Unmooring ourselves….

Ok,…that sounds wanky.  But I was thinking this morning about just this.

A couple of months ago I left a writers group I had been in for a few years.  It was a good classroom for learning many things about writing.  It was good.

It was also addictive.  I realized that all my writing there …well, most of it…was to fit in the mold of erotica.  That’s fine for a while, but there is more to writing that just that genre.

I have changed in my style and taste.  Erotica is a spice now, not the full monty for me.  Perhaps it never was.  I did teeter on the issue of what was porn and what was erotica.   I found many arguments on both sides and some that said there was no difference.

I didn’t buy it. I read some pretty horrific stuff, mostly in the extreme bdsm nature…that squashed any erotic in the writing.  I read some out and out work that was pornographic in my estimation.  And in a couple of cases, I read some good erotica.

I was restless there, and thought  I was way too addicted to the approval of others about my writing.  I knew that I didn’t fit, was writing work that wasn’t of interest there, and I felt I was limiting myself in some unknown way.  So I left months ago.

Recently I went back.  Now I wonder why.   Sometimes we are better leaving and staying gone.   I think what happened is that I changed, even in a few months.  When I went  back, I realized the same arguments were there, and new ones.  Now, I am not against the growth in plunging into this stuff…..but I found I really had too much on my plate.

I didn’t have the blocks, the writer’s blocks, the issues of  depression that seem to grab  many writers, I didn’t have the quirks of some writers, the rituals, the superstitions, whatever keeps writers from writing.  I was writing with no issues really.

I was just writing.  I was writing stories….novels….poems.  It seemed just the natural thing to do given the stimulus around me. It was no angst y thing really, it was just the response with pen and paper to the wonderment of life around.  Everything sparked either a blog entry (LOL!…and people who read the blog know all about that!)….or something else.  Mostly the novels I have been writing.

Ok….I will admit that some departments  my writing has fallen off…like tanka production which for three years was something I loved.  I was now writing ‘long’….and tanka has a very different state of mind for me, and it just wasn’t appearing.

I would walk last year and just that constant movement would bring tanka flooding to mind.  I had to place a pad and pen on a cathouse, or chicken coop (I walk in my back yard) to write down those verses that came to me.  Nature seemed to flood my senses, and if it wasn’t tanka, it was freeverse.  (which ain’t free by the way, there were rules to freeverse, but another entry for that).

Like the lithe bowing

Of a red maple sapling

My heart turns to you,

Yearns for those nights long ago

When pale skin challenged the moon.

I write tanka in the 5/7/5/7/7 form.  That’s Japanese and I stick to it.  There are other forms, 3/2/something…but I’ve rarely seen it, and frankly, I’m not interested in it.  I find a balance and a comfort in this 5/7/etc. form.  I also find comfort and inspiration in some older Japanese themes, like the moon, nature, etc.  Works for me.

We can get lost in a crowd.  We can go along with others who are fellow travelers for a while and scratch itches we think we have.  But at some time along this journey, we have to look at what we are and what we are giving up with some bad company.  Maybe not bad, but hindering in some important ways.

It’s a priviledge to write.  It’s a wonderful thing to create through the cobbling of words. But we have to know our influences and whether they are progressive or hinder us in some way.  We have to be loose and goosey.  We have to honor that imagination  that is the generator of our creativity.

We have to unmoor ourselves in that sea of imagination and push out alone into the water.  We have to unhinder ourselves and in that stillness and silence, we can hear ourselves and our voice.

That goes a long way to being a writer. Perhaps drawing on this leads us to the bedrock of our  originality.

Lady Nyo

“The Kite Runner”

By Khaled Hosseini.

For two years or more, I have had this book, stuffed on my shelf and I haven’t done more than to read a few pages.  For some reason I took it down and started to read it a couple of days ago and I couldn’t put it down.

Although a work of fiction, it really isn’t.  It is more a contemporary historical work, with an old-fashioned storyteller style.

I have been stumped lately.  Not blocked because when you are preparing a manuscript for any publication, you aren’t really creating something new, you are going over what has already been written and you are refining it.  Hopefully.

Perhaps to say there is nothing ‘new’ is wrong.  You are doing so, even in the rewriting.

Where I have been stumped is the ‘why’ of my stories, especially those written for “The Zar Tales” and also the novel, “Tin Hinan”.  They are written in the framework of cultural issues and a place I have no experience or knowledge.  But that didn’t seem to stop me and I wondered about the ‘why’.

I borrowed from my experiences in Belly Dancing, but that is just part of the issue of the ‘why’.

Reading “The Kite Runner” I fell under the spell of what Hosseini was doing: he was weaving a wonderful, elaborate, moral and timely ‘tale’:  Perhaps the Persians, the vastness of the history and literature, the poets Rumi, Khayyam, Beydel, Hafez, the Shahnamah, (book of 10th century Persian heroes) can turn our hearts and minds from the horrors of what Afghanistan and those parts of the Middle East have become to us in the West.  It is more than terrorism.  These writers and stories are part of the heartbeat of humanity that knows no walls.

“If thou art indeed my father, then hast thou stained thy sword in the life-blood of thy son. And thou didst it of thine obstinacy. For I sought to turn thee unto love, and I implored of thee thy name, for I thought to behold in thee the tokens recounted of my mother.  But I appealed unto thy heart in vain, and now is the time gone for meeting….”

(from the Shahnamah, a story about Rostam and his long-lost son, Sohrab who he mortally wounds in battle.)

For writers, for those of us who write fiction, it is good to dip into history and other cultures.  The richness and beauty of these things can only add to our attempts.

(Funny. In writing one of the final chapters of  “The Zar Tale”, I took the sense of  “Now is the time gone for meeting” in the poetry of the stumped, second-rate Emir, who finally (after ten centuries of mulling over the same three  opening lines) gets it together in his indictment of the three Mullahs.  Then his poetry soars and he is able to complete it.  I must have read something of the Shahnamah somewhere, but I don’t remember.  It’s funny how the mind holds onto something in secret and then gives forth when needed.

“Take to delight the presence

That from this two-way abode

We would not meet each other

Once we pass through.

For our chance meeting is but

A reflection of life’s mysteries

Not to be counted upon,

But to acknowledge the wonder.

But!

You have barred our spirits from Paradise!

You, and your One God, have condemned us

To wander the earth inconsolable to human kindness.

 

Now is the time for our answer!

Now is the time for the quick slash

Of a sword!

Now we delight  we will not

Meet again

Once you pass through this

Vale of tears you have created.

Heaven or Hell-

You have made it the same!”

–From “The Zar Tales”

 

 

And perhaps the real reason of the ‘why’ is that humanity suffers the same issues all over the map. When we do read and understand at a deeper level these human issues, we begun to understand ourselves.

If the upshot of all this means  our writing is fuller, the colors richer, well, that is good. When  we understand that alien cultures are no barriers to the human heart and compassion…well, that is even better.

Lady Nyo

A few Tanka….

Autumn means tanka for me.  Autumn and winter for some reason.  I am trying to get back into the swing of tanka, but right now my attention is divided.

