Shamanic Bat Journey (by Cas)

image from ucsantacruz.ucnrs.org

                One of the big attractions to living in the southwest is definitely the spirit of the place. That spirit energy draws all kinds of beings to Tucson. The mixing, melding, merging and mingling of many viewpoints, cultures and lifestyles is the bounty of the Naked Pueblo. I love being able to go to the opera one night and an All-Souls puppet making workshop the next. Being able to attend a Noam Chomsky lecture at the U and being able participate in a Despacho Ceremony for the winds of the four directions of Tucson. Tucson is a rich combination that appeals to the high intellect and to the profoundly spiritual. What better way to experience both than a shamanic journey with 45,000 Mexican Free-Tailed Bats? 

                On the one hand you have one of the biggest colonies of Tadarida brasiliensis, who, according to Wikipedia, “are about 9 cm (3.5 in) in length, and they weigh about 12.3 g (0.43 oz). Their tails make up almost half their lengths. Their ears are wide and set apart to help them find prey with echolocation.” What kind of prey? On a nightly basis they eat pounds of moths, beetles, mosquitoes, flies, wasps, and ants. Pounds of them!! Not to mention spreading pollen. Tons of desert cacti and succulents depend on them. If you enjoy rum or tequila, thank the Mexican Free-Tailed Bat for pollinating the sugar cane and the agave!!  Now, let’s add to that the fact that Shamanically Bats represent rebirth, intuition, dreaming and vision. Bat spirits are capable of imparting to you great gifts including; the ability to see through illusion, create true community, transformation and prophecy!! All this AND they are MAMMALS THAT FLY!!! Bring on the Bat Journey!!

                We gathered together about an hour before sunset at the walking bridge on the Rillito River near River and Campbell to meet up with Alyson Greene, who envisioned, created, offered and guided this journey. (Here’s a link to her account of our evening…http://shamanacircle.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/sacred-nature-adventures-beauty-bats-and-blue-lotus-tea/ ) A group of a dozen of us then walked down into the wash north of the bridge and settled ourselves comfortably on the sand. We formed a circle, shared sage and essential oils to open ourselves to the spirit of the bats. We took a short consciousness journey together to connect with our guides and receive some clarity about our adventure. After we checked in with each other we then made ourselves extremely comfortable, most of us lying down on our backs on blankets spread over the sand to begin journeying with our eyes open, Alyson’s drumming and wave after wave of thousands of bats waking up and heading out to hunt and pollinate for the night.

                Whenever I have journeyed, the beginning of the experience is always a battle with my cognizant self that starts questioning, “How do you know this is real?” If I engage that thought with possible replies like;  “How do we know if anything is real?”, “What is “real”?”, “Maybe I did too many drugs twenty years ago and this is all residually enhanced.” or  “How do you prove experiential knowledge?”… (you get the idea)…then I inevitably miss relevant portions of the journey. I have learned, gratefully, to simply reply to my own negative thoughts with, “This is my reality…here…now” and quiet that distraction as quickly as possible. This mental exchange occurred as the bats activity began to intensify and spirit gifted me with another musing, “If animals could speak to us, would we understand anything they had to say?” and so I listened.  Watched and listened.

                Prior to the journey experience itself, I brushed up on my scientific bat knowledge a little. I was mostly interested in learning about echolocation and how different bats ears are from ours.  The one piece of information that really stuck with me was that our ears are actually pretty similar; some humans can even use a form of echolocation, but that the sound that bats emit as their echolocation beacon is not detectable to human ears. Wait what? Not detectable? Nearly the first thing I think of in regards to bats is that distinctly bat sound, you know the sort of clicking almost electrically kinetic chirp clicking noise that is BATS. Turns out that their actual echolocation noise is at such a high frequency that humans and even most dogs can not hear it.  But we hear bats, right? So what are we hearing? I listened, I watched and I listened. They are talking! Like any other communal mammal they were communicating with each other.  The more intensely I focused, the more visual the connections between the bats became. Mostly they were webbed together by intricate lacings of pale green glowing lines which were easiest to see directly above us and harder to maintain visually if I followed the bats movement into the sunset.  Every once in a while one of these lines would grow thinner and thinner almost as if it was being stretched and then it would quickly glow a bright pink and the two bats at either end of the pink line would move closer together, remedying something between their connection.

