A Rational Animal

Image from here. 

Strep and bronchitis - both of us.  Trying to stave off pneumonia, which is rampant around here right now:  The BF’s cousin, who I think is around my age, has been in the hospital for over a week, critical, on a vent.  By comparison, we’re really lucky.

I spent much of last week and this week compounding herbal remedies for the BF, which I think helped him halt at bronchitis and avoid moving on to pneumonia, but there comes a point when Zithromax is required.  I actually thought I might escape with a mild case, but no.

Fortunately, last week (the 19th) I began a traditional medicine used by local tribes (including members of his), and it’s boosted my immune system enough that even a bad case hasn’t done its usual damage to me.  I’m cautiously optimistic that it’s working on my autoimmune disease, too - not a cure, mind you, but a better control than I’ve found anywhere else.

And if we feel well enough, we’re heading to the Santa Fe Farmer’s Market this morning to score some more herbs and organics.

Fingers crossed . . . .

As is probably grossly evident, it’s been (with one important exception) a profoundly shitty year around here.  I swear, I feel like fucking Punxsutawney Phil on a brilliantly sunny day - "OMG!  There’s my shadow!  Run!  Hide!" - I don’t dare poke my head out, for fear that yet another Really Bad Thing will blast me in a drive-by.  Puts a damper on the blogging, I gotta tell ya.

The next two weeks are going to be a fucking nightmare.  Away from home, stuck involuntarily in a shithole fundy Republican-run town, life in suspended animation.  In theory, that should make for good blogging conditions; in practice, maybe not so much, since my current environment seems to have forced my brain into suspended animation, as well.  Amazing, the anesthetizing effect these idiots can have on you.

So I’ve begun updating the blogroll - at least then you can read folks who make sense, which is not guaranteed in these quarters for the time being.  (Still working on it; if I’ve promised you a link and it’s not there yet, never fear - it’s forthcoming.)  Pay particular attention to Mikey and Righteous Bubba, whose genius I discovered courtesy of Da Boyz at S,N! (or, rather, courtesy of their Comments section).  If you’re unfamiliar with their respective oeuvres, I suggest starting off with a comment thread from today; scroll down until you reach the Bear/Puma Rap between the two.  (Yes, I know it’s confusing, what with other comments interspersed, but it’s worth the effort.  Steve, you especially will appreciate this.)  Seriously, though, the commenters at S,N! are some of the smartest and funniest in the blogosphere - and none of this "Fitz!" crap, either.  Sometimes I go there purely because I need a laugh, and it rarely disappoints.

In other news, Maru has renovated her digs - she’s got a sleek, elegant new look to go with the snark.  Contributing bloggers Undie Lib (heh) and JasonC now appear on the sidebar, too.  (Note to divageek:  What’s your URL, woman?)

Finally, I’ve got half a dozen posts in the pipeline, in various stages of undress.  If I can ever get them decently attired, maybe they’ll put in an appearance.  Or maybe I’ll just let them run around starkers, risking lewd-conduct arrests . . . .

It’s a strange thing.  It steals silently up behind you, and before you even know it’s there, you’re enveloped in its dark and heavy cloak.

Strange, too, that you can grieve for something you only knew you had when you realized that it was lost; for something that you hadn’t tried to possess; for something that you know wasn’t meant to be.

And so it isn’t.

And I’m shocked to find that it still breaks my heart. 

They seem to be everywhere right now:  in my life, in the country’s life, in that of the entire planet.

Apologies to all who’ve visited over the last two or three weeks.  After my father’s death, of course, I had to do the things that attend a death in today’s society:  beginning the task of sorting through his belongings; writing his obituary; picking up his ashes from the funeral home; fulfiling certain traditional obligations.  In the middle of all of this (unsurprisingly, I suppose), my autoimmune disease decided that it was time for an exacerbation, which has turned out to be the worst one I’ve had in recent memory.  Life ground to a halt.

