A short while ago I had a dream that prophesied some potential problems to come. And what’s true is that one of those “whales” from the dream smacked me nearly senseless as it went by only a few days after I had the dream. I won’t bore you with the details, but what may be of interest is how I cope with such things as “prophecy” given my atheism.

I know enough to realize that while dream images may be random firings of the brain, so, essentially is much else we experience.  The point is what the brain does with those electrical and chemical impulses not just how they originate. There are many theories about how we achieve meaning and while many are interesting, I lean toward embodied cognition. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines embodied cognition this way:

The general theory contends that cognitive processes develop when a tightly coupled system emerges from real-time, goal-directed interactions between organisms and their environment; the nature of these interactions influences the formation and further specifies the nature of the developing cognitive capacities.

In other words, as Wittgenstein said, “The human body is the best picture of the human soul.”

(I would add another phrase to make it: “The human body (as it comes to be through trying to accomplish things in the world) is the best picture of the human soul. Not as catchy of course, but more accurate.)

This idea is where I begin thinking about how dreams accomplish meaning. Because language and concepts are so blazingly important in our recent development, they drown out much of our older forms of communication. Things like “my skin is crawling” or “my gut tells me no” are messages now largely consigned to the realm of spirit and intuition. They have become all but inaudible in the time it has taken to move from Erectus to Sapiens. We have developed technologies to listen for those “messages” – meditation and the like – and now, given our conceptual dependence, we create stories to explain their origins. Since those zaps of insight often feel as if they are not like us (i.e. rational and conceptual), those “communications” are often thought to originate in the outside-us — in the spiritual world. I understand the impulse to consign the conceptually unknown to outside-us but I think it unnecessary to posit another world when our own will do as an explanation.

Our bodies, living and developing in the world provides enough of an explanatory net.  Where do dreams come from? The bodily (non-conceptual) systems as they co-develop with the larger set of (non-conceptual) environmental systems.

The body is the model (think of it as a biological non-conceptual framework) which guides the activity of organizing those random impulses into meaningful episodes.  Impulses fired because of events in the body in interaction with its environment, are organized into packets based on past experiences. Like rain flowing down a dry stream bed, where a particular rain drop falls may be random, but the pattern the water creates as it moves across the earth is not. Because those body/brain firings originate and are released into a fairly tightly organized set of pathways, many of which result in (and have been caused by) meaning construction of the waking mind, it seems silly to assume that dreams would not have just as much meaning potential as other waking mental events.

I am an echo. Born

                       in a sound breathed:

the coupling

of my parents, undone soon after,

yet still

                       there was a sigh.

Released in the canyon

                       of satisfaction

the quivered air began

      its first rush to the other side.

For those of you who are familiar with the Meyer’s Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) you will understand me when I say that I am a INTP.  The first letter stands for “Introvert.”

How to know if you are an introvert or extrovert?  When something bad happens where do you run? If when the unimaginably awful slams into you this afternoon, will you go to your BFFs house and collapse in a saline puddle on her doorstep? Or will you ooze along on unshed tears until you can find a dark, quiet, empty corner behind as many closed doors as you can manage?

A bit dramatic perhaps but I am of the second sort. An introvert. So the silence of the last weeks – an introvert’s response to the unimaginable awful having slammed into my head.

There’s a bunch of stuff out there about what the different types are like, some of it is just plain silly but if you’re interested in what an INTP is like you can find lots to read.  The interesting thing about INTP people is that usually their “feeling” side is considered their least developed trait. On the whole I’d have to agree, at least with respect to my personal anecdotal evidence. At work, surrounded as I am with intensely dramatic people (The stapler WON’T work! HOW can I be expected to FUNCTION in these CONDITIONS!), my mean, manipulative side has had a bit more exercise than perhaps it needed (push the working stapler to the back of the table and the broken one up front and just see what happens). I do have the excuse that I have been in both physical and emotional pain (and INTPs with their pitiful feeling function don’t handle emotional pain all that well), and the only thing I really want to do right now is sit quietly in the sun and bead.

Things were getting kind of bad there for a while. I nearly quit my job. In fact I nearly quit the whole 9-5er thing. I had lost too much, the pain was eating at my capacity to retain myself, and the DRAMA at work so irrational, so deeply false in some important way, so much not-me that even reading wasn’t cutting it as a return-to-center tool for a while. What kept me ticking (albeit it with a rather erratic tock) was my beading.