                As I mused on the nature of what these various connections might mean, I was graced with visits of spirits very dear to me. Some of whom, I have only ever known as spirits and others of whom I have known in various states of existence.  In a communal way, they had very clear messages for me. Some simply by their presence reminding me of all of the astounding transformations of which we are truly capable.  Others spoke directly to me about very specific fears I am currently facing and very specific paths to overcoming those fears.  Some named individuals who are willing and ready to work with me and some illustrated resources that I already have in abundance and have been neglecting to recognize on my own. Seems a lot like creating community, breaking down illusions and aiding in transformation…did the bats do this? AND THEN A BAT LANDED ON MY BELLY!!! The bat seemed to weigh nothing, adjusted its wings, twitched its little head and was gone again. Yeah, that happened. I glanced at how really close to us a lot of the bats were coming, several more came extremely close to me, but the one who had landed on my belly really defined the entire experience for me. I was entranced and deeply charmed and saturated with gratitude.

                The experience continued, Alyson drummed on, others were still journeying, but I was content. I watched with complete admiration and joy, relaxed and at peace. I appreciated how mammalian these bats remained in flight, flying a bit kinetically like I imagine I would when I dream of flying. I turned my head more often and watched how the thick black cloud of bats faded and diminished and were ultimately absorbed in the glowing red light of the sunset. Individual bats moving together becoming one mass and then becoming part of the horizon of it all. Every once in a while we are given a little glimpse of the big picture and this time I had bats to thank for it, as if I wasn’t already infinitely indebted to them for their assistance in tequila creation!!

Adventures in Culinary Alternatives...

I had talked a few months ago to a friend who uses a common, regulated medicinal herb for chemo pain relief about its possible use as an alternative to the narcotics that my husband, Marc, takes for chronic pain. My friend offered some of his supply for a trial, although he had nothing to suggest about how to use it other than by inhalation. That is not an option for Marc because his illnesses already affect his respiratory system. My friend nonetheless kindly gifted me with about half an ounce of loose, tiny leaves, all wrapped up in a white paper towel and then again in a beat-up plastic baggie. I put the baggie in my purse and drove straight home, feeling at once culpable, vulnerable and empowered.

When I got home that afternoon, I told Marc about my proposed experiment and laid the baggie on the bar in the kitchen. Marc said nothing at first, and I saw expressions of incredulity, censure, wry gratitude, and finally, curiosity cross his face. Neither one of us was terribly well informed, although years ago I had held a similar baggie briefly in my hand after picking it up from the lavatory shelf in the U of A women’s room. Before I could determine what it was, a coed had burst into the room, grabbed the baggie and darted back through the door as it swung.  

After staring at the small packet on the kitchen counter for a while, we engaged in a lengthy, wide-ranging debate, one that is obvious and no doubt universal among those seeking alternative medicines. At last we decided to leave all options open for a while (including just throwing it out) and I stowed the baggie deep in the tea cupboard, with half a grin for that small joke.

Weeks passed, and although several chances arose where we could have run the trial, the herb was still not in a usable form. Each time, Marc took the usual narcotic, and I felt bad each time about my failure to follow through. True, I’d come home with the product; done some initial research (finding out that in addition to steeping tea, one could also could brew a beer, but baked goods were best because fat was the most efficient processor of the therapeutic ingredient), and I’d think about it periodically before getting distracted by something. I have a habit of beginning but never finishing a project, but in this instance, I’d faltered partly because I’d read that the effect is slow to manifest and the potency difficult to measure. On a recent, particularly bad pain-day, I finally took action, deciding that I would prepare something called “bud butter” to have on hand. Spreading that on cinnamon toast might be the best option: it was lower calorie than brownies, and easy for Marc to prepare if I was not at home.

While Marc was sleeping, I put a pound of butter in a pot on the back burner of the stove to melt, and rummaged through the cupboard looking for the plastic baggie. In my kitchen, everything once opened gets transferred into one size of zip-lock bag or another before I toss it in the pantry. Now I pulled out a small (unlabelled, but then nothing ever is) baggie of loose leaves wrapped in white paper and poured it into the blender to grind up and add to the butter as the Internet recipe directed.  The recipe said to simmer for twenty minutes, until the butter turned green. This particular pot of butter was a red-gold brown and I wondered if I'd let it go stale. Perhaps it was a different variety. In any case, it smelled heavenly—slightly spicy and not at all cloying, as had been the hazy atmosphere of the rock concerts we’d attended years ago or of the annual open-air blues festivals at Reid Park. Marc, awakened from his nap, came into the kitchen. After one or two hearty sniffs he asked why was I making apricot decaf on the stove rather than steeping it in the electric teakettle.

Somehow that misstep soured me on the whole endeavor, and this project joined the myriad others left undone. I do have fruit-flavored butter for coffee cake that I might make soon, but the other ingredient has been returned to my friend. I’m sure I returned the proper baggie. There are no others, labeled or not, in that cupboard now. None at all.

