White with African Ancestry

(photos: three 'white' celebrities with confirmed or rumoured African ancestry: Lula Da Silva, President of Brazil. Heather Locklear, actress. Dwight D Eisenhower, former U.S. President.) In my continued efforts to investigate my ancestry, I shelled out even more money to get my Dad’s genome tested with 23andme.

Part of this was to see if I could get more information on the oral tradition of Native American and “Black Dutch” ancestry on his side of the family. The website 23andme, in addition to telling you your paternal and maternal haplogroup and your likelihood for particular diseases and traits (“Yes you have blue eyes!”) has something called “Ancestry Painting” which will break your genome down into three ethnic groups: European, African, and Asian. It also goes a step further and give you your likelihood of having Native American ancestry in the past five generations.

So I look at my Dad’s ancestry painting and see this teentsy weentsy bit of orange Asian color sliced into his blue Western European painting. The Native American Ancestry finder tells me this teentsy weentsy bit of orange “Asian” indicates my Dad could have a Native ancestor, but any ‘full-blood’ ancestor would probably not be any closer than a great-grandparent.

Which sounds about right to me, and fits in with when and where the tradition of Native ancestry started in my family tree. But the segment is so small I want to be sure it is not just statistical ‘noise” and send it off to a couple of genetic specialists, Dr. Doug McDonald and David W of the Eurogenes blog.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Both these guys, who do a much more detailed and precise scan than 23andme, tell me the “non-European” bit is not Asian or Native American, but African. David W ID’s the African as West African, and says because the rest of my Dad’s genome is Western European, he believe that it probably comes from “a distant African- American ancestor”.

“Your Dad?” says one friend. “He’s about as white as anybody could get without being an albino!”.

It’s true. My Dad looks like a perfect Celt--blue eyes, red hair, ruddy skin. And all this time--according to the ‘one-drop rule’-- he has been a black man passing for white.

But suddenly, with this bit of news, certain ‘suspect’ behaviors in my Dad’s otherwise French, English and Scots-Irish demeanor fall into place. I quickly go through the mental checklist: 1. the only white guy in the very white Southern California neighborhood I grew up in to stand up at a crowded and heated neighborhood meeting and argue for school integration, 2. wanted to take me to see Martin Luther King speak when I was a kid instead of letting me go off to play Barbie or Superman with my friends. 3. taught journalism at a black university. 4. worked as an editor for a black newspaper. 5. takes me to Leimert Park, a historically black neighborhood in Los Angeles, to chat with a woman who owns a store specializing in African-American history, instead of going to Disneyland or Universal Studios.

Very suspicious, all this. The call of the ancestors is louder than any one of us could imagine.

When I tell my “nearly Albino” Dad that he has that one drop, he just kind of shrugs his shoulders, not seeming the least surprised. My brother, another pale skinned red-head, says jokingly that this explains why I know how to dance. My sister, the dark haired, dark-eyed one in the family, says “I always knew I was part black!” remembering that in high school she always felt more comfortable with mixed race kids.

As for me, I now have another excuse besides my maternal Jewish lineage for my frizzy out of control hair being ‘not quite white’. And it has opened up a whole new set of questions for me. Like: how come so many white American people are looking for their Native ancestors but not their African ones? Is that “Cherokee Princess” that pops up in so many white Southern genealogies actually a light-skinned black person who needed an excuse for their complexion? Does this negate or just push further back in time any Native ancestry ( which I have been all along so certain of) that I may have? Who were my black ancestors and at what point did one of them make the decision to be white?

And: What does all this say about our country’s historic obsession with racial and ethnic definition? 

Japan and The Dream of Water, revisited

It seems like weeks since the Japanese earthquake and tsunami hit, yet it has really only been hours. It seems like weeks because it has been difficult to tear myself away from the news and videos about this tragedy...I feel as if I am living it,moment by moment, with them. Suddenly the people in Japan, a country I have never visited, feel like my next door neighbors.