I’m slowly (but surely, I think) on the mend - in part because I’m now at Home #2, and getting a little R-and-R.  The shot above was taken from the deck here the day after Dad’s death, but we’ve gotten the same wave of storms every day since, including a spectacular lightning show last night.   Unfortunately, it’s haying season, and this puts me in a position I don’t think I’ve ever occupied before:  praying for no rain.  In a desert climate like this, you learn not to argue with rain whenever or however it wants to make an appearance.  But after a solid month of daily storms (and the loss of the last cut of hay about six weeks ago, again, to too much moisture), I’m literally praying for a three- or four-day window of bone-dry weather.

It seems like a metaphor for our times, with storm clouds amassed in every direction, and drenching us on a daily basis.  We were talking this morning over coffee about the FISA fiasco - neither of us thinks that we’re going to get our country back absent a major societal upheaval.  Once our "leaders" give away our most fundamental rights, it’s nearly impossible to get them back.  I mean, does anyone really think that Hillary, if she wins, is going to give back the FISA expansion - or the gutting of habeas corpus, or any of the myriad other thefts of constitutional protections that this pack of criminals has wrought?  (Or any of the other candidates, for that matter?)

I didn’t think so. 

So while I’m happy to be feeling a little better personally, I increasingly despair for my country.  Strike that - for the world.  Because what our "leaders" do in our name affects the entire planet.

Which is another reason I continue to insist that impeachment, trial, and conviction are the moral imperatives of our time.  Our obligations now go far beyond the U.S. - certainly beyond parochial worries about keeping certain Democrats in office.  We now owe the world an enormous moral debt - one whose tally climbs every hour.  And we can only begin to repay the smallest, most superficial part of that debt once we take these first necessary legal steps.  It’s how we show the world that we recognize the tragedy and obscenity of what this nation has wrought - and it’s the precondition to regaining the tiniest, most fundamental bit of moral authority as a nation.

[Sigh . . . .]  You’re right.  I’m not holding out hope, either. 

About 4:20 PM yesterday, my father began his four-day journey along the western road.

I wasn’t there; Mom was with him.   I’d left about 20 minutes earlier, finally headed to my other home for a few days.  At about that time, I saw two adult golden eagles flying not quite in tandem by the side of the road; I thought it was odd, since you virtually never see eagles in that area, much less a pair, and that close to the road.  Of course, I didn’t know then that Dad was gone, although I rather suspected it long before I got the message.

As has probably been clear over the years - of for no other reason, from the things I didn’t say - my father and I had, shall we say, a difficult relationship.  Compounding this was the fact that his illness included a specialized form of dementia, so that for the last 3.5 years, carrying on any sort of conversation has been virtually impossible.  There have been other factors at work, too, all underscored by the fact that I had a lot to forgive him for.

Mom had been saying for a couple of days that she thought this was it, so to speak - but we’d been there before, many times, and his illness was such that at any given time, he could be assumed to last ten more hours or ten more years.  However, knowing that I was headed out of town yesterday morning, I knew I had to go see him, since I might not get another chance.  (I did not get that chance with either of my sisters.)  Honestly, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted a chance in the first place, but duty trumps certain emotions.  I wound up staying for several hours - not for any concrete reason that I could identify, but there turned out to be a reason in the end.

When I got there, his breathing was very labored (he was being treated for pneumonia) and, as usual, clonus had rendered his limbs spastic, so that he was contracted more or less into a fetal position.  At one point, one of the nurses checked his feet and hands; all were a mottled purple, with the discoloration on his feet extending up over his knees in a nearly solid blue-black mass.  When I spoke to him, his eyes parted a little; it was clear that he couldn’t see me, but he seemed to be tracking my voice.

