PAIN IN MY HEART

caterpillar among the wildwood flowers

 

Up this morning, took sunflower seeds to toss on the gravel where I feed the crows, the doves, the squirrels, whoever finds it, and a handful of carrots for the donkeys. They were up the meadow out of sight. I brayed to Jack. He brayed and came running. His front hooves slid about four feet in the thin mud at the gate, wet from yesterday's rain. It's fun for him to slide in the mud. His eyes sparkled. Jack has a playful spirit that finds play easily. I was especially happy to see them this morning, talked to them while they munched, and rubbed the underside of their necks. They like to be rubbed at the point on their backs where the lines of dark chocolate cross. When I want to touch them, this is the place I start. It calms them down immediately. I make it a point to rub Jack's neck after rubbing Jenny. They pay attention. Jenny goes first for carrots, for grain, for everything. Jenny shows her jealousy up front. Jack holds his jealousy such that I don't see it, but he gets back at Jenny. Feeling jealousy puts him in a bad mood. Jack automatically defers to Jenny, his babydoll, and Jenny's jealousy requires being first. I've learned their individual natures by now. As long as Jenny goes first, we have peace  in the meadow. No way could I ever change a donkey's nature it was born with. Jack adjusts his behavior to Jenny's jealousy about being first, and I do too, so we flow together smoothly. As we humor her jealousy, she needs to express it less and less, which eases her mind.

 

queen anne's lace

 

The morning I realized Caterpillar was gone, Jenny and Jack felt my sorrow. They were especially still. I saw it in their eyes. They could feel what I was feeling. I remembered the time Jenny lost her first baby, me crying with her, my arms around her neck hugging her while we both cried. I held Jack around the neck and cried with him awhile. Both were in deep mourning. I felt like I bonded with them on a deeper level that day sharing their sorrow. This time, they shared my sorrow. They knew Caterpillar lived with me in the human barn. A couple times I held her to let them smell her, one at a time, feel her fur with their lips. She pushed her face down into the crook of my arm. Their heads were bigger than her whole body. They were ok from a distance, but up close, they were frightening. I wanted them to be familiar with her scent, to understand Caterpillar belongs here so they would not hurt her if she were to walk into the meadow. I know she has. I found her once curled up in a bed of grass with wildflowers all around, fairly deep into the donkey meadow when they were in the meadow across the creek.

caterpillar walks among the wildwood flowers

 

Back to the house, I brewed some Sumatran coffee, called Carole and we talked an hour or more. All morning, Caterpillar dwelled in the front of my mind. I read some in a Cormac McCarthy novel and put on a documentary from yesterday's mail, Geronimo and the Apache Resistance. It took my mind off Caterpillar right away. I felt the people, felt their anguish, their determination. I felt like I was there with them. I wrung and twisted, gnawed a thumbnail, tied up in knots on the inside, feeling what those people went through. I'd read enough about them that all the generals engaged in their genocide were familiar names and faces. I felt a deep love for the Apache people. Throughout my childhood, I read about Indians, saw movies, tv shows, identified with the Indians. I knew early that white man spoke with forked tongue. There was no white man in my world that didn't lie to me, including the preacher. All of it was fake Indians, but I knew it. I thought it ridiculous the directors and producers used white guys with dark tan makeup and wigs. However, I lived in the white world and knew white attitudes toward the Indians I did not share, would never expect white film makers to make a film using real Indians. A few were made eventually, but nobody cared.

black eyed Susans and queen anne's lace

I was moderately devastated by the end of the documentary,  though knew their fate already from reading. I came out of it thinking about how devastating love can be sometimes, Geronimo radicalized by losing his wife, kids and mother to white soldiers. I was shaken to the core with the story of the Apache resistance. I have chosen for self the path of love. My unconditional love for Caterpillar made losing her a wound to the heart. My purpose has been to allow heart to open, to go about everyday life with an open heart. I was still reeling from losing my baby when I took in this documentary of the genocide of people I appreciate so powerfully it felt like I surely had some past lives among the Apache. I recall in childhood, a long time before I heard about reincarnation, a day when I became concerned about my white skin. I realized my people would not recognize me in this lifetime. I was born among the enemy. What could I do? Nothing but live out my life as one of the people that killed my people, isolated from my true people an entire lifetime for being born white. It is said, be careful what you hate; we become what we hate. I must have hated whiteman. I'd guess the white population has a large number of Indians trapped in white bodies for hate.

black-eyed susans and queen anne's lace

It is so very difficult to attempt to live in this world with an open heart. To do so, I allow vulnerabilities. I have come to believe shutting down vulnerabilities hardens and closes down a heart. I lived so much of the early life with a closed heart, it took awhile to allow it slowly to open, slowly from fear. I know how it hurts to lose a loved one, cat, dog, human. Caterpillar and I grew closer and closer in the recent months and years. I thought about it sometimes, when it is her time to go, I'm really going to feel some pain. That's ok. Eighteen years of unconditional love both ways is worth a few days of intense sorrow, weeks and months of grief. I've come to see grief is the last gift I can give my friend. I go ahead and feel it, unafraid, knowing from experience I come out of a period of grief with an inner clarity I did not have before. My mind was occupied today with how painful love can be sometimes. It's not all about Cupid shooting candy arrows. I've learned that real love is about engagement, not talking like an undertaker. I've even wondered if I over-loved Caterpillar, literally loved her to death. No. There is never too much love.

