <span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"> A traveler’s experience in Guatemala during Holy Week</span><br /><br />I found myself at the Guatemalan border with Mexico, around noon, in the spring of 1988. I was traveling alone, and didn’t speak much Spanish. It was sunny, warm, but not hot. I’d arrived on the early bus from San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, on my way to Chichicastenango, Guatemala to observe Holy Week. I chose Chichi because it is more Native American than Antigua, and since first seeing Guatemalan textiles, I was most attracted to those from the K’iche Mayan region. I looked forward to the famous Sunday and Thursday market where I hoped to buy a nice weaving or two.<br /><br />Chichicastenango existed as a K’iche ceremonial and market center long before the Spanish arrived. During the 1980’s this area suffered both Guatemalan government and guerrilla attacks on its villages and way of life.</span> <span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br />I had recently been at the Mayan ruins at Palenque on a spiritual adventure. It seemed from a Tarot reading made at the Temple of the Foliated Cross that I should go to Guatemala before going back to Oaxaca, my home base. I returned to San Cristobal to spend a few days with my friend Kiki before heading out again. Other friends, Marcey and Janet, gave me the name of a good but cheap hotel in Huehuetenango, Guatemala. That close-to-the border town was my destination for the evening.<br /><br />I waited at the border to cross the “no man’s land” between Mexico and Guatemala in the back of a pick-up truck. After that, I went through customs and immigration at La Mesilla, the Guatemalan port of entry on the Pan American Highway. Getting my passport stamped, I carried my lightweight bag to Customs. They searched it thoroughly looking for guns, a heavily-armed man in an army uniform told me. Money changers met me as I emerged into the sunlight and I sold my Mexican pesos to buy Quetzales. <br /><br />As I looked around I noticed a long stream of Mexican buses, loaded with families having just crossed from Mexico, heading into Guatemala. I went to a bus stop to wait for the local bus to Huehuetenango. There, an American guy in his twenties, sat waiting also. I hadn’t really been paying attention to these bus loads of people but he informed me they were Guatemalan refugees returning home from the U. N. Refugee Camps in Quintana Roo, Mexico. He was covering the story for a newspaper in the US. He pointed his camera at me, and wondered if I didn’t think he was really part of the CIA.<br /><br />This struck me as ironic, a twist of fate, to be at the border with refugees being repatriated to a “model village” somewhere outside Huehuetenango. I happened to have some money with me to help Guatemalans displaced by the war. These were the last of funds gathered by GRACIAS (Guatemalan Refugee Alliance, Consciously Involved Action and Service). We’d been collecting donations during the early/mid 80’s to help Guatemalans, mostly Mayans, who fled their own government’s war against them. The lucky ones made it out alive, though traumatized by massacres of whole villages and hamlets. They had walked, and sometimes crawled, over mountains, through jungles and crossed rivers to become refugees in Mexico. Now here were some returning home.<br /><br />The camps in Quintana Roo were run by the United Nations. GRACIAS, which I founded after finding out about the crisis in 1982, donated money to Nobel Laureate Bishop Samuel Ruiz who ran the Catholic Church’s outreach for refugees in the San Cristobal de las Casas area. We also helped fund CARGUA (in San Cristobal), a group run by Kiki, Marcey, Janet, Gabriel and other friends that took food and clothing to unofficial refugee camps in the highlands of Chiapas. CARGUA, a grassroots organization, was created to meet specific emergency needs of Guatemalans who made it across the border. GRACIAS also tried to get money to other small groups, including ones that helped displaced people inside Guatemala. I decided that I shouldn’t tell this guy anything, but did remark that I knew more than I wanted to know about this situation.<br /><br />The Mexican buses were guarded by Guatemalan soldiers, some tough young men who’d probably been innocent Mayan teenagers just a short while ago. Most were probably kidnapped from their villages by the army. They were often forced by brutality, threats and brainwashing to carry out unspeakable deeds against their own people. The newspaper guy seemed nervous, so I just sat across from him meditating. (May all beings be free of suffering)<br /><br /> I watched the buses out of the corner of my eye. The people seemed really happy to be back in their own country. Women and children, some men, were going back to plant their milpas . Here were survivors of the war against farmers and artisans and their self-determination in what seemed to be a genocide against the native peoples of Guatemala. Sitting there in bus stop shelter, I realized I couldn’t be an innocent tourist in Guatemala. I already knew too much about various layers of their culture and their current political situation. Still, I didn’t consider myself on a mission. Donating the money I had with me seemed like a small deal. I just wanted to see Guatemala, buy some textiles in the Thursday or Sunday market at Chichicastenango, and take in La Semana Santa, Holy Week, among the Mayans.<br /><br /> I’ve been in love with textiles from Guatemala since 1980 when my partner returned from Guatemala with a pile of colorful, interesting weavings. Later, GRACIAS used beautiful weavings, films, slide shows and speakers to bring the plight of the Guatemalan people to the attention of our local citizens. Sharing the beauty of their traditional culture made the refugees more real and their situation more extreme. By 1988 repatriation of refugees had been happening for a couple years. GRACIAS had stopped collecting money.<br /><br />Eventually an old bluebird type bus pulled up at the stop. The driver’s helper put my blue bag up on the top of the bus and I got in. The seats had been replaced by board benches, the third class, in the third world. I seemed so much bigger than the Mayans. Four of them filled one bench, on one side of the narrow aisle. I took the place of two of them. By late afternoon I’d be delivered to Huehuetenango, traveling down the Pan American, stopping to pick up everyone along the road. The bus driver’s assistant yelled “Sale” in Spanish which means “leave, or get going” after putting their colorful bundles up on top. Passengers joined in, a kind of chorus as the bus lurched forward after each stop. I talked to no one, but listened to the Mayan languages spoken around me. Along the highway, there were lots of soldiers. Once, they stopped and searched us. They took a man off. Fear has a way of quieting normal chatter. Women cried into their rebozos (shawls) as the bus continued.<br /><br />The poverty in Mexico has always bothered me. The poverty in Guatemala seemed worse than Mexico. The mountains, the rivers, the land itself called me with its beauty. But the poor condition of the people alarmed me. I had to remind myself that I’d come for other, more mythical reasons and personal adventure, not a fact finding mission for the World Food Program. Still, I couldn’t help seeing the situation as I headed deeper into the Guatemalan highlands. Huehuetenango has a Spanish-style main plaza. It’s not very remarkable otherwise. The town, a kind of crossroads, seemed dirty. Grime, dirt built up over years, smudged the once colorfully painted buildings. Getting there safely seemed like a luxury though.<br /><br />I knew I had to get a first class bus ticket for Los Encuentros which left early the next morning. I found the first class bus station, got a ticket, and then went to the hotel recommended by my friends. I got a cheap room not far from the bathroom at the back. I had to be on the first class bus by 6 AM and after many long bus hours in Mexico and Guatemala, I had no trouble sleeping early.<br /><br />The ride to Los Encuentros was uneventful. Los Encuentros is a transfer point for buses either going down to Solola, Lake Atitlan and Panajachel or the ones going up into the K’iche highland region. I had barely touched ground when I found a bus for Chichicastenango. Getting on this local, third class school bus with benches, I met another foreign woman traveling my way. Tall and blond like me, we talked as old friends might. She was European, working for a NGO at a health clinic in Santa Cruz del Quiche. She filled me in on details of the current political and economic situation as we rode upward through pine forests and little farming valleys. She went on further into the highlands when I got off at Chichicastenango. Karmic winds ruffled my consciousness. I could not escape knowing about the Guatemalan war, even if it was almost over.<br /><br />Chichicastenango is an indigenous town. White, plastered adobe walls edge the streets which lead to a large plaza. Walking on through the town I found a casa de huespedes (boarding house), an inexpensive place on the far edge of town. There weren’t many tourists, though the handsome man who ran the place assured me that in Holy Week, the town would be full of people from Guatemala City. I settled in, a room with private bathroom, and simple bed and table. A bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling revealed the presence of electricity. Hot water showers could be had when the wood-burning boiler was lit. I only needed to ask.<br /><br />Eager to explore, that afternoon I walked around town. I looked into the courtyards of plastered adobe buildings pressing against the unpaved streets. I walked past Santo Tomas Church, sitting high on what looks like an old pyramid platform above the plaza. I saw the army outpost on the road to Santa Cruz del Quiche, the one paved road out of town. I found I couldn’t walk out of town on another dirt road I wanted to take. The civil patrol stopped me. Perhaps there were guerrillas camped up on the ridge. This feeling of being in a place occupied by the country’s own army reminded me of my trip to Spain during Franco’s rule.</span> <span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /> Later, the evening turned foggy, almost cold. These highlands are around eight thousand feet. I put on my San Cristobal outfit, black skirt, black tights, black sweater with colorful underlying warm layers, wrapped in a wool rebozo (shawl) I’d brought from Mexico. At dusk a nearby hillside blazed with fire, the yearly clearing custom before planting new corn. The flames rose vividly in the night sky.<br /><br />Right after breakfast the next morning at one of the two tourist restaurants, I went to Santo Tomas, the plastered, white Spanish church which sits at the edge of the main plaza. Undoubtedly the Mayan’s had a temple here before Alvarado arrived to plunder the area. Men with incensors burning copal and chanting prayers stood outside the doorway at the top of the pyramidal-type steps. Below, near the street, a small altar sent up smoke from offerings of pom (copal) made by passing people. I made a prayer dropping a tamale-like pom bundle too.<br /><br />Inside the semi-dark stone building, I found Mayans, shamans and mid-wives, making beautiful ceremonies on stone altars that go down the middle aisle of the church. They lit small thin white candles, attaching their melted flat ends so they stood in lines stuck to the stone altars. Kneeling above their creations, they lovingly sprinkled rose petals between and around the burning candles and then poured aguardiente (rum) over the candles, chanting their prayers to deities and guardians that preceded the coming of Christ to their Mayan world. Smoke from copal rose from incense burners as each individual prayed for their own or others’ concerns. I sat on a pew enjoying the sweet aroma, enchanted by the candles’ light, and mesmerized by the sounds of their chanting.