Being a Dirty Bird

Like many people, I loved my grandparents' home. It was warm and cozy; it smelled always of comfort foods simmering on the stove, and it had lots of unique features including a pink tiled bathroom with a tub set on the diagonal. I used to marvel at the bath because its surround was a large square set beneath the window. It's construction made the space seem luxurious even though the bathroom actually was not at all large. For some reason, I used to long to take a bath in that tub; it would have been a space to dream of the house I myself would one day have. I wanted a tub like that! But, as it was, my siblings and I never took a bath that I can remember when we were at my grandparents'. I have no idea why this was; surely we smelled badly after playing all day in the summer sun! Our puppy smell must have been sweet, however, in my grandparents' nostrils, like  a gentle musk mixed in with their own since they too never used the tub.

Big Ma and Big Daddy had at that point, the 1970s, been country people for what was still a majority of their lives, they having moved from rural Mississippi in the Forties. Both of them were born at or near the turn of the century. I don't suppose in their country house they had a bathroom with a tub. I remember the red pump near the front door of their house. I took a picture there in 1974 with my father and my brother posing. Between the 1940s and the 1970s, there remained a gap for my grandparents, which is to say they did not necessarily adjust all of their practices to modern behavior belonging to the twentieth century.

How ironic it is then that their granddaughter would return to Mississippi and take up their old ways, partly out of necessity or limitations and partly out of philosophy. I have moved into a 1951 storefront with a living space in the back. There is in fact running water and a bathroom, but I've had to make both a kitchen (without a sink) and a bathroom without a tub. This arrangement is totally a choice. (Indeed, I have a full, 2000 square foot house in a northern state, complete with two and a half baths.) In the last several years, after our kids left for college and from which they have since graduated, I found myself wanting to have a pared down experience. I connect this goal to my writing process, which involves removing unnecessary things, clutter from my life and clutter from my mind. Is bathing one of those unnecessary things?

Well, honestly, when I live in a home that has a bath I do bathe every single day. Bathing has always been for me therapeutic. I'm as invested in the daily ritual of experiencing the feel of hot water on my skin as I am in getting clean. But, I also find, that when I'm living in a space that doesn't have a full bath, I quickly forget about the daily shower and adjust myself to a washup. My flexibility comes either from memory of my grandparents' seeming well-being or from a retreat I attended ten years ago that included twelve women and but one shower, whose hot water lasted for only two sessions each morning. The retreat director, a Moroccan who had grown up in Iraq, suggested in a very motherly, nurturing voice that we ladies didn't really need to shower each day. I think she was saying to us, "Be comfortable in your own skin, its oils, even its funk." That too, I have come to feel, is part of my writing process. My natural musk is part of my undisturbed vessel. As I write with my whole being, my body, unbothered for a time by the urge to stop and wash, is able to function as channel. There is undoubtedly a time for bathing but perhaps it is best matched with the rhythms of thinking and writing. This may mean developing one's best time for meeting body with water rather than unconsciously conforming to the common practice of taking a full-on shower every morning or evening.

I am loving my newfound freedom of my body's natural odors. They are as sensual as the smell released from slicing an onion or from stepping onto freshly-cut grass. I am happy in fact to be a dirty bird.

Channeling Art

In Dark Night of the Soul, Thomas Moore writes, "It helps to know who is living through you at any given moment" (253). A similar thinker has stated that we don't so much live as we are lived. Such thinking is in keeping with the idea of the decentered subject. There may be no such thing as the individual, and even if there is her existence is much more than ego and activity.

Psychoanalysts obviously deal in dreams and suggest that people consider their dreams almost daily. I have been playing closer attention to my dreams in the last year or so. An irritating large number of them are reoccurring, constant themes being houses--which I have taken to symbolize order, stability, structure, and inheritance or family. In these house dreams, I am sometimes taking down walls of observing them, going through doors or noticing that they are closed or cracked. Very often I am angry at my newest ancestors, people I knew when they were alive, because they were not good stewards of family property; they hoarded, kept heirlooms from being passed down. The meaning of these dreams seems obvious. But maybe it is; maybe it isn't.

Through genealogical research, or actually through involving students in it, I have seen that the dreamlife can indeed be affected. My students have had unsettling dreams about people they have researched. For a long time, my own dreamlife was not thusly invaded, but about a year ago I dreamed of a man who I took to be a figure I was spending lots of time on. Then there was last night or this morning.

I woke up with a song in my head that I had been singing in my sleep, in my dream. I have titled it "Ridin' to Freedom." It goes like this: "Oh half-a-day. Ridin' to (till) freedom come./Oh half-a-day, half-a-day, ridin' to (till) freedom come." Perhaps this is a published song. Maybe it is even a common folk song or spiritual. However, I am not conscious of having heard it or of having been familiar with it before I sang it in my dream.

I have been thinking a lot about ways the spirit world communicates with the living, and it has become clear that some spirits like to use music. I think for instance that it is my father's preferred form if communication. Whenever I wake up with soul music strongly in my head, I figure Daddy is trying to reach me. This phenomenon is invasive but I don't experience it as such, and usually the song offers a message of comfort. "ou child things are fine get easier/some day we'll walk together in the beautiful sun/some day things will get brighter" was one of the first. My father had a strong belief in reuniting with loved ones in the afterlife.

As for Ridin' to Freedom, it fits perfectly the  life I have been studying, that of hauler or wagoner Cato Govan of Holly Springs, Mississippi. He transported cotton between Holly Springs and Memphis under government contract during the Civil War. One question I have had of his experience and identity is whether he viewed himself as free after the Union army occupied Holly Springs in November 1862. Govan actually states that he was not free until after the war. But now there is this song to consider. I could never prove I think that he sang this song, but it does provide an interesting counter to the idea that African Americans who remained near where they had been enslaved were not free until 1865. This song is intriguing because it suggests both that it's subject rode to freedom and that he also was waiting on freedom, which within a half a day, part of the travel time to Memphis, he would experience. Possibly, his trips to Memphis--it would appear that he made many--let him know that the war would soon be over and freedom would come to all. This feels like a song of celebration and thanks. My gut tells me that by some supernatural, psychic experience I received this song. Perhaps this is how all music comes into being. Again, as Moore writes, it helps to know who is living through you at any given moment.

Reckoning

My last post was about the old word "bargain." This post is about the word "reckon," or reckoning. As with bargain, I come across reckoning in Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina. In this story of the late nineteenth century, reckon can mean to count or account. For instance, when one is conducting business, making an offer, to reckon means to calculate or consider everything that is to be considered. To state that one has reckoned everything out, as Stepan Arkadyevitch does in the novel, is not just to say that one has accounted for everything. More importantly, to make this statement is to give one's word that the transaction is honest.

One of my friends, a Southern lady who has lived all over the world, has told me that reckoning and bargaining belong together. Both are old words that are more than business terms; they belong to a cosmology, a system of beliefs about the order of the universe including the business and politics of humans. One of the key questions that Tolstoy seems to be asking in the novel is if God in fact wills certain relationships, or how marriage fits in the order of things. He asks as well how class fits. Are the monarchy and bourgeoisie divinely appointed? Is Konstantin Levin supposed to be over his peasant workers? They seem to accept their place. They are disturbed when he labors with them. They think that he is in fact disturbing the order.

Certainly, Anna Arkadyevna disturbs the order when she loves someone other than her husband. But, Princess Mayakaya defends Anna, arguing that it is not Anna's fault that more than one man's soul is tacked to her. Mayakaya is suggesting that there exist soul connections that transcend one's earth life. Anna too defends herself. When she believes she faces death, nothing is more important than that she receive her husband's forgiveness for her infidelity, which is not to say that she feels she has been wrong to love another. Yet, she shows us that at death one must reckon or account for what one has done on earth.

This concept of reckoning gives me a way to understand my own ancestors' practice of having their land sold at death and having their executor pay off all debts before disbursing any bequests. This is another form of reckoning at death. I have seen this a number of times in wills including in that of one ancestor whose will was challenged because the request would result in her being expelled from the land where she had lived with her husband. Her case went to the Supreme Court of the State of Mississippi, where she prevailed. She was allowed to remain on the land until death, which unfortunately wasn't long after the case was decided. In this case, the ancestor's reckoning might have included care for his surviving spouse.

The case reminds me of my grandfather, who I knew in my lifetime, his having lived until I was fifteen years old. It would appear that, a couple of years at least before his death, he tried to get his house in order by making sure that my grandmother's needs would be met. This task included purchasing my grandmother a washer and dryer to replace the wring washer she had used for many years. I guess he didn't want to, from his grave, see her working as hard as she had while he lived. Or, maybe Grandma had asked for a new washer and he didn't want that request to go unfulfilled. Whichever is the case, I do see his actions at the close of life as a reckoning, and I very much feel that this was behavior he had learned from his elders and ancestors.

So, if bargaining is an attempt at honest business, reckoning points to an ethic based in the belief that one may be outside the will of God or outside of a certain order if one does not settle, make proper account, of one's earth doings. One may turn in one's grave if things are left unsettled or undone.

Another reason I have been interested in the concepts of reckoning and bargaining is that I think that these may come into play with the activities of African-American soldiers in their own dealings. I am looking in particular at the 63rd USCT, which was a guard unit stationed at Memphis. These men served basically in John Eaton, Jr.'s Department of Freedmen and in the area's contraband camps. Following their service, as well as during, they appear to have sought every benefit that was coming to them. For example, most of them applied for a bounty, which a significant number of them used to get started in farming. Many of them opened accounts with the Freedmen's Bureau Bank. They vouched for each other's service when applying for a pension and informed their wives that they too should apply if they preceded them in death. In short, even though most of these men were former slaves, they appear to have evaluated their experience in the war, systematically, which is to say as a part of an order, and they placed their lives in agreement with that order. I see their various applications as a reckoning, a commitment to discerning God's will in a situation and acting accordingly. This is a theory in need of some work, but these are my beginning thoughts.