Ah, life….and love.

1.

A glimpse of  white wrist,

Surge of blood beneath the skin-

This is seduction!

But catch a wry, cunning smile

One learns all is artifice.

2.

Give me a moment!

Let me catch breath and settle.

Give me some peace now.

Stop kissing my hands, stop it!

What if someone is watching?

3.

Presence of Autumn

Burst of colors radiates

From Earth-bound anchors

Sun grabs prismatic beauty

And tosses the spectrum wide!

Lady Nyo

Copyrighted, 2009

Move, Damn It!…. and an Update.

IF you move, you can look like THIS!

MOVE, DAMN IT!

Well, you just can’t belly dance unless you move.

Some of my students don’t.  I don’t know why, but I have to figure out what the blockage is.  You aren’t a good teacher unless you can light a fire under their fannies.

And I am not afraid to use the matches.

Some are extremely shy, though they have the beautiful bodies youth still brings.  Some are just not used to moving their bodies in sensual ways….and if Belly Dance isn’t sensual, then what is?

Ah, God.  There is such growth in BD when you catch on fire.  There are no ceilings, you reach to the heavens and your feet are like roots down deep into the earth.  You are stretching for immortality.

I can’t express too strongly the regenerative powers of dance…and this dance in particular. It is born of our bodies, our natures as Women, as creative human beans….Plant us in the earth and watch us grow!

Every woman has the power to dance, regardless her body shape or her experience.  It is these damn internal messages we carry around like toxins in ourselves ABOUT our potential as dancers.

A good teacher can punch through these barriers and find those things that can unlock them.  I have to be a better teacher.

Today I put on full tribal makeup, a good tribal costume and either I will look like a left-over from Halloween or I will scare the bedevil out of them. I will scare them into motion.  I will spit wooden nickels or I will spit on them.  This last was done to me 5 years ago when I went out for my first solo performance by the older dancers and I thought: “How rude!”  I didn’t know that was for ‘luck’.

One thing I think is my problem.  I am a stickler for form…and form takes time and it varies for each dancer as she comes into herself.  I am going to let up on form and just try to make it all more fun.  That should help…but I thought we were having fun.

Another thing: I’m going to use more music in the exercises we do.  I think music must be able to unlock a lot in our minds and bodies and I haven’t been using it enough.  I’m going to rely on this and see what happens.

We do have a lot of fun each class, but I think it’s just commitment on both sides.  Me to start pushing them into different steps, and them to PRACTICE.

I know now why teachers rely so heavily on choreography.  That’ll fix ‘em.  Some Hagallah  will make them attend.

Teela with the Whip this afternoon.

Addition:  I loosened up this afternoon, and the class went MUCH better.  I forget that these movements are damn hard in the beginnning…and they can be frustrating.

So, I dropped the whip, only attended to form on some things…and had more fun in the doing.  We danced to 9 pieces of music, not the whole songs, but enough to be able to work different zones of the body.

That went very well.  I think I really saw improvement and progress today, because people were not so self conscious about ‘getting it right’.  (but I did go back to some basic forms, and we did snake arms today…and that’s damn hard~!  Even for me.)

That will come, but it will take time and PRACTICE!!! And that must be done at home…on their own time….religiously.

There is no way around this….

Plus, I think music is ‘the’ key to getting it in the muscle memory.  I saw some progress here, and I think muscle memory is developing in these gals.

We went to Kaboobee’s after class and regained all those calories we lost in class with some wonderful baklava.  And Persian sweet tea.

The owner is Iranian, and is a poet and LOVES Rumi and is going to set up poetry readings.  He has asked to carry “The Zar Tales” and I carefully explained to him that some of it is erotica, and it’s very “anti-fundamentalist”…to the extent that the Zars (djinn) barbeque the Mullahs (the bad Mullahs….) and thereby “Spirit becomes Flesh”.   Of course, the Mullahs come back as Zars and create their own revenge…. but that is in Book II of “The Zar Tales”.

Are we having fun yet?  He seemed delighted in the synopsis of the tale so we will see.

But he gave me a ‘junk drive’???? to download some of my Persian music (belly dance) for him and the restaurant.

This later will be an excellent venue for my gals to start dancing in public.

That’s when they PRACTICE and really start to move.

And I might not have to get out the matches.

Teela

A Chapter from “Ancestors of Star”

Bill Gaius is one of my favorite authors.  He writes blockbuster mysteries and action packed novels.  He’s also a good friend and one of the most generous of men in critting works by new writers.

I love reading Bill’s work, in part because it’s always a good story and he’s a polished writer.  He writes insightful and believable characters, even when he throws a bit of mysticism into the works.

Lady Nyo

Excerpt from William Gaius’ ‘The Ancestors of Star’.

Tim Hyatt has been outraged and embarrassed when Lucy White Eyes is apparently kidnapped from his care by armed members of a reservation drug gang. From a number of tiny clues, he thinks he’s guessed where the ‘kidnappers’ took Lucy White Eyes. On a cold November Saturday, Tim decides to check out his guess by hiking into the sacred canyon of the ancestors to try to find Lucy White Eyes and her fugitive boyfriend, Michael Talking Deer. City-bred, he has no idea what he’s getting himself into.

* * *

[from the previous chapter:]

Should I run the distance to the shrubbery on the other side, or move slowly? Should I crawl or stay on my feet? I scanned the cliffs, riddled with caves and erosion troughs, to see if someone had spotted me. There was nothing. I moved slowly across the open space, one careful step at a time, looking about as I moved.

hurtled forward into the sand. I couldn’t inhale. The breath had been knocked out of me. Pain slowly rose through my back and left side where a boot had hit me. I lay paralyzed, face down. Before I had time to panic, my ability to draw breath slowly returned in painful, wheezing gasps. I turned my head so I wouldn’t inhale sand. A knee settled into the small of my back and a large hand pressed my head firmly against the ground.

He didn’t say anything at first, but wrapped my left wrist with thick cord. My other wrist was pulled back and tied to the left one.

“He’s alone, I’m sure of it.” The voice was Lucy White Eyes’. “You didn’t have to kick him so hard, Michael. You might have broken his back.”

“He’s fine,” came a man’s soft, sing-song Lagalero accent. “Get up, white boy.”

I slowly stood up, which is not easy to do with hands tied, wearing a backpack, and punished by a sharp pain running from back to chest. Talking Deer helped, in his own way, yanking on my tied hands until my shoulders screamed with pain. Lucy stood in front of me, a rifle dangling from her hand, looking worried. I still couldn’t draw a full breath, and rocked forward and back on my feet, working to pull air noisily into my lungs. The canyon walls spun, and seemed to be falling in on me.

Talking Deer gripped my bound wrists and pushed me along the bank of the stream. Pain shot up my side and I gasped for breath each time I stumbled. After another hundred yards, we broke into a sheltered clearing in front of a broad, shallow cave. Under the rock overhang, a tent had been erected and a little corral had been built of slender poles bound with rope. It housed two horses.

He gestured to a boulder. “Sit down.”

