Last summer, after forty years on the planet, including five living in what is virtually a bird sanctuary (and many others in settings that come close), I finally awoke to a basic fact: not only am I surrounded by amazingly beautiful avian singers, but I can actually learn more about them. Suddenly, saying to myself "oh, that familiar bird song--I have no need to know who the singer is," or "I've probably seen that bird many times--but I don't care about the name," became unsatisfactory. Having just traded eyeglasses for contact lenses, I also found myself able to use binoculars easily for the first time in my life. As has often been the case, the more careful attention I paid, with all available senses, to what surrounded me (in this case, the world of birds), the more intriguing it became, and the more deeply I felt its interconnections and its connections to the larger whole.
Since then I have had a number of moments of a type that I had experienced previously mostly with plants, geologic features, people, bodies of water, some slower-moving creatures, and various manifestations of fire and air. My insight at these times can be summed up roughly as "Birds Are God" (or "children of the Earth Mother," or "jewels of the Goddess," or however you want to describe the qualities of divinity). The combination of beauty and familiarity I find in my bird neighbors has become a grounding force in my life, inspiring not only more gratitude for being part of this world, but also more curiosity about it. Who are these winged musicians?
My first aid in starting to learn the songs of local birds was Peterson's Field Guide to Western Bird Songs, a two disc-set with song samples from 522 species occurring in Western North America, introduced individually by name. I also enrolled in a bird class, which helped me narrow down the possibilities of what I might be hearing (I created an edited version of the set containing only local species). A few months later, I learned about, and eventually acquired, a set of similar but more extensive field recordings, with longer song samples and a greater variety of calls: the four-CD Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs: Western Region, which includes 551 species. I created an edited version of this set too, this time more broadly, regionally focused. I enrolled in additional bird classes, and played my edited CDs while doing other things (like cleaning my yurt or laying out this magazine). Through this process of trying to match up what I hear on the recordings to what I hear all around me outside, I have learned to identify a certain number of birds by ear.
But helpful as they are, these bird-song identification sets alone are not adequate for this task. Many species are almost exasperatingly similar in the sounds they make, turning an enjoyable pastime into a source of frustration if one slips into being goal- rather than process-oriented. Certainly, I thought, there must be other people who've tried to do this--people who could help me become more adept at learning the potentially overwhelming diversity of these sounds, many of which can also be so similar.
While my bird classes are primarily visually-oriented, my teacher has often helped me learn more about songs and calls in that forum. But an essential aid in making use of, and tying together, all of these other resources--my bird classes, field trips, daily wanderings, and the Peterson's and Stokes ID sets--is Peterson's Western Birding by Ear: A Guide to Bird-Song Identification (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, New York, 1990). This is a 3-CD instructional course, rather than a comprehensive compilation of bird songs and calls. Richard K. Walton and Robert W. Lawson have listened long and hard to birds, and present here their insights into distinguishing the voices of 91 common birds. Their set also offers birders helpful tools for distinguishing among additional species; the basic principles which apply to listening to this representative selection of birds can be applied to others as well. The general introduction which starts Disc One lays out some of these principles, discusses the natural history of birds and bird sounds, and sets the tone for this set: an enthusiastic, personable approach reflecting the authors' love of the subject.
Following this introduction, Walton and Lawson immediately passed my first test, in the very first group of birds presented. My Peterson's and Stokes ID sets had left me with a big question, which was foremost on my mind when I received Birding By Ear: how can one possibly distinguish between an American robin and a black-headed grosbeak, or between either of those and a western tanager, without also seeing them? On my ID recordings, I had confused them repeatedly. Fortunately, the creators of Birding By Ear have grouped them (along with Cassin's vireo) into a group called "Sing-Songers," and by playing recordings of their songs and calls, interspersed with narrative, help us hear what makes them different from one another.
In the case of the robin, grosbeak, and tanager, this did not automatically confer the ability to instantly distinguish them in the field. For me, it took several additional days of conscious listening to the birds themselves, as well as listening to this track and getting some guidance from my bird class teacher and another friend, to become confident in telling them apart. But Walton and Lawson were major contributors to this breakthrough.
