BAT MEDICINE AND PLAY

neighbor gary chauffeur of trees and sky

 

Brought more hay for donkeys up from the barn before the rain. I can fit three bales in the trunk of the car with lid up. Park beside the road and roll the bales down the hill to the place I stack haybales. A blue tarp protects them from the rain. Donkeys have a ball when I deliver new hay. Jenny and Jack stand at the corner of the fence ready to watch, like me waiting for the mailman, expecting a new book in the mail. It alarms them slightly, the bales rolling down the hill. Jack jumps and frolics in a small circle. Jenny stands back and watches. Neighbor Gary came down the road in his PT Cruiser and stopped. I stepped up the hill to the road to visit for a few minutes. We talked about baby donkey and I noticed a red bat flying up and down the road, cavorting, playing, up and down, in circles. It looked like the bat was indeed playing, putting on a bat dance in the air for me personally. It flew back and forth, about a hundred feet up the road one way, then about a hundred feet down the road the other way, this way, that way. I couldn't stop watching it. I'd never seen such a demonstration of bat flight in the past and knew I never would in the future. I gave it my full appreciation.

 

find the bat

 

Attempted to take some pictures of the bat, but none of the still pictures worked out. The camera focused on the trees in the near distance, putting the bat out of focus, it's in swift motion too, I could not find the bat in the still pictures. Made a brief video in which  the bat, a speck, can be seen flying for maybe two seconds. The air above the road along there is a channel for air flow between my trees and the bank across the road. The bat flew from one end of my trees to the other, leading me to believe the open air along that stretch of road is a good place for a bat to find flying bugs. I googled red tree bat, found a description, notes about their habitat and how they live. And red tree bat is what they're called. I had several good looks at it flying by. Can see it clearly closing my eyes. I asked Gary to step outside the car to see it, billing the flight a once in a lifetime moment. A time came I was impressed by the bat's stamina. It flew for so long we stopped looking and went about or ways. Birds need rest after extended flight, but the bat kept on flapping wings, cavorting, diving, circling. It looked like it was putting on a show, though I doubt it was aware of being watched, though an observer does change things. 

sofia observes the primate

 

In the house, I went to Jamie Sams' book, Medicine Cards, to see what bat represents. The book came with cards, each having a picture of a form of wildlife, like bear, dragonfly, hawk, deer, skunk, 52 of them. It is a form of consulting chance, like tarot, I Ching, and others. In the Native American way, medicine means anything that improves one's connection to the Great Mystery and to all life. A few pages in the book tell the spiritual gift of each animal, bird, reptile or bug. Once, a hawk flew above the hood of my 78 Toyota pickup for about a tenth of a mile, looking back over its shoulder at the primate through the windshield. At home I looked up hawk to see what the hawk might be saying. One of the aspects of Hawk medicine is a message that I should circle above my life and examine it from a higher perspective. I take a visitation by one of the animals for the same as drawing one of the cards. It felt so much like the bat was telling me something, I looked it up. In every case, Bat signals rebirth of some part of yourself or the death of old patterns. Bat represents what is called the shaman's death and rebirth. Rebirth is the main theme of the bat. 

miss ed says this is different

being a donkey

Two strong cases of rebirth came into my life lately with a kitten in the house and a donkey foal in the meadow. Reading of bat I felt recognition that rebirth, a change of patterns, was in the works. Before kitten came into the house, I was feeling fairly glum. Caterpillar was gone and my heart was mourning her. Jenny kept on expecting. I faced Jenny's expectation with sorrow, hoping, daring not to hope, her baby would live and be in good health. I did not want Jenny to suffer again her grief from losing her first baby to premature birth last year. I still miss Caterpillar who lived here eighteen years, though sorrow turned to joy when Sophia entered the house. Old patterns going away. Caterpillar leaves her old cat body, Sophia new in her cat body. The successful birth of Miss Ed turned sorrow to joy like bringing Sofia home.  Feeling a renewed sense of my own life. Sophia has taught me how to play. We have play time every day. Noting the value of play courses through my mind. I play better with four year old Vada from awareness of play's importance, and how to play, not just in child development, but all along the way.

