learning from Trickster

Joe Migwans told me a great Trickster story today.

It got me thinking, as I walked home along the Yukon river, how important it is to learn from Trickster, how to laugh at Trickster, how to understand the Trickster in myself, and the society I live in.

This particular Trickster story involved berry juice and bear soup, a birch tree and a feast, muskrat and cooling a pot down.

This story got me thinking how it might be possible to be tricked so badly that it could become normal to work jobs that have no meaning, to pursue things we don't care about, escape reality and fail to live up to our responsibilities. If we don't have the opportunity to have Trickster show us reflections of ourselves than the Trickster in each of us will win out. From my brief walk home, it seems like we're tricking ourselves into systems that don's serve us to live full of joy/grief, which trick our thinking and affect us emotionally.

I was thinking about the land, and that the ways we are living are hard on the soil, water, and air. And that to be a well adjusted person in a society unhealthy for the earth is not a sign of individual health. It makes sense for individuals to feel dis-ease in themselves if our collective being is hurting.

Maybe it's time for us to tell/listen to Trickster stories, so that we can see ourselves in new ways.
So ask somebody who knows a story about Trickster and then once you know that story, tell it to others.

where I'm from

We are each from places
We are all part of families that connect us to the beginning.

We are also alive in geographies
Though the sustenance of our living may be more widespread as
the food that I eat is from Hazelton, Saskatchewan, California,
the clothes I wear from new zealand wool, woven in the united states
natural gas from alberta heats my house
electricity from ... bakes my potatoes and powers this computer...

I am largely ignorant of the places and people that sustain my life

I honour the living places of my life and accept the responsibilities to worship the earth through my living. I feel a praise/grief in my living relations - for this is where I'm from - and this may be more significant than tracing one's heritage.

It's time we deepen into relationship with the actual stuff of our lives so as to exhibit what others will describe as culture, emerging from the ways that we relate with life

Michale Stone suggests this as a deepening materialism in this short ted talk.

this life is to take part in that which is bigger than our self
and so I carry this body to these places to exercise gratitude by realizing the shrinking difference between myself and place as this body exchanges oxygen with carbon dioxide and tree breath.

Walking over land helps my body accept that which I find difficult to acknowledge.
My heritage and cultural legacy - the questions I have about colonization and the way those who have come before me had assumed a dominance - that continues today largely unquestioned.
I try to walk often - along roads, up mountains, down to water - to find myself in the places I call home, because it allows me the time to arrive when I get to where I'm going.

Today I asked,
"How do I introduce myself in a good way?"
And we laughed, and laughed, because nobody had ever asked that question before.

I think it has to do with walking. It's a human speed and helps conversation. It's also an earth speed, and allows for mushroom finding and berry eating.
Today I can't decide which I enjoy more. Thimble berries or blue huckleberries. Life is good.

Roche de Boule trail, Hazelton B.C.
click for larger view

Fox asked

I woke
having dreamt of a fox
and I needed to tell a friend.

conveniently I knew a married man who had been wed by a fox so I sent him an email.


I recounted to him that

i had found her near water
in a quiet spot
of what felt like a national park.

it was daytime
and i was carrying this black fox
with grey/white flecks
around in both my arms.

she seemed calm and content
i remember her slow breathing
as her body pressed into mine

I passed by people paddleboarding
down a steep river, akin to a waterfall,
and was amazed.

i met up with some other people
and a man told me that
the fox i was holding was an old female.

I realized she was a grandmother

there were other foxes socializing
with each other near where we were talking.

i put the fox down
and became worried
so we caught her
even though
she wasn't running away

As i held her again
i realized that it was crazy
to be holding this fox
as she is alive
in her own life

i put her down
and she asked me
'how are you guys running?'
to which i responded
"not enough"

it was a neat way to start the day

waves

love words if you will,
drink the music of poetry
revel in the poet

but know that you are loving yourself
as we see our reflection in this world

the real poem exists in
the living inspired by
these words

the real poem is
alive in your
living

for as much love
as exists between us
we are simply distracted
by the ever moving oceans of our
souls as we
swell and crest on this
oceanic planet

let us remember the shapes
of these moments and let go
as we eventually,
gracefully, reach the shore and
splash on to the face of
the great mystery

goose barley soup

The healing qualities of this meal
exist in the time between planting and harvest
the care and concern for those plants.

I'm reminded of September winds
The ones that winnowed the chaff from the seed

I'm reminded of the last warmth of fall sunshine
as we killed those geese, carefully plucking the down

The world is a better place
as I maintain a sensitivity to time and place
holding my own mortality in the passing life of a goose

The healing qualities of this meal
can be calculated by protein and nutrient
but far more significant is the closeness
this meal has brought me to life.

In very real ways I become the sunshine
captured by barley and the life force of the goose.

