SIMPLE MEDICINE

It’s a beautiful day in Taos, the first true spring day this year. Looking around we see prairie dogs standing up near their holes to examine a world that they haven’t seen since before the last big snowstorm. We went out ourselves finally venturing beyond Walmart, the grocery store and post office. 

Right now, we are Munching on real Pueblo prune pies. A good friend we hadn’t seen for months kindly bought them for us at the annual show of Taos Pueblo artists at Millicent Rogers Museum. This show was our first real outing for several months. Over coffee just this morning, we had shared how contented we were to stay home this entire winter. Perhaps, the outing was even more pleasurable in contrast to our uncharacteristic prairie dog like winter.

Dad and Mom at a wedding ceremony
We thought of them today.

I’m always amazed at how much talent lives within the photogenic mud walls of Taos Pueblo. There were artists we’ve known for years and then there were some wonderful things that were entirely new. Patricia Michaels was there with her beautiful clothing designs. She is now a celebrity after several TV seasons on Project Runway. It was a diverse group with glass art, drums, jewelry and even natural lotions, soaps and shampoos in addition to paintings and photography. 

PQ showed admirable restraint although I was worried when he started looking at bolos and bracelets. He is almost a jewelry junky. He did buy a beautiful photo of the Moon over the Northside Pueblo by neighbor Debbie Lujan, and a small micaceous pot. Not too bad. After being so careful  with cash all winter we needed to invest a little green in spring. Also we were gifted along the way. This generous spirit is one of the good things about the pueblo. Artists like to help each other.

Time is not really as set as we humans imagine since we started measuring it. As I savor the prune pie, layers of time and space collapse into a timeless world of soft tan dust, wood smoke and clear sharp air that is completely unique and beyond time. That slice of pie contained the entire pueblo, past, present and future and even the sacred mountain. PQ commented on it too.  For a few moments, we just relished being home. It may seem strange that I a non-pueblo person would say that but home is a feeling and a state of heart.

SECRETS OF LIFE ON THE EDGE

I automatically delete all emails about retirement investments, making the most of a fixed income, savings plans, health insurance ads, and investment opportunities, and so on. All are irrelevant in Taos, unless you have one golden foot in another place. Right now, I would love to get out of here, take a deep breath in that other world and then probably come back here after the respite. I never lived in the “normal” world but I used to live pretty close to it and had close friends who lived in that world. It was comforting to have some proximity to mainstream America. I imagined that someday I too would have health insurance, life insurance, savings account, and get my teeth cleaned once a year.

I never consciously chose to live a third world lifestyle but looking back, I can see that I was always headed in that direction. I’ve been immersed in this life on the edge for 23 years. Well, actually, I practiced for several years before moving to Taos but back in that earlier life, I fantasized that change was just around the corner. Now I’m accepting that I will probably live on moment-to-moment faith for my remaining time on this planet. It’s like lead floating on a cloud but for some reason it works. There is a magic element (I’m not being facetious) at work. It’s amazing what you can do on faith when conventional options aren’t available. 

Some things work precisely because other options aren’t available. What I’m learning is that insurance is an expensive illusion. This doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t have a Medicare supplement if I could afford it. It just means that the needs of the future are unpredictable and will remain so. When you aren’t living under the illusion that you have some control over the future, other resources come into play.

This is what a graduate degree in Taos living is all about. This unique place, a genuine third world country, nested in the so-called United States of America, specializes in getting 21^st century people back in touch with a more universal even cosmic reality. It sounds like a contradiction, but to have a spiritual relationship with the cosmos, having your feet in the sometimes muddy, un-groomed, still under construction earth is essential.It doesn’t work to fight the poverty, surly residents, dysfunctional Walmart, do-it-yourself traffic rules, and sometimes-caveman living arrangements. It’s like quicksand, the harder you struggle and fight, the faster you sink. Lay flat and belly walk and you will get where you are going a lot faster.  I’m not saying this will get you entirely out of danger. After all, it is danger that causes the blood to flow, adrenaline to push for the big challenge and the mind to jump out of the box. 

