Where The Wild Child Lives

In which I learn from my ten year old self, how to stay focused. How I made my first youtube video and how Catherine's illness changed my perspective.

To improve my Shamanic practice I was advised by my Grandmother Spirit to journey every day and write down questions. I was not a very questioning sort of person it turns out. There is an art to asking questions. Most big questions I didn't want to know the answers to; it required a different kind of mind. One that is concerned with shaping the future and I had been raised to allow things to unfold and to pounce when the opportunity presented itself. I wanted to learn to master the art of the question, but meanwhile I could just hang out.

My power animals were very affectionate when I came just to hang out. We moved languidly as if on vacation. On my first hanging out visit, Mongoose and I rode on Bear who made himself as big as an elephant and thus we sat on his back in an elephant chair much like the ones used on Thai elephants. We decided to visit Leopard. I told Mongoose I loved Leopard. "She is your heart", he said. 

We found Leopard sunning herself on her usual rock. She licked my face in greeting and I asked her what to do about Lenore. This was not actually a question on my list, but hey as long as we were hanging out I asked it as one would a friend.

After I wrote about my crush on Lenore I had sent her the link to the story along with all the other stories during those prolific few weeks when I was being reacquainted with my returning soul parts. I wanted to know if she minded being a part of my story. People do not always take kindly to being written about and I was prepared for this. Prepared to walk away. I had an entire flow chart in my head about how many ways I was prepared to walk away, but she gave me a big hug when I saw her next and told me how well I wrote. I did not expect her to follow the writing at all. I was so prepared to be rejected, I had to reorient myself to this warm reception and was not sure how to proceed; how to trust it. 

"Lenore will be there for you as long as you need her," Leopard said. "Stay open for what is offered," she added wisely. And so I let go of my second guessing mind. 

I asked Leopard if we could visit my 10 year old. We all walked down to the River and got in a small dinghy. The River drifted us downstream a little ways and stopped at the opposite bank beaching on a little spit of land bordered by some reeds. We jumped out and the 10 year old emerged from the reeds. She was eager to show us her house, a little round adobe house, whitewashed, with a single window and a thatched roof. I could build one myself from what I learned at a workshop in Northern Thailand. There was nothing inside.  

"It's round," she explained, "because it is more productive; it is the corners that are distracting and catch hold of extraneous stuff." I had to agree with that. Then she ran very fast around and around inside the house to demonstrate. We walked outside again and in the clearing next to the house was a little writing desk. She said she was the one who recorded everything and did the accounting. I had also been a very diligent diarist from the age of eight. I asked her what else kept her focused. She took from her pocket a sling shot with a carved wood handle and gum colored band. It was much like the ones I remembered from childhood. I had not dared own one for my mother was against weapons. I knew these slingshots to be lethal.

"I use it for target practice," she said pointing to the target on a tree 25 yards or so to the left of the camp. I looked at the circles of the red target. (It was much like the logo of the store of the same name.) And suddenly I felt I understood something about having goals and plans for action. It was a brief, but clear message for I was not given to goals or any kind of plans for myself though I admired it intensely in others. 

Before we left, the 10 year old also admitted that she hunted squirrels to eat. Such a wild child, I thought. I mused for a moment how this tale could be told from the point of view of the unincorporated 10 year old soul part hanging around for 44 years watching me live my life and waiting for an opportunity to join in—or not. I was reminded of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. 

I went to e-bay and looked for slingshots. There were lots and one was even from Thailand with a lovely green stained hardwood handle. I was the only one who bid on it. I sent the seller a picture of myself when I was ten. He/she wrote back in a Thai sort of English, a tender note of appreciation.

Slingshot Productions

Meanwhile I returned to my leadership obligations and prompted by my conference team, decided to make a video announcement about the conference and all the great speakers we were having. A quick look at similar videos made by colleagues and others showed that there was much room for improvement. This always inspired me, but my standards were already high. I also wanted it to be memorable and entertaining. I could not pull off a professional business attire thing as others would do, but Jim at ICD headquarters encouraged me to go with the same mountain climber costume schtick I had created for my introduction at our last conference and that was enough to set me off and running.