caterpillar

photos by tj worthington

 

 

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GERONIMO

     rain splash by tj worthington

Started reading GERONIMO: His Own Story. I like about it that it is in Geronimo's words, translated. The translation and the writing of it in English was originally published 1906. I'm so glad it was not written in 19th century American written language. I say this because I have seen a great difference between how somebody thinks who has Geronimo's experience and somebody whose experience is schooling and white people urban. Very different ways of thinking and seeing oneself. I like the straight-forward thinking of the American Indians. They lived by the wisdom of generations of first hand spiritual experience. They had shamans who knew the spirit world. They understood that this world runs in line with the spirit world. They understand there is more going on in this life than money. They understood flow. I skipped the lengthy introduction, because I'm not interested in a white man's analysis of someone no white man can understand. I want to go straight to Geronimo's own words, his own way of putting a story together. I like how he started with the Apache creation story. He was a shaman who kept it from white people. They didn't know what that meant anyway. Witch doctor, as they would call it in that time, is so far from what a shaman is, that it has no meaning at all. Like the white men did not understand the spiritual in the Indians, the Indians did not understand the absence of the spiritual in white men.


My admiration for Geronimo is along the lines of admiration for Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Cochise. These are men who struggled for their people to the very last possible moment. None was afraid of dying. Every one a great warrior. Sitting Bull also a shaman. Crazy Horse was known to have a psychic sense. In childhood I identified with the Indians. I believe it is because of several lifetimes in the past among American Indian tribes. I've come to suspect that people who become "Civil War buffs" were in the Civil War a few lifetimes back. I've been an Indian Wars buff all my life from the Indian side. In the neighborhood as a child, the other boys wanted to play cowboys or cavalry. I was the Indian. All of them against me. When I'd get shot, I fell down and died, got up and was another Indian. I could never play white man; it would have been betrayal of my true people. White man was the enemy. I liked that arrows, spears and tomahawks are silent. I don't recall the age I was, and I don't remember where I first started hearing about Indians. Kids played cowboys and Indians. Possibly it's from automatically being drawn to the Indian side that I took an interest in Indians. Boy Scout interest in Indians I couldn't go with. It was seen from the side of the white man, from the cavalry. Some years ago I bought a book about the Indian Wars, started reading it and found its perspective was from the side of the US Army. Stopped reading. I didn't care about what was behind what they did.

Sherman was as ruthless in the Indian War as he was in the Civil War. My only feeling about Sherman is the shame for humanity that his mother did not have an abortion. He's one of the figures in history I truly revile with what seems to me good reason. Several years ago, in the Nineties, visiting Atlanta, a Vedanta monk from southern California was visiting a friend of mine there, another Vedanta monk. Over lunch we had a pleasant conversation. At one point he mentioned his great grandfather was General Sherman. I fell into shock and could only say, "Don't tell anybody else. This is Atlanta. I wish you hadn't told me." Despite knowing this guy had been in a monastery thirty to forty years and didn't get out much, that he had nothing whatsoever to do with the Indian War or the Civil War, something snapped inside and I couldn't hardly face him anymore. I wouldn't want to be held accountable for any of my great grandfathers' minds. I knew then what I know now, that what he said was no more than an aside. It had nothing to do with him having William Tecumseh's experience or even very much of his blood. But it still got to me and I couldn't stop it. Something flooded over me that was deeper than I was aware of. In Atlanta of all places.

I like about Geronimo's account of his story that he speaks of experience. He didn't get foggy in abstractions, generalizations, ideas, conclusions. He talks like the old mountain people who told their stories by experiences. He is not constrained by denial nor making a good impression. The man asked for his story, here it is. He opened his story with the tale of the beginning of Apache. It is quite a good story. It has an understanding from the spirit world perspective. I'm inclined to take the "myth" for literally how it happened, though from the perspective of spirit world. How it manifests on earth in people and culture is quite different, yet follows the same flow. Like where we are now in Western Civ is in the time of the Revelation near the end of the story. The story is full of devils, dragons, demons, angels and visions. It's the same with the Apache story. It's their story told in the spirit. The Indians were tapped into the spirit world that was shut out in early Old Testament times, all the way back then in the progression we call civilization. The only way I can let go of my regret to be a part of the people that committed genocide with intent is to see it as process in God's unknown ways of raising collective human consciousness. I don't know whose consciousness was raised. I've come to see that in God's view death is the blink of an eye. It's time for souls to change clothes, learn the scientific method, get on with discoveries on the earth, in space and within. Looking at it through God's eye makes even the slaughter of the buffalo something I can come to terms with.


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