More Recent Notes From the Journal

22 10 2008

Sunday, 9.7.08

I dreamt about bats last night. Large ones, as large as I am, in an alley with me at night. Three of them. One was two-headed. I was at least partially aware of the fact that I was dreaming and I asked myself, as they moved around me, if they were my totem animal and, if so, what qualities of theirs might be important for me to incorporate into my life. The only adjective I could conjure was “aggressive”.

Tonight (after the day had ended), I was walking home when I heard a sound and saw three bats swoop into the sky above me. I’d never seen bats fly in real life and I haven’t seen a bat in-person at all since I was very young. Read the rest of this entry »





Tongva Two-Spirit Traditionalist Featured in Article

21 10 2008

Search Magazine (formerly called Science & Spirit Magazine) featured an article in its July/August 2008 issue about the decision to grant the naming of one of Neptune’s moons to the Tongva Indian tribe of southern California. Amidst discussion of some of the tribe’s most important deities and internal schisms  concerning the possibility of building a tribal casino, the article mentions Marc Acuna, a Tongva wehepet.

The article says that wehepet is “a term meaning ‘two-spirit’ or ‘two-road’ that was traditionally applied to people we would now identify as gay or lesbian.” This is technically incorrect and ethnocentric on a number of counts. For one, we would identify this person as either a wehepet, a Two-Spirit, or gay, depending on how the person identifies. Secondly, the reason why the term ‘Two-Spirit’ was coined in 1990 was to provide a more gender/role-encompassing term (meant especially for American Indians) than “gay/lesbian” — terms which only speak to sexual preference and limit our understanding of the individual to that aspect of him/her/ze.

Nonetheless, mention of Marc in this article is really awesome in terms of general visibility and understanding of Two-Spirits and the piece even goes on to discuss some of what his role entails with a few direct quotes from him. I love the photo above because it shows him teaching local youth native herbalism. So Two-Spirit!

You can find the full article here. And for a little something extra I dug up, here is an article Marc wrote discussing traditional uses of Mugwort (kwiash) in the Tongva tribe (found on page 4).





Recent Notes From the Journal

19 10 2008

Wednesday – 8.27.08

I journey to meet my spirit guides.

I walk around the World Tree and it is covered in red and green flowers and bark. It’s a bulbous tree and I am soon overwhelmed by its immensity as I look upwards. It is both sunset and sunrise all over the sky. I walk barefoot along the Tree’s roots. After stating my intention, a cellar door opens at the base of the tree and I slide down a dark spiral till I fall into a shallow muddy puddle. I feel handles beneath me, opening to a metal cellar (the other one was wooden) and I fall for a long time and, eventually, fall through a hole in the sky, hitting a desert where a LARGE tortoise sits. Ze tells me to follow hir to my spirit guides.

I shapeshift into a tortoise as large as the one leading me. We slowly walk through the desert and I am aware that this is the perfect pace for my nature at the time. The sun is beating hot and I feel the urge to climb out of my shell, though part of me fears the searing sun, not exactly sure of what a tortoise’s skin beneath its shell looks like or how vulnerable it is. All of a sudden, I see a woman in white and a man in a dark hooded shroud standing next to one another on a sandy cliff. I approach them and ask them if they ar my spirit guides. The woman says no and the man says yes.

The woman tells me her name is Maria and that she is one of my ancestors. Ths spirit guide tells me that his name is Zechariah. The woman takes me for a walk.

I hold her hand, paler than I’d expected, and wonder about her ethnicity. She has long brown flowing hair an a white lace dress on. She tells me that she was worried about me and that she’s come to rescue me from impending doom. She says that I am stubborn and do not follow my life path and listen to my spirit guides. She tells me to go speak to Zechariah. I ask her if I will ever see her again and her answer is ambivalent.

I approach Zechariah, who I remember from the first time I’d met hm some years back. I inquire about his face. He pulls back his hood slightly and I quickly realize that I do not want to see anything further. We walk and talk.

He tells me that I need to follow my life path and that this Performance Studies stuff is bullshit. He tells me that I want to heal the the world and that requires a different set of skills. I know what he means and consider how theory-oriented Performance Studies is an how, even though I’m crazy interested in it, books and academia are not practice and do not heal. Herbs, energy healing, and music all come to mind as important avenues for me, as do my theatrical presence and desire to counsel, my need to travel the world and meet different kinds of people. I need to focus on the tools that aid me in my healing work.

