the great dream

When I was about 19, I had this remarkable dream that I would have a son one day who would be a seer. I wouldn’t know what that meant until almost ten years later when an audiologist confirmed our baby boy was deaf.For the most part, I put off the grief about that news for almost 25 years. Instead, I thought of that dream and dove into its goodness . . . this was going to be about seeing, not about not hearing.

How that boy could see . . . always different than everyone else . . . inside the soul and outside the lines. One morning when he was maybe four or five, he woke up earlier and happier than usual. I came into the kitchen to find him already at the table with crayons and paper drawing something with the kind of intensity that pushes tongue out over lip. He beamed up at me . . . held up his drawing of this scene:
“Last night I dreamt you a raccoon.”The years have been full of such gifts . . . deafness has given me much more than it ever cost me. But it cost a lot–frustration, raging at the world that wasn’t kind, patient or just; my guilt and vulnerability and trust and doubt and confusion and exasperation.
But not with my son, at least no more than usual when your kid sasses back, whacks his brother, launders his hearing aids, skips school, keeps dating a bad girlfriend, and trades his sensible car in for a super-jacked ATV.Now we are writing a book together, and more gifts come at me a myriad of ways. Things I wondered about in the days before he had enough language to tell me what he felt have come pouring forth. We are waking and dreaming together.We laugh, we cry, we find each other in new ways and discover we were never lost, not even once. Even now when he lives a thousand miles away and days pass without a word, I can feel him in the darkness of every kind of distance. For me, this hasn’t been about seeing or hearing, but about feeling.

 

flowergirl

I’m not a wedding photographer, but when tasked with such a gig as a favor to family or friends, I find the flowergirls to be powerfully photogenic.

What’s in a Name

Currently editing my client’s book about 30 years in Indian Country (after 30 years growing close as family to a tribe, you get to say Indian Country, I’m told). Loved this story:

When I first met Dani Not Help Him, I asked about her surname: Not Help Him. I assumed that it was a name depicting someone who had somehow been shamed and not deserving of help. I did not understand “Not Help Him,” so I asked Dani to explain the meaning. She told me that the surname is derived from members of one of the warrior societies among the Lakota comprised of men who were destined to be the first line of defense against invaders or other tribes who might raid or battle the Lakota.

A warrior designated as Not Help Him was said to be so brave and so dedicated to the safety of the village that he would lay down his life for the tribe or village and nobody was supposed to help him as he performed his sacred duties to protect the village. She said that some Not Help Him warriors would go so far as to sink a stake into the ground and have another warrior lash their leg to it so that they could not retreat in the face of certain death. You were not to help him, Dani explained, because his death was in furtherance of the protection of his people. Just thinking of this, the dignity, the courage, and the generosity of these warriors brings a lump to my throat, to this day.

*(The man with the drum is a Nottawaseppi (the people who can hear the river) singer. This tribe has lived for generation upon generation in the Michigamme/Michigan: the place where food grows on water–a reference to wild rice. If I had a picture of a Lakota Not Help Him, I’d use it. My pictures are from Pow Wows in the Michigamme and markets and mountains in New Mexico where I love to walkabout listening with my lenses.)

What an incredible name. I had to see if I could find Dani Not Help Him by GTS (google that shit). I couldn’t, but I did find this obituary with a name even more incredible: http://www.lakotacountrytimes.com/news/2014-04-24/The_Holy_Road/Marie_Theresa_Not_Help_HimFox_Belly.html

what he said

the Impotence of Proofreading

Has this ever happened to you?

You work very horde on a paper for English clash

And then get a very glow raid (like a D or even a D=)

and all because you are the word1s liverwurst spoiler.

Proofreading your peppers is a matter of the the utmost impotence.

This is a problem that affects manly, manly students.

I myself was such a bed spiller once upon a term

that my English teacher in my sophomoric year,

Mrs. Myth, said I would never get into a good colleague.

And that1s all I wanted, just to get into a good colleague.

Not just anal community colleague,

because I wouldn1t be happy at anal community colleague.

I needed a place that would offer me intellectual simulation,

I really need to be challenged, challenged dentally.

I know this makes me sound like a stereo,

but I really wanted to go to an ivory legal collegue.

So I needed to improvement

or gone would be my dream of going to Harvard, Jail, or Prison

(in Prison, New Jersey).

So I got myself a spell checker

and figured I was on Sleazy Street.

But there are several missed aches

that a spell chukker can1t can1t catch catch.

For instant, if you accidentally leave a word

your spell exchequer won1t put it in you.

And God for billing purposes only

you should have serial problems with Tori Spelling

your spell Chekhov might replace a word

with one you had absolutely no detention of using.

Because what do you want it to douch?

It only does what you tell it to douche.

You1re the one with your hand on the mouth going clit, clit, clit.

It just goes to show you how embargo

one careless clit of the mouth can be.

Which reminds me of this one time during my Junior Mint.

The teacher read my entire paper on A Sale of Two Titties

out loud to all of my assmates.

I1m not joking, I1m totally cereal.

It was the most humidifying experience of my life,

being laughed at pubically.

So do yourself a flavor and follow these two Pisces of advice:

One: There is no prostitute for careful editing.

And three: When it comes to proofreading,

the red penis your friend.

©2017 Taylor Mali

(Selfy-Portrait)

Father and Daughter

Wm and his little girl in an uncharacteristically sober mood. You’re far more likely to see them like this . . .

omission statement

I want to be a farmer of words…strictly organic…knowing each word I’ve planted will produce something sustainable.  I want to master the husbandry of words…know what it takes for them to grow strong and viable, to see words sprouting in a field that I have made ready…to know which to cull and which to feed.  I would rain on them from porch swings or Paris, fertilize them with prayer and presence.