Following the "Sing-Songers," Walton and Lawson continue with additional groupings of birds that have some quality of vocalization in common but which (like all birds) can ultimately be distinguished, sometimes easily, sometimes with great difficulty. "Owls," "Name-Sayers," "Hawks," "Wood Warblers," and "Harsh Vocalizations" round out Disc One. Disc Two treats "Whistlers," "Warbling Songsters," "Woodpeckers," "Trillers," "Mimic-Like Repeaters," "Complex Vocalizations," "Hummers," and "Thrushes." Disc Three considers "Trillers Plus," "High-Pitchers," "Nuthatches," and "Miscellaneous," then presents a test of its own: a re-grouping of the birds and their songs by habitat, with no narrator telling us who they are.
I am still very far from scoring high on this test, and it may take years to be able to do so easily. But learning any language takes time, and for full assimilation this three-hour course needs to be combined with many, many hours spent listening to birds in the field. The ID sets can be seen as dictionaries of sorts, and Birding By Ear as an introduction, grammar, and exercise book as well. However, immersion learning is the only way to become truly comfortable with any living language. In this case, there are actually more languages and more local dialects than we could ever fully comprehend, but at least we can learn who's speaking or singing, and often even some of what they are saying.
Walton and Lawson recommend concentrating on one or a few groups at a time, rather than trying to take in all of these lessons in one fell swoop, and I believe this is good advice. However, it is certainly possible to listen to all three CDs start to finish, and to enjoy the experience. I don't think it hurts to listen to these discs over and over-something is bound to get through even in the confusing parts. The relatively easily-distinguished groups (like Owls, Name-Sayers, and Thrushes) are tastefully interspersed with more difficult groupings, conferring periodic, dependable boosts of confidence in the listener. And Walton and Lawson handle even the more troublesome groupings with never-say-die enthusiasm, as well as compassion for us novices and even a touch of humor. In one of my favorite segments, Walton introduces the warbling vireo: "Now to add to the confusion, let's listen to a fourth warbling songster... No, it isn't one of the finches... Let's face it, just as some species cannot be correctly identified in the field without knowing the song, there are others, such as the birds in this group, where a good pair of binoculars comes in handy."
Birding By Ear: Eastern and Central applies this same approach to birds in the Eastern and Central regions of the United States, and my impression after a sampling of the tracks is that it is just as valuable a resource. In fact, the two sets taken together have much to teach about comparative eastern and western ecologies. Many of the vocal groupings are similar, although the actual species involved are often different, and Walton and Lawson treat many of the same themes.
Whether you're a novice birder like me, a pre-novice, or an experienced birder, Birding By Ear is likely to open up new worlds, or at least to make them more navigable for you. And if you are in the undoubtedly small minority of birders who have fully "graduated" from this level of instruction, and know all of this already, please email me--I have some questions for you.
Chris Roth ([email protected]) listens to birds while weeding and seeding in Lost Valley's vegetable gardens.
©2003 Talking Leaves
Summer 2003
Volume 13, Number 2
Community With All Life
I live with three chickens; layer hens to use the barnyard parlance. I also live with a daughter teetering on the cliff edge of womanhood. The hens and the daughter, Emily, are a team. She understands and uses "hen speech" and is periodically found perched on the arm of the couch. The hens willingly stay in her arms for hours or are content to go on field trips to the woods with Emily as their guide. Frank Perdue is their common enemy.
Emily has researched chickens with the diligence of a scientist. She inspects their vents (the egg laying orifice), analyzes their excrement, records behavior, and has consumed what little material has been written about chickens. I like having Emily spend time with the "ladies." They are industrious, social, and take good care of themselves and each other. They will screech out a call that we have come to understand means "I've lost the other hens!" Emily then carries the lost hen to the others and all is quiet again. They seem to need the presence of one another even though most of their time is spent beak to ground looking for tasty grubs. They particularly enjoy physical contact with one another at night. When we close the coop door at dusk the hens are clumped together so that they resemble one very large hen. When one of the hens finds an especially nice patch of bare ground, just right for a dust a bath, we hear her call the others as if inviting them for a dip in her hot tub.
Our yard is a poultry paradise. The "ladies" have a variety of fresh food from yard and woods, freedom from predators, warmth in winter, shade in summer, and companionship. They eat organic feed and are given nothing to produce unnaturally plump breasts. We are happy with what they give us: fresh eggs, fertilizer for the garden, and insect control.
Our hens are getting older, entering their menopause years. Their combs have lost their red color, their vents are dry, and their egg production has just about stopped. Our coop became a metaphor for our present culture as we faced the question of what to do with older, nonproductive members of our little chicken society. Killing Emily's beloved hens was out of the question, so euthanizing or the dinner table were not options. Instead, we have chosen to let the hens live out their natural lives.