</span> <span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" > Witnessing these ceremonies reminded me of San Juan Chamula outside San Cristobal, Chiapas. At Chamula the shamans don’t use flower petals with their rows of burning candles. And there are no pews in the Chamula church, therefore no middle aisle. It is a Mayan ceremonial center where prayers are chanted in 16th century Spanish and Tzotzil, where musicians make intoxicating, repetitive kinds of songs with guitar and harps, while various ceremonies take place all over the church simultaneously, candles blazing in long and short rows on the floor. Groups of petitioners kneel on the pine needle covered floor in front of various saints dressed in layers of sacred clothing. These saints may seem Catholic but they also represent the old, preconquest dieties. Often shamans set up their own ceremony in the middle of the floor, looking towards the main altar. I’ve sat so many times on the Chamula Church floor observing the happenings that this very foreign situation has become familiar. At Chamula, I often chant Tibetan Buddhist mantras quietly. They blend nicely with the chants of the Chamulans.<br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br />That Saturday in Chichicastenango , the one before Palm Sunday, shamans from the area made a ceremony at the stone god figure called Pasqual Ab’aj, an old deity about which I know little. It could have been his day of worship in the Mayan calendar, perhaps adapted to coincide with Christian Holy Week, since this ceremony happens each year on the day before Palm Sunday. He may be the old god of the underworld or the Earth Lord. Perhaps an ancestor of the local people. Several people pointed out the path to the mountain top shrine where his stone head rests in the ground, enclosed in a large circle of smaller stones. I decided not to go. I think I felt shy about being curious, a tourist on-looker. Later that day I met a couple other women travelers who spoke English, one from the United States, one from France. One of them may have gone for part of the day-long ceremony because Saturday night we conspired to do our own ceremony up there the next afternoon. Three feminists with a spiritual bent we trudged up the mountain path through the pine trees on Palm Sunday afternoon. We brought candles and rose petals, copal, and some aguardiante to offer to the universal Goddess.<br /><br />Pasqual Ab’aj’s stone black face shown with dried blood from the previous day’s sacrifices. A few black chicken feathers still stuck to his stone face. We offered him aguardiente and welcomed his witness to our ceremony.<br /><br /></span> <span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >After purifying ourselves and calling the directions, we concentrated our energies on invoking the Goddess. We felt Her presence as we offered copal, candles, rose petals and some liquor. We prayed for peace in Guatemala, for the return of Feminine power to the planet, for safe journeys and loved ones’ well-being. Local children watched, and I am sure, wondered what we were doing as we lit candles and sprinkled rose petals asking for blessings on that flat stone altar near Don Pasqual Ab’aj. These children of a family who lived close by possibly tended the shrine. No adults came to interfere though, we put back the stones we’d moved when we left and closed the ceremony. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /> Part 2<br />Palm Sunday, the beginning of La Semana Santa (Holy Week) starts the week of Christian Mysteries throughout Latin America. In Chichicastenango, the Cofradias, Mayan lineage holders, officials and spiritual leaders, perform ritual duties related to the Catholic liturgy. These Cofradias or religious societies, formed by the Spanish as part of the religious conquest, seemed totally Mayan to me. I wondered if existing Mayan priests and shamans formed part of these brotherhoods. I felt certain that the Catholic celebration was only part of what was going on, though I couldn’t be sure.<br /><br /></span> <span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >Being in such a Catholic setting, during Holy Week, led me to think about Jesus as the man who sacrificed himself in a historical, spiritual and political way. Once in Oaxaca at the Basilica of Soledad, in the back room where the suffering Jesus is enshrined in a glass box, I understood how Jesus represents the suffering of all humanity. Undoubtedly that is some of his appeal. In San Cristobal de las Casas one of the churches had the Jesus of the Stations of the Cross represented by local Mayans in scenes of social and economic distress, and political persecution by white authorities. Their victimization was shown in drawings at various Stations of the Cross along the white plastered walls. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" > Historically, Jesus’s sacrifice of himself and the rise of Christianity may have ended the need to make blood sacrifices of other human beings in the Middle East. Jesus, as the mythic dying son in the ancient Goddess tradition and then, the sacrificed lamb of the Old Testament God, fulfilled the need for a human to be sacrificed. That mythic Dying Son came out of cultures where some ritual human sacrifice had been practiced since remote antiquity. Perhaps after Jesus’s death and rebirth, humans didn’t need to murder other humans in order to appease ancestors and dieties. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" > Blood, the life power and soul of the human beings and animals, has been sacrificed throughout history in many cultures. The Mayan leaders practiced offering their own blood, drawn by cactus spine ropes drawn through their tongue or penis dripped on paper and burned. Human and animal sacrifice served as part of the religious practices of the Mayan as well as other indigenous groups in the Americas. Animal sacrifice continues, usually the black chicken later eaten by the family who sponsored the healing.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" > There may be some truth to the notion that the cultures of Mexico, sick of the Aztecs’overzealous use of human sacrifice, welcomed Cortes as the long awaited Queztalcoatl (Kukulcan, to the Maya). Of course, Cortes was not their long-departed God. Queztalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, left Tollan because he didn’t approve of human sacrifice which the cults of Tecatzlipoca (Toltec) and his Aztec derivative, Huiztlepotle, required. The god the Spanish brought, Jesus, didn’t require human sacrifice. Jesus, not Cortes, was more like the idea of the returning Quetzalcoatl that was looked for in Mexico. However, the conquest of Mexico by Cortes, and Guatemala by Alvarado, was a huge blood sacrifice--a genocide against the native peoples and their cultures. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br />Saturday night before the Sunday Market, Chichicastenango began filling up with merchants from all over the highlands. This is one of Guatemala’s most famous markets. Mayan vendors slept on petates , woven mats, wrapped in wool blankets under the portico of buildings that line the plaza. They huddled in family groups waiting to sell and buy the next day. Their colorful bundles of items for sale served as pillows. Thick tortillas, with chilies, salt and some coffee or a bottled drink made up many peoples dinner and breakfast. Food booths with tables and benches appeared in the market before sunrise. They seemed busy all the time.<br /><br />From where I sat on the pyramidal steps of Santo Tomas church that Palm Sunday morning, the market spread out below, covering the plaza like a colorful patchwork quilt. The temporary booths sprung up with sunrise. Beautiful textiles, huipils, and blankets hung next to jaguar masks, leather goods, and useful farming items. On side streets I found calculators, tape players, batteries and tapes in tiny stalls.<br /><br />Earlier that morning I had followed a procession of striking-looking Cofradias, the Catholic Mayan brotherhood, in their traditional ceremonial costumes. Led by couples of husbands and wives, they circled the church’s side patio the men in black handwoven wool tunics, their heads covered with a colorful,handwoven cotton </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >tzutze.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> In their hands they carried silver staffs with sun symbols, bags of copal and small palm fronds. The women wore their most intricate, finest </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >huipiles</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> in the current Chichicastenango design with large flowers. Long strands of silver beads covered their </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >huphiles</span><span style="font-size:130%;">. Participants carried a large wooden box on a litter. They entered the church by a side door to carry out some ritual within. I wasn’t allowed to follow them inside.<br /><br />The Catholic Mass began sometime later. The church on Palm Sunday was packed. Mayans, in their traditional clothing, occupied the pews on the right side of the aisle. The ladinos, non-indians, sat on the left. I leaned against an archway on the right, drinking in the sea of color worn by Mayan women around me. The Mass was given in Spanish and in Quiche by the handsome, Mayan priest. Woven palm fronds fluttered in the hands of the parishioners.<br /><br />After the Mass I noticed a church office in the patio area. After ascertaining from the official there that my money would get to displaced people (internal refugees), I donated the last hundred plus dollars from GRACIAS to their fund for feeding the hungry. These highland Catholic churches lost many priests to the army and far-right death squads because of their affiliation with the Liberation Theology movement. The official assured me that the money would be used to help the victims of the war. Then, I returned to the market to bargain for a few weavings to bring back to the US. I wished I had more money to spend.<br /><br /> In early afternoon I sat on the steps of Santo Tomas. I watched flower vendors sort their flowers. Below in the square, awash in blurs of bright colors, the market would go on until mid-afternoon. A shimmering young woman from Aguas Calientes sold me a small cloth from her bundle. The lively red/green and blue striped tortilla cloth danced before my eyes. I was reluctant to ask her for a photo although I had been taking some photos on the sly throughout the day.<br /><br />Monday morning I decided to go down to Lake Atitlan for a couple days, cross the Lake and perhaps stay in Santiago Atitlan overnight, or a day or two. I took the bus down to Los Encuentros, and then a combi, a van, on down to Panajachel. I didn’t want to stay in Panajachel, though it is a pretty town, mostly catering to tourists. At this much lower elevation, I’d reentered the tropics and would soon find myself looking out at beautiful Lake Atitlan and the attendant volcanoes that surround it. Banana plants, hibiscus flowers, and palms crowded along the streets, next to the plastered, colorfully-painted, well-kept houses.<br /><br /> As I walked down the main road to the Lake, where I would get a boat, I heard some guy calling out my name. This seemed pretty amazing. I didn’t think I knew anyone in Guatemala. It was Ron, a person I’d met in the GRACIAS days. He’d once presented a slide show of his stay with Guatemalan refugees in the jungles of southern Mexico. Now, he’d founded a weaving co-op in Solola to help Mayan women weavers and their families. I knew he lived in Solola, but hadn’t thought of running into him. “ Small planet” we agreed as we drank smoothies in one of the cute restaurants. We chatted, catching up on each other’s lives, then hugged, and I headed to the jetty. Lake Atitlan is breathtaking, from up high on the road to Panajachel or down at the landing where motorboats wait to take customers across it.