Squirrel in the neighbor’s mulberry tree. Photo by Rachel.
Today I learned that the East Fork of the White River (which runs south of town) is called Aankwaahsakwa Siipiiwi by the Miami people. This translates to “Driftwood River”–which is a far better name that East Fork of the White River!
The disappearance of Mr. Robert Kirk
Andrew Lang’s introduction to The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies: [The author, Robert Kirk] died (if he did die, which is disputed) in 1692, aged about fifty-one; his tomb was inscribed– ROBERTUS KIRK, A.M. Linguæ Hinberniæ Lumen. The tomb, in Scott’s time, was to be seen in the east end of the churchyard of Aberfoyle; but the ashes of Mr. Kirk are not there. His successor, the Rev.
Gordon: “So a broken heart is also a heart that is breaking open so that it becomes larger, so that it can hold more of the grief and the love and the joy and the pain of the whole cosmos. That is what it is for. That is what you are for.”
Brother Ali: “I’m using my heart for / what hearts are for.”
It is incredible to me that we humans can live a long, full lifetime on this planet and be unwilling to face the brokenness of our lives and the destruction we have caused ourselves and others. I know shouldn’t get angry about it, but I sometimes do. I hope I can do better when my time comes, but who knows? One of the realizations I had while meditating in the cabin was that we humans, so capable of surviving nearly any catastrophe, no matter how horrific are—at our hidden core, in our most tender and utterly vulnerable ways—so easily broken and nearly impossible to fix. … We can traverse our entire lifetimes in a self-venting miasma of dysfunction so total that it becomes nearly invisible, and never really know why.
Trickster Squirrel
George Hansen, The Trickster and the Paranormal: the trickster is a character type found in mythology, folklore, and literature the world over; tricksters appear as animals, humans, and gods. They have a number of common characteristics, and some of their most salient qualities are disruption, unrestrained sexuality, disorder, and nonconformity to the establishment. They are typically male. Tricksters often deceive larger and more powerful beings who would thwart them; they may be endearingly clever or disgustingly stupid—both cultural heroes and selfish buffoons.
The rich and powerful used to pose with a hand inside their waistcoat, like Napoleon. Now they pose with thumbs up, like Trump.
Godspeed, Gordon
This morning I was watching Gordon White’s tribute to the recently-departed Peter Carroll. I’ve never read any of Carroll’s books and I doubt I ever will. I was watching for the same reason I read or watched nearly everything Gordon produced: you never knew when he would drop some jewel of knowledge or practice. He ended the video with a prayer that Carroll would be seated as an ancestor of practice.
The bodies of peasants
Patrick Joyce, Remembering Peasants: How little we know about these bodies, these bodies that do the eating! Our ignorance is fed by our assumption that peasant bodies were the same as our bodies. They were not. The difference can be summarized thus: we have bodies, which we carry about in our minds, whereas they were their bodies. The head had not yet won victory over the medieval notion of the bowels as the centre of the body.
The grace of peasants
Patrick Joyce, Remembering Peasants: And here we might step back a moment and consider that something of great weight may be going on here, with this matter of the morality of ordinary life, and with the word ‘grace’ in particular. For a word that is traditionally applied to the lord seems equally and perhaps more applicable to the peasant, one who is decorous, courtly even. Where does being civilized really reside?