The Anarchist's Shoes

In which I learn why manufactured shoes are bad for you and how to make your own.

At Thanksgiving dinner the Anarchist was admiring the black ankle boot moccasins I was wearing with my sarong pants and I announced that I was going to make my own shoes. 

"I'd be very interested in how that goes", said the Anarchist who was a self designated non-conformist who had, during a discussion at one of our parties, announced that she was an anarchist. A term that fits well for this story. 

Her desire to join me in my shoe odyssey further intrigued me and she told me of her feet woes. How the combination of bunions and toes now curling up over her feet made it increasingly difficult to find footwear to fit. She didn't have good feet to begin with, she explained, but years of forcing them into heels and of being on her feet all day while working at a Hallmark store did them in. Only then did I realize that she always wore Ugg boots even in summer and now she could only wear the right boot of two pairs of Uggs. I showed her the work of a shoemaker who had blogged about making a pair of shoes for a woman with severely swollen feet. This gave us the confidence that we too could solve our shoe problems in the same manner.

I had my own reasons for wanting to make my own shoes. My daily dog walking was wearing out my shoes faster than at any time in my life. The soles of walking shoes did not seem to wear as well as they once did. I was shoe goo-ing them repeatedly (glue used to fix holes in tennis shoes). Then I read an article brought to my attention by a newsfeed I subscribe to called the Village Green Network which usually concerned itself with food and recipes for making something simple like laundry soap. 

The article was by a woman who had decided to make her own shoes because most shoes caused her pain on the long hikes she liked to take. She referenced another article that described how shoes compromise the natural gait of the foot. I was shocked and then not at all surprised. So often did a single assumption lead to misinformation never investigated. Shoes were still built on the same too narrow lasts as they had been for centuries under the belief that feet had to be supported. They were also too heavy, inflexible, reduced surface area of the foot and since they were drawn with a curve rather than on a straight axis forced the foot to an incorrect orientation.

The referenced article described how the footbed of shoes have an indentation under the ball of the foot designed into the shoe to make the foot look smaller. Sure enough I checked all my shoes and every one of them had that indentation built into the footbed. This slight dip compromised the natural arch of the foot especially when other areas of the footbed were compressed with wear. This combination put three important bones out of alignment. The reason arch support was needed turned out to be to raise these bones back into place. The turned up toes of shoes, the lack of flexibility in the sole, the stiffness of the uppers all interfered with the natural ability of the foot to grasp surface area, expand and move the body. 

The article also pointed out that you can tell by the wear pattern of your shoes that the natural gait was being compromised. I looked on the bottom of my shoes and sure enough all of them were worn down on the outside edge of the heels and on a spot in the middle of the ball of the foot as described. I thought it was because of my bowed legs causing my shoes not to land properly. I read the article several times before I could believe that shoes were not helping at all (apart from protecting the foot from pointed rocks) and were more likely reducing the foots flexibility and strength. Feet would be better off in a pair of moccasins the article concluded. 

Earlier in the year I had been similarly astounded by an article claiming that the brassiere seriously compromised the ability of the breasts to get rid of toxins and did not in fact keep a woman's breasts from sagging over time, but had compromised the muscle structure of the breasts to take care of this themselves. Given my personal minimalist topography I could happily give up the brassiere, but I could not do without shoes. Thus I embarked on my shoemaking education and found a book at the library with full color pictures that convinced me of what wonderfully colorful and interesting footwear I could make for myself. This led me to find the author online where I found the aforementioned blog about making shoes for swollen feet. She had also posted an article from the New York Times a bit more readable and less technical that said the same thing—shoes were bad for you.

I consulted my chiropractor and he told me about the body's remarkable ability to adapt. How bones that had been badly set would over time correct themselves. So feet would also adapt to shoes. And he himself would not be giving up the support of his hiking boots no matter what the claims of the new minimalist trends in sport shoes. One could simply train oneself to walk properly he claimed. I in turn told him how I had learned from a masseuse that the Asian squat was not a body position that one could learn in adulthood. That this act of folding the body up and squatting on the heels actually changed the angle of the hip sockets so only those who had practiced this sitting position from childhood could accomplish it so easily in adulthood. So wouldn't a person who had spent most of their time walking barefoot be similarly suited to unconstructed shoes? He agreed that I had made a convincing hypotheses for my new shoe wearing preferences. And given his theory of adaptation it is likely that others who adopted a barefoot lifestyle could over time strengthen their feet too. My karate class was, after all, filled with newcomers learning to exert their body for peak fighting performance while barefoot.

Shoemaking

I had been a seamstress all my life and I once made jester slippers from wool felting, but I hadn't a clue how to choose

leather or what a millimeter in thickness felt like. In order to become acquainted with the medium I ordered a three pound box of leather scraps from e-bay for $30. And what an assortment of cowhide did I receive. I picked over the fake crocodile in unnatural colors, the fake pink ostrich that came in lime green, red and turquoise, some shiny red metallic gold and copper pieces, floral embossed ones and weird ones that looked like flocked wall paper. I was both repulsed and intrigued and spent an afternoon art date putting together combinations of blue crocodile and lime green ostrich. Most of the scraps came in pieces too small to use so I would have to make a crazy quilt shoe.

I felt more compelled to meet the needs of my Anarchist friend for her need was greater and I still had shoes a plenty. Plus the caveat of making shoes for a "customer" excited me with visions of a new shoe making add-on to my services. Who could resist custom made shoes? Another of my clients also had problems with bunions gradually eliminating all but men's running shoes for her. She said she could have had an operation to correct her feet, but there was no way she would have been able to be off her feet for six weeks. (My Anarchist friend had said the same thing. It occurred to me that the abuse of women's feet in heels and the failure to correct them surgically was probably quite common among women, especially those that took care of others as women so often did.)