"So, have any of your hens become a rooster yet?" a friend and former hen keeper asked Emily. For months Emily had reported that one of her hens, Layla, was growing spurs, crowing, and getting her hackles up. My husband and I assumed this information was the product of a fertile imagination but we underestimated Emily's observation skills and what she calls chickenology. "Indeed," our friend assured us, "older hens can actually take on some physical and behavioral characteristics of an absent rooster." We shouldn't have been so surprised. As hormonal differences decline, androgyny, both physical and psychological, of our own species is evident in the later years. In our culture, which does not honor this stage of life, we seem to try to ignore an older woman's facial hair or an older man's pendulous pectorals or more nurturing attitude.
There is nothing like the taste of a fresh egg. Because we were used to those neon orange bulls-eyes of protein, we needed younger hens. Also, we thought it would be great fun to raise baby chicks. So on Emily's birthday, we found ourselves at the post office being handed an absurdly small, violently peeping cardboard box. The post office employees seemed all too happy to be rid of the noise. It was difficult to control ourselves but we waited until we were home to open the box. Inside were mere handfuls of indignant fluff, rather put off at having been in such close quarters for the flight from the hatchery in Iowa.
We now have eleven adolescent hens that were baby chicks for a nanosecond. In four weeks they were almost fully feathered, the fluff replaced by silky feathers. Nature has endowed our chickens, as all other birds, with a highly evolved flight apparatus, which is not only beautiful but provides warmth, camouflage, and waterproofing. The feathers as well as the chicks themselves grew at an astonishing, logarithmic rate.
The same can be said for our daughter. Her legs sprout out of her pant legs like the roots of a plant searching for water. Gestures, expressions, and temperament change on an hourly basis. I certainly don't want to medicalize a natural process, but being a mother I allow myself to worry about her physical and psychological development. In our breast-conscious culture, I wonder what her self-image will be. I take myself on a guilt trip when I think of the estrogen mimicking compounds that I'm told are everywhere from the breast milk she drank to the dental sealants that are on her teeth. Could these substances be speeding up her developmental process or worse? Could I have done more to protect her from these dangers? I see her striving for independence, seeking some distance from home, but I secretly hope that, like the hens, she won't fly too far away. I want to slow things down but I can't capture even a second. There is no adolescence pause button or, better still, instant replay. I can only be awake today and look forward to the person I will meet tomorrow.
I can't slow down my own timetable either. As I near the end of my egg producing years, I get my hackles up more often, I have spurs on my heels, and the less said about my wattles the better. Like the hens, I find that I need the company of other females of my own species as I reevaluate what it means to be female. Yes, I'm a supporter of a little-known movement to install hens in every woman's backyard. Our crone chickens, bonded in nature's cycles, as I aspire to be, are mid-life docents.
Today, as the young hens are getting ready to start laying eggs, one of our older hens is molting. Old, tattered feathers fall out and are replaced by silky, iridescent plumage. It is an elegant process of renewal and symbolic generativity.
Laurie Knight lives in Lewisburg, PA with her husband, Jim, and homeschools Emily (11) and Glen (8).
©2003 Talking Leaves
Summer 2003
Volume 13, Number 2
Community With All Life
If I were to recommend one new book as essential reading this summer, it would be Sobonfu Some's Falling Out Of Grace: Meditations on Loss, Healing and Wisdom (North Bay Books, El Sobrante, CA, 2003). On nearly every page I found pithy, profound passages so startlingly applicable that I needed to share them immediately with friends--words that often pertained exactly to a discussion I'd just had with someone, or to a situation we'd been pondering.
A member of the Dagara tribe in Burkina Faso, Sobonfu first emerged from traditional life in her tiny West African village very reluctantly, at the urging of her elders, who recognized her gifts and destiny. She remains deeply connected to the life of her village and to her elders, sharing the profound wisdom of her own ancient traditions while learning to navigate the perilous, promising, inevitable interface with "modernity." Her thought-provoking insights and observations have proven popular around the globe. Her first book, Spirit of Intimacy: Ancient Teachings in the Way of Relationships has been translated into five languages. Alice Walker recently cited Some's second work, Welcoming Spirit Home: Ancient African Teachings to Celebrate Children and Community, as her favorite book. I myself devoured that one in about 48 hours, and found my world forever widened.
