The tracks lead
them off to the north, and in a great circle back to the flowering
tree; that is, their search leads them to a fresh confrontation with
themselves. Exhausted by their journey, the people all sit down and
begin to talk honestly to each other. They realize that they don't
really want to hurt anyone. They find that as a result of having unwittingly
united together in order to do something as a whole people, they can
now hear the four harmonies of balance, symbolized by the songs sung
by a white coyote from the north, a green coyote from the south, a
yellow coyote from the east, and a black coyote from the west. The
people, of course, represent the whole hierarchy of selves within
each individual human being.
...they don't live alone - they
live with Gray Wolves, too.
... Dylan D, age 9 drew what he
saw to be a white coyote surrounded by energy colors and electric
bolts radiating out from it.
Hi ------,
Thank you for your email. I appreciate
knowing that the White Coyote experience is valued by others. It is
unique in my experience. I actually saw the coyote twice--once when
she was at the side of the road, which is the basis of the painting,
and another time when I was out walking my dog in the woods. We came
to a clearing, and there she was. My dog didn't even growl or whine.
The coyote looked shining silver. It was a grey day with a little
mist. We all stood still in silence, looking at one another. After
simply standing and gazing at us for a time, the coyote turned and
walked back into the brush. I was so moved by that experience!
When I painted the roadside coyote,
I tried to make her the colors of the physical coyote, grey and rusty
gold, but she refused to turn those colors, and stayed more white.
That is when I realized it was a spirit animal.
When I lived in Janesville, Wisconsin,
a white buffalo calf was born there. I think it later turned dark,
but people said it was an omen anyway. I hope it is an omen of universal
peace and brotherhood, although the wars continue.
My website has moved. the new
address is below in my signature, along with my new email address.
I will be visiting your site, and you are welcome to put the image
of the painting and my new web address on it. I am attaching the jpg
for White Coyote.
THIS IS BIZARRE--while I was attaching
the jpg of the Coyote painting, I heard a coyote howl on the TV downstairs,
where my husband is watching a program on the Black Hills and Mount
Rushmore.
- Ellen McCormick Martens,
Artist of White Coyote, above.
~#~#~#~
Some years ago, perhaps on a Saturday
- during the afternoon, a close poetFriend of mine, A.B. - who comes
from a rather illustrious pair of poetParents, stopped by to visit.
He discusses in an entertaining way, an anecdote about a girl he knew,
who was commenting on the yogic or semi-yogic practice of drinking
one's own urine. It was rather incidental, or so I saw it at the time.
This was perhaps 5 years ago or more, but could be dated by writing
we did together. Shortly thereafter, K.B, A man whose name escapes
me at the moment, and myself took a trip which is elsewhere described
to a mountain called Shasta. So this was prior to the unusual and
striking events of the I AM HERE phenomenon. This was prior to that.
We might refer to this as the I AM ENROUTE time, in relation to the
formerly named 'mystery' which is now, in far hindsight, so very very
much clearer - and yet still ripe with its initial mystery, as any
good quest will always be, and remain - at least for me.
The night of A.B's visit, I had
a rather incredible dream. I had been intentionally enmeshed in a
variety of impossible quests for some time; but at this point I had
little idea or real belief that any of them could ever be reasonably
completed or provide the rewards I was seeking, not so much for myself,
but instead for the people and places I adore. That would be all of
them, by the way.
The dream began in my room, I
was musing that my quest had become rather confused, and longing,
as I always tended to do, for an older mentor who was wise in the
realms and domains of my seeking and desire. As always, those few
I found paid little attention, or charged too much gold, or were false
to their own hearts upon any reasonable examination. In my room, I
was perusing a new copy of a magazine like Shaman's Drum. On the cover,
there was a dark or reddish-skinned woman, with black hair. There
was an absurd headline to the left side of her image, something like:
silentWoman Eats her Own Feces. I became extremely intrigued, and
I examined the article.
Around this time it became clear
to me in the way it can only really in dreams, that the walls of my
room had dissolved, and in fact, my room was no longer in a house,
or within a city - at all. Though my room was the correct shape and
size, and all of my furnishings were there, there were neither walls
nor ceiling, there were merely four 'posters' at the corners. I don't
remember if they went to the top of the sky, or were short. The whole
affair, was, apparently, sitting in the middle of a small field, with
a lot of small weeds and flowers growing in clumps nearby. The weather
was pleasant and not too hot, nor bright. I lounged on my floor with
the magazine, knowing that the world, and the rest of the house, could
be accessed through a doorway that was present, but only framed against
the ... real world around me. The door was gone.
