Silence is Golden

Americans are outspoken. It's part of our culture to open our mouths and say whatever we feel like, always, in every situation. Yadda yadda yadda. In some parts of the country, this value is so deeply inculturated that we believe if we do not speak, it's not healthy, or we're being sneaky, hiding behind our silence.

I've lived in the American south now for more than ten years, a place where belief in the value of keeping quiet is still intact. Slowly, over time, I've come to see that I don't always have to say everything I'm thinking. In fact, sometimes it's actually better to just keep my mouth closed. I would never have believed this, once upon a time.

Old habits are hard to kick; sometimes I blurt things out and then feel so stupid, or rude, or obnoxious. Or superfluous (word I learned in Miss Searcy's class). A very wise friend of mine believes it's good to think about what you hope to accomplish every time you speak. What is your motivation?

Clearly it will take a LOT of practice on my part to fully develop a new habit of saying less, thinking more about what I do say. And it's kind of excruciating to realize how often I speak with no motivation at all except to hear how witty I am, to entertain the listener. For heaven's sake. It's a big change of habit for me, but I'm working on it. Wish me luck!

Prisoners of War

I don't know anyone who would say that war is ever "good," though there are plenty who think certain wars are "just" or "necessary," or some other word like that. I'm not completely convinced that it's ever worth its horrors. Maybe, who knows? You tell me.

What I do know is that we humans are war-like. We're not the only aggressive species on earth, though our opposable thumbs make possible some truly hideous creations - sophisticated and deadly weapons, for instance. As bad as the shooting and killing (at least in my imagination) is the habit of imprisoning people we see as a threat, whether they are enemy soldiers, Jews, Japanese-Americans, or alleged members of Al-Quaeda. Criminal imprisonment is bad enough, but what we do to prisoners of war is beyond my comprehension.

The stories of the POW's taken during the Vietnam War are particularly awful. There's still a huge government searchable database for families and beloveds of the American soldiers who disappeared without a trace, at least 45 years ago, into the camps in N. Vietnam. After all this time, the MIA's are still lost; people are trying to track them down. The prisoners who came back from that experience were never the same - I'm thinking right now about ex presidential candidate John McCain. Because of the torture he endured, he can't raise his hands above waist-level. Unimaginable.


I'm puzzled by the quotation marks on this sign. Are they trying to convey that staying on the sidewalk isn't "really" honoring those who served but is just a rule they want to guilt you into obeying? Someone please explain?

I came of age during the time of the huge American protests against the Vietnam war, so I remember a lot about it. I remember a friend's older brother who served twice. The first time he went because he was drafted. The second time he went voluntarily because the drugs were so good over there. Within a year after he came back from his second tour of duty, he committed suicide. His story, sadly, is typical. People of my age can tell you countless stories about the sickness of that war. It left us so heartsick, it really did.

In general I have avoided the Vietnam Memorial here in DC, probably because of my memories from the 60's. It's a beautiful sculpture: elegant, powerful, wrenching. That memorial does everything a war memorial "should" do. But every time I visited it (in the past), I always felt like I was being boiled, even in the dead of winter. It felt toxic, harmful, viciously haunted, so I stayed away for the most part.



Yesterday I spent about an hour there, walking back and forth, listening to music on my ipod (mostly so as to avoid overhearing tourist talk - no offense to tourists but those conversations never enhance my experience), dancing around as I do when I'm trying to understand the energy of a place. I've never lingered so long at Maya Lin's wall.

I don't quite have the right language to describe what was happening there yesterday but I can say for certain that it was different than anything I've felt in the past. The walls of the memorial, so shiny and unusually reflective, seemed somehow porous, more like mesh screens than solid rock. Watching people touch the black granite, I half expected to see their hands go right through to another dimension.

Maybe it was the joyousness of the inaugural concert (it took place at that end of the National Mall) that shifted the energy. I felt even that day that the music was bringing a powerful healing to all those awful memorials down there (the Korean War, Vietnam War and the Lincoln).

Yesterday it felt like an exchange was taking place, a soul swap of some kind. The thought in my mind while I danced (mindful that the Park Police were keeping a close eye on my shamanic twirling) was that souls of soldiers from both sides of the conflict have been stuck, like POW's, in a hideous post-life limbo, a prison camp for the dead. Yesterday I sensed that those stuck souls were finally crossing back and forth through the mesh screens of black granite and etched names, guided by Vietnamese ancestors. It felt distinctly like those souls were finally going home.

