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

 

 

 

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THE JOY OF PLAY

the shadow line series by tj worthington

 

Went to visit friends Justin and Crystal to see the day's race, and watch Vada play. She played like a kitten the whole time I was there. I told Crystal I have my very own Vada now in the form of a kitten that plays all the time. Vada makes everything into play. She picked up a small package of her daddy's, what looked to me like, earplugs. She said it's candy, let's eat it. I said I don't think daddy wants us eating his earplugs. She said it's all right, and she acted like she picked one up and handed it to me to eat. I acted like I ate it. She asked if it was good. I told her it was and she pretended to eat one. Later, she had some blue play-dough (sp?) and stuffed it into a plastic tea cup. She pressed it to my mouth, the play-dough, and said, "Drink." I pretended to drink. She said, "Was it yuckie?" She then smelled my lips and said "It smells yuckie." I was laughing inside the whole time I was there with Vada playing while the tv was going, giving me a fun distraction from something that gets a bit monotonous after a few hours.

The last 80 laps are the most interesting for me, though the earlier part of the race is important, too, to see how the different drivers are doing, who is having a good day and who is not. I love about the races that they are unpredictable. I hear announcers talk about who is favored to win and what's gonna happen and I think, Shut up. There is no knowing who will win, sometimes right up to the finish line. I've seen a win by a few inches and a win by a quarter of a lap. I've seen a big pile-up at the finish line where a dozen cars crossed the finish line wrecking, sideways, backwards, tires smoking. I've seen the winner run out of gas with a quarter lap to go and have to coast to the finish line to come in second. It is bound to be big betting business in Vegas and underground gambling all over the country and around the world. It's such big money, I think some people are looking for ways to rig a race for betting, though I can't see any way it could be done. Seems like football and basketball would be easy to rig, but a 400 mile and 500 mile race seems a bit more difficult. Where money is happening, a way will be found if it hasn't already.

We watched the last quarters of several football games, saw a few good plays, mostly quarterback sacks. Not an exemplary day for football. Vada played with her mermaid doll and danced around in her fairy dress, not a tutu, but a long nightgown type dress with pictures of animation girls from a kids movie. I asked who they were. She said, They're fairies. I thought, interesting. How many years has it been since I've heard the word fairy? It seems like it just about left the language and some kids movie brought it back. I found a word, reading Orwell's 1984, published in 1946, that has fallen out of the American vocabulary except as a product, tang. Orwell used the word in its original meaning before "the drink of astronauts," Tang, came on in the 1950s. Tang the drink put an end to tang the word. Vada kept me in good humor the whole time I was at the house, playing nonstop, stream-of-consciousness, one idea following another in a flow that went as the wind blows.

 

Though Sophia was back home, I felt the same spirit with Sophia as with Vada today. Both are relentlessly entertaining. Vada kept Sophia in my mind, and now Sophia is keeping Vada in my mind. Seeing Vada today, after a couple weeks living with a kitten, it charmed me to see human baby and cat baby loving play so similarly, stream-of-consciousness play from one thing to the next with no transition between the two but their random sequence. It's what the living do in childhood, play and learn at hyper-speed. I find it curious that our first interaction with the world, growing into it, humans, the four-leggeds, birds, I don't know about fish, but they probably play too, we play. And, like Vada and Sophia, we play nonstop thinking nothing could be more important than the moment's play. We adults continue to play, we just do it in more twisted forms. The games adults play are games like one-upmanship, the one I find most tiresome. We gamble, get drunk, get high, race cars, shoot guns, listen to rock, continuation of play into adulthood. It's good to have Sophia and Vada in my life in a time when I'd about forgotten play. It's fun right now with kitten crawling all over me. 

the shadow line series

by tj worthington

 

 

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BABY VADA AT PLAY

vada one year old

I don't know if it's Saturn retrograde or if it's something I'm going through in this time anyway. It's hard for me to feel motivated for anything that requires action, any kind of action. For the present, I'm satisfied looking out the windows at the birds pecking around the birdfeeders. I get up and go do things like watch the Daytona race at a friend's house. This afternoon I had fun with Vada. She found a plastic hamper, squarish; she sat in it and I turned it slowly, not enough to make her dizzy or wear me out. She'd sit and watch the objects in the living room and kitchen move around her. Then she'd stand up and watch everything in the rooms move around her. She wanted her "blankie" and sat with it in her lap while I turned her round and round. She seemed to never tire of it. She made eye-contact with me nearly all the way around, then hurried to make eye-contact again. It seemed important to her that I see her going round and round. It was something she'd never done before. Since she's discovered a playmate in me, we have a new relationship. Before, I was one of the grownups that came to the house to see mommy and daddy. Now, it's play time when she sees me. We make toys of whatever we find.