The Messenger

Winter is showing signs of weakening. I’ve been very patient with the way things are this winter and so has PQ. It was unexpectedly easy to live like the Prairie Dogs, coming out only when the sun did and then quickly retreating underground after a quick trip to the grocery store and post office. 

I look at pictures and videos of places I would one day like to visit, or visit again the way someone lost in the desert imagines a cool flowing rivulet. That’s OK; it’s nice to have something to draw one forward. Right now, it’s Sedona/Cottonwood. We have unfinished time there.  I’m ready to go but not in a hurry.  Even if having two places of the soul is a pipe dream, that dream is even now preparing the materials of a home for the next body of experience.

We can futilely watch the world news but aren’t in the know about who is behind the flare-ups in the Middle East, nor can we defeat the Illuminati, or corporate and government corruption. But, everything out there is also in here and that is where the future is conceived and nurtured in this holographic universe.

SNOW MEMORIES AND REFLECTIONS: Remembering Barbara Waters

It is snowing heavily. I got up early this morning, whisked snow off the car and shoveled the walks. I was thinking about the memorial service in Arroyo Seco for Barbara Waters the wife and soul partner of well known author Frank Waters. I hoped to attend this memorial with PQ. However, as the snowflakes intensified their assault I suspected that it was too much snow and cold air for his lungs and thus wasn’t really surprised when he decided not to go, besides by the time he got up and had his coffee it was getting late, so I said some prayers and imagined her being happily reunited with Frank under the aspen trees in El Salto before they begin their next adventure in space/time.

A good beginning

Barbara is one of the special people of Taos who were always on the outer edge of my Taos experience. I knew her casually. Once we shared membership in a group that met at a mutual friend’s house back in the 90’s, and occasionally I saw her at a coffee shop/bakery in Arroyo Seco. We knew each others name and shared some acquaintances, recognized a certain energetic connection with related stories, but never became close friends. Somehow, activities in our everyday lives went down two streams that never merged. It was as if the connecting piece of a picture puzzle we both lived in was never located within the time limits of this incarnation.  Nevertheless, I always valued her presence in my Taos picture.

Two years ago, Mark Gordon and his cameraman had PQ join them for an interview with Barbara concerning Frank’s relationship with Tony Lujan for the movie he is producing about Mabel Dodge Lujan and Tony Lujan. Of course, I tagged along and after the interview, Barbara graciously shared the history of Frank’s many artifacts adorning the walls and hanging from ceiling vigas of their old El Salto adobe. I knew, more familiarly, her half Coyote dog, Trickster who liked to visit the Seco bakery for croissants and attention. Isn’t that a typical Taos anomaly?

Another visit a few months later was the last time we saw Barbara although I often thought of her. Mark gave me a copy of her autobiography at that time, and I remember thinking that it was a shame that she hadn’t promoted her own abilities as well as Frank’s. The book was chock full of anecdotes, memories and pure Taos flavor written with heart and wry humor.

Thinking of Barbara Waters pulls me into the very heart of my Taos life. I remember my surprise at discovering, upon moving to Taos that an author that had significantly influenced my life lived in this town and even more importantly was associated with Mabel Dodge and Tony Lujan, historic figures intimately related to my new Taos family. It all made up a seductively complex net of synchronistic connections.

It has always amazed me, how often we stumble blindly into places and people that link us to a multifaceted sphere of interconnected life events. When our heart moves us to another place, we discover yet another circlet of intertwined associations. Truly, earth time is a puzzling illusion. Nevertheless, it is an exciting show as we move from episode to episode; even better than Downton Abby.

MORE ON AWAKENING IN TAOS

This year’s Christmas was perfect for a reflective mood. Just a small gathering of close friends at a sweet intimate, casual dinner and the rest of the evening spent listening to music and now and then looking through the window at progressively bigger flakes of snow. The last two hours of Christmas in Santa Fe were white.

