Always Coming Home

by Ursula K. Le Guin

so take and loose my hand

  so love and leave me dancing

  all in the western land

  FIVES ABOUT LIZARDS

  Improvised by Giver Ire’s daughter of Sinshan while sitting in the sun near a rock wall.

  Big lizard pumps up

  and down, up, down, up,

  shows his blue belly:

  I’m sky! I’m lightning!

  Little one scuttles:

  I’m shadows. I’m not.

  TO THE BULLOCK ROSEROOT

  An improvisation spoken during the Second Day of the World ceremonies by Kulkunna of Chukulmas.

  What’s the thought you think

  all your life long?

  It must be a great one,

  a solemn one, to make you gaze

  through the world at it,

  all your life long.

  When you have to look aside from it

  your eyes roll, you bellow

  in anger, anxious

  to return to it, steadily

  to gaze at it, think it

  all your life long.

  THE BUZZARDS

  Sung to the drum by Fox’s Gift of Sinshan.

  The meter is “four/fives.”

  Four buzzards, four!

  Four buzzards, four, five!

  They turn gyring,

  return gyring.

  High up, the buzzards

  circling turn circling

  on the center.

  Where is the center?

  This hill, that hill,

  any valley

  where a death is.

  There is the center.

  Under the circles

  inside the gyre

  of nine buzzards,

  the center is there.

  TO THE VALLEY QUAIL

  Spoken by Adsevin of Sinshan and her mothers sister, Flowering.

  Mother Urkrurkur, show me your household,

  please let me see it.

  The floor is of blue clay,

  the walls of rain falling,

  the doors are of cloud,

  wind is the windows,

  you know there is no ceiling.

  Sister Ekwerkwe, how do you keep house,

  please tell me or show me.

  By running directly and neatly,

  and flying up loudly not very far,

  by staying together and talking,

  by delicate accurate markings,

  by plumpness, round eyes, and a topknot.

  Daughter Heggurka, what is the end of it,

  please let me know it.

  The hawk in the hot noon,

  the horned owl in twilight,

  the cat in the darkness:

  feathers, bones, rain falling, sunlight,

  hidden under warm wings, round eggs.

  TEASING THE KITTEN

  Improvised by He Is Thinking, a boy of about sixteen, in Sinshan, in the vegetable garden.

  Ho ya, little piece-of-the-ground cat!

  Ho ya, little color-of-the-ground cat!

  You are holding the dirt down,

  sound asleep in the sunlight,

  on top of your own shadow.

  If I toss this pebble

  cat and shadow will come apart—

  Ha ya, little fly-in-the-air cat!

  BUCKET

  Improvised on a warm morning of early spring by fifteen-year-old Adsevin (Morning Star) of Sinshan, while cutting bamboo.

  I feel so dreamy

  dreamy lazy, crazy sleepy

  like I want to be there

  in the doorway, the doorway

  or the porch corner

  be sitting, be empty

  not doing not going

  an old bucket left there

  in the porch corner is like I am

  an old empty bucket somebody left there.

  A LOVE SONG

  Sung all over the Valley

  If the yellow wind will blow

  southeasterly, southeast,

  if the pollen wind will blow,

  maybe he’ll come this morning.

  If the sweet-smelling wind will blow

  southeasterly, southeast,

  if the broom-flower wind will blow,

  maybe he’ll come this evening.

  How to Die in the Valley

  FUNERALS TOOK PLACE in the large area of wild hill and forest alongside each town, “the hunting side,” where no planting was done and ownership of seed-meadows, cattail marshes, and gathering trees was either communal or a matter of use and usage only. Somewhere within a mile or so of the town each of the Five Houses used a certain region of hilltop or high valley as a graveyard. There were no boundaries, and a family could place a new grave where it liked; the graveyard area was identified by the plantings of apple, manzanita, buckeye, wild azalea, foxglove, and California poppy. The graves were never marked with stones aboveground, but sometimes with a small carved figure of redwood or cedar, and often were planted with one or more of the plants named above, which were looked after as long as survivors and descendants cared to keep the memory green. Most graveyards looked like apple orchards, only even more straggling and irregular than the usual Valley orchard.

  The burning ground was in a vale or hollow near and below the graveyard. The fairly large circular ground was cleared of all grass and stamped down and sown with salt yearly by the Black Adobe Lodge members.

  The ceremony of dying was called Going Westward to the Sunrise. The following description was given in writing by Mica of Acorn House of Sinshan.

  GOING WESTWARD TO THE SUNRISE: INSTRUCTIONS FOR DYING.

  Somebody in the Black Adobe Lodge would be the teacher of this knowledge.

  After the Wine Dance and before the Grass, people who want to learn the songs of Going Westward to the Sunrise would ask that teacher to instruct them.