What's a Bargain?

I have been studying this term bargaining or bargain, which I first began making note of as I read through Civil War documents. Since then, I have been noticing it elsewhere. I noticed it last summer in Gone with the Wind though I cannot find the reference at the moment, something about Gerald, Scarlett's father, not wanting to spend his life bargaining. I suppose in this context bargaining is an ungentlemanly act. Bargaining is better left to merchants, whose livelihood depends on buying and selling at a reasonable price.

I have a second example of the practice; it comes from this summer's reading of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Darya's wayward husband, whom she sometimes allows herself to call Stiva, is selling off a piece of her property to a Ryabinin, who is actually taking advantage, getting the property at a steal. Stiva's friend Levin advises him not to sell at the agreed-upon price; Levin even offers to buy the land himself. It is timberland, and Levin informs Stiva, otherwise known as Stepan Oblonsky, that because so it is worth many times what he is getting for it. The correct procedure for determining price of such land is, according to Levin, to count the trees. Needless to say, that would be tedious work, and Stiva--who spends much of his time philandering and otherwise enjoying a life of good food, women, and wine--doesn't have time to count trees.

In Levin's own words, there is a difference between bargaining and haggling. With the latter, one continues bargaining after the deal is done. Oblonsky would not haggle. I suppose his word meant something, his character and reputation as well. He says, "I've given my word, you know." Apparently, one's word was everything.

I had an aged cousin tell me once that this is how it was as well in the South, in northwest Mississippi. If someone, white or black, gave their word, you could count on it. For instance, if a white man said he'd sell a black a piece of land, the white would not go back on his word because of the interference of others who might like to influence the deal one way or another rather as Levin tries to do in the novel. Maybe this is just my cousin's opinion. I don't know. I do know that fair dealing between whites and blacks in the past runs contrary to popular belief, which is that whites would not have had the wherewithal or integrity to sell to blacks or to deal fairly with them in the first place. One of the reasons I'm investigating traditional business behavior is to see if business ethics in the South encouraged a transcendence of race. I feel naive in even asking this question given all that I have been told about black life in the Old South, but, as a scholar, I have to ask and investigate rather than assume.

Why besides humanity would a white, say, during the Reconstruction era or the Jim Crow era, bargain fairly with a black? Did standards and practices of gentlemanly behavior always or ever extend to blacks? Again, were business people compelled by some ethic to deal fair and square and to stand by a word given, a promise, a deal? My guess is yes, for I believe I have gathered much proof of this in my many documents relating to my own family's land purchases. I also have an opportunity to witness indirectly business deals of an acquaintance who lives in the South today. I notice that he employs the same language of the past. The other day he spoke of the standard "fair and square." I think this phrase, which my father used often undoubtedly influenced by his father who conducted much business in Mississippi, means on the up and up--honest dealing. I am intrigued by the association of the social term fairness with a geometric term square. The latter gives the former a visual and physical aspect. Fairness is exact. Fairness can be measured and seen. It is not asymmetrical or uneven. Maybe our ancestors, both black and white ones, believed that bad dealing, unevenness, would haunt them, that they would have, through bad dealing, set up bad karma.

Likewise, close dealing too can be frowned upon though shrewdness is sometimes admired. Ryabinin says of Stepan's advisor, "Very close about money is Konstantin Dimitrievitch...there's positively no dealing with him." Ryabinin claims for instance that he offered Konstantin, also known as Levin, a pretty price for some wheat. In this case, it seems that a good deal to Ryabinin is the offer of what he may consider a fair price but one that his rival may consider too low. One key to dealing obviously is to know what one's goods or one's labor is worth. I am studying also a colored hauler from the Civil War era. He claims to have made fifty dollars per bale of cotton hauled to Memphis. He said that he'd haul for anyone who paid his price. I would assume that plenty did, which says to me that he knew what a fair price was for the job. Another black, enlisted, wrote home to his wife that he could have made more money outside the service using honest, close trading. His words too suggest knowledge of business etiquette, and they imply that a black skilled in dealing could play the game.

The Sociology of Work or Makin' a Livin' (first installment)

This is the blog where I try ideas out, and so I will use this space to continue thinking on one of many questions belonging to my manuscript--Mississippi Wound, Detroit Bound. In that text, I am considering my father's family's migration to Detroit after World War II. One of my angles into answering the question of why the family moved from DeSoto County, Mississippi to Detroit is their philosophy and experience of work.

To answer this question, I have come to Mississippi since this is one of the places where the family would have been socialized to work, which is not to say indoctrinated into an ethic of work, meaning busy-ness, but socialized to ways of valuing or measuring the value of work. In Detroit, this question emerged as an important one for the family as they reorganized their lives. This question is relevant to so many migrating families, yet one of the things that perhaps makes our story different if not unique is that it would seem that my grandfather--who I think of as the sponsor of their migration--did not go to Detroit with the intention of working in an auto factory. He was not pushed into the city by disappearance of farm work from rural areas due to mechanization. He may have been thinking about factory employment, eventually, for his sons, but, for the time being, this is a question that remains open. At the moment, I am fairly certain that he never considered factory employment for himself.

My grandfather was an enterprising man, which, an aging Mississippi cousin instructed me was not uncommon in the past. My Big Daddy did everything from undertaking to running a store to raising bulls. He inherited the family's land from his own father and uncle, which I'm sure helped him get his start. The same cousin reminds me, however, that "Moody 'em" (not sure who's included in the "em or them) "never made no crop." Making a crop was in northwest Mississippi from Reconstruction well into the 1970s a center of life. My great grandfather grew cotton though it is unclear how many acres he himself worked. The aged cousin brags about the family's wealth partly created by the numbers of blacks they had "workin' on half." When I came here, I didn't know if "workin' on half" was a good arrangement for the worker or not. The question comes of a sensitivity gained growing up in the nation's premier union town. I'm still not entirely sure of the answer since I have shied from asking that exact question, because of the way in which it might implicate my ancestors. Whatever the case, it is clear that the family was in a relatively better position for having owned the land they lived on, and that better position allowed their children to choose what work they would do while they were in Mississippi. I am mindful, however, that black, spoiled, and Mississippi do not go together--not in the 1940s--when Big Daddy packed up a truck with the family's belongings and headed north.

I live part-time, which is actually most of the year, in northwest Mississippi, in a small town that is not quite a bedroom community for or a suburb of Memphis. This is not the county my father grew up in but the one to where my earliest Mississippi ancestors were brought as slaves. There is a college in town, (my Big Daddy attended it for a while) which is where I work, and there are the typical black businesses, barbershops and beauty shops, eateries, and funeral homes. Most blacks are employed by the college, others work for the municipality and its auxiliaries, or for retail establishments.

It didn't take me very long to realize that most blacks in this general area of Mississippi have more than one job or source of income. Some work two jobs while others are employed by some entity and also earn money from self-employment, for instance, catering. Lots of people sell various wares. There are some roads where one will find sometimes a half dozen people, not always black, selling mostly clothing, usually procured from auction storage lockers, out of the trunks of their cars. The goods are sold along the roadsides dirt cheap, leaving me to wonder whether the enterprise is profitable. The low prices do keep things moving, which is good, yet I have asked myself if the main purpose is for these vendors to keep up a habit of work more than it is to make good money.

When I first moved here, not knowing how long I would be, I bought lots of household items from a woman, I estimate in her sixties, who has a yard sale at her rural home ten miles from me about once a month. Compared to other sellers, I actually found her prices to be somewhat high, but I bought from her nevertheless because she also delivered and set up the items for me. Eventually, after I had everything I needed I stopped buying from her, but I still see her around from time to time. She may be seventy by now and is thin as a rail but obviously as strong as the day she carried a heavy couch off her truck, brought it through my kitchen door without even having to turn it, and set it down in my living room. She did break a sweat, it was August after all, but she broke nothing else.

Other, more genteel, types, also may have two jobs. For instance, some of my colleagues, who work full-time in higher ed, are ministers and have churches. Others rent out houses around town. This level of industriousness surely unsettles stereotypes of Mississippians as a poor lot, sitting on porches swatting flies, getting little exercise while contributing to their own poor health through sedentary living.

Full disclosure, my own lifestyle may be more sedentary than that of the Mississippians I observe though I bolt out the door every Saturday morning to see what's for sale along my favorite route. The thing is, I wasn't really taught to work. I was the youngest child  in my family and reaped all the benefits thereof. My family, my mother excepted, believed children were to be spoiled, especially pre-adolescent children. The point of childhood was play. This was in Detroit.

Evidence that the family's philosophy of childhood was no different in Mississippi is the fact that all of the blood relatives who remained in Mississippi remember all of my grandparents' children, well, most of them, as spoiled. "They had him spoiled," I hear a cousin say of my Uncle Sonny Man, the youngest son. Of my father, called Lil' Bro though he is older than Uncle Sonny, they say nothing. No one remembers my father. This is perhaps because, as the son a step up from him told me, he didn't do much but sit under a shade tree with his nice shoes on rather than walk around barefooted like the rest of us.

My father did carry those same behaviors into Detroit from age thirteen until his death. The brother who, pun intended, threw shade worked until he died at the age of eighty. The two of them may be in heaven right now arguing about who really worked. You see, my father was employed by Ford Motor Company for at least two decades while his blissfully barefooted brother appears to have shunned such employment. Just a few years before my uncle's death, he showed me a big catfish he had caught. He specialized in river catfish, and he had a ready and steady clientele. As far as I know (only my father might disagree), Uncle was never without money.