I watched a video on my shoemakers blog on how to make a last upon which to build a shoe and went to visit the Anarchist with duct tape and homemade play dough in hand. The play dough was for filling the spaces over the toes to make a shoe like shape. I had her slip on a pair of knee high nylons I had brought with me and she stood on the cardboard soles I had made with a little wall of duct tape around the perimeter. I went to town ripping off pieces of duct tape and wrapping them across her feet attaching them to the side wall.  After I was done I carefully cut the duct tape boots off down the top of the foot. The results looked like a pair of boots left behind by the Tin Man after a thorough beating.

Instead of flattening out my duct tape pieces to make patterns for a last as instructed, I decided to skip that step and just drape the leather over the duct tape forms themselves. I cut up an old black t-shirt to make a prototype. The Anarchist loved the pixie shape I had devised to accommodate the unusual shape of her feet. My challenge was to make the shoe for the more normal foot look the same as this high profile one. It would not be possible to make them identical, but I could mimic the same shape and hold the foot with a hidden piece inside the shoe. I had brought my bag of leather scraps so she could choose what kind of leather she wanted her shoes made from. She admired how soft and flexible some of the pieces. As they were to be her first pair,  were and chose black which would go with most of her outfits and hats for she was a snappy dresser.

She then showed me the pair of shoes she had had custom made by a professional shoemaker. They hurt her feet she

said and cost $500. They were so stiff and ugly they made me angry. There was no flex to the sole at all. Whoever constructed these shoes had decided that her feet were too crippled to be of any use and had made what was essentially the foot part of a wooden leg.

I ordered more leather from e-bay—remnants from upholstered leather sofa making. And I made adjustments to my t-shirt mock up until we were satisfied with the fit. Then I took apart my model and used the pieces as a pattern to cut the shoe parts out of the black leather. Next I had to learn how to sew leather together with the prescribed synthetic sinew. I bought myself the proper needles, a stitching awl, sinew and some non toxic cement. I could use my sewing machine to make holes in the leather that could then be enlarged by the stitching awl; the hand sewing went much easier once I made the holes large enough.

Hunting down material for the soles would be a challenge since this was a material only available to professional shoe makers in bulk rolls. My shoemaker blogger suggested going to Home Depot to look for rubber floor tiles used in workout rooms and garages; they were made from recycled automobile tires. The pack of 6 tiles I found would be enough for 12 pairs of shoes, but they were the right thickness. I was very pleased that they were a recycled product. 

The insoles were also challenging because my customer's feet were of such a shape that no conventional insole from the drug store would work. So in the end I used some square sheets of rubber I had on hand that came as knee pads inside gardening pants. I covered these thick pieces with scrap upholstery material I had gotten from FabMo a non profit that collected samples discarded by interior design stores. For shoe laces I decided to use gross grain ribbon from the fabric store was in order. These ribbon ties along with the pointed pixie toes made the shoes look magical. 

I had the Anarchist try them on. The problematic right foot was a bit loose in the toe. She got her canes out and took a test drive walking fast into her room and back. The pointed soles on one foot would catch a little as she picked up her feet so I took them home and cut and sewed the toes into a rounded shape. Now they fit better and were easier to walk in. She also commented that they were very comfortable and the soles offered plenty of arch support. That's funny I thought, I didn't build any arch support into the footbed. But the thickness of the insoles afforded enough cushion to feel like it and protected her protruding bones from the hard floor. She was pleased with the that they looked dressy too. 

Stepping off the Grid

Such off the grid journeys, I realized, usually started with a revealing piece of information. Shampoo I found out made your hair grease up which led to hair washing every other day when I really didn't need to wash my hair more than once a week if I used baking soda and an apple cider rinse as was done a century ago. Not to mention that some of the ingredients in shampoo were toxic. 

When I started reading up on what caused my blood sugar to spike I learned that our food supply was compromised by the misinformation of the medical institution creating a world wide aversion to saturated fat. The processed food industry then capitalized on cheap ingredients some of which the body was unable to digest. But as long as a package said low-fat or vegetarian any frankenfood would sell as a health food. 

My interest in electric cars taught me that automobiles could be built much simpler and lighter if it weren't for the demands of long distance travel and the crash test at freeway speeds. Crash test regulations kept other alternatives off the market even if you never intended to drive on the freeway, but at a much slower speed appropriate to neighborhoods. Housing was also controlled by regulations not necessarily for safety but to keep keeping them large. Too large to afford. I had believed that these first world regulations created a superior society, but I now see that it is more about upholding a standard of living. One that would continue to feed the profit margins of industrialized products made with machinery so large it required huge amounts of capital so only mega corporations could compete. Not to mention creating a society where shoes, cars and houses had become status items under designer label brands. These designs were so conventionally limited that there were only minute differences between brands and models creating a sea of choices that really offered no choice at all. Anyone wanting a different concept altogether was out of luck. Likewise anyone with abnormally wide feet or feet already ruined by fashion trends had no shoes at all. 

I too had been taken. Years of reading advertisements specifying the technical improvements of shoes in the sports industry had convinced me that a highly "technical" shoe corrected or at least enhanced the performance of feet. Now I saw that industrially made shoes were coddling feet with padding while undermining their natural ability to function. (Plus the overseas sweatshops with their underpaid labor and toxic work environments to produce these shoes always irked me.)

Others had also realized how the emperor had no clothes given all of the above revelations being passed around and I

was aware that a movement was afoot. More and more people were interested in old ways of doing things—cooking from scratch, finding ways to live in tiny homes, getting kids to school in Dutch cargo bicycles, investigating ayervedic medicine, massage, yoga and other ancient techniques of living healthily. But despite all this re-skilling as it has come to be known, not too many people had taken up shoemaking. In fact leather work as a hobby seemed to have fallen out of favor along with macrame plant hangers. I had found only the one out of print book in my library system. Even on the internet very little information was being offered. Those who had had taken up shoemaking were mostly moms and grandmothers looking for healthy shoes for children that would allow the foot to develop naturally. Shoes for adults were likely more subject to fashion demands and fitting into conventional work settings.