I wanted to write about the combination of awe and horror and compassion that I experience when I see that wave of water washing through whole cities. But then I realized I already had--six years ago, when I sent an email out about a 'prophetic' dream I had before another Asian Tsunami.

So here it is, from January, 2005:

Friends,

It is New Year's Day and we are surrounded by a tidal
wave.

On television and in our memories, the images
continue:
the rushing wall of water, the cars, buildings and
bodies floating in the swollen sea, fragile and
temporary as children's toys. The faces of pain, loss
and anguish are our faces. National boundaries are
dissolved, at least momentarily, as we send love,
financial support, healing.

Because my dreams are frequently wiser than I am, I
want to share a dream with you that I had about a week
before the Asian Tsunami hit.

In the dream I am on the beach with a group of
international students from the school where I teach
English as a Second Language. The students are from
all over the world. Suddenly a huge tidal wave
arrives and we are all running along the beach in
panic. I see something metallic floating in the water,
a vehicle of some kind. I think in my dream that it
could be some kind of military vehicle, like a car or
a plane or boat. It is clear to me that this vehicle
was made by man in a moment of self-importance, and it
is now utterly useless, bobbing helplessly along on
the water.

We all run away from the water and manage to reach
"higher ground." We are then all huddled inside a
room together, feeling fear but also deeply connected
to each other, and relieved that we are safe. One of
my Muslim students comes over to me, and I put my arm
around him, feeling a wave of love and compassion.

I woke up from this dream, asking, as I usually do of
dreams, what it was saying to me:

There is something more powerful than you, the dream
said. Maybe you should pay attention.

Your technology and the shiny vehicles that get you
through your life are useless in the face of this
power, the dream said.

It is the power of water, the dream said. it is
feminine, emotional, receptive, illogical,
mysterious, compassionate, ruthless, ferocious,
cleansing. It is running the blood of your veins and
in the ocean that links continent to continent. It is
the Tsunami and it is the wave of healing that
follows.

Maybe you should pay attention, the dream said.

It is the power of Mother Nature, the dream said,
seeking to balance all her elements, no matter how
horrific the sacrifice. With so many man-made fires
and explosions raging on the earth right now, it it
any wonder she chooses to respond with water?

Maybe you should pay attention, the dream said.

Look around you, the dream said, those people with
their different languages and religions are all
huddled in the same fragile room with you.

Find the person in the room who is most unlike you,
the dream said, the person who is supposed to be your
enemy, and reach out to him or her in compassion.

If there is a god, the dream said, he or she exists
not in the labels we have assigned, but in this
gesture, in this stretching of the heart.

You are alive, the dream of water said , and this is
a gift that can be taken away at any time.

Maybe you should pay attention.


Love,

Lisa

DNA Tribes and All My Relations

I finally broke down and decided to see what my DNA had to tell me, if anything, about my ancestry.

So I sent my spit to an organization called DNA tribes and they sent me back a chart with my DNA alleles as well as three lists that matched me with current global populations. The first list matched my DNA to "Native Populations" around the globe that have experienced little admixture with other peoples. Since I am pretty mixed up ancestrally, my scores that matched these 'pure blood' folks were pretty low. Some in the top twenty included the Russian Bashkir (#1), the Tatars (#2), the Russian Udmurts, the Scots, the Finns, the English, the Irish, the Italians of Umbria, and the Iranians.

I found only minimal matches to existing Native American tribes in their data base, the highest being the Inuit. Many tribes, like the Cherokee, are not included in the DNA Tribes data base. Also surprisingly low matching scores with Ashkenazi Jews, despite the fact that I am Ashkenazi Jewish through my mother's direct line.


The second list is the one that really broke open my conceptions of who my 'people' (or peoples) are. This matches your DNA with existing populations in the world who could be 'pure-blood' or mixed. These are my closest DNA 'relatives' in the world today.

