Frank Waters, a novelist of the early 20th-century Taos art colony, wrote, “We have yet to fully realize that the physical and psychical realms are two aspects of one transcendental unity.”133 Native American culture understood that dance, drumming, vision quest, and other ceremonial actions encouraged direct experience with Nature, the supernatural, and the atemporal. To the mechanistic, reductionist mind, somehow humanity existed outside of Nature and certainly had nothing to do with the supernatural. The ancestral Puebloan people did not agree. So important was it to them that they constructed an elaborate city at Yupköyvi, where people could come to heal, to integrate with their community, to receive visions, to meet themselves multidimensionally, and to have first-hand experience with an infinite Universe of power.
As a modern person, I had the great good fortune of drawing upon a rich legacy of magic, warrior, mythic, and rational humanity. With a pluralistic approach, all the perspectives could sit around the same campfire. Unlike my ancestors, I was in the unique position of being able to comprehend differing worldviews and then to transcend and include them in my interpretation of reality. Similar to a Navajo saddle blanket, my vision wove strands of Nature, Culture, ritual, myth, emotion, ideas, and spirit, to a practical outcome: I could throw that blanket onto my supernatural horse and ride it through a tumultuous world.
“Myth and ritual are wings of the bird of spirit...” says Paula Gunn Allen in Grandmothers of the Light. As we integrate a holistic vision of Native American spirituality, as we understand that we are all relatives – humans, animals, plants, rocks, water, and many more – then we as Earth citizens may soar on the wings of spirit, and celebrate ourselves as expressions of the Great Spirit, unbound by constrictions of time or space.
As the Lakota say when referring to the interconnectedness of Creation: Mitakuye oyasin! All my relations!
LA QUERENCIA
The bad news is you’re falling through the air,
nothing to hang on to, no parachute.
The good news is, there’s no ground.
~ Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
During our last year in Taos, we pretended like it really wasn’t the last year; we felt so at home, participating in a vibrant community, communing with dear friends, creating our art in our respective fabulous studios, marking the four seasons on the wheel of the year... We imagined subletting our house at the threshold of the mesa while we were away in India, and then coming back to it. Nevertheless, one by one, the support beams of our New Mexican life were withdrawn until we found ourselves, once again, stepping onto thin air.
Within months of the Grand Unveiling, James admitted that his days at the studio revolved mostly around watching TV. His brushes hung there, totally ignored. The blank canvas never beckoned him to stand before it. So we decided to save the rent and give it up. His studio with the crystalline northern New Mexico light – gone.
James now spent his days in the house, resting a lot, still recovering from the big push of painting. Blue the dog would lay next to him to keep him company. Mars, the wounded warrior, with his crippled totem animal... One day it hit me that Blue was like a Tibetan monk. Now, I am not suggesting that she could debate Buddhist spiritual concepts, chant the sutras, or teach the neighborhood coyotes the Four Noble Truths. Nevertheless, Blue was ready, at a moment’s notice, to offer compassionate presence at full attention. Well acquainted with suffering (through the continual pain from her injured hip), she rarely whimpered, but concentrated instead on what she loved: catching snowflakes in her mouth or rolling in the snow; patrolling the property day and night; gnawing on a bone, burying it, and then joyfully digging it up again for more gnawing. At the edge of the bluff, Blue would sit in the late afternoon gazing out over the rolling mesa. Sometimes we watched the sunset together there. Other times I saw her with eyelids half-closed, as if meditating.
The Tibetan analogy was not such a stretch: here we were on a high arid plateau with snow-covered peaks living near people who did sand paintings and ritual dances with drums, and wore long black braids and jewelry of silver and turquoise. Blue was a guru sent to us to protect us and model for us compassion and the joy of living.
The day these realizations hit me was the day Blue disappeared. She was simply not there anymore. Though we searched the road and the arroyos, we never found a trace. Perhaps a pack of coyotes had attacked her. Our dog was gone. And now the whole property had an empty echo.
