If I Were a Pueblo Princess

When I was in first grade I learned about the Pueblo Indians. I went on school field trips to museums and drew pictures of adobe homes in class. I went on family trips out to Pinnacle Peak and hiked the red hills till I was tired and hungry. And in college I learned about the real, tragic history of American Indian tribes.

I always wondered what it would be like to live in a Pueblo villiage "way back when". I loved the desert. I loved the heat. I loved the sun. I loved Gilla Monsters and horned toads and "garden lizzards". I loved Prickly Pear fruit and the strange and subtle smell of rocks.

I remember driving out to the state parks, watching the mountains grow bigger and bigger as we got closer. I remember wanting to climb those mountains barefoot. I don't think I ever tried, for fear of Black Widows and scorpions. Sometimes I would stop and stare up at the sun, then out accross the seemingly endless span of jagged, red cliffs. I imagined that I was an Indian Princess.

I imagined I lived in an adobe and ate hot corn tortillas with honey for breakfast. If I were a Pueblo princess I would spend my days padding through the mountains barefoot, eating cactus fruit and scanning the horizon for ominous birds. I would learn how to talk to the animals, and one day I would find my spirit guide.

Then I would be invincible.

Maybe I was a mountain lion. Maybe I was a bear. Maybe I was an Iguana so I could change my colors to blend into my surroundings. Maybe I was something poisonous.

I always liked sweating. I liked it when my heart raced and my muscles filled with hot blood. I liked it when the wind blew across my damp scalp causing my skin to ripple into goose bumps. I liked how much better cold water tasted when my mouth was dry from panting. I once had a dream that I was soaring through the Grand Canyon, speeding along with the pressure of the currents, but ever descending, gently to the bottom.

I felt safe in the desert. I didn't worry about starving, or dehydrating, or being maimed by an animal. I wanted to roll in the dirt and sleep in the sun and sit by a fire after the sun went down and the temperature dropped with it.

I used to stand in the middle of the street in our suburban neighborhood and watch the sun sink below the horizon. The middle of the street was the best place to stand because East Janice Way ran due East/West. From the street, it looked like the sun melted into the pavement before me. The sky turned pink first, with a lavender glow at the farthest reaches of the sun's last light. Then the sun turned orange and the sky was red behind it. Bright oranges and pinks painted the underbellies of the clouds, and a deep blue began to creep forward from the other end of the block. The purple sky was right above me. Then the sun turned red and the whole horizon looked like it was on fire. I could stare right at the sun without having to squint. That usually meant it was alsmost bedtime.

The collective buzz of the cicada chorus gave way to the sound of cricket chirps and the pavement grew cold beneath my feet. I would get into my pajamas and lie in bed, trying to burn the image of the sunset into my mind so I could keep it forever. I was sure that each sunset I saw was the prettiest one yet, and I didn't ever want to forget it.

I hated how quiet my room was. It was silent. And through the door I could hear the soft mumble of the t.v. in the living room. I wanted to hear the cicadas and the crickets and the wind. I felt cut off - trapped - in the house when the desert was still settling down outside.

"If I were a Pueblo Princess . . ." I'd ask myself. And if I was lucky, I'd fall asleep to a dream that I followed a horned toad through the desert to a cave full of beautiful Indian jewelry, and there I would find my spirit guide who would teach me how to be invincible.

Poets, players, thieves, and friends

Whaaahhhh. Wow. Something is happening to me. I don't know if the stars are aligning, or my tightly woven world views are simply unraveling because the corrosive threads have been pointed out to me or WHAT - but DAMN. All the things I ever wanted to care about are suddenly taking a front seat.

I didn't think it would ever shake down like this.

I always wanted to be "the kind of person" who did "good things". I wanted to be the kind of Jew that did "Mitzvah/ Mitzvot (pl.)". I wanted to WANT to care, I just couldn't quite get there. I spent all of my time thinking about how hard life was for me, and I never felt truly happy. I couldn't possibly help anybody else because I didn't have "enough" to give away. I didn't think I even had "enough" for myself. ("Enough" of what I still don't know).

I'll have to write more about this later, but in a nutshell, I came to understand that a human experience can be a beautiful thing. Today I believe that we are all spiritual beings having a human experience, and that no one person is any less entitled to enjoy his humanness than anyone else. That is why I believe I have a duty - WE have a duty - to ensure that one's basic needs are met, that they may enjoy a human experience on this earth.

We would not have been artists, thinkers, painters, architects, chefs, dancers, poets, musicians, politicians, soldiers, lovers, friends if a human experience did not posses the potential to be divine.

http://www.oxyweekly.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticle&ustory_id=72016d2e-ae5e-4047-9f77-41582f428ccc

I responded to an article in a California college's publication. The issue at hand is essentially RACE IN AMERICA. I am particularly fond of one article - the ARC preamble - and I have attached it at the end of this post. These are my thoughts:

"I am a student at a liberal arts school in MN and I am currently researching "racial equity" and "economic justice". I find it FASCINATING that you have a group of "white" students for racial equity. I can see where a person of color might find this threatening, offensive, and counter-productive, but I would like to say that I understand the sentiments of WSRE. I would also like to point out that civil rights leaders from W.E.B. DuBois and Malcom X to Audre Lorde emphasized the importance of ACKNOWLEDGING the difference between "races". According to Lorde, one of the worst sins we can commit is pretending that these differences do not exist. I think that WSRE can serve as an invaluable asset to achieving equity - IF - they/you can work toward educating those who identify as "white" about the implicit advantages of being a fair-skinned American. BECAUSE racism IS institutionalized and reinforced through social and academic media, it is ESSENTIAL to bring awareness to those who identify as "white" that the messages they are receiving about themselves and non-white people are skewed.