 

vada

 

 

 

*

 

 



MY LIFE IN THE THRILL KILL WORLD

donkey jen

It is a moderate time of winter this week. A few days of sunlight and cold. The sun makes the cold feel better than cold under dark clouds. By chance, I saw a weather report for the next week. It looks like every day above freezing and every night below freezing. It's not bad. The floor is not quite so cold. After maybe four winters with two bird feeders, the bird community has worked out a flow that works for all concerned. Blue jays, one black and white woodpecker with red on top of its head, and other big birds go to one feeder. Chickadees dart in for a seed between the big birds. Snowbirds, nuthatches, chickadees, the smaller birds use the other feeder. Cardinals go to both. The birds have an understanding among themselves, something like the way animals of the African plain gather around a watering hole in peace. The family of red squirrels that live in the pines around the house use the feeder the small birds go to. Gray squirrels from the trees across the road use the one the big birds go to. The squirrels don't take everything. They eat what they want and go on. I throw seeds on the ground for the squirrels so they won't go to the feeders so much. They're not a problem, but the birds have to wait when a squirrel is at the feeder. I see the birds in peace with each other, the whole variety of birds, big to small. The blue jays are not aggressive with the smaller birds. They wait their turn when another bird is at the feeder. They perch on the rhododendron branches waiting for next opening. They live in peace. The feeders are the communal station for nearby birds. The hawks know the feeders are here. Among the tree limbs and rhododendron is not an easy place for a hawk to maneuver. They wait outside the grove of trees to nail birds coming and going. I suspect one is living in a grove of white pines up the hill behind the house. I hear it from time to time. I've seen a sparrow hawk fly in here, but it didn't do any good. The birds scattered. The hawk had no reason to wait, perched on the bird feeder, and flew. 

donkey jack

At first, I didn't like the idea of the hawks invading my bird sanctuary. It wasn't long before I caught on. The feeding station is here to feed hawks too. They're birds, they live here, it's communal, they're welcome. They're part of the balance. I once saw a Cooper's hawk land just beyond the window, a big bird with impressive wingspan. It looked in the window, saw me and flew. A red tail lives nearby. I see it sometimes sit on a wire or sail by. It is Justin's hunting buddy. When he was using his tree stand, he said the red tail would fly up and perch on a branch uncannily close to him. Soon after, a deer would appear. He learned the hawk knew he was hunting. The boom of the rifle did not make the bird fly. It stayed in place, just a few feet away. The hawk knew Justin was a predator too, who went after the big animals the hawk couldn't handle. The hawk knows Justin's truck. I think of the thousands of years the Indians lived in peace with mountain lions, rattlesnakes, bears, wolves. Europeans discovered the world was round and went looking for gold. The age of discovery on one hand---the age of genocide on the other. They not only annihilated Indian civilization on two continents, but killed about everything else too. Killing became American tradition unto an attitude pervasive all my life I trained self away from: if it's living, kill it. Buffalo Bill's genocide of the plains buffalo made his name, got him fame and fortune, ostensibly to starve the Indians into submission. Someone I know heard something on the deck in the night. It was a possum. He went and got his gun and shot it. And I say within, Wha? I wanted to say, It was only passing through. He knew. Something to kill. Easy target. Hear the gun go boom. Nailed the sucker. Good shot. By this time in the life, I have emotional, as well as physical, reactions I suppress from view hearing somebody tell about killing something. I'm not a good actor.

donkeys and their shadows

I've noticed my hunting friends like to watch my face while they tell me about a kill. I do my best to keep a poker face, which gives me away. I've heard some stories that make me want to cry. The hardest time I had keeping reaction from showing in my face was the time my friend Jr told me about shooting a hoot-owl out of a tree at a hundred yards, watching my face to see me hold it. One of the great ironies of my life came the night of the morning Jr left the body. Parking at home, when I opened the car door to get out, I heard a hoot-owl in a tree so close my first thought was, why didn't you fly when the car drove up? Next thought, It's Jr telling me he's all right, saying hi and thank you. I wondered why he chose an owl to speak through. At the house I looked up owl in Jamie Sams' book, Medicine Cards. I already knew the wisdom part, but wanted to see what else the book had to say. Owl fit Jr. He was the one I call the only man I've known all along the way who had true wisdom. I found the owl is also the deceiver. It flies on silent feathers and sees the unknown. Both these aspects of owl point particularly at Jr. I was not the only one who knew him to see the deceiver, but knew I was the only one to see his wisdom. I mentioned to two of his friends of many years, separately, a few weeks after he'd been gone, "Jr was the only man I've ever known I'd say without hesitation had wisdom, the real deal." I knew neither one would allow him wiser than themselves. Also knew neither one would see wisdom in him or anywhere else. It's a bible word with no meaning in the now, like prophet or king. It's not a word you hear much on tv. Both men without much school education, though both with PhDs and post-docs in experience, answered after a pause of a few seconds in the same words, "Jr did have some wisdom about him." I took it for affirmative, knowing neither one had seen wisdom in Jr, consciously, and knew both had seen it unconsciously. I wanted to bring it into their consideration to add a new dimension to their memory of Jr.