These are my own inheritances relative to work; the case is very different on my mother's side, but that is another story for another day. For now, I'll just say her orientation to work is much more in keeping with what I've been observing in northwest Mississippi. As for me, I continue to adjust to the pace of life and the work ethic as I see it at my place of employment. I had not expected to be more oppressed by clock and calendar in Mississippi than in Detroit, but I am, which makes having a writing life exceedingly difficult. The only option is to fit it in within the imposed structure of work rather than to allow it to flow throughout my day, making itself primary. I know that half the time I am being negligent even to think about having a writing life. It is a luxury few can afford and one that few people with whom I have become acquainted believe I can afford. Perhaps not yet. When people poked at my father for taking periodic, unscheduled and unapproved, vacations from Ford, he would respond, "I've worked enough." When he was alive and when I was a kid, I never could wrap my brain around that rejoinder. There were just so many doodads for a kid to have, and the income from Ford was more than enough to buy them. When a paycheck wasn't forthcoming, my Big Daddy stepped in. I'm coming to understand different orientations to work including my father's which is probably most akin to my own. The differences go to a basic question of existence--just how much work is required of us humans.

The Alley Less Traveled

The other day, I read an intriguing article on folk agriculture. The writer suggested that we might return to more sustainable food systems--meaning local food systems. She pointed out that humans used to get their food closer to home. I was introduced through the piece to wildcrafting, a word I immediately fell in love with. I don't know which part of the word I love most--wild--or--craft since both define me pretty well. So, put together, we're talking about a lifestyle right up my alley.

"Food access used to happen in lots of places in our lives, not just at grocery stores and restaurants."  Gordon Smith

Speaking of alleys, on my morning walk I realized that I've not walked through any alleys this summer. I always do so two or three times to capture images of vines growing on garages that haven't been painted in twenty years. I love getting a back alley view of America--a glimpse of the side of ourselves we don't show the world. I also hold out hope that I'll find something really interesting growing back there. Quite purposefully, I keep my nails long enough to have them serve as sheers. This morning, I pinched off a sweet pea in full bloom. It was growing on a beautiful old stone wall that bordered what I suspect may be a carriage house. This morning, I noticed that the neighborhoods in the general vicinity of our house have many properties with carriage houses. This fascinates me. I long to know what life was like in South Bend 100 plus years ago when people still had horses and carriages. And I am amazed that these structures are still standing. There are some pretty "ancient" ones at the back of some Victorian houses along Lincolnway East. This is not a highly sought-after neighborhood. Actually, no neighborhood in South Bend benefits from the rule location, location, location. But, the neighborhoods along Lincolnway are even more ignored, which is fine by me because it means that maybe one day, if I'm lucky, I may for a song own one of these gems.

Perhaps what makes the area even more unappealing to most is that it backs up to a very active railroad. I walked along it this morning as well, picking some weeds, aka wildflowers--some yellow ones I'd not noticed before but which were growing abundantly and the purplish blue ones that grow in every Rust Belt city I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. These foot-high beauties have taken over huge fields in my hometown of Detroit. As I plucked these two varieties up by the root--intent upon planting them in my already wild backyard--I prayed that I wouldn't break out in a rash or, worse, die upon contact. I slightly exaggerate my fears. In fact, I should be more fearful. Most people would agree that walking highways and byways, not to mention urban alleyways, is not smart. Maybe so, but my rebellious spirit against all things others consider smart and not smart naturally makes me go against the grain. I also am curious and growing more so with the passing of each day about the historic functions of all of the weeds that populate cities. If I had another lifetime to investigate, I sure would like to become an herbalist. How wasteful are we to ignore daily plants that for all we know could be tremendously pleasing to our palates or, even better, a panacea for much of what ails us? I'd like this city in which I currently reside much better if on my walks I ran into other wild children out foraging (another word I love). We could share recipes. I could invite such persons to my kitchen, and they'd invite me to theirs. We'd sit on our front or back porches surrounded by trumpet vine and have a lunch of dandelion greens, nasturtium flowers, and marigold heads.

I actually met such a person just a few weeks ago. She lives on a corner on a questionable street with at least one vacant house with a large lot next to it which she plans to buy for a full-fledged garden. Her home is inspired. You can hardly see her front porch what for the growth, and on the facade of the second floor is a huge metal, painted dragonfly. I spotted this urban gardener when I'd gotten done checking out the abandoned house, which, since for rent, may serve as my writer's cottage next summer. As I approached the slender lady, she was bent over, snipping off something with her own fingers. I said something. I forget what, and she told me that she was collecting radish pods, which are great on salads. Right then, I could see that she was going to talk to me and that she had a lot to teach. I view her home, replete with chickens and a shed turned into a coop, as an urban farm. This woman of the house--whom I will call Laura though that is not her real name--can get most of her meals from her yard, and she let me know, after she'd given me a couple dozen basil leaves, that I could stop by with a basket anytime. According to her, many of the plants I saw growing, even the tomato plants, had volunteered, so even though giving one's city lot over to a garden can require a full-day's work, diminishing one's food anxiety--increasing one's food security--may allow one partner of a two-adult household to quit her day job. I dream of this possibility when I walk throughout the city. I wonder what all besides eating I can do with the lush vegetation of South Bend--dried floral arrangements, pretty water colors to be sold at the local farmer's market in winter? I have sold there before. I am not above it even though my Ph.D. suggests I should want more or other for myself and family.

My new friend is just the type who would keep me in this city though I swear every year I will not endure another. She scavenges, and she has told me there is a whole group of urban foragers here who make it their job to know every apple, pear, plum, and peach tree within the city limits and also a few fruit varieties long forgotten or, like mulberry, underappreciated. Laura had completely won my heart when she shared that she traipses onto abandoned lots looking for food. I am similarly drawn, as much for the beauty of decay, a good picture that I might paint to share on Facebook, or to just dream about restoring as I am drawn to potential foodstuff, but I am not closed to the latter. Laura told me to try one of the most plentiful edible greens--lambs quarters. I have Googled it, and she is right. It can be eaten raw or cooked. It's good on salads, and when cooked some say it tastes like chard. The weed is quite plentiful. God's provision I think. There is a warning, however. When it is found in abundance, the ground is likely contaminated, for it is there to restore the soil. This it seems is its other purpose. I have not yet consumed any lambs quarters, but I'm definitely gearing up. Would that the whole world would step outside of the box and live a little on the wild side. Life would be so much more interesting, but then, such radical change should it ever become the norm might lead me to search for the old order.

Where the Ancestors Reside

Margaret Mitchell does not make light of the O'Hara's Irish ancestry. This comes across in the novel in ways that it did not in the film. Irish ancestry is a key aspect of the story; it is how both Gerald O'Hara and Scarlett's determination is explained. In the case of Gerald for certain, his success is at least partly for the ancestors who never could have experienced the good life in Europe. Rhett Butler recognizes Scarlett's "Irish spirit." It is one of the things he likes about her. He notices when she has her Irish up. Scarlett herself hardly recognizes the depth of her heritage while she has but one goal before her--winning Ashley Wilkes. It is not until she figures him dead and perceives herself as abandoned in the world, left by Butler as well, that she acknowledges her ancestors.

"And when they died, they died spent but unquenched. All those shadowy folks whose blood flowed in her veins seemed to move quietly in the moonlit room. And Scarlett was not surprised to see them, these kinsmen who had taken the worst that fate could send them and hammer it into the best. Tara was her fate, her fight, and she must conquer it."

This is what comes to Scarlett as she lay in bed planning her future. She wonders if the ancestors are in fact in the room with her, or if the dimension she has entered is only a dream. "'Whether you are there or not,' she murmured sleepily, 'good night--and thank you'."

The mystical including presence of ancestors can be found throughout the novel. In the same chapter, Mitchell writes, "There were too many Irish ancestors crowding behind Gerald's shoulders." One can read this figuratively, Gerald seen to be standing on the shoulders of his ancestors. Their perseverance
has led to his. One can read it symbolically, which would be to read it from a symbolic universe in which there is a crowd existing in another dimension and yet ever present as witnesses. I do not think it unintentional that Mitchell places the ancestors behind the shoulders or, perhaps, off to the sides, for it has been suggested by others that this is how, visually, they are attached. Mitchell would seem to know this. Mitchell has undoubtedly acquired such an understanding.

Reading Gone with the Wind

I began reading Gone with the Wind at the beginning of June. I am almost half way through. I'm an incredibly slow reader because I savor and make a study of text. I am amazed at just how much cultural information Mitchell's book contains. I am especially interested in what she suggests throughout her text, about class.

She helps us understand how it is that Gerald has come to be a slave owner and that, despite his success, he will always be confined to a certain class partly because of his Irish heritage. Gerald, she explains while giving the background leading up to his becoming a planter, didn't want to be "in trade" like his brothers. He didn't want a life of endless "bargaining."

I have been studying trade and bargaining. I am fascinated by these terms and their meaning in the context of nineteenth century America and, even more so, in the context of slave society. I first became familiar with this term, however, through my grandfather, a Mississippi expat, who always spoke of "trading" with certain grocers in Detroit. He had been a small grocer himself in both Mississippi and Detroit, but I suspect that he had learned the term in the South, where he had done much business with area whites in both the small town where he lived and in Memphis, where he traveled regularly to buy and sell cotton and cattle. Many times, I've come across historical writings in which trade and bargaining are mentioned. For instance, right now, I'm studying the Southern Claims Commission file of Cato Govan, a former slave who made a good deal of money during the Civil War hauling cotton to Memphis.

What intrigues me about Mitchell's commentary is that she places the planter far above that of the merchant. A good deal of Gone with the Wind is in fact spent telling a story that has this class problematic as its foundation. Gerald is not Ellen's social equal; Scarlett is not Ashley's equal, and Rhett, despite coming from a good family, is not received by any reputable families, so, in the end, he is not Scarlett's equal. I am interested in this issue for many many reasons as I have immersed myself in Southern culture of the twenty-first century, studying at the same time William Crump, who was an attorney but appears on the 1860 census as a grocer despite the fact that he was a relatively prosperous planter. What gives? Why would Crump self-identify as a grocer rather than as a planter, especially if the former was less respectable?

