Siete son los colores del arcoíris
reflejados en las ocho puntas de la Estrella de Lakshmi
When I feel that my lady guests from the past
are fully awake and present with me after some time spent, for all of us,
pondering about the meaning of the mantra I had created, I tell them about one
of my realizations.
-You know, ladies, I took advantage of the
night to “sleep on” some of my prejudices, and I re-watched the beginning of
that stupid movie, “El pecador de la
pradera”, “The Sinner of the Prairie”. I have heard more than once that
what gets on our nerves is actually very revealing if we are willing to know
why it makes us nervous or mad or impatient, because it has to do with
something we should deal with. Soooo, I have decided to listen to that “comedian”
again, because I remembered a sentence that had come to me one morning as I
woke up from a dream that I could not recall: “if something seems off or odd, it must be, somehow, Spirit
speaking... So let’s make sure that we’re not deaf to signs, otherwise
they will fade”. The repetition of “f” and “d” in that strange “wake-up
greeting” had naturally led me to repeat the Catholic Monarchs’ motto: “Tanto Monta, Monta Tanto, Isabel como FernanDo”, which stated the equal power and status between husband
and wife. So I armed myself with patience and rewound this piece of… anthology.
I started to accept that, maybe, Chiquito’s nonsensical gibberish could actually
be Spirit talking through the guy, and that I should therefore give it a second
try because I could find something of interest for me, especially if it was
“off” or “odd”… I was able to “stand” the first minutes of it, watching the
actors crawling as they talked nonsense, but there was something actually
really cool in the end of Chiquito’s speech: “Lucas, estamos perdidos… Perdí la última huella “distilar” en aquella
montaña gris. Cuidado con los alacranes y cocodrilos… ¡Tú has tenido la culpa!
Por aquí no se va a París. Hay tanta sequía que se ven las ranas con
cantimplora. Lloras por estos conductos
vocales lo que no supiste defender como una mujer”…
-I guess he meant instead: “Ibki
l-yawma bukā'a n-nisā'i ʿalā mulkin lam taḥfadhu ḥifdha r-rijāl”, well I
mean: “Lloras como mujer lo que no
supiste defender como hombre”, says Soraya.
-That’s what I thought at first too, I answer. But
then I pondered about it. And I heard
a melody from the past. As I say this, I take my recorder and play: la, fa, re,
re, la, sol, fa, sol-fa-mi, sol, fa, mi, sol-sol-sol, fa, sol, la-la… “Fátima,
allash, b’kit ana, Fátima mi corazón te llama” I sing in a smile.
-Any chance that someone would find a translation
button in your wonderful machine, Nathalie? asks Annie who really doesn’t like
it when she does not understand something.
-Haha, push MY button, I say, I am your flesh
and blood translator… I was singing a song that Soraya reminded me of. The song
I’ve just played is bilingual, in darija (Moroccan) and Spanish, and says
“Fatima: why am I crying, Fatima: my heart is calling you”. It was a song by a
local Moroccan band in Granada, something I remembered because of the hyper
famous sentence Soraya and I know about.
-It was uttered by Boabdil’s mother when they went into exile in the Alpujarra, says Soraya: “You are crying like a woman over something you were not able to defend like a man”. That’s what Fátima told her son, my stepson, when he cried over his (our) lost paradise: Granada, on his way to exile, with all his people, including his cold momma and his weak wife who would not make it to the other side of the Mediterranean when time would come for them to leave Spain for Morocco... Destiny seems to be doing things backwards, at times, isn’t it? she sighs.
-It was uttered by Boabdil’s mother when they went into exile in the Alpujarra, says Soraya: “You are crying like a woman over something you were not able to defend like a man”. That’s what Fátima told her son, my stepson, when he cried over his (our) lost paradise: Granada, on his way to exile, with all his people, including his cold momma and his weak wife who would not make it to the other side of the Mediterranean when time would come for them to leave Spain for Morocco... Destiny seems to be doing things backwards, at times, isn’t it? she sighs.
-Well that’s exactly what I want to focus on
here, Soraya. I answer. What sounded like an inversion in that stupid movie, a
mistake in the sentence, is actually fantastically accurate. Chiquito de la
Calzada says “to defend like a woman”, instead of “to cry like a woman”. Even
though I profoundly dislike the guy’s so-called humor, which I’d rather call
dumbness, I have to recognize that he made a point there. He shut Fátima up! Even
though she was “official” for society, she had never been Hassan’s true love… But
she held on to the idea of it because she had married him, and when he left
her, her pride, more than love, had been hurt so bad that she relinquished on
what I now learn to see as divine feminine traits: compassion as strength, love
as weapon, and emotions as what keeps the world in motion. We, mujeres, are
powerful beings, but not in the war-like sense that Fátima gave to it. So
thanks, Chiquito, even though I’m pretty sure that you managed this “sin querer queriendo”, heehee… And I choose to say, instead, “thanks,
Spirit!”
-I guess Fátima let her bitterness get the best
of her and turned her heart into a stone, says Soraya, who sounds deeply
immersed in her thoughts.
-And it is very considerate of you to still
care for her well-being. Also, that queen of old chose to remain bitter though,
I say. You cannot feel guilty forever, Soraya. You were a slave in the first
place, you had been kidnapped, and destiny made you fall in love with your
captor, just like he had fallen in love with you. You two recognized each
other… And Fátima was the one who kept you prisoner for a long time as well,
before your beloved finally could rescue you, after he was forced to give up
the throne to his son, all this being planned by Fátima / Aixa and her allies.
-Well she had been kept a prisoner too, says
Soraya in an attempt of finding balance and justice.
-True. Those were very complicated times. But I
have a feeling that her marriage to Hassan had never been a marriage of love,
but rather a “sensible” and practical political operation. She was first
married to Muhammad XI, and once his successor Said got rid of Fátima’s first
husband, he married her to his son and heir, your beloved, to try to bring
peace between rival factions.
-Yes, politics and love did not mix too well,
sighs Soraya.
-Maybe if you were to come back roaming the
earth in something more than soul, and in a body again, you would learn how to
make the heart even more powerful than the brain, but also trying to fix past
mistakes… There are many ways to fix past mistakes, though, I have a few ideas
about it… But we are here to fix how you feel for now, so, if it helps, I want
to show you the cover of two books about you. Let me tell you that you inspire
many people, still to this day… I must confess that I haven’t read them yet,
heehee, but I will, soon, incha’allah.
-Incha’allah, smiles Soraya.
-I know for a fact, though, that many women are
inspired by you. Love always wins in the end. Always. Look, here are the books
I am talking about.
-Oh they look beautiful. Thank you! says Soraya
who sounds extremely moved and relieved at the same time.
-You know, I met one of the authors of the two
books I choose to show you here. Brígida had come to the event I had organized
when I had invited a French-Tunisian filmmaker: Nacer Khemir. I had organized a
casting for his movie about Shahrazad in the Hammams al Andalus… Hammams were and are secretive places, where
many things happen. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes less beautiful.
-Oh yes, says Soraya. In our times, when the
call of the muezzin was still heard in the streets of Granada, conspirators
also gathered in hammams to imagine plots to try to make sultans or kings
falter…
-And water remembers, says Adaline… You know, I
had heard that in the past, there, close to where my dad lived, ancient rival
bands or tribes, who had perpetrated horrible deeds against each other, would
gather in natural hot springs to cleanse from those past rivalries and give
their bitterness and old wounds to the water.
-In the Lakota way, says Zitkala, another
practice was also commonplace, which consisted of adopting ancient enemies and
perpetrators of offenses to ensure peace in the future.
-I think it is beautiful to see human groups
trying to fix the mistakes of the past, I say.
-Yes, says Adaline. It was commonplace for
people in my times too to adopt those who were considered ancient enemies.
-Oh, I say, I have read that your stepmother,
Josephine, adopted a Navajo boy who had been captured by the Utes. They would
have killed him for considering him a nuisance. So she only listened to
her heart and traded the boy for one of your father’s favorite horses.
-Oh yes, she was very generous, says Adaline.
Plus, like I said, it was customary to do that in our times. At least back in
New Mexico territory.
-I guess it must have been tough for your
father and his adopted son to deal with the terrible consequences of Carleton’s
orders when that man decided to end the “Navajo problem”…
-I had passed already, I think, says Adaline. I
have no recollection of that episode.
-I do, says Zitkala. I had heard and read about
it in school. And it was hard not to hate your father, Adaline, but I
understand now that sometimes what we consider our duty makes us fall into
fatal traps. I mean “fatal” in the sense of fate. I guess he did what he did
because he considered it to be his duty. I’m sure he had his adopted son in
mind when he forced the Navajos to this terrible long walk. Maybe all he had in
mind was also to go back to his family as soon as possible. So yes,
purification through water is necessary…
-Yes, I
acknowledge. It is also fair to ask for water’s forgiveness, then, she has so
much to carry from us. And also asking forgiveness from the earth. You know, dear Phoebe Apricot, I
think maybe this is why I keep on calling you that, because of what I read
about the “scorched earth” policy that Carleton commanded Kit Carson to apply
to force the Navajos to surrender. By the way, maybe it’s why the conversation
out of the maze, with the voice, started with a memory about burnt cork… Who
knows. The beautiful peach trees cherished by the Navajos in Canyon de Chelly
were destroyed. All of them! I think this is why we must pay a tribute to trees,
and water. Maybe Christians could (re)learn from that… And not only for the
sake of forgiveness, but also for the sake of keeping the earth and our own body
happy! Back in the days of Soraya, I’m sure she was grateful for the refined
hygiene practices of the Muslims vis-à-vis how Christians dealt with their
body!
-Oh yes! says Soraya. Actually I would have
never been able to go back to the filthy practices (or actually, the lack
thereof) of Christians after learning from Muslim ways. The Catholic Monarchs
banned all this though, when they took Granada. Hammams were outlawed. It was out
of fear of more conspiracies, but it sure had a lot to do with their total
ignorance regarding personal hygiene and sensuality, haha! But it is also true
that water retained the stains of some bloody vengeance…
-Oh you know, Soraya, now the tour guides in
the Alhambra always “play” with the oxidation stains in the marble of the “room
of the Banu Saraj, Abencerrajes”, whom your husband had allegedly killed for
their treason and alliance with his former spouse, Aixa. They say those stains are
the blood of that powerful faction. To this I will add that the Banu Saraj
family seemed to have quite a yo-yo-like allegiance…
-Well you know, says Soraya, sometimes things
like that happen. Regarding the stains, Water and Stones do have memory. And
they tell you about it if you’re a sensitive soul. I always shivered when I was
around places where I knew some disgraces had occurred, because the place would
remind me of it. It was like hearing the whispers of pain kept in old cisterns.
There’s so much water sleeping underground in Granada, it is a constant
reminder of the wounds of the past. In Hassan’s times, there were many “wannabe
impostors” out there, and also many traitors… Former spouses and sons fighting
against fathers and vice versa; families making and then breaking alliances. Too
much hatred and bloodshed, if you want my opinion.
-But who knows, I say, maybe if son, father and
brother get to reincarnate they will learn compassion and forgiveness and will
perform a healing ceremony, maybe sometimes being totally unaware of it too… Those
who feel that the burden of “guilt” is too much to bear will try to tell a
different story. Many times I am pretty sure it happens unconsciously too. Few
people are really able to confront their shadow self or shadow side, accept it,
embrace it, learn from it and move forward thanks to the lessons of the past.
It takes courage and lucidity. It takes memory, too, and I think it’s why many
times people live their life in total oblivion. Sometimes I am not too fond of
the ways some perform what they see as healing ceremonies, because I feel it could
add more wounds and therefore give some more weight to the karmic pain, but I
know that for some, like a Navajo girl once said as she tried to explain her
part in the path towards healing, medicine men tell you that you have to feel
the pain to really understand it, embrace it, and only from then on be able to
move forward.
-Who said so? asks Zitkala.
-A little bird, I answer with a smile. That’s
what we would say in Spanish, but I believe you say “my little finger” in
English.
-Oh, smiles Adaline. This reminds me of my way
to cope with loneliness and sorrow, sometimes. When I first learned to handle
the writing tools of my white education back East, I would draw little faces
on my fingers and also play puppets with them. They lived beautiful stories of
reunion and harmony... All in my hands...
-Oh I love that! I exclaim. You are going to
think that I do it on purpose to force you into watching movies, Adaline, but
it reminds me, AGAIN, of one of my all-time favorites, Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain… Adaline, Amélie, not too far
off actually… Anyway. The opening credits show how Amélie, when she was a
little girl, played with extremely simple devices to spend her time as an only
child who lived in her own world. Check this out:
-Oh yes, it’s exactly that! says Adaline.
-I love the little cut-outs ready for the round
dance! says Annie. At least those are cut-outs I like!
-Why do you say that? I ask.
-Oh forget about it, she answers… Or maybe I
will tell you later.
-What does the grey spiral puzzle have to do
with hand games, though? asks Zitkala.
-Well this is a kind of interference in the
images, I acknowledge. The puzzle is what friends of mine were trying to
resolve a few weeks ago, and I would see the evolution in their puzzle choices week
after week. Actually all the patterns they had chosen for the different puzzles
I got to see had a little message for me, regarding my life path and things
that would “pop up” for me to notice. Now there’s no more puzzle, no more
spiral. I mean, the spiral is ever present in all that we are and do, at least
this is what I believe, but maybe it is no longer there in the shape of a
puzzle because a little finger trick showed me how spirals can go clockwise or
counterclockwise, inward or outward: when the forefinger, pointed at the sky,
keeps on turning in the same direction, if we raise or lower our hand, it will
switch the perceived direction.
-And what about the wolves and the domino game on
that image? asks Soraya.
-Well, the wolves conjure up the Cherokee story
about the fight within us between two wolves, and I think it’s pretty graphic
if we compare those little wolf cubs with the domino figure since they’re black
and white, the color of duality. And they hide behind a witch’s broom, so maybe
it is a reminder of how we need to cleanse our habits to keep only the good
wolf’s intentions. But in my personal story, I’m also reminded of a nursery
rhyme in Spanish: “cinco lobitos tiene la
loba” (five wolf cubs has the she-wolf). I did not know the song, but it
brings back a bad memory since the first time I heard it was from someone with
great imbalance in his life (and in the life of everybody else around him) who
had sung that to a friend of his after the latter’s favorite soccer team had
lost 0-5. I have no interest whatsoever for soccer, I found those little games the
guy played to try to drive his friend mad totally ridiculous, I have worked at
erasing the memories of when I felt wretched around that person. But then
again, I forced myself to listen to the song again, getting rid of the voice
that sang it or at least of the feelings brought from such voice. The song is
usually performed as the singer’s hands spin in the air, and it made me rethink
my relationship with visuals, with the puppet hand and its relation with the
puppeteer, movies, life, mirrors, and us, ladies.
- Are we those five little wolves? asks
Zitkala. I am saying this because we are four guests here with you, and as our
host, you would be, in that nursery rhyme, the fifth element…
-I love you too, I say in a smile.
-Well thank you, says Zitkala, but I did not
say that I loved you right now.
-You said “The Fifth Element”, heehee… I am remembering
the title of another futuristic movie.
-Five can be organized in nice patterns, says
Soraya who must have been remembering her wonderment when she observed the
walls of the Alhambra, where everything is devoted to math magic…
-So true! I exclaim. Actually, I was wondering
about a few things related to mathematics, and I remembered, back in Granada,
how strange it felt for me to see the way my Spanish colleagues were drawing
the number of votes on a blackboard.
When I was expecting to see what I usually do
when I count in series of five, I was pretty surprised to see Pepe drawing a
little square house with a stick in diagonal in its center. I mean, it’s always
the same result, but that square thing looked like a closed space to me, and my
own way of doing it felt like crossing out the iron bars of a prison. But then
again all this is very subjective. I loved to see the permanence of the
diagonal though. I also noticed that I cross the “prison bars” from right to
left instead of left to right as others do. Maybe it is because I am
left-handed. They say that “diagonal thinkers” are gifted with the capacity to
think both in a linear and diagonal way, which I see as an asset. Also, back to
our cinco lobitos and five fingers,
when Spaniards and many people in the Hispanic world count on their hands, they
start from the “pinkie” and finish with the thumb. I started from the thumb
when I lived in Belgium. Those details fascinate me. Recently I’ve discovered
what they call “multiplication par
jalousies”, and I saw the light, literally! Multiplying high figures with
this diagonal system makes complex operations extremely easy!