Benevist Tribe

“With whom do you believe your lot is cast?”

 ~ Adrienne Cecile Rich, May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012

                  When I was an undergraduate, I wrote my senior thesis on Adrienne Rich. Back in those days very few people had computers and very few of those had internet. So, I went to the library and read books for my research. With little expectation of reply, and on the advisement of the head of my department, I also wrote Adrienne Rich a letter. On paper, with a pen, that I mailed, in an envelope with a stamp.  I explained how much I loved her work, that I was writing a research thesis and I asked her a few questions. She replied. She answered my questions, was intrigued by my thesis and agreed to correspond during the semester to help with my research.  In all, I received six letters from Adrienne Rich. I cherished them all, but the final one was a trophy. I sent her a copy of the finished paper and she sent me back a rave review including the statement that was really the jewel in the crown….”I have rarely read an analysis of my own work that prompted me to look at my motives or techniques in a new way. Everything you wrote was true, it is all there. The beauty of great art is what you can find in it with the right set of eyes.”  Now, I’m not an idiot; I know as a teacher myself that she was trying to be encouraging to a young writer, but that really didn’t diminish it for me in any way.

                  “With whom do you believe your lot is cast?” became my personal koan. When Adrienne Rich asks this question, answering it implies that I am in fact of a kind. Throughout my twenties, there were plenty of days that the belief I was of a kind was really all I needed. Knowing that I was not without peers…somewhere, even if I hadn’t met them all. Sure there are still questions. Does my kind leave or stay, fear or triumph, love, change, believe? The certainty was only that there were others like me and that we are named together. I set about finding those answers.  I found quickly that people were eager to “help” me define/marginalize myself.

“You graduated Summa Cum Laude? So you’re one of those brainiacs.”

“You’re a vegetarian? So you’re one of those grass eaters?”

“You’re a research educator for Environmental groups? So you’re one of those tree huggers?”

“You’re a feminist? So you hate men?”

“You’re an artist? So you’re crazy?”

                   It is quite strange really how even when we hear these societal labels and know that they are inaccurate; we are still curiously intrigued by the groups that embrace these epithets.  In a kind of no-I’m-not-a-dirty-hippie-but-I-would-still-rather-hang-out-with-them-than-YOU way. So I spent a decade or so exploring all these things that society told me I was.  It went okay. On this circumvented path I did in fact meet many of my true kind. People who I love and cherish to this day. My tribe. Not necessarily the people I was born closest to, but those I was destined to know. Then somewhere in my thirties I quit searching and started rooting. Or as my mom explained it to me, “Somewhere in your thirties you get to stop apologizing to everyone for who you are, because I guess they figure out that you have been this way for this long it’s probably not a phase.”

                  Rooting for me was literal and figurative. I actually set about putting things with roots into the ground and I began to look for ways to make the lives closest to me better. I did less to work on national issues and more to work on local issues. I realized at some point that anywhere you were, there are likely to be problems. You can complain, leave or start working to fix things. I work hard within my family and my community to live simply and sustainably, but many days I still feel like those of us who care about the health of the planet, the beings on our planet and our fragile ecosystem on the planet are fighting insurmountable forces of destruction. If we continue playing by the rules of the existing paradigm we will fail, exhausted by quenching the fires and solving the problems other people have started.

                  A good novel or a good koan is something you revisit at various stages in your life. Rich herself revisited this line in some of her later poems. Different seasons in life generate different responses to the line. I am 44 now and only recently I am drawn to recognize an optimism in the statement that is inherent, basic, and yet I overlooked it in the past. “With whom do you believe your lot is cast?” My belief. My choice. My destiny to shape and form as I see fit. Okay, okay, my lot is cast, but I decide with whom!!  On a really optimistic day, maybe I even decide the parameters and boundaries that shape everything about my existence. 

                  For example, do I want to continue to live in a world that doesn’t even have a vocabulary word for the concept of living non-violently?  Do I instead want to give away all the power of my personal intentions and just use a phrase that makes me utter into existence that exact opposite of my intentions every time I say it? Come on…”non-violence” is close enough, right? It is okay if we accept a world that can’t even define our dreams, let alone envision them as reality…right? No. It is not right and it is not okay. I decide with whom my lot is cast and we will name ourselves.

                  This word is going global… Benevism! Benevism  (benivzm), [noun, from OE. b‹oeacu›n, bén, cogn. with ON. bón, bœn (Sw., Da. bön):—OTeut. *bôni-z; perh. from root ba- ‘cry’]. Def: doing good works, acting in a manner that benefits and promotes the health and well being of others, blessed action.