New Mexico had a more merciful approach to health care than most of the United States, and since we qualified for the state health insurance, James saw about repairing his painful knees. The doctors agreed, so he underwent knee-replacement surgery on one knee. My little escape to Chaco Canyon with Alex was my first respite of the summer, for I spent months tending to James during his recovery, at the hospital and then at home.
I was at home anyway, in the thick of writing the “Climax” poem, and reaching the end of writing Nassim’s biography. Meanwhile, in Hawai’i, Nassim’s benefactor talked about reducing his financial support, and after a heated argument with him, decided to pull out altogether. I received a terse message that I would be receiving no more paychecks. Without that monetary input, living in the United States became precipitously daunting for us.
That was it. We needed to sell off a good share of our possessions and get out from under paying rent as soon as possible, in order to finance our pilgrimage to India. As soon as James could walk well enough, we would leave our beloved Southwestern home and community. We made travel plans for late autumn.
Despite the losses of my job, James’ studio, the Coterie, and our dog, we had been reluctant to stay in the United States in any case. Not only were civil rights being chopped out of the Constitution through laws and executive orders – all in the name of the War of/on Terror – but the dominator elites had widened a program of high-altitude spraying of the general population. New Mexico’s famous sapphire-blue skies were now crisscrossed with chemtrails, which turned the sky a sickly white as they dispersed. Falling to Earth, they were a hazard to the health of everything living. On spraying days, I would stand atop our bluff, shaking my fist at the pilots in their planes, yelling, “What’s wrong with you?! Don’t you have a mother?” Like some crazy old crone, like a responsible lawmaker of the Grandmother Council, I called to those young pilots to account for their actions. The crosshatches in the sky felt to me like the bars of a prison. James and I would be leaving the country of our birth, scouting out a place where we could breathe free.
In Spain, the national sport of bullfighting pits men and their courage against a wounded, raging bull. After being stabbed and weakened by picadores, the bull often goes to a place in the ring to gather its wits and strength. This place was named la querencia. It means “a place where one feels at home.”
In northern New Mexico, we had come to feel securely at home. The apu Maxwaluna had watched over us with its solid mountain presence, while the paqarina of the Rio Grande Gorge guided us with motherly regard. We had been rocked, like babies in a cradle, to a rhythm of the four seasons. Disregarding the bone-chilling cold, I had found beauty in the blue-sparkled snow and comfort huddling close to the piñon wood glowing orange in our kiva fireplace. With the snowmelt and winds of spring, the desert was not an absence of trees but a riot of greens: olive green, avocado green, sage green, fir green, jade green. I loved breathing in the smell of sagebrush roasting in the sun during the summer. In the yellow season, I received the blessing from sunflowers bending over the roadways.
You can taste querencia, too. In the corn from the hornos (adobe ovens) or the roasted green chile, I tasted a tradition of a thousand harvests: Native Puebloan people tending their corn and beans, and chanting and dancing to the fertility spirits, Spanish settlers digging the acequias (irrigation ditches) and blessing the waters.
The Río Pueblo purling down the Taos Mountains from sacred Blue Lake murmured of struggles and hopes,
and the gritty soil of Taos Valley belied the blood it had received when the war drums beat, the conquistadores arrived on horseback, and the Wild West stirred up the dust. The hue and cry of history was held in a beloved spot, and carried along through traditions by us, the humans with our sense of place.
At this way station of our odyssey with Venus and Her Lover, when we realized that we were apprenticing with the elements, and in the Southwest we would open to Earth, I learned the word querencia. When I described my emotional connection with the Sacred Palm Grove in the Caribbean, and the history-soaked Tuscan hillside villages, and the warm bosom of Mama Pele from the āina of Hawai’i, I said I was writing about my love affair with the Earth. I wrote of power spots full of mana, and the primordial sea, and mountain apus, and the World Tree – archetypal forces of Nature – and what welled up in me was querencia.