-Jalousie
means jealousy, right? says Annie.
-Of course it does, says Zitkala. Heehee… It’s
funny to build, trigger, rekindle and play with people’s jealousy, sometimes, creating
elaborate little tales and throw them at their stunned face to leave them
speechless for a while so that they cannot fight back.
-“Carlos poor Carlos” I mutter, which “triggers”
Zitkala’s need to clear her throat before asking me what I mean.
-Well you know, I did a bit of research after
you came to talk to me by the little bridge over the acequia. And speaking of
“throwing”, you may have thrown Carlos’s letters, but he did not destroy yours,
and I regret (or not) to inform you that your biographers have published them… Cat
and mouse, yes and no, hot and cold, obnoxious and charming… Poor Carlos.
-…
-Oh but don’t suffer though. We all do that,
sometimes, in a more or less conscious way though, eso sí… But just imagine
that, maybe, your little epistolary exercises became useful to those who came
after you to practice their storytellers’ skills, and also to investigate some
more about the way human psyche works.
- I love lattice! I am touched to see a detail
of the Alhambra’s Throne Room, says Soraya, clearly attempting at shifting the
conversation topic to avoid an uneasy moment, because she must have had her
share with jealousy.
-Well, I say, actually this is where the second
meaning of “jalousie” was taken from,
to characterize this type of multiplication: because of how the light is
filtered through this beautiful work of carpentry, in diagonal. But I’m sure
that many found it great also because from behind a lattice you can observe
without being seen… It is very “trendy” in this time and age too, although it
is no longer done from behind lattice but through the grid of the world wide
web and its technology that makes “lurking” easier than ever.
-What is the meaning of this cross, and the red
letters looking at each other? asks Zitkala.
-This is my tribute to your name, I say.
Because when I look at your initials, I actually see a number two (the letter
Z) and a number five (the letter S). Z looks like lightning in the sky with its
linear shapes, whereas S is like a curvy serpent feeling the ground where she
moves. But if you play with both in mirrors, you basically reach the same
result, and both of them are needed, for life in all its aspects. So I played
with their shapes a bit, and decided to invert your name’s initials, starting
with “red” and ending with “bird”, which gave “SZ”, or “52” in my particular
parallelism. Fifty-two is the age of wisdom for the Mayan people because it is
the result of 4 times 13, a sacred number. And you can imagine this cross
within a circle: it becomes its center at the intersection of vertical and
horizontal, and it also divides the circle into four equal quadrants.
-Oh wow… For some time I thought it was the
Benedictine cross, answers Zitkala.
-Well it could be, and I think that it has a
bunch of letters associated to it too, but this is a Roman coin that represents
the quincunx. So in this cross and its representation of five (four quadrants
and their center), I also see ourselves, ladies: the embodiment of the
quincunx.
-There are so many shapes for crosses, says
Soraya. My dad was “Comendador de la Orden de Santiago”, and their cross
sometimes looked like a dagger to me.
-It would have been awesome to throw such
dagger crosses into the E… says Annie.
-Into the what? we all ask.
-Oh it, was my way of calling the bull’s eye
when I practiced before the show, answers Annie. Because many times, since it
is called the eye, and I would sometimes practice with two different targets,
it seemed as though the eyes were staring back at me, through their dark,
spiraling, hypnotic irises of E… Sometimes it is as if I was a slave of their
eternal, though invisible spinning. It was like a black hole sucking me in, so
how could I ever miss the target?
-You are really way deeper than what I had
imagined first, dear Annie. I like you, says Zitkala.
-It sure feels good to hear! says Annie.
-You know, I say, back to this dagger / cross
throwing, I think it would be a great, metaphoric way to show how religion
could build or crush one’s life back in the day. There was a series about
Isabel, not our Soraya, but the Catholic Queen, recently on the Spanish TV,
just when I left for New Mexico, actually. Soraya, you are depicted in it. They
show the moment when you’re taken away from the cell to be prepared for your
first encounter with the sultan. At first “you” (your character) says that
you’d rather die than becoming his mate. So Fátima asks one of her slaves to
bring you a dagger, I guess in the hope of seeing how you “walk your talk”. You
did not, obviously, and thank God, life is God’s gift so we should not take it,
neither ours nor anybody else’s by the way… When the sultan comes to your
alcove you point the dagger at his chest and he bleeds a bit, but is already
too enamored to try to defend himself or hurt you back.
-Oh, wow… I frankly don’t recall that, so it
will be convenient and more comfortable for me to say it’s something invented
for the purpose of that modern storytelling you call movies, says Soraya who
sounds a bit embarrassed.
-What about that weird plate with a rock on the
right, and the little character on the left? asks Annie. Was it to carry the
dagger? I could imagine it as one of my props if I had delved into knife
throwing with Frank, heehee…
-Those represent the flower and fruit of life,
but I won’t go into details about that, I say. I’d rather stay with our number
five, which is related actually. Let’s just say that if you align five circles
vertically, and then, from the third circle at the center of that vertical line,
you draw two diagonals adding two circles on each side of the center circle, you will form the fruit of life, made of 13 circles.
-In this description, for some reason, I am
seeing a peyote button stitched in beadwork, whispers Zitkala.
-Oh really? It’s good, I say. And we stay in
Mexico, since 13 is a new reference to the sacred Mayan number. Those figures
also have to do with what Mayans considered the way towards building a healthy
soul. Just imagine how they saw it: let’s organize our human characteristics in
circle, clockwise, following the east-south-west-north movement of the sun, so
that we can attribute percentages of care to each of them. Respectively, 52% of
care will go to our body, which is indispensable; 26% to our emotions, which is
necessary; 13% to our mind, which is desirable, and 9% to our spiritual
development, which is excellent. When we reach the north or spiritual care, we
will have summed 100%, and therefore will have gained a healthy soul, at our
core, the center of ourselves, the fifth element (love, you remember?)! And if
we think in terms of the natural elements: fire, water, earth and air, the
fifth element is ether, which can be equated with space, inner as well as
outer. Therefore I think ether is like a vessel, which contains or holds the rest
of elements. But at the same time it’s the void… or solitude, or darkness, or
silence, or… you get my drift. When I was doing my research about chakras, at
the same time as I walked the maze with “the voice”, I learned that ether, as
the fifth element, can also be equated with the fifth chakra, aka the throat
chakra. I thought that it was ironic, since the voice would sometimes, paradoxically,
force silence upon me, either his silence or mine, for different reasons and
through different stratagems. But then, I understood that maybe it had to do
with taking me by the hand to address traumas of old, and again, not only mine.
-Is everybody aware of the fact that we reached
this from childhood games??? asks Adaline.
-Yes! I exclaim. And this is where it gets
really exciting regarding us, ladies. Because if you remember, we were talking
about the opening credits of the movie “Le
Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain”, and when you look closer at the way the
filmmaker organized those games we’ve all played as kids, you’ll notice
something more subtle:
As I froze each image with its respective
credits, I was able to enter the filmmaker’s mind. Starting with Amélie
“wearing” her cherry earrings, I noticed the name of the costume designer: “Madeline”
(hey, Adaline, again close to your name!) “Fontaine” (fountain). Then I remembered
one of the characters of the movie: “MadelEine Wallace”, who explains that her
name was a curse that condemned her to sadness since one says “pleurer comme une Madeleine” (literally
“to cry like a Magdalene”, referring to Mary Magdalene washing Jesus’ feet with
her tears) and since Paris is known for its Wallace fountains (fontaines). I am pretty sure that
Jean-Pierre Jeunet came up with this idea for his character thanks to the
costume designer’s name. Then I realized that the cherry earring was an
accessory for the little girl, and therefore belonged in that category of
costume design. And the rest followed the same pattern. Let’s unravel that
mechanism, as we move from the cherry to the left, to Amélie flattening her
face on a window: this image belongs to
the category “casting”. Well of course, she makes faces and is being observed
by those who are on the other side of the screen. She looks a bit “porcina” or pork-like with that deformed
nose…
-Porcuna??? asks Soraya.
-Oh, weird that you mention that, I say.
Porcuna was the village of my adoptive family in Granada. They were from the
Jaén Province, but they had come to live in Granada and I loved their house
from where I could see Sierra Nevada. The house is situated “Placeta de
Martos”, the village next door from Porcuna. Isn’t it strange?
-Well it is strange indeed, since Sancho, my
father, was knight commander of Martos…
-Oh wow… You and I were meant to sit and talk
for a while, then, I say. Maybe because both of us come from “the frontier”… My
birthplace in Belgium straddles three countries. And Granada was the last
frontier between the Christian and Muslim worlds. Also, I remember that my
foster family’s house, there at Placeta de Martos, had tunnels that led
directly to the Alhambra… They had discovered them when they remodeled the
house. I thought it was fascinating. My foster mom, Paquí, que en paz descanse, used to tell me many stories of the old times
back in Porcuna, and yes, since all this came through “porcino”, also about la
matanza, the pig butchering… For some reason I am remembering a course in high
school in which we had learned that many times women of a certain tribe in Papua New Guinea would kill their first
born and breastfeed a pig instead, to get trained in that practice. I think it
was a bit too simplistic and not too wise of the teacher to tell such things to
teenagers without the necessary preparation. But still, it lingered in my mind
and later on I came to think that pigs share much of their DNA with humans, and
that they could, therefore, sometimes symbolically “replace” them, or at least
serve as “mirrors” or “props” for an observation of human behavior, or a
rehearsal of some societal practices.
-And here come the pigs again, this is becoming
a habit! Says Annie. I prefer talking about the movie.
-I’m back at it, I say. In the opening credits, another childhood game of Amélie was to look through huge lenses, an illustration of the photography category, which doesn’t need additional explanation. Then a little face painted on Amélie’s hand stands for makeup, and another little
face she painted on her chin, moving as she makes huge talking mouth moves, is
the illustration of the category “dialogues”. Finally, the “swing” between her
two middle fingers is aimed at representing screenwriting: the script tells the
storyteller how to move the threads of human puppets aka actors, for other
humans to watch and identify others, or themselves. But the way little Amélie
moves them also conjures up above and below, and somehow I see a symbol for God
as ultimate screenwriter or puppeteer.
-Holy Cow (Or should I say holy pig)! Do you always
think like that? asks Zitkala.
-Heehee, I smile a bit embarrassed… I “think so”,
yes…
-But with all due respect, goes on Zitkala,
what does all this have to do with our gathering?
-Well, I believe that watching a movie is very
similar to watching our life as we remember or analyze it. Right now, I am
having a conversation with you, ladies, while you’re all supposed to be “up
above”, and me, “down below”. So it’s a bit like this exchange between the
viewer and the actor on screen. And I believe that a screenwriter can actually
sometimes feel imbued with God-like powers, which enable the creator of a
story to do and undo, build or destroy. I think that we’re given the
opportunity to understand the script that lies in the shadow of how we lived
and live our life. Perhaps it’s kind of a training for me, and an assessment
for you, guys.
-What do you mean “guys”, we’re all ladies
here, protests Annie.
-Haha! I know. But it’s how they say now in
this country when they mean “you all”. And the concept of “you all” or “us all”
finally takes me to our relationship with each other, and our
interconnectedness. I think that this God-like power is what Jeunet tries to illustrate
when he shows Amélie’s little stratagems to take her romantic interest where
she wants him, through a meticulous analysis of his interests and passions, since she
does not “date” like other people would do. The blue arrow sequence also shows how
magic (or spirit) takes a hand, with real-life actors such as pigeons, a little
boy and a statue co-creating Amélie’s scenario.
I am not saying that Amélie could not have prepared
all this with the little boy and the statue guy. She obviously has crafted part
of this scheme. But I profoundly believe that in the end, Spirit is the
ultimate screenwriter, working 24/7 to gift us with constant leads, exactly like the
blue arrows and the statue’s pointing finger, for us to follow and get to
understand, step by step, the path and meaning of our life, present, past and
future. Many times, at first, we are blind to the signs, and we need a little
poke to help us see. Sometimes though, I would argue that the “poke” sounds
more like “pock” and “paff” (or knock
and bam if you prefer!) like in this
little cartoon, and the “poking methods” may feel like the sky falls on our
head or we’re thrown against a rock!
-Apples again, says Annie.
-Yes, I say. That little Smurf story is titled “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”. I’ve added a coconut since the harshness
of the apple’s fall reminds me of what some medicine men say: you have to split
the coconut open so that it can reveal its flavor, the coconut being a metaphor
for one’s head. And sure enough, the three little dots on top of the coconut
look like two eyes and a mouth, and if we split it open, the “brain surgery”
right in the middle of the two hemispheres will let the third eye pop out of
the big divide. As the little boy in Amélie
says: “Sir, Sir! When the finger points at the sky, the dumbass looks at the
finger”.
-Haha, laughs Adaline. But it’s rude to point one’s
finger at people.
-Well, the statue is pointing at an object,
actually a telescope, I precise.
-But still… Mom passed so young and I was taken
from my tribe very soon, so I am not too sure of all the details, but I had
learned to always point either with my lips, or maybe my thumb, since it’s less
conspicuous.
-What is a telescope? asks Soraya.
-Well, I say, it is something a scientist of Al-Andalus
might have discovered as well. A telescope is a piece of glass in a tubular
shape that helps you see things from afar so that they can appear closer.
-Oh, I see, she answers. I had taken a huge
interest in eye medicine. I wish that our doctors could have done a timely procedure
following Al-Gafequi’s writings to try to cure Hassan from going blind. But
there was more to his ailment, though. I might have been the “child” in the
Muslim ways, since I was a convert and had not been born in the creed, but I
felt that what happened to Hassan, his seizures, were not only physical. I’ve
always believed he was a fqih, but they would not let him be who he was meant
to be because of who he was and because of his status in Granada. The way they
treated him, even spiritually, felt wrong to me, because precisely they said
their way was the only right way possible. Instead of encouraging what was
coming from him, they repressed it in him, therefore creating huge conflicts in
his inner self. And it physically made him choke. I also remember that he had developed a
profound distaste for oranges because the doctors thought that orange tree
leaves would stop his uncontrolled shaking. Sometimes, Egyptian doctors would
come and sell us “mumiyya”, a substance from mummies, and silver and gold dust
for more elaborate remedies. We also used saffron and hemp juice. He liked that
one! And me too... I would take some with him when they left us alone. They
said my husband was not as “serious” as his status required because he spent
his time listening to music, resting and “idly eating fruit”. It was also part
of his therapy! But what did they know… And external pressure was huge. His
former wife seemed to enjoy it when she learned about his sight problems. I remember
that I had thought that even though she perfectly saw with her own eyes, she
was the blind one because she failed to see with her heart. Oh and they also
accused me of being the one behind the death of their son Yusuf, Boabdil’s brother. Treachery was
present at every step, lurking in every corner. Many would thrive on it. And
showing love, real love, was considered weakness or sin…
-Yes, I say. Like we mentioned at the beginning
of our conversation today, she is remembered in History for trying to
“humiliate” her son, hinting that his being emotional over the loss of Granada
made him appear weak “like a woman”. I translated a play by a Franco-Lebanese
author, Raphaël Toriel, precisely titled “Como
Mujer”, “Like a Woman”. The play in its Spanish version was premiered in Granada by
students of the School for Translators and Interpreters, when I worked there.
-Where was this picture taken? asks Zitkala.
-I was wondering too, says Soraya. And this
person in white looks like Isaac.
-How do you know? I ask. I thought he was a
fictitious character: the Jewish doctor of Boabdil.
-He was our Jewish doctor, Isaac Hamón, says
Soraya. So where were you?
-At the Alhambra bookstore, the one downtown, behind
the statue of Isabel -the Catholic Queen- and Christopher Columbus…
-Who are the little characters? asks Annie.