This latest book hits even closer to home. Deeply personal and unsparingly reflective, it grew out of personal tragedy. "One day my world fell apart.... In those days I felt so small and pitiful that I thought even death would reject me."
Falling Out Of Grace describes the concentric circles of relationship, family, community, culture, and universe that are meant to support us in a state of alignment and harmony with our own center, with other beings, with our life purpose. It looks at what happens when they fail.
"Falling out of grace shakes us up. It reconnects us to the larger universe in order for us to see ourselves anew. It forces us to rediscover where our true center begins, and to learn what needs to be set aside."
In reflecting on her own experience, Sobonfu offers her bracingly unique and intriguing perspective on topics from Family and Intimate Relationships to Leadership and even Death--all in the context of falling from and restoring a state of grace. In a world that seems to have fallen seriously out of grace, these observations offer hope and perhaps some navigational aides to steer by.
Take this example from her chapter on Leadership:
"One challenge I have observed is that communities in the West sometimes want to put certain people on a pedestal, to make them larger than life.... Leadership is...a skill just like painting or storytelling or haircutting or anything.... Leadership doesn't make people superior beings. It just makes them good at what they do--at leading.
"The Mossi of Burkina Faso have a saying: 'A king is as good as the people he rules.'... If we see a problem, rather than saying to our leaders, 'Why can't you fix it?' we need to say to ourselves, 'Here's an area where our help is needed.'"
I like to fantasize how the political climate might change in the next year if enough people were to adopt this viewpoint. In fact, this whole book seems to extend comfort simultaneously to individuals and to a country and culture in transition--her own as well as ours. We're in this together.
"Let us give gratitude for all that happens to us--especially for the hard things, for they are messengers of wisdom. And then we can loosen our grip on old ways and let our lives change. We need to let go even of those people and ways and things that we want dearly--in order for them to find their own way back to us, or for something better and more true to take their place."
Dee Kehoe teaches Naka-Ima at Lost Valley Educational Center, where she has been a resident community member for the past three years.
©2003 Talking Leaves
Summer 2003
Volume 13, Number 2
Community With All Life
Rhizome--a system of interconnected root-like stems, usually growing horizontally under or along the ground and sending out roots from its lower surface, and leaves or shoots from its upper surface.
Yesterday, August and the lawn mower were in cahoots and their respective sweat and grass were convening on my back. On a whim I threw down my clothes, hauled up on the handle of the hydrant and crawled cringing underneath to wait for the water. In seventeen years, I'd never tried this before. Gravity driven, my cold experience worked its way up the pipe, the stuff that the windmill pulls from deep down for us to use. There was a sharp moment of wonder about the sudden and involuntary restructuring of my breath when water hit skin. Who allowed that gasp to get through? Dripping and unhindered by time, spectator, or clothing, and with more than a little glee, I pulled a warm towel off the line.
This is my joy. How I found it I don't know--it was a mere seed before--but somehow I've done some good stumbling and found these beads of gratitude that continue to multiply. I don't think that a person's state of mind can be traced solely to a concrete list of elements (since there are always unquantifiable forces at work), but I know that my happiness draws heavily on the nature of our lifestyle. My parents came to rural Winneshiek County in January of 1982 to begin being the change that they wanted to see in the world. They wanted their day-to-day existence to seek out sustainability on all levels. (This quest continues: our latest venture involves a solar-powered lawn mower that gets plugged in through an upstairs window for recharging.) Naturally, their choices have meant that my view of the world and my place in it have taken on a certain tinge to begin with, but in the last couple of years, my journey has taken a more independent turn. I've begun on a path to affirm for myself the truths that have been suggested to me every day.
Thus far, whether I've known it or not, the whole phenomenon of "growing up" has been about learning to see the world in its concentric layers of relation. The pursuit of sustainability requires one to be open to the systems, patterns, and weaving that is the context within which we live. It requires us to do away with the compartmentalized thinking that most of the western world relies on, to seek a vision of the whole. I think I'm just beginning to understand this. I've been composting my food scraps, I've been reusing my plastic bags, I've been buying in bulk, I've been doing so many things because individually they make sense. Plus, that's just the way we've always lived. But it's only now that I am beginning to create mental ties between the firewood that I split, the potatoes waiting in the ground, and conservation efforts in Massachusetts or Brazil. Diverse pieces are linking arms. I'm asking more questions and in stepping back, I am diving in.