The hills covering the potatoes and careful
hoeing around the onions.

All of these actions
A part of
the regular healing
of being alive.

potlatch

conducting business
at the intersection between
privilege and responsibility
abundance and gratitude

The first time this name would
be held by a women in
89 years

on our way home
i realized

that knowledge never needed to be
written down - because history
is held in the living beating heart
of a culture that knows how to
feast itself

it was more like a wedding
this new chief
becoming married to the people

and
600 people listening
from 2 pm till past 10

rights of leadership
responsibility of leadership

and I thought of how we
conduct business in my tradition
and the discord of question period
in a house of, commons?

adversity - criticism - voting
positioning - exerting power over

the heart of a society
no longer directed by the sun
and the rhythms of our mother
who will be the one to feed our
children.

and she
would be our priority if we
lived for our children
but we've got a bit caught up
in our own perpetual adolescence

swift as

let's run through life
as curious as foxes
teasing one another.

light

floating on snow

so that the sight of
us
    and our tracks
           by daylight may
    inspire
      curiosity
           awe
              and smiles

Round dance

to dance gratitude
we shine and
others join

together the
circle grows
towards balance

we all leave
to the directions
carrying a new
medicine

Tobogan Creek / mt. Robson
stunning

Many hands reveal
that the work of making cloth
the ways we use our days
is as much about doing as being

creating cloth with
the hide of an animal
we shared an experience where we
each journeyed our own paths
through this shared experience
connecting with our selves

It didn't have to happen the ways it did

People have lived with these waters
with these trees
with these animals
for a long time.

Guolahan hosted us in this place
where grandfathers of grandmothers ....
have participated in the seasons
surviving, thriving, in this place

looking south west from Bulkley house

It didn't have to happen the ways that it did
the newcomers that brought whiskey and took a generation
after generation
after generation

It didn't have to happen the ways that it did
but it did.
We lived that week
on this land
understanding the intimate legacy of that great disruption
in our lives, in our bodies, in our minds
our spirits

[we spent a week with DueNeh and Guolahan on this land with 8 boys lost to their families, languages, ways of being, land, history. We did this in a good way. Deeply rich and meaningful.]

{click for larger view}

To not name the perpetual colonial realities alive in

our governance, politics, legislation, language, economics

and our own minds

is to give shame/guilt/anger/hurt/sadness 

power over us.

by naming, by not running away anymore,

we shed light on a darkness that we choose to let go.

what happened has happened.

we need to accept this - 

not as right, or just, or ok

but accept that our past was

residential schools

intentional assimilation

racist

Only in this way are we able to come together

Let us be honest

and live together

100 years from now

a hundred years from today
our children
and their children
will acknowledge the work we've taken part of
together.

together
we've been acknowledging our hurt
each of us, in our own way
about the indian residential schools
and the legacy

each in our own way
we accept that what has happened, happened.
in this way
we can live now.

now,
with gratitude having sat in that large circle
I walk taller having left shame and guilt
I walk with love for myself
and I'm willing to continue my work and play
as I belong.


http://returningtospirit.org/

can you find ben in the alpine?

always click for the full view

I've got to say, gaia is alive ...

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

New poem with film,
good fun.
for youtube go here

as a neighbour to the Gitxsan,
as a new person to the L'hedli Tenneh territory
I am thankful for the Gitxsan's political will, foresight, and perseverance.
This is happening now (dec.5th)
watch what 'the news' only talks about,



A New Beginning from Ardea Films on Vimeo.

Scott Harris, a tasteful mason

talk to Scott Harris if you want to build a dry stack wall, or carve beauty into stone.

Scott Harris budsirrah@hotmail.com

He lives in lovely New Brunswick

swimmer, together

Breath held herself tight as we

Jumped into the flow.

She is in love with the sky, though

She often finds herself yearning for the depths

And we dove right in.

dispite being divorced from her sky world
we find momentary peace as
I find a rock to hold on to as

She tugs this body upwards by his lungs.
herself fragmented in bubbles, racing

Towards the surface, following herself

She leaves. and

I chase her – eventually - falling back

Into the sky world with open mouth,

Nose. Breath is waiting, her patient warmth

At home in my lungs

Playing. Breath and breeze, flirting

Between shade and sunlight, romancing

With rain, love making as ocean’s spray

I’ve found her in all these places, resting

And running, swimming or sitting.

She takes care of me too, when I forget.

See, she’s not apart from me, she’s a part of me

Resting is when she comes into me so deeply as

Stars sing shadows on this face, eyes dancing

Back and forth in time with

Breath coming, leaving, coming, leaving

Flooding through me like spring rivers

Spilling home into ocean

Flooding through me like spring rivers

Spilling home into sky

Breath,

She holds herself tightly when we go

Swimming.