They remind me of those cut-outs that someone had the “brilliant” idea to design,
out of an inspiration of my own person, she sighs. There was one of them in a
pinkish outfit that kind of enhanced my white hair… Grrrr.
-Oh really? Haha… Let me look for that, I say
as I google “cut-out, Annie Oakley”.
-Aaaaaah, see what I told you? whines Annie. Also,
why on earth would they have those cut-outs in provocative outfits or even in
their underwear? This is so against Quaker values!
-Well, that’s the price to pay when you become
a sex symbol, I chuckle. You should read some comments out there. People
thought you were extremely sexy because of this nice “little girl” uniform and
attitude combined with your sharp-shooting skills, not only with a gun. I guess
the hair, too, looked sexy to some.
-It was not my intention, though… says Annie in
all sincerity. I mean, this red and black outfit is definitely not my style. I
swear I was never out there to look “sexy”!
-That’s why it happened though! I say. In my opinion,
those who “try too hard” to be sexy end up looking slutty. I see sexiness as a natural
state of being. I know it’s not very kind to describe anybody as being “slutty”
but hey… I did not invent the term. Also, to make you feel better, I think that
the red and black outfit is more inspired from a singer and actress who
impersonated you in “Annie get your guns”.
Her name was Ethel Merman.
-Merman? asks Adaline. Oh, maybe it’s the male
version of a mermaid…
-Haha! I love that, says Zitkala. I could
create a new opera around a mermaid concept. I already hear cello and violin,
maybe some viola would sound good too.
-Oh that’s a good idea, Zitkala. We should
figure out how to do that! Let me see if I can find a good picture of that
actress, I say. Let’s see, I’ll google her name, and then “Annie Oakley”, and
then “red”. Oops, haha! Here’s what I found:
-What is that??? Are we back among frogs? ask
Soraya, amused.
-And swines, adds Zitkala.
-Haha, yes, it’s the Muppet Show. The frog and pig were puppet characters of a TV show that
invited famous guests. You know, Soraya, Miss Piggy actually tried to kiss
Kermit the Frog a few times, sometimes he would run, sometimes not…
-I think I found out why I don’t like bloomers!
exclaims Annie. Don’t you think those big, fat lacey thighs makes a woman’s
legs look like those of a frog?! Like that cut-out woman in her underwear. That
would be Lilly’s style. Not mine!
-Oh speaking of which, I say. I did a bit of
research last night, and I found some info about that Lilly whom you did not seem
to like very much. You know, I came to the conclusion that maybe she had not
been too happy in her life. She rushed from one relationship to the other maybe
because she felt lonely and had an unresolved soul wound. But she showed some
real courage, or maybe she did not care though, when she performed together
with an ex-lover (or husband) of hers and his new girl. Apparently the two
women ended up getting along pretty well. When she got older, she ended up
taking care of a bunch of animals in Ponca City, Oklahoma.
-Oh really? asks Annie. Reconversion into
animal lover for Lilly the Oakie. Oops! It nearly sounds like Oakley…
-Yup. I confirm. We’re all a big family after
all, right?
-Well, says Annie somehow uncomfortable yet, I felt better when she left Cody’s troop to go and perform with the Miller Brothers Show…
-Meunier,
tu dors… I sing again. Yes, the wheels always end up turning.
-But still, continues Annie, this “Princess
Wenona” thing. I mean, she really believed she was such “princess”. She did
change her name, her style, her story… Oh and she also painted her skin darker…
-You know, I say, maybe it would be wiser to
stop feeling irritated about it and start seeing it as her clumsy way to try to
emulate you. And also, if you had been observing her in a different light, and
wondered why she felt like imitating, first you and then a Native American
woman, maybe you would have discovered a sign that was being gifted to you…
-A sign… Well I don’t know. But well, if she
did good deeds for animals, I am seeing her in a new, better light… I guess I
was being a bit harsh with her.
-Oh we all can be harsh when we’re tickled. And
it’s necessary at times. We should not accept being treated like a doormat
either. She was rude and pathetic when she bragged and promised to relegate you
to History, but I’m pretty sure that it was out of her own insecurity. Also,
many times I found that this kind of rivalry is usually worsened or even
triggered by third persons’ interventions. Often in the press, reporters or
interviewers seem to find their only joy in trying to trigger jealousies or to
magnify competitions between public figures, because “it sells” and feeds
audiences whose lives are so dull that they need “drama” in other people’s
adventures or supposed adventures, to fill their existential void. And voilà,
everybody can potentially be “turned into a porn star” riding a big white
horse…
Zitkala falls prey to a sudden coughing attack,
and after gasping a little, she says:
-You have weird comparisons. I really prefer
how my beloved Raymond called me… Sky Star… How pretty is that?
-Lovely, I say… You’re right, I wonder where I
get my comparisons from, I answer ironically. Maybe from wanting to lift the
veil from under crosses and crowns, or from being around people with such an
imagination that they would make the best screenwriters of the planet pale in
comparison with them. Of course I had to go back to my dear movies… Oh and speaking
of pale, let’s talk about that pink outfit, Annie. It is not at all what I had
thought of when I visualized pink, since I had that flash from my own image
world again, of a lady in a pink veil over a big divide or barranco. There are many barrancos in the Granada province. One
directly at the foot of the Alhambra, others in the Alpujarras… By the way, I
remember that the last time I was in Granada I ran into an Egyptian friend of
mine, a translator and professor. When I still lived there, we had shared a
kind of interpreting marathon, in another event I had organized in Granada
around the Arabian Nights, but a coughing spell had prevented him from going on
translating the Arabic speech, and I relied on his translation to translate it into
French. Oh, it was a mess. Anyway… back at that last time I met him in the city
of the Alhambra, both his nationality and first name had made me think of two
figures of the past. The former evoked the legend of the talismanic construction
of the Moorish Palace, from the Palacio
del Gallo de Viento, by an Egyptian wizard who knew Salomon’s magic, and the
latter was a reminder of Boabdil’s stepfather, father of Morayma, la sultana del ciprés…
-Boabdil’s stepfather shared his first name
with the second name of my beloved, says Soraya.
-Oh really? I did not know that… So to be a bit
more precise regarding my own little characters at the Alhambra bookstore, which
reminded you of your cut-outs, Annie, they are my students and I, at the end of
the representation and before the interview with the author. Raphaël was so
happy, and he had noticed the details in which I had taken great care: the
prayers, both from the Jewish and Muslim world, were not only accurate but also
recited on a very precise spot on stage. I was adamant: the actors had to turn in the correct direction, of both Jerusalem and Makkah, to perform their
respective prayers. I had made them observe videos of Jewish and Muslim
ceremonies to have them perform the exact gestures, and I had even bought a talith or Jewish prayer shawl directly
from Jerusalem! Rana, Raphaël’s wife, was really happy about that too.
-“Rana”?! This is so cute, exclaims Soraya. It
means “beautiful” or “eye-catching”.
-Yes, I confirm. And also “frog” in Spanish… Frogs
do show up a lot! Maybe it’s why “Chiquito” would talk about ranas running around with water jars in
the drought-stricken land of Almería…
-Haha! Maybe… says Soraya. And maybe the
drought Chiquito also mentions will come to an end once the frog has been
kissed into a prince again…
-I can tell you have an eye for beautiful
stories, I wink. Maybe you are Shahrazad in disguise, because I’m not sure that
the “shapeshifting frog” fable already existed in your time! Water must have
whispered this scenario to you… Oh, and since we are talking about water
creatures, Annie, what you chose as patterns on your beautiful skirt were not
only flowers, like in your cut-out self, were they? Because I see butterflies
and dragonflies in the real outfit.
-You are totally correct, says Annie. But people
are so simple and do not take enough time to observe details.
-Thanks for confirming it! I was asking because
once, when I got back to Belgium, I went for a walk with my dad, half a
kilometer from where I once lived, on the very spot of the Wild West Show grounds
back in the day, and I swear to God there were butterflies EVERYWHERE. It had
caught my attention because it had made me dive again into a story I had
imagined of my great-grandma going to the show, and keeping on her lap a
feather that had flown from one of the “show Indians”. From then on, she held the
feather with a butterfly broach…
-Oh I like that! exclaim Annie and Zitkala at
the same time.
-Thanks, ladies… When I saw Annie’s outfit, I
smiled at the butterflies. I really admire your riding skills, Annie, and maybe
I was imitating you unconsciously the last time I rode a horse, in Spain. How
would you rate my style in this picture? I fancied riding next to you so I
chose a picture of you when you were more or less in the same age range as the
pink cut out, heehee.
-Well, it’s not too bad, says Annie. I see that
both of us hold our reins in our left hand and leave the right arm resting on the
thigh. Did you know that I could shoot with both hands?
-I discovered that, yes. I like it… It only happened
to me for a short while after I recovered from my broken arm…
-Back to your riding style, says Annie, you
seem to be more or less at ease, but there would be many things to correct...
Nothing that practice would not achieve, though. What is this other picture of
a man riding behind a lady?
-Oh, heehee, it was just for fun, I answer. It
is a screenshot of a video clip of a song I had performed as a child at the
traditional show of the end of the school year. Maybe you would be tempted to
call the “lady” on that picture a “Lilly” or soiled dove if you saw the clip,
though…
-Oh really? ask both Annie and Adaline.
-Yes, haha! Well, the English version is the
one you might deem “risqué”, and some lines are pretty funny, like “hands up, baby, hands up, give me your heart
(…) no need to play hide and seek for weeks”.
-Ah yes, sighs Adaline. Not playing hide and
seek is a great idea!
-Haha, yes, I confirm. You know, Annie, I think
I have written somewhere that I danced a cute choreography on that song, “hands
up”, when I was a young girl. And also, when I was even smaller, for the same kind
of end of school year show, I performed another song that, I have learned
through my research, is also related to our Miss Apricot, indirectly… Check this
out, heehee:
See me there, with the bear at my feet? I’m
singing “Davy Crockett, King of the Wild
Frontier”, in its French version by Chantal Goya, my childhood “she-ro”,
singer-wise.
And there was also another version, a bit more “energetic”
by another Annie, Annie Cordy, a Belgian comedian.
-Annie CoRdy, that’s funny, says Miss Apricot.
It’s nearly Annie Cody, but no siree, Buffalo Bill is not the man I married.
God forbid! I mean he was nice to me but I don’t think we would have gotten
along too well as a couple, haha!
-And with Davy Crockett? I tease. When I sang “his”
song in 1980, I was unaware of the fact that, back in 1956, the Greenville Girl
Scouts had adapted it to praise you, in their Ohio style! Isn’t it funny?! I’ve
read this information in a book about your “legend and legacy”. Also, when I
researched your life dates, I realized that you died (like I said already,
condolences…) on the day of the patron saint of my parish: the 3rd
of November, day of Saint Hubert. And believe it or not, this little stage
where I performed the song was in a cultural center called “Cercle Royal Saint Hubert”! Here is
what’s left of it.
They would perform plays in Walloon, our
dialect, but people gradually stopped speaking and understanding the language,
so the last plays were performed there in 1999. There was no 21st
century for this whole part of our Walloon world. My dad, when he would take us
(my schoolmates and I) to the theater for rehearsals, often thought of one
of his predecessors at the school: Father Stenne. This priest was fond of
movies, so many times he would take the kids to screenings there, at the Cultural Center. History mainly remembers him because he saved many Jewish
children from the Holocaust, when he hid them in Stoumont, which became famous
because of the Battle of the Bulge.
-We don’t know what that is… says Zitkala
speaking on behalf of all my guests.
-Oh, sure. Sorry. I forgot that all of you did
not live to see the second World War. Yes, another episode of that very bad real-life
movie saw the light, Annie… Let’s just say that a guy named Hitler took many
ideas from the way Native Americans were treated by the U.S. government, “refined”
the horrors, and then sent millions of people to their death in concentration
camps.
-This is horrible, says Annie…
-Yes. I do hope we finally learn not to repeat
the same mistakes one day, I say. Anyway, speaking of time passing, here are
“before and after” pictures of you, when you were maybe just a bit older than your
girl scout fans, and then as an elderly lady. I like how it shows the
relationship you had with your dog, and husband, in no particular order, haha!
-Oh what have you found there! complains Annie.
But I love seeing Frank’s book dedicated to our sweet Dave! Look at my old
self, though. It is so embarrassing!
-Oh Annie, don’t be silly, I like seeing you
like this! exclaims Adaline. I would have loved to see myself as an old lady… When
or how did you start growing your white hair? I’m asking because life did not
really give me time to grow them, and it always fascinated me. My grave is
surrounded by white, but my hair was not given time to grow white. I remember mom
saying that, sometimes, white hair was a sign of profound change in a person’s
spiritual or emotional state.
-Well the metamorphosis was pretty abrupt… So
your elders are right, I guess, answers Annie. In 1901 we suffered a terrible
train accident while touring with the show. As a result of the impact, I could
not move my left side for some time, but ended up recovering. What really gave
me my white hair was seeing how so many of the animals were killed in the train
wreck. Miraculously, no human being lost their life. Basically, two trains
collided in a head-on crash. It was horrible. Many horses and buffalos died
from the impact, but we also had to sacrifice many others that had been badly injured. We buried my favorite horse there in North Carolina. That’s something
I wish I would have never experienced. Although an animal burial also reminds
me of one of my few real bonding moments with my Native-American sisters in the
Show. When they saw my pain when our beloved French poodle passed away, they did
not make fun of me, like other people would have, they respected Frank and I in
our grief as “parents” to non-human offspring, and they chanted mourning songs
when we buried Dave. They had come to love our dog nearly as much as we did.
Through the dog’s death, I felt alive in a deeper way, thanks to this
connection with the other women in the Show. It was a moment filled with love.
And burying our respective horses is also something that reestablished the
connection that had been somehow severed between Bill Cody and I. I even saw
him cry for his beloved Old Pap. It brought me closer to him after our problems
back in the day.
-You had had problems because of his hiring Lilly,
asks Zitkala?
-Maybe, answers Annie. Oh by the way, sometimes
there are conflicting dates regarding my year of birth, 1860, 1866… Everybody
said that 1866 was chosen to draw me closer to Lilly in age. Let me tell you,
even though it does not sound too nice, I really did not want to be closer to
her, in any way! Frankly, if you ask me now, I would say that it was a way to
forget the Civil War that tainted my early childhood’s memories. And also
because sometimes Cody made me feel that he and I were having some kind of
rivalry, show-wise. He was reluctant to hire me at first… But oh boy how happy
he was to have me, though. I was kind of his rival and right-hand-man though,
or left-handed-woman, hahaha! Anyway. We were headed to Danville, Virginia, when
the accident occurred, and oddly enough another train wreck happened there two
years later. The other train fell into the river. It is remembered as “The
Wreck of the Old 97”.
-Oh… When I think of 97, I say, my first visit
to the States comes to mind. I toured this country in July and August, 1997. By
the way, one of the things that had a profound impact on me, Phoebe Apricot,
was a laser show, in the Peach State, aka Georgia, at Stone Mountain where they
set up a laser show depicting historic events. I remember crying when I saw the
Civil War, its consequences, and a gesture that really blew my mind.
-What is a laser show? asks Soraya.
-Oh well maybe lasers could have been
beneficial for Hassan’s loss of vision, I say. How can I explain this to you…
Let me see if I can find the show online. YES! How lucky, someone posted the
precise moment I was thinking of!
-Oh I remember when they started desecrating our
mountains in such a terrible way, says Zitkala. After Stone Mountain, they did
the same with our very own Black Hills, in the most blatant, blunt and
disgusting way.
-I agree with you, I say. My Spanish students
and I wrote a story about it… Observe this, from minute 3:30 on, when Jefferson
Davis rides Blackjack alone.
-Blackjack Davy? asks Zitkala.
-Oh you’re having a lisp again? I say, tongue
in cheek instead of tongue between the teeth (heehee).
-Why no, says Zitkala in all sincerity. Don’t
you know that song about a young Gypsy man who charms and “steals” a woman who
puts her Spanish leather boots on to follow him?