In an interview with Renee Lertzman (The Sun, April 2002), Paul Hawken remarked, "Once you see the world as interconnected--even if it's just a glimpse--you will never be the same." He's right. My thought trains meander differently now, drawing together the centermost components of my days:
There is wild all around us to be reveled in. It is not a luxury but a necessity. We live in it, with it, we live by it. In past years, on walks through the woods with Mom, our conversations have touched on buds and leaf scars and the brewing of foliage within brown shoots. Coming home I wonder about the scars that our saws leave on the orchard trees when we alter their growing plans (how does this relate to altering the genetic make-up of a tomato by adding or subtracting various and sundry genes?). We bring in many five-gallon buckets of red skin and firm pith from these trees in fall. This is a part of our harvest. The garden brings forth from old soil an annual abundance of color and texture that we hold in grateful hands. Our bodies remember the hours spent nurturing, and savor these fruits even more.
Our food brings us together with friends and neighbors-whether through a trade (twelve pints of raspberries if you'll cut our hay field!) or an evening potluck. We are warmed by company, stories, possibilities, and so much hope in the graceful arms of each other's words. I go to bed that night wondering how I can be like these people who surround me, these ones who have been my greater family. How can I create? How can I bring something good and needed to what is there? What will be my gift? And so, these people are my teachers and I love them for that. I think of them when I sit in a classroom. I think about how being there takes me away from them and funnels me into a boxed monoculture. Consequently, I've chosen to be partially home schooled and to take some classes at Luther College. My ideas about education keep forming, and home schooling allows me the freedom to pursue them. My parents are intelligent people. I respect them for respecting me, and their knowledge is a blessing. Dad and I keep remarking on how most things are grey and there's really very little that's black or white. His political passion and knowledge are instructive and inspiring. We read together and end up forgetting the book as our conversations fly like fire.
* * *
In one sitting I mentally consume: the importance of ecosystems, small-scale agriculture, genetically modified organisms, good food, the value of hard work, and of community, hopes for the future, educational philosophy, the development of my own world view, and any number of random sidetracks that may occur (usually including some spiritual wanderings). How can one's life be any richer than that? One consequence of my journey (unconsciously begun and now purposefully continued) has been an ever-increasing sense of responsibility and obligation to engage in and protect the systems that I perceive. I think about change and action as part of my path (while learning from my parents' hardships and happiness). I think about stewardship. There's a lot of good work to be done.
Strangely enough, this process of revelation has brought more peace than despair to my heart. Searching for my own form of sustainability has brought me into the world in a new way. I am learning to see quiet beauty. I have found gratitude where indifference sat before. I am amazed. Ahhh, to be part of something! And to know it! There is both security and excitement in that.
Hannah McCargar lives in Decorah, Iowa. She writes: "I am eighteen, working my way through an educational amalgam of homeschooling, high school, and college classes. I'm currently reading E.F. Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful (some hope lies therein!). I'm curious about steady-state economies, horsemanship through feel, interdependence, the relationship of body/mind, and pedagogy."
©2003 Talking Leaves
Summer 2003
Volume 13, Number 2
Community With All Life
Late May, 2003
As I write this, spring is turning into summer, the black-headed grosbeaks are singing up a storm here at Lost Valley, we're hosting a "Permaculture and the Sacred" workshop with Starhawk, and I'm wondering how best to introduce this issue of Talking Leaves. About a month ago, I wrote a draft editorial which explained upcoming changes in our publication approach, and our reasons for making those changes. As I review that editorial now, written before we had formally decided on those changes, I read the "declaration of indepenence" of a burdened person, struggling against a self-imposed role that had become limiting. I now feel much more open, optimistic about our publishing future, and excited about the projects ahead-no longer so jaded by the written word. What follows is the gist of what I wrote a month ago, included so that you, our readers, can better understand the process that led to the upcoming changes. At first glance this may appear to have little to do with our theme ("Community With All Life"), but figuring out how you, I, and everyone and everything else fit with one another--what roles we take on in this earth community, how we choose to express ourselves--actually has everything to do with our theme. So here's how we got from "there" to "here"...
* * *
Mid-April, 2003
Before I could read or write, I had a distinct impression of the value of the written word: limited. I remember scribbling all over a piece of paper and giving it to my mother, saying that this "writing" was just as good as what adults did. It was. I didn't object to learning to read and write in elementary school, and even enjoyed it, but as a child I never entertained any illusions that words on a page represented ultimate reality.