I balanced myself on the flat-topped stone, trying to minimize the agony in my ribs. “You don’t need to do this. I came up here to see you.”

“Shut up.”

Lucy tugged at Talking Deer’s arm, and whispered in his ear.

“Don’t move.” He pulled an automatic pistol from behind his back and made sure I saw it. He took Lucy some distance away, where they spoke together for a few moments. The conversation grew louder and more heated, until Lucy put her fists on her hips and he threw up his hands in surrender. He shoved the gun into his belt and came back to where I sat watching.

“Luce tells me you’re smart,” he said, “So I’m going to take a chance with you. You have to promise to be a courteous guest, and not fight with the host.”

“That was a hell of a welcome.” It hurt to talk. “I won’t be fighting anyone for a while.”

“It could have been worse. I had you in my sights five minutes before you set off my little alarm. You were making more fucking racket than a herd of buffalo. I decided it would be safer to knife you than risk the sound of a shot. But Luce, here, convinced me I should find out what you’re doing up here first.”

“I want her to come back to the rez and make good on her promise to Metal Head.”

“You’re fucking stupid. You could be dead now.” He moved beside me and loosened the ropes. He smelled of sweat and wood smoke. “Welcome to Mike and Lucy’s Place,” he said, as I shook the ropes loose and rubbed the circulation back into my hands.

“It looks like you have regular housekeeping set up here,” I said. “And I’m guessing you can’t be seen from the air?”

“Not even with one of those heat-seeking cameras. All they’ll see is rocks. We can hold out here forever.”

“What about me? I know where you are now. You can’t let me go, can you?”

“I can. In fact, I have to. Our people go missing in these mountains all the time, but Lucy says a biliga’ana boy missing on the rez is going to bring a lot of attention. Search parties and everything. I guess she’s right. Anyway, you probably told Star where you were going. I hear you can’t take a piss without her say-so.”

I felt my face flush. “Yeah, I did tell her,” I lied.

Lucy said, “Tim, you’ve got to go back without me. But first, you have to stay for lunch, and listen to some things.”

“Come back with me, Lucy. You’re important to your people now. No one else can take up Metal Head’s job.”

“And she’s a witness, too, against me and my friends,” grumbled Talking Deer.

Another lie wouldn’t hurt. “The Feds don’t need her any more. They’ve got lots of evidence without her. Let her work with Metal Head. Let her go.”

He chuckled. “You’ve got it backwards. I don’t tell Luce to do anything. She can walk out of here anytime she wants. But she tells me she doesn’t want.”

“But how long do you think you can stay here? Someone will come for you sooner or later.”
“How did you know I was here?”

”A lucky guess,” I said. “I mean, I saw the tracks leading in here and took it from there. But you can’t stay here forever, can you?”

“You don’t understand us much, do you?” he said. “Half the rez probably knows we’re up here. My three friends brought Lucy here. They’ll check on us once in a while, and I’d never count on them to keep their mouths shut. Anyway, our people have been here a hundred years. Luce and I aren’t the only ones that know about this place.”

“Then why haven’t they hunted you down already?”

“Because they don’t want to.” Talking Deer stood up. “Come here and I’ll show you something.” I followed him into the cave, past the horses, to where the roof sloped down to meet the floor. An ancient mud-brick wall closed off a cramped space the size of a closet. He produced a flashlight from somewhere, and snapped it on.

“Ah!” I jumped back, startled. The last thing I expected to see was another face grinning back at me. A skeleton was curled up in there, its empty eye sockets staring in my general direction. A shiver rippled down my spine and lodged in my crotch.

“Luce calls him Buddy.”

My involuntary reaction had hurt my ribs again. I wheezed, “Is that one of the original people? The ones who built the ruins?”

He shook his head. “Buddy’s a Lagalero. His hair is done in a Lagalero braid, and his jewellery is Lagalero. He’s been there no more than a hundred years, I’m sure of it.”

“Was he buried here?”

“He died right there where you see him. Our custom is to bury our dead in a secret place for a couple of years, and then put the bones into a pit with the rest of our clan. There’s no pit around here, just this one poor old guy. Nobody buried him.”

“So why did you show him to me?”

“Not because I need the practice speaking English,” he said. “I’m trying to show you something.”

He squatted and kept the flashlight beam on the bony face. “I think Buddy was running away from something, maybe the soldiers, or an enemy, and he came up here. He lived a long time, too. This cave was a mess, with deer bones, corn, and yucca scraps all over. I’m thinking he survived here on his own for years.”

“…and you can stay here, too?” Against my better judgment, I was beginning to like this guy. I had to remind myself that he was at least partially responsible for Blue Antelope’s death.

“You’re quick,” he said. “Buddy knew that this place would be easy to defend. I found his bow and two dozen worn-out arrows, and a Winchester saddle ring carbine at least a hundred years old. There’s empty 30-06 cartridges all over the canyon. But it looks like he died of natural causes. He crawled into this old room and piled up some rocks to keep the animals out, and just died.”

“That’s interesting. So what are you trying to show me?”

“What I’m saying is that if anyone comes up here to get me, I’ll get some of them. They can only kill one of me. I’d rather die up here like Buddy than burn out my life in a jail cell.”

“I get your point. Everyone knows you’re here, but no one’s saying anything. If I go back and make a public issue of it, they’ll have no choice but to come and get you, and if they do, some people will get killed.”

“Luce said you were smart.”

“What about Hunter? Wouldn’t he know about this place?”

“Sure as shit he knows. But while I’m up here, no one’s getting hurt, right? You said it yourself. He’s off the hook as long as nobody says anything out loud. Between the drug charges and the manslaughter, I’m looking at twenty years minimum, with good behavior and all that. When I get out, I’ll be in my forties, and most of my life will be over. I won’t be taken out of here in cuffs. I’ll either leave in a bag or I’ll end up like Buddy.” He jerked his thumb towards the little tomb.

I said, “But if you stay up here, won’t it be just like you’re in jail?”

“This isn’t jail,” he said. “Here, I can live like my ancestors. They’re all around this place. You can feel them, and at night, you can even hear them. I can hunt my own meat and grow my corn and defend this land. Down in the town, they’ll forget about me. And Lucy…Lucy will be with me, if she wants…”

“I want, Mike.”

I said, “Lucy, I don’t know much about the desert, but think of what it’ll be like, living up here. Having to gather enough food for winter, plant crops, gather firewood, no medical help. You’re going to be cold and hungry. You’ll have to get feed for the horses, too, won’t you?”

“I don’t care what happens to me, if I can be with Mike.” Her dark almond eyes were as hot and determined as Star’s had ever been.

“Let’s have something to eat,” said Talking Deer. I followed them to the front of the cave, where a small fire burned within a wall of rocks. A steel cooking pot was near the flames to keep the contents warm.

“Mike’s proud of me,” said Lucy. “He brought back his first deer two days ago, and I butchered it myself, even if the coyotes got some of it. And I dug up a couple of yucca hearts, and found some herbs to flavor it all. This is our first meal eating off the land, now that our store-bought food’s getting low.”