<br /><br />I’d missed the last afternoon boat to Santiago Atitlan so I took the one to San Pedro Laguna instead. San Pedro sits at the foot of one of the most distinctive volcanos. The sun, the wind and the afternoon choppy waters just added to my bliss of being on that mythical body of water. The volcanos really seemed to be gods holding up the sky.<br /><br />I found a pension near the lake. I left my pack in my room and walked into the small village. I was appalled to hear loud speakers and radios blaring with evangelical Christians preaching the gospel according to their interpretations of the Bible. I counted at least five different evangelical wooden churches on the main, unpaved street. In that gorgeous place, in view of this amazing natural beauty which Mayans consider to be so sacred, I heard the terrible noise of loudspeakers and radios. It was Holy Week but....<br />.<br />Mayan preachers had given up their ancestral ways for what the Baptists, Pentecostals and Mormons offered. In that war-torn time, pernicious with death squads, it was probably an unspoken offer of personal safety. After all the “President” of Guatemala, Rios Monte, was himself a born-again a Christian. He notoriously ordered the massacre of whole Mayan towns accused of being “communists” or supporting the guerrillas. Mostly these traditional Mayans just wanted to be left alone by both the guerrillas and the government.<br /><br />I managed to get out of the noise made by blaring radios and walk down along the lake. I bought some simple table runner weavings from women eager to sell them. By the next morning I figured I’d go back to Chichicastenango before night fall. I’d kept my room at the pension there. Before leaving I walked to a semi-remote part of shore and sat on a rock, overlooking the lake and women washing clothes near-by. Clouds and fog hung like sheer weavings across the shoulders of the volcanos. The morning warmth nurtured my poetic side. I sang a couple songs I’d made up, a gift to this inspiring place.<br /><br />Holy Week celebrations consumed the energy of people in Chichicastenango. Upon my return, I noticed that another temple-type church across from Santo Tomas was hosting activities. I learned it is only open in Holy Week and never found out its name. There Mayans made a ritual. No one was allowed to climb the steps. From below in the plaza, I heard a simple drum and single flute play trance-inducing, mournful sounding music. Three large wooden crosses could be seen through the open door. This continued through the day and night that Wednesday. Perhaps they were hanging Maximon there on Wednesday night as they do down in Santiago Atitlan. The mournful sound related to my feelings about the political situation. I felt their oppression acutely with the military always visibly present. By early Thursday morning I felt restless, and decided to head back towards Mexico. I felt it would be nice to have Easter dinner with Kiki and Gabriel in San Cristobal.<br /><br />I got to Los Encuentros later that day. Standing out on the Pan American Highway waiting for a bus going to Huehue, I met a couple on their way back to Oaxaca. Jorge, a handsome Oaxaqueno with long eye-lashes, and Barbara, a Spanish teacher from the US. Jorge was a tour guide in Oaxaca where they’d met. They’d decided to take a little trip together to Guatemala. We had instantaneous rapport. I felt blessed to find friends I could laugh with. I felt like a homesick Oaxaquena myself, there at the crossroads in that beautiful, and frightening, foreign country.<br /><br />I had been missing mi querida Oaxaca . I’d recently fallen in love with a jazz musician. His handsome Zapotec face, curly black hair and sunny smile sent a flush of hormones coursing through my body. My bad Spanish and his halting English served to connect us in other ways. Flirting led to a brief tryst. I loved the American jazz and Cuban dance music his band, Grupo Mescalito, played. Hanging out with them on their breaks, those Spanish-only conversations forced me to improvise Spanish and communicate as best I could. Jorge knew him. Oaxaca was a small city then. Oaxacaquenos and adventurous </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >extranjeros</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> (foreigners) met, ate, drank and danced together at El Sol y La Luna Restaurant where Mescalito played. That intimate setting created friendships that endure to this day. I considered it my living room.<br /><br />After waiting out there on the Pan American Highway over four hours we finally got a slow bus and arrived just before dark in Huehuetenango. When we got off the bus, we found out that no buses would go anywhere on Good Friday, the next day. Everyone would be mourning the death of Jesus. Barbara, Jorge and I figured we’d watch the local celebrations together.<br /><br />Friday morning throughout Huehuetenango streets were being covered with colored sawdust, making flower designs and Catholic images as a carpet for the Good Friday processions. Antiqua has become famous for these processions. There in Huehuetenango the large, heavy wooden float carrying a larger-than-lifesize carving of Jesus on his way to his death is paraded through the streets over sawdust and flower carpets. Each individual carpet is created by families whose houses they pass. Purple robed parishioners carry the heavy litter on their shoulders, preceded by men bearing incense burners of copal and bands playing dirges. Penitents walked behind. Women carry the mourning mother of Jesus on another heavy, wooden litter. This Virgin of Soledad’s black gown and downcast eyes express the grief of losing her Son. She reminded me of the mothers of victims of the Guatemalan’s governments’ harsh reprisal against its own peoples. Penitentes traded off carrying these cumbersome floats. The colorful carpets returned to sawdust under the feet of the believers. The processions went through every neighborhood as the afternoon turned to dusk, and then darkness. Through the night candles and sky rockets lit the suffering Christ’s way through the somber lives of the town’s inhabitants. By Saturday morning the town was quiet. Jesus had been buried.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" > This reminded me of a Good Friday observance I’d once seen while sitting in the window of La Galeria in San Cristobal, Chiapas. A Roman centurion on horseback cracked a real whip above the head of a half-naked man with a crown of thorns dragging a large wooden cross down the street. Penitentes made a somber parade behind them down Avenida Hildago towards the Cathedral on the Plaza where, perhaps, he was hung on the cross. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br />That night I felt a sense of panic which translated to “I must get out of here”. Guatemala seemed so claustrophobic to me. It felt like I’d been there much longer than a week. I was overwhelmed by knowing too much to be a tourist. Barbara, Jorge and I had hung out that day, and ate dinner together in a hotel restaurant. They had each other and wanted to spend the next day being lovers before they got on another bus. I couldn’t blame them but I felt the urge to get going. I would see them later in Oaxaca.<br /> I was determined to take the first bus to the Mexican Border on Saturday morning. I wanted to be in San Cristobal before the Resurrection on Sunday. I was in line for the bus at 5 am.<br /><br />The trip back to the border took me through the outskirts of Quetzaltenango. I remember sitting on the bus at the bus station for an hour, waiting for it to get back on the highway. The political and economic situation gave me a feeling of hopelessness. Perhaps I was just picking up the vibrations of those around me. Dressed in their beautiful handwoven clothing the people still appeared hungry and scared.<br /><br /> I thought back to my days in Chichicastenango. One afternoon the cleaning woman, a young Mayan in a new huipil, noticed I had my Tarot deck out, looking at the cards. She wanted a reading. She wanted to know if her life would get better. We talked in broken Spanish, both of ours’ second language. She was pregnant with her second child, her boyfriend wouldn’t marry her and her father had kicked out of the house. She lived and worked there to feed herself and her son. I couldn’t convey much, but it seemed that things would be better but it might take a few years. I wondered about the affects of the war on her, but knew better than to ask.<br /><br /> Leaving Quetzaltenango the bus finally got back on the Pan American Highway heading for La Mesilla and Mexico. We stopped everywhere to pick up passengers and to let others off. Colorful bundles tossed down from the bus top were soon on women’s heads or backs, and going up narrow foot paths to unknown tiny villages in the beautiful mountains. Cries of “sale” seemed to move the old bus north. An inexhaustible feeling of grief flooded me. I cried silently all the way to the border.<br /><br />At the Mexican border I was grateful I could leave Guatemala. As soon as I got my Mexican visa and was on Mexican soil, I felt like kissing the earth. I felt free. And I felt safe enough to try hitchhiking from the border to San Cristobal de las Casas, about three hours further along the Pan American Highway. It was either hitch a ride or wait two more hours for a bus......I decided to take my chances.<br /><br />Tall and blond, with a bright, blue backpack and smaller red bag, I must have looked strange and disheveled after the early morning bus trip. Perhaps a little crazed too after crying for hours. I thought some of my countrymen would give me a ride as several cars from the United States passed by. None seemed to have room for me. Eventually, a couple of local </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >cafeteros</span><span style="font-size:130%;">, coffee buyers, offered me the back seat of their small car. Yes, the driver’s ultimate destination was San Cristobal. He was leaving the other man out in Comitan, a town on the way, and eating lunch there at a comadre’s house. They all-but-ignored me talking non-stop with each other. I sang a mantra under my breath. At one point they pulled off the highway and stopped by a fenced pasture. That scared me. They related that they were going to buy honey from some local farmers explaining that this honey tastes great and was cheap. After that we continued along the Pan American Highway.<br /><br />Though it seemed like days later, it was still Saturday when I got back to San Cristobal. I arrived in time for </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >comida</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> with Kiki and Gabriel. Their house was my house. After a couple of hugs, I put my bags in their guest room. I felt elated to have gotten back safely and to be with close friends again.<br /><br />After dinner I pulled a couple nice weavings from my backpack and gave them to Kiki. She put one on a small table, under a vase of calla lillies with pictures of her German parents. That tzutze (man’s ceremonial head cover) looked quite handsome covering the table. Then we met out in the sun porch to eat chocolate cake and drink tea. I marveled at how easy it was to be back with Kiki in her familiar, comfortable world. The recent hard roads in Guatemala dissolved into the long afternoon. I shared my insights and experiences from the trip. Since Kiki knew the Guatemalan situation well, I didn’t have to start at the beginning. That was a relief.