I have a little white buckskin bag that holds this current project. I keep it in my backpack and when I am able to leave work for a break I go across the street to the Starbuck’s, get my tea, go sit outside at one of the little tables and bead. I get a few funny looks and more than a few people doing odd things with their necks trying to see what the heck I am doing without actually asking and that’s kind of diverting but it’s the wonderful mindlessness of the actions themselves that have allowed me to keep my rational equilibrium from totally destabilizing.  Controlling two small needles, multiple threads, wrapping the bead-laden thread around one hand to keep the tension while using the other needle to tack down beads, every other bead along gentle curves or straight places, every bead around not so gentle curves, keeping your eyes glued to the work at hand, flexing your fingers when they get too cold so they won’t hold the tiny beads properly, watching as line after line fills up the empty spaces of the background, that – for now – has replaced even reading.

And if I finish the strap before I am over this?  I have this small purse that I am working on as well. I plan to quill the background and there is the other side that isn’t even started yet so I have lots of healing hours yet to come. And I have my note book with the plans for a new wing dress. They take lots and lots and lots of work so all will eventually be well.

Now what I need to know is how well the quiet-mind that is achieved through my hands can translate into a willingness to show up on these pages again. I guess you and I will find out soon enough.

Such a good idea.

I’m not a gamer mind, but there was this one word game that my kids had me play that required you to kill goats and other iconic creatures in order to be able to get new words. I liked the word-puzzle aspect of the game but every time I had to kill a goat…well, I don’t play it anymore.

At the time I thought about what kind of metaphorical creatures I would be willing to kill in order to play. The first one that popped into my head was the (then) president Mr. George Bush. That got my not-so-nice side cackling. Doubt a game like that would pass social muster because Mr Bush is in fact a real person, but this new idea of Penny Arcade’s – Wow! Is that going to raise a hullabaloo!

Can’t wait. Should be quite a ride; of which Dan Brown and Philip Pullman can only dream.

I’m so supportive, so appreciative of the effort, I’ll buy the game even if I almost certainly won’t want to play it. As I said, I’m not a gamer and those particular icons never had a life in my head so I don’t need to kill them. But for those of you who do need or want an extra rabbit hole to maximize your exit strategy’s efficacy, play on.

via Pharyngula

I’m having a hard time coming back here to the coast. I like living here and I couldn’t live on the Rez again but I find myself longing to return to eastern Washington and just roam around. These images are from the Snake River region. They are both of Buffalo Eddy and as you can tell from the pictographs they have long been a site to which people were drawn. I don’t seem to be able to get the image of the water and the rock out my head. There are moments when I swear I can smell the rock dust, that almost metallic smell of age and memory.

I didn’t expect Thyra’s death to effect me this way. I knew I would feel grief and probably the headache I’ve had since Friday is because of that. But this longing….

Don’t know what to do with it except just wait it out.

Here obit was run in the Spokesman Review.

Here it is. There’s a picture there of her in her youth. Her eldest daughter looks just like her. It’s wonderful. Read this and imagine what it is like to have that many relations. It’s pretty cool really.

Thyra Moses (04/05/1953 – 03/08/2010)

Moses, Thyra J. (Cox) (Age 56) Born April 5, 1953 in Nespelem, WA. Died peacefully in the presence of her family after her courageous battle with cancer came to an end March 8, 2010. Thyra lived in Wellpinit, WA. She is survived by her husband, Patrick Moses of Wellpinit; children: Patrina Spotted Blanket (Lloyd) of Spokane, WA, Russell Cox of Wellpiinit, WA, Lennetta Moses of Spokane, WA; numerous grandchildren; mother, Inez M. Hubert; siblings: Claude Cox (Linda) of Medical Lake, WA, James Samuels of Wellpinit, WA, Steve Brockway of Vancouver, WA, Konnie Brockway of Denver, CO, Francis Carson of Wellpinit, WA, Deanna Auld (Francis) of Elmo, MT, Steven Moses of Ford, WA, Alfred Hubert (Shannon) of Ford, WA, Brea Franco of Reardan, WA; the Peone Sisters; aunts and uncles: Viola Frizzell, Lillian Alexie, Donna Moomaw, Herman Cox, Donald Carson; numerous nieces and nephews; and many more adopted relatives. She was preceded in death by her grandparents: Etta Adams, James Cox; father, Thomas “Manny” Carson; stepfather, Milo Hubert; aunt, Virginia Bradshaw; and uncles, Arnold Cox and Leonard Cox. A wake will be held at 5:00pm, Thursday, March 11, 2010 at the Spokane Tribal Longhouse in Wellpinit. A final viewing will be held from 7:00 to 9:45am, followed by funeral services at 10:00am, Friday, March 12, 2010 at the Sherwood Memorial Center in Wellpinit. Interment will be at the Presbyterian Cemetery in Wellpinit.

