In the Merlyn books Grandma Earth represented another kind of schooling, one more private and open only to a few who became known as shamans. Here is an example from book one, Braided Dreams:
**
“A middle-aged woman by the name of Qwinta stood staring at a multi-shaded Maple leaf. Orange it was and the hue was complicated by the photosynthesis of carbohydrates using the electromagnetic energy in sunlight. She was standing within sight of the east coast of a body of water that some eight thousand years later would be identified as Lake Champlain on land presently called Burlington, Vermont.
Qwinta thought, the hue of orange evolves in this leaf as a ghostly princess of a canoeist evolves in a streamlined and artfully carved royal dugout. The maple paddle and I, the Quinta, become as one in the mind but in the body, the head and paddle are two. I know and understand this to be a natural circumstance. Two arms become one in the mind as both drop and swirl the paddle through the water. When the paddle is lifted from the water, a ripple ensues. The ripple is as a wave of orange seen in a Maple leaf.
The thinker whose mind dips like a paddle into the River of the Dead also lifts up and leaves a ripple as it passes from one side of the profound and ethereal current to the other. The swirling spirit of sculling manifests itself as the tree reflected water is swirled into this leaf as the oar rises. This is a perfectly remarkable concurrence in thought and I, Qwinta, in both body and mind, am the only causal connection between the Living and the Dead just as the Maple is the only causal connection between the color and this fallen leaf.
Grandma all wonderfully black, full bosomed, and full hipped, is colorfully costumed in Caribbean Island dress sashays around, and says, “there isn’t a reason on this Earth for people to be touched by Perfection. Since I’m out in the science and physics of the universe, I don’t see any reason to be touched there either. Matter has its own rules. Reason with a capital cannot exist in such rules.”
Grandma sometimes settles on earthquakes as a reminder of what she is when there is a construction underneath the feet of both the Living and the Dead. You get in the way and you pay. That is a rule. Human beings are not perfect forms, but they have the Imagination for something less than Perfection. Reason plus Imagination may equal Understanding, but it is a human equation and though Grandma rests in all human beings, Alive or Dead, old Grandma must settle in her rocker from time to time, to ease the tension. I operate by Necessity and so do you.
Grandma beamed but did not move. Her hands were on her hips like there was work to do and she better get to it. Always work to do. Physics runs its course on the track of necessity. She said, “The universe is like any other media you work with. It needs a frame. On Earth the interior of human and marsupial skulls will do . . .
Over these muddy Waters run
And show a future from this past;
This story light from thought begun
With an inky photosynthesis is cast.
And from old Grandma’s toothy gums
Something easily familiar this way comes.”
***
I remember this story from Book One; Chapter Three; Grandma’s Story. This is most of that short story intact. Grandma serves as a Master Shaman in the books. I forget what it was like to be ‘evolved’ in her character. Here are a few lines from a previous story in Chapter One that shows how Grandma Earth is in the Merlyn books.
**
“. . . This particular shaman, long dead, knows you are reading his thoughts, smiled old Grandma, who appears Aunt Jemima black in the richest soil on the planet. Her white teeth gleaned as paper unsoiled with ink or paint. She looked down on her young listeners. Child, she said, you ain’t got a clue on what words are when they come out of the blue. I’m gonna sit on this here stump and hope it won’t stain my pretty blue and white dress that likes to float in a gentle breeze. You look up at Grandma as you look deep down into yourself child. I am your nature inside and out. The kerchief on my head ain’t nothin’ but the stars. You keep that in mind, if you got a mind for it. Freedom stories ain’t for everyone.
Grandma glanced up beyond the dark sky above her head. The white in her eyes could tell you her dark pupils were disappearing inside. I got me a chant to take us from a story in the past to a story in the future. I’m the board on which the Shamans dance. Merlyn and lover in a dead man’s dream to a future together his old mind streams . . .”
***
Enough introduction written here. Grandma Earth is appointed in this blog to speak her mind when she so wishes. No more from the Merlyn books she speaks when in Shaman’s way her tongue will dance on postings. – Amorella.
No comments:
Post a Comment