I want to be a mad scientist of words…an anthropologist of words…and spend some time as alphabet-sous chef to William Least Heat Moon.

I want to put on a little lace camisole, a short ruffly skirt and some well-worn cowboy boots and go out dancing with words…in the French Quarter to a Doobie’s cover band…I want to taste Jack & Coke on the mouth of words…words against my neck…words that have a houseboat right on the river, not far from here…words in rivulets…

I want to be a field surgeon of words…the triage of words…able to keep somebody alive with words alone.

I want to debate words at Oxford and win.

But I will remain a recluse in a cabin on the Lesser Slave Lake of words…to be found a few months after I’ve died…to be posthumously unpublished, famously unknown.

$26 for the happiest day of his life

He knocked on my front door, needing money . . . the exact amount to the penny for a bus ticket to Chicago: $25.65

Did I have any odd jobs he could do?            (this got my respect)

Overcoming my default NO, I said I figured I had $5 for pulling weeds out of the cracks in my driveway.

It’ll help, he said. And he started yanking at the crabgrass.

After about five minutes, I couldn’t stand the white privilege roiling off me; I approached him with a better idea.

OK, I’ll cover the full price of your ticket if you write about the best day of your life.

He just stared at me, confused.

How do I do that, he asked.

So I handed him a can of Cherry Pepsi, something to sit on, a notepad and paper.

Just tell me what happened that made it happy, I said. Write what you remember.

I went back into my house. Every time I peeked through the curtain or around the door frame, the boy was writing intently.

After 20 minutes, I went to see how he was doing. I asked if he would read it to me and said he would, but it made him shy. Shyly, he read. Sensei-ish, I listened.

I liked his theme and told him so. He said he wasn’t done yet, so I went back to my work. Maybe 15 minutes later, he was ready. Did I want him to read it out loud again? I said no, you don’t have to.

He returned the notepad and pen. I shook his hand and gave him an envelope with $26 cash in it.

Congratulations, I said, this is your first paid writing project. You are now a writer. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Go to Chicago and keep writing even if no one is paying you. One day they will. You’ll be amazed by your life one day.

I’ve no idea why I felt authorized to say that, but that’s what I said. I think I just always wanted someone to say that to me when I didn’t know who I was.

Then he smiled awkwardly, trying to hide his broken front teeth. He thanked me and walked off.

Later in the early evening, I was walking Nessy and saw a nearly full can of Cherry Pepsi sitting on the curb just up the next block from my place. It wasn’t thrown down, not even dented; somehow politely, it was just sitting there, punctuating the end of our exchange.

It charmed me.  It embarrassed me.  It was something I would have done at his age when I wasn’t brave enough to say no thank you . . . decades before I learned how to be the person  I myself needed when I was 17.

the last thing She sees

Of the field and fall

from grace we yield

the summer-sated grasses

and the golden-hour lasses . . .

Letting go the season

has come to pass

What wouldn’t I
do to spare you?

The Earth drops her gown

from green to gold to ground

but the last thing She’ll see

is blue . . . remembering

a world She once knew

. . . all the women do.

© LGS 9/14

(Bolstered by my writerly colleagues at http://www.lakeeffectwritersguild.com, I post this for my girl, and for all us girls)

Portrait of my daughter

Now and then . . .

a common wicasa

Young Bear would not let me take a picture of his hands.  He was self-conscious about missing a finger, but not over the way it looked.  It was because he had cut it off during a Sun dance, and that was a sacrifice, not a photo opp.  He said I am going to tell you things you cannot speak about later.

I do not share those things . . . they are for sacred knowing not blogposting.

So I spent the next hour with him, who pointed out many times that he was not a Wicasa Wakan, a Sacred Man, but just a common wicasa.  Still, he was working to elevate his people on their spiritual path; he was the man who bridged them at Death (which is not real, he pointed out) over the North Star down the Milky Way to the Death Star.

At the end of the Milky Way is the place where the spirits face the Smokey Mirror for judgment.  But the judgment is not from the Creator, who loves and accepts all wicasa.  It is the reflection of our own fears, shames and beliefs about ourselves that judge us.  We judge ourselves.  He knows this and his function with the tribes is to teach the people self-love.  If they know self-love, then they can face the Smoky Mirror and accept the Gift of their Life.  He gave me this Knowing to share.

Then he said that he would give me a gift, too, that would help me.  What did I need?  So I asked him if he could tell me about the Eagle Dream I had.   He nodded.  After I told him, he kept his eyes down on his hands, on the finger that wasn’t there, and after a while he started talking.  He told me things about it that were not given to me before, but still entirely synced to what I knew about this Dream.  He added some things I didn’t know, and my heart swelled with the Truth of what I’d been given…how it was instantly known to this man, the common wicasa.

Then he told me that if I want to keep the Gift of my Dream, I must give him a penny.  An exchange of things of value must be made before I could own it, before the Dream was really mine.  Except that I didn’t have a penny, so I gave him the compass I bought in Australia last fall that was hanging on my camera bag.  He studied it, then nodded approvingly.  He took it ceremoniously and hung it on his keychain.  Now the Dream is mine, and it will now come to pass, he said.  Then he told me more things I can’t speak about, although I do not know why…why extraordinary things like this happen to me, an even more common wicasa.

(This happened to me in North Dakota, Summer 2012; reposted by special request of BJHM)