I had no equipment to speak of. Just my iPod touch. Kids were using it to make their movies so how hard could it be? The only thing needed, said the after school tutorial I found, was something to hold up the iPod. I looked around my room and my eye fell on the movie splicer I had unearthed from the basement for my soul retrieval ceremony. It was now sitting on my desk like a giant talisman. Heavy and sturdy, it had flaps to hold the 35 mm film down on a flat bed. I discovered that the flaps would hold the iPod upright and allow easy installation and removal for downloading. I set the splicer on a stack of books on my sewing table in my room. The repurposing of this old movie technology to support the new, pleased me with its poetic symmetry.

I did not have a backdrop of our conference location in the mountains of Denver as I envisioned, but I had a world map someone gave me. I pinned it to my louvered closet doors which looked so obviously like closet doors it added to the improvisational aspect, plus closets have much significance for organizers. Over the doors was a mask of a whiskered wild cat of some sort. It gave my set an explorer flavor and a spirit protector.

I wrote the piece, did some takes and realized I would have to memorize it so my eyes wouldn't be tracking back and forth reading the words on a page. It was also hard to remember where to look since the camera lens was the size of a pinhead. By the time I was able to remember everything in one take, I was exhausted and it showed. I asked Catherine's opinion. She had owned her own videography company and was a good resource. 

"It drags," she said. It was better before when I was animated, but full of mistakes. Well at least it's done I thought and went to bed. I had already spent most of the weekend on it. 

Done was better than perfect as we say to our clients, but these youtube things were forever, would be who you were after you were dead, as I found out when Hester died and that was what we had to remember her by—a lovely series of videos of her talking about being a professional organizer and how she approached various organizing problems. None of us had any idea she had made them, but she must have had help because they were so warm and personable; someone was on the other side of the camera. Too many videos had that dull look about them from people sitting in a room by themselves talking to their computer. 

When it came down to it I had my pride, people to impress. My friends, my colleagues, my organization, not to mention Lenore—a filmmaker herself—would all see this thing. And some of my internet friends had never heard me speak. At least I could be more lively. Two days later, I decided to try again.

By then I had memorized my two minute piece. To liven it up I added expressions for each of the topics we were offering; I moved the camera back to make room to move so it would be funnier. I had an opening shot and an exit and little bits with props. Now there was a premise, a story. The mountain climber hefting a packed rucksack, heading out the door then stopping to talk about where she was going and who should come with. I worked so hard on this thing it took a total of ten hours to get it right after over 40 plus takes. But at least I had made it look easy. To seem effortless was a good marker of artistic competence. Catherine gave it the thumbs up.

When the video was delivered to members in an e-blast, a colleague who had been a long time president of our much bigger umbrella organization sent me an e-mail. "Cute ICD Video. You're quite the actress, ha ha," he wrote. Awe thanks Barry. I had hit my mark with my first attempt, fulfilled my obligations to my colleagues and left my stamp on something. 

The vision of the target in the10 year old's camp kept appearing to me. The simplicity of the slingshot representing a few well chosen tools. I could feel the satisfying connection of target and slingshot coming together. How a vision pulled energy to it. How the role of projects worked to sharpen my skills and move my thinking forward.

The Harpist

Before Catherine's diagnosis my ongoing project was to make emergency off grid equipment and practice self sufficiency. This entertained me not because I had fantasies of being a survivalist although I did read their blogs and write for peak oil enthusiasts, but because the simplicity of off grid living reminded me of home. Or what was home before it embraced globalization and became the mega-tropolis Bangkok of high end shopping malls emmeshed in grid lock traffic. Sigh.

My interests covered all the bases—tiny hand built homes, small boats, rainwater irrigation techniques, co-housing, vegetable gardening, solar oven cooking and living without electricity. Not that we didn't have electricity fairly reliably on my family compound and we cooked with propane, but it was there amidst the water jars, the ponds and extensive garden backing up against empty lots of high grass where old things were allowed to rust and fall into ruin, that I played and appreciated a life of simple handmade things. I had kept up an equivalent interest in California where orchards had given way to high tech. Building furniture from scrap wood, sewing my own designs and making simple home cooked meals kept me connected to that other life.