I find the time spent with Vada the most valuable. Playing with a child out of time, out of space, in that place children go into when they play. It's a free, open place with no boundaries except the physical, like Vada getting her foot stuck getting into the plastic hamper one of the many times. She figured out how to get her foot unstuck and she did it. I've learned not to help her unless she asks for help. She wants to figure everything out for herself. I'm happy to let her. Seems to me, wanting to figure things out for yourself is the best teacher of all. Junior Maxwell told people who asked him to teach them to play a banjo, "If you can't figure it out for yourself, you don't want to play the banjo." In our play, I look for things that have the potential to fascinate Vada. Turning her around in that plastic hamper was a new experience, seeing the room move around her, was endlessly fascinating for her. She's at an age now where she can engage her attention at will. It's an enjoyment for me connecting with so fresh a spirit, a soul in a new body that hasn't yet been burdened down with neuroses and cares, that old baggage we carry all our lives except in the baby stage and dementia.

I like that still place baby and I drift into unnoticed where we make a toy of anything we find. For me, the experience is even prayerful. Happy prayers of gratitude and asking that Vada have a fulfilling life. It seems like each one of our play times becomes more intimate. Intimate like with mommy or daddy, that kind of familiarity, not just the familiarity of somebody who comes to the house occasionally. It's like we really know each other now. I like knowing a baby. In the coffee shop this morning, Lisa deMilo came in. She is a Cuban dance club singer who has retired here from Miami. She was telling about her grandchildren she raised from day one, the first baby's mother needed to stay in the hospital another two weeks, and Lisa was given the baby to take care of until mother came home. Then she took care of the two kids while their parents worked. She loved her grandbabies as though they were her own. She was telling how much she misses them. I was thinking of how much I would miss Vada if I would never see her but once a year. The intimacy I'm feeling with Vada is that intimacy Lisa was saying she missed not seeing her grandbabies but a few times a year. She called it bonding. Maybe I'm bonding with Vada. I don't object.

In this time of pedophilic priests being uncovered, it sounds suspect to be talking about "playing with a baby," but I don't know any other language for it. There is not an atom of my self that would allow doing such harm to a baby I love, or any child. I've come to see over the years that adults playing with children sexually is a serious crime against humanity. I couldn't harm a child's soul in any such way, and certainly not one I love like I love Vada. I want to protect her. I want her safe from any harmful influence. I've come to believe that adults doing sex play with children is the worst thing that can happen to a child. Surely there is much worse, as there are so many more people than we imagaine going around as adults who have been played with as children. They never forget it. It screws them up for life. If somebody were to do something untoward to Vada, it would be a race between me and her daddy to see who could find him first to kill him. Vada will be known all through school as a girl with a rough daddy no boy dares go up against. If I live long enough, the word will go around: That crazy old bastard that lives up at Air Bellers, he'll kill ya if he hears of ya messin with Vada.

I find it curious that in this time when I feel little motivation toward anything much, I have discovered opening myself to playing on the floor with a baby. That's a great advance in my inner quest, for one thing the freedom to play, and all the more the freedom to play with an infant. She understands me when I talk to her and I understand her. We have no problem communicating. Sometimes she'll telling me something and I won't get it. I'll ask mama and she'll tell me what that signal means. One time before when I was there she was pointing at a chair and saying "Seat." She said it several times. I felt like she wanted me to sit her in the chair, but didn't know. I looked to mama and she affirmed it. I picked up Vada and sat her in the chair, a rocking chair, and that was what she wanted. She wanted to ride the rocking chair. She rode the chair like she'd paid admission for it. Later, mama told me she wanted me to put her in the chair because mama doesn't let her rock in the chair. Vada comes to me to enable her to play with toys her mommy won't allow. Looks kinda like the grandparent role. I love it.


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