Wholly Holidays

   Let's talk about the holidays --the holy days-- now arriving in most parts of the world and in many religions and versions.  Here in the U.S. it can mean a frenzy of both bricks-and-mortar shopping, as well as those peaks of online consumerism heavily marketed during these periods, Black Friday and Cyber Monday (both set new records for spending).  But this time of year also means a lot of travel, be it by air or by car or by foot, all terminating with a welcome sight as the door opens...friendly smiles of family or friends, the warmth of a home greeting you, the delicious aroma of both food and comfort.  At those first moments there will be laughs and smiles as months and years vanish with memories of times past, and with them the regrets of not connecting more often as if realizing that as one grows older the chances to gather diminish and that capturing distant histories can fade as quickly as watching a train disappear into the horizon.  There's another side to all of this, of course, a time of cold, not only in the weather but when the chill of being alone becomes especially biting, the gaiety and rosy cheeks of those walking by having little or no effect on what seems a dark approaching storm of depression, one which wants to sink in as surely as the night envelopes the light.  Mother Nature in all her glory, can often display her lack of concern for such human partitions of time as if seeming to shrug that there's work to do, currents to move, a planet to repair.

Golden Eagle photo: Cochrane Times

   The time of turkeys came and went in a blur over here, as if even now our "day of thanks" has become little more that a prelude to move on to the "real" holiday.  It's the same with our veterans or our laborers as if those days of honoring the fallen now cause us to wonder why fewer and fewer people arrive at the parades and cemeteries, the plastic flowers perhaps a reminder that those visiting won't be back for awhile.  Somehow it all reminded me of a time decades ago, a time when I used to hike a nearby trail in the early dawn hours, a time when the skies were filled with bubble-gum pinks meshing with the purpliest of purples, an art lesson that no instructor could teach or capture.  Together with the brisk and often dewy air, it would take me an hour or so to reach my spot, a tiny carved out slot in a massive boulder 90% wedged into the hillside as if planted there by an ancient asteroid.  It was from there that I could nestle in, my own hard but comfortable bucket seat which faced the distant and foggy bay some twenty miles out, a slot that hid me from whatever other stray and solo hiker would chance to come by, a seat from nature that let me witness an occasion mule deer or osprey as if they had taken the time to study and decide that this interloper was of no consequence, that soon I would just be more fodder for the redwoods that I had passed, trees which had seen far more than I ever would in a hundred lifetimes.  And it was one on of my walks back, the sun now slowly dissolving the colors and the air beginning to lose its crispness, that from a gully below a massive bird emerged, a sight every bit as surprising and as welcoming as a monstrous alien craft; it was close enough for me to feel the powerful downdraft wind that its wings generated, a gush of air that danced across my face as lightly as a brush from a makeup artist.  Surely it was as surprised as I was as it caught the updraft of the warming air currents, knowing it would continue to circle and swirl in those updrafts until it was as distant as the tops of those redwoods times ten, its eyesight still as pristine and as focused as if it were close to the ground.  To this day I swear that it was a golden eagle, rare in those parts* but existing, their wingspan wider than I was tall.  They are the national bird of Mexico, come to find out, but this particular morning it had no time for me; I doubt that it even gave me more than a passing glance for I was soon to be gone and this, after all, was its home...but then I could have been mistaken.

Turkey Vulture photo: Alan Murphy/Minden Pictures

   Roaming throughout the area, and much more prevalent, were turkey vultures, their name and appearance relegating them into the slums of the birding world, their vital functions and size all but ignored as if they were right to be shunned.  But not to everyone.  In a story in Hakai, there was a tale of 75-year old Dave Manning who finds "nothing unattractive" about the birds.  The article adds: In India, followers of the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism leave their dead atop purpose-built towers to be consumed by vultures as a way of dealing with impure corpses, while Vajrayana Buddhists in Tibet practice sky burials on mountaintops, the release of one’s body to the vultures representing a final gift to nature.  Manning, a gentle soul who believes in reincarnation and the interconnectedness of life, is just fine with that.  “It’s like a spiritual lifting into the atmosphere,” he says. “Who knows where it goes from there.”  It's an interesting idea, that of reincarnation, and one of many that we've created in our human version of what happens next.  Where do our dreams come from?  How does déjà vu work?  Is life not really about us but just about DNA? (which seems to be the only "thing" to progress through the eons, outliving us humans by millions of years)  Or do we, during our brief stay on this planet, have plans to return (another thing we don't seem able to comprehend).  If you're scratching your head at this point, then consider the recent episode on the podcast Snap Judgement.