A lot of that is still there within our family compound in Bangkok. Tucked away beyond the sterility of the formal parlors of the three Big Houses, in the core of the half acre property, the staff live in one-room apartments adjoining an open air kitchen. Surrounded by a courtyard full of tropical plants kept tidy with borders of upended beer bottles, it was charming and anachronistic. When I visited I hung out there talking to our cook who remembered me as a child and told me what was really going on in Bangkok. Because I had left Thailand at such a young age, I never really gave up my affinity for that back kitchen living that was so full of life and things to do.

When Catherine entered into what would be a nine month cancer treatment schedule, I took up residence with her in the high tech, disposable, single serving world of modern medicine. Assisted by teams of competent, cheerful nurses there was nothing do-it-yourself about it. I would have to make something else—art. I amassed a collection of origami dinosaurs, a dragon, fish, a kangaroo, a space shuttle, two dogs and several traditional Japanese cranes. I particularly enjoyed folding my origami models when the harpist trundled her harp into the infusion lab and sat playing for us. There was something about the symbiosis of making art with our hands that made both of us smile secretly at each other. She was otherwise rather dour and made little eye contact unless someone clapped.

And as I whiled away the afternoon watching the cancer patients sit patiently reading, I came to appreciate  the value of art, music and fiction. Once Catherine felt able to read, she chose those simple, charming stories of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and I was grateful for their ability to comfort and amuse. From the point of view of illness as a personal episode of collapse, the power to entertain and relieve the mind of the angst at hand made the efforts of artists a form of life saving.

After Catherine's treatment was over, I  returned to my off grid projects, but I did not feel as compelled to tell myself the scenarios of technological collapse that supported the reason for my projects. It would always be a good idea to be self sufficient and handy and it would still be cool to have an off grid refrigerator, but the stories I wanted to tell now were very different.

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.

Returning To The Hearth of Health: Further Travels of the Thin One

In which Catherine undergoes a ritual shearing and I consult with a Buddhist Priest and my Shamanic guides regarding my diet.

The Shearing

By the third week of Catherine's Taxol chemo treatment her hair began to come out in handfuls when she showered. It was unexpected; this particular chemo wasn't supposed to cause such hair loss and she found it alarming. Though hair loss was one of the passages of the cancer journey that she had been preparing for, it still brought up so much. She had had enviable hair all her life. It fell in waves of blond tresses and looked great no matter what length she wore it. To be bald was to become unmistakably a cancer patient. But this in between stage of thinning hair was problematic as well. It never could look right.

By the third handful of hair in the shower, she put in a call to Gil, our Buddhist dharma teacher. She had already been in touch with Gil about her cancer journey and he had offered to shave her head when the time came in a ceremony that would renew her Buddhist vows much as one does when becoming a monk. 

Catherine had often spoken of a desire to retreat from her life and would ask me how I felt if she shaved her head and entered a monastery to live as a monk. In this scenario I saw myself following her to take up a position as the gardner. 

"You always wanted to be a monk," I said when she made the appointment with Gil.

I did not aspire to attain enlightenment through my meditation practice and was content to be a slacker Buddhist next to my more serious American Buddhist practitioners with whom I sat with at our meditation center. 

I had great respect for Gil and his ability to explain the concepts of the Buddhist teachings. He gave me language, in English, for a perspective on life that I had understood innately from living in Thailand and speaking Thai as a child. I found the translations invaluable for it showed me that my natural perspective was a viable one in the face of a culture that often valued just the opposite.

It was integrated into the Thai language this Buddha nature. The way we experienced time, the way we asserted ourselves or more likely did not. The way we accepted ourselves as a given in time and place, a part of something rather than striving to make something of ourselves. 

This making something of myself is how I am mocked by my adopted American culture. I continually arm myself with opinions and convictions so that I might defend who it is I am.

On the appointed Sunday, I  put on my blue Thai farmer's shirt and welcomed Gil into our home. He had on his usual jeans and a plaid shirt. I became the assistant to the event, minding the dogs while he and Catherine talked about this conundrum of being forced by serious illness to face one's death. 