Instead, I remember looking at birds flying overhead and telling my mother I wished I were a bird. I was happiest when jumping high into the air to catch a swiftly-moving baseball, or lifting off of snow-covered ground in a toboggan, or sailing a frisbee through the air, or engaging in some other form of free, unrestricted motion.
Somehow, somewhere along the way, I got seduced by the written word. My love-hate relationship with this form of expression had many ups and downs, but after periods of overindulgence and fasting, I finally found a somewhat healthy balance, and ended up as a magazine editor.
However, I'm getting signals that, as they always do, things change. Words are still important to me, but in my current role I'm too often in a "reactive" rather than "proactive" relationship with them. My job entails filtering all the words that come my way as submissions to this magazine, and arranging them in some coherent form four times a year. It also involves managing virtually every aspect of producing and distributing the magazine, maintaining the subscriber database, updating the website, soliciting contributions, etc. It helps me, but doesn't necessarily help the magazine, that I am only a part-time Talking Leaves staff member (albeit its sole staff member), and that more of my time is spent "in motion," gardening and co-facilitating the organic gardening apprenticeship here.
Talking Leaves' quarterly magazine format now seems overly restrictive to me. Because of our schedule, issues come out not necessarily when they're organically ready to come out, but because the calendar says they need to come out. The length and format of the magazine mean that many topics are covered in a cursory manner. The number and quality of contributions arriving from outside vary greatly from issue to issue, and it now seems to me that only synchronicity and some inherent intelligence in the universe has allowed us, thus far, to produce issues that have held together so well.
Yet I know that much of what both I and Lost Valley can contribute to the world through writing and publication is not being revealed in our current format. All the busy-ness of putting out a quarterly magazine has meant that many projects that we've thought of, or that numerous others have suggested to us--such as a Lost Valley cookbook, a nature guide to our land, booklets or books exploring in-depth what we've learned about community, gardening, permaculture, and sustainability, and detailing the teachings of Naka-Ima and other workshops--have all needed to be put on hold. As a sometimes-inspired writer who nevertheless retains my childhood impression of the value of the written word (limited), I would like the time I spend with words to be as meaningful as possible, not diluted by filtering millions of other words. Editing so much other material is a fine thing to do, but after six years of it I feel as if I've paid my dues.
Therefore, our next publication--whatever and whenever it is--will result from an organic readiness to publish, not a timetable. No longer a strict quarterly, Talking Leaves will be only one of the printed productions of Lost Valley Educational Center. We will be working on several writing/publishing projects simultaneously, and will send each, when completed, to all paid-up supporting members of Lost Valley. (In the event that we produce substantially more printed material than we have been sending in magazine form, we will send at least an equivalent amount as part of your membership benefit, and offer additional books at reduced cost.) TL subscribers who are not happy with this arrangement can request a refund on issues not received (or replacement with back issues), but our intention is to provide at least as much value for your "subscription/membership buck" as we would have with the strictly quarterly magazine. We will keep you informed about updates to this arrangement as our publishing future unfolds. All back issues that we've produced (starting with Volume 8, 1998), as well as several previous ones, are still available, and a "best of" retrospective is a distinct future possibility, either in magazine or book form.
So, you may be wondering, what has replaced my obsession with producing a regular TL on a preordained schedule? Why don't those long nights doing layout after full days in the garden, or those weekend marathons on the computer, hold quite the same appeal any more?
As I said, things have changed. Or actually, they haven't changed, they've just returned to how they were a long time ago before I got distracted. To me the living world is what holds interest, and the lifeless page (or mechanized computer screen) is relevant only insofar as it communicates something about the living world. Or, to put it another way, I have rediscovered my desire to be a bird, to dissolve my human ego-bound self and to fly. I seem to have had more flying dreams in the last year than in my entire life preceding that year. Although I'm still a novice in this field, I've become highly motivated to learn about birds, and am enrolled in my third bird class since the fall (with a local Audubon birder). I'm also trying to learn to identify as many birds as I can by their songs and calls. I'm now finding the same fascination in birds that hooked me into plants almost twenty years ago (a fascination that abides).
My other obsession these days has been learning to play the guitar. This pursuit has proved just as engaging, since it too involves what I would suggest is a deeper level of truth or experience than can be found on a printed page.
So I hope that, amidst all of this, you will understand why, as Lost Valley publications manager, I feel a big burden lifting, and new gusts of inspiration replacing it, when I can tell our readers that, from this point on, they can confidently expect the unexpected from us. Static forms give way when living spirit takes hold. Or something like that...but I think a bird or a guitar might express it better.