It was also a skill that pushed beyond most people's ability requiring sharp tools, a bit of strength to push needles through leather and thick rubber and an imaginative design sense plus an ability to visualize three dimensionally. Just the sort of skill set I had been cultivating since childhood. And the potential for recycling and making unique fashionitems would entertain me for some time. What better way to upset the paradigm than to make one's own shoes? A village cobbler could help turn a community away from exclusive designer brands to unique one-of-kind efforts in a locally made product. 

It is the Year of the Horse an kick ass time to manifest new ideas. And the horse is the only animal on the horoscope to wear shoes!

May ye all be well shod.

Have Braids Will Travel

In my travels around the Bay Area I add new cultural sensibilities to my inner terrain and learn some profound leadership skills at a Director's Lab.

"I like your hair," said my colleague, Deb, when I met her for lunch at a local Thai restaurant. She was referring to two small braids on either side of my face framing my long hair. 

"I was afraid I wasn't ethnic enough," I said. She laughed a delightful laugh of appreciation for this comment on the fluidity of identity. 

"You'll never not be ethnic," she said. She herself was sporting her usual head of salt and pepper ringlets falling past her shoulders that complemented her Jewish identity.

"Oh phew, I was beginning to wonder if I was becoming too white." I joked. She laughed again. 

"I was actually going for the look of the Faeries in Lord of the Rings," I added, "but it didn't turn out that way". More delighted laughter. Yes those Faeries are definitely ethnically white in the palest European sense, but they did have long hair decorated with beautiful silver jewelry. 

I was happy with the Native American look I ended up with. I became visible to people who never noticed me before. Latina women smiled and wanted to talk to me in the wealthy houses where we worked. I had somehow transcended my race. (Thai women never braided their hair.) Interior designers in those same houses wanted to know my name. The New York closet designer I sometimes worked for loved my new look and because she was such an arbiter of taste that pretty much clinched it. I was confident that I had achieved a definitive style worth cultivating.

My hair redo was prompted by a shift in the demographics of my environment as the streets of Oakland became a part of my geography. Oakland is a black city, famously so, and the historical home of the Black Panthers. It is across the bay an hour's drive away, but it might as well be another country. Not too many Asian people visible there if at all. Further south, but still in the east bay, the suburban town of Fremont was the home of Asian immigrants with entire school districts full of college bound, 4.0 Asian students. On my side of the bay Silicon Valley offered a diversity of brown immigrants drawn to the tech industry, but very few African Americans.

The economy on the east bay side is different from Silicon Valley's upwardly mobile, moneyed tidiness; it is possible to drive through miles of shabbiness in Oakland that look third world in comparison. The run down houses on small lots marked off with cyclone fencing. Junked cars up on blocks, household furniture left outside in the yard. 

Seldom did people on my side of the bay speak of going to Oakland. There is a resistance to crossing bridges in earthquake country; you can get stranded. Plus downtown Oakland is so cut up by freeway exits that you can't get out the same way you got in. 

When I started going to Oakland for sessions with Lenore, my shamanic counselor, I would take BART in, arriving at the Ashby station. It being Saturday, the station parking lot was given over to a flea market with chiefly black vendors. Some stalls sporting reggae flags and dashikis. The open air display of used items and new household goods reminding me of open markets in other parts of the world. A sensibility not without a certain cultural pride fleshed out by street musicians. No street musicians on my side of the bay. Not allowed without a permit. 

Barbara Ehrenrich wrote a book about the suppression of communal celebration called Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy. She noted that when the rich and poor celebrated together in the streets, then so too does social injustice become personalized resulting in commentary and cruel satire from the have nots. Feeling threatened the haves of the Middle Ages separated themselves from their common brethren and fearing further violence towards them, made laws to forbid certain aspects of carnival traditions. Street musicians remind me of this ongoing suppression. 

I braided my hair so I could belong on the Oakland side of the bay too, hair being such a marker of tribal affinity. While searching for silver cuffs with which to decorate them, I found a site discussing how to emulate the hairstyles of the characters in The Hobbit. Hobbits were all over the braided hair look, even braiding their beards. An Etsy seller in Australia was recommended who was selling Nepalese silver cuffs. My hair quest was going global. (Also recommended were latex hair bands to fasten the braid over which the hair cuff would slip. A useful tip.)

Director's Lab

Shortly after my lunch with my friend Deb I was scheduled to attend a director's lab for filmmakers wishing to learn how to work with actors. I did not have any plans to work with actors. I was not a writer of fiction, but the opportunity presented itself and I stepped up to the plate and applied because of my work with Lenore. She regularly introduced me to new information and her interests were now mine. My admiration and love for her forced out fear and cut through ambivalence. Because of her inspiration I wrote on more dangerous topics, pieces I knew could get me in trouble and took much more effort to get right, but her support alone was enough to make it worth the risk. (This love being a projection on another of what I hadn't been brave enough to own for myself yet. And as I took these risks so too did it allow some of my readers to feel supported. Some also questioned me, thus broadening my horizons further into these challenging topics.)

I applied to the director's lab because I wanted to see what was involved in directing a movie. Plus it was completely free courtesy of the San Jose Arts and Cultural department. I heard about it through the Media Center. The same outfit where I had taken the video filmmaking class in order to learn the skills needed to help Lenore videotape the backstory play she put together last Spring (or which I had also built sets). 