-Well no, I know Blackjack Daisy who got mad at
the singer of a 49 song but… maybe we’re mixing genres and epochs here, who
knows.
-Oh that’s funny, says Adaline. There’s a
Blackjack in Missouri, actually it’s facing the confluence of the Mississippi and
the Missouri rivers, and as you know, ‘49 is the year of the Gold Rush in
California. Actually many people from Blackjack would try their luck and
therefore become “49ers”.
-Yes, says Annie. It’s why many amusement areas
for itinerant shows and carnivals were called 49-whatever they had there.
-We could say I was one of those 49ers, says
Adaline, even though I left for California a bit later, in 1953. You know, I really
wish I had stayed home. I only stayed barely a year in New Mexico after leaving
Missouri, and then dad “gave my hand” to one of his trapper friends… After we
lived in Napa for some time, Louie said that “I did not do good”, and he left
me. I did not miss him anyway… Then I moved to Mono Diggings with my second
husband, and I never got to go back to Taos… You know, I remember thinking,
when we were headed west with dad and stopped to see the Río Grande Gorge, that
my life was organized by forces superior to us all, which obliged me to live
either on one side or the other of that divide, but never where I really wanted
to be. I used to have that kind of thoughts after listening to dad’s tales of
his expeditions with Fremont and how they mapped the areas they visited.
-The Great Continental Divide… I whisper. It’s
very profound, Adaline, and strangely enough, this video we are seeing also talks
about a divide, but this time between North and South, during the Civil War. Jefferson
Davis breaks his sword, and the two parts of the broken artifact morph into
several parts that come together again, representing the reunification of North
and South out of a broken sword. It is the moment when I cried. It was also
because of the tension I had felt all day. Something made me uncomfortable over
there. I felt a kind of glorification of the so-called Southern Belles,
nostalgia for slavery, that kind of things. And I remember staring for a very
long time at the steamboats… So here’s a glimpse at how I spent a day of August
1997.
-Oh, says Annie. In August of the year I was
talking about, another kind of “wreck” happened to me… That despicable William
Randolph Hearst lied about me in his piece of garbage he called newspaper. I
still remember that publication, word for word: “Famous Woman Crack Shot...
Steals to Secure Cocaine”. The article went on stating that I was sentenced to
45 days in prison in Chicago for “stealing the trousers of a negro in order to
get money with which to buy cocaine.” Then it stated that I was 14 years
younger than my real age then, but that I had lost all my beauty because of
drugs. Soon that garbage spread all over the country. I was devastated. That
terrible piece nearly killed me.
-Oh so that is what you had mentioned earlier
regarding impersonators? I ask.
-Yes, confirms Annie.
-Now I understand why you feel a bit “rigid”
sometimes, says Zitkala. Although, heehee, I can’t help but finding that kind
of funny; it could give me ideas for stories, haha!
-Oh I’m sure you could come up with “oh so
funny” stories, I say.
-Well let me tell you, ladies, that I did not
laugh at all, says Annie. I began by demanding retractions. At first I thought
that they had made this horrible story up, but actually it had really happened,
but the perpetrator / impersonator was a burlesque performer named Maude
Fontenella, and she had the nerve to perform under my name, only that she had
changed its spelling. How clever-NOT is that… Plus she had chosen a spelling
that I read as “whatever” kind of Annie… Any..way… I guess she never got
closure for her own fontanelle or soft spot and let stupidity enter her gaping
brain…
-Oh wow! I chuckle, you sure feel better after
that one, don’t you?
-YES! says Annie.
-So did they finally apologize? asks Zitkala. I
don’t remember that story at all, too bad!
-Really? asks Annie, somehow doubting Zitkala’s
sincerity for some obscure reason. Well yes, they ended up retracting and
apologizing. But I was not satisfied, so I sued them. Actually I filed 55 libel
suits.
-Holy Cow! Annie, wasn’t it a bit of a waste of
time? I ask.
-It sounds a tiny bit exaggerated, yes, says
Adaline.
-Well, says Annie who still wants to prove her
righteousness although sensing that she might have indeed lost it a bit back in
the day, at least it enabled me to travel and to hone a new skill. No one could
beat me as a plaintiff. Frankly, it kind of became my next job.
-Haha! I laugh. That sounds so American to me.
I sure don’t want to be accused of something I did not do, but, this “sue me”
or “I’ll sue you” mentality is so weird for my standards…
-Well, welcome to America! says Annie in a
vehement tone.
-Eaaaaasy, Annie… And thank you, I smile.
-Oh and I had my aunt Sue, a nice woman who
helped me a lot, says Zitkala. I would have never thought of sue…ing
her, heehee!
-I don’t know what you’re talking about and I
don’t care, says Annie, who REALLY feels like going on venting for a while. Can
you imagine that the man, Hearts, even had the nerve to send a detective to
Darke County? Of course that person did not find anything to tarnish my
reputation, and my people would not have him stay there anyway. And the
attorneys… What a shame, some of them would try to throw me their dirtiest lies
to see me collapse. But it didn’t happen. I remained calm, or at least tried
to, and when I lost my temper a bit, in the end I think it was good for me,
because the jury recognized my sincerity. Just once I had had it and left the courtroom
inviting one of those cowardly liars to shoot me in the back if they dared. I
only lost ONE of the suits.
-I don’t really understand how that works, nor
what suits or attorneys are, says Soraya, but was it worth it in the end? I
mean, did it make you richer?
-Hmmm, ponders Annie. Actually not really, it
made me lose money despite the big quantities I was granted.
-Oh but I did not mean money, says Soraya. I
did not know that you could receive money out of that. I meant richer in your
soul. Más enriquecida en tu alma.
-I am not sure, recognizes Annie. A sure thing
is that it gave me even more white hair than I already had after the train
wreck…
-Ha! That reminds me of myself when I started
to feel bad about how I had treated Carlos, my on and off boyfriend before I
married Raymond, says Zitkala. But weirdly enough, my eyebrows more than
anything else were affected by this whitening process. And Raymond, after he
got over some stupid bout of jealousy, got his sweet little revenge out of a
masculine solidarity move. He made fun of me, giving me an “alternative indeed
generous name”, as he called it: “Snows on Her Brows”. He said that “brows”
also sounded like “bros”, brothers, and he thought it was perfect because of
how I (sometimes) poorly treated the men who were in my own association…
-Heehee, I chuckle, I am glad that you did not
sue Raymond…
-Oh you’re so funny, says Annie. Anyway, still
speaking of white hair and as a special dedication for Zitkala, sometimes I
have a dream in which I stay too long soaking in hot water and leave the
bathtub in a coma, and when I wake up, my hair is all white. At this point I
really don’t know if the white hair dream is real or if the train wreck is a
dream…
-Yeah, it happens, says Zitkala. There’s a
point in which we no longer know what is real and what is fictitious. Like this
weird thing that I would swear really happened (even though I recognize that
many times I’ve made up situations for the sake of my stories). Our
conversation about white hair reminded me of it. There in Indiana, I was so
eager to see the apple blossoms the white men had promised us...
-Oh, speaking of Indiana, you know what? I
interrupt, since a flash is coming back. Once I went for a “recognition tour”
of where I was born, and I was struck by a bar called Indiana, just at the
angle of the street where I was born: la rue Masson.
-Oh, so masons really are everywhere, huh… says
Zitkala.
-Haha! Maybe, I say, although we would spell it
differently in French. The fact is that I remembered this sight, here, check it
out, when you said that you first thought that the name of the state was to
make fun of your people.
-Oh, wow, says Zitkala. It’s pretty familiar. Those
buildings and their red bricks, they remind me of some of the houses I’ve seen
back East… Anyway, over there at my first “white” school, it is true that there
was an orchard.
-So the Quakers had not lied to you, says Annie
with a little bit of irony out of a desire to stand up for her folks.
-Well, no, but… Something strange happened. The
white people did show the orchard to us, and they told us that there were 150
apple trees waiting to blossom. But a year after I arrived there, the orchard
began to die off.
-Oh no… whispers Adaline.
-Isn’t it weird? asks Zitkala. I swear it felt
as if the trees were mad at me and denied me their fruits for some reason, as
if they wanted to punish me. I was always so delicate with my natural
surroundings, though. I always applied the ancestral teachings of my kin. Actually
many of my peers, later on at Earlham, would make fun of me because I did not
want to disturb or injure the fluffy dandelion heads when I walked across
campus, or because I sat in the dark so that moths would not feel fatally
attracted to the lighted gas jet and burn their wings on the flame…
-This is so beautiful, I say. Sometimes maybe
nature remembers things from way back in mankind’s history and it does not have
to do directly with us, but with the energies every person carries around. This
is really a fascinating topic, and I am reminded of the story I told “the
voice” before meeting Zitkala, about this man who had decided to plant almond
trees so that his beloved could remember Sierra Nevada’s snows from her new
abode in Córdoba.
-Oh yes! exclaims Soraya, I loved it when we
listened to that old story during the long winter nights spent at the Alhambra,
waiting for spring.
-Yes, me too, I say. I’d always wondered what it must have looked like and came up with this. Here’s what Medinat Azahara might have looked like after this dedicated king had made it snow for his beloved:
-Yes, me too, I say. I’d always wondered what it must have looked like and came up with this. Here’s what Medinat Azahara might have looked like after this dedicated king had made it snow for his beloved:
-Oh it’s beautiful!!!
Adaline is in awe.
-And just look outside, I say. It seems that
the apricot tree is starting to wake up from the winter slumber! Soon it will
look like those cousins in the almond tree field! I have spotted an early
bloomer in the sun, Annie, heehee.
-Oh this is magical, smiles Soraya, who is a
bit too deep in her poetic mind to go on teasing. Nature always speaks to us
when we are showing awareness and an open heart. I also remember that one of
our soothsayers at the Alhambra had predicted that once in the future in the
land of elephants, Bengal tigers and cobras, a king’s hair would turn white
overnight because of his beloved wife’s passing, and that he would build a
white palace floating on water to keep her pure and forever worshipped. I
always thought that maybe that is what our architects had already tried to
achieve with the tower of the moon… Borj
al Qamar.
-La Torre
de Comares, I say. Well, let me tell you that your soothsayers were right…
The prophecy is the exact story of the construction of the Taj Mahal Palace,
started in 1632 by Shah Jahan of India.
-It’s wonderful, exclaims Zitkala! I could
imagine a whole story mixing both countries and characters…
-I totally trust you for that, Zit, I say with
a wink… By the way, this diminutive I am using would mean “oil” in Arabic, as in “zit
zitoun”, olive oil, coming from another familiar tree… See, you seem to have a special
relationship with trees. Do not despair about that weird orchard phenomenon.
Also, I have noticed that Soraya’s memories often mention water. So many things
seem to happen by the water. So this is why I have paid a visual tribute to
your life with Hassan, mainly referring to water.
-We sure were water worshippers at the
Alhambra, says Soraya.
-Well there was a
TV show, some time ago, from which I took some images. I think it was well
done, even though it was a bit weird when they portrayed Boabdil as one of your
lovers before Hassan.
-See!
says Zitkala. Another misinterpretation made by white folks…
-We
can look at it that way, Gertie… I answer. But we can also think of it as one
of those odd and off signs, maybe it was there to force us to ponder about the
consequences of love when other’s interests and well-being is at stake. But
like I said earlier, I think that we are here to acknowledge things we have
done that were not so great, but also to heal from any feeling of guilt, shame
or sadness. So here is my collage for Estrella de la Mañana:
-I
like it very much, answers Soraya / Estrella de la Mañana. You know, Hassan was
so wonderful with me. When his last days were coming, he said: “I wish to be
born again as a slave to know what you must have experienced before I got to
know you. And I would roam the entire world, with shackles and chains if need
be, to find you again.” I told him not to say that kind of things because you
never know… Cosmos might take it seriously.
At
this point of Soraya’s story I am having a hard time not to sob all the tears contained
in my earth vessel, aka body. I only let one tear run down my cheek in silence
as I replay in my mind what she has just said. But my mind also tells me that
Hassan had not been too nice to his own son and the young man's beloved, so I guess my
sense of justice is what urges me to talk in those terms:
-He
was not always too wonderful towards his offspring though, at least according
to what I’ve read. He’s said to have imprisoned his son in one place, and his
son’s wife in another place, just after their wedding. Actually I believe that
I once ate at that carmen where the newly wed young woman was kept a prisoner.
It is now a restaurant: el Mirador de Morayma. I had had dinner there with a
Moroccan poet and his wife. By the way, she is a writer too, and she told in
her beautiful autobiography how she had to struggle when her husband was
imprisoned for his political ideas in Morocco. She had faced her racist
father’s ire and disavowal when she married her beloved, and also some
“reverse” racism when she raised her kids by herself while her husband was in
prison. Her book is called Aloe Liquor.
-Fathers
sometimes don’t know better, sighs Soraya. Those were different times, also. I
like peeking into your here and now, Nathalie, because I see that things are
changing.
-I
think it is important to remember that, yes, I say. Moral standards and the way
we regard love have certainly changed and are continuously changing, I think.
-I
have struggled with my role in all that happened in and to Granada once I
became Hassan’s wife. I recognize our mistakes, but I won’t feel guilty
anymore. I felt for Morayma and Boabdil, deeply. And even though I really
disliked Fatima / Aixa for how she fought against the man I loved, I also tried
to understand where she came from. Nevertheless, I think she was more in love
with power than with any human being, truth be said. Plus she had done the exact
same thing with me, she had imprisoned me when she, Aliatar and Boabdil deposed
Hassan. She actually “allowed me to live” on condition that he give up his
throne to Boabdil. That’s why Hassan dedicated his life to conducting raids on
Castile. He was angry, sad, desperate, and he wanted to regain his people’s
respect, so he did what he knew and what was expected of him by then: he
fought. Eventually that is how he was able to rescue me. But he hadn’t
forgotten, and did the same as his first wife had done to punish all of them… But of
course all this made it way easier for the Catholic Monarchs to conquer our
last bastion that was immersed in civil war.
-I am
understanding so many things now, I say. Cosmos can be pretty “funny” at times.
And we are being tested in many ways, until we understand that we have to
surrender to the different shades lying in between the black and white of the
chessboard. Speaking of colors, your story shows that life does not always help
us seeing events through pink-colored shades… which takes me back to my vision
of that woman with a pink veil. You know, thinking of the women of that part of
History when you lived, Soraya-Isabel, I wish to retain women’s suffering, and
resiliency, and love. I really wish things had been different for Morayma. She
died so young, but gave three children to Boabdil. He had to let them “hostage”
to the Catholic Monarchs when they “liberated” him after the disaster of Lucena.
-Did
you know that Morayma’s daughter, Aixa, became Sor Isabel de Granada when all
was lost for the Nasrids who went into exile? I have always thought that
through her mixed names she embodied our attempts at redemption from one side and the
other… says Estrella de la Mañana.
-Human
moves, life’s strategies and cosmic threads… I whisper. I am remembering this
legend again, I say. Earlier I had mentioned la Casa del Gallo de Viento in the
Albayzin, the crumbled Zirid palace that once stood where later was erected the
little palace where Aixa / Fátima went to live after you married Hassan. I am
realizing that it was actually a cascade of imprisonments or confinements… And
from that house where Aixa / Fátima once stared at the Alhambra in rage, the
Egyptian wizard designed the “upside down Alhambra“ for the sultan who fought
his battles on a magical chessboard. The old wizard used “a few more tricks”
though…
-Oh
you know, says Soraya, often I have wondered if it’s not best to leave legends
in their slumber, because you never know what fierce things you can stir
otherwise. But if legends guide your heart, believe what your heart tells you.
What I know is that spells can be terminated through love and compassion. What
I know is that even today rivers and stones and trees remember what they want
to remember to reveal part of their secrets to the mortals they choose.
-I can
nearly smell the orchards of the Generalife as I hear your stories, I say. By
the way, here is another picture I once took of the Alhambra in the spring,
under an orange tree.
