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Dec. 31st, 2004 01:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
home_and_away.... So yeah. It's been an interesting year.
Enlightening.
Enriching.
I swear, there's a little grey hiding in this brunette chaos I call a hairstyle because of it, but that's alright, because there's a little red, too. And that's what shines when the sun hits it, so who really cares?
... Went half mad this year, and am coming back half sane, if "sane" still applies to someone who's blessed to hear voices in her head that aren't necessarily her own.
Found strength and weakness. Found joy and sorrow, compassion and ruthlessness. Found examples of all four varieties of love (and if I had the old study Bible on me, with its article on the four individual words the Greeks had--still have?--for the concepts that, in English, all get lumped together under "love", I'd throw that one up for the edification of all. It's fascinating how inefficient this language is sometimes...), and watched them all bleed together when I tried to parse them out. Fell headlong into a canyon of Tao and Zen and stepping-in-to-step-back-from-and-vice-versa....
Hoardes of stuff that probably only makes an ounce of sense to you if you've been witness to it, vis a vis.
Learned the difference between what-you-want-to-hear and what-needs-said.
And, so far, am coming out of it with family and Pack intact.
Thanks be...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So. You'll give me shit about it, Brother, and that's fine. But the Old Man is my favorite Uncle and I love him too much to write him off. Frankly, you love the traits I have from him too much to really want me to. And I never would've met him if you hadn't pointed him out, so there's that for "no-one's listening".
In the end, I *am* listening and you're *not* a fool.
I'm just stubborn (family trait?) and not inclined to take the word of any authority figure without having tested all its seams and seemings for weaknesses. Even less inclined when said authority figure leans like Grandfather is prone to do. 'S why I think it's good for all of us involved to tweak his tail now and then.
Let me get my dens--physical and mental--into slightly better repair, and we'll go walking.
Deal?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the meantime, one by my most beloved author, Charles deLint, to round out the entry and the year. 'Twas passed on to me by Mischa, and I'm still singing and dancing, having added it to the collection of shiny-s. Thank you, love!
Be thou each one blessed and twice blessed,
and may you live in interesting times.
"Coyote"
1.
Coyote's
all used up now,
some say.
His mystery has
been diminished
by too much attention:
a hundred times a hundred
times a hundred times over
he's sold as a memory
to tourists—
snout pointing moonward,
howl in throat;
his image has become
quick shorthand
to the apperception
of Trickster as myth
and every would-be shaman,
born of book
or new age guru,
is on a first name basis with him.
Though, of course,
Coyote only ever had
the one given name.
The commercialization
is robbing Coyote
of his Trickster myth,
those same worriers go on.
It's not a recent phenomena;
he's already been swallowed by cartoons.
He's Bugs Bunny and Tweety Bird,
and even the Roadrunner
(where Wiley plays the fool
—but that's Trickster, too).
Now he's Bart Simpson,
they say,
Trickster for the nineties,
and the real magic's
all gone away.
2.
Here's Coyote
as we met him:
A raucous sound
cutting across the night's
comforting cricket chorus—
it's freshman week
at Desert U.
as a half-dozen coyote voices
mimic drunken students;
party animal, indeed.
MaryAnn calling me
to an early-morning window,
pointing, "There,"
as two reddish grey and buff shapes,
white-bellied and cock-eared,
continue on down the road,
disappearing finally
behind a stand of mesquite
and beavertail cacti:
calm ghosts,
not so much shy,
as cautious.
Terri and I driving
to Tappan and Beth's,
stopped a half-dozen yards
from the driveway
as two coyotes come
down the dry wash,
stand to watch us
as we watch them,
—curiosity on their part,
awe on ours—
then slip away into the brush.
Standing on the small hill
that holds a replica
of the Grotto of Lourdes
just east of the San Xavier Mission,
I point down the hill at a dog,
and joke, "There's a coyote,"
but it's no joke;
the lean shape ambles
in between the parked cars and buses,
and makes his brazen way
along the wall enclosing
the San Xavier Plaza,
set across the parking lot
from the Mission.
He's in sight a moment longer,
then he crosses the road
and saunters away,
into the scrub.