So… creating the world we want instead of having our energy taken from us combating the world we don't want. Focusing thoughts and actions toward doing good for others, for the planet and for future generations. Adrienne, I believe my lot is cast with Benevists… and I am not a tribe of one.

http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-change/

 

                 

Highway to Hell

Highway to Hell

“I’m on the highway to hell/ 

No stop signs, speed limit/

Nobody’s gonna slow me down…”

I recently moved from Tucson, AZ to Felton, CA, and now live with two friends, a cat and two snakes in the middle of a redwood forest near the ocean. I found a job as a nanny nearly right away, but the family that I fell in love with requires quite the commute. I drive from Felton (which is near Santa Cruz) to Menlo Park (which is 45 minutes inland from San Francisco). For those of you, who haven’t driven that, it is an hour of driving, without rush hour traffic, which is exactly when I make this hellish pilgrimage, dreaming of the lack of idiots when I reach my Holy Land, the Place of Toilets and Coffeemakers. 

   

When driving in Tucson, I rarely viewed the level of idiocy in my fellow drivers as I do here in the sunny California. Sure, there were the jerks who cut people off, the thoughtless people who drove too fast, and the old people who drove 15 miles below the speed limit and should have had their licenses taken away twenty years ago. You would see the hippies who don’t seem to know the laws of the road, and the teenagers driving recklessly to the mall, high on newfound privileges. Before leaving Tucson, I was the driver who was a little distracted; admittedly, I have received a photo radar ticket with a picture of myself, speeding whilst talking on the phone. (I do not talk or text while driving now: BIIIIIIIG ticket for that in CA.) Honestly, I’m still a little bit of a distractible driver, moving and driving more frequently hasn’t really changed that, though I do make an effort.

In California there are these varying driver types, but…times a billion. Somehow, putting these people in Lamborghinis and giving them a freeway with a 65 mph speed limit makes them catch a bad case of road rage with a symptomatic lead foot. And with a speed limit of 65, that means you can go 90 mph, right? At first I was appalled, and then vowed to be the superior driver, safely staying in the left lane with the semi-trucks and smart people who follow the speed limit and are terrified of missing their exit.

Slowly but surely though, through various circumstances, mostly sleeping in and running late to work, I began to speed. I only went five over at first, rationalizing that no police officer would pull me over for five miles over if there were Camaros going 90.  Now I max out at 15 over on stretches of road I know there won’t be any cops, and that’s only because I’m not sure my old beater can go any faster. Then came the first mild cases of road rage. I would only mutter enraged comments and glare, quelling full out shouting and the urge to flip them off, trying to stay the better person; desperately clinging to my superiority and dignity. This suppression of my true feelings rapidly diminished and then altogether disappeared, culminating with me speeding down my single lane neighborhood street at 10 p.m., narrowly avoiding an elderly couple walking their dog. I was blasting music with the windows down, and as I braked, I hit my maximum road rage potential. Forgetting my windows were down, I shouted, “Why are you f***ing walking your dog at 10 o’clock at night?” I immediately realized what I had done, and was completely and utterly ashamed of my actions: it was official, despite my embarrassment, I had risen to maximum Lamborghini-level road rage, and I could only hope for redemption for my vehicular sins. Despite my horror, I have only become guiltier. I have now topped my previous road rage shenanigans: I have officially raced an old lady on the freeway.

What’s interesting is, despite driving with thousands of people down highway 17, and thousands more on freeways 85 and 280, I occasionally see the same cars whose commute seems to match mine. I see the Prius with the R2D2 keychain hanging off the bumper; the blue car with the TARDIS license plate, and the same semi truck that always almost plows me into smithereens when I merge onto 280. There is one more car, however, that I see consistently on the 280, right before I exit into Menlo Park: the gold Jaguar. (I like to say Jaguar like Benedict Cumberbatch says it in the British commercial: “Jag-u-ar;” it seems so…British, I guess. So sue me, I’m an anglophile. Here’s the link if you want to listen to pure liquid sex. Best. Voice. Ever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdWMTMjzaik )

The gold Jag-u-ar is driven by possibly the most fancy, stiff, cream-of-society elderly woman, whose up-do is coiffed perfectly in a swirl atop her head so delicately it looks like pure white cotton candy. Her lips are precisely coated with bright red lipstick that manages to look elegant instead of trashy. She wears a giant necklace of pearls everyday and it looks classy and 1950s instead of goofy like it would look on us if we tried for that look. I can only imagine what the rest of her outfit looks like. Probably wonderfully 1950s retro, all powder blue jackets and matching skirts that look professional and feminine at the same time. There is always a tasteful broach on her lapel. She does not know what a wrinkle is. (Yes, I have swerved while staring at this perfect woman. She defies reality.) I have seen this woman 5 times on the 280. And there is one imperfection that drives me into a frothing rage: she is a HORRENDOUS driver. She is, unfortunately one of many amongst the elderly population who should have to take the driver’s test again down at the DMV. I don’t know if she’s just used to having a professional driver and she only drives to work when her driver has the day off, but she is AWFUL. I often get stuck behind her in the lane right before our mutual exit, and she starts out going the speed limit and slowly works her way to 70, the 75, aaaaaannnd suddenly we’re at 85. Then, it’s like she notices how fast she’s going and places her leaden foot on the brake, slowing down to 55 mph. That’s ten miles below the posted speed limit. On a freeway. IN CALIFORNIA.

Dear Reader, if you don’t hate me already, then surely you see my point of view? Surely there are those amongst you who run late to work regularly and despise getting stuck behind slow drivers, even if they are intimidating and highly fashionable matriarchs of society? It’s about then, when I am stuck going ten to fifteen mph below the speed limit that I decide to change lanes and speed up to the posted limit to get around her. But then, and I swear on all that is holy, it’s like she sees my banged up little Subaru sneaking around her and she can’t have my little POS car get in front of her gold Jag-u-ar AND SO SHE SPEEDS UP TO 90 MPH.  90 mph!!! She went from 55 to 90 mph so as to not have my car cut in front of her pretentious golden Jag-u-ar. So, in a valiant attempt to remain a solid law-abiding member of society, I swallow my rage and get back in line behind her, patiently speeding up and slowly down as her highness pleases.

Nope. This is false. I did not do this. Honestly, after living in California for a mere seven months, this course of action does not even occur to me. I am livid with rage and there is a red haze of fury obscuring my vision (and ethics). I speed up to 95 mph, nearly merge into a semi, and zip around through two lanes of traffic, finally sneaking in at the very last second to merge riiiiight in front of dear Mrs. Jag-u-ar. I am absolutely giddy with success. Landing a job almost right away when I move to California doesn’t hold a candle to cutting in front of this woman right as we get off on the same single lane exit into Menlo Park.

Is this enough? Have I won at this point? Has it gone far enough? Does my sense of right and wrong, and safety that my mother instilled in me from a very young age kick in? Do I listen to the rational internal voice lecturing me on social morals (that sounds suspiciously like Julie Andrews), telling me to stop being a complete bitch?

The answer is no. My victory is not complete without giving her a taste of her own medicine. My one concession is that I do not break the law while doing so. I make sure that, for the whole fifteen minutes we are on this single lane road, she is stuck behind my busted up, muddy, scratched, bent bumper that has black duct tape holding the rear headlight in. Not only is her beautiful Jag-u-ar stuck behind my ass, but I am very carefully going precisely 10 under the speed limit. (I am able to do this without too much question because we are in a school zone, even though no children are present.) My success is made even more sweet when the one lane road, that usually turns into a two lane road, has road work and remains a one lane road for considerably longer than I had anticipated. Glancing at the clock and seeing my 10:00 a.m. deadline for arrival rapidly approaching, I took pity on the cars stuck behind my prey and I very carefully adjusted my speed to a mere five miles below the speed limit. When the roadway finally allows her to go her own way, and I turn down a neighborhood street to my job, she speeds up and roars towards her destination, no doubt filled with a similar seething ire I had been feeling at the beginning of this regrettable escapade.

As I arrive at work, and finish my coffee, I feel a tinge of remorse. I did cause a great many people to go agonizingly slow just so I could terrorize an elderly woman. But this twinge is overwhelmed and drowned by my satisfaction. I won! And, because of this, perhaps you will dislike me, or condemn me, or even feel the need to tell me the error of my ways, hoping to enlighten me, or…geez. I don’t know. I feel a little bad, honestly, I do. Maybe I am a horrible person, and maybe California is a cesspool of aggressive, mean, brutal drivers with no regards for kindness or safety. I won’t defend myself. I am guilty.

I’ve seen this woman a few other times, and I make sure to stay out of her way, just glancing to confirm that the gold Jag-u-ar is spotless and she is as perfectly coiffed as the day I saw her first. I hope she gets to her destination safely, and that maybe someone criticizes her driving habits in a constructive way. Or maybe she should just hire a driver that never takes the day off.

