a small paper for a small planet
“There’s only one thing you’ve got to remember.
Everything in this world is a brother or sister.”
In addition to being a world-class author, Charles de Lint is a heartfelt folk musician. Here he offers up a message about Animal People, beings who are also featured in his mythic fiction.
If only man did not tether us
we would fly widdershins,
kick up clods at the sun,
make clouds of turf swirl round our heels.
Instead we pace and crib to get high
in the sterile gold stalls of Olympus.
Here the social feed smells mean
and riders mimic predators.
De Lint’s storytelling draws mastfully from both folklore and scientific truth. When I worked as a field biologist, fresh out of college, my mentors informed me that ornithologists who study the crow family quickly learn that the birds are also studying them. These creatures are among the most intelligent of all animals, having demonstrated self-awareness in mirror tests, tool-making abilities, and a total brain-to-body mass that is close to that of humans.
I just returned from an evening of dancing to live music. Live, danceable music always brings great joy to me. I love moving my body in harmony with the music, I love experiencing all the ways my body will move, I love watching others experience the same things. This evening it was reggae. Rock and roll, jazz, blues, yes even classical can inspire the same joy. When I am in a self-care mindset, I plan dance into my life.
Every day the first thought of the productive person is…. what do I need to accomplish? Work, laundry, grass mowing (ach), finances, really never ending. What a funny life we have decided is normal. I look at the young people and think that I am now old enough to be their grandparent, and yet I still feel like I am the hippie kid who spent her last 200 bucks on a property down payment back in 1977 with the hippie Buddhist guy with the long hair and beard with whom I lived in the tent where we conceived our first child.
Having never before visited, Cannon Beach didn’t conjure images of any kind for me other than sand and waves, which can be very misleading for someone visiting from sunny Southern California, where the waves are bigger, the sand can burn your feet, and everyone runs around half-naked instead of thrice layered.
For most of us it’s hard to peel back someone’s layers to find out what a person is really feeling, especially when that person doesn’t want to show what they’re feeling. It’s easy for us to put on a mask and not burden people with our problems. But what we need to recognize is that other people hide under their facades too; and even though they may be smiling on the outside, they may be crying on the inside…
Since childhood I’ve been exposed to love in a thousand different ways. It started with the love I have for my mother and the love she has for me. She was my first example of what love is, how it feels, how it sounds and what it looks like. Then, in my childlike brain it was translated into holding hands as you crossed the street and kisses on my fallen knees.
On the morning of the first Earth Day a seven-year-old boy seached for salamanders in a creek. He didn’t know adults were launching a new holiday to encourage care for creation. His heart and mind were filled with amazement at the critters who lived under the damp mossy rocks. After lunch he climbed one of his favorite trees.
Out of darkness and balloons, Jim Young stepped into my life. It was Intro to Theater, freshman year, and I had slid from harsh daylight into a darkened womb called Arena Theater, a black box theater at Wheaton College in Illinois. The balloons were tied to the floor, suspended mid-air, so that we had to walk through them like trees…