<br /><br />By Easter morning I was feeling a sense of rebirth. I wanted to leave for Oaxaca the next day. I doubted I would ever go to Guatemala again even though it is a beautiful and interesting country. I still love the weavings I have from there, and have studied more about ancient Mayan culture and current </span> <span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" >costumbres.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> I never was able to shake the feeling of underlying terror that seemed to permeate the common experiences of its people in that time period.<br /><br />I thought it could be a long time before real reform and justice would replace the repression, even if there was peace. Currently, in 2011, Guatemala and her beautiful people are threatened by the drug mafias and their brutal warlords. They arrived from Mexico when the military in Guatemala was dismantled after the peace accords in the 1990s. May all beings be free of suffering.</span>Mitzi Linnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05167793497585467643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2040755657314705824.post-57319252971961447152011-05-01T16:01:00.000-07:002011-05-01T16:41:19.042-07:00Map to the Underworld by Mitzi Linn<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> (A poem about initiation--</span><span style="font-size:130%;">part of longer poem called Maps)</span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" > </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span> i<br /><br />At the end of your own road,<br />you find three paths,<br />each to be taken, or be taken down.<br /><br />Waiting, as it were, for a guide<br />a mentor or a seer to remind you<br />of what you already know--<br /><br />That any path will lead you away from<br />the current dead-end road you live on,<br />That all three lead into the underbrush,<br />unseen, unmapped territory of<br /> your own soul.<br />Many have taken these paths and lived<br />to convey their experiences in images.<br /><br />You are not the dumb beast<br />bred by agribusiness for slaughter.<br />You are the wise coyote<br />instinct in tact, living on the edge.<br /><br />DESCENDING<br />into your own labyrinth<br />into your own dark passage way.<br />into dark solitude, the earth’s womb, to<br />experience the dark moon’s initiation.<br /><br />You see your lives,<br />hear voices of your own demons/angels<br />mistaking them for others<br />or the OTHER.<br /><br />Watching with the cold eye of the dead,<br />in the cold heart of the initiate,<br />watching in trance<br />detached, in the dark, alone,<br />solitary confinement,<br />imprisoned by your own<br /> self/search.<br /><br />Having to let go of lovers, family, friends,<br />identities, duties, activities---<br /><br /> ii<br /><br />Then waiting,<br />developing detachment,<br />evoking compassion,<br />nuturing new growth,<br />until time to birth a new self...<br /><br />Waiting/hoping for rescue<br />Waiting for the shaft of light to find your face<br />Waiting for a Voice to instruct you<br />Waiting cold and dead<br />Waiting in trance for the Vision<br />Waiting to really know through experience<br /><br />Awestruck in timelessness,<br />convinced you create your own angels and demons,<br />responsible for this life and your view,<br /><br />A Voice asks...<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">ARE YOU WILLING?</span><br />and you must answer........<br /><br /> iii<br /><br />Later, when you’ve returned above ground,<br />to the real world<br />There is certainty and dread<br />as you recall the experience.<br /><br />The dread of returning,<br />the periodic sacrifice of ego to wholeness,<br />the call to be alone, to mourn, to reflect<br />to hear the inner prophecy and to<br />live the judgement and purification<br /><br /> iv <br /><br />Do not wait until Death’s coldness takes you. <br />Start now<br /><br /> choose initiation<br /> choose knowledge<br /> choose vision<br /> choose love<br /> choose wholeness<br /> choose confrontation<br /> choose evolution<br /><br /><br />Face the ego mask/hero intellect holds fast your everydays.<br />Its terrors demon you.<br /><br />No computer can lead you in this journey,<br />No loss will be greater than this opportunity.<br />Others wait their turn<br />You may be able to help them.<br />You may become a guide.<br />You can become a light on another’s path<br />just as you see a light<br />on your own dark path now.</span> <br /><br /></span>Mitzi Linnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05167793497585467643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2040755657314705824.post-38968037946265245082011-04-02T13:21:00.000-07:002011-04-09T15:49:58.556-07:00Angela's Metamorphosis by Mitzi Linn<span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" ><br />Exhausted, I sat playing my guitar. I had retreated to the corner bed platform of my small cabin. The kerosene lamp’s soft light took the edge off the situation as dark night condensed the cabin’s interior.<br />In front of me Angela stomped a circle around the cabin floor, yelling , cursing and crying, as she named every man who’d ever mistreated her, abused her, abandoned her. Her fury shook the cabin as she shouted at and stomped on faceless men from her recent adolescence. Playing quietly, my fingers released anxiety created by the electric energy of Angela’s rage. While she enacted this dance, this ritual, this cleansing of her fragile psyche, I could only watch and wait.<br /><br />Eventually the Thorazine would take effect. Angela would come down. The shouting became sobbing. Angela collapsed to a fetal position on the polished oak floor. I moved down to comfort her, fashioning a bed in front of the wood cook stove. I gave her my pillow and tucked an old quilt around her. Stroking her long reddish hair, I felt Angela’s demons finally rest as she went to sleep. Enough for today I said to her. I would drive her home in the morning.<br /><br />I understood on a deep, non-verbal level, the pain and conflicts coming up for Angela. She could have been any one of us who live near the abyss and explored the narrow edge between the seen and unseen worlds, sometimes with grace, and sometimes, outside it.<br /><br />Witnessing her meltdown, I remembered that just two days before, I’d learned that Angela had flipped out. The whole community had been celebrating a great growing season at Forgotten Works Commune. We visited, ate, sang, danced, smoked and made love as the September Full Moon surged from behind the mountains and flooded our narrow valley. Angela had made a batch of grass brownies for the full moon celebration. She ate one brownie, and flipped out. She’d freaked out on the August full moon too but came down in a week. This time Angela’s frenetic energy release was draining her commune mates and her husband. Marilyn spoke of the crisis faced by those who lived at Forgotten Works as we were driving down along Graves Creek.<br /><br />We had spent the afternoon picking blackberries. Plump purple berries dripped from long branches above the low creek. The dry September heat was welcome on our skin as we waded in to gather them. Purple stained our hands and mouths. Looking at the dry grasses along the roadside I listened to what Marilyn was saying. I silently asked the Universe to give me Angela’s energy. I felt I could contain it, use it creatively, and perhaps, help transform it. Then I forgot about the prayer and discussed the situation with Marilyn.</span> <span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br />It was on that drive home that we thought of taking Angela down to the Takilma Clinic near Grants Pass. We must have talked to Arthur, leader of Forgotten Works, when I dropped Marilyn off. We decided to try to get Angela to Takilma as soon as possible. Angela was never left alone, for her commune mates feared that, in her out-of-body state, she might seriously hurt herself. During her first episode the month before, she took off on long walks into the woods, up mountain roads in search of her lover. She had come down from her high in a week that time. She didn’t seem to be coming down this time. If she wandered outside the Wolf Creek/Sunny Valley hippy community and its communes--Forgotten Works, The Family of the Mystic Arts, The Muldoons, Cabbage Lane etc, we feared she might be picked up by the State Police. Worse, some paranoid, straight neighbor might shoot her.<br /><br />Angela agreed to go to the clinic at Takilma. We were all grateful. Soon she would be calmer after getting Thorazine. The clinic was forty or so miles away from Wolf Creek, part of the Magic Forest Farm Commune. It was the only rural hippy health clinic operating in southern Oregon. We called from Wolf Creek’s pay phone to make sure Dr. Jim would be expecting us. The Takilma Clinic doctor had rightfully earned the respect of the southern Oregon counter-culture by doing just what he did with Angela--helping hippies in need.<br /><br />To get to Takilma that night, we needed a trusty vehicle and driver. Having no telephone, I drove over to ask Marty to help. We’d lived together in San Francisco a few years before. She had an almost new Scout which we could trust to not break down. We wouldn’t be hassled by the State Police either. They often stopped hippy-looking cars to just find something wrong. Then too, they might just wonder where you were going after dark on Coyote Creek Road. African-Americans invited the same dalliance.<br /><br />In the late 60’s/early 70’s many hippies and other counter-culture types left San Francisco and East Coast cities to live in the Western mountains and other remote areas. While we may have all had our personal reasons, we were fleeing the toxicity of the times-- the Vietnam War, race riots, unabashed American materialism (the consume-more culture) and the destruction of the environment.<br />The arrival of hard drugs on Haight Street pushed many pot smokers to leave San Francisco. We pulled together in communal efforts and moved on. Many of us had chosen to live simply as social and economic dropouts. We wanted to know how to survive outside middle class lifestyles. Others who had traveled in the Third World saw that in most places on the planet people lived with much less and seemed just as happy. They returned with many creative living ideas. Land was cheap in rural southern Oregon then, so many alternative culture people migrated there. I had joined a hippy family in San Francisco who had bought farms near Wolf Creek. Before caretaking the tiny cabin, I lived on a commune with them.<br /><br />The Wolf Creek area sheltered a microcosm of humanity in the early 70’s. Hippies, draft dodgers, ex-LA Bikers, lesbian separatists, gay men, drop-out lefties, feminists, back-to-the-land young people, retired military families, farmers, loggers, miners--just to mention some of the more obvious types you could run into at the Post Office. There were vast differences in beliefs, though almost all practiced a basic survival lifestyle.<br /><br />The pervasive Wolf Creek outlaw mentality sometimes spawned potentially violent interactions, especially given the philosophical and lifestyle differences. These differences erupted during one of my first mornings in Wolf Creek when camping out on Mrs. Holland’s mining claim with friends. Our burly, redneck neighbors arrived on a bulldozer (tank) and with shot guns. They didn’t want us hippies traipsing through their property on our way to the shack on Mrs. Holland’s gold mining claim. We used the road to get down to the creek, which had a right-of-way, we pointed out. Frank caretook the place for Mrs. Holland who lived in town. We had the right to be there. Frank had a friendly open manner and had lived there awhile so he was able to talk them down. No shots were fired. Later they became our allies.