Catherine had set up an altar in the sun room with her Buddha, her small brass bowl for ringing and a pink rose from our garden in a vase. Gil added a string of wooden beads and a tablet with the Buddha image in relief. Suitable for holding in the hand, he said. I joined them as they stood at the altar and began with a memorized Pali chant. 

They then reviewed the Five Precepts andTriple gem vows which includes aspects of right living and a pledge to do no harm. (It is this pledge to do no harm that prompts a vegetarian diet in a monk's life.) Catherine repeated, after him, the vows of the precepts. Then Gil invited me to tie a red string around her wrist.

And then the shearing began. Gil had brought his electric shaver with him in a plastic shopping bag. Catherine sat in a kitchen chair looking at her reflection in the window glass of the sunroom, as slowly the remaining hair came off in strips. She was moved seeing herself transformed. The effect was somehow uplifting and liberating. Gone was the worrisome hair. This was a look that was complete in itself. Nothing needed to be done with it or about it. A truly carefree style.

As Gil took his leave he told Catherine to call him anytime if she wanted to talk to him. "And you too", he said to me recognizing that the caretaker is just as much under stress. I appreciated this acknowledgement and inclusion. 

Both Steven and I were taken by Catherine's new look. She had worried about how we would react. Would we be repelled by such baldness? But the novelty of it appealed to us. It was unambiguous and thug like, but her petite head was so even and beautiful it contradicted itself. Steven took pictures with his phone to show to their other brother. I sewed her a white cap from a t-shirt and later a black one. The white one made her look like an inmate from the futuristic setting in THX1138. The black one like a drug dealer. I was startled every time I did see her naked head and was reminded again of a monk. 

Once she had taken this unambiguous step into the identity of a cancer patient, she seemed to own it, become more confident about fighting the disease. Between watching episodes of Judge Judy and the antique dealers hunting collectibles on American Pickers, she researched the promise of a cure and how to prevent a recurrence. She also continued her meditation practice daily. When she was feeling energetic (especially after the steroids from the infusions) she listened to lectures for her studies with The Diamond Approach, a spiritual inquiry practice.

The Path of Non-Harming

Shortly after this hair sheering ceremony I found myself confronting the ethical aspects of eating animals. The leftist, social activists, environmentalists and Buddhists, who were part of my context and community, heavily supported the vegetarian ethics of not killing what you ate. It felt urgent to me to answer to this ethic. 

I came across a book by a recovered vegan who laid out for me, in neat categories, all the arguments put forth by the vegetarian camp, from the moral issues to the environmental issues, to the health claims. 

I also felt betrayed by the claims that such a diet was healthy. It was not as I was finding out. It was nutrient depleting and metabolically troublesome, possibly energy draining. Plus the high heat of industrial processing all but destroyed what nutrients were left in the supposedly healthier-for-you veggie burgers and other meatless soy wonders, filled, as I found out from the book The Whole Soy Story, with secret toxins, rancid vegetable oils, mystery fillers and other dubious unknown ingredients. 

From my reading of Lierre Keith's book, The Vegetarian Myths, it became clear to me that the planet would not benefit at all from humans choosing a vegetarian diet. The very grains that would have to be grown to sustain so many vegetarians was already colonizing the land in a distinctly imperialist manner. Industrial agricultural methods rendered the land infertile, stripping the soil of nutrients which led to desertification, thus more clearing of forests and natural habitats for farmland. Factory farming of meat adding insult to this equation by pushing grains into animals. Animals that normally fed off the land itself and were designed to add to the fertility of the soil with their manure. 

I was still left with the moral concept of killing what one ate. The up close, human to animal responsibility of it. No argument could persuade those who were unable to kill. It was as immoral as the death penalty. And so it was that I took Gil up on his invitation to contact him. 