Do you know what I mean, or the return of the gesticulation

 

I attended an art opening recently, meeting people I hadn’t seen in decades. The sponsor, who had been my high school drama teacher, greeted me with a warm smile. As we chatted, she asserted that I hadn’t changed at all. Not a bit. At all. At first I was dismayed, thinking that my tailored knit ensemble and understated jewelry had failed to redefine an awkward teenager as a sophisticated gallery-goer unlikely to topple the statuary. I mumbled something I couldn’t hear over an inner voice clamoring, “Oh my God, tell me you’re kidding!” and launched into an anecdote illustrated with a thorough and varied assortment of gestures, hoping that I was communicating just how much her tutelage had meant to me.  In the late hours back at home, I realized that my over-enthusiastic display had surely fueled her assertion that I remained as I had been decades before.

I have always relied more on gesture than on speaking, as if communicating a request for the salt across the table depended on the frantic illustration of a lunatic mime. Even as recently as last night, I dipped my hand in a bowl of red salsa as I was describing a poster I’d seen to my  dinner  companion. This habit of out-sized gesturing is of such long standing that a Humanities professor once clasped my hands between his, saying, “Now talk” and when I was struck dumb, laughed, released them and added, “Hmm. I  just wanted to see if you could. Guess not.”  I felt a certain vindication in later years when an emphasis on gesture was promoted as a key strategy for teaching English as a second language.  My gesticulations, bobbing and dancing around through years of teaching seemed to keep my elementary students’ attention, although they may have been placing bets on how soon and with which piece of classroom furniture I was most likely to collide.

One would think that such a dependence on kinesics would have made me a better student-actress in high school than I was. Our early training was in mime, and I began to shape objects in the air even in casual conversation. I prefer to characterize my over-the top moments onstage as a soul-deep desire to get my point across rather than a bone-deep klutziness. I was the Blue Fairy who leapt for the papier mache tree trunk near the footlights as part of a musical number in A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream and toppled it and myself into the front row of the audience. In another play I was a burglar hoping to avoid capture by jumping head-first into a large barrel that I did not see had been placed too far upstage. When I vaulted in it, the barrel tipped over and wedged itself between the back wall and the stage risers with me thrashing around inside it. A third time, I was prancing off stage as the Mother Bear of the Goldilocks trio and bounced off a pillar in the wings. Our teacher-director was impressed that I stayed in character as I plopped down on my backside to the cement floor, still Mama Bear wringing her hands under her chin.

A few years later my love of the communicative arts re-emerged in my teaching. Students love stories, and over the years I’ve taken a few workshops to refine my skills. One of these gave me just a taste of pure glory. It was held at a mid-town hotel. There, in a banquet room adjacent to the bustling dining area, a staff member from the Arizona Theatre Company was using Alvin Schwartz's  “Tales to Tell in the Dark” to play theatre games with the Tucson Tellers of Tales group. In one of the sessions, a small group was to mime the events of a story told by a single narrator. My character was the vengeful victim of a bully who’d died the week before. Not satisfied with just seeing him buried, I went to the graveyard on a pitch black night with the wind rising and the trees flailing (other gamers surrounding me, moaning and waving their arms about). I kneeled on his grave, working up the nerve to stab through the mounded dirt to ensure that my tormentor was truly dead and I was finally free. I looked up to see my fellow work-shoppers encircling me, drawing closer, moaning louder, reaching in and pulling away. I was so lost in the story that after plunging my butter knife deep into the pillow on the carpet (I was supposed to mime catching my coattail under the knife and so believe that the dead bully was pulling me down to join him), I dropped to the floor wailing in terror. The wailing tree spirits went silent. The lunch-time traffic in the restaurant across the hall stopped dead.  The restaurant manager came in to have a word with the director. The clatter and bustle next door slowly resumed, and the workshop participants drifted back to their seats.

I got up feeling sheepish and in a secret way, just a little satisfied. Ah, the power of the perfect marriage of motion and emotion. Surely you see what I mean.

Clueless in the kitchen, or adventures in food service

At home, a clean, well-lighted place

I have been maneuvering through daily life one-handed for the past three weeks after washing a wine glass in too big a hurry. This brings to mind similar accommodations after my mishaps long ago in restaurant kitchens. There were cuts and punctures (by which I discovered your living bones are actually pale green), burns or scalds (as on the eve of my wedding) and electrical fires (just two, but one was truly spectacular, with orange flames rising behind a chest-high bank of drawer-like ovens and bursts of sparks reflecting off steel-paneled walls).

Commercial kitchens are all straight-lined, right-angled steel and tile and the managers of those in schools and hospitals take the health inspections seriously. Early in my days as a part time galley slave I discovered that some retail restaurants can be vastly more casual about them. The two cafeterias I worked at while still in school were hygienic opposites. My mother was the kitchen manager of the one, and held herself, me and the entire staff to an “eat off the floor” standard of cleanliness. I doubt that eating from any surface at the other location was a truly prudent choice.