Mom used my cell phone to call a few (very few) relatives; each time, she put the phone to his ear in the hope that he could hear.  His face would spasm briefly, whether in recognition or from pain, it was impossible to tell.  I retrieved my smudge kit from the car, filled a medicine bag with the four sacred substances, and tied the bag to his bed.  (When I return, I’ll burn the bag’s contents.)  Later, two nurses (wonderful women, both of them) turned off his oxygen so that I could smudge him.  Because of the safety concerns, the tendril of smoke was virtually nonexistent, and I was afraid that nothing was happening.  Then he breathed in the scent and suddenly gave what sounded something like a single hiccup - and his face, body, and breathing relaxed.  He lay there on his back, the grimace gone from his face, the breathing rhythmic and no longer labored, the clonus gone from his body and his limbs at last stretched out, relaxed. 

Mom had to run to the bank, so I took her place beside him.  I apologized to him for not knowing the proper songs; I "sang" (that’s a gross overstatement) the only two I do know - and only in English, of course.  They’re designed to release the person from the tethers of this life, so that s/he can begin the journey without worrying about what may or may not be left behind.  I told him that I didn’t know whether it was his time - but if it was, I was releasing him, singing him into becoming a spirit (becoming one with Gitchi Manitou and the essential Mystery).  And then I told him that we would all be okay.  I told him for the first time about a particular person; that this person would take care of me; that we’d take care of Mom; that all the dogs would help.  Occasionally, his eyelids would slit open slightly, and while there was no indication that he’d even heard me, I still think he was hearing my voice.

When Mom returned, I got ready to leave.  Twenty minutes after that, he’d begun the walk.  And when Mom called me to tell me, she also told me that - for the first time in months - his face was relaxed, unspasmed, and with normal color; the angry black mottling on his limbs had been replaced by healthy-looking tissue; and his hands and feet were warm.  She saw him at the funeral home this morning (they can’t perform a cremation in the absence of a death certificate, which won’t be available until after the first of the week), and she told me that he looks more like himself than he has in a long time.

Talking with her yesterday evening, I apologized for the smudging, thinking that it may have hastened things faster than perhaps she would have wanted.  She told me she was glad that I did it; that she thinks it made all the difference, first, in making him physically comfortable, and second, in releasing his spirit.  I think she’s right.  I also think she’s right that he hung on for three days because he couldn’t go until I released him.  Not by way of forgiveness, precisely - from my end, it’s simply that everything that happened is now irrelevant.  (And knowing him, if I’d used the word "forgiveness," it probably would’ve pissed him off into hanging on indefinitely from sheer rage.)  But I do think he needed me to tell him it was okay to start his journey now.

This morning, while I was on the phone with Mom, a young eagle carrying a prairie dog in its talons flew across my path at roughly eye level, only mere yards from where I stood.  A few moments later, an enormous swallowtail butterfly - easily a five-inch wingspan - raided the garden flowers for pollen while I stood three feet away.  And all day yesterday and again today, birds have served as my escorts.  As the person who owns this place said to me this morning, those were meant for me to see.  And since then, I’ve been unusually serene.

The last few days have been . . . well, pretty brutal, obviously.  And the confluence of certain events has the capacity to make them, taken as a whole, far, far worse than the sum of their parts.  But I don’t think that’s going to happen.  Sometimes the universe has a way of forcing everything on you all at once - purely to get it all out of the way once and for all, so that you can change direction unencumbered by any remaining baggage of any sort.  I think that’s what’s happened this week:  Several disparate aspects of my life that have been weighing me down (in some cases, for decades) have now been taken out of my hands.  I don’t have any choice but to start fresh.  And it all happens to coincide with a particular one-year anniversary that has changed my life in countless and untold ways.

So for those of you who have been thinking good thoughts, thank you and bless you.  And if anyone feels the need to "do something," Parkinson’s research efforts need help.  So do domestic violence programs for Native American populations. 

I’m not sure how much blogging I’ll do here over the next couple of days; my brain is still sorting things out a bit.  For those of you who’ve already left comments, I will get to those.  And shortly, I anticipate having considerably more time and a considerably more regular schedule, allowing me to immerse myself in writing here, and in developing Debwe.  Before I leave you this evening, I’ll share one of today’s gifts from the universe - no chance at getting a shot of the eagle, but I did get one of the butterfly:

The shot’s not terribly in focus, but believe me, it was a stunner.