Lucy didn’t look like a sixteen-year-old flirt now. She was a busy housewife, bringing worn Melmac plates and utensils to a flat rock that served as a dining table. Using a worn kitchen glove, she brought over the stew pot and ladled a portion onto each plate.

Talking Deer spooned some stew from his plate, but Lucy said, “Wait, Mike.” He held the spoon in front of his mouth, blowing on it, while she threw a little out the door with the ladle, saying something in Lagalero. She explained to me, “Always a little for the Holy Ones. Then they’ll keep us safe and supplied with everything we need.”

The stew was actually very tasty, and I accepted seconds. If she could make meals like this from the things they found in the canyon, she and Mike could actually live well up here. But soon, there would be snow. The rocks would be slippery, and the stream would freeze, and the wind would howl down the canyon.

I had one question left, and I debated with myself a minute before asking. “What exactly happened to Mary Jackson and the others?”

“None of your fucking business,” said Talking Deer.

“Mike, don’t be rude,” said Lucy. “I’ll tell you, Tim.”

She came and sat next to me. “After the deal was finished, Mike came looking for me, and drove up and down the road. He didn’t want me left out on the desert all night, he said. While he was doing that, Curtis and Mannie and Mary all went off to hide the stash.”

“Shut up, Luce,” warned Talking Deer.

“I guess they must have kept some back after they hid it, and started smoking. Mary had never done meth before. Anyway, Mike caught up with them and they were so sick, he drove them into town and dumped them in front of someone’s house and blew the horn.”

“Mary was alive when I left them,” said Talking Deer sullenly.

I said, “Was it worth it? The meth, I mean.”

“Don’t preach to me, biliga’ana,” Mike spat. “You won’t ever have to live like us. Everyone has to make money somehow. And people want the stuff. They really want it. But that’s done now. There’s just three of the boys left, the ones you met on the road. They never wanted us selling meth in the first place, and they’re really scared after Curtis and Mary died.”

I wasn’t going to push the argument while I was in his kingdom. It wouldn’t help anyway.

“Do you keep the meth up here?”

“No. Luce won’t allow it. She says I won’t be able to hunt and we won’t be able to grow crops, and we’ll just die. She’s right, I guess.”

“Well, the meth you guys brought in is still down there somewhere. Do you really want it to get into circulation among the other Marys and Curtises?”

Lucy tugged at Talking Deer’s arm. “Mike, this is your chance. Money’s no good to us up here anyway. Let Tim get rid of it now.”

He looked out of the cave mouth for a moment, and nodded regretfully. I got out a piece of paper, and he drew a detailed map to the stash. “Remember, don’t handle it with your bare hands, or you’ll end up where Curtis and Mary are.”

When the meal was finished, I said, “When can I leave?” I looked at my watch. “It’s going to be dark in a couple of hours, and I left my flashlight in the car.”

“We’ll take you to your car now. We’ve got to sweep our tracks away, anyway.”

From inside the cave, I hadn’t noticed that a steady rain had been falling for some time. The walk back to my car was wet and cold, and dark was coming on fast. I had to walk quickly in the soft sand, which aggravated the pain in my side and made it harder to breathe properly. Talking Deer apologized for kicking me so hard, but his words didn’t help. By the time we reached the car, the sky was almost dark and there was neither moon nor stars. His flashlight was our only guide.

When I was about to get in my car, Lucy came over and kissed me on the cheek. “You won’t be telling anyone, will you?”

“No, Lucy, I won’t.”

“And will you apologize to Metal Head for me?”

“He can’t, Luce,” said Talking Deer. “Metal Head, and everyone else, would know that Tim knows where we are.”

In truth, I hadn’t made up my mind what to do.

Driving in the rain and darkness down to Stone Giant Road, I turned left and found the narrow, unnamed track that passed an abandoned hogan.

I looked inside the hogan, poking the flashlight beam around. It was a filthy mess of beer bottles, food wrappers, discarded clothing, and condoms. Trickles of water leaked through the roof and glittered in the flashlight beam. A rusty stove stood in the center of the floor, its bent chimney pipe leading up through the hogan’s smoke hole. A low wall of mortared stones surrounded the stove. In a few minutes, my freezing fingers found and dislodged the loose stone inside the wall. I thought, this hiding place is a cliché. If no one had found it, it was because no one had looked.

Behind the stone, some paper had been pushed in to fill the space. I pulled it out, and a plastic bag the size of a basketball rolled heavily into the wet fireplace ashes. Many smaller bags were inside, each containing slivers of shattered glass, the smoke-able form of methamphetamine.

I held it in one hand and examined it with the flashlight. The drugs in this package had killed Blue Antelope and Curtis Marks, might soon put four men in prison, and condemned Michael Talking Deer and Lucy White Eyes to living in heroic squalor in the mountains. It also indirectly created the real possibility that the tribal patrimony of the Lagalero might be lost forever.

The meth was pure evil. Its purpose was only to kill and spread misery.

It was also evidence, and I was about to commit a felony and destroy it. Without it, the four Redskin Rangers in custody might go free. On the other hand, if I turned it in, I’d have to reveal the whereabouts of Talking Deer. And I’d made a promise to Lucy and didn’t want to break it. I looked at the stove and considered burning the meth. But it was possible some passing car might spot the fire or smoke.

A narrow wash ran with water a few yards from the hogan. I crouched with my back to the wind and began to empty the bags into the rapid flow. I rinsed my hands every few minutes to avoid absorbing the chemical through my skin. There were hundreds of the little bags, and dumping the whole stash took almost an hour. Finally, shivering violently, I climbed into my car, turned on the heat, and headed back to town.

Taped to the door of my room, I found a sealed envelope, rather than just the usual page torn from Star’s square notepad. I opened it and read, ‘As time goes by? Feel like dancing tonight?’ Her little scrawled signature, the five-pointed star, was at the bottom.

It was some hours later that she saw the huge bruise on my ribs. I said I’d fallen while hiking. She warned me not to go into the mountains alone again.

NOTE: ‘The Ancestors of Star’ is available for sale as trade paper ($14.95) or download ($4.95) at Lulu:

http://www.lulu.com/content/2196691

Bill Gaius’ current work in progress is on view at

http://www.williamgaius.com/

Some Easy and Inexpensive Recipes….

I’ve been talking to a bunch of friends lately about recipes and food in general.  We all are affected by the economy, and those of us with families to feed are noticing that food bills are going UP not down.  I don’t know how stores can in all honesty charge MORE for food right now, because people have less to spend on these necessities.

Whatever….I think we can make out better with a bit of time and effort.  Perhaps these times will make us better cooks, too.

I have been thinking of our own diet.  I have cooking responsibilities for a husband and son.  The son will be going very soon off to the Navy…so it will be just my dear husband and I.  But I think we need to lessen the impact of meat on our bodies and health and I don’t feel so guilty doing that with the kid not around.

I have been making beef and chicken broths a lot lately.  It’s easy and formed the basis for a lot of good meals….and combined with a crockpot…what’s not to love?