#1 The Polish Tatars. I suppose with so many Northeast European and Central Asian Turkic people showing up (Tatars, Bashkirs, etc.) my mother's ancestral Jewish lineage must be heavily mixed with tribal peoples who ended up in Latvia, Poland, and elsewhere. Jewish Khazars? Conversions? Pogroms? Interbreeding? I may never know.

#2 European-Aboriginal Australians. Huh? I can't even begin to understand this one, though it certainly explains my unruly hair and why I love the didgeridoo. Did one of my "European" ancestors stop off in Australia and have a kid or two before he or she made their way to the United States? Or is DNA tribes just completely wacked out? Whatever. I have no problem embracing my Australian aboriginal cousins, mixed or not.

#3 Central Mexicans. Ja ja ja. Ahora entiendo porque he pasado tanto tiempo con los latinos. Yeah Spanish has come pretty easy to me and now I understand it's because so many latinos are my DNA cousins. Central Mexicans are basically European-American Indian mixed bloods, so this kind of fits in with the family tradition of Native ancestry, or at least fits in with the European-Asian mix that seems to be prevalent in my DNA. (Native American DNA apparantly shows up as "Asian" in the DNA ancestry world.)

#4. United States Caucasion. Well yeah, this is always what I THOUGHT i was when I was growing up as a little fair-skinned blue eyed white girl. And despite what everyone says about these people, I also accept them as my brothers and sisters in the human family. Some of my best friends are U.S. Caucasians, really.

#5. Canadian East Indians. Not East Indian East Indians mind you, but Canadian East Indians. I'm not sure why my DNA only matches highly with the immigrant Canadian East Indians and not with the East Indian East Indians. Is this because this is another bunch of immigrants who decided to mix their blood with the local people and produce some kind of mulatto mestizo mixed race mongrels who were then accepted back into their tribe? Why, how dare they? Dammit, if people would just stay within their borders and not have sex with foreigners life would be so much easier. And you wouldn't end up inflicting smart mouth mix-ups like me onto the world.

Again, my DNA matching so highly with East Indians is about as understandable as the match with Australians. All DNA tribes really told me was what I already knew--that I am an ancestral mutt, that no matter what tribal circle I am standing in I will always have one foot outside it. And that will be the foot that is looking for the larger circle.

Others in the top twenty were Maraicabo, Venezuela, Scotland, Italy, the Flemish, the Bashkirs and Udmurts again, more U.S. Caucasian groups and more European-Aboriginal Australian groups.

The third chart matches you with broader genetic groups called Regional Populations. Top Five Here were #1, Finno-Ugrian (Northeast Europe), #2 Northwest European, #3, Altaic (Central Asian Turkic people) #4 Mesopotamian (Iran, Iraq, etc.) #5 Eastern Europe. Seems to match the other charts. Other groups that showed up were Mestizo, Horn of Africa, Levantine, Mediteranean, and again, an uncharacteristically high match to Australian aboriginals for a US Caucasian person.

I shared all this info recently with a friend. "But it's too much!" He said. "Too many relatives!:

Indeed it is, I thought. One great big sprawling messy family of too many relatives.

We are the world.

Spirit of the Seventh Chakra

The chakra class I was teaching has ended, and the seventh chakra has been hanging over my head ever since.

Exactly where it belongs of course, since traditionally this is the chakra of the Crown, the chakra where spirit enters through the top of your head and ideally, fills you with its 'ineffable knowing.'

In traditions I've studied if this chakra is clear you walk with certainty and purpose and a sense of spirit within. Blocks and imbalances here might manifest as dysfunctional ideas about religion, attachments to gurus who really want your attachment more than your freedom, or a seventh chakra that is too wide open to all sorts of spiritual influences that cannot be practically grounded in your day to day life.

The Seventh Chakra has also been hanging over my head because although the class ended several weeks ago I have yet to post and write about it.