And so I took myself, braids and all, to the Mexican Heritage Plaza deep in the heart of the Latino community in San Jose (once affectionately known as the armpit of the Bay Area given it's location at the southern most point of the Bay). Alex Mundoz, the director who had offered to teach this lab was a local boy who had gone to USC to study film, had done some short films and was now working on a feature. We would work through a couple of scenes from his script. The twenty-two winning applicants who arrived for the workshop were also largely minority—mostly Hispanic and Asian. A handful of white people rounded out the group plus six actors (of different ethnicities) to help with the scenes.  

When we introduced ourselves, three of the white people turned out to be Europeans with foreign names and foreign accents. For the first time in perhaps my whole life in the Bay Area I felt part of the majority—a brown majority. I still felt obliged to explain where I came from and why I had an English accent, but the effect was of being of the same general migratory trajectory as everyone else in the room. It allowed me to assemble at the same starting point as the rest of the group whereas I usually occupied a bubble by myself content to do my own thing, but nevertheless apart from the group. This acceptance within a group enhancing my experience.

Alex told us how his first class at USC was so intimidating that he almost quit. He didn't want us to feel that way so he explained everything clearly and started with the heart of the work, how to motivate actors by giving them internal thoughts. I felt welcomed into his artistic process right away. We saw what a collaborative creation a play or film became because of the interpretations of the actors. And by the end of the day we understood something about bringing human emotions and relationships alive.  

The next day we started off with an exercise to memorize everyone's name. The first person said their name and added to it a gesture. The second person repeated that name and gesture and added their name and gesture and so on with each person repeating all the names of the people before them. I was last in line so I had to name all 29 participants which I was able to do with only one prompt. Having named everyone I felt like part of one big family. 

We then went on to watch an exercise that demonstrated the arc of an interaction. Alex explained how his scene had a point of ignition, a moment of crisis, a point of no return, a moment of surrender and reconciliation. He marked the floor off in sections. Each section was assigned a different emotional piece of the scene. The first mark was the start of an argument, the point of ignition. The second contained the back and forth of the argument and so forth. Then he directed each pair of actors to improvise wordlessly through the scene using the section boundary lines as points of transition. As each pair of actors walked down the length of the room we watched an argument unfold, then escalate in a period of intense back and forth followed by what looked like a change of heart and a reconciliation. I was oddly moved by seeing this movement within a relationship.

In the next exercise we all paired up and were given secret instructions to guide our interactions with our partners. We were to dance down the room with our partners, but one partner was told that if they did not maintain eye contact with their partner they would not be able to breath. While the other partner was told that if they so much as made eye contact with their partner they would turn to stone. This of course made for an intensely interesting dance as we moved about trying to get our needs met. I was in the group who wouldn't be able to breath without eye contact and such a set of gyrations I went through that I appeared to be doing a form of break dancing and the room laughed at my movements. This exercise, Alex told us was called the Dance of Avoidance. And he used it to show us the underlying motivations of a scene.

Watching these two exercises back to back I had such compassion for us poor misinformed humans that I came to a new understanding of story and relationships. Here we were moving through time according to the narrative of whatever story we stepped into, motivated by secret needs we had not yet acknowledged. How like life! At the same time I saw that nothing was locked down—stories played out—people had changes of heart. This was an example of IMPERMANENCE, one of the key teachings of the Buddha. Yet somehow I had not understood before how impermanence connected with story. But here sitting in the director's chair I saw that a situation could change, had to change. It was the nature of things. And I realized that if we were so stuck in a story we were telling ourselves then we could simply tell another, reveal unacknowledged motivations, cast ourselves in different roles, renegotiate terms. 

This kind of power over one's own story was a very Western concept; one I had resisted. When things came at me I was so well trained by my Buddhist culture to accept what was. Over time I had studied how to be more prepared for events and been drawn to concrete ways to be prepared (even literally by becoming a prepper—preparing for the apocalypse and other emergencies), but I had not yet approached the front end of the story. Looking at story from such a director's point of view, I saw how stories were vehicles that created interactions and roles to be played out. But I didn't have to accept the story that seemed to be coming at me. What was a story after all, but a narrative going on in your head? 

I had not worked with theatre since college acting classes. Revisiting this territory took me back to my nineteen year old self and connected me up with that abandoned thread in my life. Abandoned in part because an acting teacher had told me I couldn't do a monologue I'd chosen because it was written for a male character. That I was restrained to gender roles and character roles written by long dead playwrights in a time when women spent their time railing against limitations set on them by men. (At least more so than in my life). But here in the director's lab the playwright was there and everyone was allowed to bring to the story something of themselves. Alex was thrilled with how his actors fleshed out his story and said he would add to his movie what he just saw happen. In his lab a story was a living container for collaborative work.

Storytelling

These revelations led me to book a session with Lenore at her Oakland consulting office. We had been meeting in coffee shops to discuss her film and the last meeting was so off it made me question if our relationship would endure and Lenore wrote me to apologize for not having a more focused agenda. During the director's lab I so saw the two of us caught in the Dance of Avoidance. Our motivations at cross purposes. I could sense that we had attributed emotions and motivations to each other that got in the way of working together. Lenore, having been cast into the role of crush object by me, was going to avoid giving me any information to feed the crush, but she still wanted my help with her movie project. While I had more to talk about than would fit in a context limited to discussion of movies, but it wasn't my place to occupy our time with such randomness so I had to shut up and we both shut down the part of us that would naturally connect. Our story had run aground, but luckily I had another one to turn to. One I could ask for and monopolize completely with whatever I needed to say.

I gathered together talismans, amulets, little trinkets I could use to represent different aspects of my life around my relationships, around my recent experience of writing about race in America, my grief about the planet given a recent oil spill on a favorite beach, my shamanic practice and my life as an artist. I picked an antique gold charm—a heart shaped padlock to represent the unlocking of my artistic aspirations inspired by Lenore herself being in my life. All the things I wanted to be seen in the shamanic way of being that Lenore embodied that also included shared political values and a life driven by artistic expression, by storytelling itself.