I have my suspicions about Mr. Crump given that I have read more than one account of his character and person. He appears to have been a Unionist of sorts. As I've been reading GWTW, I have compared him to the unforgettable Rhett Butler. Was Crump too all about profit? Was money everything to him? He was attorney for Elizabeth Hull, owner of my ancestors. Hull trusted him both to take care of her business and with her daughter, whom he married. It was apparently an unhappy marriage; Crump was thought to be uncaring. Elizabeth the younger died, it would seem, heartbroken. Neighbor Henry Craft's diary is one source for this view of the marriage.

My guess is that there were layers and dimensions to William Crump. These deserve to be investigated, for to do so would be to provide a more complex view of Southern society than most of us have received. This investigation may have capitalism as its foundation. Why was Crump Unionist? Was he simply the same pragmatist as the fictional Butler? Was he as dead set on survival as even our heroine Scarlett O'Hara Butler would come to be? How well did Crump come through the war?

In 1870, we find him living in a household led by Morris Anderson, a 32-year-old mulatto carpenter born in North Carolina. Crump, now 65, would appear to have a good amount of money relative to his neighbors. Perhaps he eschewed all social convention. This living arrangement would certainly seem to suggest such independence. I look forward to digging deeper to find out.

The Rose Hotel, 1812

Today began my annual trek from Mississippi to Indiana. In my new position, the school year doesn't end as neatly as it did when I was not an administrator, but I have managed to get away still the first week in June. As busy as I was, however, tying up loose ends, I had only a couple of hours to look for a nice play to stay overnight--as I had decided before taking off that I would not drive straight through. I've done it far too many times, and my constitution is not, it seems to me, better for it.

I looked online for a bed and breakfast somewhere between northern Kentucky and Southern Illinois. I must have looked at rooms in at least a dozen, but with the exception of those in Paducah, which seem very interesting, some even exquisite, others seemed too fru fru. I am really not that much into Victorian. It can be sweet but is usually not restrained enough for my taste. I did find one B&B in Harrisburg, Illinois--the Lafayette Inn--but I called them, and their phone just rang and rang. When the time came for me to hit the road, Highway 7 north out of Mississippi, I had not yet found a room. This was a little discomforting. I feel a little less desperately out in the world by myself when I know ahead of time where I'll be laying my head for the night.

So, the plan then was to stop in Paducah, Kentucky--a town whose name I've known for years only because I've seen signs for it off of the interstates I've traveled. I also traveled through Paducah last year although from Highway 45 one does not see the city's downtown, which must be where the snazzy inns are located. Things did not go as planned. I got a phone call while I was driving through Paducah, and then I somehow wound up off 45 and on 60. Despite having navigation, I also carry a road atlas, and my car has a compass, which has saved me many, many times. So, I saw that 60 travels northwesterly, and since I was headed to Indiana... Besides that, 60 also connects to 91, which connects back to 45...

I've forgotten how long I was on 60, but I wasn't the least bit worried since I still had over a half tank of gas, having filled up in Jackson, Tennessee. I'm also not sure how long I was on 91, but somewhere along the way I saw a sign that said that trucks of a certain tonnage could not take the ferry. Ferry? I know what a ferry is, but this water vessel that takes people and vehicles across rivers is not a part of my experience, which is likely the reason why I, despite forewarning, didn't think about what the message to truckers meant.

The next thing I knew, the Blazer and I were in a line of cars and a big truck. A guy at the shore beckoned for me to go around the truck, and that's when the reality that my car and I were about to cross the Ohio River, not on a bridge but on a ferry, began to sink in. I did go around the truck, and the same fellow directed me to get behind another car, very snugly I might add. I was scared, honestly, I was, first of getting too close to the car in front of me and, then, that I was going to suffer some kind of cognitive dissonance from not adjusting my mind quickly enough to the fact that my car was moving without my having to press on the gas. I started to turn the car off but was unsure that that was the proper thing to do, so I left it on and hoped that automatic pilot would not kick in and instruct me to press on the gas pedal. In other words, I was just a few minutes shy of freaking out.

Of course, I managed to remain calm somehow, and on the other side of the river, I landed at Rock-in-the-Cave, which I have since learned is a major tourist site. There is a cave. I drove maybe a couple of blocks--can't really recall how far, could've been more--then saw a sign for a lodge. Yes! I turned a corner, went less than a quarter of a mile and entered a state park whose signage directed me to the cabins. There was a restaurant as well, and I entered there to ask about the cabins. The price was incredibly reasonable, but they were all booked. The clerk could only offer a full house for $165, and I'm glad to say that, not needing a washer and dryer and three bedrooms, I was not tempted to rent it for the night. Still, I regretted that the cabins weren't available; they are situated overlooking the water. I asked the clerk if he could recommend other lodging and he told me that there were two beds and breakfasts in Elizabethtown about thirteen miles away. At that point, I was even more stubbornly committed to not trying to reach Indiana; it was around 3:00, and I wasn't interested in driving in the dark or of arriving in town exhausted.

I got to Elizabethtown in maybe fifteen minutes and found the B&Bs pretty easily. One need only go toward the water. As the clerk had said, there are two right across the street from each other. I had no idea which to choose. I started toward the one and then turned toward the Rose Hotel, founded in 1812. There was a vacancy sign (as there was at the other), and when I entered the front door, with the look of the road on my face--the innkeeper smiled. He showed me the rooms that were available, and I chose the Sarah Room, which is very nice, with a sleigh bed situated in the corner, a lilac chenille spread covering the bed. The room is carpeted and furnished with simple antiques, like a wooden rocker and a wardrobe. There is a nice clawfoot tub as well, equipped with shower.

So, the room is very tranquil, and this of course is not the point of this blog post, but I enjoy telling the whole story because I think how I came to this place is important. After arriving here, actually, before arriving here I began to think about journeys of our ancestors. The thing is I crossed at least two other rivers, and since I haven't checked my atlas I'm actually not sure that I wasn't crossing the same river in different places. I imagine that one of those rivers was the Little Wabash, which if I recall correctly figures in that awful story of the unsuccessful escape attempt by William Still's brother. But, more to the point, how can I stay at the historic Rose Hotel, which was open and running during the era of slavery, and not think about slaves who lived just across the river in Kentucky and hoped against hope one day to be able to cross the river to freedom. I didn't see any literature to this effect when I checked in. Maybe I will find some tomorrow. Breakfast is at 8:30. I will be sure to ask then.

If there is not such history, or if there is, but it has not been told, then I expect I'll be doing some writing on this. All day, I had been thinking about my trip, how eccentric I am to keep taking this annual slow jog through the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. On one level, I am consciously covering the steps of freedomseekers, and yet I struggle greatly to even approximate feeling what they felt. I may have worried about getting loss, having mistakenly gotten off 45, but they worried about being caught and sent back. I felt a little unsafe getting so far off the beaten path, but they must have thought it wise to do just this. As I crossed the Ohio, I was afraid; this is true. The journey seemed to take a long time. I wanted to speed it up. I worried, irrationally, that we might somehow tip into the water. Maybe I had a moment, a visit, an alignment of sorts.

Finally, curious about the Rose Hotel, I of course Googled it when I got a chance, after having a lovely meal at a floating restaurant that can be seen from the hotel. One website was of ghost-trackers. I didn't click on it. The innkeeper had earlier told me to call "if anything happens." Her assurances that nothing would did not erase the suspicion she had already aroused in me. From that point on, I pretty much accepted that the hotel is haunted; how could it not be? It's 200 years old! I decided I would sleep with the bathroom light on. My mother has always said that ghosts cannot harm you; only people who are alive can harm you. I believe she is right, but I have come to accept that there are intersecting spheres, and I have no doubt that there are here at this beautiful hotel remnants of the one-time presence of our ancestors who may very well have taken refuge here.

Blurred Lines II

So, in a previous post--Blurred Lines I--I asked why the song "Got to Give It Up" by Marvin Gaye (1977) came to me in a dream this week, and I implied that its surfacing is directly connected to my having heard Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" back in June of this year and again a little over a week ago. I didn't say in the previous post that I am not in the habit of dreaming of Marvin Gaye songs. Actually, my father wasn't that crazy about Gaye since he didn't like the sexual (read erotic) aspect of some of the later stuff; my father was a romantic in the more lovely sense of the word. So, either my father, whom I have called my psychic d.j., did not send forth this song, or he did but not merely for my listening pleasure.

What, then, does my subconscious self want me to do with the knowledge that Thicke's song is strongly influenced by Gaye's? Might I add that last night I gave some thought to other influences that I hear in the song and came up with Prince as the main influence on Thicke's falsetto? I went online and learned that not a few people have realized the same. Some think Michael Jackson is an influence as well, but I'm not yet able to discern anything beyond the "Hey," which I guess could be Jackson's "He he!" At a time like this, I need an ethnomusicologist. I know of two, and neither is available to me at the moment. If they were, I'd ask just how common this degree of influence is, which is beside the point of this post, or, well, maybe not. Okay, I know enough to recognize "Blurred Lines" as a pastiche, my term of choice for what others call a mashup. Again, there are in Thicke's recording several influences. It takes either a refined ear, age, or a little peace and quiet to tease them all out. Why bother? Well, one reason I can think of is that one is a fool if he or she thinks that there is anything new under the sun. What does it mean then to have a hit if that hit is a creative collage of old hits? I suppose it means that one has reassembled the old with the new very creatively, and I would admit that one is to be applauded for that. Most old heads would say that the originals were better. I dunno. I don't even know if I am an old head. What I do know is that the old music takes me back to a time, and I know that when I hear music from the past--an experience very much like Proust and the teacup or was it Didion and the teacups?--the essence of that time also comes back. When I first heard Thicke's song, I approached the past but did not become fully immersed in it, maybe because of the puzzle the music placed before me.