-Beautiful,
says Soraya. An orange crown for Borj al
Qamar, the Tower of the Moon, smiling at the trees below, by the river,
with shimmering leaves softly swinging their silver hues, and a bell over the
Tower of the Sun, Borj al Shams and
its ghost soldiers. Yes, it sums up pretty well how the world I knew evolved or
rather changed throughout the years.The orange blossom soothes my heart and
makes me eager to go on discovering the rest of my sisters’ stories as well. I
would like to know more about your life, Adaline, you too were named after a
star.
-Thank
you, Soraya, says Adaline. I doubt that Nathalie will find anything about me
though…
-Mujer de poca fe, I say. You need to have more faith! Look what I found so far:
-Oh
mom and dad! exclaims Adaline.
-And
you too! I say. Or at least this is who they say you are in that engraving.
-They
had a lot of imagination back in the day, haha! My engraving leaning on my
grave, how weirdly appropriate. But I feel that I am breathing again now that I
am talking to you, ladies.
-Me
too, says Soraya. I feel liberated from a heavy burden.
-I am
glad! I say. Adaline, here are different versions of the covers of the book you
mentioned by that author who might have been channeling your spirit:
-Oh
what a beautiful dress! exclaims Annie. Is it Arapaho?
-Yes,
answers Adaline. And I like the message in all those images under the book covers…
-I
like the third cover, with the doggie! says Miss Apricot.
-Me
too, says Adaline. “I” look a little bit less sad or mad than on the other two.
That little dog, in the writer’s story, was sent by the Great Spirit to help me
in my escape from Saint Louis, where dad’s white folks wanted to lock me in a
mental institution. They thought I was crazy (well, in the writer’s story). I
had to find a way to get as close as I could to Bent’s Fort, and Caddie, the Black
slave, was the one who helped me. The author says that Caddie reminded me of “Rosalie”
at Bent’s Fort. I personally remember Charlotte Green, who had come from Saint
Louis with her “masters” Bent. In the story though, Caddie stays in Missouri,
and gives me directions to leave the house, go east, and then follow a creek
that would take me to the Mississippi, and from then the Missouri River. The writer
had imagined that my hair was cut and I was dressed as a boy so that I could travel
incognito. The dog appeared, we found a canoe and off we were.
-Haha,
that’s a good plan. An Iktomi kind of a trickster plan, says Zitkala. Once a
girl, now a boy… and then vice-versa.
-Thank
you, Red Bird, says Adaline. So I was hired as a steamboat worker. I would have
to fuel the furnace and would get paid half a dollar a day.
-How
generous, I chuckle… But then again, I guess half a dollar was not bad in your
times. And this job that you landed... Maybe it is why I was having those thoughts
about coal. Also, the more it goes, the more I feel there’s something else
about coal, and when I do have this hunch, I start to feel very hot and I cannot
breathe properly… Some would say that it is because when I was a little girl I
once tripped by the coal furnace in the kitchen, and I burned my hand on the
glass protection… But I feel that it has a deeper meaning. I could even feel my
body losing consciousness around coal, for some reason.
-Well
yes, says Adaline. I guess that would have been the problem for me to be working
at that furnace. Let me remind you of the fact that this is the construction of that writer, though… When
I discovered her story, what made me cry rivers was that, because of that
scheme, “I” had to abandon my faithful little dog, and be mean to him because
it was the only way I could think of, for him to no longer follow me, or so I
thought. I mean, NOT ME, the character invented by Mary Pope Osborne.
-Oh it
reminds me so much of that movie I love, “Va,
Vis et Deviens”, Live and Become… I say as I look for the moon in the sky…
I know I’m not the only one who’s been inspired by that movie either…
Annie
does not seem to be aware of the subtle signs of the moon but totally relates
to the doggie part.
-Aaaaaaaaaaaah,
this is so heart-wrenching and horrible, she sobs.
-But
wait, says Adaline who is becoming very good at nurturing her story and
building her cliffhangers. An unexpected event was meant to happen to the Buzzard (that’s the name of the
steamboat), on our way to Kansas Landing.
-Kansas
Landing!? Let me guess, I say. The little dog, called Toto, landed on the boat’s
deck after a twister brought the four-legged on the deck to sit at your feet.
-Well,
the fury was not caused by air, but by fire! says Adaline who sounds a bit
surprised. A fight started in the fire room, and my character went to the…
hurricane deck (wow, Nathalie maybe you could have written the story too!)
-Well,
I should quote my sources though, but please, proceed with this “wonderfully
weird oddity”! I chuckle.
-So,
I, well she, well, you know who, warns the captain, and catches sight, on the
shore, of…
-The
little dog!!!! exclaims Phoebe Apricot who is completely hooked.
-Yes!
says a triumphant Adaline. And then there is this beautiful sentence in the
book, which goes like this: “I plunge down deep into the muddy water (…). Arm
over arm over arm, I’m swimming away from my ride home, away from Bent’s Fort,
away from Indian Country…”
-This
is hooorrible, complains Zitkala. We must find a way to take you back home!!!
-Wait!
commands Adaline who goes on reciting: “I might never get back to all that. But
all I want now is to be with the dog. I’m giving up my future and my old life,
too, for this one thing I love.”
-Awwwwwww
I am crying, I say.
-Me
too, says Miss Apricot. So what happened!?!?!?!?
-Well
the fire room soon set the whole boat ablaze, which ended up exploding, so I
was saved by abandoning everything for the love… of a dog.
-Oh my
God, oh my God… Oh, my God! Frank would have loved that story! Says Phoebe
Apricot.
-Frank
Baum? I ask, still a bit influenced by my Ozmania.
-No,
says Annie. MY Frank… The man I married. Don’t you remember that book you
showed by my side, the white hair picture? Frank wrote the most beautiful story
of our dog Dave, who had become the Red Cross mascot too, by the way. But it
was written in Dave’s own voice. The cutest thing you can come up with.
-Oh, that’s
a cool idea, I say.
-OK,
says Zitkala, dogs, how cute. BUT WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU AND YOUR DAD, Adaline???
-Well,
in the story, it’s a beautiful happy ending because, somehow, after reaching
the shore and losing consciousness, I wake up on a bed and my dad and the
doggie are by my side, and we all go back home, in the Wild Wild West…
-I
knew it! exclaims a triumphant Zitkala. Love wins in the end! I love that
story. That’s a fantastic idea for an opera.
-Yes,
I say, it is wonderful to be a writer and craft the stories we want. I LOVE THAT
STORY TOO, Adaline.
-Yes
but it’s a story, says Apricot-hanging-from-an-Oak-lie. Is this really what
happened?
-That’s
why storytelling is magical, I interrupt, a bit annoyed by her need to cling to
what she calls the truth, knowing perfectly well that it is my own thirst for
truth that I criticize in her right now.
And I
proceed: every writer can craft the world as they please. And you know what,
sometimes even what is perceived as a catastrophe can be a blessing in
disguise. You should know that, Annie. Because that fire on a steamboat reminds
me of an event that occurred during the Wild West Show’s French tour. You
mentioned the train wreck, but I remember that a Wild West Show boat was
destroyed by fire too, “for real”, so it obliged the show people to stay in
southern France for some time.
-I
don’t remember that; it must have happened when I had left the show already.
-Yes,
I say. If you left the show in 1901, you didn’t experience that beautiful, true
story in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer… A story of friendship between the show
Indians and the Marquis people… Horses, Bulls, Flamingos (heehee, you know,
those birds that adopt a yoga pause), Sea and Sky, Gypsies and Indians. Look at
how a French comic writer rendered it in his album “Camargue Rouge”:
-Gypsies…
says Annie with contempt, I don’t trust them.
-Annie,
this is a prejudice as big as the big sea you crossed to perform in Europe, I
say. I am starting to think that such stain or shadow is what hovered over me
when I was there, aux
Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, when I was about to finally meet Saint Sarah. A
Gypsy Woman got upset when I refused to buy a medal she tried to sell, and she
said “you needn’t be afraid of the Gypsy Woman”. I was not afraid! I was just
not interested. She just assumed I was rejecting HER… She had that commonplace behavior
from white mainstream people so ingrained in her mind that she decided it was
what I felt… OR, you projected your own mistrust on the screen of her third eye
through my person, naughty Annie…
-I’m
not naughty, protests Apricot who takes everything seriously.
-No,
you’re just a little bit of a cute pain, sometimes, cutie pie, says Zitkala in
a smile. Don’t sue me though!!
-Can
we go back to my images… complains Adaline. You always take over, ladies, and I
never get to finish my part of the story.
-True,
acknowledges Annie. Please proceed… I am glad that you are learning from my
whining habit, haha!
-Quién no llora no mama, I say,
remembering that Spanish proverb.
-Thank
you, says Adaline who is becoming more and more assertive. Because there is
something very important I want to share, and this Saint Sarah for some reason
made me think it belongs here. Apart from the dog chosen by the writer as my
prison break companion, Mary Pope Osborne also wrote about a corn husk doll,
made by dad, and which bore mom’s spirit. My beloved momma, Waa-Ni-Be, Singing
Grass. It’s perfect in its poetry and metaphoric link that the author came up
with this talking doll to bear the spirit of Singing Grass.
-Oh
it’s beautiful, I say, as a tear runs down my cheek. Were you an only child?
-No…
although my mom only gave birth to one more sibling and then…
At
that point of her story, Adaline is sobbing. And weirdly enough, because she
usually sounds so tough, Zitkala-Sa is crying too.
-She
died shortly after that birth.
-Oh
I’m so sorry, I say, feeling deep pain in my throat as if someone had left a
dagger in there. It must have been so hard on you two and on your dad.
-Yes,
it was.
-I
guess your mom is on the first picture that’s surrounded by a golden halo, says
Annie. So, then, who is the one in the middle who is barely seen in the
pictures that your dad is holding? asks Annie.
-Dad’s
second wife. He married three times.
-Oh,
my mom too, says Annie.
-Mine
as well, says Zitkala.
-The
one in the middle is Making Out Road, says Adaline. She’s the one who threw us
out of her tepee, my sister and me. I forgive her, though. She was not always
happy, waiting for my dad who was still a bit disoriented after mom’s passing
and had married Making Out Road basically because he needed someone to take
care of us. But he spent way more time down south than at the fort. I think he
rushed a little in marrying this Cheyenne person. He said he needed someone to
help him with parenthood, and it was apparently not her biggest dream… It was
not always fun to be around her, maybe because she felt animosity towards whom reminded
her of my mom’s love for dad and viceversa, I don’t know. Some people
experience that. She was kind of cold and very conceited though. So one day
when she heard that dad was seeing, maybe, someone else, she did not even try
to talk or to understand, she threw his things, which included me, outside her
tepee. I stayed there for HOURS. I felt so disempowered, I felt like a bag of
dirty laundry, there by the river, like a lost puppy. Later on dad decided that
I needed a “white education”, just like what happened to you, Zitkala, and he
and I went on a journey to Saint Louis to meet his white folks. The journey was
great but the rest, once we reached our destination…
-What
about your sibling? I ask…
-Well,
that’s the second real memory I have of Waa Ni Be’s times, and it’s way
tougher. Actually it’s not really a memory, it’s an image I built in my psyche.
And it stayed with me ever since like a black cloud hovering over my head.
-Why
is that? I ask as a shiver runs through my body.
-My little
sibling died, answers Adaline.
-Oh,
was it out of sickness? asks Zitkala, with a very sad voice.
-No, “out
of” falling in a kettle of boiling soap.
-Chat échaudé craint l’eau froide, I
murmur as my blood gets extremely cold all of a sudden.
-I
love languages! What does that mean, Nathalie? asks Zitkala who tries to divert
the topic to ease the pain that is really palpable among us all.
-Well,
it’s a French saying. I answer. You know, sometimes we have those sentences,
words, jokes, images that keep popping in our mind for no apparent reason. This
is one of the expressions that has always been with me. It means “a cat that
once got boiled grows afraid of cold water”.
As I
say that, I hear Adaline sobbing again, and now, I can feel her arms around me
too. It is weird, sad, sweet and liberating at the same time.
-Rest
in peace, little soul, she sighs.
-Yes,
rest in peace, I repeat. Maybe that little soul was the one Mary Pope Osborne
chose to give you as a present, in the form of that little dog.
-Oh
now I’m the one crying too, says Annie Apricot. I am sorry to speak again, but
I really need to talk about my dog.
-It’s
ok, cutie pie, says Zitkala, I’m sorry I was a bit harsh with you earlier. What
do you want to share with us regarding dogs?
-Well,
you are going to laugh at me, but the first time I met my future husband, I was
not really interested in him. It sounds awful to say that but…
-No it
doesn’t, I interrupt. Sometimes it happens, some people we meet are there in
our life just as transitions, I remember seeing someone as a dog when I
understood that life had put that person in my path for some time to give me,
literally, “the ABC” of what would come next…That person had the right letters,
but not the right earth vessel. Still, it was not too nice to describe someone
as a “pathetic poodle”...
-A
poodle! Oh my God! exclaims Miss Apricot…
-What?
I ask.
-Well,
let me go on, says Annie… Actually the dog’s owner was not a transition for me since
I married him, or maybe I married the peace he was to bring me, but now that
I’m dead (wow, it still sounds weird) I swear that at first I did get closer to
him because I felt like being close to his dog… The fact is, the William Tell
thing was not my idea. It was one of Frank’s show tricks when he performed with
his dog before I met him. That day, when I went to see him on stage, George
brought the apple (which was shot off his head and cut in half) to me instead of bringing it to Frank.
Isn’t it cute?
-Wait,
I got lost, says Zitkala. Who is George now?
-Well,
the dog… Pay attention, Zitkala, I say.
-Wasn’t
it Dave, like we saw on that book? asks Zitkala.
-No,
says Annie. Dave was our last dog. But Frank’s dog when I first met him was
called George. George is the one we buried with my Native-American sisters…
Could we try to find a picture of George and I? I know several were taken. Oh
and there were also charcoal drawings…
-Sure!
I say. Let’s see. Ah! Here’s what I found. Oops, I laugh, I also got bloomers,
because of their color, haha!
-Are
you sure you did not type “bloomers”? asks a suspicious Annie. Anyway, yes,
here’s a sight of George. Always sleeping at our feet, sweet creature.
-I
don’t want to sound rude, I say, but did the two of you, I mean Frank and you,
not the dog and you, heehee, always dress alike? I have always found that
kind of a bit cheesy.
-Of
course we did not, says Annie, whom I must have offended again. Please look for
images of the two of us, and our animals, maybe we’ll find more pictures with
George in them.
-As
you wish, I say with a smile. Here you go!
-Ah
perfect! says Annie. See: George curled up at our feet again.
-You still
look like you cut your clothes of the same fabric on that picture though, I
tease.
Annie
totally ignores my comment and goes on describing the different pictures.
-Then
this other little dog accompanied me for some time, and finally Dave between us
two when we had retired. And you can also see me on that horse I loved so much,
and whose passing was the reason for my white hair. So George is definitely the
dog we buried while touring the show, and my Native sisters accompanied me in
that sad moment.
-Maybe
they had felt something that could not be explained with words, whispers
Zitkala.
-I am
sorry, says Adaline, but am I the only one thinking it is horrible to name a
dog George??? This is a person’s name! Not a dog’s name. Not a dog, it was not
a dog… Oh my God… So much pain…
As she
says that while Annie wonders what’s the big deal about her dog’s name, I
myself feel a strong pain in my guts, and the room feels very hot all of a
sudden, so I have no better way or idea than singing the pain away, going to
the computer to play “Great Spirit”
by Nahko Bear.
-Ladies,
I say, we are all a bit tense here, so let’s calm down as we check out this
beauty. I used to sing this for hours before moving to New Mexico… Actually I
remember singing one line over and over again “Great Spirit, I have had it,
bring me back to the nomadic”, when I was in my parents’ car in Belgium. They were
taking me to Brussels airport, I was going back to Granada after I had left my kitty
Oopilo with them, as a preparation for my departure from Spain.
We
remain silent for a while, maybe thinking of our respective earth walks, as I
look for the song and then play the video for the ladies to find comfort, or so
I hope... As we start watching it, all of a sudden, unfamiliar images come
popping in.