At my appointment I laid the objects out on a stool between us and talked about everything that had been going on, picking up each talisman as I picked up all the bits and pieces of scattered narrative that was my life. And as I talked I put it all into a fresh narrative, on the way correcting whatever I felt needed a more truthful representation, people I had complained about but now felt I had represented unfairly, things brought up by all the new territory I had explored of late. What artistic projects I would turn to next. What she meant to me as a mentor. 

Story telling like this allowed me to get at the front end of the story I was living—become the director of my own life. And I could see by Lenore's expressions that I was being heard, that things were being aired and ironed out that needed to be, that my story was lining up with my intentions in a way that would allow us to work together free of hidden projections. And I also recounted to Lenore, my life with Catherine, acknowledging how she had acquired a grace and wisdom after her cancer journey. How she was able to listen without judgement to my occasional rantings. How she had stopped worrying about death and had decided she was here to help people with their own similar journeys. And in the days following my session I saw improvements in all these aspects of my life. And when Catherine and I went away that weekend to our favorite zen monastery at Tassajara for a much needed retreat we were able to reconnect on a sweet and profound level.

It was ironic that in the context of learning how to direct drama I had learned some powerful leadership skills that allowed me to step away from the components that created drama. Instead of a point of ignition I now had a point of inspiration. Instead of a point of no return I had a point from which to go forward. A period of crisis could now become a period of collaboration. And while surrender and reconciliation was still a part of my story I could also see celebration and exaltation being the end point. I just had to watch how I let the story unfold and direct it towards the most optimum outcome.

On Becoming Magical

The Reading

In October I happened to be working with a colleague who told me that a very good psychic was making her customary bi-annual rounds to California from New Zealand. Apparently several of my close colleagues had been to see this psychic in the past. (Geesh. Nobody tells me nothin'.) The only reason my colleague was telling me this, at all, was because we were carpooling, had been working together on and off for a year or so and were becoming good friends. And because I happened to mention that Catherine's psychic had told her that I was learning so much about medical matters that I could write a book—for others who had also been given a pre-diabetic diagnosis. (I had been wondering for about 5 years now what my next book would be and if I would get around to writing another one at all. I was hoping, actually, that it would be a book about making your own portable composting toilet. At least it would be a short book and I was confident I had some unique innovations to contribute.) 

I did manage to get an appointment with Beryl, her last one. I found her to be delightful; a white-haired English lady dressed in a turquoise jacket. I later learned she was from Yorkshire (which happens to be my mother's place of birth). As I sat across from her in the little guest cottage on the side of a hill in Pacifica, she handed me her deck of well worn tarot cards and asked me to shuffle them. When I returned the deck to her she took the first card from the bottom and turned it over.

"Oh that's a lovely card," she said, "do you see what it is. It's the manifestor." My familiarity with the tarot was rusty from neglect so I did not recognize the archetype. "Haven't you noticed that things show up when you need them?  It's has to do with the law of attraction."

"Well yes," I admitted though I loathed the concept. The one about making your own reality that the New Age movement had so thoroughly exploited, until the economic collapse took the wind out of their sails. 

I did consciously manifest small things, mostly having to do with shopping, finding just the right pants, for instance, or the right hotel and B & B. The rest I chalked up to luck. And good relations with the spirits. It was some combination of all three that had recently helped me to find speakers for next year's ICD (Institute Challenging Disorganization) conference for which I was the program chair. (This was such a large job that no one in their right mind would volunteer for it. Not me anyway. I had to be asked and then told why I might be worthy. Plus I had inadvertently auditioned by showing up on stage at a previous conference to field questions on a panel about international shopping habits. I knew I had charmed the group with my poise and ability to speak off the cuff from the podium. It just had not occurred to me that they would wish to put this talent to use.)

Beryl went on with my reading laying out card after card. "Have you been reading a lot of medical texts?" she asked. 

"Yes," I said pleased she had picked up on it. She told me I could write a book, not right now, but in a year or two, based on the medical information I was studying now. In fact I would likely write several books which could become my income stream in the future. Sounds good, I thought. Now I had a second opinion confirming this potential. If I could just get around to it.

"You have so many ideas just popping out of your head," said Beryl, "you have to watch that you don't get too fragmented." Exactly. "Your passion is knowledge," she continued, "how the brain works. Anything you're curious about, you go and research." That described my current self to a T.

"You are intuitive. You'll just know things while you're reading or looking for something." Terrific. What an affirmation; it boosted my confidence immensely. And accounted for why I had been able to learn so quickly and follow my nose to read what I needed to know.

"I've been working on it," I told her. Like I did most things—by reading a book. This one had DIY exercises involving a pendulum. A beginner's intuitive toy. Training wheels.

"Brilliant," she said genuinely pleased. 

Beryl also asked me if someone close to me was seriously ill. So we spent a good bit of time looking at Catherine's profile and examining her character in terms of her childhood history. Beryl felt that Catherine would recover completely from the cancer. 

"It's the cancer treatment that's harder to recover from," she said. That was my worry too. Beryl had, for a time, been a naturpath (and before that a lawyer). Clearly a smart woman. She then told me how to perform a direct healing by infusing a glass of water with healing intention and then having Catherine drink the water.

Final Chemo 

We incorporated the infusing of water into our next ritual to get on board with the Red Death, the affectionate name that cancer patients had given to the chemo drug Adriamycin owing to the color of the solution as it was injected into the veins. (It was so caustic it had to be contained in a glass vial not the usual plastic bag.) Catherine and I each wore a red shirt for the ceremony. I had bought red tulips for her altar. As before we asked that the chemo medicines be affective and gentle. 

The first round made her very tired, but we were grateful that she had manageable and only slight nausea. She maintained good appetite and ate everything I cooked. Nor did she suffer from chemo brain so was able to continue with her spiritual studies for what was now a ten year long inquiry practice (called The Diamond Approach). 