I admit we have a rather wanky diet.  I cook Japanese a lot…or did until recently.  We do still make miso-based soups and we make sushi about once a week. But a steady diet of tofu is not to ‘the boys’ taste…though they will eat their way through rolls of sushi with no complaint.  It’ s just that the nova has become very expensive, and it’s the basis of our sushi.

So…back to the broths.  A good beef broth can’t be beat.  I use it for the basis of French Onion Soup and the guys like it a lot.

FRENCH ONION SOUP

5 large onions, sliced thinly,

2 teaspoons of olive oil

saute the onions until transparent.

Add thinly sliced carrots, celery, with s/p and 1/2 cup (or more) of sherry..not cooking sherry….DRINKING sherry.

a good two quarts of beef stock and simmer on very low for about an hour.  The usual toast rounds with Gruyere cheese or something compatible.  Under the broiler for a few minutes.

BEAN SOUP

I buy bags of red kidney beans/Navy or white beans/lentils/split pea/garbanzo beans/ and mix them together in a container.  It gives more for later and is actually cheaper.

I saute some sausage (link or kielbasa) and onions together until sausage browned, and then add  about 1 or two cups of bean mixture.  In goes about 3 quarts of pre-made beef broth.

In a crockpot this can be a leisurely simmer for hours.  In a Brown Betty on the stove top…about one and 1/2 hours.

Generally, it’s a good cook who keeps onions/garlic/potatoes/pumpkins, root crops in some quantity.  In a root cellar.  If we don’t formally have those, use a bin somewhere….a plastic one is fine with a cover…in the basement or cellar…where it’s cold or cool.

Oh..one of my favorite dishes from a friend in Australia…Nick:

ROAST PUMPKINS….GOOD FOR USING THOSE JACK ‘O LANTRENS

Cut up in chunks….(de string the inners)

Bake in a 350 oven with cinnamon/brown sugar/butter/s/p.

Until tender.  A great and different starch for a meal.

Cut up/raw pumpkin is frozen easily….just pack in ziploc bags.

Lady Nyo who is heading towards the kitchen for some roast pumpkin…taste tester here.

And from Berowne:

Here’s a favorite of our own creation:
RATATOUILLE

1 large onion, chopped coarsely
1/2 clove fresh garlic, minced
1 bell pepper, cut into squares
1/4 cup olive oil
1 large eggplant, cut into 1-inch cubes
2 medium zucchini, sliced into 1/2-inch rounds
1 cup fresh mushrooms, whole or sliced
1 15-oz. can stewed tomatoes
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon basil
1/2 teaspoon oregano

In a dutch oven or heavy-bottomed saucepan with a lid, saute the onion, garlic, and bell pepper in olive oil until soft; stir in eggplant, zucchini, and mushrooms and saute a few minutes more. Add tomato and seasonings. Cover and simmer gently for about 20 minutes or until all vegetables are well cooked.

Uncover and allow liquid to evaporate, to taste; turn up heat if necessary.
Serves 4-6.
Variations include addition of a large potato cut in chunks, and carrot rounds.

A Repost of Belly Dance and Other Nostrums….

 

Rachel Brice doing her thang...

This is a repost of an entry that seems just about where I am today with dancing, with some adjustments.  It was written in July, 2008 and still holds truth for me.  The adjustments are that I AM teaching some students and I, at least, am having the time of my life. I can’t say that they are, but I can look back 5 years and see myself starting out  on this incredible journey. It’s all the same for all of us, one foot in front of the other. I think the best thing I have received from this teaching is I have grown more patient with students.  There was I a few years ago, and I remember the thrill and the frustration.

Sorry for the YELLING!! I was locked in some point and didn’t know how to get out!

Some  of my friends know I am a belly dancer.  I’ve been at it for about 5 years, and have only scratched the surface of all the different techniques.  I spent months in classes learning routines, the Mizmar, Jasmine, Hagallah, etc…and I hated every moment. Well, not every moment, in the beginning it was new and untried and  getting my body to conform to the different movements was awkward, frustrating and exhausting.  And exciting for a few weeks.   You have to ‘think’ in choreography.  You have to be part of the group-think and movement.

You have to be a good Nazi.

You have to follow orders.

It took almost 4 years to finally break out of the  Turkish routine of following other patterns and develop my own. (I had tremendous teachers…)  It took that long to trust my body to respond in less awkward ways, and in fact, to break out automatically in dance.

NOW it’s routine.  Sure, it’s inappropriate to do a shimmy in the fish department , or maybe it’s all that ice with dead-eyed trout and salmon watching, or to do breast lifts and breast shimmys when sitting drinking coffee while reading a book in a booth, or walking down  Home Depot aisles and doing double hip drops, and alternating sides, but what you are doing is Vibrating with a latent sexual energy.  For after all, belly dance is in essence, sex.

Ok…a lot of people deny this, but it figures. (and it took a cranky man to convince me of this…) Its roots are in childbirth movements, where hip gyrations and stomach flutters were designed to PUSH the baby out.  And before birth, the body was strenghtened, the muscles and tissues, for the coming birth.  And before that!  It was dances of seduction, and besides the fun of what comes with THAt, it led many times to pregnancy.

In the Middle East, and Africa, girls as young as 4 were taught to belly dance…I have seen young girls here in this country.  They take it very seriously, and can imitate the women around them with ease if not total grace.

(I got mad at the owner of the club I danced at the end of March, and stomped out.  I haven’t danced really (except for a few parties) in 5 months.

Now I realize that I love dance more than I hate the owner.  So back I go.)

I thought perhaps I would be back to square one, because this is the longest time, except one where I had a knee in a brace (knees go out the most for belly dancers…) for about 7 months….

But something has happened to my body, apparently a very  independent organ from my brain. Recently, as I contemplated going back to August classes, (August is the dead zone here in the south) I decided to take the bull by the horns, drop that croissant from my teeth, and see what the old body could do.  I was surprised.

Something has matured in my movement.  My extensions are longer in my arms, the hips have a mind of their own, the hands are commanding and though I don’t have the wind or stamina I had before I stopped dancing, there was definitely something better happening.

I think what happened was two things.  My body got a good rest.  The muscle memory built up, and then my body was glad to get back to the routine it knew and was ‘fed’ by it.

Sure,  my timing in choreographed movements is off, but that will come back.  I am just pleased to be back in the game.

Mac the knife in NY, a friend with a webblog I have mentioned before (http://ropespringseternal.blogspot.com) wrote something that resonated to me deeply: What one does with who one is could be so important (in life).

I guess in some way, what I do (dance) and who I am came together in some way that I couldn’t deny anymore, though I tried.

Movement has been a tremendous influence in my life…it has kept depression at bay and channeling it into something that creates a form of beauty has made a lot of difference for me.  It’s created self-esteem, confidence and a bit of arrogance. (and I am aware that arrogance has been a thorn in the foot of one man in particular…)

It has made me feel beautiful, whether I am or not.  It doesn’t take prisoners, dance, it slaughters us all alike and reforms us from the ashes.  It brings the essential sexual female to the front and gives her a platform to work her magical nature…at any age.