PS: Having gotten all of the above off my chest (and created a nearly limitless opportunity for others to tease me about bird/word droppings), I proceeded to read through the rest of this issue with new eyes, and reached two conclusions: (1) the written word does indeed have some merit; and (2) TL is still vital and has good reasons to continue publishing. The changes ahead--more variety, more surprise, and a more organic approach to production--should enhance our publishing efforts in ways even we can't predict. As always, we welcome your ideas.
©2003 Talking Leaves
Summer 2003
Volume 13, Number 2
Community With All Life
1-2-3-4-5-6...
...and on until I catch myself and stop counting. It is a compulsion that I have, and it only surfaces when I'm swallowing liquids. I count the gulps. It only lasts a few beats, but, for some odd reason which perhaps I'll discover here, I do nothing to fight the compulsion. When I do catch myself and stop, it is most often with a chuckle, as in, "It's amazing how this habit got rooted so deeply in me."
Luckily, I know how it took root. It was (seemingly) indelibly imprinted on me around the time I was six years old. That was an even tougher year than the ones preceding it. From the time I was about four and a half until six, I found it almost impossible to keep food down, and promptly vomited after each meal. When I was finally weaned from this behavior, it was done by filling a book with columns of little sticky stars; one for each meal, and, at first, another for each hour I was able to keep my meal down. So many stars in a row and I'd get a toy. It was then that I began counting the number of swallows that I kept down. Apparently, the compulsive counting of food swallows has faded away over 45 years, but this is not so with liquids.
My relationship with food was a reflection of a number of things. One was being witness to meal after meal being prepared by my mother. At the time she was bitterly disappointed by life, in seething rages much of the time, and, while cooking, would be expressing her pain incessantly and aloud. It was all coming in to me. Being rather sensitive, I would absorb the anger that came through her whenever I was around her, but during those meal prep times while I was in the kitchen doing my homework, I could sense that the food I would be eating absorbed it as well.
Paradoxically, the impulse to vomit provided me a dependable source of comfort, also. I would usually go right to the kitchen sink after eating, or the bathroom if I could make it, and while I vomited, my mother would come to my side and put her hand on my shoulder to comfort me. She was touch-phobic, and in years of scanning my memories to find evidence to the contrary, I've come to the conclusion that that was the only way I could get her to touch or physically comfort me.
At around six years old, another thing had begun to happen. Though my mother was not physically abusive with me, outside of the occasional swat on the ass, in second grade I started getting beatings in school by a twisted nun, who, as it turned out, was only one of many twisted nuns to follow. 1957 was the year when IQ tests became the rage in Brooklyn, and I had the misfortune of scoring third highest in the Catholic school I was attending. I would imagine, living in the home I lived in, I didn't pick up too much of a desire to excel at anything, for the majority of my energy was being spent in surviving. The nuns felt they had the right, if not obligation, to beat the "laziness" out of me.
Basically, I was quite the wreck. My mother carted me from doctor to doctor to find out what was wrong with me. She was on an incessant quest to correct the things wrong with my being. This was a significant part of my early years, and I, literally, carry the scars with me.
One of my "problems" was that I had flat feet. Mother dragged me from doctor to chiropodist to podiatrist seeking a way to correct me. They all said either it was no big deal or that what would need to be done was so extreme that it wouldn't be worth it. Undaunted, she kept her eyes open. There, in a shoe store on Avenue D, she found a little old German shoe salesman, who, I would imagine, had been a cobbler in the Old Country. Charlie knew just what to do. He began selling my mother shoes for me that were about one and a half sizes too small, and then, he inserted "cookies"--compact foam pads of increasing thickness--under my arches. My feet were bound in that way for a good (good?) two years. I don't remember the pain, but, to this day, left with arches high off the ground, I feel out of balance in my walking.
At the same time, though, some very important things happened to me that gave me the foundation upon which I could build a life. My first year of Catholic grammar school, which I started when I was five, introduced me to choir, and my voice. In that choir, led by Sister Cor Marie, who I hold close to my heart to this day, I found my direct connection to Spirit. Through her patience with my total disregard for Latin, and support of what I could move through me, I was able to transcend my experience of "God's representatives on earth" and find a vibrant, loving force that would always, and in all ways, be present for me. And then, there was Dorothy Powell. She was our big, black maid who came on Thursdays and got on her hands and knees and scrubbed our floors, and did all the dirty work my mother didn't choose to do. Dorothy was round and soft and smelled like ammonia and loved me like no one I ever knew. She held that space for little white children all over the five boroughs. I met a few in subsequent years, and I'll lay money that through her, they got the touch and love that just didn't exist in their households. Wherever you are Dorothy, thank you for teaching me what unconditional love feels like.