found on a maple

I personally do not like guns, though had two that were given to me, didn't want either one. After several years of catching dust, I gave them away to get them out of the house. I'm of the belief that guns attract guns. I also believe I'd rather be killed than kill, though haven't had a chance to test it and don't want the chance. I do not believe I'm safer with a gun. A possum wants to sleep under the house, you're welcome. A coon wants to eat leftovers at a bird feeder in the night, you, too, are welcome. It's communal. Coyotes come around in the night, I don't need to kill them. I step outside and yell big and loud, GIT. The giant's left his barn. The coyotes leave. My reputation as a human precedes me. Everything is afraid of humans. The animals left in the wild tell their babies the humans can kill you just by seeing you, they go boom and you're dead. A wild animal weaned by its mother cannot be tamed. A wild animal brought up from birth by humans is easily tamed; it hasn't been trained by mother who knows to avoid humans, rule number one in the wild. They'll kill you just for living. American cops kill three people a day, one of them an unarmed black man, woman or child. It's not safe to be a human in America either. Then we have the homicides and all the other -cides. My way in this world is to go in peace. Merely having a gun in my mind is not peace. Some friends taught me to fill half gallon plastic fruit juice jugs with water and blow them away. I had a .45 that shot magnum hollow points. I went out one day and blew holes in a few. Never touched it again. Hot dang, blew up a plastic bottle. I liked the balance of the weight in my hand. I liked the feeling of power when it went boom. OK, I experienced it, now what? I'm suspicious of "power" so readily available. As for the balance, a brush feels better in my hand. I'm of the belief that guns, like money, create more problems than they solve. A gun is an instrument of hate. I don't trust hate either.    

yard art

*

HAWK MEDICINE

red-tail hawk

It is bitter cold the last couple of days and nights. The temperature did not touch 30 today. The floor is cold. I've let the venetian blinds down to lessen the cold coming through the window glass. Heat runs all the time. It's too cold to concentrate on anything. Reading is all right with feet up on footstool, a foot and a half above the floor. Caterpillar's food in the bowl on the floor is cold as the floor. Sometimes I wonder how she likes eating her food that cold. Then I realize she's done it all her life. She knows no other way. If I'd put it in the microwave to warm it up, she'd let it wait until it was cold to eat it. The floor is cold. I keep a heater by her two beds, one bed on either side of it. On days when it is this cold, I tend to want to stay in bed and sleep. But there comes a time I can't sleep any more and the bed gets boring and I have to get up and stir. I tried reading, but Caterpillar then sits on the floor beside the chair and meows at me until I give up reading and pick her up. She doesn't do that often, so I don't have a problem with it. Cat behavior. Get used to it or don't live with a cat. Hairballs and puke go with cats too. I always wear house shoes when I walk in the house at night. Stepping on a wet hairball barefooted is disgusting as seeing a picture of Ted Nugent.

My head is floating a variety of images. The image that comes to the front is one from dreams during a nap a couple days ago. Three times in three separate dreams during the same nap, I saw the red-tail hawk that maintains the territory of the mountain around my house. In the dream I saw the red-tail flying low over the meadow that runs to the east and the south of the house, maybe 10 to 20 feet above the ground, sailing with wings out, not flapping, sailing like the wind was pushing from behind, pushing the hawk through the air like a bullet. The hawk flew so fast it had a bit of a blur to it. Seeing it three times, exactly the same and in the same part of the meadow, I took it to mean pay attention. I picked up my book of the Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams, and looked up hawk. Hawk is said to be the messenger from the world of the grandfathers and grandmothers that lived before us. It is a call to pay attention to messages from the spirit and pay attention to omens. Hawk has a keen eye and a bold heart. Hawk flies close to the light of Grandfather Sun. In my symbolism, the Sun is my spiritual master, Meher Baba. It has to do with paying attention to messages from my Master, possibly some awareness is on its way to me at high speed. The hawk was not circling above, but sailing effortless and low, in a straight line, parallel to the ground, like an arrow. It wasn't like the hawk was hunting, rather enjoying the thrill of flying really fast.