-Oh my
God! What is that mask??? asks Adaline.
I
start shaking when I see those images too. I freeze the image, and I feel my
body freezing as well. I kind of know the videoclip by heart and I am positive:
the black and white images don’t belong in the original version of the video.
-Well,
it’s what the plague doctor would wear, I answer. Let me look for some more
info here… Oh here it is. “This mask is what protected doctors who had to treat
a patient affected by the deadly black plague. They wore a special costume made
of a heavy, waxed fabric overcoat, a mask with glass eye openings and a beak-shaped
nose stuffed with straw, spices and herbs: juniper berry, ambergris, lemon balm,
mint leaves, camphor, cloves, laudanum, myrrh, rose petals, and storax. Plague
doctors also carried a cane to examine patients without the need to make direct
contact”.
-And
who protects the patients FROM the doctor? Who protects mothers from those
people’s filthy hands? asks Adaline in tears.
-Oh
wow, I believe that from plague doctor you went to the doctor’s plague…
Childbed fever…
-Yes!
I died of it, I’m pretty sure mom died of it too, dad’s third wife died of it, so
many other women died of it… Giving life should be beautiful but it killed us!
IT KILLED US!
-How
does “it” happen? asks Phoebe Apricot whose voice sounds like she might miss her
shot if she were to hop in the Wild West Show arena right now.
-It is
an infection of the uterus following the birth of a child, answers Zitkala. I
know because poor Carlos had explained it to me from when he studied medicine.
-Yes,
I say. If doctors failed to treat the infection, or if they carried a germ that
was transmitted to the mother, the infection would spread into the bloodstream and
cause blood poisoning.
-Blood
poisoning can be very real and dangerous, whispers Miss Apricot. I guess maybe
it’s the reason behind my subconscious refusal to bear a child. Maybe it’s why I substituted
it with a dog.
-For
your information, says Adaline, I got mad at the name given to that dog,
because George was the name I had given to my son before dying… I had named him
after his father, my second husband. Well, I must admit, also, that I was inspired
by George Bent, the half-blood son of William Bent and his Cheyenne wife, Owl
Woman, who, by the way, died when she gave birth to her George too… She was the
daughter of White Thunder, the keeper of the sacred Medicine Arrows of the
Southern Cheyenne. Yellow Woman, Owl Woman’s sister, ended up taking care of their
George when his father married her. George always walked that difficult path
between two worlds… He got married to Magpie, Black Kettle’s daughter.
-I’m
so sorry, Adaline, mumbles Phoebe Ann. How could I know? I felt so drawn to
that dog… But you know, even though I did not bear a child, eventually, blood
poisoning of another kind killed me too… It was caused by too much lead in my
organism, from manipulating so many guns and holding bullets in my mouth…
-Metals!
I exclaim. And I knew there were other reasons for me to dislike weapons... I
tease you but I love you, Annie, you know that, don’t you.
-Of
course, says Annie in a maternal tone. Well, you know, the car accident I had
in Florida did not help either, it left me very weakened and frankly, I could
have lived without another wreck after that train tragedy. The doctor’s verdict
on my death bed was “pernicious anemia” though. Frank followed me less than
three weeks later. I remember that when I recovered from the car accident, we
had mentioned an oddity: the accident occurred near a place called Butler
Beach. It was quite bizarre, since Butler was Frank’s last name... I closed my
eyes forever on November 3rd, 1926, in Greenville, Ohio…
-J’suis dans un État
proche de l’Ohio, j’ai le moral à zéro… I sing.
-Is it
your funeral chant for Annie? asks Red Bird.
-Well,
it’s one of those songs that stayed with me ever since I heard it for the first
time. It means “I’m in a state close to Ohio, and I’m feeling pretty low”.
-OK,
hmmm, to make things a bit lighter here, says Zitkala in an attempt to cheer us
up a bit, if anyone’s interested, I will state that I died of old age, yeaaah!
She really
tries hard. I recognize in that trait her life-long struggle to help her people
in every way she could, or at least to do what she believed would be
beneficial, in all the torn contradictions it meant for her as well…
-My
dad too died of old age, says Adaline. Well, relatively. Because for some
strange reason, I have always felt that my own death had something to do with
his horse accident, a little bit after my own passing. It is as if he had experienced
a little death to accompany me in the journey beyond the veil. That event would
eventually take his life years after falling with the horse. It happened once he
was in Colorado, leading a hunting party.
His mount fell and he was dragged among rocks. His left side suffered a
great deal, causing him internal injuries. And he ended up dying in Colorado
too, by the way.
-Now
that you mention it, I had read somewhere that Kit Carson had signed his name
on the bark of an aspen tree in Chromo, Colorado. Maybe he did it during that
hunting party, I say.
-Maybe,
says Adaline. He had done that once in California as well, in the forties… I
tried to tell him that maybe it was not too respectful toward the tree, but he
had said that since it was the only thing he knew how to write, he wanted to
let the trees remember his presence.
-Well
trees sometimes remember a bit too well, says Zitkala. And they sure don’t need
our name written on their skin to be reminded of our presence…
-I’ve
read that they communicate among each other, I say. Let me try to find that
info about Kit’s tree again. Look! Here it is! His signature on the aspen tree
was carved somewhere near Pagosa Spring.
-We
had had a conversation with my son about that habit of so many people, once in
Ute territory when we saw another person’s signature on the bark of a birch,
says Zitkala. I had told him what you have just said, Adaline. It was a nice
journey I took with him, the two of us walking in balance and beauty. I told
him that people should do something else for the trees to remember them, and he
came up with the most wonderful idea. He said: “mom, why don’t we play a violin
serenade for them?” I was so proud and so in love with my son... He always knew
how to find the balance I had tried to achieve for him with his two names: one
white, the name of his father who was Yankton Sioux like me: Raymond, and then
a Lakota name: Ohiyesa.
-Doesn’t
it mean “victor”? asks Annie.
-How
do you know that, wasichita?
-The
nerve, answers the shooting star. Should I remind you of our age difference? I
am nearly 16 years your senior. A little respect, little red bird… And to
answer your question, Lakota was spoken all over the place when we were touring
with the Wild West Show. I ended up
remembering some words.
-Lakota
is a beautiful language, says Adaline. Arapaho too. I am moved by the story of
your son, Zitkala. Music and songs are powerful medicine. We have so many
precious songs, healing songs. I tried to remember them by that salt lake
infested with so many flies in California.
-Oh flies
are what I remember of the shores of the Great Salt Lake too, I say.
-When
I was by that lake, trying to remember my people’s songs, all I could remember
were the songs of dad’s family there in Saint Louis. And also the trappers and
miners’ songs, they were not too poetic… Why do white men go crazy about the
yellow dust?
-The
name of this street, in the here and now, is dedicated to that yellow dust, I
sigh.
-When
Zitkala mentioned the trees being mad at her, says Adaline, I felt that
somehow, Mother Earth was mad at me when I accompanied the gold dust seekers,
and maybe she decided to send me back to the sky through a fever because I had
let someone else’s fever for that yellow dust once cloud my knowledge and
heart.
-So is
it why lead spread in my blood and sent me to rest as well? wonders Annie who
starts to ask good questions regarding cosmic laws.
-I
have a little confession to make too, says Zitkala. You were right to tease me
earlier, Nathalie.
-Oops,
I say, you know that “the more I tease the more I love”, I say, stealing a
quote I’ve heard recently.
-That’s
fine, says Zitkala. We always get what we need… So here’s the thing: I thought
I was being helpful to my people when I vehemently opposed Mooney.
-Who
is Mooney, asks Soraya? I like that name.
-He was
an ethnologist who spent a long time investigating peyotism.
-Oh
well, what an appropriate name, I add. I believe that the moon plays an
important role in peyote symbolism.
-Yes,
I’ve learned that, says Zitkala. Later… But during the Congressional Hearing, I
stepped all over Mooney arguing that he was just a white guy who had no clue,
when I actually was the one clueless there, but he had challenged my
authenticity AND ethnicity, when he described my outfit with his supposed
knowledge of where I had borrowed what I wore, from different cultures... So
what?
-Yes,
I agree, so what, but maybe the issue was a bit more important than a criticism
at one’s style? I venture.
-Well
yes, says Zitkala, but it hurt me to the core, because I believe that I have a
great style. And he was out there saying that, on a picture to illustrate an
interview for the Washington Times, I, as a Sioux woman, should not have worn a
southern tribe dress with long fringes, a Navajo man’s belt and a peyote man’s
fan. I believe he said that mixing genders, styles and tribes made me
unreliable. He said that my lack of capacity to discern between cultures made
me unfit to be speaking in the best interest of my people. The nerve!
-Well…
I say. You do have a great style, and mixing is something good in my eyes too,
but there are things that, still today, are a bit touchy for many people. I
would say that your style showed that you were ahead of your own time…
-But
that is not the most important thing, proceeds Zitkala. What really profoundly
hurt and humiliated me was that the man, a wasichu, knew so much more than I
did regarding the peyote medicine.
-There
is progress, though, says Adaline. You have just called it “medicine”, this is
wonderful.
-Thank
you, Adaline. Speaking of steps, I understand now that Mooney had walked my
path in reverse.
-Logical,
he was doing his own moonwalk, I chuckle
as I tell myself this private joke in my own here and now…
Without
hearing what I’ve just said, Zitkala-Sa continues:
-Mooney
had gone to the encounter of my people’s ways, and I had gone towards his
people’s ways. However, it was precisely, and ironically, what brought this
clash between us, and also sad consequences for Peyotism, which I now regret.
What I saw in the mirror that he held for me, its reflection and what his words
stirred in me were too much to bear by then. Also, it felt as if he was being
more empathetic and “feminine” than me, so I reacted being even more aggressive
and “solar”, and I did what I had been trained to do: acting through brain
instead of heart, fighting back with words, which I knew how to weave in order to
manipulate the threads of human emotional reactions like a puppeteer moves its
wooden toy.
-Or a
grandmother weaver, I add, or like Iktomi, to which you dedicated part of your
writings…
-Oh,
true, says Zitkala. Anyway, I knew how to talk the white audience (and ultimate
deciders) into rooting for me. Don’t forget I had very good oratory skills… But
I must admit that Mooney knew the topic way better than I did. It’s easier to
say now that I’m dead, heehee… One has their pride…
-Tell
me about it, I sigh… We all do.
-But you
know, by then, I really believed that peyote was bad for my people, I thought
it was like alcohol, or a dangerous, addictive drug… I should have investigated
a bit more. Now that I think of it, I believe my attitude was a result of the
fear-based mentality that Quaker education and then Carlisle military style had
impressed upon me.
-Well
you know, I say, it doesn’t take Quakers from those times… Things have not
evolved too much in terms of prejudice and assumptions. It reminds me of the
reaction of one of my colleagues back in Spain when I experienced my first
glimpses of a reality way bigger than what I held as real up to then. He later
admitted to me that he had told the rest of our colleagues that “Nathalie must
have been taking whatever drug those Indians use; she is acting weird.” It made
me smile. It was a sad smile though, because I knew he was talking out of
concern for me, but his prejudice also hurt me. And it was not easy either to
leave behind what made up my whole world up to then, but I knew what I felt in
my heart, and I knew there was no other way than forward… What bothers me too,
sometimes, still, is when I feel the assumptions from others here, regarding
how “I must be thinking” because of my skin color, my blood and of how my
upbringing is supposed to have crafted me…
-I
know the feeling, says Zitkala, and it is good for us to express this here. I
myself was constantly pulled between head and heart, between white and red,
between the two sides of the “apple” that others had made out of me. I now believe
that La Flesche was right, and I was wrong.
-Who
is that La Flesche? asks Adaline.
-He
was Omaha, and a fellow member of the
Society of American Indians to which I belonged, together with other prominent
people, like Ohiyesa, aka Charles Eastman, whom I held in high regard. Charles
stood with me and against La Flesche in that hearing. It is funny, though,
because I remember poor Carlos also telling me that he was the second Native
American ever to earn a Medical Degree in an American University, after someone
called Susan La Flesche Picotte. Wassaja (it was his Indian name) was the first
Native American man to receive a medical degree.
-Interesting,
I say. La Flèche means “the arrow” in French. Maybe it’s a sign from the sky… In
the form of sunrays, lightning or raindrops… In both French and Spanish, we
have sayings related to water to say that things have evolved and are
different, and better, now, like “ha
llovido desde entonces” (it has rained since then), “pelitos a la mar” (little hair to the sea, let’s forget about it)
or “l’eau a coulé sous les ponts”
(water has run under the bridges since then). I am not sure of why I am saying
all this, Zitkala. I guess it is to tell you that, since then, maybe, other
things have happened that reconciled you with señor peyote…
-Why would
that be, and why do you see it as a sign from the sky? asks Miss Apricot.
-Well,
because of this image of arrows being a metaphor for sunrays. Tau’uru means sunrays in the language of
the Huicholes, the indigenous people from Mexico to whom the world owes the
knowledge of Peyote. In their practices, they use prayer gourds, which
represent the feminine, and prayer arrows which represent the Sun, Tau, the masculine and its tau’uru…
-Tauro?
asks Soraya.
-Haha…
It nearly sounds like Taurus, yes, I smile. Hey, that one would be for you,
“Adaline des gens de la vache”…
And, actually, in the T-shape of the
Tau, I see bull horns…
-Why
do you say that I might be reconciled with peyote, though? asks Zitkala. I did
not do anything to fix that relationship after the Hearing.
-I
don’t know, I say. I just feel it. May I ask you a personal or somehow weird
question?
-Sure…
Shoot!
-Bang,
heehee… I wanted to ask you if you ever drew your name, Zitkala-Sa, instead of
signing it with letters. You know, like those drawings that represented, for
instance, a buffalo sitting on its hind legs attached to a kind of cord coming
from a rider’s mouth, to express that Sitting Bull was the one represented.
-Which
Sitting Bull? THE Sitting Bull from
the Hunkpapa Nation? asks Zitkala.
-Yes, I
answer, not the Arapaho Sitting Bull who brought Peyote to his people, although
I think it’s great that they should share their name.
-Oh
really? asks Adaline. Somehow I felt that my people had to be related to that
too. I like it. So Zitkala, did you sign with a drawing? I know I did,
sometimes… with a star-lit sky illuminating prairie flowers below.
-How
nice! says Annie. And funny, since I remember that “Prairie Flower” was the
name Cody had given to one of his female performers. What was her name… She was
an Iroquois. Ah yes! Louisa Stump. She was an expert shot and traveled with the
Kiowa Medicine Company for a time before Cody hired her. Sometimes she also
performed under the name “Texas Lillie”. Funny how we would mix everything back
in the day. Many times, those Indian medicine shows claimed that absolutely
everything they had was Kickapoo…
-Here!
I found a picture of that “Prairie Flower”, I say, triumphantly.
-Yes,
that’s her! says Annie.
-You
know, says Zitkala, maybe those weird shows existed because, again, White
people would misunderstand what we, Indians, would call “medicine”. So what is
YOUR medicine, Nathalie? Does it have to do with drawings?
-Well,
I say, creative expression, either visual or written, surely represents
medicine for me. I know that the Peyote hearings took place the year that World
War I ended, and I know of a book by Gerald Vizenor about that time frame; its
title is “Blue Ravens”. The “gueules cassées” or “broken faces” are
depicted in it, and among many other things happening, including a visit to
Paris, those blue ravens are drawn all over the place by the wandering
protagonist, as part of his healing ceremonies. Through art, he is trying to
bring balance in an unbalanced and traumatized world during and after the
“great war”. It felt strangely familiar when I learned about it, without really
understanding that feeling. So I was wondering if you would like to see
something that might do the trick for our own healing of what we want to let go
of, here, Zitkala-Sa… Would you like to give it a try?
-Sure,
why not… she says.
-OK.
Let me show you this, then. Do you like what you see?
-Oh
yes, it is so perfect! whispers Zitkala. This is so beautiful. You know, when I
decided to call myself Zitkala-Sa, many people criticized me, because they said
I had disrespected our ways since I was giving that Lakota name to myself when a
name in my specific language was supposed to be given to me by someone else.