I have to create a class for some beginners, special friends that are eager to learn from my poor teaching.  This is a great responsibility for me, and I have thought over it for a couple of days.  I want their experience to be ‘better’ than mine.  I want them to feel their innate sexuality, their allure from the first lesson.  I want them to find their beautiful independent ability to be a powerful dancer, in mind and body, but I want most of all to stress that it doesn’t take years with the right mindset.  It takes hours, a belief that you are a beautiful dancer, when freed up to be just that.

Every woman, regardless age and size, is a natural belly dancer.

A few figure 8’s, some basic shimmies, correct hands and arms, and a definite attitude, and we are all good to go!

Lady Nyo with a coin scarf tonight…

Hands OFF Halloween!!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

I received an email from a very nice pastor last week.

I wish he would have shut his mouth.

It was a rant against Halloween, chiding and shaking his finger against the sticky candy that rotted teeth and the monstrous variations of adults in costumes.  It was quite funny actually, though this nice man didn’t mean to be funny.

And that brings me to my own rant.

Halloween was (and still is in my mind) a time of Great Expectation. Perhaps it was the rare smorgasborg of candy  we got ( certainly  a key element of the holiday for us kids), but it also had something else  there  we weren’t exactly aware of.

I think most of us young kids fell under the spell of the changing of the season.  There was that juncture , that hinge, that turn in the weather that decidedly ended the balm of Summer and brought on the difference of Autumn.  We could see the harvest brought in, and even if our parents weren’t farmers, the stores were stocked with evidence in apples, nuts, fruits of the Fall.  Roadside stands sprung up with Fall produce and there  was the hurry by our mothers perhaps to make sure that there were jams and jellies and produce stocked in the root cellar.

Winter was acomin’ in.

I came from a time when people had fridges, but root cellars were where you placed the root crops: pumpkins, onions, turnips, potatoes, garlic.  The apples of the fall were carefully wrapped in newspaper, the gourds hung to dry for seeds, and crops that grew underground and some with tough skins above, were part of this cellar harvest.

It was also the change in the skies.  The blue of summer was diffused with tendrils of clouds which defined the cold of the upper atmospheres.  The chill wind did blow and we watched the migration of the birds in awe.  The honking of the geese and the migration of the turkey buzzards some days cast black streamers against the sky for hours.

We knew a little about Death.  Our pets and farm animals had died or been slaughtered, but that was a natural part of life and childhood.  This seasonal death was something  different, mysterious, intangible.

We didn’t know about Samhain, but we did know about the harvest.  We had our yearly Harvest Home, and this year my former community celebrated it’s 127th year.

Samhain was the Celtic part of the year, when the harvest was celebrated.  It was also believed there was a thinness, a rip in the envelop of what surrounded us, when the spirits came through and either were welcomed or bedeviled.  In Ireland and Scotland, young men would dress in white rags and smear coal dust on their faces and go out at Halloween to scare off the evil or bad spirits.  A candle was placed in a west window to welcome the spirits of ancestors to the house.

Turnips and rutabagas were carved into faces.  This was probably a throwback to the Celtic warrior traditions of headhunting: heads were taken from enemies and set on pikes as trophies and warnings. Pumpkins were more of an early American fruit and easier to carve.

Halloween has many parts to it depending on culture and customs.  The Romans who occupied the Celtic lands for four hundred years brought their own customs.  Feralia was the Roman holiday celebrating the passing of the dead.  Pomona was the Roman goddess of fruit and trees.  Her symbol is the apple.  Probably bobbing for apples comes from this.

I remember my own Halloweens as a child.  We lived in a rather spooky pre-Revolutionary War region, and ghosts were part of the local ‘color’.  I knew of a couple of Revolutionary war soldiers, mostly British, who had been hung from the rafters of a couple of local barns.  Knew the legends of the specters in white, floating around these old houses with candles. Had one ghostly experience when I was 12 years old.  Knew some of the legends of vengeful Leni-Lanape Indians and some hapless Dutch settlers.

So Halloween and it’s haunts and spooks were something we children looked to for the wonder and mystery of life.  Plus, there were no street lights out in the countryside, and we made our way from house to house (and these houses weren’t close) with flashlights, scaring each other as we went.  The adults were in on the fun, meeting us at the door with plastic fangs and switching on and off the porch lights fast and the candy!  You have to remember that kids back in the 50’s and 60’s didn’t have access to candy like they do now.  We had one local store, Tornquists, and the candy was behind a glassed counter, in large glass jugs: they were like jewels to us:  the juju fruits, the very large pretzel rods (2 cents a pop), the wax candy full of colored sugar water, the ribbon candy, the sour balls…none of this was packaged.  You bought it by the scoop or piecemeal.  One summer I found a 50 cent piece while walking the sandy canal causeway road from River Road to Tornquists.  Nancy Madsen and I got sick from  all the candy one 50 cent piece brought that day.

So when the Sabatello’s opened their front door and we trouped in with our paper shopping bags, the array of candy before our eyes!!  They had folding tables set up full of the stuff.  And because we were the few of children passing in the darkness to their house, which was set back and out of the way….we got the lion’s share of the loot.   We were on a sugar high for days.

Adults with their religions and their fears have attempted to ruin the wonder of Halloween for kids.  We were just out for the candy and the dress up in our weird costumes, which didn’t change much from Princess to Gypsy to Beatnik.  (this was the 50’s and 60’s anyhow).  My brothers went as hobos or pirates mostly.

I want to see the children dressed again, robed in their imaginations.  The kids who come, and last year we had Zero for the first time since we have been here….well, they don’t wear a costume anymore.

We bought an electric candle pumpkin to put in the front center window.  Looks good, but I just sent my son to the grocery store to buy a REAL pumpkin. (He came back with two and is starting to carve.)

And we will dress up in costume, at least something in expectation of the littler goblins who will snatch through the wrought-iron gate the candies and apples we offer from a large basket.

I wish these preachers and pastors would shut up.  They are destroying one of the best of childhood memories.

And they are destroying a wonderful season of mystery.

Lady Nyo…..HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

For a hysterical take on Halloween, read this!

sandysays1.wordpress.com

Chapter 10, “The Zar Tale”

I just found this chapter in my computer file.  I forgot all about it but decided to float it here.  This chapter is for Margie.

CHAPTER 10

The village was quiet after the visit of the mullahs.  The presence of Ali in the life of Shakira at first caused a lot of interest, but their Sheikha was obviously  happy no one could really begrudge her this for her troubles.  Although Ali came and went at will, he was there very little as far as people could see, for he seemed to travel a lot, and Shakira was not complaining.  It was general knowledge they were to be married in the coming month and the presence of Ali amongst them, when he was there, was taken in stride.  He was a handsome addition to their village, and the times he appeared, he would smoke the hookah with the village men.  He stood out by his height, his dark blue turban and the gold earrings in his ears.  Unusual for their village, but then again, it was privately said Ali was a Berber far from home.

Any plans for future zar rituals were on hold.  The women could wait for they were schooled by life in patience.   They had their Sheikha back, none the worse for her trials.