On the stones of a dry riverbed
at the bottom of an arroyo,
sitting with MaryAnn and Terri,
the slopes rising up on either side,
red stone and green cacti,
a secret place,
my gaze was caught
by a broken branch-stump
on the lower trunk
of a desert willow,
and there was Coyote,
rising from the wood,
head lifting out of the bark
nose pointed high,
ears cocked—
features pulled from the tree
by wind and stormy weather.
Driving back to Terri's
with Charles and Karen
in the backseat,
MaryAnn saying to them,
"I hope you'll get to see
a coyote before you go,"
and no sooner do the words leave her mouth,
than there he is,
a lean grey and brown form
caught in the headlights,
the reflection from
the tapetum layers behind his retinas
turning his gaze bright red.
3.
Coyote will survive
commercialism
and new ageism
and tourism
and any other -isms
we care to throw his way.
He'll adapt to our intrusions,
into both myth and nature,
because he is Coyote.
It isn't mysticism
that sustains him,
but mystery.
4.
We brought home
Coyote in a photograph:
desert brush and cacti,
sun-bleached stone and faded dirt,
and somewhere in the picture,
hidden—
spot the coyote.
We brought home
Coyote on a T-shirt,
Bryer's coyote woman playing a flute
while all around her,
the coyotes are singing.
We brought home
Coyote as a Zuni fetish,
jet, inlaid with turquoise,
myth wise.
We brought home
Coyote in a pencil sketch
and another I did
with a ball point pen.
We brought home
Coyote and his mate,
in Terri's "Coyotes Mate for Life,"
brownprint and pastels,
an image that perfectly
steps the intuitive path
between coyote spirit
and human spirit.
The point is,
what we brought home
was the idea of Coyote,
the resonance of his presence
as it plays against my spirit,
but Coyote remains
as he always has been:
mythic spirit and desert predator,
cockily brazen and ghost shy,
Trickster and Canis latrans,
capable of adapting to
any environment or lifestyle,
and forever unconcerned
with how we perceive him.
5.
Coyote's
all used up now,
some will still insist.
Such a sentiment says more about
the one who holds it to be true
than it ever could about
Coyote.
—Charles de Lint
Late autumn, 1991
________________________________
Copyright © 1991 by Charles de Lint <http://www.endicott-studio.com/bios/biodelintharris.html>
This poem first appeared in Desert Moments by Charles de Lint, Triskell Press, 1991.
Enlightening.
Enriching.
I swear, there's a little grey hiding in this brunette chaos I call a hairstyle because of it, but that's alright, because there's a little red, too. And that's what shines when the sun hits it, so who really cares?
... Went half mad this year, and am coming back half sane, if "sane" still applies to someone who's blessed to hear voices in her head that aren't necessarily her own.
Found strength and weakness. Found joy and sorrow, compassion and ruthlessness. Found examples of all four varieties of love (and if I had the old study Bible on me, with its article on the four individual words the Greeks had--still have?--for the concepts that, in English, all get lumped together under "love", I'd throw that one up for the edification of all. It's fascinating how inefficient this language is sometimes...), and watched them all bleed together when I tried to parse them out. Fell headlong into a canyon of Tao and Zen and stepping-in-to-step-back-from-and-vice-versa....
Hoardes of stuff that probably only makes an ounce of sense to you if you've been witness to it, vis a vis.
Learned the difference between what-you-want-to-hear and what-needs-said.
And, so far, am coming out of it with family and Pack intact.
Thanks be...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So. You'll give me shit about it, Brother, and that's fine. But the Old Man is my favorite Uncle and I love him too much to write him off. Frankly, you love the traits I have from him too much to really want me to. And I never would've met him if you hadn't pointed him out, so there's that for "no-one's listening".
In the end, I *am* listening and you're *not* a fool.
I'm just stubborn (family trait?) and not inclined to take the word of any authority figure without having tested all its seams and seemings for weaknesses. Even less inclined when said authority figure leans like Grandfather is prone to do. 'S why I think it's good for all of us involved to tweak his tail now and then.
Let me get my dens--physical and mental--into slightly better repair, and we'll go walking.
Deal?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the meantime, one by my most beloved author, Charles deLint, to round out the entry and the year. 'Twas passed on to me by Mischa, and I'm still singing and dancing, having added it to the collection of shiny-s. Thank you, love!
Be thou each one blessed and twice blessed,
and may you live in interesting times.
"Coyote"
1.
Coyote's
all used up now,
some say.