He responded right away and I met with him a few days later at the meditation center. He took me on a walk into the neighborhood leaving me to guide our talk. I offered a little of my own history with Buddhism and how it had been my home base, but more recently I had felt more drawn by a Shamanic practice. I told him, too, how I appreciated that American Buddhism was saving the dharma with the individual practitioners giving their full attention to it in the characteristic, driven, American way. But the Buddhist practice in America embraced vegetarianism in such a way that I was led to believe it was healthy. "I felt misled," I said simply. (This was understating my feelings of rage at being so misled by every sector of society concerning food plus the concern I suddenly had for the health of the people in our Buddhist community.) 

Gil gave his response. There were two reasons people became vegetarians in the '70s, he began. One was for the moral aspect and the other was for the environmental aspect. 

"We knew a vegetarian diet wasn't healthy," he said. It was a relief to hear this because no one in our Buddhist community ever discussed the health aspects. As a newcomer to the community I thought those who ate vegetarian as part of their practice were purifying their bodies to compliment their spiritual path.

Gil then told me a story about Frances Moore Lappe, my hero of the Diet For A Small Planet fame. In the '70s, Gil lived at the zen monastery in San Francisco. The monastery had invited Ms. Lappe to come to dinner and speak to them about vegetarianism. She lived in Berkeley at the time and arrived bearing a rabbit stew made from her own rabbit. This shocked them all, but she explained to them that feeding a rabbit kitchen scraps was the most ecological way to bring food to the table. The whole point of her book had not been vegetarianism, but that feeding grains to animals was wasteful.

I was thrilled by this story. She got it; she wasn't just a hippie chic proselytizing a vegetarian diet. She understood the underlying math. It was the public, then, that wanted to embrace such vegetarian deprivation to do their part. She would be repeatedly quoted for her ardent explanation of how there was enough protein in beans and rice to sustain humans and that's how we should eat on a finite planet rather than fattening cattle with food while humans starved. Too bad she wasn't able to flesh out her equation so to speak. It would take another thirty years before Novella Carpenter would write her book Farm City and reintroduce the idea of growing your own meat with her backyard farming in Oakland and her pig.

But that still left me with the ethics of killing. I confessed to Gil, that I was also the family rat killer.

"That's because you can," he said with no judgement either way, "I can't. I can't kill. If someone else goes fishing and kills a fish I will eat it, but I can't kill a fish myself. If I do need to eat meat for health reasons I eat some chicken or fish." 

He told me about killing gophers when he was a gardner at Tassajara, a zen monastery we had stayed at ourselves. There was no policy about the gophers; it was left up to the gardner to decide. Gil gave it a great deal of thought and watched the garden carefully. In the end he decided that, given how much damage the gophers did to the food crops, he would trap them for the greater good of the community. But over time he had become less able to kill. Someone else would have to catch his rats.

He hoped he had answered my questions. I offerd that it was even more complex and nuanced than I had thought. Then suggested that I might consult my spirit guides and power animals in a Shamanic journey on the topic. He encouraged me to do so and was as intrigued as I was by what they might say.

Returning to the Hearth

The crucial part of journeying to ask a question is what exactly do I ask. The wording of a question would bias the answer. I formed in my mind a nuanced request. What were the ethical considerations of eating meat? How did I reconcile killing another being in order to eat it?

I put on my ten minute drumming segment on my iPod and followed the urgent rhythms into the theta state of my mind and entered the Dream Time. I chose to go to the upper world first to meet my spirit guide Grandmother because she often gave an answer that was an overview.

When I arrived in the sky place, I found myself running across a field of grain, the imperialist colonizing kind, and I was eager to be free of its vast dry yellowness. The cottage of the Grandmother was at the edge of the field over a stone wall. She was in her garden. I entered it and went to her. She hugged me a long time before taking me into her cottage where I sat at her kitchen table and she put before me a hot bowl of bone broth soup. 

I asked her my question about the ethics of eating animals. She gave a sigh and told me that the whole purpose of my incarnating in human form was to integrate fully into my body, the cells of plant life and of animal life so that I could fully realize health in this incarnate, human form. As she mentioned plant life and animal life, I saw their essence in my mind and noted that the plant essence was by far the more powerful and intelligent.

"What about the vegetarians? I asked.

"Forget about them," she said impatiently, "that is not your path."