<br /><br />Back to Angela’s story. During the August full moon we had what we called the first Oregon Women’s Spiritual Festival. She freaked out the first time after that weekend event.<br /><br />The Festival took place on the 100 acre tree farm where I lived alone in the cabin as the caretaker. That Festival, on the full moon in Aquarius, August 1973, attracted many women from Portland, Eugene, and California as well as southern Oregon. We’d put out the word out in tiny women’s magazines.<br /><br />The Festival grew out of a women’s spiritual group that had been meeting through the winter around Wolf Creek. Angela, Mar, Cathy, Frannie, Nellie, Marilyn, Sharon, Ruth, Jean, Pan, Sara, Marty, myself......others. This loose alliance of straight and gay women ranging in age from 17 to 50+ met once a week or so. We studied healing, did Tarot together, read poems and tried to listen and help each other through everyday life challenges. We also created some powerful rituals to celebrate certain yearly passages nurtured by a belief in the Goddess. We invoked the power women derive from a feminine, earth-centered religion. In those times, out there in the Siskiyou Mountains, sisterhood was powerful. For many of us, it was necessary.<br /><br />Located on the edge of the National Forest, my beautiful, tiny cabin perched above a year round creek. While almost all the creeks had gone dry that summer, this clean source of good drinking water still tumbled down through the forested mountain. My cabin served as the reception area for the Festival. Lacking all modern conveniences, my daily life often resembled permanent camping out. Still for me, being there three years helped heal my spirit. I liked living with the seasons, and without electric lights. The silence and the rhythm of daily life suited my personal growth needs just fine. I had the good fortune to belong to a community with favorable conditions for studies of esoteric philosophies, Eastern religions, art, music, dance, poetry and the Goddess.<br /><br />Friday afternoon women started arriving for the Festival. Our committee didn’t know how many women to expect. We offered workshops in various disciplines that women wanted. Meditation, herbal remedies, yoga, journal writing, Tarot, the Goddess, African dance and drumming, massage, made up part of a longer list. We had child care. You could teach a workshop about something you practiced or studied. Some level of expertise was required but, in sync with the times, we wanted to share what we had learned with each other. This extension of the democratic ideal began with the free universities that sprouted up from Berkeley to Boston.<br /><br />Over one hundred and fifty women and children, including babies, found their way to the event. Our group ran it as volunteers. The whole thing was more or less free. We did charge something to cover food. I saw Angela and other members of our group in passing. We had specific things to take care of. Still, the whole event had a “come and hang out” feeling. Organic, holistic, relaxed. Most local women returned home at night rather than camp out. Others slept out in sleeping bags under the beautiful night sky.<br /><br />The Moon Hut offered a soft, comfortable shady place with curtains and pillows for women having their periods. They could hang out near the creek and get massaged. In other workshops intense discussions about women’s control over their bodies, and sexuality , exploded with laughter and rage. All around small groups of women with shared interests lounged in shady places, talking and writing down information they thought they’d use. The African Dance Class, led by Be, found a flat place to practice movements from Senegal and Ghana. Sara, Cathy and other women conga drummers played rhythms that sparked the dancers’ bodies.<br /><br />My caretaking that summer included another 100 acres below Lower Wolf Creek Road, belonging to artist that showed up occasionally. Hidden in the woods his cabin had electricity but no running water. We used the electric stove to cook on for the event. I brought down my electric guitar, amp and microphone. Singing and playing went on at all hours. I sat in when I had a break.<br /><br />Below David’s cabin women sunbathed naked on the edge of a secluded swimming hole, occasionally jumping into the clear, cold mountain water. I guess they saw themselves as wood nymphs bathing under boughs of Douglas fir.<br /><br />No fires, no cook stoves allowed, eating was simple, and communal. Committees of participants took care of fixing meals and cleaning up. We formed orderly lines for a couple meals a day. The rustic back-to-nature ambience included warnings about rattlesnakes, scorpions and poison oak. Smoking anything required much care. Southern Oregon was in the middle of a bad drought that summer and any tiny spark could have ignited a holocaust. Many more women than we’d imagined showed up, including city dwellers who had limited experience in the woods. I had to maintain a state of alert for the entire weekend.<br /><br />Some participants parked their cars along Lower Wolf Creek Road. Rumors of bare-breasted women walking on the road brought out local straight men hoping to see SOMETHING. We hadn’t planned for Amazons who glorified being nearly naked outdoors, even on the public road. I remember I had to run off some pushy men. Us locals went without clothes regularly but not along the road, though, there were some near wrecks on the hairpin curve near Forgotton Works Commune's lower garden.<br /><br />Dressed in my bright pink and gold Magician’s jacket, I moved around the Festival to make sure things ran smoothly. Women smiled and hugged new and old friends. Kids played together in playgroups admist a rotating watchful committee from all festival participants. Somehow, all needs got met in this basically supportive environment. Well, it was all women. Saturday passed with workshops, laughter, mealtimes, learning and consciousness raising. Our women’s group had planned a large group ritual for Saturday night after the communal dinner. It was voluntary so only about 50 women participated.<br /><br />A large circle formed as the full moon rose at sunset. We grounded the energy and Mar invoked the power of the Goddess. We dance snake-like around the circular but flat driveway in front of the cabin. A beautiful altar of flowers, stones and garden produce gathered artfully around a statue of Isis which formed the center of the circle. We sang.....<br /><span style="font-size:85%;">"May the blessings of the Goddess be upon us,<br />May her peace abide in us<br />May her love illuminate our hearts<br />Now and forever more."</span><br />Drumming and dancing raised a cone of energy. This gave way to the passing of the sacrament, magic mushrooms. Cathy, acting as Priestess, presented a beautiful basket filled with liberty caps to women in the circle. I couldn’t take mushrooms since I needed to be totally available for any emergency.<br /><br />Many women participated in the rite, recalling the ancient mystery tradition at Eleusis, Greece. In Demeter's rites at Eleusis, hallucinogens opened the participants’ minds. It is said that partaking of the sacrament gave them certainty that death was an illusion. At Eleusis, Demeter and Persephone’s secret initiations were shared by men and women. As night came on we evoked Demeter and many other great, ancient Goddesses.<br /><br />The full moon gave the hillside and valley below a magical, shimmering appearance. A meditation closed the circle. Graced by the moon’s light, women moved about on the meadow and in the trees. No electric lights. Very few flashlights. Low voices....singing, talking. A glimpse of a peaceful tribal way of living. Mothers and children, friends and lovers, relaxed into the August night.<br /><br />After the main ceremony, Mar, from The Family of the Mystic Arts, whispered I should come with her to a special, secret ritual on a remote part of the hillside. Arriving there I found various members of our women’s spiritual group casting a small circle. Their Wicca coven was meeting to initiate a new member. They said that I should be inside the circle to protect me from any negative energy. Angela too, had been invited. She refused to enter the circle, sat some distance away by herself. I looked at her on the moonlit hillside thinking this was not a wise choice on her part.<br /><br />Mar, a woman in her forties, had a dramatic personality, and as High Priestess could create a powerful sacred space and ritual experience. I hadn’t taken mushrooms, (as the caretaker), but the moon, the night, the concentration of women’s energy electrified the 6 or 7 of us sitting out on the grassy meadow. We listened intently to the interchange between Priestess and Novice. Sacred items were shown. Promises made. This initiation officialized N.s participation in Wicca, the old goddess religion. She’d now be completing studies in the next year, after which she could officially join this local Coven.<br /><br />My Magician’s Jacket protected me against the mountains’ chilly night air. The astral realm opened as I gazed from my cabin’s porch to the mountains. I felt content, honoring the ancient earth- centered way of being. The Moon Goddess’s blessings shone over the gathering. At the festival site, the night passed quietly into daylight.<br /><br />I was surprised to learn a few days after the Spiritual Festival, that Angela had flipped out that seemingly peaceful night. Mar came by with one version of the story. Others, from Forgotten Works Commune, shared theirs. Putting the versions together, what I know is that Angela made love with Rod that night. Perhaps he and Cathy and Angela. Rod was Mar.’s son and Cathy’s partner. Hadn’t he shown up to take Cathy up the mountain, home to Mystic Arts? I remember seeing him, even though men weren’t allowed to be there. I guess Angela went home with them instead of to her husband at Forgotten Works.<br /><br />I speculate that the fiery, mysterious tantric love force, released by magic mushrooms, created a mythic meeting of those young people on a Siskiyou mountain top. An innocent happening that opened doors of perception not tightly bolted shut. It seems that Angela left her body up on the mountain that night. By the next day, after returning home, she’d become obsessed with Rod, seeking him out, trying to get back to Mystic Arts Commune by walking the 5 or more miles. A part of her still lingered on the mountain.<br /><br />Her husband tolerated all this, trying to help, even drove her to see Rod who clearly wasn’t in love with her. After this, her concerned commune mates tried to keep her safe at home on their 100 acres. Someone stayed with her day and night. She returned to normal in about a week.<br /><br />I don’t know what Angela did during the month between the Festival flip out and the freak out that landed her in my cabin on Thorazine. Those September mornings I worked my garden early before it got hot.</span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" > I played guitar and sang. Wrote a song, made drawings and poems.</span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" > </span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:130%;" > Fall was coming on.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> I started getting my winter wood supply together. I went swimming on hot afternoons, visited friends. Days got shorter as the moon swelled to fullness. Until I went blackberry picking with Marilyn, I had no idea that Angela was in crisis.