For months then, I think I suffered a bit of cognitive dissonance, a condition which may increase with age, but one which I suspect that more and more young people (am I young at 48?) suffer. (Incidentally, my mother, who is in her 70s, experienced such an episode recently, a sort of temporal confusion. She got stuck in her own constructed sense of time, which may actually mean that she's ahead in this game.) My own persistent dissonance has to do with living in, one, a culture that gives me much more to do and much more to consume than I reasonably can (which means I am cognitively overloaded all of the time) and, two, living in a culture in which truly nothing is original. My response to what I take to be postmodern facts of life is not to take on an air or claim of cultural superiority (I suppose Gaye's song wasn't pure either) but to feel disturbed by the possibility that most may not be able to tease out the differences for whatever reason--time poverty or choice to spend time on things that seem to matter more.

Take for instance last year's blockbuster slavery film Django Unchained. Now, I went in so hard on that film last year that I promised myself to give it a rest. Trying to get people to see that film as problematical was definitely a losing battle. Apparently, so long as you're Quentin Tarantino you can treat subject matter however you like, as bloody as you would like. It seems to me that a majority of people whose opinions I heard--that would include more than one man of the cloth--were not bothered very much by the violence, which was made acceptable by the "It's Tarantino" argument. I was surprised that these people did not offer (only a handful did) that slavery was violent every day. Had they done so, I would have countered with the fact that the violence of slavery was contextualized so that even in its barbarity, in the final analysis, one would be able to explain it, which is not the same of course as accepting or approving of it. With DU, the artistic and moral question is whether the violence made sense, as in, did it fit the specific context, or was it simply added for effect or pleasure. The latter possibility would be rightly called pornographic intent. (Decontextualized, obsessive, viewing is what pornography is I think.) About the time that I lost patience with the various ways in which people excused this very troubling film, I had even decided to hit below the belt, offering that Americans don't know enough about slavery to judge a film good or bad. This is a fact that is not in need of an argument, right? So, what have producers in effect done when they offer a historical film which precious few consumers have the knowledge to judge critically? In my opinion, this is an offense almost criminal, a compounding of ignorance. And what are the implications of that!? Worse than a compounding, however, is willy nilly exponential growth, multiple denominators whose only common thread is the refrain "It's just entertainment." Augh! Absent a critical thread, for example, "this film bears no resemblance to real slavery" or "why can't African American lives in film ever be given enough back story to create depth so that they might pass as something close to real?, Hollywood can produce just about anything it likes so long as we find it entertaining in one way or another--it make us mad, it cracks us up, puts us just briefly in touch with the past, in short, titillates rather than moves (us to action?) Amused to death (Postman), we are served up another slavery film this year.

And this folks it seems to me is the state of things and the state of our minds, overwhelmed with information, overloaded, hyper-entertained, which is why the whole idea of the "must see" film does make sense to us, and our friends--who, like us, have few critical bones left in their consenting heads-- tell us every other week that we simply must see movie x,y, or z, as though viewing films has become a life or death matter.

All of this returns me to the other issue at hand--how it is that my and, I suspect, everyone else's, subconscious would pull up for us what has been suppressed. Is it to take to task the information overloaders, the Lords of the Media, who are the ones doing the overloading and to much profit I might add? The answers from Jung are balance and that the subconscious has something to offer all its own. In this case, I think it wants to point me and others to what is real, or more real, which is to say closer to the source of the original experience; Gaye's song is a reminder of a different reality, more deeply sensual I think, closely knitted to a more soulful, less consumeristic time, you know, that Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored? (Taulbert) That was a very modern time, which, as social critics explain, may have laid a foundation for and anticipated this present time in which everything is a mashup and we haven't the time either to discern or to reconnect with the past at deeper levels. But my dream suggests that whether you have the time or not the past is always with us and will pop up when it is good and ready. Now, it is a matter of whether we will hear, see, or recognize it for what it is, which is not simply another layer of reality--but a sensuality and a spirituality that perhaps cannot be experienced richly in the postmodern world of so many things--but within the space or place of dreams and other psychic phenomena. Be that as it may, I have to admit that Thicke's song did stimulate my psyche. This function of "new" music must be worth something. But the lines are in fact blurred, and there is a politics and an economics to various acts of blurring. I am these days constantly reminded of Melville's wisdom--this world pays dividends. This explains so much, but I'm willing to believe that Thicke and Pharrell Williams were as musicians inspired by the artistry of Gaye, which is probably why they should go ahead and admit the influence and pay accordingly. In this case, sampling and, in effect, tweaking black people's experiences of joy and pain is a real money-maker. Worse, are "Blurred Lines," "Django Unchained," or "12 Years a Slave," placebos? Are they vaccinations, periodic inoculations with the pain of the past, in order to stave off real despair, deep reconnections with the various deep pains of inhumanities suffered? The answers to these questions are answerable, yes?

Blurred Lines I

I'm not a Jung scholar, nor am I a psychoanalyst, but I have very slowly been reading Jung for the last two years, and I have come away with more than a few ideas including that Jung thought dreams (and the subconscious) provided a balance for the conscious. He also believed that the world of dreams is as much reality as what we perceive in our waking hours. I have been reading Jung out of an interest in understanding how humans perceive reality and what constitutes it; I have been naturally (it seems to me) led to this interest as I have sought to understand the world(s) of the ancestors. Take for instance this line from a document I came across years ago, which narrates early African American church history in northwest Mississippi. "He was one of our greatest divines." I gave a short talk last spring in which I considered this word "divine," and how it has been lost from our vocabulary including church jargon. Just the other day, in reading another historic document, I saw it used interchangeably with "seer." Divine is both an adjective, a noun, and a verb, and it means to know or to discern. I suspect that right along with the loss of this word we also have lost faith in the plethora of ways that the ancestors sought and found knowledge. The loss has been a result of scientific, "rational," thinking. I'm sure there are those who believe, and I think I would agree with them, that in adjusting to scientific thinking we have in fact limited our ways of knowing and, in so doing, given away power. Knowledge is power, right? I think Jung would say that certain kinds of thinking, primitive thinking, have not however altogether disappeared from modern humans; they have only gone underground so to speak. And I suspect that if too much is left to the underground, it comes bubbling up either because of overcapacity in our personal underworlds or because some piece of information or knowledge needs to surface to balance out something in the conscious. An example may clarify what I mean. Last spring, I was traveling from Mississippi back to Indiana (I live in both places). Because my car is old, I'd decided to take back roads all the way up, and being that I wasn't in any hurry (school being out for the summer)I decided to stop at every antique or junk store on the way. In one particularly junkie one, a radio was on, and I heard Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" for the first time. Even as I perused the shop, already certain that I wasn't going to buy anything, I was mentally stopped dead in my tracks by the song. It took me back, to the seventies, I felt. I asked the shop owner, a white man who looked to be in his late twenties, if he liked the song, and I cannot remember his answer though I think it was he who said it was Robin Thicke. The shop owner may have said he liked the song just fine, but he didn't seem especially taken with it whereas I was because, well, I could tell it was having an effect on me. I was being played somehow, emotionally. Honestly, I kind of liked the play even while I also knew that someone, Thicke or someone else, was doing some serious sampling and owed some serious credit. In truth, I felt like something had been stolen, but the first time I heard "Blurred Lines" I could not immediately identify who the artists of influence were. Over the next several months, because I seldom turn on the radio to listen to anything other than NPR and use Pandora's pre-selected oldies stations on my phone and computer, I didn't hear "Blurred Lines" again until Rust College's Founder's Week. Then, it was blared all over campus, heard all over the west side of town, and I refamiliarized myself with it and also realized that it was a hit among blacks. Its groove is just so festive; it's perfect, as I read from one critic, for family reunions. Even the old people ask for it. Perhaps the song rekindles something latent in us, again, something we've let go underground. But then... Two nights ago, I awakened to Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give It Up." From time to time (once a month?), I dream of music, usually one particular song. A few years ago, I came to the conclusion that this is how my deceased father communicates with me. My father, born in the '30s, was not much for the Blues. Rather, he loved soul music and R&B, and this is the kind of music I dream most often. The first time I dreamed of music (that I can remember), Daddy played for me "Ouuu child, things are gonna get easier." That song and that time were a real affirmation. Now, when I dream of music I'm always trying to figure out what message my father is sending. Whether or not he is in fact the source of my dreamtime music, whether or not my father is my psychic d.j., I still wonder why a certain song will come to mind without it seems my own conscious control of its emergence. Yet, when I dreamed the other night of Gaye's song from 1977 I knew immediately that my subconscious was providing an answer to a question that I had not consciously asked: who the influences were of Thicke's anthem. I was amazed, amazed at how this answer had surfaced so easily without any hard thinking on my part. I was, however, somewhat concerned with the fact that the process had taken almost six months. Still, I was more interested in the why--why my subconscious felt I needed the information. My answer to this question goes back to what I've already stated of Jung's theory of the subconscious as a balance. It is easy enough for me to reason that the six-month period is proof positive that in the very modern life I lead I am entirely too busy. There is just too much going on in my conscious thoughts from day to day. Back in June when I was rambling through the junk shop, overwhelmed by so many dusty gadgets, I might have discerned the influences then had I wanted to take the time, or had I been relaxed enough to think clearly, or taken the time to stop and sit. But I did not feel I had the time, which is usually my evaluation of my life, and add to this the fact that I was crossing both time and space as I headed north. Some things, would-be thoughts, apparently chose to slip through the time/space gap--one made all the more convenient by the hour I gained between Mississippi and Indiana--until later. The question remains whether the surfacing of "the answer"--one that I may have needed without even realizing it--was neutral or whether it surfaced with intention. I think Jung would say whenever what is in the subconscious surfaces it is with intention. More musing on this in the next post.