  After the Wine Dance, they help the teacher build a heyiya lodge outside the town, usually on the hunting side, sometimes on the planting side. We in the hill towns build with eucalyptus or willow poles, nine or twelve to the side, tied to the ridgepole with withies, and weave the walls of fir boughs. On the Valley floor, where the lodge may have to be bigger because there are more people, they leave the walls open but make a thick roof, since the rainy season is beginning and some of the celebrants are ill or old, needing shelter. Whether there are walls or not, the entrance is on the northeast side and the exit on the southwest. Dead manzanita wood and apple prunings are gathered and stacked for the fire. All the stones on the ground within the walls of the lodge are gathered together and are heya. The lodge is named Rejoining.

  The teacher goes there on the last night of the Grass and spends the night there, digging a fireplace in the earth, without stones around it, and singing to bless the lodge.

  The learners come in the morning. They build and light a fire in the firepit, and throw bay laurel leaves on it, and sing heya.

  If people want to talk then about dying their own death, or to talk about a person close to their heart who had died suddenly or who was ill and dying, they would put a handful of bay leaves on the fire, and talk. The teachers and the others listen. When they finish talking, the teacher might speak about things dreamed or learned in vision about the way people may go when they die, or read from the Black Adobe books of poems that speak of the soul, or say nothing but beat heya on the one-note drum.

  Then the teaching would begin. They are to learn the songs to sing while dying and the songs to sing for the dying.

  The teacher sings the first song to sing for the dying.

  That song will be sung when dying begins. It may be sung for a short time or a long time. The person dying may be able to sing with the watchers then, singing aloud or silently while going into death. The others, the watchers, keep watching and listening as they sing. When it is time to sing the second song for the dying they will know, because the person dying has become still, or the breath is trying to get free. When the pulse and breath have ceased, the third song is begun. Wh
en the face is cold, it is ceased.

  The teacher tells these things between singing the songs, and teaches also that any of the watchers’ songs may be sung again and again until the dying is over. The fourth and fifth songs are to be sung first at the burial, and aloud thereafter at any time or place for four days, and aloud at the grave after that for five days, and after that only in silence, in the mind, until the next World Dance. After that they should not be sung for that person.

  Most people have heard the watchers’ songs sung, the songs for the dying, but have not heard the songs the dying person sings.

  The teacher will tell them that the people dying know when to sing the songs by the places their spirit comes to as they die. At first the mind will know these places, later the soul will know them. If they have lived mindfully, they will recognize these places, whether they are in the Five Houses or the Four Houses. It is well if they can sing all the way to the last song, but there is no need for it. What is needful is that the watchers’ songs be sung during the dying, if possible, and for the first nine days of the death, to help the dying to die and the living to live.

  When this has been said and discussed, the teacher will sing the first line of the first song of the person dying. The learners will answer singing the first line of the first song of the watchers. So they will learn all the five songs that they will sing when they die, never singing them aloud, but answering them antiphonally with the watchers’ songs. Only the teacher, who belongs to the Black Adobe Lodge, sings the songs of the dying person aloud. It is well for the learner to sing them many times in silence, then and later, so that they will be part of the mind and soul.

  These are the songs of Going Westward to the Sunrise. [They may be read apart or together, reading down the page or across it.]

  THE SONGS

  THE FIRST SONG

  The one dying sings:

  The watchers sing:

  I will go forward.

  Go forward. Go forward.

  It is hard, it is hard.

  We are with you.

  I will go forward.

  We are beside you.

  THE SECOND SONG

  I will go forward.

  Go on now, go ahead.

  It is changing.

  Leave us now.

  I will go forward.

  It is time to leave us.

  THE THIRD SONG

  There is a way.

  You are going on.

  There is surely a way.

  Your feet are on that road.

  There is a road, there is a way.

  You are going on that road.

  THE FOURTH SONG

  The singing is changing.

  Do not look back.

  The light is changing.

  You are entering.

  The singing is changing.

  You are achieving.

  The light is changing.

  You are arriving.

  They are coming.

  The light is growing.

  They are dancing in shining.

  Back here is darkness.

  Rejoining.

  Look forward.

  THE FIFTH SONG

  The doors of the Four Houses are open.

  Surely they are open.

  The doors of the Four Houses are open.

  Surely they are open.

  When all the songs have been learned, they cover the fire with earth, filling in the firepit, and while doing that they sing this song:

  It is hard, it is hard.

  It is not easy.

  You must go back in.

  They would take down the Lodge Rejoining after that. They might take a pebble from the heap or a twig of evergreen from the roof to hang their knowledge on. They would go to bathe, and go home. The teacher would go to a wild spring to wash, or if a Blue Clay person, to the heyimas for ablution.

  This is how the way of dying is taught by people of the Black Adobe Lodge in the Valley of the Na. I have been learner twice and teacher seven times.

  The Lodge Rejoining

  If nobody among the family and friends of the dead had learned the watchers’ songs, a member of the Black Adobe Lodge came to sing them, at the deathbed if possible, and at the graveside; and in fact there was always a Black Adobe person in attendance to help out and officiate during a death and funeral.

  If there was any doubt or anxiety, a member of the Doctors Lodge certified death. Soon, always within that day and night, the dead person was carried on a covered litter to the burning ground of their House. Family and mourners were the bearers. Wood might be given and carried to the burning ground by mourners, but only Black Adobe Lodge members stayed at the cremation. Family and mourners were directed to go home.