I was unsettled by the state of that kitchen from the moment I walked through it to reach the closet-like office in the back. There was standing water in the pock-marked concrete floor. Water bugs scurried ahead of me to dark corners where, I found out later, they hung out with the rats--all of whom had been given names. Every counter I saw was sticky, every cook’s apron was stained and smeared. The interview with the heavy-set, balding manager was brief (“You’re tuberculosis tested? You’ve had a tetanus booster recently?”) and paperwork for a transfer completed.  Whatever misgivings I had, economic expediency meant that come August when my sophomore semester at the U of A began and we were newly installed in married student housing, I needed to transfer to this more conveniently located branch. Doing so meant I could maintain my latest promotion (from line-server to 3rd cook!) together with its nickel raise past minimum wage, I could get there on a Suntran bus, and perhaps I would not be the only new employee. From the look of the place, no doubt a whole new crew was being hired.

Although I’d taken the bus home from the dorm every Friday afternoon during my freshman year, I was anxious about riding the bus four miles one way after a one mile walk from married student housing to the bus stop three nights a week. As it happened, the commutes to what I later named the E. Coli Kitchen were uneventful. The adventures were all onsite.

Patrons were fewer, generally older, and obviously poorer than the clientele I’d known. The older staff greeted their regulars with a fierce, defensive recognition of their common struggle to make do and get by. In a mix of compassion and carelessness, they combined questionable leftovers into menu items unsanctioned by the out-of-state corporate officials and offered these at lower prices. I could not reconcile this rough friendliness in the front of the house with their unconcern for anyone’s immune system in the back. I hoped that no one lingered over their meals. The safest course was to eat while the food was still well above the 140 degrees that inhibits pathogens.

The cooks’ intent was patently kind and I cannot say these plats du jour were inherently unwholesome, but their preparation was alarming. The cooks stopped short of actually smoking while handling the food, but any soup seasoned with fire-purified ash would have been safer than the one made with vegetables taken from the tub stored in the walk-in refrigerator under seeping boxes of raw chicken. As third cook it was my duty to keep that cold box clean, and that first night I wondered how long just ago my predecessor had been fired—or had quit.

My matter-of-fact re-organizing and scrubbing of the walk-in seemed to please the head cook. Trouble was, I was only there from Friday to Sunday. When I walked in for my second weekend shift, she jerked her chin over her shoulder toward the walk-in from where she sat on a milk crate in the back doorway, saying, “Hey, Miss College, grab a rag and get to. It’s been waiting for you all week.” Now I wondered how and with what the health inspector was being paid off. It couldn’t have been free meals.

Every Friday night for six weeks, I closed my eyes to the pervasive dirt, grease, and  spills in the kitchen. The soured, always matted floor drains were harder to ignore. The walk-in, as foul as it was, became both my duty and refuge. Hiding out in there meant I could avoid inadvertent comparisons to my mother’s kitchen that might land me in even more unpleasant cleanup. It helped, too, that the particular dank odors of the cold box were subdued in the still, cold air, that 40 degrees is not all that cold, and that the freakish metabolism of a nineteen-year-old allowed me to stay there for a long time.

On my last night, I spent most of my shift in the walk-in as usual. I threw out the latest round of unidentifiable fermenting objects. I sorted the remaining pans and used a big black Sharpie to label them with their contents and the date after first sealing them in fresh, tight plastic wrap. I wiped down each rack after first peeling away the thin but perversely elastic layers of congealed sauce that stretched from rod to rod of the open shelving. I scrubbed the crusted floor so that it could actually be seen to be tiled, although the grout remained black. At length, I scooted the scrub-bucket of bleach and detergent through the doorway toward the pot station and pushed my hip against the heavy door to close it. The door latched to with a satisfying click as I leaned back on it. While resting there I saw a giggling, shrieking line-girl run past me, followed three steps behind by a maniacal pot-boy swinging a drowned rat (Fred?) by the tail.

I walked slowly to the office, where I set down my apron on the manager’s desk. He raised an eyebrow, saying, “Couldn’t take it anymore, hunh?” I mumbled something pleasantly innocuous, but I recognized a strange new emotion as I made my way through the parking lot to the bus stop. I could not remember feeling contempt for another living person before.

