Pot-holes, dial-up, violence and other primitive conditions

During the past four days, in both Ashland and Grants Pass I was reminded of the so-called “primitive” conditions that I lived in while a yurt-dweller in the Tetons— and with only “dial-up” available I decided to ignore the blog until now. So let’s see . . . I last wrote here on August 24th, the day after my dear body/energy worker friend Janet arrived at Mouna’s little forest compound up the Mount Ashland gravel road off I-5. She not only worked on me that night, but four more times in two days! An unheard of luxury that left my neck soft and my all-around condition firmly supported and purring with pleasure.

Meanwhile, two more events, on the 24th and 25th.

The first one, in Ashland, felt challenging at first, since the room held a temporary art exhibit on war, with violent images collaged on the walls and a gigantic photo of George Bush on the floor, meant, apparently, for visitors to walk on.

We folded up the floor photo and circled the chairs at the back of the long room, beyond the collages. The situation reminded me of my “peace activist” days in 1982-83 when thought I was working to make sure the MX missile didn’t come into Wyoming (it did), and I was shocked to discover that I was, in fact, a violent-peace-activist.

That stunning surprise plummeted me into my own inner world, and I spent the next four months staring into a fire of the stove in the yurt in the Tetons into which I had just moved, shuffling through turbulent scenes from memory that made me wince with pain, shame, remorse, and an absolute determination to learn how to never repeat.

I thought that would be it, that having taken this time to “integrate my own shadow” I would be free and clear, ready to go on without unconsciously spraying my own inner weirdness all over others. But NO. It took six more years of work, deep work with “Orphan Annie,” the one who felt abandoned and covered it up with arrogance, before I finally began to feel that I was hopefully conscious enough of how my own unpredictable nature can wreak havoc in the world.

So when I sat there in that room with those war images all around me I noticed the turbulence I still feel when even glancing at them. Obviously, I’m not yet at the point where I can say that my awareness remains as a calm, still pool no matter what.

A dozen women, mostly of crone age, were present, and I began by talking about the CRONE magazine that we’re about to launch. And when one of them (a very modest woman whom I later discovered is a sculptor of international renown) asked “how do you define crone?,” the images on the walls reminded me of my favorite definition, “She who eats her own shadow.”

“What’s the shadow?” Someone else asked.

“The parts of ourselves that we don’t like,” I answered, firmly, remembering—to the nods of many others.

Actually, I’m not sure if that question was asked then. It may have been at the other session, held in Grants Pass, again with about a dozen women mostly of crone age. T he Grants Pass event, was the first where I directed the entire conversation specifically to the magazine—and received lots of great feedback and suggestions for how we can make it even more relevant to women of crone-age.

The Ashland event, on the other hand, felt similar to most of the other 17 book events so far—intense, deep, focused on the multidimensional quality of our responses to death and loss and how allowing ourselves to process grief fully transforms us. Later, one woman who participated in the Ashland event heard about the more “informational” tone of the Grants Pass event, and how it was focused almost exclusively on the upcoming magazine, told me she was surprised that the second one was not like the first, and wondered why. (By which she apparently meant, “why didn’t the second group of women get to experience what we did?”) In fact, that was because my friend Jean Mountaingrove, the organizer for the Grants Pass event, had assumed that her group would want to focus on the magazine more than the book.

Besides the gravel road to Mouna’s yurt/dome compound, I got to negotiate a two-mile long pot-holed dirt road to Jean’s barn/hut/cabin compound north of Grants Pass. Tthis second road made me decidedly nervous, since the Prius (now called the Pius, thanks to Janet’s play on both her and my Catholic origins, and the “holier than thou” attitude of us who drive these hybrids) runs very low to the ground, and I did scrape its front fender on the one pothole that went clear across the road. Otherwise, the potholes felt like moguls on a ski run, fairly easily swerved around.

Jean and I spent a day at her place with the tape recorder running on and off again, as a first step for the “interview” with her that will run in the first issue of Crone magazine. She and her then-partner Ruth Mountaingrove ran the seminal—oops, I’d better say “ovular”— little magazine WomanSpirit, for ten years starting in 1974. This magazine initiated what one might call the spirituality arm of the second wave of the feminist movement. Jean’s now nearly 82 years old, and intrepid, despite her cane and a recent hip replacement. Her compound, called "Rootworks," now sports a compost toilet and electricity, both within the last three years, after nearly 20 years in truly primitive conditions. My yurt life was always luxurious by comparison.

Tonight, an event at the Open Secret Bookstore and Cultural Center in downtown San Rafael. This will be the first event where I was the contact person for it. In other words, no local contact! Yeeks! It will be interesting to see who (if any!) are drawn to the poster that they put on the door, and the books they placed on the table near their check-out stand. I was gratified and relieved to see their preparations for this event when I checked in with the store yesterday.

Then, on the 30th, my interview with Angeles Arrien in Sausalito, also for the launch issue of CRONE.

BTW: I decided to stay in a motel during these three days in Marin. Sudden strong craving for solitude.
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