The men? Well they were smart enough to hold their tongues.  They met in the evening to smoke the hookah and talk over the issues of the day.  They knew  it could have gone a lot worse for them at home.

The important peace had been restored.  They didn’t live in fear of bad meals and a back turned to them in the marriage bed.

As for the mullahs, it was such a tragedy what happened, Allah Protect!  An investigation by the police had shown the car plunged off a cliff high in the mountains.  It was strange they were on that road, because it led deeper into the mountain and not back to Ankara.

No one seemed to know who the driver was or where he came from.  He wasn’t a local man, and a number of men remembered seeing his dark blue turban.  Perhaps he was from Ankara.  In any case, all were burned up in the wreck at the bottom of the cliff, the car just a twisted, burned out hulk of metal.  The smell of burnt kabobs hung over the area.  Ah Allah! Such misfortune!  And then the honorable Mullah Kaleel died in his bed, and our mayor had a stroke and was recovering his senses slowly. So many twists and turns.

Life returned to the usual routine. Shakira was happy and roses bloomed  in her cheeks as well  on the walls of her small courtyard.    She fed her two goats and sang songs each morning to them.  When asked why she was so happy, she would giggle like a young girl, and say that her goats gave more milk with music.  But soon word was out that Ali and Shakira were to be married in his village way across the mountains.  They would leave for a week and return.  Ah! This was not the way custom was done in this isolated village, but there were other things to be considered.  Sharika Sheikha was a middle aged woman, with no close relatives except the kinship through Leila’s family, and it was, after all, the 20^th century.  City ways were creeping up to the mountains.  Perhaps this was the current, modern fashion with marriages? Perhaps this was the way things were done in the cities.  Who could account for today’s changes?

Mail and newspapers came more regularly, now every month over rough roads of the mountain,  and the telephone line running to the mayor’s house was in working order.  True,  some weeks there were no outside communication, but the line would start working again by magic, and news would flow into the village.  The women were better than the newspapers, for they were natural gossips.  They could take a story and make it much more interesting than the writers from the big cities.  And the men understood the words!

Ali was amongst them early one evening when the men gathered outside the baker’s shop, again sharing the hookah. He was sitting and enjoying the mixture of babble and smoke that rose up like spirits above.  His eyes were half closed, more in thought than because of the blue smoke that circled his head.

There was a lot more energy needed to be a mortal than a Zar, he thought.   That woman was insatiable.  Now she would grab his hand and lead him to the bed, and she would stay there, with demands and little shame for a woman!  On top of that, she was feeding him too well, and he was getting heavier.  Shakira told him he needed the weight, but he thought she just was in love.  Ah! Women acted differently in love. This was something he had forgotten over the past thousand years.  He also was adjusting to a digestion of rich foods he had not tasted before.  The diet of his Berber clan was simpler, and here was Shakira making flaky walnut and honey pastries and stuffing dates with sugared almonds and tempting him with candied ginger and orange and lemon peel.  Then, too, were the wheat salads with golden raisins and garlic and herbs from her garden.  And he was eating too much meat.  This goat and lamb was not stringy, as he remembered in the desert, but stuffed with lard and fat and served with stewed apples and apricots and more delightful than even her sweetbreads.  Ah, he was going to get fat and slow!  But he had a thousand years of nothing on his stomach, and Shakira was going to kill him early with all these rich dishes!  Or, he supposed, her demands in bed.  One or the other was going to shorten his life.

So, the smoke and silence this evening was a restful time for Ali.

But it wouldn’t last long.  The murmur of the men made him open his eyes and there walking towards them was Emir and Hasan.  Ah! Two old  Zar friends now as flesh and blood…. thanks to mullah kabobs… as he.

Hasan wore the indigo blue turban. There was a kinship between them, and if nothing but their hooked noses and the colors of their robes and turbans showed this, well it was enough.  Emir was Persian, and his robes were white and black.  Ali stood and embraced both men, and kissed each on both cheeks as was the custom.  He introduced Hasan as a kinsman from a village in the mountains and Emir as an old friend.  How old, Ali didn’t reveal, but they had been Zars together for many centuries.  Ali called for more of the strong Turkish coffee and the baker came out with the tiny cups and the long ladled copper coffee pots.  The village men, as all in this region, prided themselves on their hospitality, and welcomed the two strangers with generosity.  Besides, they might bring gossip or news and that was better than reading weeks- old newspapers that dealt with city issues and rarely those from the mountains.

Hasan and Emir were passed the piping of the hookah, and they filled their lungs with the sweet scent of dried apple tobacco.  After a while, Ali mentioned that Emir was a poet, and a wonderfully inventive one at that!  Emir beamed with pride and delight and looked at Ali, a broad smile wreathing his sun darkened face.

“Ah!  My Brother Ali here is a fine poet in his own right!  I can not hold a candle with my poor verse next to him!  I have heard Brother Ali expound at length and his verse is prodigious!  The angels in heaven get dizzy with the beauty of his lyrics. They spiral almost to the ground and Allah sucks them back up with his breath!  Ah! The Great Rumi would have treasured the verse of Brother Ali here had he but heard it!”

Ali had to laugh to himself.  Emir knew well Ali had been a student of the great Rumi almost a thousand years ago.  It was not in his mortal flesh he sat as Rumi’s student,  but a time when he was condemned as a Zar, and without purpose or a woman to possess.

When Ali was a young Berber chieftain, and still with mortal connections to the earth, he was taken by the beauty of verse and was on his way of becoming a very good Berber poet.  This was unusual for his region, for the women of the tribes were known to be the poets and the literate ones.  But Ali was a favorite amongst the women, and they loved to have him around as a young man, before he was of age where he would not be welcome company with the women.  He heard the verses the women chanted while washing at the rivers, and learned how they took from the beauty of nature and the joys and sadness of their lives and wove them into carpets of verse.  The knots and threads of these beautiful verse-carpets were full of color and the softness of the yarn of dreams, not sheep wool.

He learned to stroke the phrases, to raise up the lushness of the Berber language.   When he was older, he would sit on his horse in the desert and roam the dunes until he lost himself in lyrics and sand.  His horse knew the way home, and Ali could compose his  poetry away from the chatter of wives and children, and growls of camels, the bleating of goats  and the general noise of the camp.

Ah! Ali had a hunting hawk, as had most of the Berber men, and he would put his beautiful girl on the leather pad at his wrist, gently pull off  the hood and launch her into the desert sky.  She would wheel and soar high and turn into the sun, and Ali would lose sight of her.  But before he did, he would compose verses in praise of his bird.  Her wings, her grace, her sharp eyes that saw from high on the wind.  She would fold her wings and plunge like a daytime falling star, stretching out her claws, and make short work of the life of desert rats.

She was fast as the sandstorms that carried the wind up to the foot of the mountains, and a fierce as any warrior on his steed.  Her coat shown with a million colors, like a piece of  bronze mirror, or like pearls glistening fresh from the sea.

Ali could never stop his praises of his hawks.  They lifted him into the wilds of their heaven and left his human travail behind.  Ah, his birds made his soul soar!