I ask him what I should do about my insecurities concerning shamanic journeying and he quickly says “get over it”.

He says I need to get myself apart from my friend group more to “forge my own path and own my power”. I ask him if I have any other spirit guides and he tells me that he is the only one who’d chosen me.

I ask him what to do about money and he tells me to increase my wealth by working with what I already have. “By investing it?” and he replies affirmatively. I tell him that the stock market is in the worst shape it’s been in in a long time and he says “so what?” and shows me his skeleton face. He wants me to stop questioning him so much and to trust him. I ask him what I could do more immediately for money and he says I should do spells for abundance. To save money, I should think “burgundy, deep reds, root chakra, security, and SAVING”. That when I receive money, I should literally sit on it.

Before leaving he, tells me again to “forge my own path and own my power”. A large falcon swoops down from the sky and picks me up in its beak. It lets me go and behind me I hear and feel monstrous things. I turn around to see a volcano spewing lava and fire with a mouth made of these substances and coming for me. From above, Zechariah tells me these are my fears. I ask him if he’ll help me out when I’m ready to conquer them. I tell him that I need his help because I eventually wanted to confront my Shadows, heal my wounded inner child, etc. He tells me he’ll be there. I ask him if it was a good time for me to ritualistically sever my connections with past lovers and he says “yes and no”. That if I wanted to forge my own path and own my power, then yes.

I escape back to waking consciousness.





In Less Than 24 Hours…

10 10 2008

This week has been a busy one with me in relatively intense preparation for a trip I’ve been wanting to take since February of this year. In less than 24 hours, I will be on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, helping build bunk beds and learning about Lakota culture and history with the organization RE-MEMBER.

I don’t think I’ve talked at all about my senior thesis on this blog as of yet, but there’s plenty of time for that later. For now, suffice it to say, I feel blessed to be able to go on this trip and volunteer in one of the most economically impoverished areas of the U.S. of A. And I also feel incredibly privileged that research for my thesis (which focuses mostly on the Lakota third-gender winkte role, the Ghost Dance, and the Wounded Knee Massacre) will not be limited to books and videos. I will get to be on the land and be able to stand as a witness to the lives of those for whom the 1890 massacre is remembered daily — a people who still await reparations for the land and lives that were taken in the 19th century and whose lives today are a testament to endurance and hope in the face of ethnic and environmentally racist bureaucracy. A story with resonance for many peoples on this continent.

Needless to say, the politics surrounding people-of-color goes far beyond mere black/white/latino/asian demographics, but few seem to look at the American frontier of the 19th century as a site that testifies to the interrelatedness of oppressions across class and ethnic boundaries. Splintered groups and sub-groups do not recognize the depths of common experience on this land, America, which I’m only recently realizing I have much greater ethnic and spiritual ties to than I ever thought (or hoped). In my own work (in the long run), I am eager to do more work in the in-between — bridging communities of color, helping to tell all of our stories, and honoring the collective voice that rises to meet both the heavens and the fists of the ignorant and blind. All my relations.

I will not have computer access over the next week, but I am eager to detail my experience upon my arrival back in New England.





I Can Only Hope So…

7 10 2008

My Taurus Free Will Astrology this week:

“Dear Rob Brezsny: I am Chandra Gupti, born May 16, 1979 in New Delhi. Right now I am not well settled due to searing problems and swampy hurt. Day by day my position goes down lower and darker, with no lantern or rope ladder. So please tell me how long this foolish suffering period will further corrode my hope. Give me at least a thousand answers that will heal every test and trial as soon as possible. I will lie in bed until you reply. Thank you. – Unraveled Taurus.”

Dear Unraveled Taurus: I love you with all my heart and soul and mind. I have adored you since the beginning of time and will worship your gorgeous Genius until eternity changes into infinity. Dear All the Other Tauruses in the World: Everything I just told Unraveled Taurus I now say to you as well. (P.S. A divine tinkerer will offer you a lantern and rope ladder within ten days. Hold on.)