summer marches on

what can I say..Bob Bowlby died last Sunday on Fathers' Day?  yep...he did...wonderful old timer he was..barely getting around, very pale, very white but a descendent of some of the native peoples of this area so very dark eyes sitting in the still very cognizant head...tending to ramble off a bit he was at the end, frail enough to be lifted from the automobile he drove up in...but still driving..adios amigo..  we're sorry to see you go...but we know you had your ticket ready for the last month or so...
speaking about tickets...pondering the allegiant offers for Mesa in the fall around my burpday...wonder how I will 'get it all done' when my back is spasming today ouch...and have some new wrinkles and curves in my life which in lift off seem a bit strange as though there were nothing better I could ever do but be a part of those moments when that's going on...I feel that way most of the time...there's nothing better I could be doing...even though there's a lot of springing from the frying pan into the fire as it were...and not much more than the cozy intimateness of just what that is...no clam digging expeditions, no forays into Seattle with some mochas to go...or even out shooting elk..well, hasn't happened and I wonder if it will...well I don't wonder so much as am grateful for whatever experience I get to have...isn't that what a blog is after all but the meditations of that very thing?  I g uess it is, what I use it for..deep thoughts here, about this that and the lover..ouch..ovary area says 'folliating'...like it hasn't done that in a w hile...nah...not in a while but it was competent that it could when it did now it's like looking in the mirror going hey..cette moi
and it is
so also got two pair of winter kind of shoes at the store today...looking ahead on that nice flannel shirt but I only wear those when I'm going to scrub up so why get a really  nice one?  I mean reallly...
so I can ruin it?  I like my cotton banger yaks...for those long winter days when it don't do nothing but rain!!
ouch...what to do then?  today I made egg rolls with plantain and egg plant...they were pretty good bring them along for the ride later I think...and meanwhile...should be getting on down the road if I'm gonna...car is loaded with bric a brack and so is the house, hehe...yikes..
so anyway...enough for now...nothing brilliant to observe except it was so fun to dance to Thriller this morning and then I thought the old cassette could stand a wipe off and don'tcha know all the lettering naming the songs on the tape just wiped off and only a little bit of the words 'Thriller' are still on it...well.. I guess I will sometime get a cd or mp3 or something but that's like the tape I've  had since my daughter was small and loved 'Billie Jean'(s)...she called it

stories from the far side of the lake...

the laundry's on the line and I've heard that so and so is bragging that he paid me $44 for about twenty minutes of pleasure...this he told to the fellow at the end of the block who doesn't ever get it right because he's never quire sober enough to comprehend reality...but he does fish...and this is what so and so is about..what I think is that s&s is the chief of this particular brand of native we have here and so the f what if that's the rumor going around, that I'm cheep cheep that way...which I know I'm not but he did give me money that day because I said his house was a wreck and that he could hire me to clean it so he says 'you want some money? and I say 'yeah, ok'...so he peels off forty from his wad...everybody has a wad but me...hehe..and now I've never gotten to do the cleaning because he's so particular about his stuff...and it's all in a transitory state anyways, what goes on between the two of us...I don't  believe for a minute that he's spreading the rumor that I'm in the profession..I forget what they call it...selling your body, I don't do that but I am a little more of an interpreter than you'd guess...and yeah I would clean his house, it'd be worth at least 40 to do that..because inside and out it's been let go, curtains hanging off the rods, things disshevled and scattered about, chopping wood for the fire right there on the living room floor watching the boards underneath shake, yikes...but anyways, last time I was there I did get to make the bed so I've made a stab at it anyway...he doesn't appear to have any money and his truck doesn't seem to be r unning and the fellows on his boat crew are pretty much alcoholic it would seem but he's not, we sat and talked and he's very coherent and well versed except when it comes to people being down on Indians (he thinks) or says he does...he doesn't reach my dark spot where I too am native (an Iriquois)...way backmy grandmother Genevieve Higgins was a LeBeau and her French Canadian father had some of that blood (Iriquois) in him so now in my later years I am taking to wearing feathers and beads and going barefoot in summer as though it was always my way, also don't mind deep cold...I guess I could tell a story now about that native woman I come from and what her story is...

many fathers before me...this is the story handed down of Silver Pike that runs with the Deer

