I’m delighted to know Indigenous petroglyphs are found here
Previous posts this year have presented my curiosity in petroglyphs and petrographs even before I relocated to the Pacific Northwest and saw them in the wild. That time in my life was accompanied by a growing appreciation of tribal mythologies, which I believe enhances an understanding of the region’s unique biosphere. Living at the edge of the Yakama reservation meant the ancient stories I was reading were local news.
The Indigenous spirit was something I missed in my dwelling-places since in my moves eastward across the Midwest, Baltimore, and then New Hampshire.
Eastport, however, with its Passamaquoddy legacy and presence, has revived that. The tribe somehow survived oppression and is rediscovering and reclaiming much of its culture, thanks to the pioneering efforts of individuals like the late Wayne A. Newell, who wrote more than 40 books in the supposedly dying Passamaquoddy language before his first book in English in 2021, Kuhkomossonuk Akonutomuwinokot, Stories Our Grandmothers Told Us.
The late Fredda Paul was doing something similar within herbal medicine and healing lore, while also continuing the storytelling tradition. They are both deeply missed.
Tribal historian Donald Soctomah has furthered their work. These days, he’s part of a circle documenting and preserving the local petroglyphs in the face of rising sea levels. His online presentation earlier this year with the Border Historical Society in Eastport had me realizing I may have been overlooking impressions here – many are stippled into the rock surface in a way that they’re visible only early in the morning or late afternoon, especially if the stone is wetted. A video, A Song of the Drum, and several short YouTube videos from Machiasport can be found for free online.
Another wonderful video, Rhythm of the Heart, on the life of birch-bark canoe maker David Moses Bridges, is also available for free online. It’s a moving testimony. He passed way too early.
With premonitions as visions in the night
Vol. 47, starting 29 November 76, was the third tall, tan Citadel … had many poetry drafts and other bits that were eventually published. Now, for a few things that weren’t …
First, an erotic dream a few nights earlier, resigned myself to a wedding feast, mine to a wealthy, rural, landed girl — Quaker family — and, oh, how happy the whole circle was, as if trying to wake me from a heavy sorrow … she had long hair. This dream would haunt me later.
I woke myself, insisting, “But I’m already happily married!”
The farmhouse, set in a grove of solid trees, was a three-story federal style I would encounter six to eight years later in Maryland or Delaware and then, later, in New England.
Also, an erotic dream of Celeste followed the next day, in fact, with a tender letter from her in the mail …
“Got Yule cards out Thurs, only marginals remain.” Guess that means the ones that needed more personal notations.
~*~
Mount Adams, the distant presence to our west, continued to fascinate, perhaps as an emotional anchor for me.
~*~
In revisiting my journals from this stretch of my life, I’m struck by ways my memories diverged from the timeline recorded in the pages.
I would have insisted, for instance, that the wedding dream took place about two years after leaving Yakima.
On the other hand, the Quaker circle gathered earlier than I sensed.
The office situation was more tangled than I remembered, too.
I’m also more conscious of not having close local connections or friendships in Fostoria, apart from Kitty and her family, and wonder how a local church might have altered that, had I not been such a yogi. Jump ahead, and it becomes apparent that my Yakima contacts, apart from the office, were mostly among transplants, especially our new Quaker circle.
I do wonder, too, if it weren’t Friends, how might I have connected. Unitarian?
~*~
From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.
Interruptus
It was a fine Sunday to make my writing leaner, more visionary.
And then they showed up at the door.
How a new Quaker worship group came together
On the 12th, received two pieces of mail. The first, a list of local Friends and their addresses from University Meeting in Seattle.
The second, a letter from Swami urging me to stop procrastinating and return to the ashram.
A perplexing, even symbolic, clash but neither to be taken lightly. Especially a message from one’s guru stated directly and forcibly. Yet my guru-of-gurus, my heart, is not there. I am not ready to answer beck-and-call, to go back to a single trunk, to do no personal writing (or submissions). I have taken on responsibilities and opportunities here and perceive a need for Yoga/Quaker alternative to fundamentalist jangling, even before considering possibilities Native poets and others offer to my outlook.
Then yesterday received a challenging, derogatory rejection from Loon, as if to say, “Why are you bothering to write?”