Blessings

This morning, I went to Walmart to wire a small sum of money to someone who needed it. On my way there, I saw a yard sale on the left side of the street. As much as rummage sales of any sort pull at me, I kept on my way, knowing that I could stop on my way back. I did of course. Actually, I do not love yard sales. I seldom find anything really good. But, today was different. Right away I spotted several things and made a mental note of them before approaching the homeowner to ask about prices. I asked about three or four items, and the answer was the same each time: $1. I smiled, and said, "I like your prices." I spent about $7 with her, and as I was heading to my car, she told me that I could in fact have anything that I wanted. "I'm getting too old for this," she admitted. She obviously was trying to get rid of everything. I added three more items to my loot. I could have added much more, but, as I told her, I was beginning to feel greedy. As it was, everything I was toting away she'd actually or practically given me for free. I am now the proud owner of a Turkish Kilim bag (by Yun Art)and, more impressive, a wooden caddy on the bottom of which someone wrote: "This box is more than 100 years old as of this date June 18, 1985." And it was signed R.I. Moore. I hadn't turned the "box" over while I was still at the yard sale although I often do this--being a seasoned junker. I did make the mistake of cleaning the item as soon as I got home because I wanted to place it at the center of the kitchen table. Since the box had been sitting on the ground, I wanted to clean any dirt off there as well. My heart leaped when I saw the handwritten message. I am very analytical, so I began thinking about the message right away. I decided that the shaky handwriting was definitely that of an elderly person--perhaps an octogenarian. I did a quick Internet search for R.I. Moore then stopped, realizing that the name was too common, and although I'd purchased the box in the town where I live there was no telling where the person who sold it to me had gotten it. True, she may have gotten it from her own home. It may have belonged to a relative of hers but then I figured that if it had been a family heirloom she might not have sold it for so little. I can always go back and ask her. Do I dare? I remain intrigued by R.I. Moore because he or she bothered to leave the note. A very intelligent person, I thought, who knew the value of the item, the cultural and historical value--not monetary. And if the box was in 1985 more than 100 years old, would it not date to the slavery era? My guess would be yes. More than 100. In 1985, slavery was 120 years in the past. That would be about right. The person who left the note could have written: this item was made by a slave. It is in fact a caddy, more than a box but the language is important. A slave would not likely have called it a caddy. In fact, come to think of it, it may be a tool box, only it seems too decorated to have served that purpose. The handle has a carved detail. Then again, the wood is not rare, not imported. It would then seem to be a utilitarian item of a lower-class person if not a slave. It's joinery is dovetail, but it's center piece, the partition and handle, is attached with square-headed nails to the bottom. There is an appraisal show coming to town soon, and were it not for the $75 fee I would take this item. I may still, but my intrigue goes far beyond monetary value. I'm, rather, interested in how I got so lucky today. Why me, and why was the proprietor of these items so generous on this dsy when I decided to stop at her sale when there were a half dozen others that I didn't stop at? Anyone who has been reading this particular blog knows that I take notice of serendipity all of the time now. I love to watch how the universe just opens up sometimes, and, as some would say, pours out blessings. I need these kinds of affirmations. We all do. They let us know that we are not alone in the universe. There are always so many other things at work besides our mundane doings. And I so appreciate R.I. Moore for marking this item. He or she definitely is or was a historian in his or her own right.

Who's Afraid of Post Blackness? I am.

Back in the early '90s, I read Shelby Steele's Content of Our Character. The book made my blood boil, and I pretty much decided that I would never read it again. And I didn't, yet I have assigned a chapter from it at least once in a beginning composition course, and the students--most of them white but a few of them black or Latino--have liked Steele's thinking. I have accepted their right to decide whether they think he is misguided or on to something. I still cannot myself much stomach his views, yet I have been glad that I have calmed down my response.

Lots of other black folk, of Steele's age cohort (which is a little before my own), didn't care too much for his perspective either, and so they pretty much quietly moved his ideas aside even while the media continued to give his thinking some attention. College textbook publishers, for instance, would continue to include essays from his popular book in their readers, and, for that reason alone, I went ahead and introduced them to a generation below my own.

The problem that I had with Steele's old argument then, as I do now, was that it didn't in my opinion include a critical race analysis, meaning hardcore sociological analysis. All of his evidence was soft. It seemed to me that he could easily blame, for instance, a black kid from the hood who dropped out of school on the person having made a poor choice. And, if anyone defended the outcome of this person's life by claiming that his or her environment had played a role, adding that racism had played a part, Steele might return to choice and ignore the social impact of race altogether. Race and racism just seemed to me something that Steele thought pretty easy to overcome. Too easy, yet transcending race seemed to be his cure for all that might be ailing African Americans at the time, and, by extension, today.

Steele's book sits in a cardboard box in my basement, a victim of a purge of my library a few years back. So, I hadn't actually thought of Content of Our Character until today while I was reading Toure's Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness? What It Means to Be Black Now. Let me say upfront this blog post is not a review of his book. I will not likely write a review, and anyway I am just getting into chapter two. So far, I have been listening to Toure's argument, introduced by Michael Eric Dyson, and I recognize how hard Toure is trying to say blackness has expanded without saying that race is no longer an issue. I can appreciate all of his attempts though I don't think I'm yet buying into an idea that the two are separate issues.

In some ways, his argument is based on quantitative thinking. That is, he sees as having multiplied exponentially the number of ways black people can express themselves today as black and the ways in which we can self-identify. He begins the book with his own story of trying skydiving even after a couple of brothas clued him in on the "fact" that black people don't do that or other similar crazy activities that obviously put one's life in jeopardy. The men's message called up the old phrase, "acting
white." I have always myself hated that phrase, and I, admittedly, have heard it a few times from people who claim to love me, responding to some of my doings. Heck, I just heard it last week when I went to a concert in the park featuring a local all-white band The Whistle Pigs, who sang some Motown classics among other numbers. I'm sure for Toure, cultural hybridity, borrowing and blending, appreciating and even feeling in some way other people's experience is also part of what is creating a new milieu of increased options for identification. Honestly, the Whistle Pigs were soulful enough for my taste on a Thursday afternoon. I wasn't looking for much however that day, and I wasn't in a serious critical mode. Had I been, I would have listened more closely to the music and maybe come to the same conclusion as Alice Walker's Gracie Mae Still. "One day, this is going to be a pitiful country." Gracie Mae Still, some might argue, is stuck in the past, but, Walker seems to be saying, she feels, she knows, and that's what she sings. Something, a lot, is lost in translation not necessarily because Traynor, the young rock and roll star who covers her music cannot really feel it, but maybe because the society in which her music becomes reproduced by industry alters profoundly both the life and the music.

I was stopped in my tracks by Toure's reference to a statement by UC Santa Cruz professor Derek Conrad Murray in which the latter expressed a difference between his generation and that of his parents and grandparents.

"...we honor the history of the struggle of black people in America but we still want to construct our own notion of Blackness that is separate from that of our parents and grandparents" (22).

 Of course we do. Is this therefore a straw-man argument? Who doesn't want to be an individual?

But, I'm reminded of my own grandfather, whose father was a slave, a fact which teaches me just how close I am to the institution. In 1945, having been a large landowner in Mississippi, my grandfather nevertheless moved his family--wife and six children--to Detroit. I had a wonderful childhood in the city, a gift I would say came from my grandfather's decision to migrate. As a result, there are no black and white water fountains and restrooms in my memory. But I'll bet there were many in my grandparents' memories and maybe as well remembrances of their elders' literal scars from slavery. Once, while I was visiting with my grandparents, my grandfather turned on the television, and I told him that I wanted to watch "The Brady Bunch." That's right; I told him, a haughty show of disrespect that already hinted at the kind of change that already had taken place within our family. And it suggests part of the difference that Toure may be missing even while he and Murray desire and/or see another difference. Well, my grandfather wanted to watch "Sanford and Son," so we had a conflict before us. The gentle giant that my grandfather was, he ended up letting me win the short-term battle, but my eight or nine-year-old ears heard exactly what he said as he returned to his seat. "You need to know something about your own people."

I have been working on a book about our family, and I have reflected many times on what my grandfather said under his breath that day when I told him that I wanted to watch a story about a family of blond-haired little white girls, their dark-haired brothers, and their parents living the American Dream, which I and so many other kids experienced vicariously every evening after the show had gone into reruns. Who among those who grew up on "The Brady Bunch" didn't want to live in that all-American family's modern, split-level house, take a pretty picture by that long stair rail, and have Alice the Maid set out cookies after school while waiting for Sam the Butcher to bring fresh meat? Did I ever stop to ask why the Bradys needed a butcher when fresh meat probably could have been had from a nearby grocer? Did I ever connect the Brady's privilege to one that was not my own? That was not obviously the point of my watching the show. The Brady life was a fantasy for black kids and I'm sure poor white kids alike. And what's wrong with fantasizing, especially if it becomes motivation for success, or for getting a fabulous house and a maid to boot? Sitting, I thought safely in my grandparents' paid-for home on the northeast side of Detroit enjoying some '70s styled fantasy, why did my grandfather think that I needed to know about black people's lives? Was this a requirement simply because I was black? Did the "skin I was in" lay upon me such a burden? And was his the identity politics that Shelby Steele would deride twenty years later?