By the second round Catherine had made a big leap in her approach to her treatment with the help of our Buddhist teacher. She told me she just decided to observe the experience instead of trying to prepare for all possible calamities that might befall her. This was what had made her so anxious before. Now she would simply observe everything in real time, watch how the drug felt as it went into her body, be present for the infusion and chat socially with the nurses. If any difficulties came up she would address it then. This was such a big spiritual leap of faith that it noticeably changed the experience for me as well. Things felt normal. This was our life now with its regular visits to the cancer center. All the faces were familiar. We knew most of the nurses and the guys at valet parking. 

We had been on this journey eight months now and had both been changed by it. I had become the planner and director and the manager of details, while she had become the observer, reflecting on her experience and learning how to amuse herself. We had both filled our heads with medical information to support our various diagnosis. 

It had not been my plan to be so cerebral. I was going to spend the year concentrating on my Shamanic training. I had even picked the teacher I wanted to work with. Not to mention that it was 2012. I was so thrilled that we had finally entered this cosmically famous and potent year that it was with a sense of great anticipation and entrancement that I wrote the year on my checks and tax forms. 

Scholars had already published their findings about how the Mayan calendar did not actually predict the end of the world, but was simply meant to be turned over and used again. That left the portentous date to the minority of us who had put our attention on the coming transformation, the birth of a New Era, The Great Turning as Joanna Macy, the deep ecologist sage put it. But the popular culture references–the cartoons and jokes–remained focused on doomsday fever.

Marking 2012

I didn't want to have the date pass by with me sitting at home looking at the sky and wishing I had done something to mark the occasion. A colleague asked me to join her at a solstice gathering at her home, but then got too busy to plan it. The only other invitation I had was to a solstice ceremony being given by Lenore, a Shamanic counselor I had never met. I knew her only from Facebook by virtue of a woman who regularly read my blog, whom I didn't know either. And so for two years or so I watched Lenore and her postings from her ex-pat home in Germany, saw her looking to return home and settle in Oakland. Occasionally she was kind enough to "like" my updates on Facebook despite having over 1700 contacts. 

I wondered how comfortable I would be going to a ritual with complete strangers across the Bay, an hours drive away, but there was also a Shamanic training to go with the ceremony; a dress rehearsal of sorts. This interested me because then I would learn something and get to meet Lenore. And if I did the training I might as well go to the ceremony since by then I wouldn't be with complete strangers. As it turned out, I was the only one who had signed up for the training so she had recruited two other women from her drum circle. I went to meet her at her office in Oakland as scheduled and we sat down as if we had long traveled in the same circle, but hadn't yet had a chance to talk. I liked her immediately.

Lenore's ceremony was not focused on 2012, but she did mention it when the other two arrived. There had been no promise or obligation that I would be part of the ceremony, but once it was clear that it was only the three of us and we couldn't do it with much fewer than that, I was in. I was part of the 'inner circle'.

Lenore described the ceremony which was based on a Norwegian Sami solstice ceremony to celebrate the gifts of the dark in the sense that the dark was a place of retreat for inspirational works to gestate. We were to embody the Spirit of the Dark in order to allow her to manifest in the room. By being merged with us, she would be able to perform acts of healing. This could mean we just sat there for the duration or we might move around and touch people, depending on what the spirit compelled us to do. But first we would have to journey to meet her in the Shamanic world of non-ordinary reality.

"All righta," I said, excited. "Where do we find her?" I asked, "in the Upper or Lower World?"

"Ask your power animal," she said, "You know, your usual pals." I was tickled by this casual reference to the spirit guides. We proceeded to lay down on the floor covering our eyes as Lenore began drumming for us.

The Spirit of the Dark

Naturally I went to the lower world to seek the Spirit of the Dark, calling to my guides as I descended. It was Bear who would take me on his back with Mongoose riding shotgun. We sped through the night to a sizable mansion, pulling up to the door. I jumped down and knocked eagerly on the double doors. The Spirit of the Dark herself answered the door. She was hooded and large, but I was my fearless Mowgli child self. 

"Mama Dark," I said, jumping up and down with excitement, "we're having a ceremony and we want you to come and help," I explained to her. 

"You better come in then," she said, and stepped aside to let me in. The hood gone, I could see her face briefly, a proud woman.

"Walk with me into your womanhood," she said letting me know I was to bring myself to my full maturity. She walked me through the house much as I would with a new client. It was a grand house, full of wood trim in a traditional, English country home style. She opened doors to various rooms to show me artists and writers working, then another room of scientists in a lab. They were gestating their ideas under her inspiration and protection. We then walked into a wood paneled room full of sleeping patients sitting in chairs. She approached one and took both his hands in hers, just like Catherine's oncologist did with her. 

"That's what Dr. C does", I said.

"Yes," she said, "that is how Dr. C does his healing. It is the only opportunity he gives us to help with his healing work. You can tell Catherine that," she added.

She continued her rounds touching patients in various ways, and just to show how many ways this could be done, she hung upside down above one patient and embraced his head. That's too silly, I thought. We continued down the hall and she told me that I must think of myself as her heir in order to embody her power. Heir to all the wealth and power represented by this house. We stopped in a sitting room to have tea. She kept calling me Alicia and I did not correct her; perhaps it was part of the role. (Later when I sat down to write this account, I looked up what the name meant. It was the German form of Alice and meant "nobility".) We finished our tea and moved onward down another passageway lined with portraits. Now she looked like the wicked queen in Snow White. I asked her about that.

"Yes, that was a fractured fairy tale to defame me," she said. I well knew how the work of the Goddess had been demonized through the retelling in patriarchal times. 

Finally we arrived in a single room at the top of the house where we would practice merging, but before we could begin I heard the call back of the drum.