Love to you all -

~ L 

In a manner of speaking.

I’ve left behind the place that feels like my real home (above image taken there), to return for a few days to the one that other people insist on calling my "home."  It’s a place that’s toxic to my health and sanity.  Unfortunately, I have no choice.

It’s been a rough couple of months.  I spent five or six weeks effectively without any Internet access, owing in part to the technological backwardness of this place.  No, finances weren’t the issue (this time); it was a clusterfuck of tech problems, scheduling, lack of access, and other issues.  But the upshot was no blogging - or virtually anything else, except loss of sanity.

I don’t know; maybe it was for the best.  I’ve also been dealing with issues that would’ve made it hard to write - at least, hard to write anything of any use to anyone.  As longtime readers know, I’ve been battling autoimmune diseases for years now, and they’ve flared - mostly as a result of all the other bullshit in my life.  And as I’ve mentioned before, a lot of my work involves issues of abuse - physical, emotional, sexual - and some of my professional activities over the past few weeks dredged up shit from my own past that left me a bit freaked.  Add to that mix assorted client bullshit, family bullshit, financial bullshit (always with the financial pressures - feh) and I’ve been useless to everyone, especially myself, lately.  And then I return to the blogosphere to find that we’ve lost Jim Capozzola, and I wonder whether there really is any justice in the universe at all.

Of course, I know it’s not that bad.  And, in fact, in the last couple of weeks I’ve begun to feel better psychologically than I have in . . . oh, hell, I don’t know how long.  Yeah, the illness and chronic pain are still there - in fucking spades.  Yeah, the money problems are still there.  Yeah, Jim’s still gone, along with Steve Gilliard, while Chimpy remains to fuck up the world some more.  Yeah, I’m stuck in this hole for 2.5 more days - and I’ll have to return next week.  But - thanks almost entirely to the help and support of one person, and you know who you are - my brain is back.   I’m me again.  And I haven’t felt like that for a long time.

So, apologies to everyone who’s been kind enough - or crazy enough - not only to read this site, but to return periodically while I’ve been on an unintentional hiatus.  I’m afraid to make any promises about consistency for fear of tempting fate, but I do promise to try.  I’m planning on staying up - all night, if I can - to watch the Senate actually do its fucking job for once, and I’ve got a post or two in me yet tonight.

And thank you to one particular person - mostly for being you.  I don’t know whether you realize just what a beautiful thing that is.  I’ll be home - really home - in a few days.

My other home, and my favorite place on earth 

And tanned, rested, and ready to go.  Well, sort of - the tanned part, not so much.

It’s been a rough few weeks.  People I love with medical issues (one just had surgery;another’s postponing surgery); my own medical issues; financial issues; professional issues . . . you name it.  As much as I’ve wanted to write about the countless outrages in the news, by the time I’d dealt with each day, I just didn’t have anything left over for blogging - either physically or psychologically.  And on the rare occasions when I was able to snag a few days at my haven (see above), all I could do was try to decompress for a few days.

But I just spent a week there (thank you, W), and - unintentionally - worked through a lot of the shit that had piled up.  When I’m there, it feels like a vacation, but it’s not; I had two all-day training conferences in five days, one out of town.   And their subject matter was difficult, to say the least.  I do a lot of work on issues involving domestic violence and sexual assault, and a lot of what I see and hear is truly horrifying.  This week’s work was horrifying in an additional way, in that it dredged up shit from my own past that I’ve been (mostly successfully) avoiding for longer than I can remember.

But you know what?  It’s all good.  It prodded me to begin to deal with it, which I clearly needed to do.  It got me back in touch with my spiritual obligations, which have been getting short shrift.  It prompted me to listen to my guides.  And it answered two nagging questions and pushed me to do something about them.  (And for that, thank you, W - again - for paying for the session that made that possible.)