Well, the name-giving ceremony had been done already, mission style, and my mom
had decided to erase the last name and therefore memory and presence of my
father from my life because of something he had done to my brother, not to me.
I had absolutely no saying there. And I actually WAS given the name
Zitkala-Sa... In a dream. I decided to obey that dream. What about the yellow
bird, though, and Sitting Bull’s picture?
-What
about it? I repeat. We were talking about your choice of a name, your lack of a
father figure… And I remember your taste for telling stories… So, what about
that status as Sitting Bull’s granddaughter?
-Well
we Indians have a broader understanding of family than you, white folks, have.
-True,
but you also said that you were a full-blooded Indian, when you were both White
and Native, Zitkala… I remind her.
-Yes,
and sometimes I hated it, and sometimes I wanted to get rid of one part, but it
makes it kind of difficult to keep on walking if we’re stripped of half our
body and soul, she says in a bitter way.
-Oh
yes… sighs Adaline.
-I was
“white-white”, ventures Annie, but I actually WAS considered Sitting Bull’s
daughter. He had adopted me, Lakota style… What was the name again… Oh yes! Hunkapi! says
Annie.
-Pomme de reinette,
et pomme d’api, d’api, d’api rouge… I
sing, remembering that children’s song about tiny little red apples, not really
sure of why it is coming to my mind. Maybe because we say “haut comme trois pommes” (as tall as three apples), and Annie was
known to be petite. Well, nothing to envy me either in that department!
-Sitting Bull's death profoundly impacted me, says Annie.
-Sitting Bull's death profoundly impacted me, says Annie.
-Yeah,
says Zitkala. I bet you preferred that kind of publicity, “Sitting Bull’s
daughter” rather than “Cocaine girl” spread by yellow journalism… Oh wow! I got
it! Yellow… The yellow bird… Here’s the relation I see: a meadowlark told
Sitting Bull that he would be killed by his own people, during the time of the
Ghost Dance that ended with this horrible bloodshed at Wounded Knee.
-Oh
maybe it is why I had shot that meadowlark in the wing, whispers Annie…
-Who
knows Annie, I answer. And the consequences of the Ghost Dance were so
terrible. All that was intended was to dance the ancestors back. The dress
below the book about Adaline, the little dog cover, had some motives that were
painted on the Ghost Dance shirts.
-We
had many important designs, says Adaline: crows, eagles, magpies… All of them
with a special meaning, like Hope, Renewal and Rebirth, you know, that kind of
things. All I know is that many people, in my tribe, always longed for a
reversal of their desperate conditions and the beginning of a new life that
would take in the old ways.
-I
would like to know more about the decorative patterns on your garment, says
Soraya. Did your people draw stars sometimes on the traditional dresses?
-Oh
yes, they definitely did, answers Adaline. I saw such dresses when I was a
little girl. Women held them close to their heart. You know, the symbols gave
power to the wearer.
-I am
reminded of what Sitting Bull had told me once before he got killed, says
Annie. He said that he trusted stars (real stars, heavenly bodies) more than humans.
He said that once in my eyes he had heard his daughter speaking, and that he
believed that the universe was hearing him and talking back through signs.
-It’s
weird, I say. When I researched his family tree, I saw that three times he “named
a daughter Hoksila”, which is supposed to mean boy. At least two died as
infants.
-Oh
yes! “Hoksila” is what he mentioned when he told me about his daughter speaking
through my eyes, says Annie.
-Well
maybe you would have needed someone to crack that code, says Zitkala in a
somehow vehement way. But of course, you were born white, Annie. So you could
not get those things.
-Here
you go again, Zitkala, I say. I don’t see you but I imagine your face turned
scarlet right now.
-Have
respect for that name, says Zitkala in a harsh tone.
-What
name? I ask.
-Scarlet…
answers Zitkala.
-Are
you talking about Scarlet Woman, one of Sitting Bull’s wives?
-I am
talking about all our women, says Zitkala.
-So… If
I may… What about changing “our” into “the”? I propose. Let’s honor all THE
women… Soul has no color and gets things that are sometimes extremely complex
and make no apparent sense. Your dad was kicked out by your mom when you were
an infant. Maybe it was something Cosmos or Spirit had decided you had to
experience for some reason. I would not do such things if I was the one
deciding up there, but hey, who are we to decide. This color thing, though,
reminds me of two ginger heroes of my childhood, whose names had to do with
such historic figures as Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill. Boule et Bill was the name of the comic, and something was “off”:
the boy had a dog’s name, and vice versa, and somehow it made me think of
Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill.
-“Buffalo
Bull who Sits Down”. Yes, that was the real translation of the name, says
Zitkala who still pouts a little but seems to accept my point of view without
staying offended too long.
-“Buffalo
Bill who Hunts Down” is kind of funny, says Annie, although you know, he was
AFRAID of the buffaloes we had with us in the show. It was the weirdest thing to
watch him trying to touch a buffalo obviously eager to receive some tender
care, and Bill would keep on retiring his hand before touching the buffalo’s
forehead.
-Buffaloes
are so beautiful, says Zitkala-Sa. Buffalo hides were the records for my
people’s drawings before we were asked to paint on paper, also a “corpse” of
some sort since it comes from the trees. Oh, like that tree we saw earlier with
the signature of Adaline’s father on its bark. I remember when Gertrude
Käsebier took pictures of Show Indians drawing on her table as they sat waiting
for their session to begin.
-Oh,
says Adeline, I would draw a lot when I was in Saint Louis. It helped me
express what words sometimes could not. It was good medicine for me.
-Yes,
I recognize. Sometimes when words don’t come easily out of one’s mouth, for
several reasons, they find a new form in whatever artistic expression we’re
more at ease with. Drawings, musical notes, or just the eyes… Pratt had
encouraged his prisoners at Fort Marion to start drawing about their
experiences on ledger books.
-Ouch,
Pratt. It still hurts my ears to hear that name, and it still hurts my lips
to pronounce his name too, says Zitkala.
-Well,
sometimes it’s good to embrace what bothers us to acquire new perspectives,
like I tried to do with that Chiquito guy in his stupid movie. Pratt had
encouraged his prisoners to draw on ledger books and then the books were sold
for $2 a piece, I add. Some of the prisoners were Arapaho by the way, Adaline.
-Look,
young one, says Zitkala-Sa whose voice is trembling a bit, if there’s someone
who knew Pratt well, here, that is me. I can’t stand him. Since you’re the most
privileged here because you came last and therefore have read and learned
about what came before you, you must know his “fantastic” motto, right? “Kill the Indian, Save the Man”. Do you
even fathom what it meant to us? What it meant for Adaline to go through the
deconstruction of who she was and learning to be ASHAMED of who she was? What
it meant for me? At some point I was so indoctrinated that I had become one of
his professors! Well, at least, I taught music, that’s what helped me feel better
about it.
-I’m
having a better idea now of what it must have meant, I humbly say. I’m learning
to deconstruct and reconstruct myself too. I’m learning to walk in Balance,
which starts with the same letter as Beauty.
-Oh,
please, there was nothing “beautiful” in Pratt’s world, let me tell you, shouts
Zitkala-Sa.
-But
in your own writings (I’ve read part of them), you recognize that you wanted to
go discover the whites’ world as a child, and then you recruited kids yourself
as an adult when you taught at Carlisle with Pratt. You know, yearning for that
encounter, maybe, was your way to try to reach out for your lost father. You’re
a wonderful human being, and at some point you profoundly believed that if you
wanted your people to survive in the world that was imposing its will on what
you had always known, you had to teach them the white man’s ways. And you were
not the only one trying to reconcile both worlds. Ohiyesa, Charles Eastman, did
the same too.
-Yes,
and I guess it’s why I gave my son that same Lakota name. I wanted victory for
unity so that I could reconcile my two sides, even though I said many times
that I was a full-blooded Indian, like you recalled earlier. It’s true, I
was not, and what’s more important than the blood, I was no longer just one
thing in my mind either…
-It is
good to call one’s son with such a powerful name. “Hey, Victor”, I smile…
-I
guess it’s another of your “movie” moments, says Adaline who starts to really
get a grasp of my personality and tastes…
-“Bingo!”
(it’s like saying ‘victory’, I precise), you know how to read my smoke signals,
heehee.
I am
the only one laughing at my own evocation of yet another movie but it feels
good anyway. Then I go on thinking out loud about Zitkala-Sa’s circumstances.
-Maybe
there was a reason, a powerful reason for you to be given that experience to
taste, to make you grow into the beautiful human being you were, or are, since
I am so privileged to be talking to you right now.
-Yes,
says Adaline. Maybe there was a mighty, spiritual reason, Gerty… There’s always
a good reason.
-Oh,
Adaline, please, are you always going to accept the horrors we had to go
through as our “destiny”?
-“Manifest
Destiny”, I whisper in sadness.
-No, answers
Adaline, but I will always try to understand why things happen and why people
act the way they do. Do you think I hated my dad for taking me to that place in
Saint Louis? Of course not! I loved him with all my heart, I LOVE him with all
my heart. It is not his fault that his folks looked at me as if I were a
monkey. (By the way it may be the reason why the resting place of my body is by
a body of water that takes its name from a monkey; I heard that whisper in a
dream).
-Oh, I
say, the experience you mention is something very similar to what I’ve lived in
some of my black and white dreams… There are some recurring dreams; one was set
in the fall and the other in the winter. In those dreams young people are staring
at me in disdain, and then giggling among themselves for no apparent reason as
they blatantly choose to ignore me after apparently making fun of me. It was
quite unpleasant.
-Maybe
those dreams were given to you for a reason, says Adaline. Maybe they were
programmed for you to meet me and the rest of your guests in this green
hallway.
-Yes,
Adaline, I think it is the reason for those zebra dreams dancing like a snake
before my mind’s eye… I say.
-At
occasions, talking to you all feels like I am the protagonist of Cast Away who ends up turning “Wilson”,
a ball, into the only companion he can talk to.
-Oh so
the ball would be like Robinson Crusoe’s Friday?
-Fry-Day,
I tease. Yes, except that he does not intend to convert the ball to
Christianity or teach the ball right from wrong… It is actually the ball that
sometimes challenges him. We can say that, through the face he drew on the ball
with his own blood, it somehow represents his higher self, or shadow self,
depending on the days. That’s what you see on that first image by the fire. And
by the way, he draws-counts the day in the same way and shape as I do it! I
think the name of that ball was a filmmaker’s wink to the actor’s wife: Rita Wilson…
-Rita
is a nice name, says Zitkala.
-Yes,
and I like the image of “Wilson” floating on the water, with that burst out head
that looks like hair and the castaway’s blood that turned Wilson’s face black,
says Adaline.
-Oh, says
Soraya, sea water, an island and blood becoming black… Those make me think of
what I saw first when I entered what you call the hallway, Nathalie. Here, by
the door.
-Oh
yes, I smile, my reptiles “Little Turtle” and “Gertrudis Geiko”, those lino
cuts by my friend Jade and myself (I made the island), and a poem I was given
when I participated in a festival when my “pony” was a Very Important Pony, I
smile.
-What
is Babylon’s Kryptonite? asks Zitkala. I cannot really read it, I would need my
glasses.
-“Love
Light is Babylon’s Kryptonite” I smile.
Who is
it that I heard saying “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of
the womb”?
-I
wonder the exact same thing sometimes, I say.
-It
sounds like a magical incantation, says Soraya.
-Maybe
we are cousins of the witches of that TV show, “Charmed”!
-You
really cannot help referring to that screen world, can you? asks Zitkala.
-Well,
I answer, maybe it’s the new medium for medicine men and women, who knows?
-Maybe
it’s what Sitting bull had seen in my eyes too, maybe he saw in my irises the
particular cinema of a man who knew how to walk in two worlds.
-Wow,
you’re less clueless than I thought, recognizes Zitkala.
-Well,
there are a few mistakes that I did though, recognizes Annie. I am
afraid that I have offended his memory sometimes, that I made him mad, because
I did not really understand the importance of some of his gestures and some of
the objects that he gave me, back in the day.
-Do
you want to share it with us? asks Zitkala.
-Yes.
He had insisted so much to meet me and have his picture taken with me… I
laughed at first. I did not understand that he was being way more than a
picture collector. Also, when he gave me his moccasins, the ones he wore
when the battle of Little Big Horn occurred, I think that he was trying to tell
me something more, but I did not know how to read the signs, you’re right,
Zitkala. Also, now I know that back in 1919, the eve of Valentine, I should not
have “dressed up” as “Junior Sitting Bull.
-What
is that? I ask. You sound like you were part of that comic of the ginger boy
and dog…
-Well,
I believe that I crossed the line without being aware of it, and that I was
gently punished with those cut-outs I complained about earlier. Let’s look for
some more pictures, she asks.
-OK,
let’s see, I think. Maybe under “Annie Oakley, feathers, dressed up, Native
American, photo”. Here what appears:
-Annie!
exclaims Adaline. What on earth are you wearing?
-I
know… she says. If I could I would go back in time and would tell myself not to
do that. Although, just like Zitkala described her dream that gave her a
very special name, I felt compelled to wear those feathers when I saw myself in
a dream, as if I was in the audience looking at me. I shot those glass target
balls that we filled with feathers for better visual effect, and a feather
landed on one of the members of the audience. It rebounded back and all of a
sudden I had this headdress and became imprisoned in a picture, while part of
me kept on shooting, only that I had become very small, like Alice in that film
I had seen, so small that I could stand atop Ned Buntline’s hat as I shot in
reverse while looking in a mirror. That’ what inspired me to do it “for real”.
Also, that’s why, sometimes, I would shoot upside down, but only in private.
Then a
tiny miller started to roll a grinding stone towards the glass balls, and a
deer emerged from a piece of paper.
-Wow!
Saint Hubert… I whisper. It was letting you know about when you would be
“recycled” for a new turn on the wheel…
-It
sounds a bit creepy. But I liked my dream though! Somehow the deer’s antlers
opened the top of the hat and I fell and fell and fell within the paper, with
weird characters drawn in it. There were also magazine covers and a poster
written with languages I did not understand, and, believe it or not, one of
those waffle makers with my effigy.
-Un moule à gaufre!
I exclaim. Haha! You dreamed of Tintin and his friend the captain
Haddock, whose insults could sometimes get him to call someone a waffle maker.
This is hilarious! I, myself, was completely fascinated by “Les Sept Boules de Cristal”. And by the
way now that I remember, there was a lady in a pink sari who played psychic,
and the Captain Haddock got lost backstage in the theater where the
fortune-teller show was one among many other gigs. The captain ended up finding
his way ON STAGE with a cow’s head on his head, ruining a magician’s trick.
I
remember that the backdrop, with a Star of David and a puzzled yellow bat, had
totally fascinated me. And you know what, Annie? The crystal balls that give
its title to the story, once burst open, liberated a substance that put people
to sleep. It was a curse brought to the European scientists who had desecrated
an ancient site in Peru, and disrupted “Rascar Capac”, an Incan monarch called
“the one who triggers sky fire”. One of those grave-diggers had had the nerve
to bring his mummy back home. And just as the professor told Tintin and his
friends about the fire in the sky, it happened for real! Lightning struck into
the chimney, sending a fireball crashing
into the showcase and vaporizing Capac. That night, all of those who had
witnessed this prodigy had the same nightmare: Capac climbed into their room through
the window, carrying a glowing crystal ball and smashing it onto the floor.
-Yup,
says Zitkala. You don’t play around with those things. They are sacred. Speaking
of which, Annie, since you became Sitting Bull’s adopted daughter, can you
share with us what presents you received?
-Yes,
says Annie. I received beaded moccasins that belonged to Sitting Bull. If I
remember correctly, they also had to do with his deceased daughter. I am not
sure how, maybe she had done the beadwork, I don’t remember too well. Then
there was this beautiful pipe.
-Oh so
it was for real… says Zitkala.
-Well
of course, it was for real, protests Annie.