Maybe these questions are difficult to answer. But, I'm reminded of something that one of my grad school classmates said one day when I was still in the throes of hating Steele's perspective. We weren't reading him in our rhetoric class that semester. Instead, we were reading pragmatists--including Cornel West whose identity as a Marxist and a pragmatist confused me at the time."If you're not a socialist before thirty you have no heart; if you're a socialist after thirty you have no head," I suppose settled things for me. Anyway, in seminars, I was usually of few words, choosing instead to meditate on others' thoughts, and, as I recall it was rare for my Latina classmate Renee to say much either. But one day, somehow bringing to my mind my grandfather, she said in reference to the pragmatists: "They don't care about our pain." Obviously, I haven't forgotten her statement. I have used it in the last twenty years as a way to measure people's humanity, society's. Do "they" feel our pain? Does Toure feel his ancestors' pain? Did and do I feel my grandfathers'? Did he think that I should?

Perhaps we are most fully human when we do feel each other's pain. I think this is what Carol Gilligan et al were after in Mapping the Moral Domain, which we also read previous to the pragmatists. What Gilligan and her colleagues seemed to be asking was what should be the quality of our relationships with others who inhabit the world with us? Procedural justice, most of us in class seemed to agree, is a high principle, but is it the highest? Mama Lee Younger gives her daughter Beneatha an answer to this question maybe when she makes her daughter repeat: "In my mother's house, there is still God," But, I think this question is answered even more directly when Mama asks Beneatha if she has cried for her brother today. Even if you hate Walter Lee for his selfishness, for almost wrecking the family's dreams, he remained human, and to understand both his choices and how the society had a role in helping him to reach the place where he would err required intellectual understanding, but for Mama Lee that wasn't enough. She wanted her daughter to feel her brother's pain like James Baldwin wants brother to feel Sonny's pain, as well as to acknowledge--rather than run from, ignore, or deny--his own. After all, Baldwin's story implies, it is not that the upstanding citizen and teacher brother doesn't have pain nor that he doesn't try to mask it. His mask and the act of dealing with pain are simply different than Sonny's.

I find myself then rejecting Conrad's statement because I have found, since the death of my grandparents, ways to connect to their pain, and in fact feeling a certain misery when present generations don't feel is part of my experience Likewise, there was pain I think even in my grandfather's realization that one of the byproducts of having brought his family to Detroit was that his grandchildren became disconnected from the family's past. My siblings and I grew up not knowing much of it, and, given our consumption of reorienting media, we felt even less.

I'm not done with Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness, but so far I'm lumping it in with similar perspectives that fall under the social construction theory I also had great problems with in grad school and after. It's an intellectual mythology that downplays significantly if it doesn't outright ignore hard-core social realities and, yes, pain.

I may change my mind later, but at this point my answer to Toure's question: Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness? is that I am. I'm afraid for my children in the same way that my grandfather must have been afraid for me. The fear is that our very own descendants as they "construct [their] own notion of blackness...separate from that of '[their] parents and grandparents," will, as cultural critic Nelson George might agree, do so sin alma, without soul.. But, according to George, it would seem that we arrived at a place of soul-less-ness at the very time he and I were coming into adulthood, in the gap, between the late '70s and early '80s, when black folks' artistic expression of their experiences, having gained mass appeal, became highly marketed products.

Sometimes they felt like motherless children...a long way from home

I love Saturdays. Every Saturday is for me a holiday, and this time of year--since it's warm in Mississippi--I love to take to the roads though I usually try not to venture too far since my 1996 Chevy Blazer is seventeen years old. Yesterday, however, it being Saturday, I threw caution to the wind and set off on what I expected to be a 150 mile journey (an estimated 2.5 hours) through the back roads of Mississippi and Arkansas.

Now, I knew that I was taking the road (or roads, as it were) less traveled. (I could have driven to Memphis and taken Interstate 40 all the way.) I tend to opt away from interstates whenever possible both because I like driving slowly and because I feel safer on back roads with my car. Help just seems more likely. (Perhaps this is very naive considering the South's history. Sorry, but I have a beyond middle age colleague who grew up in Holmes County, and you can hardly pay him to get off of the Interstate.) On I-40 or any Interstate for that matter I feel unprotected, anonymous, and minds and bodies are just moving much too fast. So, the day before my trip, learning that I could avoid the bridge to Arkansas in Memphis, I easily chose an alternate route in which the bridge to Arkansas is gotten in Mississippi across from Helena.

Out my door in Holly Springs (North Mississippi), I went through town and caught highways 4 and 7, which led to a 4 cut-off, which I took all the way to Senatobia in Tate County. Btw, Marshall County needs to work on 4 badly! I am ashamed at how much the road improves at the Tate County border. The countryside along 4, which I have taken a few times now to visit the courthouse in Senatobia, is interesting enough--with a few old churches along the way. Leaving Senatobia--having ignored the directions and instead hanging a right at the first major road in town--it wasn't too long before I came to a junction with Hwy. 3. When it split off again, I remained on 4 for who knows how long, well, until I finally arrived at the infamous Hwy. 61, which takes one to the Mississippi Delta region.

I was excited to be in the Delta. It was foreign country to me although when I was nine years old our family took a trip deep into the Delta--to Mound Bayou--that all-black town familiar to so many African Americans, founded by the Montgomery family. I was on 61 for what felt like a really long time, and--just when I was about to conclude that my having ignored directions (to look for Panola Rd. in Senatobia) placed me perhaps too far south of the next highway--I came upon it--Highway 49. I was glad to see 49 not just because I had worried I was lost and not just because I expect that the Blazer is going to quit on me one of these days but because 61, beyond the casinos of Tunica County, was so desolate it was eerie. Folks who live out west may be used to huge expanses of undeveloped land, but I am a Midwestern girl. Prairie in Michigan comes with tall prairie grasses. Along 61, the land is covered in what look like stationary tumble weeds (an oxymoron I realize).

Highway 49 wasn't much better in this respect, at least not until I was ten miles or so into Arkansas. There was an occasional house along the way, and of course I was wondering what I would do if my car stopped. I had packed my gym shoes in a backpack, but I wasn't sure just how far I could walk in the hot sun. It was only in the 70s yesterday, but I knew that the sun would feel as hot as fire on my head if I were forced to walk in it.

Into the third hour of my journey, I came to Highway 17, which I was supposed to take but didn't because I had already seen a sign indicating I wasn't far from my final highway--70, which would take me to DeVall's Bluff, Arkansas, where I believed they were holding the Lincoln Freedom Festival. Well, I haven't looked at a map, but Highway 17 appears to loop back, which may mean it's a shortcut, but I kept straight on 49 and then got 70, ten miles down the road. I still felt rather lost because I seemed to have been on 49 far too long, causing me to worry in the same fashion I had when I'd skipped the other suggested route. I thought about turning around. Thank God, I had a tank full of gas--not something I'm known for having (or I should say I had a full tank when I left Holly Springs. Near the end of my time on 49, I was already down a half tank.) Do I exaggerate when I say that in the entire trip (with exception of Senatobia) I saw less than a half dozen gas stations and only two really, really, tired looking grocery stores, the second from which I bought a big yellow onion--reminding me of the food that sustained Zero in the book Holes. (Really, I bought the onion because it was the only fresh produce in the store, which had about five drink machines full of every soda known around the country. I don't say this to talk down about the grocer, only to give readers an idea of what has happened to the South.) Well, anyway, I left there, and it wasn't long before I reached my final destination, and when there were no people milling about Sycamore St., where the festival was to be held, I suddenly realized my error--I was a week too early. I thought about going to visit my sons in Little Rock, another hour and a half away, but decided the Blazer had had enough and still needed to get me back across the state line. I deliberated the option of returning the way I had come, more or less, maybe the second time following the directions to the letter, but decided instead that as much as I hate interstates I could not stand the idea of going back through the Delta.

Maybe in a newer car I would not have minded the Delta so much. Then again, maybe the landscape engenders fear. How many times have I read about the horror with which African American enslaved people contemplated being sold to the deep South, meaning Mississippi and Louisiana? The expanses of barren land certainly were once, and still may be, cotton fields on which our ancestors toiled without the shade of trees. When I'd passed into Coahoma County, I thought about Lucien Bailey, brother of Africa Bailey, who having been bequeathed in 1844 to a son who would find his fortune in Coahoma, had had to add another journey to that which he'd already experienced between Virginia and Mississippi. How alone had he felt in that wilderness? Flat land offers no nooks, or crannies, no curvatures of the earth into which one may escape mentally if not physically. And spying that land, casting one's eyeballs upon it must have made it hugely difficult to contemplate escape or to envision returning to one's mother or father back in Virginia.

Moving too quickly is what made me take to the road yesterday without consulting a calendar or double-checking the date of the Festival, but I gained an important lesson, an experience of the land that cannot be learned either from a history book or even from a friend, a white Clarksville, Mississippi native who tried in vain some years ago to explain to me the difference between hill country and the Delta. I realize now that one has to drive it; our ancestors may even have walked it. Little wonder that they sometimes felt like motherless children...a long way from home.

Still Dreaming

I hesitate to write this because it's going to sound nuts. Yes, nuts, but, then again, if you have made a habit of reading this particular blog of mine, then you must be the open-minded type, which is to say not closed to strangeness. Now, my dream last night was not on the surface really that strange at all. I dreamed that I was at church, a majority-white one if that matters. I was there, but sort of didn't want to be there, and yet the ladies of the church were counting on me to help with miscellaneous tasks. Mostly, I think I was there for moral support. But, I was distracted, in particular by some other event that was going on which I actually did want to be at. It was a dark church; it's narthex was dark I mean.

Well, that's pretty much it. It was a short dream and only worth writing about because the the place was so familiar, and I am aware that I have had similar dreams of churches and mansions. With the mansions in particular, I get a strong sense that I belong to them (if you read my last post you probably are concluding that I have delusions of grandeur), that I am of that First Presbyterian class of people, which is true and not true since I in fact am a member of a First Presbyterian Church, but to my knowledge this is not my family's heritage. My gut tells me though that the churches in my dreams, especially the one last night, was perhaps Episcopal rather than Presbyterian.