Recently in weeks and months I've been feeling kind of bold of heart. Nothing much scares me and I have an ongoing attitude that anybody pushing me around will be pushed back. Though I know the spiritual path does not encourage revenge, I feel no problem being the active return on you-get-what-you-give. In this time of my life I want to be the active part of the return. I want to see the return and have an active involvement in it. I feel like if somebody threatens me they better be ready to back it up. I've never been like this before. It was threatened out of me in childhood and I never developed it as an adult. Though now, standing tall for myself feels like the natural next thing. It feels like it fits. I say to myself that it's not doing what Jesus said of turn the other cheek; it's not the Way for somebody on the spiritual path to act. Then I remind myself the spiritual path is not about being good. It is about being bad too. It is about the whole life experience, both sides of the coin. After spending so many years on my spiritual path looking to do "good" by it, I forget the human part of myself needs to breathe and stretch its muscles. Too often, I will not give my human self expression because I assess it not good for the spiritual path. My spiritual path is not about denying my humanity. It is about embracing my humanity, my forgetfulness, anger when provoked, my psychology, allowing myself to dislike somebody I can't stand.

That's it, allowing myself. I can allow myself to cuss a streak when something pisses me off. I feel it, so why not let it express freely. It's important to ease off of Xtreme vulgarity and hurtfulness when somebody else is around, not involve them in my own moment of allowing my humanity when it is not hurtful of anyone around me. If it is hurtful to me, I'm willing to take the return. I'm wondering if I'm in a time of my inner growth of allowing my humanity after several years of teaching my humanity principles of the spirit. I don't mean it to suppress my humanity. One evening several months ago talking with Justin, he asked what I thought God wanted of us. I took a moment on that one. Justin pays attention to what I say and I didn't want to lead him down a blind alley by some cliche I heard along the way. I wanted to give him the best answer I could find. First thing in my mind: God does not want. God allows. Then I saw it. I said, "God wants us to live our lives." How we live our lives is our concern. Free will. The word to live is the key. God is life itself, so living our lives, we act out God. I feel like it means to be actively engaged in one's own life. If I wanted to climb in the ring with Anderson Silva and get my ass kicked from here to yonder, I suspect God would say: do what you gotta do; don't worry, be happy.

The medicine cards interpretation puts emphasis on hawk circling high above looking at one's life from another perspective, seeing it from above. But my hawk was close to the ground sailing in a straight line, fast. No cries, no vocalizings. Just the red-tail of my mountain showing me something a hawk can do that I'd never seen before. I'm wondering if the hawk is suggesting more active engagement in my life, play, pedal to the metal, enjoy the thrill of flying really fast, close to the ground, watching it pass by in a blur having fun the way swallows have fun flying loops in the air. Maybe hawk is telling me to take my life by the reins and get-er-done. Play more. Spread my wings and sail on the love of the people I care about who also care about me. Allow love to be the air I fly on top-speed. Something is going on inside I don't see, but feel it all the time. It's an overwhelming feeling of love for the mountains and everyone around me. It's like a heart running over with joy. Much of the time when I'm with friends, I spend a lot of time wiping my eyes. They get wet and stay wet with tears of joy. When it's happening and I look within I see inside my skin the bright light of joy, like carrying wine in a leather pouch. It's like no matter what I'm thinking or feeling, that furnace of joy inside my skin is going. It's like my life energy. Perhaps the hawk's joy in flying fast was a messenger from my interior self showing me what I'm feeling deep inside where I can't see it so well.


* 

THE BAT CARD

painting


Thursday evening a week ago, I had finished the day's project helping Justin paint the interior of the new house. It was after sunset, before dark, the gloaming. I was maybe a tenth of a mile from the driveway, gathering speed on Wagoner Ridge Road, 25-30 mph, and a bat flew across the windshield just a few inches from it. Evidently the bat had misread the speed of the car and flew a little closer than intended. The wings were grabbing at the air in a sudden panic to get out of the way of the flying wall. I feel like moments like that are worth noting, like when I turn down my road and a redtail hawk joins me, flying above where a hood ornament would be, no more than 6 feet in front of the windshield, loping along, looking back periodically to see if the truck is still back there. Crows have done that too. A few times going down the mountain, a fox has run out in front of the truck and run in the middle of the gravel road, the dog beside me on the seat dancing and squealing to get out and chase that fox on foot.