The article turned out to be extremely
interesting. A prophet had arisen to moderate notoriety, who never
spoke at all. She would listen, or watch, and then speak through a
man, who was her public face and her companion in the deepest, and
apparently not romantic sense. They were both indigenous individuals,
it was not clearly described, but it appeared they were of Native
American and other mixed heritages. So people would speak with or
be mentored by this 'medicine woman' and yet she would never speak
a word.
She apparently had a variety of
extremely unusual practices, many of which she would not discuss beyond
the fact that they had been revealed to her as necessary and in fact
sacred; meaning that she considered and defended them as holy, regardless
of their appearance or the ideas of others. The most remarkable, to
me, was that it was clarified in the article that primary amongst
these, was the practice of eating her own feces, regularly, in fact,
each day.
As I read the article, I became
flush with a kind of longing; I felt this woman was very real, in
fact, that she was precisely the sort of person that I had
so long searched in the world, literature, practice and theory for
- a person who would really be able to guide me in the paths that
I felt so certain were critical to our lives, and just as certainly
obscured from us in our living experience and modern industrial world.
A world that was dying, just as fast as I myself was...and from precisely
the same causes. I knew I needed some keys to the puzzle of societal
extinctions, racial extinctions amongst humans, symbols, language,
and - in a word - atrocity. I needed some answers, because, along
with my own life and world to save, there were those of my son and
family - and when you extended that with any degree of rationality
- that family had no end.
I needed to talk to a this woman.
Or a woman who was alike with her wisdom. I also knew the futility
of attempting such a thing. That I would, as was common as well as
realistic, be 'reduced to a kind of hanger-on' - a humiliable 'consumerThing'.
I knew that any feeble attempt I might make to establish meaningful
contact with such a person would be thwarted by my apparent lack of
status. Or my inability to spew gold like some sort of absurd machine
that eats its own blood to make money...
I felt a kind of excited resignation,
as one often feels when consuming the evidence of the potential for
real liberty, while being denied access to the door itself, which,
it is also clear - lies within the very self thus denied. It was a
feeling so familiar that such prosaic descriptions rise like a thousand
raindrops falling from the dark nocturnal storm above, each one looming
large and complex, in slow motion, as their path brings them, in scales
of magnification, nearer the eye...which, when close enough - is reflected
in them, and in the reflection, there are domains of echoes of echoes,
like two round mirrors, placed before each other...except...it's not
static. All the eyes are moving, all reflecting water and eyes within
water and sky and world.
As I was musing on my desires,
the man approached from the outer field, followed by the woman. I
was surprised, but not shocked; and I soon filled with excitement,
coupled with a reasonable but small amount of confusion. There was
no introduction. We all knew each other, somehow - but the relationship,
for some reason, was meant to be formal, and had to be, at least in
part, maintained in this spirit in order to be beneficial for all.
I do not reCall precise sentences
now, so all dialogue here will be 'meaning-true' rather than the more
common 'recording' of one glued to exactitude. The people seemed kindly
disposed toward me and sincere. They appeared to trust the same of
me, and the man said, basically:
"We have come, now you must
ask what it is you wish, or seek what you called us for."
I was, quite literally, at a loss
for words. The situation was so novel, and my position so irregular,
that, even in a dream, I did what I might do if I were suddenly naked
in a crowd - I waffled and treaded water for a moment.
"I um, well...I trust her
to show me. Can she just show me what I most need to see?"
The man looked at her, and turned
back to me.
"Come, follow me."
We began walking.
We went along a path, the man
in front, the woman far behind. I stayed with him. We passed a large
dead tree, and the woman was no longer with us. The man took me off
to the left of the tree, off the path, and into a terrain of dry grasses
and bare but gentle rocky earth. We came, after a while, to the side
of a very gentle hill, and there was a small 'bump' of earth, somewhat
elongate, perhaps 15 feet long, and 8 wide at its widest. The bump
made a rather crude cradle, and there rose nearby some grasses, weeds,
and, a little ways of to our rearFacing left - some brush. The whole
area was on the side of a this gentle hill. The weather was calm,
there were a few clouds in the sky. The man motioned for me to sit
or lie down here.