In addition to reveling in the pleasures of Earth, I felt it was important to support organic life, given that human attention was lavished more and more upon computers, phones, game screens, and the engaging virtual realities provided to us by Artificial Intelligence (AI). As my heart opened to physical places, I could relate to their spiritual existence. Aloha ‘āina, the Hawaiians had called it: love of the land.
While usually reserved for the birthplace to which one longs to return – as an animal seeks its lair – the practice of querencia had broadened for me. Our Tantric art project severed my fixed ideas and let me sink roots in my homeland, and then uprooted me to bring me to another homeland, and then another. I came to understand how the archetypal home lives within me, like a wicker basket woven of feelings and full of juicy fruits and aromatic flowers. After all, home is held in the heart. Yet, it has to manifest in these 3-D, fragrant, pungent, brilliantly-colored, rhythmic, soft and hard places, right here on Earth, our home.
Right here, we were living a relationship with the most powerful archetype on the planet – Gaia, Pachamama, Mother Earth – bowing before the Great Goddess in gratitude and love.
We left New Mexico on a November day when gray clouds like spaceships spritzed trails of snow on the ground. Slanting rays of cold sunshine set the white patches aglow, and indigo mountains hovered above the redemptive mesa.
INDIA
Element of AETHER
SALVATION IN THE LAND OF THE FREE
The glass doors of our hotel room opened onto a balcony bright with sunshine and the dancing shadows of palm leaves slapping delicately in the breeze. James stood looking over the balcony at the Thai workers in broad-brimmed straw hats and long-sleeved shirts manicuring the lawn and chopping banana leaves. In the adjacent canal, workers in high rubber boots were bent over, clearing away lotuses that might choke the flow of water. This lakeside resort north of Chiang Mai was comfortable and lovely – a reward we were giving ourselves to recover from the jet-lag of 2 days hard travel, not to mention the previous months’ strain of packing up our lives in New Mexico. At last we had made it to Asia!
Modern times being what they were, protesters in Thailand were laying siege to the Government House, Parliament, and international airport in Bangkok, and terrorists had staged violent, deadly attacks in Mumbai, India. Despite State Department advisories, James and I still heard Thailand and India calling to us, so we stepped gingerly through our itinerary to comply.
Though my weary body yearned to be poolside, my first order of business was the phone call I had just successfully dialed. On the other end of the line was the Australian woman I had been emailing for months. It was her job with an international Protestant church to visit foreigners in prison, a labor of compassion indeed. She was our connection to Mysterious Molly.
“She doesn’t want to see you, I’m afraid,” Catherine said.
“What?!” I exclaimed. “But we’ve come all this way!”
“Didn’t you get my last email? I’m sorry, I know I just sent it, but in my last visit to her, she told me she doesn’t want you to see her in her present condition. I wrote you to just stay in Bangkok, not to bother traveling all the way to Chiang Mai.”
I explained to her our situation. “Look, we changed our flights. With the Bangkok airport under siege, we were able to fly directly into Chiang Mai. I think I explained to you that the whole reason for visiting Thailand was to see Molly – I mean Giselle – and we don’t care what condition she’s in. We’re her friends, we’re on our way to India, and we put the layover in Thailand because we care about her. We want to see her.”
Concluding, Catherine said, “Well, good luck! God willing, you’ll get in, and she’ll see you.”
Thanking her, I hung up and explained everything to James.
He responded, “If she doesn’t want to see us, Becca, she doesn’t want to see us. Maybe we shouldn’t even go.”
“I don’t agree. We’re going there, we’re going to look into her eyes, and she can tell us to leave if she wants. But we’re going!” I declared resolutely.