"What about the killing of animals for me to eat," I asked.

"You must see it as an ecstatic experience for the animal. The ecstasy of being released from the incarnate form. The birth and return home to the spirit world." 

I then ask about the slaughter of the animal.

"The faster and more skillfully it is done, the better the ecstatic release."

"Should I kill my own meat?"

"We'll talk about that when you are serious about doing so," she said, calling my bluff.

I gazed into my soup and saw chunks of liver. I was not sure about them, but I ate and contemplated her words. (Later I would read that bone broth and liver were good foods for regulating blood sugars.)

The drums began the call sequence before I could finish the soup. I got up and hugged her goodbye, sobbing a little. She comforted me and welcomed me back to health, back to the hearth of my health.

The Hunter

Comforted by her reassuring presence, I wrote my notes from the journey. Then I began another to visit the lower world to ask about the killing of animals for eating. As I descend I heard my power animal Mongoose announcing my arrival. I was dressed like Mowgli in a loin cloth. My feet bare and I am in a young body. I was also young in the upper world.

"Here she comes," says Mongoose, "the Hunter." We greet, but we do not hug. Then he does hug me, but rather stiff and formally. He was creating distance between us.

"Your task is to kill me," he said simply.

"I can't do that you're my power animal," I protest and I know that I really can't.

"Okay then you can kill my young,"  he says and there is no arguing with him. The young mongoose are clearly much smaller, more realistic in size than the god-like human size in which he has appeared to me today so I agreed to it. I manifested my own bow and quiver of arrows and followed him into the jungle.

"I will instruct you," said Mongoose when we came to a clearing. Meanwhile all the little mongoose came out into the clearing to greet me, then scampered back into hiding again.

"This reminds me of seeing Island of The Blue Dolphins when I was little," I said, I had been entranced by the girl with her bow and arrow, but then she shot the wolf. I kept watching as if my own life depended on it. Was life intrinsically cruel or not? I was much comforted when the wolf was nursed back to life and became her companion.

"That was a recognition of your path," said Mongoose. "These mongoose will also come back alive, but they must die first by your hand." I agreed to play the game and manifested a crossbow instead for better stalking. Mongoose told me how to find the mongoose. "You will need bait," he says and he handed me a cat carrier with a cobra in it. I took it to the clearing and let the snake out. At first the snake wanted to bite me, but I shoo it off. He entered the clearing and the mongoose came out to prepare to kill the cobra.

"So I am to kill the mongoose as it prepares to kill the cobra?" I asked him perplexed.

"Yes it is the same. The same ecstasy to kill or be killed," he explained.

I concentrated on making a good killing. Only one mongoose had stayed to fight the cobra. I shot it in the throat. Mongoose, my teacher, hurried to its side and caught the blood in a wooden cup which he bid me drink. "This will nourish you," he says, "And then you must skin it and roast it."

I drink from the cup. Then I cut the skin of the slain animal down the middle and down each limb to the feet and hands. Mongoose handed me a hatchet to take off the feet and hands, then helped me put the carcass on a spit. He manifested a fire and I roasted it. When it was cooked, he bid me eat of the flesh.

"It tastes like chicken," I said. Mongoose knows that I am making a joke.

"No," he says, "more like rabbit." I remember the taste of rabbit from a restaurant in San Francisco. I noticed that he did not eat of the mongoose meal. It was for me.

"You are hungry," he says, "eat before the drum calls you back." And I did, letting the juices drip down my chin. I smeared the grease on my face and body like war paint.

"You are trained to be a hunter," he says, "your are wiry and strong; don't' worry about being so thin. The meat will feed you." I ate until the call back of the drum. We walked away together. I was still holding the roasted mongoose. I handed it to him. At the mouth of the tunnel I saw Bear my other power animal. I gave him a hug and rubbed his fury chest. He hugged me back warmly and I scampered up the large tunnel, taking my leave.

The journey left me feeling exposed for my hunter nature. It was not a story I could tell easily, but at the same time I felt integrated into the cycle of life. I could now stand confidently before the meat case at the butchers counter and own my meat eating life.