Could it be true that the stuckness of the Vietnam War is coming unstuck at last? I'm just guessing of course. I wonder, am I the only person feeling this? If so no doubt what I'm experiencing is something in me that's coming unstuck. Felt bigger than that, though. Who knows? Below is a "walking tour" of the memorial. Take a stroll through, will you, and tell me what you feel? Thanks.



"I saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial not as an object placed into the earth but as a cut in the earth that has then been polished, like a geode." --Maya Lin

Now Who Am I?

For a long time I refused to admit that I had terrible allergies, even though every spring during tree and grass pollinating season, I was a miserable mess of sneezes, congestion and a terrible itchiness all over. When I finally came to understand my environmental sensitivities, I became obstreperous,* tried to carry on with all my outdoor explorations in spite of the fact that at times I was practically in a state of anaphylaxis.

Finally, don't even remember why, I broke denial (or more likely, the allergies broke it) and I took it on, not just as a condition but as a part of my core identity. I am a person with terrible springtime allergies. I created a philosophy around it, i.e. My only health challenge is allergies. I began staying inside with the windows closed while the green dust flew around outdoors, and though I did feel sorry for myself for missing out on the prettiest moments in spring, I was finally resolved to my fate. I might as well have said I AM my springtime allergies. For heaven's sake.

This year (just like last year) I'm having a surprising, happy identity crisis because all around me people are sneezing while I am not. Yes I'm seeing the Sufi acupuncturist regularly and I'm sipping my Chinese medicinal tea and too when it's really bad out there I am retreating to hermetically sealed spaces for an hour or two until the worst of it blows over. Even so, I'm not reacting to the pollen like I once did. I'll sneeze here and there, blow my nose, but then that's it. The histaminic reaction to pollen that once upon a time brought me to my knees at this time of year can no longer get itself fully organized.

My new identity: I am a person with MILD seasonal allergies, as long as I address them with Chinese medicine. It's a whole new me.

*Obstreperous is one of the many words I learned in Miss Benny Searcy's high school English class. She was red-faced, cross, funny, and always smelled like metabolizing alcohol, but she was a great teacher. She died recently, so she's been on my mind more than usual, though I always think of her when I use the words I learned in her class - ascerbic, recalcitrant, obstreperous. Hail and farewell Miss Searcy. May you rest in peace.

Shamanic Assignment

DISCLAIMER: I try mostly these days to keep my shamanic activities off the blog, because really my spiritual path, in this time and place, is so weird. I apologize, in advance, for giving any of you the willies. Sometimes I try to think of what I do as performance art, though the Sufi acupuncturist has told me it's disrespectful to diminish my spiritual path, no matter how far out of the mainstream it may be. The bottom line is, my shamanism doesn't hurt anyone or anything. I don't think others should (or even could) follow the same path since it's so idiosyncratic. Best of all, I maintain a sense of humor about it most of the time. I know, I perhaps do not always have both oars in the water. Oh well. --end disclaimer--

Here's how it happened. First, I became entranced with the sound of Huong Thanh's voice. I can't stop listening to her music. I used words like "haunting" and "eerie" to describe it. I even said "It's like the ancestors are talking to me." (See sidebar for my exact words.)

A couple of days after, when I sat down to post to the blog - that was yesterday - out came a few paragraphs about ghosts. Even as I was writing, I was thinking, "This is weird. Why am I writing about ghosts in May?" A couple of hours after I posted, I remembered Memorial Day is just around the corner, a holiday that celebrates dead soldiers. The dots were beginning to connect, but I still didn't get it.

At the very moment I began to wonder why they chose the end of May to celebrate the Dead (shouldn't Memorial Day coincide with late fall?), about a hundred motorcycles sped past my window. There were so many of them it was impossible to ignore. I thought, Hey, it's too early for Rolling Thunder. (Rolling Thunder is an event put together by Vietnam Vets in celebration of Memorial Day. They parade all over DC on their Harleys and then gather at Maya Lin's incredible, powerful, heart wrenching Vietnam Memorial.

Indeed it is too early for Rolling Thunder, and as I love to say, you can't plan for the timing of all those motorcycles rumbling past just as I was thinking about dead soldiers and Memorial Day.