Now, let me leap to something else--to the Hull family that I have been studying of Spotsylvania and Northumberland counties in Virginia. They were likely Whigs, some of them anyway, and while in Virginia they belonged to the Episcopal Church. As far as I know, they seem to have joined the Presbyterian Church after moving to Mississippi. This is true, for instance, of Elizabeth Hull the Younger, wife of William Crump. Elizabeth died a sad death and unfortunately also had a sad marriage for reasons I do not know for certain. It does seem, however, that Mr. Crump did not treat her very kindly. When she was nearly deathly ill, she chose to travel to Spotsylvania. (There was still family there who hadn't migrated to Mississippi, and I think she wanted to see perhaps for the last time both them and the land of her birth.) I think she may also have wanted to die there, but before expiring she in fact made the journey back to the deep South. Her home was Marshall County, Mississippi, but I think she only made it as far as Memphis before passing away.

I know all of this about the family that owned my family because, like most of the planter class, the Hulls left behind a pretty decent paper trail and also because one of the Crafts of Marshall County, another big planter family, was smitten with both Elizabeth and her sister Lucy and provided a nice journal where he wrote in depth of both of their passings.

A couple of years ago, I went to Spotsylvania County to check up on the Hulls, that is, to look for all documents that would tell their story, and, in turn, my own family's story. I had a very lovely day at the Central Rappahannock Research Center, coming away with quite a bit of information including the name and location of the home of Elizabeth Hull the Older's farther, Laurel Hill. The next day, before heading out of town, I treated myself to a nice stroll down Princess Anne Street, which is home to probably fifty quaint shops selling antiques, gifts, t-shirts, coffee and spices, etc. Just as I started down the street, a middle-aged white woman who was exiting her car spotted me, and with the biggest smile exlaimed, "Hey you!" I could tell that she was looking at me, but I nevertheless,feigning dumbfoundedness, turned around to look behind me. She continued to focus on me, waiting, and I continued to act as though I hadn't a clue who she was speaking to. Finally, after what seemed an eternity but could not have been more than five seconds, she said, "Oh, I thought you were someone else."

The rest of my time in Fredericksburg was uneventful. I bought some gifts for friends I would be staying with at my next destination and got on the road.

But the next summer! Well, there's nothing spectacular or spooky that happened unless you're easily frightened. I traveled to Albemarle County, Virginia--Charlottesville--to look at the Hull/Herndon Papers at the University of Virginia. This too proved to be a fruitful trip. I learned of the earliest Hull settlers, how the Herndons and Hulls came together and more. I learned of the name of Brodie Strachan Hull's family home, or one of them anyway--Hay Farm. The one thing that I didn't find, which I have been looking for for many years is a connection to a Walker line. Our family, owned by the Hulls, used Walker as a middle name for years and gave it as a first name to at least two generations of men. The closest I have come to understanding and explaining this practice is that, one, our family may have been owned by Walkers at some point and, two, that the Herndon/Hulls were definitely associates and relatives of Thomas Walker of Castle Hill, which is in Albemarle. I've been meditating on this connection for several years, and this is all I've come up with. Thomas Walker was quite a figure (I'll go into his life story some other time). In short, he was definitely, like the Hulls, part of the elite families of Virginia, and it makes sense that our ancestors could have been with him at some point though it is difficult for a modern person such as myself to fully understand or embrace why we would have marked ourselves with the Walker name. That too is another question and story for another day. For today, let me just say that I continue to wonder if I am onto something with this connection to Walker.

I didn't say earlier, but before traveling by train to Charlottesville, I had been in New Haven, Connecticut studying at Yale slave narratives. I stayed for a few days on campus then took a cheap hotel in West Haven for a night. I was assigned Room 213. I am not superstitious, but I did think twice about the room number before taking the key. I had a good night's sleep, however, followed by a pleasant trip to Charlottesville. There, I stayed at another cheap hotel though the surrounding area was nice enough. I was a little tired when I got there, so I'm amazed at how patient I was standing behind a young man at the check-in desk who was having a fit that he was being assigned a smoking room. I know he argued with the clerk a full 20 minutes. After he finally gave up on getting any justice from the low-cost hotel staff, it was my turn, and my business proceeded pretty quickly. I was glad to be such an easy guest after the clerk had suffered the young man's complaint, but then just as I was patting myself on the back for being so patient, something told me that my own situation was about to go awry. I knew it! I just knew that I was about to receive a room assignment that I too was not going to like. And wouldn't you know it? "Hey," I blurted out, "Please tell me you're not putting me in Room 213." Expressionless, the clerk looked at the key envelope, "Yes, Ma'm. You're in Room 213." She didn't ask me if the assignment was a problem, and I didn't want to explain. My mind comforted me. "You're not superstitious. You're not superstitious," it said. But then again I thought; this is just too much. I survived one night in Room 213; I should not be expected to survive another.

Too embarrassed and shy to make a fuss, I took the key and headed up to my room. I put all worries out of my mind and focused my energy elsewhere. And as I've said, this too was a productive trip. When I was back home, I told a few people of my reoccurring room assignment, and all were agreed that 213 was simply an affirmation that I was/am in the right place, searching the right trail. Of course, this is not scientific evidence that Thomas Walker is indeed the Walker I am looking for, but in doing genealogy I have learned that scientific evidence and mystical experiences go hand in hand.

Running with a Lion

Night before last, I had one of the most memorable dreams I've ever had. It has been a stressful week, so I partly attribute the dream to this fact. When I am stressed, I am very aware that my quality of sleep is different, and usually this encourages more fantastical dreams than I usually have.

I dreamed of a lion in a home that I shared with my mother, sister, and brother. The lion looked just like...well...a lion. He was a male and huge, but tame. In fact, he was in most of the dream sprawled out on the floor of our "den" acting like one of the family. The others rubbed his belly, and he was just eating up the attention. As for me, I really didn't want much to do with him since I was thinking--the lion's got to go. He doesn't belong. But, not yet ready to ruin everyone else's fun, I decided to leave, or I should say I tried to leave. However, every time I headed for the door, no matter how gingerly I stepped, the lion would see me, bolt for the door, and, like dogs always do, beat me there. At the door, he showed me much affection, jumping up on me. It's a wonder he didn't kill me with his weight. I had no choice but to return to my earlier act, waiting in vain for a chance to leave without his noticing.

I told a few people about this dream because it was such a strong one, its image staying with me after waking and even today. Everyone said the lion should be seen as an image of power. "So you like power, eh?" was the question I was asked. No, just the opposite. I tend to shy away from power as I do not like the responsibility or accountability. I'm always more than happy to let others have that.

Today, I decided to write about the dream in my journal since a few days of meditating on its meaning have been useful. I also reflected upon a book I've been reading, Man and His Symbols, by Carl Jung, et al. Jung has this, among other things, to say about our dreams: (1) they are as real as anything else, (2) they communicate needed messages to our conscious selves, and (3) they help us achieve equilibrium. As a result of reading Jung, I definitely have been paying closer attention to my dreams, and not only that, but I have also slowly been attempting to embrace the idea that what is beyond the natural, or beyond our consciousnesses is nevertheless real. I have been more observant, more open, and more introspective. And, in this way, I am feeling refreshed.

But back to the lion dream. Well, in fact, there was an earlier portion of the dream in which there was another animal, and I should say up front that I very, very seldom dream of animals. Jung says that animals are religious. I know little of animal symbolism, but certainly I am aware that the lion is an ancient symbol used by many different faiths and cultures. Universally, this animal at the top of the food chain seems to symbolize power. In my  other dream, however, I saw a skinned calf lying on the floor. It may already have been dead, but I knew that it was in fact going to be butchered, so I left the place where it was, turning my back to it, refusing to  witness the "sacrifice."

Jung wrote that we are capable of having dreams that contain ancient symbols. Even children have such dreams, and this fact seems to be proof for Jung just how deep our psyches, our souls or roots are. In my present life, however, it is very easy for me to see how the two parts of the dream communicate a message about turning away or escaping. In the first case, I wanted to escape watching a sacrifice and in the second the companionship of an animal who seemed out of place. Both dreams suggest rejection and fear, in the first case, fear of sacrifice, and in the second fear of power.

According to Jung, humans need balance. The conscious needs to be in balance with the unconscious. I can see how the two parts of my dream are a balance for each other, and I am open to the message that accepting power is in fact my required sacrifice. The tasks that the universe has set before me I must act upon. And, not only is the lion with me; we are aligned. His power is always available to me if I will just call upon him.

I never write about religion, not in my blogging anyway, and this is not intended as a religious message though I am Christian. Being open to other ways of thinking about our existence in the universe, I have read a bit on the place of animals in Native American cosmology. A few years ago, I went as far as to create for myself a medicine wheel. It's a beautiful object, which adorns the wall of one of my bedrooms. I haven't thought much about it since making and hanging it, so I definitely cannot say that I have felt the power of any of the animals I placed on it. It has become simply decoration. But, after dreaming of the lion, I thought of my medicine wheel, and, more generally, I thought of the whole concept of animal medicine, and I am embracing the idea that the lion, like other animals, has something to teach me.

Anyone who has owned a dog knows that it is wonderful to have them greet you at the door even when they jump on you. As I said earlier, the lion raced and beat me to the door and threw itself upon me. I have made much of this, but one idea that I wish to communicate here is that this dream of the lion teaches me that my (our) sense of time and movement is not superior to that of most animals. A dog will beat us running every time as will a lion. So, there's no point in trying to beat such animals; instead, we should submit to their power, what they have to teach us, and what they offer us. Even though the lion was faster than I was, what he really achieved was synchronicity. He met me at the door every time I attempted to get by him. He synchronized his power with mine. I understand this to mean not simply that I should accept his sense of time but that my life is ensconced by this larger time to which the lion belongs. In short, my life is attached to a larger order, and I am not on this journey alone.