"This is the place. Just
stay here and watch. Enter what you see."
I did as instructed, feeling a
deep sense of trust, and a little confusion at the simplicity of his
request, but I felt capable of doing it. I lay down with my head along
our path, and he departed. I lay as one might on a summer day, looking
up at the sky, the nearby earth, the clouds. In the direction of my
feet, off to the left, was the brushy area. Farther in the same direction,
but off to the right, was the large old tree, which was far out of
view.
I remained there for some time,
perhaps fifteen minutes, when, of a sudden, a very subtle, yet profound
change began to accrue in my cognitive perspective - not my
visual one. I felt calm, and present, and aware, and there seemed
to be a kind of (subtle-but-essential) playfulness to the color and
characters of the world around me as I watched it in stillness and
movement. Just about the time I noticed this, I heard a sound from
the brushPlace, and I kind of sat up to see what was making it, because
it was loud enough to be a large animal.
I saw something really terrifying
emerge from the brush, albeit some 85 feet away. It was a White Coyote,
and it wasn't like any possible coyote I can imagine, because it had
a few features that, thankfully, 'real' coyotes just don't sport.
First, it was a nightmareCreature - meaning, it had the power of being
incredibly scary in the way we tend to call alien. It moved
wrong, and too fast, and too strangely. It was clearly some sort of
infernal nexus of strangeness. It had really frightening
teeth, which grew in a horrifying wall of razor-edged, linked bananaShapes
from its upper and lower jaws. The effect was startlingly frighting
when combined. But the worst part, aside from all the really obvious
terror of its teeth, nature, terrorPower and movement, was the surety
that it had come specifically for me, and was sniffing around
at this moment in an attempt to better locate the spoor which had
led it to my proximity.
I knew two things: I was in unexpected
trouble unprepared, and that some sort of action was going to be necessary;
there was no reasonable nearby cover, and the animal moved, quite
literally, like lightning. There would be no avoiding it, that was
instantly clear. Nor was there any reasonable weapon handy. My mind
flashed to the old tree, I thought I remembered some large branches
which might be handled to advantage, lying near it.
As I rose, from slightly up the
hill, I saw a movement. And as the Coyote was moving rapidly toward
me, this other creature, which I could now see was a large and wiseLooking
wolf, grayBlack in color, moved to a place above and between us on
the upper hillside, and stared down at the Coyote, which stopped in
its tracks instantly. The two seemed to exchange a challenge and an
answer, and the Coyote returned to the brush. The Wolf glanced at
me, turned and departed.
I felt relieved, and thankful
that the Wolf had come, and wondered at the relationship of this Wolf
to myself, and the whole situation for a moment - then I realized
that the Coyote was still nearby, and quite formidable. I decided
I should head for the tree, and see about locating a large branch
with which I could at least defend myself to some degree.
I returned to the tree, and discovered
that I had failed to notice some of its features in my prior passing
- the tree wasn't vast, but it was a good size. The bark was thickly
textured, and a deep wrinkly black which was almost shiny. In numerous
orifices along its bare trunk and branchings, there were 'holes' of
a distinctly vaginal shape, as those which sometimes happen in 'real'
trees, but are generally more round. These were like elongated eyes,
turned on their sides - but with the same sort of unusual rung of
growth around their edges that is found on similar holes in 'real'
trees. Within the center of each of these, was an unusual crimson/pink
berry. It was generally roundish, but irregular, and the surfaces
of the berries appeared quite articulated - bumpy in patterns, one
might say.
About the time of my noticing,
I heard movement in some nearby brush - in the same direction as my
return, but again to the left. I knew it was the Coyote - and the
Man and Woman were nowhere to be found. I hurriedly glanced around
and found a perfect branch. It was long, wieldy, and hand a complex
broom-like mesh of branches at the end - a perfect tool for the idea
I had.
My idea was to try to 'squish'
the Coyote in a mesh of branches, trapping him, and letting him know
that I was not going to be trifled with - I felt this would rattle
him enough to convince him to seek elsewhere for his errands. We approached
each other, and things speeded up, very suddenly.