His mystery has
been diminished
by too much attention:
a hundred times a hundred
times a hundred times over
he's sold as a memory
to tourists—
snout pointing moonward,
howl in throat;
his image has become
quick shorthand
to the apperception
of Trickster as myth
and every would-be shaman,
born of book
or new age guru,
is on a first name basis with him.
Though, of course,
Coyote only ever had
the one given name.
The commercialization
is robbing Coyote
of his Trickster myth,
those same worriers go on.
It's not a recent phenomena;
he's already been swallowed by cartoons.
He's Bugs Bunny and Tweety Bird,
and even the Roadrunner
(where Wiley plays the fool
—but that's Trickster, too).
Now he's Bart Simpson,
they say,
Trickster for the nineties,
and the real magic's
all gone away.
2.
Here's Coyote
as we met him:
A raucous sound
cutting across the night's
comforting cricket chorus—
it's freshman week
at Desert U.
as a half-dozen coyote voices
mimic drunken students;
party animal, indeed.
MaryAnn calling me
to an early-morning window,
pointing, "There,"
as two reddish grey and buff shapes,
white-bellied and cock-eared,
continue on down the road,
disappearing finally
behind a stand of mesquite
and beavertail cacti:
calm ghosts,
not so much shy,
as cautious.
Terri and I driving
to Tappan and Beth's,
stopped a half-dozen yards
from the driveway
as two coyotes come
down the dry wash,
stand to watch us
as we watch them,
—curiosity on their part,
awe on ours—
then slip away into the brush.
Standing on the small hill
that holds a replica
of the Grotto of Lourdes
just east of the San Xavier Mission,
I point down the hill at a dog,
and joke, "There's a coyote,"
but it's no joke;
the lean shape ambles
in between the parked cars and buses,
and makes his brazen way
along the wall enclosing
the San Xavier Plaza,
set across the parking lot
from the Mission.
He's in sight a moment longer,
then he crosses the road
and saunters away,
into the scrub.
On the stones of a dry riverbed
at the bottom of an arroyo,
sitting with MaryAnn and Terri,
the slopes rising up on either side,
red stone and green cacti,
a secret place,
my gaze was caught
by a broken branch-stump
on the lower trunk
of a desert willow,
and there was Coyote,
rising from the wood,
head lifting out of the bark
nose pointed high,
ears cocked—
features pulled from the tree
by wind and stormy weather.
Driving back to Terri's
with Charles and Karen
in the backseat,
MaryAnn saying to them,
"I hope you'll get to see
a coyote before you go,"
and no sooner do the words leave her mouth,
than there he is,
a lean grey and brown form
caught in the headlights,
the reflection from
the tapetum layers behind his retinas
turning his gaze bright red.
3.
Coyote will survive
commercialism
and new ageism
and tourism
and any other -isms
we care to throw his way.
He'll adapt to our intrusions,
into both myth and nature,
because he is Coyote.
It isn't mysticism
that sustains him,
but mystery.
4.
We brought home
Coyote in a photograph:
desert brush and cacti,
sun-bleached stone and faded dirt,
and somewhere in the picture,
hidden—
spot the coyote.
We brought home
Coyote on a T-shirt,
Bryer's coyote woman playing a flute
while all around her,
the coyotes are singing.
We brought home
Coyote as a Zuni fetish,
jet, inlaid with turquoise,
myth wise.
We brought home
Coyote in a pencil sketch
and another I did
with a ball point pen.
We brought home
Coyote and his mate,
in Terri's "Coyotes Mate for Life,"
brownprint and pastels,
an image that perfectly
steps the intuitive path
between coyote spirit
and human spirit.
The point is,
what we brought home
was the idea of Coyote,
the resonance of his presence
as it plays against my spirit,
but Coyote remains
as he always has been:
mythic spirit and desert predator,
cockily brazen and ghost shy,
Trickster and Canis latrans,
capable of adapting to
any environment or lifestyle,
and forever unconcerned
with how we perceive him.
5.
Coyote's
all used up now,
some will still insist.
Such a sentiment says more about
the one who holds it to be true
than it ever could about
Coyote.
—Charles de Lint
Late autumn, 1991
________________________________
Copyright © 1991 by Charles de Lint <http://www.endicott-studio.com/bios/biodelintharris.html>
This poem first appeared in Desert Moments by Charles de Lint, Triskell Press, 1991.