24:X:76
Cold, damp, in a Binghamton mood / my aura dark gray, the one who has known God and is now out-of-light yet sitting in the morning, lifting me away …
And then a strange call from Tacoma Friends … me sounding phony yet happy to hear from another …
The 2nd Yakima Quaker gathering, my first, came after 17:XI … the phone number and directions for Tom and Carol’s …
Out Summitview to 74th, turn right up a grade with orchard on right, straight to end and take a left, West Lincoln going west a half-mile, starts to up over irrigation canal, a T go left, PRIVATE DRIVE DO NOT ENTER, around crush rock, past house under construction, the only house on left, go up to 2nd driveway, park on (?)
The Meeting here started worshipping in September, as if by my prayer … once a month, initially, with potluck and children …
21:XI:76 … got a letter from Tacoma Meeting and a call from Seattle Sunday night (arranging to be there).
Continuing 21:XI:76, first mention of Zenny and Bloom, who stayed over at our place … she was happy to have a shower, since they have neither a shower nor electricity yet on their blackberry farm … the house was uninhabited 11 years, in the woods with a wood-stove …
Kitty realized, from talking to them, how middle-class we’ve become — she’d been wondering (from her coworkers) if we were really strange
Extended talks with Zenny, and his Buddhist background, explored fronts of reconciliation between Yoga/Zen and Quaker traditions, “Eastern paths Quaker stumbled onto by fits and starts but without full knowledge of what it had discovered”
Also, how much wasted time in becoming convinced! How much unnecessary agony! How many fall away who could be helped by clearer direction?
So much bad information / misinformation is floating around out there!
Also raises matters of theatrics or colors rather than heart-essence. All around. (For Friends, the thees and thous or Quaker Oats figure.)
Already, I was glimpsing how the “Christ trap,” as I saw it, as Lord and Savior leads into “salvation” and “sinners” and the shallowness of “I’ve found it!” In this line of thinking, Friends were left vulnerable to the Methodist/Baptist pickings, depleting Quaker ranks.
Many seekers in Christian veins have been turned away by verbose non-answers (Fox: how they turn upon themselves), shallowness, lack of compassion, exploitation of man and nature (including persecution of others), and self-righteousness.
Yes, Jesus was divine. But what about others, too? “If I understand Friends correctly, all men are divine,” including women and children. (Today I would add that many turn their backs on it and despise it.)
Quaker faith is Christian and more. Sitting in silence returns us to our own hearts, our truest guru.
I do not mean book learning but rather the practice between a teacher and student, leading to an awareness within the student of his own God-nature, regardless of whether the term “God” enters into it (in many ways, the Quaker term “Light” is far better — no images of the Sunday School
[Today I’m surprised how closely these early observations develop into LightSeedTruth.]
29 nov, note another letter from Swami Lakshmy, for money (again) and questioning increasingly deeply …
Need for sacrifices, even though we are not making it financially — in fact, most of my pay steps from Fostoria have gone into rent (from $50 a month to $135 ti $275) and then into art supplies, food, and clothing … the car still the same …
4:XII:76 still bummed out by Swami’s (increasingly) harsh/strident letters, because I was already in the midst of a what-am-I-doing-here contemplation in the weeks before and been suffering root rot regarding writing — a dry, dryest of hearts: loss of laughter) …
~*~
From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.
Tribal beadwork applications
I have no idea anymore which tribe or tribes these notes reflected, but the list still stirs something in my imagination.
- Large pottery bowl
- Moccasins
- Painted stone fetish
- Bear mask
- Home partition screen
- Pipe bag
- Painted robe
- Painted shield
- Drum holders
- False-face mask
While regaining momentum in the literary world
As I noted in October, ’76: Good two weeks of poetry acceptance — 12-14 pieces taken.
That confusion some have, mistaking Jimm for Swami Jnana. Though they live together, they are distinct. One is the patron, who pays the bills by laboring on newspapers, complains about things, tries to live in some style, occasionally smokes, sometimes eats meat, likes to dine out (despite his income), listens to classical music, reads Newsweek, snuggles with his wife. Swami Jnana is his guru, appreciates silence, honest laughter, high country hiking, hardline poetry, animals, and fully human circles. Although they share the same household and many of the same interests, they are distinct. They met in early 1972 and things progressed from there. They have lived together in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and now Washington state. Since joining, Jimm has been calmer and happier while Jnana spreads Dharma seeds. Jimm’s childhood and historical roots have become less urgent; he may disappear altogether. There’s nothing more to say at this point. I’m not certain whose journal this is. It doesn’t matter. They each enter lines on these pages.