We began a rapid and brief series
of circular feints as he closed upon me - and just as he leapt for
me, I 'squashed him down' with the branchBroom. As I did that, he
twisted, however, and I had to adjust my leverage to keep him restrained.
When I did this, he squirmed very rapidly - and when this happened,
the edges of his teeth on the left side of his horribly toothy and
seemingly cheekless face, brushed their razor-sharp edges against
the flesh on the outside of my right hand, just above my thumb. They
left a small but clear series of tiny bloody cuts in the soft skin
there, and I leapt back, letting go of the branch in shock. The White
Coyote leapt out from under the branch's and was gone into the brush
in a flash, his errand apparently accomplished.
I felt extremely uncertain and
really worried about the fact that he'd broken my skin with his teeth.
It seemed clear that there was some potentially dangerous principle
in his bite. Though he'd not bitten me, his teeth were so sharp that
merely brushing their sides along my skin had cut me. I headed back
for the tree, hoping to find the Man and the Woman. When I got there,
they were present, standing near the tree, the Man in Front, the Woman
behind him.
The Man seemed to already underStand
what had transpired, but I think I made a brief report. He and the
Woman conferred very briefly, without words, and he turned to me and
spoke:
"She says that you've been
bitten by the White Coyote, but it is not clear to you what this means.
She says that it is good, but that you will have a hard struggle to
see this, and that there will be a lot of confusion or early trouble,
but the outcome will be better than if you'd not been bitten. She
says it will be good in the end."
I was confused, but I trusted
his answer. I believe they left, I looked at the tree for a moment,
and awoke.
~#~#~#~
Tanais picked
up the stick again and started to very carefully adapt the picture
of the first coyote he drew. "Not very far away from the tribe
lived a coyote woman," Tanais said. "She was very beautiful
and wore a green and purple cape and the feather necklace of a medicine
woman. Known only as Why-ay-looh', or `Coyote Woman', she loved to
take long walks by herself in the plains, searching for herbs and
roots that she would later turn into powerful medicines.
"One
of her favorite places was a rocky cove; called Medicine Cove, it
was shielded on all three sides by a sheer wall of rocks, accessible
by a secret path that only she knew about. Coyote Woman would often
spend many hours sitting in her cove, looking at the moon as it rose
over the ocean. Sometimes she would sing to herself or devise new
magic and medicine, sometimes she would braid colourful beads into
her long golden fur or prepare her herbs. In the centre of the cove
was a pool of water that she would often use to look into and think
about things when she wanted to be by herself and not be disturbed.
"One
night, Coyote Woman went to her cove and sat on an outcropping of
rocks that looked over the pool. As she sat, braiding beads into her
hair and humming a song to herself, she looked into the pool and saw
to her surprise what looked like a face smiling up at her in the reflection
of the moon. With a startled yelp, she jumped back and looked up at
the moon shining high in the sky but saw nothing unusual there. Shaking
her head, she looked back at the pool and stared into the water."
Tanais
looked down into the pool and saw his reflection looking up at him.
The reflection of the moon had slid a little further into the pool
and shone behind him, lighting the outline of his ears with an eerie
glow. He thought about playing with his reflection using the stick
he had just been drawing with, but he thought better of it. He paused
to remember where he was in the story, then continued.
"At
first she thought it must have been some sort of illusion - that the
reflection in the moon was her own face looking up at herself from
the pool - so she peered a little closer. Although the face was indistinct
and shimmered slightly as it rippled in the water, Coyote Woman found
that if she squinted her eyes as she looked into the pool, she could
quite clearly see the image of a pure white coyote staring up at her
with his deep blue eyes.
"Nothing
like this had ever happened before! She had acknowledged long ago
that this was a very magical place but knowing about magic and coming
face to face with it are two very different things."
"My
name is Edwin Benson. My Indian name used to be Ma-doke-wa-des-she,
Iron Bison. Ben Benson was my grandfather. His Indian name was Buffalo
Head. I'm about one of the last ones that's able to speak the Mandan
language quite fluently. The Lewis and Clark Expedition . . . there
is only one name that I recall, and that was White Coyote. In the
Mandan language, White Coyote was Sheheke-shoat. I would say, maybe
in the older days, they probably called it E-mah-shoat, because the
Mandan languages were different from the way I speak today.
|