  An old sad song in the Valley hints at this:

  I watch the smoke behind the ridge,

  the smoke rising and the rain falling.

  Cremation was the rule, but a good many circumstances might prevent it: very wet weather in the rainy season; very dry weather in the dry season when the danger of forest fire disallowed the building of any open fire; and the expressed desire of the person to be buried not cremated after death. In these cases a Black Adobe group dug the grave and laid the dead person in it, wrapped in cotton sheeting, on the left side with the limbs somewhat flexed. Then they watched beside the pyre or the open grave for one night, singing the Going Westward songs at intervals.

  In the morning all who wished to came to attend the burial. Close kinfolk, assisted by the Lodge members, made the small grave for the ashes, or filled in the grave. When the grave was filled, a member of the Black Adobe spoke, once only, aloud, the Nine Words:

  Unceasing, unending, unobstructed,

  open, ongoing, incoming,

  ever, ever, ever.

  A wisp of ashes or of the dead person’s hair was cast upward into the air as the Nine Words were spoken. Children at the funeral might be given seeds or grain to scatter on the grave, so that birds would gather there to carry the mourners’ songs to the Four Houses. Anybody who wanted to could remain, or come back at intervals during the first four days after the death, to sing the Going Westward songs at the graveside; and during the five days after that, a family member or a mourner from the dead person’s House came at least once in the day to sing the Going Westward songs. On the ninth day, traditionally, the mourners regathered to mark the grave with a tree or shrub or flowers, and sing aloud for the last time. After that no formal mourning took place, nor were the songs to be sung aloud for that person.

  When somebody died outside the Valley, the companions would make every effort to cremate the body and bring home the ashes, or at least some locks of hair and pieces of clothing, which would then be buried, and the songs sung. If someone was lost or drowned at sea (a most unlikely event) so that there was “no death to carry,” a relation would ask the Black Adobe Lodge to set a day for mourning, and the songs of the watchers would be sung daily for nine days at the dead person’s heyimas.

  Although anyone might come to the burial ceremony, all these ceremonies were essentially private, observed by the close family and friends of the dead, and by Black Adobe assistants. There was no public mourning for any death until the World Dance at the equinox of spring. As described in the section on that dance, the First Night of the World was a community ceremony of mourning and remembrance for all who had died in that town during the year. The long night ceremony of Burning the Names was a fearfully intense, overcharged excitation and release of emotion. It was dreaded by many of the participants, people trained to value serenity and honor equanimity, and required on this one night to share without shame or reserve the pent-up grief, terror, and anger that death leaves the living to endure. It was a more intensely participatory and abreactive ceremony even than the Moon and the Wine, with all their emotional license and reversals. It expressed as did no other Valley ceremony the emotional and social interdependence of the community, their profound sense of living and dying with one another.
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br />   The Fourth Day of the World wakwa, which are intellectually closely connected with mourning rites, are described in the section on the World Dance.

  Valley beliefs and theories concerning the soul were of a most amazing complexity, and imperturbably self-contradictory. One might as well try to pin Valley people down to one creation myth as to get a coherent description of the soul out of them. This multiplicity, of course, was in no sense of the word accidental. It was of the essence.

  A fairly esoteric approach to the soul is represented in this book by the written piece “The Black Beetle Soul”; an expression of a more popular body of belief or thought is the poem “The Inland Sea.” The Valley theory of reincarnation or metempsychosis may be unsystematic, but it is lively.

  Specifically connected with funeral and mourning rites was a body of popular theory and superstition concerning various kinds of soul involved in the different stages of the funeral. When the breath-soul escapes, at death, other souls are “caught in the death” (the corpse) and must be released. If not released, they may linger around the grave or the places where the dead person lived and worked, causing both mental and material trouble—anxiety, illness, apparitions. The earth-soul is released by cremation and ash-burial or burial of the body; the eye-soul is set free when the bit of ash or lock of hair is cast into the wind; and finally the kin-soul is released only by the casting of the names into the fire at the World Dance ceremony of general mourning.

  In the case, not very common in the Valley, of a death abroad or a disappearance, when “there is no death,” no body, only the kin-soul can be ritually released. As mentioned, some possessions of the dead person may be brought home and buried in the graveyard, “so that there’s a place in the earth for the souls to come to,” and the Going Westward songs may be sung in the heyimas; but a feeling of discomfort and incompletion remains, expressed in the conviction that the other souls will come back to haunt or simply to confirm the lost person’s death and take leave of the survivors. The breath-soul is invisible, a voice in the night or twilight in lonely places in the hills. The earth-soul might return as an apparition of the person as they were when they died, or after death, and this ghost is feared by people who hold the belief. The eye-soul is benign, sensed only as a presence, yearning or blessing or saying farewell, “going by on the wind’s road.” Certain Eighth House invocations are addressed to this soul, or to all souls who are thought of as sometimes returning to the Valley on the wind.