And shouldn't white people feel proud and safe being WHITE people who want equity and justice? Isn't it possible that "non-white" groups/organizations are less accessible to white people who want to be part of the solution? (e.g. are there any white people on the board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People?) Why would there be anything wrong with someone saying, "I am white and I think there is something wrong with the ingrained racial inequities in this country," ?

As an aside, I happen to be a "mixed" American and my particular group has been referred to as, "white with an asterisk". I am "fair-skinned" but I am "non-white-enough" to get stopped in airport. Through my research this year, I am beginning to understand the depth and power of the fallacy of "race". While our genetic differences are negligible, it would be profoundly ignorant to say that race "does not exist". It DOES (as an idea, a VERY powerful idea) and it is just as important for white people to be openly on-board with racial equity as it is for "non-white" people.

I urge you and your readers to check out the information at the following addresses. (I do not represent, nor am I employed by either of these agencies. This is JUST information that I have come across in my research. Thank you for your candid efforts to live in the solution. Yes we can."

www.evaluationtoolsforracialequity.org

http://www.arc.org/images/fr08/compact/ARC_compact_preamble.pdf

Giddyup

"When the horse you rode in on becomes sick and dies, it is prudent to dismount."

PRUDENT
1. wise or judicious in practical affairs; sagacious; discreet or circumspect; sober.
2. careful in providing for the future; provident: a prudent decision.

SAGACIOUS
1. having or showing acute mental discernment and keen practical sense; shrewd: a sagacious lawyer.

I don't have much else to say other than that. This phrase has been stuck in my head all day like a bad song. I guess the moral of the story is that I have grown sick and tired of being sick and tired. It is time dismount the dead horse and get on with my life.

Ahh . . . ahh . . . HAH-CHOO!!

Logic is neat stuff. I use it. I like it. I'm not always rational, but I am always making an attempt to put things together logically.

The problem is that all the logic in the world can't account for those things that are unforeseen. I can be both logical and rational but I will never know what the next 30 seconds of my life will hold.

Like when you have no idea that you're going to sneeze and the next thing you know - HAH-CHOO!! (Only on a much larger scale). The logical sequence that was interrupted by the sneeze might have gone like this:

Open the cabinet.

Grab my toothbrush.

Turn on the water.

Get the toothbrush wet.

Put toothpaste on th-  HAH-CHOO!!!

. . . 

Thus the logical and orderly routine of brushing my teeth is interrupted. Now I have to put down the toothpaste. Put down the toothbrush. Grab a kleenex. Blow my nose. Pick up the toothpaste, etc.

I didn't plan on the sneeze. There was nothing illogical or irrational about the order or method that I was using to brush my teeth . . . and hah-choo - my life got interrupted.

This is not to suggest that my life would be better were I to throw my hands up in a fit of 'fuck-its' and never brush my teeth again. I guess I used this example to illustrate (mainly for myself) that logic isn't neccessarily the answer to living life the way I want to live it.

I have been relying heavily on reason, and to little avail because (as I've said before) the future is made up of entirely unforeseen events. (Not to mention all that stuff I wrote about flawed logic recently). That's it. I'm done thinking about my thinking for now.  

Were i but a...

I was going to write a new blog entry but it took me so long to figure out how to disable the Hindi transliteration that I don't have time.

basically, the world continues to spin on it's tilted axis, regardless of my deepest wish that it stop for what would become an indeterminate (if not inconsequential) period of "time".

baby steps

God didn't exist until God was an idea.

I had to write that down before I forgot it.

In my last post I wrote that I am (or was ) (or still am) on the verge of some big ideas. New neuropathways are slowly being etched into the carbon-based mass inside my carbon-based skull. The pathways are being reinforced, each crevice dug a little deeper, with every repetition of the old words as they collide with one another in a new way.

I was watching the History Channel tonight and there was this segment about how the Earth's moon was created. There is some evidence to support the idea that roughly 4 billion years ago there was a "Great Impact". An "asteroid" for lack of a better term was dislodged from it's orbit around the then-molten Earth by the gravitational pull of the planet Jupiter. It flew toward Earth at 25 thousand miles per hour. The asteroid "nicked" one side of the planet and upon impact was shattered into a million pieces, spinning out into space in a long, arm-like shape. Because the asteroid was made up of metals and because gravity already existed in the universe, the scattered pieces began to amass creating Earth's moon in about a year.

A wise man once told me that science and religion lived in different houses and that I was not to imagine that they lived together. He said I could not be a "Dieistic Creationist". (I think he meant I could not choose to believe that God created atoms and thus the atoms have intelligence and thus the universe was created out of divine intelligence). He said that the Greeks referred to the Heavens as the Cosmos which means Order in Greek. The Greeks understood that the world (the WHOLE world - people, animals, plants, tides) all acted in accordance with natural laws. They knew this thousands of years ago.

But it was considered impious to suggest that lighting was "thrown" by anything other than the mighty hand of Zeus. All the knowledge in the world in ancient Greece was rendered useless.

To believe in God is to believe in the irrational. And for "belief in God" to actually be a belief there has to be behavior to accompany it. (Otherwise it's just an idea). (Hence religion??).

I think I am getting closer to the reason why I cannot accept that science and religion live in the same house. I think - I thiiiiiiiiink it may be because if I attribute the natural order of a universe, a solar system, a planet, a moon, and six million known species to the intentional agenda of a divine being, then I am getting the irrational confused with the rational.

That's the danger. Don't call something that is not rational rational and don't call something that is rational not rational. They are separate. Science and religion do not live in the same house. They are both here ('here' meaning part of my experience) but they are not the same.

God it feels good to get that out. I think some of the pathways are secure.