Listen to the silence

The following is from my book House of the Earth. Have you ever had a time when it seemed like you could stop the chatter in your mind long enough to "tune in" to the silence? Alison Cabot never has ... yet. 

From her perch on the housetop, something caught Alison’s attention on the roof of a house across the plaza. A handful of men, bodies painted in wide black and white stripes, had climbed onto the rooftop. They wore loincloths, moccasins, and striped, two-horned hats over painted faces. Drunkenly, one of them almost walked off the edge of the roof before another man grabbed his arm and jerked him back. With much laughter from the crowd, they threw a rope over the edge and lowered each other to the ground where thay gawked about without seeming to notice the katsinas dancing in their long unbroken line. The clowns’ clumsy presence on the plaza served to emphasize more sharply the elegance of the katsinas’ graceful movements and intricate costumes.

Leaning close to Alison’s ear, Ben’s aunt, sitting on the blanket next to her, jutted her chin toward the clowns on the plaza. “Once the Hopi were like the clown people. We couldn’t even tell the spirits danced right beside us.”

She was quiet for a long time and Alison thought she’d finished speaking but followed the custom of remaining silent in case the other person had more to say.

After a bit Ben’s aunt leaned close again. “We had to learn to listen to the silence and then we could hear drums and see the spirits dance.”

Alison wondered about what the woman said the rest of the morning. What did “listen to the silence” mean exactly? If she could but see it, was there something bigger than herself that she was already a part of?

Welcome to Hopi: Leave Cameras & Stress Behind

Each of us has silver box experiences we tuck away, and from time to time we re-live the emotive memories. The other day Doug, my oldest, told me going to Hopi (The name is used for location as well as people.) wound up in his silver box. He says it changed his life. Maybe it did mine too.

On trips north, time seems to stretch longer and quiet grows deeper the closer we get to Hopi. Doug says on that first family trip we pulled off on a high mesa and got out to look around at the 360 degree panorama of empty desert. He spoke of noticing the curvature of the Earth for the first time and the pelts of grey rain in the distance and said, “At that moment I knew there was something bigger than me and that I was a part of it. It changed my life.”

I agreed. Something about the high desert puts me in touch with the infinite. Visualizing the landscape with no human footprint, no buildings or power lines, drains away stress kind of like a message, but in a whole different realm.

On a practical level, while in a traffic tie-up on the 101 the other day, conjuring up that vista and long-remembered chants and drumming helped me with perspective. I remembered newly that being late for the meeting wouldn’t matter much ten years from now. Next time I’ll leave earlier. It’s all good. Relax the shoulders.

The day after our arrival on Third Mesa, our Hopi hosts led us up a ladder to sit on the roof of one of the houses facing the plaza to watch the katsina dances. I reminded the kids not to fall off the sloped roof. Duh! My husband reassured me they were old enough to be okay, even when they jumped over two feet of thin air onto the next rooftop with the other kids. The mom part of me was uneasy. The actual me was loving it all.

Over a hundred people crowded around the square, but the dozens of us scattered across rooftops had the advantage of seeing the kiva where the dancers emerged. They danced down the path to the plaza and right into my silver box. My heart pounded. I hope I captured the sights and sounds in House of the Earth when Alison Cabot observes her first katsina dance. My next post will be an excerpt from the book of that experience, but for this blog I’m remembering its effect after the fact. Like how the trip affected my handling of stress and its impact on my son.

We were invited, along with about thirty other people, to eat our mid-day meal at our host’s mother’s house. Because of the numbers, we ate in shifts, males first. Before I could remind Doug not to push away the mutton stew with hominy and ask for mac and cheese, he was swept into the kitchen with the other boys. I worried at first but focused on the drum cadence I'd heard and allowed my mind to relax. “Not bad,” Doug said on his way out. When I asked him about the incident last week, he said, “I knew to behave because I didn’t want the Hopi family to be disappointed in me.” Wow, he took the high road, and I didn’t even know why until now.

Currently he’s writing songs like crazy for his rock band Izzy Edible’s next CD and credits his creativity to many things, experiences on Hopi among them. I think I need to sit down with my two daughters and ask how the trip affected them.

Today's blog makes me wonder. What is it that inspires? What relieves stress and reconnects us with the bigger picture? Are they one and the same sometimes?

By the way, I blogged about enjoying the blues band, Krimson Chord the other day. Today I’ll mention that Druid and I are going to see Izzy Edible next Sat. night. (Google it. They promise to “melt your face.”) Does rock music de-stress people the way chanting or orchestral music can?

Thomas Lynch Quote: Why I Write

Thomas Lynch, an award winning author and former funeral director, sparked a quote about why he writes that’s also true for me.

“I write because I read, and I just think it’s part of the same conversation. I’ve always thought writers are only readers who sort of go karaoke.” Quote from Cyndi Lieske. The Writer. Vol. 123, Issue 10.
The reason I wrote House of the Earth was that one day I searched my bookshelves, the public library and the bookstore and couldn't find the exact book I was hungry for, so I wrote one. You know how it goes, when you're hungry for extra sharp cheddar, even Brie won't do.

Aztec Ruins

A witch, you say? At Aztec Ruins?

Let’s back up a minute. Archeological evidence says the inhabitants of Aztec Ruins were ancient Ancestral Puebloan people. (I know. I know. You called them Anasazi back in grade school, but like with the planet Pluto, you have to unlearn whatcha learned.)

Old timers back at the turn of the twentieth century named everything they stubbed their toe on after the Aztecs. Check out a map of the four-corners area (AZ, UT, CO & NM), and you’ll see towns, counties, a well, and ruins named after the ancient Mexican culture. In reality, the Aztecs and their king Montezuma never came this far north.

            Whoever the Puebloan Donald Trump was at the time plopped this three story condo complex on prime real estate beside the Animus River in NW New Mexico. It’s on the road between its more famous cousins, Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon. My book’s fictitious main character, Alison Cabot, is a 1916 archeologist. In an early scene from House of the Earth, Alison is with Earl Morris when he discovers the skeleton of a “witch” at Aztec Ruins-a real event involving the real Earl and my not-real Alison.

Imagine Earl’s shock when he saw that the skeleton of a crone propped against a wall inside a room had a pointed stake driven through her pelvis clear into the ground. Reporting to his funders, he said the woman had probably been accused of witchcraft. The media today would be all over that. Stay tuned for News at 6:00. Lister & Lister’s biography, Earl Morris & Southwestern Archeology, says it made the papers then, as well. They state the woman, “ lying in her grisly torture chamber had her picture emblazoned in dozens of newspapers.”

Earl Morris eventually reconstructed the Grand Kiva at Aztec Ruins. As I stepped out of the blazing sun into the cool serenity of the magnificent building on my first trip, I was struck with the beauty of its colors and proportions. Surely this was a sacred space. Out of nowhere I heard drumming and chanting. I’ll let you discover for yourself where it came from when you visit the Aztec Ruins yourself. Be prepared for goosebumps. Check out my web link to their site.