<br /><br />The morning after Angela slept on my cabin’s floor, she seemed mellow and self-reflective. Many of her relationships with men had been abusive. Her husband, no. But others. She decided to not take any marijuana or hallucinogens for awhile so she could assimilate these experiences. I felt relieved to hear this. I thanked the Universe silently. We hugged as I dropped her off at Forgotton Works. I hugged her husband too. Nearby flowers seemed to wave and smile. It was a new day. I went home and wrote a lyrical song inspired by Angela’s freak out. It was a gift that flowed from my fingers, feelings and voice.<br /><br /><br /></span><br /></span>Mitzi Linnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05167793497585467643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2040755657314705824.post-46472661774485925912011-02-24T12:48:00.000-08:002011-02-24T13:04:19.215-08:00"Bless You, Peggy Harmon" by Mitzi Linn<span style="font-size:130%;"><br /> Peggy Harmon must have been in her late 60’s when I met her. She seemed timeless though, a single British woman who ran the Theosophical Library out of her home in Eugene, Oregon. I met her at the Library. At the time I was studying many different esoteric disciplines and teachings, I found being able to borrow her books a great deal of help. I, like others, paid a small yearly fee to use the Library. <br /><br /> Peggy’s life piqued my curiosity. Her appearance was nondescript, an older thin woman with medium length gray/white hair and glasses. She dressed conservatively in dark skirts and white blouses often with a cardigan sweater. She seemed void of dogmatic tendencies or power tripping. She never pushed any Library patron to become a Theosophist. Her reserved nature kept me from asking too many questions. I noticed that she always expressed a positive, supportive point of view. I found her insights and tidbits of information gleaned from years of study helpful. Her kindness flowed out towards everyone. She exemplified what it meant to be of service.<br /><br /> The Library, a large room in her apartment, held books on Astrology, Kabala, Tarot, Theosophy, Healing Methods, Yoga, reincarnation, and mystical religious experiences. Books by Alice Bailey, Annie Besant, Krishnamurti, Madam Blavatsky, G. Manley Hopkins and many others crowded the shelves. Some of the books were antiques and, of course, many were out of print. Books about Indian, Japanese, Egyptian, and Tibetan spiritual practices asked for exploration. Sometimes I spent an hour examining books before deciding which to take out. Of course when a book fell from a shelf in front of me, I saw it as a message from the Universe that I needed to read it. The library was only open a couple afternoons a week.<br /><br /> At some point Peggy and the Library moved over to Springfield, a smaller city east of Eugene. She bought the perfect house on the edge of a park, not far from a hospital. The Library enjoyed it’s own space now, the converted garage. Books that Peggy once kept in storage, got their day on the shelf. The Theosophical Society had grown some and volunteers helped keep the Library open more hours per week. Pots of flowering plants filled the unused driveway. The dimly-lit Library space nurtured calmness of spirit and soul. Visits to exchange books anchored my higher mind. I thought about the fabled esoteric library at Alexandria, Egypt, destroyed by Roman Christians. Libraries have always seemed like temples to me and this one, housing books of sacred knowledge, was really useful.<br /><br /> During this time I was teaching Tarot Classes, Psychic Development, Healing Workshops and leading groups on the Goddess. I also saw clients for readings and healings. Many times I recommended the Library to others as a unique and precious source of wisdom. The mystic arts and personal growth flourished in Eugene.<br /><br /> Over five or six years Peggy and I developed a friendship, based mainly on my visits to the library. I often stayed to talk, and at least once she invited me to tea. She loved organic gardening, which she could do at her new house. While she was always a bit formal, “Bless you” fell from her lips like pearls. She said it more than anyone I’ve ever known. Spending time with her helped me in a somewhat emotionally rough time of my life.<br /><br /> One sunny autumn afternoon in the early 80’s I went over to the Theosophical Library to borrow some books. Across the street the park’s sweet gum trees were changing from green to red, yellow and orange. Peggy was alone, sitting in the front window. She was happy to see me. After our greeting she said, “Guess what? I found out I have lung cancer.” I don’t know what I said. She continued in an upbeat tone, saying that she didn’t want to get treatment for it, except having the liquid removed from her lungs when needed. Luckily the hospital was down the block. Peggy had just turned 75 and thought she might have a year to live. She also mentioned she had always wanted to die at age 75 so she was ready for this next adventure.<br /><br /> We talked about her feelings and plans. She wanted to stay in her house until she got to a point that she couldn’t take care of it and herself. Some other, younger Theosophists would take over the Library and house when she got closer to passing over. She is the only person I’ve ever known who cheerfully announced she was dying. I noted that this was radically different than my previous experiences with friends dying of cancer. I’d already lost a couple of younger women friends to breast cancer. They had fought to live. Peggy though felt she’d had a full life, and was ready for its completion.<br /><br /> I put Peggy on my appointment calendar promising to come see her at least every two weeks. I offered laying-on-hands, energy treatments for her tumors. I didn’t think the treatments would cure her but perhaps they would relieve her pain. It also gave me a focus for our time together. She had many friends and associates who were going to step to help as she needed it.<br /><br /> I made a point to see her as autumn became winter, visiting with her and laying my hands on her tumors. We talked about the her process of dying some and about my chaotic life. Often the tumors shrank, and her pain lessened with the treatments. She opened herself entirely, very helpful for receiving energy treatments. She reported that she didn’t have much pain in general and she got the fluid drained from her lungs every couple weeks. Her “bless you”s accompanied me home.<br /><br /> One rainy, winter day, I arrived to find Peggy in a yellow rain jacket at the back of her white wood frame house. She was digging foot-deep trenches in her organic garden and putting compost in it for next spring’s planting. The dormant roses next to the trenches had been pruned. A bare fruit tree stood in the middle of the small, grassy backyard. No, she wasn’t overdoing it. She felt strong.<br /><br /> She was getting the house and its Library ready for George and Marilyn. As members of the Theosophical Society they would continue the Library after Peggy died. She had no children of her own, so they would become her heirs. Peggy asked to be cremated and have her ashes spread around the base of her rose bushes. She still lived alone, continued doing things for herself, seeing friends, running the Library and consciously finishing up this lifetime’s endeavors. She was slowly letting go of her physical life. I knew George and Marilyn, but I barely knew her other friends and associates.<br /><br /> One afternoon in early spring, I went over and did the hands on treatment while she lay in her large recliner in the semi-dark living room. I proposed we also do a little guided meditation into what leaving her body would be like and what she might be doing when she did leave. She was game to try but stressed she always had a hard time doing guided meditations, and they never seemed to succeed. Well, we would try anyway.<br /><br /> I relaxed her using my low and soothing voice. I talked her intellect into loosening its grip on her being. We found her spirit guide and proceeded to pass through a dark tunnel to the light on the other side. We went slowly. I didn’t ask for descriptions as I usually would do in a guided visualization but just kept her going on her own journey into the next lifetime or situation. Wherever she was, she seemed calm and safe. Later, she reported that she met with her guides and they showed her what she would be doing next after this lifetime. It made her extremely happy, peaceful, to know she would continue serving humanity. I felt grateful just to be there.<br /><br /> Peggy must have been a long time meditator though she never talked about it. She embodied the IMPERSONAL LIFE as it is often described in esoteric teachings meaning her personal agenda seemed to be the well-being and happiness of others. As her illness progressed, she became weaker. Her “bless you”s never faltered however. She talked about dying without it being a big deal. It seemed she had no fears. Her pain wasn’t all that much. Doctors took the fluid off her lungs. Late spring arrived and her red and white roses started blooming.<br /><br /> In early summer Peggy turned her house over to Marilyn and George and moved to a small apartment where she didn’t have so much to take care of. I saw her weekly now and by the end of the summer her friends were bringing her prepared food everyday. She spent most daytime hours lying on the couch in the living room. She didn’t own a TV so she was just there undistracted when I or any of her other friends arrived. Many came by to visit and help out. She blessed us, smiling, and never complained. In fact, I began to feel her lightness of spirit during my last visits. Peggy had once told me she wished to die when she was 75 and I noted, as a Virgo, she’d soon have a birthday and become 76. I mentioned it seemed like she was in sync with her plan.<br /><br /> Her body wasted away but her beingness kept blessing all who came to be with her. Still, her passing out of her body got closer. Though she was only taking Tylenol for pain, she became noticeably very frail. Her friend Margret and others had started spending the nights at her apartment. I remember thinking one time after a visit that she should stop eating, as the tumors were now claiming her chest and torso. It would help her to go on since the transition time was near. When I saw her next, she said she had stopped eating, just taking liquids, water and juice. She smiled, reporting she still had little pain. She was really letting go.<br /><br /> By now her body had shrunk to almost nothing, luminous flesh stretched over thin bones. These last times I always held her hand and expressed my gratitude for our connection. I wasn’t sure I’d see her alive again. She blessed me. I went home to my busy life, with husband, step-children, clients and students. I wanted to be there when she left her body, when she died, but none of us knew exactly when this would happen.<br /><br /> Margret called one morning to tell me that Peggy was in the dying process and she hoped I’d come. All that busy day I kept trying to get out of my house and over to her apartment. At some point I remember feeling like she was about to depart. I felt frustrated that I wasn’t there.<br /> When I finally arrived at her apartment late in the afternoon, I learned that she had passed into spirit about an hour before. Her friend Margret had been with her during her passing. She reported it went well, that Peggy died sitting up and awake. Arrangements to have her body cremated had been made, and her body would remain at home another day.<br /><br /> In the bedroom Peggy’s body still sat upright in her bed. She seemed larger dead than she had been while alive. I stayed with her body awhile. Sitting there I felt that Peggy’s spirit had already departed, had flown the cage of earthly existence. The room’s energy seemed very light and loving. I let that lightness sink into my being.