It is remarkable to
sense the presence of those long passed at the locations where their adventures
took place. Spirits range without
boundaries of any sort, and spirits may be called back in any number of
ways. The method used in the calling
also determines how the spirit manifests itself. I think a spirit may or may not choose to
remain at the site of its passing or death.
I think they might be in a number of places at the same time. Storytelling can procure fleeting moments to
experience who they were and how life felt long ago. What I enjoyed most as a child was standing
at the site of an incident recounted in one of the ancient stories that old
Aunt Susie had told us as girls. What
excited me was listening to her tell us an old-time story and then realizing
that I was familiar with a certain mesa or cave that figured as the central
location of the story she was telling.
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Before the arrival of Christian missionaries, a man could
dress as a woman and work with the women and even marry a man without any
fanfare. Likewise, a woman was free to
dress like a man, to hunt and go to war with the men, and to marry a
woman. In the old Pueblo worldview, we
are all a mixture of male and female, and this sexual identity is changing
constantly. Sexual inhibition did not
begin until the Christian missionaries arrived.
For the old-time people, marriage was about teamwork and social relationships,
not about sexual excitement. In the days
before the Puritans came, marriage did not mean an end to sex with people other
than your spouse. Women were just as
likely as men to have a si’ash, or lover.
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All places and all beings of the earth are sacred. It is dangerous to designate some places
sacred when all are sacred. Such
compromises imply that there is a hierarchy of value, with some places and some
living beings not as important as others.
No part of the earth is expendable; the earth is a whole that cannot be
fragmented, as it has been by the destroyers’ mentality of the industrial age. The greedy destroyers of life and bringers of
suffering demand that sacred land be sacrificed so that a few designated sacred
places may survive; but once any part is deemed expendable, others can easily
be redefined to fit the category of expendable.
-------------------------------
…..These cowboys believed in action, not words, certainly
not the printed word.
Hundreds of years before, proclamations, letters, and edicts
came to the Americas from monarchs and popes admonishing the settlers to obey
the laws. In the Americas, the settlers
were to reap the riches they all desired.
If you could not read the king’s or the pope’s edict, then you could not
be held accountable. If you were
ignorant of the pope’s edict then you were blameless before God. So illiteracy and the aversion to books that
is found through the Americas descends from colonial times. Ignorance was blissful and profitable.
--------------------------------
(On Photography) The
origin of waves or particles of light-energy that may give such a sinister cast
to a photograph is as yet unexplained.
Fields of electromagnetic force affect light. Crowds of human beings massed together
emanate actual electricity. Individual
perceptions and behavior are altered.
Witnesses report feeling an “electricity” that binds and propels a mob
as a single creature. So the greed and
violence of the last century in the United States are palpable; what we have
done to one another and to the earth is registered in the very atmosphere and
effect, even in the light. “Murder,
murder,” sighs the wind over the rocks in a remote Arizona canyon where they
betrayed Geronimo.