The next day found us standing in the sweltering sun in a line with other Thai people waiting to see their inmate relatives. We had spent the morning proving our identity, waiting, shuffling paperwork, waiting, locking up our bags, waiting, and being searched. We heard the guards tossing about the words, “Gee-sey! Geee-sey!” and farang, which we took to mean, “Foreigners are here to see that notorious Giselle!” Ultimately, we were let into another waiting room. We sat with the others and watched the ceiling fan spin. When an interior door was opened, we joined the rush to the hallway and then to a divided room to grab a space in front of the dividing wall, thick cement to chest high and then glass and bars to the ceiling. We stood in front of a telephone. Soon guards opened a door on the other side of the divider, and inmates ran in, searching for a familiar face. Mysterious Molly ran directly to stand in front of us.
Only fifteen minutes per day (and not every day) were allowed for visitation. We wanted to make every second with Molly count.
James and I pressed our ears toward the phone receiver as we tried to hear Molly’s voice on the other end and read lips when we could not. We gazed at each other through the bars and glass, our eyes speaking more than words could. There sat our friend, an inmate at the Chiang Mai Women’s Correctional Institute.
Mysterious Molly looked gaunt but essentially well. Her light brown hair was pulled back; she wore no jewelry. Her simple prison clothes called for no attention, thereby accentuating the light in her face. And there was light in her face, I was relieved to observe. James later remarked that for him her appearance had changed, as if she was no longer living in the shadow of a great oppression. “How are you?” was the first obvious but weighty question.
Molly answered, “I’m well... better than you’d think. I’m a born-again Christian now, and without being saved by the Holy Spirit, I don’t know what would have happened to me. My first months in here were dark, so dark. I didn’t think I’d make it.”
We nodded as we listened. We knew of her conversion through emails with Catherine. When she mentioned the Holy Spirit, my mind hopped across concepts: in Christianity the nongendered Holy Spirit had taken the place of Sophia, the Goddess of Wisdom. Even the Buddhists depicted the Feminine as “wisdom energies.” The Goddess... but I would not breathe a word of this during our fifteen minutes.
Molly spoke of how God, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, had saved her, just like Jesus had transformed Saul on the road to Damascus. I knew the Bible story. Saul of Tarsus, who had made a name for himself persecuting the first Christians, is traveling to Damascus to expand his deadly mission when the resurrected Jesus appears to him in a blinding light. When he regains his senses, he realizes Christ was real – and not only that – forgiving of the Christian blood on his hands. Saul gets baptized as Paul. He goes on to become a great missionary, establishing churches in Asia and Europe, and writing a large part of the New Testament. I could understand Molly’s identification with Saul/Paul.
“I can’t believe you’re here. I didn’t want you to see me like this.” Molly’s eyes began to fill with tears. In the past I would have worried about her mascara running.
“Molly, you know we love you unconditionally. That means under any conditions.” My steady Venusian gaze drove home the point.
“I want to apologize for all the deception,” Molly said. “I’m so sorry I had to lie to you. Please forgive me. I was very confused back then.”
James spoke into the receiver. “We knew you were lying, Moll. And we knew you had your reasons for lying.”
“You knew? You always knew?” Molly searched our faces for forgiveness.
I answered. “No, not at first. But gradually we figured it out. And it’s OK. We know who you are. I know who you are, you know that.”
Now tears ran down both our faces. We gazed at one another deeply, the same soul gazing we had done the night her daughter Renee was born.
Molly then spoke about the importance of accepting Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, quoting Bible passages and describing how she had been lost and now had found her salvation. I was aware of the minutes ticking away.
“Whatever you need to get you through,” James stated. “Just keep it in balance. Keep the masculine and feminine in balance.”
“God is everything, everything,” she affirmed.
I suppressed the urge to say, “as is the Goddess.” James and I had agreed we would enter into no religious controversy during our 15 minutes with her. We wanted to deliver books, fresh fruit, and chocolate, and to beam our love to her. That was our mission, which we accomplished. Before we knew it, our time was up.
Venus and Her Lover Page 28