-Oh
relax, Phoebe Apricot, says Zitkala. I just needed to see which steps had
actually been taken. And the pipe is definitely something that I respect. You
know, I am actually thankful for this mention because it enables me to share
with you the memory of an accomplishment that makes me proud. I helped the
Yanktons regain the right to mine pipestone for the sacred pipes at the quarry
in Minnesota that was among the guarantees in the Treaty of 1858. I did it
because I knew that they would do it in a respectful manner, and because the
pipe is an essential part of our spirituality.
-I am
amazed at how many evocations I receive from that word, pipe, I say. Right now
since we are in Annie’s memories, the evocation comes in French, and I see a
shooting booth in an amusement park.
-Ah,
those times… whispers Annie in a nostalgic tone.
-Tiny
pipes were what people used to shoot at, I say, and we kept the name even
though nowadays usually you shoot at an item held by a tubular shape, something
like a hollow chalk. Well, actually the material is similar to calcium
carbonate. Let’s see if I can find an illustration of how such a booth looks
like today:
-Oh
but you said contemporary, says Annie. Why is yet another cut-out of me showing
up?
-Because
you are an everlasting star, Annie, I chuckle. The lady in the middle
represents the embodiment of a certain Wild West as we still like to represent
it. I like the breastplate she wears. I have this desire, many times, to “play
guitar” with the bones, a bit like, I guess, you would do with skeletons that
are meant to become the inner structure of a strong body, to compose the
heartsong of those who will use them.
-What
are those toys that look like characters from the Nutcracker ballet? asks
Zitkala.
-Oh
there on the right? Bear and Kaiser, I say. They are toys made by J.F.
Sebastian in yet another movie, Blade
Runner. I figured that it might help Annie to reenact her encounter with
Kaiser Wilhelm and maybe shoot his toy version to ease any guilty feeling she
might have regarding the war.
-Oh I
appreciate this, says Annie. It will help, I think. And then I’ll give the
teddy bear to the newborn of a woman whose husband will never have to go to war
again. I no longer want to train women to fight in that way, I want women to be
like us, warriors of light and healing.
-It
sounds beautiful, says Adaline. And what about this monkey rider there?
-Well,
I guess it’s a reminder of what can be bothersome about flying monkeys, and if
they appear, we have to know how to still learn how to shove aside what could
bother us, in order to retrieve the information they can carry in their eyes or
project into ours, like in this new adaptation of Emerald City. By the way, in
this version of Oz story, once the princess Ozma accepts and embraces who
she is deep inside, all the flying monkeys leave their bosses, her enemies, and draw her name
in the sky.
If
need be, I am sure Annie would be delighted to help us honing our shooting
skills, only harmlessly aiming at those fun items, a bit like what one must
feel after releasing tension on a punching ball! Finally, chalk, for me, is a
reminder of my “teacher’s hat”, and I love to give that hat to others too,
because I have to remember that everything and everyone can teach me something,
coming from the realm of the living, or the dead.
-How
true, says Annie. After Sitting Bull’s murder by this Red Tomahawk person, I
sometimes had the feeling that he was still talking to me. And some things that
happened to me felt like a dialogue coming from wherever he might have been
dwelling. Strange sensations…
-Haha!
I think I have a better picture now, I say.
-What
happened to the gifts you had received from Sitting Bull, Annie? asks Zitkala.
-I
gave them to my only brother’s son. He lived in Kansas City.
-Hiding
in the tornado of time, I smile. There are a few images that have had a profound
impact on me, as I watched Emerald City. Let me share them here in the green
hallway where so many shades have been added to my rainbow of emotions,
thoughts, insights and moves. I think it will be beneficial for all of us.
Through
an emerald dagger is how Ozma is recognized and led to accept who she really
is, and to take back her power.
When
they hand her her crown, she sees in one of the emeralds her former reflection,
as an anonymous boy, and as she acknowledges what he gave her, she accepts her
new life and leaves her former “he-self” in the reflection of the jewel.
As for
Dorothy who came from the outer world, she realizes that she gains more and
more power, as much as to be able to repel (or keep at a safe distance) an
infestation of grasshoppers consciously caused by her cold rival’s desire of
vengeance and destrution.
Grasshoppers
look cute to me, and they’re considered as charms in many cultures, but they
can also mean destruction if there is an unbalance and their number weighs too
much in the delicate harmony of mother nature’s scales. I have had a
realization only a few days ago, about something that had happened the day of
the saint who rides a white horse in the sky: grasshoppers (which I generally
save from my cat’s claws and mouth as I hide them amidst the bamboo) took for
themselves, maybe in my name, what they might have “coined” a punishment, a
curse or a test, when I was unaware of
it.
Sometimes
things happen that are beyond our knowledge or control, but still, I think I
prefer to bring rain. And if I have to flip a coin to decide what role to play,
it will be heads instead of tails, because only “en tête à tête” is how we can
look at the future with the same mindset and from an equal weight on the
scales. This being said, talking about heads and tails, or endings and
beginnings: do you want to add something else, or are we ready to close this healing
circle?
-Let’s
close the circle, says Adaline.
-Yes,
says Soraya. It is a good time, the full moon has been up in the sky since yesterday
morning, and we don’t want all the flowers of the apricot tree to disappear
before we finish this gathering in beauty.
-You
could be native, Soraya, says an amused Zitkala.
-I
feel so blessed for this meeting, says Annie.
-Me
too, I say. Extremely blessed. I owe THE voice so much in being able to talk to
you today. And even though I don’t always approve all that’s being done in
Santa’s castle up there in the clouds, I understand the cause and purpose of
it. However, my wish for this year will be to help Hanscrouf / Peridot in the
task assigned to us by the big boss up above, through a well-thought sharing of
our chores and duties. So now, ladies, should we gather around the peach tree?
-Again
calling it peach tree? protests Zitkala.
-Actually
it’s good, says Adaline, because I’ve just said a little prayer for the peach
trees that were burned in Navajo lands, and I am sure that the apricot tree
will let its ancient cousins know about our intentions. I am grateful for the
liberating encounter we have had here and I ask for forgiveness for me and
other people, for the attempts at excessively exploiting the richness of the
ground, which caused a lot of suffering, to the earth and her children. I also
forgive whomever and whatever may have caused my lack of happiness both as a
child and an adult.
-Thank
you, says Zitkala, it is extremely sweet. As for me, I am taking the firm
resolution to honor the beauty of a medicine I did not understand back in the
day, and as I ask for forgiveness and compassion, I also give it freely, to
others and myself.
-As
for me, says Soraya, I feel as liberated as Adaline and I am thankful for all
the teachings contained in seeing our life in perspective. I am grateful for
the liberation of the shadows that were hovering over my soul and vow to do my
best to always send loving energy to all up above and down below, and I wish
harmony to all those who may be suffering.
-As
for me, says Annie, I am grateful for all that I have learned then, in my life,
and now, in my death as well, I am aware of my lack of understanding,
sometimes, of the subtle balance of all that surrounds us and I stand strong
and confident again, choosing to alleviate the senseless pain caused by attempts
at nurturing rivalries, up above and down below. I forgive all for the pain
inflicted upon me, I am eternally grateful for all the blessings I received.
-As
for me, I finally say, I give thanks to all those who have shown me the way towards
the maze, and then through and outside of it. This includes magical godmothers,
pumpkins, butterflies, desert roses, and all the other instruments of magic. I
ask for forgiveness for the times when I hurt others consciously or
unconsciously, and I also ask myself for forgiveness when I failed to trust my full
power and inner wisdom. I ask my renewed discernment to always see beyond
appearances and to strive to see something good in all of us, especially those
I have a hard time appreciating, because I know they mirror what I fail to
appreciate in myself. I also wish to state that forgiving does not mean letting
anybody try to dull my spark or drown my light. I ask for divine help in
moments of darkness, and I trust my inner light to find its way out of any
abyss where I let others take me or where I willingly jump. I release remnants
of shame and guilt, and I embrace the new me that I feel emerging from within.
I count my blessings and the love I feel for life and love itself. And now I
invite you ladies to accompany me as I sit, leaning my back on this peach t…
-APRICOOOT!
begs Zitkala.
-Haha!
I knew it would happen again, I laugh. Hey, maybe Georgia, the Peach State and
its Stone Mountain still have things to reveal. And you know what, it would not
have been really me if I hadn’t referred to screens one last time, so I know
that I must have mixed the two trees over and over again because it was a wink
of those brujitas of Charmed, since
their “social” headquarters was “the Peach Pit”. They must be giving me mi
fuerza brujil as we speak…
-Or
maybe it came from the witches of the four directions in Oz, says Annie who may
feel like honoring Frank’s creation, even though it’s not “her” Frank.
-True,
I say. I think real balance comes when we’re capable of assuming our shadow
self, and when we accept that there’s no such thing as an eternally bad or
eternally good person, and that light must embrace darkness, and viceversa, to
reach wholeness. You know, what I liked in this new version, also, Emerald City, is that power is gained in
multiple ways by very different characters.
Without
a gesture from me, the Book of Shadows
appear on the computer screen, as the hand of an invisible being shows us how
the edge of the book holds hidden artwork. I understand this as a metaphor of
one’s own “trance-formative” journey, and its blessings in the form of revelations
gained after looking at one’s life from a new angle. The Book of Shadows has
decided to show us the chakra cleansing page, from which two diagrams appear:
one in a circle, the other in the shape of a witch’s hat. What’s written there speaks
to me in terms of story and journey.
-I
think it is time to join our tree!
As I say this, I grab my recorder, take the
copper plate from the maze, put the stone I had kept in the center of it, happily
hang on to my silver cord, and open the door of the green hallway that leads to
the small yard. Then I sit on the ground and lean on the trunk of the apricot
tree, with the plate on my lap, the recorder in its center, and the stone as a
crown, for balance, and to keep my head held high. I feel my four companions in
spirit following me, and I also know that many other stars and sparkles are
watching over us, from above, from below and from all the subtle variations in
the four winds of our soul. Raining on me with the petals of the apricot tree,
inspiration comes from all that we have talked about and experienced with my
sisters in spirit. I utter it in my
bilingual way:
Lakshmi nos llama desde su flor de
loto por fin abierta,
Salomón nos habla en las esmeraldas
de una mesa peruano-sacromontana,
Y Tara verde nos protege de las ocho
sombras que bloquean la vía iluminada.
From the Center of Ourselves,
Oh Spirit, show us the Steps towards Infinity,
Fly us on the Kite
hanging from the Rainbow Bridge in the Sky
Make the Clouds Rain
on Us Droplets of Love’s Pure Joy
As I see in my mind the four quadrants of the Mayan
percentage rule that leads to a healthy soul, Soraya reads my mind and states:
-My ethereal sisters and I will sit each in one
direction, around the tree where you lean. I, Thurai, Morning Star, will embody
the East, Annie who shoots faster than her shadow, the South, Zitkala who
longed for her lost ways, the West, and Adaline the North because her home is
North from here. As we hold hands, the intersection where our fingers touch,
will be the seat for other energetic centers to be placed and therefore draw a
second square. In this manner, an eight-pointed star, our Muslim Rub-el-Hizb,
will be formed around a circle in is center. This is how we mark the end of a
chapter, in the Quran or any other book we hold sacred. Rub means one fourth,
Hizb means a group, and their union brings a universal shape that rotates
around its axis, where our tree receives all of our healed energy to
redistribute it freely and endlessly. Here and now resides the magic that holds
unending power, here and now we release fear, guilt, shame, grief, lies,
illusions and unhealthy attachments in order to awake to a new self, rich of
the eight sources of the real wealth embodied by the gathering of the Hindu
goddesses: prosperity, good health, knowledge, strength, progeny and power.
This is held within our star symbol, which wise men from the land of elephants
call the Ashtalakshmi.
-Une étoile indienne dans le ciel andalou…
I whisper. Let me
repeat the words once whispered to me by an ancient slave dancer: “Open your
heart, for I still have many secrets for you to hear. Also know that all that I
am giving you already exists within you. The Ashtalakshmi came to you from the
dawn of times. It symbolizes the infinite within the finite, the immensity in a
rain drop, the imperfections down below that help create the perfection there
above, the roots of humanity as a whole, drinking from the Source of love and
creation…”
-Grateful for this gathering, says Zitkala,
through which we were able to feel our Niya
again, to express our Nagi and share it
freely, in order to regain our Sicun
and have a glimpse of the Nagila that binds us all.
-Hava, I say, mixing Hebrew with Lakota.
-Yes, says Adaline, love flowing from our open
heart is where the rainbow bridge is to be found rising from the emerald shards
that once were water jars. From their loss we rebuilt ourselves, from scattered
parts we recreated the whole. Let’s lift up our hands, let’s celebrate our
freedom from invisible shackles and chains! Their invisibility removes mine,
their silence gives me back my talk. Their failure is my victory.
Adaline,
from her place in the North, has gained a huge power now and is capable of
leading the rest of us into the proper way of closing our circle. I feel her
hand in mine, to which that of Zitkala, Annie and Soraya are added for a split
second before a whirlwind breath takes them flying in the colors of the rainbow
emanating from the tree.
It shines under the moon as I smile at Venus. Then
I close my eyes, full of the brilliance of all the stars above, and I start playing
a melody heard in an animated story:
la-re-sol-la-solb
(2X)-do-sib-la-sib-sol-re-fa-fa-sol-mi.
As I repeat the melody over and over again,
feeling the power of the healing incantation, the Book of Shadows materializes
from the screen and lands at my feet. It’s opened at the perfect page titled “Vanishing
Spell”.
Then I place the recorder in the center of the
plate again, and I say: “In beauty, it is finished, so that we can start again,
because, of course, there is still, and there will always be time for us.”
I start pulling the silver cord that I have
always kept close to my heart, and with this thread growing longer and longer, I
weave an eight-shaped skein and smile at what it means to me.
I wonder where the kite will be right now, and
I send, in my mind, a postcard invitation that I tie to its multicolor tails.
Then I whisper to the voice that now I finally see the green gleam of the
peridot stone that was hiding in the heart of the coal periodically brought by Hanscrouf…
And from the heart of green, as I tie my hair
with my eight-shaped silver cord, I find a clover shivering in the breeze.
Along with the wind, I sing my own version of the sweet melody dedicated
to whom is the owner of so many hats, among which that of Amélie in a revisited
story of what it means to have a fabulous destiny.
“Shamrock, gleam and glow
Let my power shine
Make the clock reverse
Heal what has been hurt”
And from the ground there where a birdie once
was buried, the postcard I had thought of materializes among buffalo grass.
It is asking me to fill in the zigzag blanks of
lightning lines as I answer the three main questions of the card.
Qué: a song to the water, a weaving of
our silver wire along the picket fence of souls of old, a sharing
in beauty, a revelation of other waters’ whispers hidden in pictures of old, a ceremony
to blow away all the traumas and pains, like a child’s hat stolen by the wind
in search of a kiss blown in the wind.
Cuándo: now 37 weeks after a leprechaun lost
his green and tiny version of Mary Poppins’ umbrella, today when the apricot
city there down south is launching its lanterns in the spring sky, a blessed
date whose figures sum up los dos patitos who finally can look at each other to
recreate a once broken heart and peacefully swim in the river of love and
light, at the exact hour when the child of a child of a child of a child of a
child of “the son of the marsh dwellers” broke his water jar a few miles north
from here.
Dónde: allí bajando hacia el sur en el curso de
after-and-before-life 101, donde un
niño perdió un sombrero valioso al cruzar el vado del río de las ánimas
perdidas en el purgatorio en el centro del triángulo que une:
-el fuerte donde la vida de la “flor de la pradera” comenzó y la de su
madre se quebró
-el fuerte del compañero peludo de la niña de los zapatos de rubí
-la última casa familiar en “ciudad de lodazal”, tal vez un guiño al apellido del siglo 13…
-el fuerte del compañero peludo de la niña de los zapatos de rubí
-la última casa familiar en “ciudad de lodazal”, tal vez un guiño al apellido del siglo 13…
Érase una Vez - Once upon a Time
A Beautiful Story
A Beautiful Story
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