photographer, peardg

“Hades seized her and took her loudly crying in his chariot down to his realm of mist and gloom.” So says the Homeric hymn to Demeter when speaking of Persephone’s removal from the living world. This isn’t a perfect quote because, in the end, T.J. went willingly. The cancer in her lungs had doubled in size in just a few weeks and she had a hole in her back the size of a tennis ball and the cancer in her bones had cost her the use of her legs. Even with all the pain killers over which doctors have command, it’s fierce talons could not be kept at bay. So, with apologies for causing pain to those of us left behind, she let go of the red light of life. She died, her room full of people, her husband with her, her sisters, her brothers, nieces, nephews, grandchildren and friends. The family differs in belief, but for all of us T.J. is now without pain, without gloom. For us, at least for now, the world of the dead is our world: Hades and Erebus is where we are and it is one of mist and gloom. We cry and lament together, we crowd the coffin, sing, seek from our memories the stories of a life now past. So really, the deep cry of Persephone is not T.J.’s but ours.

There are hundreds of us here. TJ was deeply respected and loved. People have been arriving for days, from all over the Pacific Northwest. Some waiting for the pass to open, to drive over the Cascades, some coming down from Canada, others from over the Rockies; the public venue had to be changed to the largest building on the Reservation to accommodate all that have come to share in the lament.

Here Perimedes and Eurylochus held the victims, while I drew my sharp sword from beside my thigh, and dug a pit of a cubit’s length this way and that, and around it poured a libation to all the dead, first with milk and honey, thereafter with sweet wine, and in the third place with water, and I sprinkled thereon white barley meal. And I earnestly entreated the powerless heads of the dead, vowing that when I came to Ithaca I would sacrifice in my halls a barren heifer, the best I had, and pile the altar with goodly gifts, and to Teiresias alone would sacrifice separately a ram, wholly black, the goodliest of my flocks. But when with vows and prayers I had made supplication to the tribes of the dead, I took the sheep and cut their throats over the pit, and the dark blood ran forth. Then there gathered from out of Erebus the spirits of those that are dead, brides, and unwedded youths, and toil-worn old men, and tender maidens with hearts yet new to sorrow, and many, too, that had been wounded with bronze-tipped spears, men slain in fight, wearing their blood-stained armour. These came thronging in crowds about the pit from every side, with a wondrous cry; and pale fear seized me.

There they are, all the shades of Hades; grey and longing for the red blood that is the moving world and the animation of the face that is life. People came into the hall in silence hands sliding around backs, hugs pulling close as each new person moved around the back of the hall looking for a space to sit. People wept in corners, some alone and silent, some supported by others, wailing. Children slept red-faced, faces resting on laps, a small dog wove it’s way back and forth under the regiment of folding chairs. A family of singers, a curved shield around her coffin, sang the songs she loved while she was alive. And by the songs, the tears, the children’s sleep sounds, the dog’s waving tail and clicking nails, prayers were made, and interleaved with the stories told of her impact on their lives, T.J.’s life was taken in to the whole tribe. By stories and song, the blood sacrifice was made to those of us in the grey mist of grief.

Throughout all this, her face was completely still. In life she was never completely still, not like this. Beautiful in the coffin, a bright headscarf, her finest wing dress and shawl, the beautiful glittery nail polish on her hand as it rested on her still belly — she was beautiful in life but this beauty in death is different. It’s as if this woman lying on the pendelton blanket wasn’t really her because when the jokes were told, and the hall bounced with the laughter of everyone crowding the walls because there just isn’t enough room for everyone who wants to be here, wheel chairs wedging in spaces too small to fit them, folding chairs scraping as people climbed over them to get back to their seats, hands on shoulders and legs akimbo in the climb, her face remained still as it never would have in life. Her chin didn’t quiver with giggles, her eyes didn’t crinkle with that smile that meant you were welcome in her house. That animation, that love of happiness and visitors, was what marked her life and was the guide by which she made her decisions.