Rexroth amazing in the number of unknown poets he admires and the candidness with which he demolishes others. The Paris expatriates were, he says, drawn there by booze (Prohibition in the U.S,) and cheap dollars. Frost wasn’t modern at all but old-guard and compares poorly with similar English poets of a century earlier.
Duane Niatum an often bad poet who comes up with some fine lines, “pine cone city in rain.”
My introduction to Marnie Walsh of the Dakotas, sounding as if created by the people and place.
Her flattest possible diction with all of its crudeness almost a parody of pig-Indian English (“Um! You white!”) almost imitation Black and yet, how utterly devasting.
Yet with a freshness that cannot be ignored, especially in its directness.
~*~
Liz Sohappy, given her Palouse name, Om-na-ma, in 1969: “My Indian name has made great difference in my life. I really felt like a floating body until I received my name. My grandmother said that was how it was to be — no one else is here on earth until he has an Indian name”
I resonate with that, having been given the name Jnana in 1972.
As for the Native poet Dave Etter?
~*~
How strange, the Ginsberg’s The Fall of America is filled with place names and realizing he has no sense of place, but exactly the opposite — that is, a loss of place and roots and thus center, as in perspective, turning the Hari Krishna and Buddha to stop the movement, to cease the spinning …
~*~
Reviewing some of my work, wishing there were something more personal, intimate and yet more forceful there …
In W’s novel, it’s haunting freshness. No feeling of the veneer of (& chilling) revisions, editing …
If the book satisfied us, why would we want to read another piece by him or in the same voice, when there is no other
Andy Wyeth confession of losing himself in the character of what he’s creating but his lack of interest in the finished work; also, the difficulty of being watched while working: his need for secrecy, the self-consciousness intruding in the event of observation-in-creation, “Don’t talk out,” don’t analyze, don’t smooth out or you’ll lose the spark. The feeling of a compulsion forcing him to do a piece, submerge himself when there’s that sweeping instant of perception (a certain touch of light, for instance). The need for solitude and for tactile feeling to get beyond the eye’s flat view.
As for Christina, she is the essence of New England — even its witchcraft. (This, before I had ever been to New England.) Sprung something in me, a recognition of America and truths we do not allow ourselves to admit. A strand I kept denying in Binghamton and Bloomington, the Poconos and Fostoria. Some lack, too, in the Anglo culture, despite exorcism-slaying.
~*~
Wed. 17 Nov. 76, see I was reading Robert Bly “Looking for Dragon Smoke” … I would come back to its impact much later, somewhere in New England …
Snyder is to me what Thoreau was to generations of Americans.
But if Henry is the amateur, Gary is the professional.
Ginsberg, meanwhile, runs with old Walt Whitman.
Snyder works from the inside-out, where others try from the outside-in.
The difference is clear meditation.
~*~
From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.
Kinisi 256
O
I
3
OI3
3IO
WHO
HOO
BIO
TWO
Solemn, spirited steps
Tribal dancing at Sipayik is a major community activity at the annual Passamaquoddy Days gathering. It does bring back memories for me of the Native dance competitions (and big jackpots for winners) when thousands from across the continent gathered for Tinowit in the Yakima Valley. This is much smaller and closer to home, in more ways than one.
If only I had owned a digital camera back then
In revising my novels Nearly Canaan and Secret Side of Jaya, I created several lookbooks slash storyboards from images found online to sharpen details in some of the passages. It’s a great writer’s hack, by the way. You pick up bits you overlook at the scene.
I do wish I had my own photographs from the decade of journals we’re sampling, but often I had no camera, much less training in how to use anything except the simplest point-and-shoot.. I did, however, work with some of the best photojournalists and knew some outstanding fine arts photographers as well. It would have been wonderful to work with them on these posts, but time has intervened. Well, I still have memories, faded as many are. And with a camera, I wouldn’t have worked so devotedly on writing, no doubt. There’s only so much time in a day, even without a paying job to attend to.
For a sense of my visual encounters in the Pacific Northwest, take a look at these free PDF albums at my Thistle Finch editions site: Apple Crates, Glorious Mount Adams, Know Your Salmon, Reflecting the Coast, Unexpected Northwest, and Yakama Beadwork.
Not that I haven’t attempted to re-create that world in immortal words.
Pick one or pick these booklets for your armchair travel.
Welcome to another Rabbit Hole on the Internet.
Jnana's Red Barn 