   It's one thing to visit a psychic or be entertained by a "mentalist" or a magician or an illusionist; perhaps some might say that our religious or moral beliefs are formed in a similar manner.  But what happens after we cease to exist remains as mysterious as ever.  Is there an afterlife?  Is there anything "out there" at all?  Or do we come back to the only physical life we know?  Can we even comprehend such thoughts since let's face it, we are unable to even imagine another dimension, say, the beginning or ending of time (itself a human creation, according to physicists).  But to hear Bob Snow tell his tale of reincarnation --he being a homicide detective and a police captain for 38 years, in other words a person who, in his owns words, deals only in facts-- well, that was interesting (he's also written several books since retiring).  It's an interesting episode to hear, his skeptical mind even taking a tape recorder with him; but as the "facts" of his past life continue to check out even he had to wonder which if any of his former beliefs were true; as he mentions, something like that will upend all that you were ever taught.  Ocean Vuong, in his beautifully lyrical novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, expressed a small part of that feeling this way when his character writes back to his mother: You once told me that the human eye is god's loneliest creation.  How so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing.  The eye, alone in its socket, doesn't even know there's another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hungry, as empty.  Opening the front door to the first snowfall of my life, you whispered, "Look."

    Jump to a lost city, one which LRB writer Benjamin Kunkel ventured: ...to hike up the steep, sodden slopes of Columbia's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the highest coastal mountain range in the world, with the object of reaching the so-called Ciudad Perdida or Lost City of Tayuna...Ever since modern tourism began, picturesque ruins have had a melancholy allure, but the memento mori which all ruined walls and bare foundations minerally intone rings today less like a philosophical truism ('All things pass away') than as a pointed warning.  The Lost city of Tayuna seems to have been abandoned in the middle of the 17th century; Spanish troops failed to reach this fastness but the same was not true of smallpox.  Tayuna had a run of approximately 850 years.  Not bad.  Raise your hand if you think our great new world cities will still be around after eight centuries.  Please make sure to raise your hand above the water or flames, as the case requires.  Mary Gaetjens, founder of the Tayuna Foundation, explained a bit more: The Teyuna are the Arhuaco, Kankuamo, Kogi and Wiwa of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region of Colombia.  Their lives are dedicated to a sacred vow to uphold the Earth Mother’s original law: All must protect and nurture the planet, our collective home...Aluna is the Teyuna word for life and thought, a concept that becomes meaningful in contemplation.  The Earth and everything on the planet is brought into creation by thought.  Genesis = nothing + a thought.  Empowered thoughts are empowered actions.  Meditation is harmony with nature; harmony with nature is Aluna...As Teyuna mamos and zagas perform pagamento they activated segwa, divine seeds that are present and lying dormant in all beings, elements, and places on the planet.  The land responds to the Teyuna as if breathing a sigh of relief.  Birds sing and rain falls in the high dessert.  When nature is in harmony, we as humans are able to feel that accord, and responded by relaxing and experiencing joy.

   Reinarnation?  Resuurection?  Earth "seeds?"  Is there really any difference between the golden eagle and the turkey vulture, and would we view them differently if their names were simply reversed?  Is it a matter of changing our beliefs and perceptions, or simply expanding them?  Perhaps it is a time for us to become "whole," a chance to rename or reconsider these upcoming holidays.  Founder Mary Gaetjens mentioned above, posted this quote from Martha Graham: There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action.  And because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.  And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium..the world will not have it.  It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how it compares with other expressions.  It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.  To one an all, a wish for fulfilling any empty places you may have or may discover,  for calm and rationality in your lives, for connection back to life and for a return to our collective home.  Happy wholly days.
 

*While the range of the golden eagle is quite prolific along the west coast of the U.S., I have only seen one other in some 40 years, and never one this close.