Finally it all came together in a narrative that my consciousness could understand. The Vietnamese ancestors ARE speaking, whispering, gathering. I can "hear" the whispers because it's what I do, and because I've practiced listening to the subtle energies for so many years. I believe the ghosts of the Dead from the Vietnam War are stirring a lot more than usual. I could feel it but my mind was unable to articulate what I was experiencing until yesterday when, looking at my blog, I noticed the juxtaposition of the sidebar with the post, and remembered the motorcycles. Finally the pieces fell into place.

And so you see this is how I "decide" to go on shamanic assignment. Clearly it is not a rational process, but then mysticism by its very nature is never rational is it?

I'm looking forward to visiting the Vietnam Memorial tomorrow or Wednesday. I'll take my rattle, listen to my theme song on my ipod or in my head where it is running like a tape loop. I will open my mind and heart to the energies there, probably dance around a little bit. Who knows?

Now, finally I am conscious that Something Is Happening, that I'm being called to dance in shamanic alignment with whatever that Something is. I am a shaman, for whatever that means, but my goodness sometimes I am so dense when I'm being called.

My mind is always the last to know.

No Such Thing?

There are lots of ghosts in and around Washington DC. In fact it is the most haunted city I've lived in. The ghost demographic here includes a lot of dead soldiers, which makes sense geographically because of all the Civil War battlefields that form a ring around the city. Also, at least according to the cosmology of Reya, ghosts are attracted to monuments built to honor them. I think they tend to cluster around the war memorials, perhaps looking for healing and release, or maybe they feel they belong there. There don't seem to be ghost "communities." As I experience it, every ghost feels that he or she is the ONLY pale wanderer among us. I believe being a ghost must be kind of a lonely existence (maybe "non-existence" is a better word).

Not only is DC haunted by human ghosts, but animal ghosts as well. There are lots of dead horses that I figure must have also died in battle, because otherwise how could a horse spirit get caught on this plane?

I speak matter-of-factly about ghosts because to me they are "real." And although mostly, in American culture at this moment in history, I'm thought of as someone who perhaps doesn't have all her dirt in one spot for believing in them, I try to remind myself that I'm not the only person who has ever "seen" ghosts. In fact in most parts of the world throughout history humans have acknowledged and co-existed with ghosts, written countless stories and poems, made paintings and movies about them. Even in our culture of "reason" many people have a ghost story or two to share around a campfire or at Halloween.

What's funny (funny-weird) to me are the people who summarily dismiss my relationships with the Dead, write off millenia of human experience in favor of disbelief. And they're so smug about it. What's that all about?

Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.

-- Wallace Stevens.

Pecked

On this morning's walk I heard baby mockingbirds for the first time this year. It's a pathetic sound they make when they first hatch; sounds like a cheap plastic whistle. Hard to believe that in a few weeks they'll be able to sing like virtuosos.

In fact there are a lot of just hatched birds in the neighborhood. I know this because their parents are in the midst of their annual cycle of territorial fierceness. Not only do they swoop and peck at Jake (who has no interest in finding or eating their chicks) but they swoop and peck at me, too.

Probably I shouldn't be insulted, but I am. I reassure them repeatedly that I'm just passin' through, but do they listen? Cranky little modern day dinosaurs! Are they channeling Alfred Hitchcock, or what?

Lush Life

Green is the color most often associated with the heart chakra. It is associated with healing, and also, as they explained at the Berkeley Psychic Institute, green shows us how to take "the next step." Green is the color ecological activists use to describe a lifestyle that's in harmony with the natural world. Green means brand new (as in green behind the ears). Green means GO.

Here in the swamp where I live, the micro-season of pastels is over and the season of green is in full swing. I'm not saying that's the only visible color, oh no. Gardens will sport every imaginable flower between now and autumn, coming in waves with the micro-seasons of summer. But green will prevail. From underfoot to the canopy overhead, DC is as green as green can be, and will remain so until August when summer begins to fade.

I believe that my brain benefits from its visual summertime bath of green, and so of course also my mind, heart and body. The rain has stopped and the sun has come out, revealing a world of deep, delicious green. Welcome summer!


I stopped every ten steps and took a pic as I walked half the length of Lincoln Park.
This is my crude attempt to take you on a green "walking tour."