Having just visited the latest turquoise exhibit at the Indian Arts and Culture Museum in Santa Fe, I am still savoring the power and beauty of the mineral and wonder at what humans have made of it.
It came to my attention that turquoise, like so many things in society, can be elusive and illusive when it comes to assigning value.
For example, not long ago wooden beads painted turquoise were discovered in a dig at an ancestral pueblo archaeological site. From this discovery and other contemporary work, we know it is the color of turquoise and not the fragile, small deposits of blended cooper, aluminum and iron that have value in the eyes and mind of indigenous people.
Further, there are no separate distinct words for green and blue in the many tribal groups that occupied and still occupy much of the US Southwest.
What? No words to distinguish blue from green? That boggles my anglo brain.
Sunday, May 4, 2014
Thursday, May 1, 2014
The Grocer Ballerina
She had movement on her mind as she gracefully glided from aisle to aisle looking for partners out of step, those not knowing where to find the items on their list.
She'd greet them with a smile, lips slightly pooched out to get them to anticipate her knowing exactly where on the floor they needed to go. She led these unknowing partners in, among and through a kaleidoscopic maze of product label, shape, color and size.
Before they fully knew where they were standing, her customers felt they'd arrived as if by some miracle, right there, eye to eye with that coveted sale item on their list.
And leaving that spot she'd delivered them, she'd be away to the next partner, this time one wandering the chip section with deer in the headlights TMI overload.
She'd swoon and sweep in with a flourish, invisibly touching her hands to their shoulders, twirl them around while slightly lifting her heels. And they'd be placed within reach of the blue corn, completing the dance with their own arc of spent motion as they reached for just the right package.
Sometimes she would rhumba or tango depending on need and customer inclination. But more often she'd lithely waltz her customers to their culinary and sundry desires.
She'd greet them with a smile, lips slightly pooched out to get them to anticipate her knowing exactly where on the floor they needed to go. She led these unknowing partners in, among and through a kaleidoscopic maze of product label, shape, color and size.
Before they fully knew where they were standing, her customers felt they'd arrived as if by some miracle, right there, eye to eye with that coveted sale item on their list.
And leaving that spot she'd delivered them, she'd be away to the next partner, this time one wandering the chip section with deer in the headlights TMI overload.
She'd swoon and sweep in with a flourish, invisibly touching her hands to their shoulders, twirl them around while slightly lifting her heels. And they'd be placed within reach of the blue corn, completing the dance with their own arc of spent motion as they reached for just the right package.
Sometimes she would rhumba or tango depending on need and customer inclination. But more often she'd lithely waltz her customers to their culinary and sundry desires.
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
"He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves." ---Gabriel Garci-a Marquez, Love In The Time of Cholera
As with Love In the Time of Cholera love can make itself most known when circumstances are dire, when there's no end of the misery in sight, when all seems lost.
I was deeply disturbed and heartbroken when she said she was leaving...and taking Jacob with her, of course, the six year old boy I'd not fathered but had come closest to being a son.
Like a ship storm-tossed at sea, its rudder torn from its hull, I had no sense of where the next land would be sighted and when. This was my family, "was" the new and stunningly abrupt operative verb.
I had no clue this cataclysm of the heart was a necessary breaking open to a new possibility, indeed a new love that would endure, lifting me up and forward in the decades to come. No idea in that piercingly painful moment.
In fact, it would be only a few short months until a meeting with Karin on my own home turf now being suddenly evacuated by those I thought I had a higher commitment to.
In those months unexpected concern and compassion came from my father in the form of a gentle ear instead of hollow didactic guidance, "words of wisdom" with a subtext of measurement, expectation or future ideals. I was deeply appreciative and as an adult son mature enough to receive that support and love in exactly the spirit in which it was given.
When I finally did meet my new friend Karin, I had no urgency or frozen need to be taken care of. I was well along in my healing journey and I have, among others, a father to thank.
He turns 90 this year and carries my mother from room to room.
As with Love In the Time of Cholera love can make itself most known when circumstances are dire, when there's no end of the misery in sight, when all seems lost.
I was deeply disturbed and heartbroken when she said she was leaving...and taking Jacob with her, of course, the six year old boy I'd not fathered but had come closest to being a son.
Like a ship storm-tossed at sea, its rudder torn from its hull, I had no sense of where the next land would be sighted and when. This was my family, "was" the new and stunningly abrupt operative verb.
I had no clue this cataclysm of the heart was a necessary breaking open to a new possibility, indeed a new love that would endure, lifting me up and forward in the decades to come. No idea in that piercingly painful moment.
In fact, it would be only a few short months until a meeting with Karin on my own home turf now being suddenly evacuated by those I thought I had a higher commitment to.
In those months unexpected concern and compassion came from my father in the form of a gentle ear instead of hollow didactic guidance, "words of wisdom" with a subtext of measurement, expectation or future ideals. I was deeply appreciative and as an adult son mature enough to receive that support and love in exactly the spirit in which it was given.
When I finally did meet my new friend Karin, I had no urgency or frozen need to be taken care of. I was well along in my healing journey and I have, among others, a father to thank.
He turns 90 this year and carries my mother from room to room.
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