"Ah you must go," she said, and opened the French doors to a little courtyard where I found my animal friends and returned to ordinary reality.

Once back the three of us told of our experiences with the Spirit of the Dark. I was struck by how much information was contained in my visit, both for my own psychological development and in the way of instruction. I was excited about how she would manifest in ritual space using me as a vehicle.

Lenore seemed satisfied that we had made contact. She told us to bring a scarf to cover our head. Something transparent we could see through. There was one more important thing to remember. She instructed us to bring an object for the altar, something to represent the gifts we received from the Dark. I immediately thought of my green enameled fountain pen that I've been using to write in my journal at night. I had bought it some 20 years ago as a symbol of commitment to my becoming a writer.

The Fall

On the day of the Solstice ceremony, I drove Catherine to the cancer center for blood work because creatinine levels three days prior had shown that her kidneys were functioning at half their effectiveness and her treatment had to be delayed for a week until we found out why. It was likely that she had gotten dehydrated, nothing more. Later Catherine remembered that her psychic had mentioned that there would be a hitch with the blood work, but it would be nothing. So she refrained from worrying.

When we got to the center there was a line of cars waiting for valet parking. I had not yet reached the entrance. We were waiting by the metal barriers placed to keep people from entering the construction site next door. Catherine got out, not wanting to be late. I watched her walk forward, glanced back at the line of cars and when I looked back she had disappeared. As I waited for her to reappear a man looked at me with a frown on his face as if I had just run her over. I jumped out realizing she had fallen. She was sitting on the ground, with her nose and upper lip scraped up, looking stunned. She had tripped over the perpendicular legs of the metal barrier. Easy to do since the protruding legs were so low to the ground. 

"Are my teeth cracked?" she asked me. Her two front teeth felt loose to her. Her hands were also scraped. She had reflexively put her hands out, but had not been able to keep her face from hitting the asphalt. I inspected her teeth closely; they looked fine. 

Three other people had also come to her aid, one with a wheelchair. We took her to get her blood drawn, then to the ER to have her looked over just to be sure. I called our dentist, then called a client to cancel our afternoon appointment. (She was completely understanding.) The wait wasn't long at the ER and soon a nurse was able to check her teeth and clean up her road rash. And her blood work came back normal so that was a relief. I still had plenty of time to get her dinner and be in good time to drive to Oakland for the Solstice ceremony. It was December 20th. 

How 2012 Stole My Brain

In the early hour of the actual day of Solstice, December 21st, I was sitting at my computer looking at a Solstice greeting a European based contact had posted moments before. I hit the 'like' button, then remembered that I had a ceremony I was supposed to be at. But it had happened already. Had I actually gone? I wondered. There was a tune going through my head; a monotonous, but pleasant tune, sliding up then down, repeating over and over. I looked around. I saw my red trimmed black Tibetan vest hanging over the back of the chair. On the seat was my unpacked bag. I looked for my pen that I had put in the front pocket. It was back on my nightstand. The scarf was under the vest. Then I realized that it was 1:30 a.m. and I had to get up at 6 a.m. for a client. So I slipped into bed. Maybe I didn't go after all, I thought, but I wasn't too worried about it. I was lulled to sleep by the same pleasant tune.

The next morning I woke before the alarm went off, warmed up my broccoli frittata, ate it and checked Facebook for clues. I had indeed posted that I was going to a Solstice ritual the night before. I felt strangely altered as if I was living two realities at the same time. Perhaps my pineal gland had been co-opted for a 2012 download per one of the prophecies. The one about how a sun flare would strike the earth's magnetic field sending a force to everyone's pineal gland, simultaneously waking us up to a more enlightened reality. I got in the car still wondering if I'd made it to Oakland the night before. Propped up on my dashboard was a half sheet of white copy paper with directions written in pencil in a hand writing I did not recognize. I smiled to see it. The note and the neat roundness of the letters exuded such a feeling of love and care that I was immediately comforted though I did not have time to read where the directions were to.

When I arrived at my destination I found my bag of potluck finger food in the back seat. The cut up veggies were half gone and the bag packed not quite as I remembered, plus the yogurt dip and toothpicks were missing. I did not have time to dwell on these details. I had six hours of bookkeeping to do. I was, however, able to chat with my client as usual and all felt quite normal. Luckily the work was so routine that it grounded me. I carefully double checked all my work as I tried to remember the night before. 

At least now I had proof that I had indeed been to the event and made contact with people who took care that I got home alright. With effort I could remember arriving in Oakland and checking the parking meter to make sure I didn't have to put money in it. I had knocked on the front door of the windowless building, then remembered we were supposed to enter through the side entrance which I did. But then it all became a dreamlike haze. I vaguely remembered sitting with people in a small room full of couches, listening to people talking, then thinking to myself that no one knew yet who among us was going to embody the Spirit of the Dark. I vaguely remembered entering the ritual space with it's soft lighting and pale wood floors. I thought I could remember the circle of people and perhaps walking inside it during ceremony, but nothing more than that.

When I got home I carried in the half sheet of directions as if it were a McGuffin in a Hitchcock movie. I placed it on top of my bag which sat on a small bookcase. I saw the paper slip behind the bag and fall down behind the bookcase. I went into the bedroom and told Catherine about my memory loss. She was naturally concerned. "Could you have fallen asleep," she asked. Highly unlikely. I might have been hypnotized by the song we were singing, I speculated. Yes, and sleep walked all the way home, for I did not remember the drive home until I pulled up to our house. 

I went to look at the hand written sheet of directions. It wasn't there. I moved the bookcase and other furniture looking for it. Not there. Was this proof going to elude me too? I went to the kitchen and looked in the bag with the potluck food. The directions were sitting in the bag. My mind was still providing me with two realities. I took the directions to my room again and pinned them securely to a clipboard. Yes they were indeed directions from the site of the ceremony; turn by turn directions all the way to the street where I lived as if someone had copied them down from Google maps. I was again struck by the care with which this had been done.