Ali was as proud of his hawks as he was of his poetry. His father and most of his kinsmen would sew shut their bird’s eyes shut and release the strong thread before they launched them. But Ali saw many hawks blinded this way, and what is the use of a blind hunting hawk?  So he patiently molded hoods of new lambskin, sewed and decorated them with dyed feathers for his hawks.

Hasan’s voice cut into his thoughts, and Ali shook his head to clear it.  He hadn’t thought about the hawks in many years, centuries actually.  Now, with his feet again mortal, he could capture and train young tercels and hunt again like his ancestors.  His thoughts brought tears to his eyes, and opening them, saw the compassionate glazes of both Hasan and Emir.  They had suffered as much as Ali, and now, thanks to the good mullahs, they had their chances at life again.

“Give us a verse, Brother Ali!” said Emir, with a broad smile.

The men of the village perked up with his words, for there was nothing that men loved more than the soft, lulling words of a poet.

Unless it was the softly moving hands of a woman.

The men had hard lives in the mountains, tilling the stony earth for their grain crops, but they made time for any poet.  It was music to their ears without instrumentation.  It was the fine music of human voice and colorful words.  It gave a precious beauty to their routine lives.

Ali shook his head, and said for Emir to give them a poem, but Emir insisted Ali give them a verse of his own making.

“Ah! You ask the impossible, my dear brother.  It has been long since I thought of any verse. Life had glued shut those pages of inspiration.”  Ali smiled to himself and took up one of the mouthpieces of the hookah, blowing out a long plume of smoke that smelled of apple.

“If marriage next month to the Sheilkha Shakira doesn’t open those pages, my friend, then all the poets of Persia have lived for naught!”

This from one of the men in the village brought out laughter.  They were all curious how this stranger had been able to attract the affections of their desirable Sheikha. But their eyes, even the eyes of men, could tell that he was handsome enough to attract a woman’s  eyes.

Better he marry the Sheikha now.  The women would have no claim on him then.

Ali stared at Emir through half opened eyes.  They spoke volumes, were masked by the heavy smoke he expelled from his lungs.  Ah, brother Emir would push him, but perhaps he could think of something.  Surely the men would want a love sonnet or a verse of the beauty of mortal life.  Make that Paradise, for these men were jaded by their mortality.  It was new to Ali, Emir and Hasan, and precious and confounding to them daily.  After being a zar for centuries, feet on the earth were heavy but strangely comforting.

“All the carpets of Persia can not match the softness of her hands

The roses of the Sultan’s garden have not the bloom of her cheeks

The trees blowing a gentle wind have not the sway of her delicate gait

And my heart travels with speed to lie at her feet.

Ah! She steps on my heart, invisible beneath her flowery foot,

And trods upon my senses, scrambling them like eggs for the breakfast.”

At this last line, the men guffawed loudly.  Even they, in their isolated mountain village could discern good verse from bad, and Ali was having his fun with them.

“I warned you I had nothing to say,” he said with a bemused look on his face.

“Ah Friend Ali!” said one of the men loudly.  “If you think you have nothing to say now, marriage will shut up your mouth completely.”

The others laughed at this comment, for the truth of the matter was so.  Marriage changed both men and women.  It made the women more quarrelsome and the men more silent and fearful of the wrath of the women.  Ah! Men could not win in this battle.

Ali had been married, with a number of wives.  His eyes glazed over as he blew out more smoke from the hookah.  The first one was Lela, when he was 20 years old.  She was 15, and so shy, she wouldn’t look him in the eyes for two months after the wedding.  She cried most of the first month.  Ali was aware she missed her family, but a marriage is a marriage and it must be endured.  He would take his horse and his hawk and ride out and hunt.  Only when Lela had her first child, luckily for her a boy, did she perk up.  She became right bossy, too.  The older men would laugh when Ali made a hasty retreat from their tent, usually followed with a string of invective from his young wife.  Ah! This was not a good situation, and his father decided that Ali had suffered enough and prepared to give him another wife. Sela was a cousin of Lela and at first, she was as shy as Lela.  But she soon overcame that and became a favorite wife of Ali.  There were two more, but one died in childbirth.  All toll, Ali had four sons and four daughters. Sela was killed in the arms of Ali, when  Ali was murdered making love to her.  Their second child died with them, for Sela was very pregnant.

“Ah, my wife will be angry if I don’t return home soon.”

The words of one of the men cut into Ali’s thoughts.   The sun was setting, and the sky was red from its fading luster.

“Soon, my friend”, answered another, putting his hand on the shoulder of Ali in a compassionate gesture,   “you will be yoked like the oxen in the fields to our Sharkira and you too will watch the hours like the rest of us, knowing that they are linked to the tempers of women.  Ah Allah! You had many wives, but we have just one each, and our lives are made miserable still!”

The laughter went around the benches where they sat in the fading sunlight.  Men all over had the same issues, and now that Ali and the others were mortal again, they faced their own temperamental women.  Perhaps it was easier before as Zars, for they could just float out of earshot of women and gather in the forests in the mountains to share the hookah with other Zars.  But the good outweighed the bad, for the cooking of the women went a long way to filling appetites that had been lost for centuries.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Chapter 10 of “The Zar Tale”

Copyrighted, 2007, 2009

“The Zar Tales”

Book cover for "The Zar Tales"

Ali and Baba...running out of names for cute kittens

New book cover, since there were complaints  about the old one.  I bet this one will also change before the end.

I have an alternate  ending for “The Zar Tale”,….that story of Ali (Zar) and Shakira..I want to pursue.  A wedding, and who doesn’t like a wedding???  Especially one with sheep/goats/baking in pits, and Turkish line dances, tray dances,  Camel races, and Berber/Turkish polo with a head of a goat.

I wasn’t going to do this, but met  a  women who had henna designs on her hands.  She was working in a Dairy Queen and we had stopped there  for lunch.  She was from India and had just attended a wedding. Henna can last for a while, and you don’t wash the designs  because it’s good luck for the wearer.

We got to talking, and I asked her about the henna and the wedding.  She was one of the bridesmaids and described the outfit she wore; pink, purple, gold and silver, very colorful, and the party the day before to paint the henna on her hands.  I asked if the bride wore a sari, but apparently she wore an Indian bridal outfit that didn’t sound at all like a sari.  She was covered in much jewelry and a golden, sheer veil and she must have been very beautiful.

This woman knew about the Zar ritual and I thought how universal this ritual must be.  It is called something different  in India, but I think how deep and ancient these traditions must be to be so ’shared’ by different cultures.

She inspired me to look again  at the parts of “The Zar Tale” where Ali and Shakira get married.  I had no  intention of doing so, but thought…what the hell.  It takes the story into a different realm and sometimes that’s a good place to go.  It means more work on something I thought finished, but that is the natural process of writing I think.  If it develops a story into something that gives more life and color and interest….why not?  It’s only a delay of a matter of weeks, but I’m really not on any time line.

Update on kittens….we decided    “Ali”  and  “Baba”  were good names for the babies.

But they come to ‘kitty’.

Lady Nyo