These moments don't happen very often, but now that they've started surfacing in my mind, there have been quite a number. I remember every one, like the time a horse-sized buck jumped over the hood of my truck in pea soup fog. I was on Air Bellows Gap Road a half mile from the Parkway in front of what was then the Colonel Holbrook house going no more than 10mph. The grace is what struck me as this horse with horns performed a full leap no more than 4 feet in front of my face. In every one of these surprise encounters with one of God's creatures civilization has not yet killed, it's the grace that strikes me most. Moments I've seen a running cow, I'm struck by the grace, tending not to think of cows as graceful, though they are. Most graceful of all, however, was the swimming water snake. She performed for me the very essence of grace. She changed the way I see legless reptiles.



On the day of such a chance encounter, I look up whatever it was in Jamie Sams' and David Carson's book MEDICINE CARDS. They tell, animal by animal, birds and reptiles too, the spiritual meaning of each of these threads in the Persian carpet of life on earth. Like the day a classic barn owl sat on a fence post and watched me drive by. I went online looking through pictures of owls called barn owl and couldn't find one. I went to Medicine Cards to see what the owl is about, and the illustration of owl was the exact same as the owl I saw. Sometimes, though not often by any means, I'll shuffle the deck and pick one card to look up its message for whatever is concerning my mind. I don't think of them an answer so much as something worth paying attention to, an assist in searching for the answer. A chance encounter with a bat I think of the same as drawing the bat card.



Bat "symbolizes the need for a ritualistic death of some way of life that no longer suits your new growth pattern....Bat signals rebirth of some part of yourself or the death of old patterns." I noted the ritualistic death the Indians went through on their vision quest, and looked at a vision quest in everyday life, a ritualistic death, whatever that might mean. Next evening I drove to Woodlawn to hear Skeeter & the Skidmarks, and returning home found the computer would not start. A big lightning storm went through while I was gone. Next day I carried it to Selma's coffee shop hoping Tim the Techman might be there. He did indeed come in. He took the battery out, started the computer plugged into the wall and replaced the battery while it was running. He said that "flushes" it. At home I got it going, then it wouldn't go online. Waited til Monday, took modem to Skyline office, had it tested and it was ok. Still could not get online. Called Skyline tech assistance and troubleshot to find the problem was not in the modem or the wire, but the "card" where it goes into the computer. Next day I took computer (laptop) to Selma's with modem and what amounted to a handwritten letter explaining what it has been troubleshot down to, to give him an idea what to look for.



I saw Tim next day at Selma's and he started with "do you want the good news or bad news first?" I bent over laughing seeing there was no way this was going to be as easy as I was hoping it would be. He said the wireless part still works and the other "card" is fried, I need a wireless router or a new computer. Router costs a lot less. I asked him what that was. He showed me the box with Selma's computer that makes it possible for people to bring laptops in to go online. My thought at the time, I'll have a blackberry inside a year.  Not that I want one, just recognition that it's probably the next step, like cds after cassettes. Tim brought a new wireless router this morning, plugged everything in, got it going, and now everything is copacetic. I have risen from the ritualistic tomb of a week unable to use the computer, unable to write to you for a whole week, and it got me out of sorts.



Every day, I imagined I'd have it going the next day. Each day told one more day. I started feeling dammed up inside wanting to write you every day and unable. I used Selma's public access computer for emails, but couldn't write like this there or at the library or even somebody else's house. Maybe it would work if I tried, but it comes down to, I don't wanna. And that's ok. I don't wanna is good enough reason for me as I have an appointment. It's really the best reason of all. I took a surprise vacation from writing you every day. The "bat medicine," rebirth of some part of myself or death of old patterns. One thing it did for certain was get me fired up to get back to writing you, every day fired up a bit more, a battery in a recharger. Every day something came to me I wanted to write about. A week offline inspired awareness of how much time per day I sit before the computer. Caterpillar could tell it.




*