I was beginning to feel like a character in a Herman Hesse novel who had just visited the Magic Theatre. How anti-climatic that I couldn't remember not one thing about the evening. Then I feared that something serious might have gone wrong, but every time my mind went to grasp around some thought of misconduct, I got a gentle emotional hit that there was nothing to worry about. All had been about love. I was assured that I had participated as befit the occasion and nothing inappropriate had happened.

I checked Facebook again. Lenore had posted that it had been a beautiful ceremony and she was going to Portland to do another one. By the evening it finally occurred to me that I hadn't checked my e-mail. She had written me that afternoon. 

"Please let me know you got home alright" read the subject line. That was all. Nothing about why she would be worried. I replied asking if I had been able to participate in the ceremony as planned. I told her I had no memory of it and could I call her or talk to someone else who could give me a recap of the evening's events. Maybe I should come in for a soul retrieval I added, as if I were a car in need of a tune-up. A soul retrieval was a Shamanic method of retrieving lost pieces of a client's spirit that had gone missing under traumatic circumstances. But I did not feel like I had been through any trauma at least not since childhood.

She wrote me back just two lines saying she thought it would be good for me to get some help and yes a soul retrieval might be helpful. Well, at least she didn't say I should seek medical attention. I wrote back asking if she would perform this soul retrieval for me—for the usual fee, I added so she would know I was good for it and I went to bed. All I really wanted to know was what happened.

Her assistant wrote me back that Lenore had gone on retreat and she herself would be leaving shortly too, but I could have an appointment two weeks from now. I accepted, grateful to have a possible end to this mystery. Meanwhile, I thought, if no one was going to tell me what happened then I was free to make it up. That Queen of the Dark must have been quite powerful to take over my entire mind like that (assuming that I was able to merge with her as trained). I had likely overreached my ability as a Shamanic practitioner, being still so inexperienced. On the other hand, maybe I channeled an entirely different entity and would now become famous for embodying the ancient warrior god Ramtha, (oops already been done). Or possibly I now had the ability to heal spontaneously. Or perhaps I had levitated and was floating in the middle of the room. This vision sent me into fits of giggles. 

The most phenomenal fact of the event was that I had been able to drive all the way home perfectly, having left nothing behind except the candle for the altar. The altar where I had placed my pen (if indeed I had done so). And then Spirit had stolen my narrative. How symbolic was that? I mean who was I without a story to tell? I called up my buddy Stacy to get a bead on what kind of story this was. She was completely intrigued especially when I said I felt no anxiety about it at all. "So you received a gift," she concluded and assured me that I did not need to get my head examined and more importantly, would I write about it?

Having settled that nothing was wrong with me and lacking any details to analyze, I would simply have to look at myself and what I was feeling. I felt calm. Everything flowed forth with such grace and contentment that I had not a moment of stress. After all, if I had been so taken care of while being absent from conscious reality for six hours why did I need to worry about anything again? I couldn't even make myself worry about anything. I felt completely de-stressed. It was indeed I who had been blessed with a healing. Three days after the incident I became more certain that it was I who had changed consciousness in the galactic eye of 2012. I laughed at all the jokes, full of play on words. How Oakland had no there there. How death was far easier than birth because at least you didn't have to drag a body with you. 

The New Era

I entered the hustle bustle of the world, to do the marketing. People seemed extra kind to me, one running after me to return a bag I dropped. Several things I needed were on sale. I noted an increase in luck when I pushed my cart to where there was no line and was greeted by my favorite cashier. Everything seemed to move with a great deal of synchronicity. Perhaps the world really had shifted like that Ray Bradbury story about time travel and the butterfly. But changed in a good way, in the manner of the promised 2012 transformation. Plus it was an absolute stunner of a day, brilliant with sunshine after the many storms. 

I posted my observations of increased synchronicity to Facebook and another colleague with magical karma confirmed that she had also felt there had been a shift towards more synchronicity. 

If Spirit had wanted to get my attention, it couldn't have done more than to steal my mind—my narrative. Something had definitely happened to me. I had been altered. I became convinced that I was a magical creature. Beryl had confirmed that I could trust my knowing; perhaps I could expand it. 

I went outside to walk the dogs and started reading the universe. Everything had something to say to me in metaphorical form. Two cars passed by following one another, one blue, one red. Now that's about the country's political consciousness, I thought, and watched what they did. The blue car made a left turn and shortly after the red car followed. Perfect, just as I suspected, the country was turning to the left. And so it unfolded. Two women jogging along crossed in front of me, both in pink jackets. One in a deep pink just ahead of one in a lighter pink. Now that's about our breast cancer journey I noted, slightly apprehensive. They passed quickly out of view to the right. Exit Stage Right, I thought to myself. This was the name of an organizing business owned by a colleague. Yes, soon our cancer story would properly exit our lives. 

On Thursday, I took Catherine to her next to last chemo appointment. A new, younger oncologist had taken over her case because Dr. C had moved on to a policy making position. We had warmed up to her immediately the week before. She was so smart and articulate and she touched Catherine repeatedly in a warm consoling manner. Catherine asked what she thought of her prognosis. "We were just talking about that," she said nodding to her intern. "It's a very good prognosis," she said smiling and confident; then listed all the reasons why she thought so. Catherine was enormously relieved, comforted by the word "very". This was wonderful news. She spent the evening calling everyone in her life who had been concerned, including our dharma teacher, her father, various friends and my mother.

My heightened sense of awareness began to fade after the three days of the 2012 transmission, but I wouldn't forget how to talk to the universe and continue to summon its magical wisdom. And now that I had a new teacher I could immediately continue with my Shamanic training. The book recommended by her soul retrieval information was available at the library; I would just have time to get it before the three day holiday closure.