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Dangerous Compassions

sacred

I want to learn how to make paper.  I like to make little books as gifts, and it would be cool if I didn’t have to buy the paper.

Going home has a different energy than outgoing trip excitement.  Going home can feel like work.  But the drive is beautiful.  I’m blessed to come from a beautiful homeland.

Some recent revelations:

History is so hard to believe.  I don’t know if I trust my guide.  Then the guide is basing it on things other people said longer ago, and I don’t know if I trust them either.  I know how “facts” can be created.  Rumor and common knowledge can be wrong.  An anecdote can get blown out of proportion.  An instance can become everyone. 

Well, I sound like a paranoid conspiracy theorist.  But I was reading this history of the Chumash people on Sunday at the bookstore in Lompoc.  And I could hear the attitude of the writer–it was published in 1965.  He would say things I totally didn’t believe, so then it threw the whole thing into doubt. 

Like he talked about some Chumash people having an easy life, and it just seemed like a lie.  When is life ever easy?  Yeah, many kinds of fish and abundant acorns sounds good, but misfortune is everywhere.

I don’t like history in general, and the only exception seems to be the history of my homeland.  I think it’s because I love the plants and animals and land here so much–it makes sense I want to know about the people who relied on them and what happened here, to make the holes in the rocks and the art in the cave.  I’m especially intrigued by the people who lived on the islands.  I love the Channel Islands.

I found out my mom’s mom was born in New Mexico, probably Corrizozo, and I want to go there now.  There’s an old volcano.  I want to learn about that place and hug a tree, if trees grow there.  Kiss the earth.  You probably think I’m crazy.  But what’s sacred, in this world? 

When Ming and I traveled to my mom’s birthplace, that was one of the best trips I’ve ever taken.

Well, I gotta make breakfast and do morning things, then get on the road.  Love to all.

By Laura-Marie

Good at listening to the noise until it makes sense.

2 replies on “sacred”

Have you read the book “Ishi in Two Worlds” by Theodora Kroeber (mother of Ursula Le Guin). It’s about the life of the last Californian Yaqui Indian Ishi and how he came to live at the museum in San Francisco.

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