I don't know that there are pike in the great lakes but I think there are and once there was a woman that caught many of them because she recognized the flash they made when they were close on the surface of the lake and she had made quite a finely woven fish net from long grass that grew on the water's edge
she used this net from her little waterboat, a round thing of deer hide that she didn't use a paddle with, only her hands because she would fill the boat with just so many fish and then she would have to go to shore where she kept a small constant fire burning and sticks all around it to dry the fish for the winter when she would melt the snow and boil the fish in a stew over the fire.  To this stew she would add the roots and dried plants of the forest and it would be a good thing to keep her stomach full when the winter was howling cold and the wolves would make songs with the ice gods...The ice gods were very stern, they would always be asking did you keep yourself warm this winter?  Did you store enough food and Silver Pike that Runs with the Deer would speak to them at the end of her day when she was very tired and sleeping in her thick furs in the little round hut in the woods that was her home..
Yes, fathers I have made the stores of food that you told to me to build up..yes fathers I have dried the fish, dried the plants and roots, picked the berries and plucked feathers from the few birds I have taken..fathers I have problem taking the birds for the loon is my brother and I do not want to make his spirit a part of my body...fathers make me understand this...she would say...and then she would hear in this time the voice of the one warrior that she now walks the path with...chasing away the skinwalkers that still come to haunt the fresh minds of todays' people...
the ice gods would say, listen to your heart, stay in our time in your leather gowns and leggings, braid your hair long down your back and wrap it around your head when  you wear the fur caps against the wind...keep your body clean and sleep long into the night so that you are rested for the day...wake up when Mother Sun pushes you gently with her warm light...keep your furs without the little brothers and the loon forgives what he does not know...we must all eat does the frog argue that point with us?  no....and so she became quite swift to trap the wolverine and ever after her body would bloom with a slight scratch should she even think about the creature and his vicious claws...wolverine's trap was made as a basket that she  dug into the ground and snow in winter and inside put many fine foods like the dried fish and the berries and wolverine's nose would tell him Silver Pike that Runs with the Deer had made him a winter nest and he would go into it and never know that she planned to skin and to eat him even t hough he was becoming her child and sleeping in her warm mother's basket.  Silver Pike wasn't afraid of the wolverine but she kept the animal as a pet and a watcher of her place in the forest and it would tell the others of its kind that she might need fur or she might need meet and they would find amongst themselves the one who would come to live in the mother's basket.  That's the way it was with all the creatures Silver Pike fished and trapped and snared and she was veryhappy for several moons until one day she came across some strange hunters that signed to her they needed passage across her wide lake...
she signed to them  "I do not travel with my people...long ago the Ice Fathers sent me on my vision quest and I came to this place where I have lived alone without others but my wolverine.."  she snapped her fingers and the wolverine came running out and rolled over for the strange ones, holding out his hand when he stood up..to receive a bit of fish or meat from the people there...
The strange ones were French and they were looking for a way to the Californias where there was reputed to be gold in the mountains...Silver Pike knew where there was gold in her own lake but she left it where it was as the lake fish swam over it and kept it guarded against all men...the Ice Fathers told her it was the way they spoke to her...through the precious metal...she did not tell the strange ones about her lake's gold but she did sign that she could bring them to the end of the lake duluthenn ahh hema... where they might meet the ones who lived there and continue on their way
be afraid of those ones at that end of the lake, she signed...they have had some disease from your kind and they do not cure it well...
the strange ones' leathers were shiny with grease and dirt and she told them to go into the lake and bathe with the plants she showed them would clean their bodies...she took their leather clothing and pounded it with rocks and hung it to dry in the sun and the great water birds came out and sang to them as they lay in the sun and dried themselves and the clothing dried by the fire in the sun as the wind blew soft over the lake...Silver Pike was asked to go further with them inland and she said she could not because her place was near the lake with her wolverine and her fish and berries...one of the strange ones made her to understand he needed her warm body in the night and she did not answer him but left him the smoke of courage from the plants under the tall pine...he understood she would  not come  unto him as was the custom them if the answers to both people were of the same smile...she also said that the Ice  Fathers wished it that she would be like a sort of a priestess on the lake that it would always be clean and f ull of fish and so she was that more than anything but she did take them across the lake and in summer a small child came to her floating in a basket and she named him Fisher...so even if there is no man and woman there are children because the world makes them from what it has...
the journey across the lake is another story for there are great kings living below the surface of those lakes and they command the fishes in the water  and they guide the craft that crosses those waters

so...in the meantime...

it's finally raining

it's all good..collected some bolls from the cottonwood tree for weaving by Judy..looking forward to planting the callas I got in town with Barbara...we were both stiff as boards when we got out of the car. It hadn't started to rain here yet but it was raining pretty good coming home from town yesterday. Going in several directions as usual, just waking up..