<br /><br /> Peggy was never glamorous. She appeared to be a very ordinary human being. I often consider that she may have been a saint, or a bodhisattva. Her kindness and humility, and her choice to die consciously and share the process with her friends, was a great teaching. It taught me more than all the books in her wonderful library. <br /> <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span>Mitzi Linnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05167793497585467643noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2040755657314705824.post-10579183619916311352011-01-27T17:42:00.001-08:002011-01-28T08:37:54.926-08:00Canyon de Chelly by Mitzi Linn<span style="font-size:130%;">The night I drove into Chinle, Arizona the first time, I’d forgotten why I wanted to go there. My guidebooks had mentioned some reason I should see Canyon de Chelly, but after driving all day from Zion National Park, along the Vermilion Cliffs, across Lee’s Ferry (where boat trips put in to go through the Grand Canyon) and finally onto the Navaho-Hopi Reservation, I’d already crammed a two day drive into one. Before leaving the warm sandstone walls of Zion, I had placed my hands against the canyon walls in praise of the earth’s beauty and to ask for safe passage. My destination that night had been the north rim of the Grand Canyon, but that road was closed, still snowed in. I kept on driving south.<br /><br />The high desert landscape cast its spell on me. I traveled alone through a vast, unknown country. My eyes marveled at black hills, lavender hills, dun-colored bluffs, coral-colored sands, yellow rocks, and blazing red/orange mesas. Blue mountains beckoned me across unmeasurable distances. Faraway jagged peaks shimmered like those fabled cities of gold the Spanish heard about. Those peaks seemed to be the destination of the two-laned blacktop road disappearing under my Dodge van. New grasses and wild flowers pushed up alongside the highway. Sage and juniper plants spaced themselves out across the desert terrain. The pristine blue sky created an open, spacious backdrop.<br /><br />At the beginning of the trip I stopped a few days at my sister’s outside Reno. I remember as it got dark the last evening I tried to explain to Rita what I thought this journey was about. I needed a spiritual adventure, something to wake me up again, to give me some inspiration. She listened without commenting.<br /><br />When I’d said I was looking for some spiritual experience as I set out on this larger journey from Oregon to New Mexico, I had no idea what that meant. I was hoping to find some personal connection to these lands of the Southwest. I was searching for a new place to live in the United States after living in Oaxaca, Mexico. I was seeking places I might love as much as I love Oaxaca. I considered that the cultural similarities, the blend of Native American and Hispanic peoples in the desert Southwest could offer a similar life experience to the one I had in Oaxaca. And, I wanted to be where there’s a living connection to the ancient people of this continent.<br /><br />A few months before I had made a painting of a blue horse in space. The Blue Horse seemed to come out of nowhere but became a theme for a series of paintings. I recalled how the horse had been my childhood totem, or power animal. My imaginary horses carried me through a sometimes dangerous, always dysfunctional, family situation. When healing my back a few years before I visualized myself as a Palomino galloping through a nearby meadow. In sand tray therapy I had picked out a blue horse as a symbol for moving on. In a book called They Sing for Horses which deals with Navaho beliefs about horses, I read that the Blue Horse is the Spirit Horse, the one of healing, related to turquoise and to water. As the Oregon winter ended, I felt the Blue Horse tugging at my heart. I had to answer my yearning to explore new places. I decided to go where horses roam wild.<br /><br />I bought an older, two-toned blue Dodge van with picture windows and a slant-six engine. After absorbing as much as I could from reading about New Mexico and Arizona, I figured out a back road route between where I was in Oregon and Ray and Susie’s place outside Taos, New Mexico. Their house would be the destination of my six-week spring journey. They had invited me to visit them, anytime. We’d had dinner together on the Zocalo my last night in Oaxaca that winter. I’d known them a couple years, meeting through mutual friends out in Teotitlan del Valle where they bought weavings for La Unica Cosa, their well-established rug gallery in Taos. We always met up in Oaxaca, since New Mexico and Oregon seem to be at opposite poles of two Western perspectives. I set out in early May.<br /><br />Leaving Rita’s early one morning I drove east into the desert on roads I’d never seen before, heading out across Nevada on the “Loneliest Road In America”. That first day out into the unknown, I drove through a storm of snow, hail, rain and sunshine while crossing various mountain passes and bleak low desert valleys without vegetation. Only a couple of cars appeared heading west all day. It got calm by late afternoon when, turning south, I finally reached Cathedral Gorge State Park on the Nevada/Utah border. The pink clay pinnacles shone in the gold of sunset. In the distance I noted ranches with alfalfa-green fields.<br /><br />Now I was traveling along a highway in northern Arizona. I watched the shadow of my van move steadily across the landscape. Elation replaced any doubt or fear I had about driving in the desert alone. As the day passed, the climate changed from hot, dry, windy, to wild, wet thunderstorms which beat into my van’s windshield. Lightning struck the hills faraway. Coral-colored high desert sands with large juniper trees gave way to adobe-colored and white-salt flatlands. Occasional towns, settlements with Navaho hogans and roadside jewelry stands, seemed small against the immense, expansive landscape. When I turned off the north/south highway in early afternoon and headed towards Tuba City, AZ, I noted a perfectly shaped lavender colored hill.<br /><br />Passing through Tuba City where the Hopi/Navaho Reservation begins, I continued east across the Hopi Mesas. I tried to pick up the Navaho Nation’s radio station that broadcasts out of Window Rock. I noted that the road to Big Mountain was closed to “outsiders”. I was not innocent of the politics on the Reservation. Hadn’t I once helped send supplies or money to the traditional Navahos trying to keep their places on Big Mountain? The Navahos and Hopi, traditional enemies, shared the same general territory before the U. S. domination of their homelands. Part of their former territories became the Reservation. The other political players are the Peabody Coal Company and the United States Government. These both undoubtedly have something to do with the conflict over Big Mountain. Like many Western conflicts, I learned later that the major underlying issue is water.<br /><br /> In now what seems to have been my dash across the Hopi Mesas, I missed old Oraibi entirely. It rained intermittently that afternoon, generating wonderful fragrances of juniper and sage. On the Reservation, drivers of on-coming cars raised a hand or index finger above their steering wheels to greet me. This greeting or blessing was something I’d not seen on my drive across Nevada back roads, through other parts of Utah and Arizona. It seemed that everyone was Native American which made me happy. After so much time spent with the Zapotecs in Oaxaca, I had an instant feeling of kinship.<br /><br />I finally stopped at the Hopi Government Building at Hotevilla. I wanted to find out if there were any local ceremonial dances to which outsiders might go. Inside the offices, I felt a little out of place with everyone in traditional office clothing and me in baggy jeans and a tee-shirt. My short blond hair and disheveled, just-gone-camping appearance contrasted with the clean, well-dressed office workers. Being early May, a young Hopi woman explained there were no dances on any of the Mesas this time of year. Outside, I shared a few words with one of the leaders of a tribal meeting going on. Smoking a Marlboro and speaking in metaphor, he said he was looking forward to going home and relaxing, after having to put out many fires that day at their meeting. I wished him well.<br /><br />I had intended to stay at the campground at Keams Canyon, a Hopi tourist facility. Not noticing any signs for the Canyon, I missed the turn off completely. After stopping in a picnic ground to eat and consult the map, I decided to go on to Chinle which is on the Navaho part of the Rez. A coyote type dog sniffed around the picnic grounds. I gave him a treat and then I drove another half-hour to the north-south highway leading to Canyon de Chelly.<br /><br />As I turned north on the road to Chinle, the sun was setting. Gold and magenta light spread across the high desert in front of me. Shadows of sage plants lengthened. By the time Chinle’s lights appeared on the horizon, the sky shown a deep indigo-blue. It was full of bright stars and the swirl of the Milky Way. I drove passed the Chinle Wash and followed the green and white road signs to the Canyon de Chelly Campground. All the camping spaces were full, so I parked along the fence outside the campground. I visited the restrooms, and gawked at a million stars in the indigo/black sky. Then, I locked myself inside the van and went to sleep.<br /><br />The next morning, after seeing a video presentation at the Canyon de Chelly Visitors Center, I remembered exactly why I’d wanted to visit this place. In the video a young Navaho man rode his horse down the walls into the Canyon. After seeing the video I rushed to the Canyon’s rim and there looked down into what seemed like another world. The world below revealed a river with lush green fields alongside it. Little hogans and peach orchards spread out along the river’s meander through the sandstone canyon five-hundred feet below. Where I stood on the rim, I was part of the biege-toned high desert dotted with sage, junipers and yellow blooming chamisa. These gave way to an immense blue sky with gathering white, cumulus clouds.<br /><br />Standing there in what seemed like three worlds at once, immense joy filled my being. I just had to go into the world below. And I wanted to go in on a horse. That afternoon I met a couple of women from Oregon at the visitors center also inquiring about riding horseback into the Canyon. We found out there were two places that offered rides into the Canyon. You can only go into the Canyon with a Navaho guide. One of the women wanted to ride into the Canyon on a horse, so Cathy and I decided to go together the next morning. Her partner, Alice, would go on the morning hike offered by the Visitors Center while we went in on horseback. The most popular horseback rides begin where the Chinle Wash spills into the town, near the Thunderbird Hotel. Being a little leery of big groups, we decided to check out the other place. Besides, they offered a woman guide. We drove a ways out along the south canyon rim to make plans with a family that rented horses there. Navahos are renowned horse people. We thought it would be really inspiring to go into the Canyon with a woman guide.<br /><br />The family lived in a hogan without phone or electricity. I could tell that the older woman we were talking with understood very little English. Still, she promised us a woman guide at 9 AM the next day. We looked at their horses standing in the corral nearby. As we headed back towards Chinle, it began to storm again. A wild mare and her foal stood out among the brush, tails turned toward the driving rain.