One of those answers is Debwe.   No, there’s nothing there yet - although I hope there will be later tonight.  But Debwe will accomplish two things:

1.  I have to write.  Period.  When I don’t, I get crazy.  And if that means that I have to jettison other tasks, so be it.  And this gives me a focal point for certain topics that don’t fit neatly here.

2.  Increasingly, my work (like my life) involves tribal issues.  This is especially true in the context of my domestic violence and sexual assault work - but it’s also emblematic of the turns my life has taken recently in other areas, as well.  I need an outlet for those issues.  However, ARA has always been largely a political blog, and I don’t want that to change.  There’ll be some cross-posting between the two, but a lot of Native American issues that are not necessarily front-burner political issues will appear on Debwe instead of ARA.

Hmm?  Oh, the name.  "Debwe" is an Anishinaabemowin word.  It loosely translates as "I speak the truth" - or, simply (and this is my usage of it), "truth." 

Maybe I should’ve named it "therapy" . . . ?

Love you all -

 ~ L 

Sage, the second of four sacred substances we use in ceremonial smudging.

Just a brief note before turning to the next member of New Mexico’s own Prosecutor Purge Rogues’ Gallery:

Dave Noon, one of the guys at Lawyers, Guns & Money, posted a note to say that his father is undergoing surgery today (6-10 hours’ worth) for pancreatic cancer.  Of all the forms of cancer out there, it’s one of the most deadly; as Dave puts it, the phrase "long-term prognosis," in these circumstances, is an oxymoron.

Dave notes that while he’s not religious, good thoughts are much appreciated right now.  Take a minute to send some his way. 

[And, Dave, I’ll do a smudge for your Dad and your family.  It may be all in my mind, but for me, at least, it works, and I do it regularly for friends and loved ones who are undergoing tough times.  One thing about it that I know does work is the calming effect that the scent of the sacred substances has on frazzled nerves - and it smells absolutely beautiful.  If you’d like me to send you some to burn just for the scent, let me know where to ship it and I’ll gladly raid my stash.]

Cedar, the first of four sacred substances we use in traditional ceremonial smudging

Sorry for the lack of posts.  I’ve been OTR again - and still battling health issues.  My travel schedule lately isn’t helping, obviously.  If I could spend a week or two at a time in each place, it’d help, but NM’s a big state, and my commitments tend to be close in time but far-flung in miles.  In February alone (yeah, the shortest frickin’ month of the year), I put 3,000 miles on my jalopy.

It’s midnight.  Since pain tends to prevent sleep, I’m back up, trying to do several of the things I wanted to do earlier today but couldn’t.  So I’ve finished another chapter in my current book (and found a new idea for one of my own swirling around the back of my brain).  I did a smudging for myself, and three for friends facing medical crises.  And as the residual scents of cedar and sweetgrass wrap around me in soft tendrils, I’m finally able, for the first time in days, to concentrate on blogging.

I’ve been planning a major post on the prosecutors’ purge for weeks now; in fact, I’ve had a draft in the works for days.  But it’s become abundantly clear that there’s too much to the scandal to cover it in one post.  So over the next few days (health and travel permitting), I’ll be throwing up a series of discrete posts on different aspects of the scandal.  Because make no mistake:  This is not just about pique at specific prosecutors.  It’s not even really about Carol Lam (as I’ll explain in a future post).  This goes much, much deeper, to the very heart of our system of government - or, rather, to a concerted and strategic attempt to destroy it.

In between purge posts, I’ll try to add a few on other issues:  Richardson, tribal affairs, Broderella’s pearl-clutching venality, etc., etc.  And at least one purge post will introduce you to a great new artist - well, not new to the art world, presumably, but new to me, I mean.  Maybe I’ll begin with hers; reverse order might make sense.

Anyway, as always, thanks to those of you who keep checking on me.  I love you all.  And before I go, please:  Send a little love to Steve and Jen, too.  Steve’s fighting a real battle right now, one that makes my health issues seem like nothing - and Jen’s right there with him in spirit.  If anyone needs thoughts, prayers, karma, blessings, spare change right now, it’s these two.