With the blood offering taken, the shades of Erebus can then speak to the still living. Odysseus speaks to his mother, asking how she died.

Neither did the keen-sighted archer goddess assail me in my halls with her gentle shafts, and slay me, nor did any disease come upon me, such as oftenest through grievous wasting takes the spirit from the limbs; nay, it was longing for thee, and for thy counsels, glorious Odysseus, and for thy tender-heartedness, that robbed me of honey-sweet life.

One of the things said over T.J.s coffin, this by her now widowed husband, we can cry for a little bit, for three days maybe, while we are together and all here to share in the weight of the greyness that wells up when someone dies. But then we have to stop because, as he said, if we don’t return to life we invite death. We ourselves would require the blood offering in order to speak to the life that swells outside us. This Erebus is not for the living, at least not for long. Shared with so many grief can be a force for cohesion, but alone it is the dark grey mist of Hades that isolates even when the shades press forward in throngs. Like Odysseus’s mother, grief too long endured, can kill. So for us, a return to the life of blood, a face reddening from laughter, is the duty of the living. To do anything else is to dishonor the dead.

And yet there remains the tasks that come with the absence of another. Her personal items are burnt and all her remaining goods will be given away. She is no longer a wife and mother. Now in death, she is part of the tribe in a new way. Her blankets, for example, will go with their new families to all the places from whence her mourners have come. At some point those blankets will be used at a powwow, or at a stickgame and they will participate in the acts of living. By virtue of that participation T.J. will remain a member of the tribe, providing comfort because the one who packed for the road, that one knows how that blanket came to the family and, when necessary, will share the story. T.J. will be there at stickgame as one of the treasured tools necessary to a continued existence. She knew all this would happen going into her death, and it would have given her great comfort and happiness to know that she would be spread across all the territory, simultaneously in all those homes, in all those lives. And perhaps more importantly, the greatest comfort goes to those of us still in Hades, still in the grey world of grief. The giving of all her things to all the people, the sharing of song, story, tears and laughter, this is the blood sacrifice, which when taken together for these days, will return us to life.

A woman who was a sister to me died on Monday.  Her death was not unexpected but despite this it was still a shock. This is not unusual. Having experienced the death of loved ones before, now matter how well prepared one is, death is never a comfortable experience.

Like all family, my sister and I had our disagreements but as luck would have it we were able to have a comfortable coze and admit missing each other when I came over for her daughter’s wedding. It was a good, if brief, visit and it stands as the last time I got to see her alive.

I had hoped to make it before she died, and last week made plans to come over yesterday, but Monday she was told there was nothing more that the doctors could do except make her comfortable and by mid afternoon she was dead. And so here I am back in Washington State, having left at the planned time, but, unfortunately, not before her death.

I am running up to the Reservation today to attend the first of several good-bye services. The services will last three days because there are many, many people who are, like me, travelling to say good bye to someone who will be deeply missed.

My children and I arrived in town last night, paid for the hotel room, unpacked and then (once email etc had been checked) we went out to pick up some groceries and a little fast food for my daughter. Remember now, this is the US.  We went to a Jack in the Box drive through and I ordered poutine. It was a bit of a comedy. The woman said “what?”  I said “poutine.” She said “what?” In the end I ordered chicken strips and drove up to the window to pay.  She came over to the window and asked “what did you ask for?” And so I had to explain what poutine is and the expression on her face said “what?”  ”Never heard of it,” she said. “Wrong country,” I said.

We laughed; it was a bit of a face-palm moment I fear.  A long drive, never enough sleep, grief, and the shock of it all –  I am hazy, not quite here. Yet I am alive, and so laughter remains. It is a wonderous thing being human.

Yesterday I spent most of the daylight hours walking through the fog, resting for a while with hot tea, Hedgehog and Deleuze, and then walking again.

Not long before twilight I went to see a film called A Single Man. It was a deeply beautiful movie centering on a man (played by Colin Firth) bound by grief and loss. After a day in the fog, a day in which the intimacy of beauty was a constant companion, I came out of the theatre to the fog Peardg has caught in her photo below.  I walked the few blocks to my car, the round towers that are so common here were like fluted pillars in a moonlit cathedral or perhaps more inline with my atheism, walking to my car was like moving through a vast and toplit cavern, one that opens up into a sense of infinity, where the buildings were luminescent stone fingers fluttering against the dark. A thoroughly beautiful day.

Peardg’s photosite