<br />At the campground that evening, I watched my neighbor’s tent struggle to stay anchored against the strong wind of another incoming storm. The campers inside barely kept the tent on the ground. I felt grateful to be in the van. I wondered what tomorrow would bring.<br /><br />I wasn’t happy to see gray drizzle the next morning. I assumed our ride was off. However, Cathy, a dare-devil, insisted we go. We pulled into the muddy driveway below the hogan. Three horses were saddled and tied at the hitching rail. We’d been assured a woman guide but a young man introduced himself and related he’d be guiding us into the Canyon that day. A fine mist surrounded us. We prepared to go with him though we’d really wanted the woman guide. Then, as if hearing our call, Vernita and her husband arrived in their pickup. She was the woman guide. She just happened to show up at the hogan at that moment. No one had contacted her about our trip. It was going to be three hours ride to Mummy House Ruins at the end of Canyon de Muertos, a spur of Canyon de Chelly. Then 3 hours back, that’s a six hour ride. We urged her to take us even if it was a new plan for her day. She agreed, saying she could use the money. I chose the pinto horse, a small mare. I like horses I can see over. Cathy had a big Palomino gelding named Buddy, and Vernita, our guide, rode a sorta skiddish, larger bay gelding, not her own horse. He was not trained to be a lead horse but since her own horse’s mouth had been ruined by an inexperienced rider, she had to take him.<br /><br />I hadn’t been on a horse in years but gave that no thought. To go into this fantastic other world on a horse just seemed magical. Did I mention I hate being out in the rain? Being from Oregon though, I did have a complete rain suit with me. And my blue felt hat. It continued drizzling. Vernita thought it might clear up during the ride. I hoped she was right . Vernita wore her husband’s oiled greatcoat and a black felt brimmed hat. She looked like she’d been on horses all her 29 years. Her outfit was timeless, American western. Her engaging smile reassured me. We put our lunches and water in a saddlebag, mounted up and headed off across the road towards a secret entrance to the Canyon.<br /><br />We were going into Canyon de Los Muertos, named that because the Navaho were trapped there, and many killed, by Kit Carson and the American army in 1864. Led by Manuelito, a famous warrior, they made their last stand in this part of Canyon. Most survivors were relocated to Bosque Redondo, a fort in southeastern New Mexico. Years later they were finally allowed to return to these Canyons, their spiritual homeland.<br /><br />At the canyon rim we dismounted to lead the horses down the steep, narrow trail. Vernita informed us that we were entering the Feminine end of the canyon. She explained that in her people’s beliefs, Masculine and Feminine designations cover everything. For instance, drizzle and fog are Feminine. Lightning, wind, hard rain, are Masculine. Vernita was having her period, it would be full moon that night and, the Feminine light drizzle and fog shrouded our passage to the world below. I wondered exactly how we would find the balance, meet the Masculine, before the day was over.<br />The stony narrow trail zigzagged downward along a ledge that dropped off hundreds of feet below. My horse, the pinto, would eye me from the above on the trail and need coaxing to continue downward around the sharp curves. We women talked about ourselves and I asked Vernita as many things as I could about her life and customs.<br /><br />As a young woman, she and her husband had ridden together into this end of the canyon, as part of their marriage celebration. She mentioned that she now studied at the Community College but was also learning traditional healing methods from tribal elders. She wanted to retrieve her heritage and pass it on to her twin daughters. The matriarchal system means Navaho women have power and almost all the financial responsibility for the family. She mentioned that this was why she was going to college, hoping to make a better living.<br /><br />Once we got to the canyon floor, the rain ceased and the sun came out. We rode along the river on a dirt lane, passing hogans with blooming peach trees, newly planted corn fields and sheep corrals. Dull green olive trees grow wild along the river, planted there by the Spanish. Riding between those sandstone walls, I understood the Navaho belief that beauty and harmony are spiritually one thing. Cold and wet, we rode in beauty. I felt sheltered by the five-hundred foot high, warm, sienna-colored canyon walls. It felt like a home place. And it is the summer home to many.<br /><br />Along the way crossing an arroyo, we sighted a wild, blue-roan stallion with a couple of mares nearby. He was quite handsome with his long black tail and diffusely spotted blue/black coat. His proximity could be a problem, if the he chose to pick a fight with our horses, Vernita said. We yelled and held our horses back, and the stallion and mares moved in the opposite direction. After that we paused briefly to look at some recent cave paintings on a wall beneath an overhang. They depicted American soldiers with guns, on horseback, from the 1864 campaign with Kit Carson. Vernita mentioned it is named Massacre Cave.<br /><br />After two hours Mummy House Ruins, an ancient Pueblo style ruin, came into sight. It is named for a mumified body found there. The ruins lie in a recess under a stone ledge at the box end of the Canyon. Talking non-stop to Vernita since my horse had to walk right next to hers, I’d forgotten about the weather as we rode along.<br /><br />A hard wind had been gathering heavy storm clouds above us. We dismounted, tied the horses to a log and decided to sit under the large old cottonwood tree to eat our lunches. Just then, the Masculine storm hit. Thunder boomed and a thick lightning bolt struck the ground twenty feet away. The startled horses jumped around and got loose. Wind drove the cold, hard rain into our faces. We leaped up and rushed to catch the horses. We stood holding their reins while eating our sandwiches in the shelter of the old Mother tree.<br /><br />My horse seemed the most frightened. I stroked her neck and talked to her. I called up hypnosis techniques previously used to in trance human clients during my years as a psychic healer. She responded well. Touching her neck also warmed my freezing hands. I knew Vernita must be having a hard time with menstrual cramps. Cathy, the least bothered by our situation, walked over and briefly explored the ruins.<br /><br />The storm passed in about twenty minutes. Wet and cold, we had to start back. This time I rode the Palomino, Buddy. It was a two hour ride to the almost vertical path out of the canyon we’d come in on. It rained lightly and steadily. Vernita urged us on. The river was rising. Flash flooding is common in heavy rain. Buddy had his own speed, slow, so every once in awhile, I’d urge him to catch up with Vernita and Cathy, who rode ahead, chatting away.<br />It was raining harder by the time we got back to where the path goes up the canyon wall. It seemed very steep looking up from below, and much more dangerous than when we came in. The five-hundred foot ascent would have to be on the horses, not leading them on foot. As I looked at the canyon wall and the narrow, slippery trail we had to ascend, “this could be it” crossed my mind. Meaning I guess, that a mistep of any horse’s foot could throw horse and rider over the edge onto the rocks below. A certain Tibetan mantra came to mind. The rain was washing out parts of the trail. Vernita insisted we get on with it. Going almost straight up seemed to be the only way out of the Canyon.<br /><br />Barely up the trail, Vernita’s skitterish horse spooked and turned around, trying to come down the narrow trail as our horses were coming up. She got him under control. I was riding last on Buddy, behind Cathy and Vernita. Vernita told me I had to get Buddy to pass both horses because, as the oldest and most experienced horse, he would lead the other horses up and out of the canyon. She and Cathy pulled their horses to the inside wall. I nudged Buddy on up the trail, passing the other horses along the outside edge with no room for a mistake. The other riders blurred as my eyes focused on the trail up ahead. I couldn’t look down or back.<br /><br />The steady rain intensified. I leaned into Buddy’s neck and gave him his head. I let the reins hang loose. He knew what to do. He’d get all of us out of the Canyon. His steady unshod hooves landed on solid rocks all the way up the trail.<br /><br />As we got closer to the top, some agile young Navaho men scaled the canyon wall on hand and foot holds nearby. It was a relief to see other human beings. Vernita greeted them. They talked and laughed in Navaho as we continued up our parallel paths. A sense of release spread through my body as we got to the canyon’s rim. Buddy relaxed too once we arrived on the high desert trail.<br />With the unrelenting rain, the desert had become a slippery two-inch coat of dun-colored mud through which we trotted, galloped and slid back to the corral and the hogan. The horses, now near home, just wanted to get there as fast as possible.<br /><br />Relief shown on the faces of Vernita’s relatives when we appeared in the driveway. They had been worried since it stormed most of the day. Vernita’s husband got out of their truck smiling. Cathy’s partner had driven out to meet us. She laughed while hugging us both. Our laughter dispelled the tension I’d been feeling. I announced that I’d been scared at times. Cathy said she was never afraid. Vernita admitted that she felt frightened when it started raining hard on our way back.<br /><br />I got the remains of my lunch out of the saddle bag and thanked Buddy with the apple I had not eaten. I felt grateful that this journey into the world below only left me with some very sore thighs. I walked gingerly over to my van to remove my rain gear and get my wallet to pay Vernita.<br /><br />Cathy and I realized that the trip had been a priceless adventure. We thanked Vernita many times. Months later I sent Vernita a print of the Blue Horse painting explaining that this mythical being had inspired me to take the trip in the first place. Cathy mailed me photos of us on horseback in the Canyon. We were all grinning ear to ear. Vernita sent me a note card with a picture of Manuelito.<br /><br /> *************************************************************************<br /><br />The following morning I walked down to Whitehouse Ruins, the one place I could go unattended into the Canyon. I treasured each step and view along the red earth trail. I bought some turquoise earrings from a tiny wrinkled grandmother in a bright blue velvet skirt sitting near the ancient ruin. That afternoon I drove over to see Spider Woman, the Dine (Navaho) people’s ancestor. She sits embodied in very tall rock formation in another part of the canyon. From below she must look like a guardian spirit. Though some distance away, her head was even with the overlook where I parked. I threw Her an offering of corn kernels and tobacco in a tiny handwoven pouch. I prayed to return someday.<br /><br />Another white woman arrived just as I was about to depart. She wondered if I wasn’t afraid to travel alone on the reservation. She’d heard that the Navahos could be hostile to outsiders, especially if you broke down. Fear of the people here had never crossed my mind. As we talked I noticed some crows diving around above me. They played in the breezes, calling loudly. Then they flew east, suggesting I follow them. I heeded their call and started driving towards New Mexico.</span>Mitzi Linnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05167793497585467643noreply@blogger.com0