For us the approaching New Year will focus on new perceptions of healing. PQ’s illness keeps this topic close to our skin. However, I’m not talking about research breakthroughs or new drugs for Pulmonary Fibrosis. In the Old Testament, prophets often enacted their own prophesies. The state of the Hebrew nation became the prophet’s personal and/or physical affliction that he then interpreted to the people. For everyone now, the indigenous soul is confined within a story told by oppressors.  I don’t mean this only in a generalized form. We are as oppressed as those we oppress.  This includes the way we interact with the natural world including our own bodies. The door of time is opening for a multidimensional experience of healing.  

 

Christmas Morning from the Bedroom Window

This morning PQ and I were talking about some recent insights brought forward by a healer we have been working with for the dissolution of some of our personal trip-ups when the subject flowed over to our involvement in the Mabel Dodge and Tony Lujan story. I somehow broke through an old difficulty with expressing my personal calling to participate in this story. I have never fully expressed this because of fear of talking out of my place or for thinking that my ideas are of limited importance since I am not the film’s producer or directly connected to the subjects of this story.

Mabel’s soul healing revelation was the experience of her personal introduction to a way of being human that penetrated deeply into the beating heart of Mother Earth, the natural rhythms of the Universe and an organic unselfconscious spirituality.  This was her medicine and Tony was the conduit of this medicine. Tony may not have consciously understood the importance of their connection either but he had faith in the source of his own guidance. His culture also needed a bridge to communicating with the dominating presence of Western European culture. This was something that both sides needed. Mabel finally after “looking for love in all the wrong places” connected to a meaningful source beyond her habitually narcissistic hunger for significance.

Native people are the subjects of much historical abuse and recently subjects of hoped for healing powers but they have remained passive subjects of outside interest. I personally believe that the “us and them,”  sensitivity must be transcended for cultural healing on all sides to take place.  

PQ singing for Miles' and Gail's Italian friends

Recently while sitting in a room with a group of upper middle class, politically correct, well read, well-intentioned and highly educated people in the home of one of the supporters of Mark Gordon’s film, “Awakening in Taos” I suddenly became aware that they were missing the heart of the project.  In fact, maybe we were all missing it.  I wanted to jump up and say, “Here is the real significance of this project. It is to help you, not as a charitable tax-deductible contribution but as a guide to what you need that you are missing. I want you to understand that this isn’t about you helping the project, it is about the project helping you and you need to do what you are able to do to bring it into your lives and into the world.”

What is unique about this project isn't something historically interesting that happened in New Mexico. This isn’t about an Eastern born cosmopolitan patroness of the arts who happened to be forward thinking and brave enough to marry an Indian man and bring a host of cultural icons to New Mexico. This is about an evolutionary process that is of profound significance for the future of the world and must be given life in the present and you now have the opportunity to awaken as Mabel awakened.

Mabel and Tony long ago passed from this dimension, but the consciousness that flowed into their lives and outward into the world is still looking for bodies to carry it forward. Mark Gordon picked it up and because of this, he found Standing Deer.

 This is a process that must and will continue whether or not we “get it.” But, if we get it, we will greatly increase the creation/healing process of the earth beneath our feet the air we breathe and an infinity of fractal connections radiating out into the universe. We are destined to dance among the stars, and I mean it literally although not necessarily technologically.

To attack or not attack, that is the question.

When I came to Taos, I was looking for the same thing that Mabel was looking for, with a few variances. It was 1992, “coincidentally” the 500^th anniversary of Columbus’ questionable discovery of the Americas.  I had recently become aware of indigenous peoples and of my own indigenous relationship with Mother Earth. It was a revelation and at first, sent me into mourning.  I felt a strange sadness that had nothing to do with my personal problems of which at that time there were many. Yet, this was different. It had no focus in my personal sphere and nothing personal moved it away. I became very interested in indigenous peoples everywhere on the planet and began to study what I could find about their modern circumstances. Although I have always been interested in Anthropology and psychology, this was not the same. Now I saw my own kind and myself as the focus of need rather than as observers and recorders. The sadness was about how far away we have drifted from what it means to participate in the organic forces of creation.