Loving Greta

    Spring and all of her lovely rituals are upon us. At our little adobe abode that means planting seedlings, adopting desert tortoises, weeding, renovating the chicken coop and thinking about new baby chickens. It is impossible for me to look at little pullets and not remember how all this chicken keeping began… 

Loving Greta 

    The first time I walked into Sunny’s yard to meet my charges, I thought of you, “You’re bigger than I had expected.” Chickens had apparently shrunk in my memories of farms in Iowa. I didn’t realize when I thought that, how much bigger you were than expected. We took you home, we made you comfortable, we started watching you like children at a circus, and then I fell in love with you. With chickens. With all three of you, but mostly with you, Greta.

    The day I gave you dried apricots because they were one of my favorite treats and I wanted to be generous, you responded to my generosity by promptly burying the apricots. Enough said. Your message seemed clear; we were much different than I had naively assumed. You were a chicken and you did not care for the things I cared for. The next day I watched you dig them back up and gobble down your now ant covered treat. Enjoying them far more than I ever could. That was the day I fell in love with you. The day I realized that you had so much more to teach me than a television or a newspaper and that I should spend my morning cup watching you. 

    I learned your voices and your personalities and your spirits. When we brought new smaller chickens home; I watched Betty intimidate them and keep them corralled, I watched Rita pick on them to maintain the all important pecking order, and I watched them run to you for shelter. I could hear your cluck become more gentle and easily imagined the words, “Ooooh, it’s okay, they’re only teasing, they’re not so bad and one day you’ll be bigger than those old bitties.” Which wasn’t entirely true for all the younger ones, but you were right about Hortence and Dottie. You were right about Myrtle. I think secretly you were happy that Esther stayed small and still needed your protection. 

    The day I saw her protecting you, my heart broke. It is hard enough to be the lunatics who take their chicken to the vet. It is much harder when the vet tells you there is nothing left he can do.  I took you out to see one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen, with tiny fragmented clouds each glowing a different color: orange, purple, cerulean, poppy red, bleeding yellow, dying violet, blooming bougainvillea. At some point I learned that chickens see more spectrums of color than humans and I can wonder for the rest of my life what that sunset looked like to you on your last day here. 

    I wonder a lot of things now that you are gone. I wonder if you like the chicken statues I painted and placed under St. Francis over your grave. I wonder if the other chickens are jealous that I still sometimes spend my morning cup with you. I wonder mostly about how ridiculous this world is. How we learn some of our biggest lessons from some of the smallest creatures. How truly tiny you felt the last time I held you, and still so much bigger than I ever expected.   

Two Poems About My Son

As a mother and a poet, my son's life is often a favorite subject for my poetry. Here are two poems featuring him and written about a year apart. Looking back on changes even at his still very young age can wash me with melancholy, so I try to focus on the joys, the blessings and the beauty we have every day.

Feather Sail

Perhaps tomorrow

we will still build a sailing ship together

on the couch with your Chenilly blanket

perhaps the wooden frog will be our passenger

with Edie and Peep, the stuffy chicken and chick.

You may use the Lakenvelder hen’s feather

you found in the chicken coop

as a sail again,

the protoceratops as an astrolabe,

the bugle as a telescope,

all to guide us on our journey

across stormy seas

to exotic lands;

Mr. McGregor’s garden with Peter,

or the bowling alley with bumper lanes,

or to your friend Calder’s house in Santa Fe.

You may pull in the feather sail

and cuddle close to me

as we rock and sway

bravely through a hurricane.

You may raise the feather sail

and bring our ship safely back to shore.

Perhaps tomorrow we may do it all again,

but perhaps it was only for today.

 ~ Cassandra Wensel-Kanne 2010   

Diana Fritillary

Your hand

you are four years and eleven months old

and your hand

reaches toward mine,

gently stops me

from turning the page.

Tears are seeping

out to the banks of your thick lashes.

“Momma, look at that butterfly.”

The tears fall and you hold back a sob.

You point shakily at a

Diana Fritillary

Orange fenestration, fire,

chocolate and fragile edging

spots deviating down in size

painted delicately in the

upper corner of the page,

"Momma, it is so beautiful

that it is opening my heart

and making me cry."

So, I kiss your forehead

and you say,

“Momma, can you see it?

Can you?

Can you see it with your heart?”

Can I see anything with my heart?

Could I ever see anything with my heart?

I look at the butterfly

painted on the page,

the striking repeat of the pattern

the bold contrast of color.

Then I look at you

wipe the tears from your cheek,

I see the monsoon rains on the desert

and the moon just beginning to wane

on the night of your birth

I kiss you again,

look into your vulnerability, your hope,

your perfection

I see every star in the night sky

reflected on the surface of your tears

“I can, my love, I can see with my heart.”

 ~ Cassandra Wensel-Kanne 2011