I have to pause here, for a moment...
It wasn't until writing this that I realized the vitality I find in my fatness; how I seem most equipped to love and hold and transmit security when I'm fat. Or, perhaps, how easily it comes when I embody my role model. Funny, all this time I just assumed it was about protecting myself from the sting and slap of the pointer on my hip.
There's a whole litany of psychological, emotional, physical, sexual, and Spiritual abuse in my childhood that occurred before I was ten years old. There were also very deep understandings gained that spoke of a Spirit that can guide, protect, teach, and support. I have been sorting out the aftermath of it all, ever since. As is evident right now, I think it's fair to say I'll be doing so until my life is over.
The end product, as loath as I am to admit it, is that I understand pain. I can recognize it and identify it, even put a name to it, in the same way that the Eskimo has a word for every different type of snow. Pain was my companion, and my whole life was, and continues to be I suppose, a sacred dance with it. Whereas it was, at first, my jailer, today it is my friend, for through exploring its many facets and turning that knowledge into tools of action that are valuable in helping others, I have learned to change shit into diamonds.
Through working with myself and many, many others, I have come to find a theory that helps me to better come to terms with how pain shapes our lives.
Developmentally, in broad strokes, the first ten or so years of our lives are spent trying to "size up," get a sense of what the world is that we have been born in to. Not only are we trying out our "earth suits," which, if you've ever watched an infant getting used to being in the confines of skin, you'll understand, but we are coming to terms with the nature of the world around us. What is this world, and who are we in it?
They say that the "power of reason" takes root some time around our tenth year, when we begin to fully realize that we are a separate entity and that the actions we take have consequences. We appear to not know this very well intellectually before this time. Whatever impressions we get of the consequences of our actions (translated as being completely ourselves) gets imbedded more viscerally, either physically or energetically.
It is at this point of burgeoning self-awareness and consciousness that we make a few decisions, and those decision are, "This is what the world is. This is what my life is. This is how things go." This filter, or mode of interpretation, persists throughout our lives.
For children who grow up in a largely safe and supportive environment, the most important understanding that expresses itself throughout the rest of their lives is that the world is, at least, something flexible upon which they can have an effect. They are more akin to growing up with the tree's innate awareness that bending with, rather than fighting against, assures longevity.
For those of us who have been more traumatized, however, that understanding is considerably different. Years of self-help related work has shown me that the biggest stumbling blocks of my life fall into the category of my having embraced the view that the world I knew as a six year old--a world full of fear, self-protection, solitude, distrust, and chaos--IS the world. Period. Today, as I work with others--and continue to work with myself--I see the biggest challenge is in working with what IS, rather than responding to what WAS.
The reason for this being such a difficult thing to shake is that, at the time, our very survival depended upon our working with that world as we knew it. There was no other world. If you took the chance to gamble on there being a different type of world, chances are, at the age of six or so, you would be violently thrust right back into the world as you thought it was. A continuous cycle of reinforcement ensues. Once the outward circumstances change, as in getting old enough to move out of the abusive situation, there is a tendency to seek out that which you know so well. The impression of that world got in largely non-verbally and viscerally, and the rate of recovery is proportional to the amount of time that we spend in that other, more safe and supportive world.
The glitch here is the innate desire to duplicate the familiar. There is not a one of us who has not been able to find a shred of security within the context of the traumatic worlds that we have been born into. Even what others would describe as horrors are often interpreted as sources of love. In my case, for example, for years I pursued relationships most adamantly where I sensed I would not get my touch needs met. The energy of my mother, as painful as it was, was what I understood as love. There was no other. There IS no other, until I learn, by repeated exposure, that there is. And that takes time.
Oddly enough, this is of great comfort to me. Now, I know what I'm working with--both in myself and in others.
Russ Reina (Firetender) lives at LVEC, is available for counseling, and teaches a workshop called "The HeART of Healing," which uses acting and improvisation games to build the muscles of choice that contribute to intuition. "I am amazed," he says, "at how the work never ends, and how the benefits of doing it are so immense."
©2003 Talking Leaves
Summer 2003
Volume 13, Number 2
Community With All Life