Although Awakening in Taos is the Mabel Dodge and Tony Lujan story, Tony represents the transformative essence of the story.  I am so happy that Mark has decided to put Tony’s voice in the film with subtitles. When viewed only from an American/English perspective, Tony has nothing to say even though he was Mabel’s direct source for the balancing truths that inspired her. That balance is an awakening available to everyone.  That’s why the story is important.

Many years ago, PQ’s father told him that his medicine was for the world rather than just his Pueblo people and yet some of his Pueblo people resent that spark he shares with everyone. It occurs to me that healing is about making whole, and is also the way to “holy”. There is nothing exclusive about wholeness.

MOVING FORWARD

I sense something new moving in through the outer edges of my aura. It is definitely an expanding energy or more accurately the details of an expanding picture that isn’t yet transferable to words. I trust that it will eventually take on an identifiable form.

PQ in Heart of Sedona Coffee Shop

It was with relief and gratitude that we arrived in Cottonwood on Tuesday, November 25, our first visit for over a year and yet as soon as we arrived it was as if we had never been away and time had stopped to wait for us. Yes, some businesses have changed, landscaping changes altered a few pieces of real estate but the feeling is timeless for us. PQ immediately notices that it is easier to breathe but I believe there is more to this than the lower altitude. It is a nurturing, healing environment away from the challenges in Taos. It’s not that we don’t love Taos and its unique beauty, but it is not a relaxing energy. It rearranges your head, stirs problems to the surface and brings infections to a head. In Cottonwood, we can relax and reassemble ourselves. 

PQ’s son Corey stayed at our Taos house and took care of the cats while we were gone, so everything came together to make this micro vacation work. His dog Mini, a pit bull, lab and maybe something else mix somehow worked out an arrangement with the cats so that they mostly ignored each other.

Our place of healing is Cottonwood and that space between Cottonwood and Sedona. Taos is a place of challenge and testing. It reveals and holds whatever needs rebalancing, and although we love it and honor it as our place of origin, our life is out of balance without what we receive in Cottonwood. There is an active polarity between the two places that I can’t explain but palpably experience. 

Sedona Rain lasted all the way to Taos.

Of course, on a practical level it is almost 4,000 feet lower in altitude than Taos, which makes it more comfortable for PQ. He is still having difficulty re-acclimating to Taos since we returned, spending a lot of time between couch and bed. He has a commission waiting but each time he begins work on it he gets severe stomach cramps. His doctor says this is due to not taking in enough oxygen to engage in both activity and digestion. 

I confess that I’ve been standing on the bank of the river of time hoping for a solution to drift by. There are a number of considerations such as coordinating a trip and place to stay in Denver to consult with the Lung doctors about the new trial drug Pirfenidone, organizing the practical steps to move to Arizona, finding a place to move to, and simultaneously finding someone to rent our house in Taos. We need to be able to return to this house in Taos from time to time, so the ideal would be a housesitting arrangement with us leaving most of our furniture here and our names on the utility accounts. Past moves have always been exceedingly stressful life challenging procedures that I felt fortunate to survive. I really don’t want more drama and trauma right now. However, intuition says that I may not have a choice. Perhaps I need some insight about why all my previous moves have been so depleting in money and energy.

George,happy to have the computer back home.

Now that we are back in Taos, it is clear that we must get off the fence about the decision to live most of our time in Arizona and do whatever is necessary to make it happen. It is another opportunity to be up front with what I believe and what is most important in my life at this time, which is PQ’s health. This isn’t PQ’s issue. He is sometimes too impulsive.  I on the other hand can put off a decision for a long time but still act too impulsively hoping that fate and luck will fill in any gaps in the plan.The process continues.