So here it is. Seems fitting to have waited until after the winter holidays, a time when many people throughout the world celebrate major religious holidays--Christmas, Hannukah, Winter Solstice. Interesting to me that in the northern hemisphere it is the darkest time of year when we are most drawn to celebrating spirit. (Actually in the south this is true too--the Incan honoring of the sun, Inti Raymi, is celebrated in June.)

The trap of any religion or spiritual 'system' seems to be its own dogma. So if you chance upon this blog and enjoy reading what I've posted about the chakras and the chakra class I've been teaching, be sure to print it out, read it carefully, then burn it and walk away.

Happy New Year.

Visions of the Sixth Chakra

The Sixth, or brow, Chakra. The 'third eye'. Located at the forehead, just above the place where the eyebrows meet. Related to the eyes, the brain, the pineal gland.

This is the place where visions are formed---our vision of ourselves and of the world around us. These 'pictures' that we have created can influence everything we do, feel, and are--they are the results of the beliefs that we carry around, beliefs that may have been formed when we were children or even before. It is the place of dreams and perceptions.

In my experience teaching classes in energy work, there are some people who seem to be natural clairvoyants--a French word for 'clear seers'. They form pictures in their mind, and can often see the energy of other people in pictures that are formed in their mind. When they come to class, they are frequently just looking for validation for something that they already know how to do.

The other group of people do not consider themselves 'clairvoyant' and don't have a third eye that fills up readily with all kinds of images, but they would like to be.

It has been my experience, that with training, this second group can learn to 'see' with their third eye. But it is frequently a long process. And the second group often has other intuitive gifts--clairsentients who sense rather than see the energy of others, massage therapists whose hands 'just know' where to go, etc.

In some traditions, when 'psychic powers' arise as a result of intensive meditation, it is said to be best to just ignore them. There is wisdom in this--the risk of seeing oneself as 'more special' than others because of intuitive gifts, the risk of losing sight of the ultimate goal of spiritual enlightenment or balanced awareness in the pursuit of 'psychic superpowers'.

I am one of those people who have always had a constant stream of images running like a movie on the screen of my 'third eye' and remember how shocked I was to realize that not everybody has this.

For people with a highly developed sixth chakra, the challenge is usually in grounding these visions in a practical or creative way. Visionaries who don't find a path to the manifestation of their visions can sometimes find themselves feeling like marginalized misfits, dreamers who have nowhere to share their gifts. On an energetic level, the task is to balance and clear the energy in the lower chakras so that the magnificent visions of these people can be actualized.

Cultivating a stronger relationship to earth, body and/or creativity is a good place to start. So, paradoxically, in order for a highly developed sixth chakra to be truly effective, it is the lower chakras that need to be healed.

Speaking True: The Fifth Chakra

Our world and daily lives often require many voices of us; the voice we use at work, the voice we use with our friends and family, the voice we use with ourselves.

If we are clear and balanced, we will be able to speak authentically to ourselves and to others. That's what he fifth chakra, the throat or communication chakra is about. When it is out of balance or blocked, we feel stifled with our communication with ourselves and others, we are not speaking our truth. This can lead either to choked silence and a voice within ourselves that never gets heard, or, on the other extreme, to endless chattering to fill the scary truths that might emerge from a few moments of silence. Listening is as much a part of the fifth chakra as speaking, something that is not often mentioned.

Throat and thyroid problems are often linked to imbalances in fifth chakra energy. In my own life, I have looked at how my thyroid health might relate to the health of my fifth chakra and my abilities to articulate my truth. As a writer, teacher and communicator, my entire life has 'pointed to' the fifth chakra as the one that holds both the most challenges and the most treasures--so it's also not surprising that in my coaching and energy healing practice I have tended to attract and work with people with 'fifth chakra issues'.

Questions that arose in the class: What do you need to say to yourself? What do you need to say to others?

Healing the Heart

This past week's chakra in the class I am teaching has been the heart.

This old organ, overused, underused,
misunderstood, misplaced, mistaken, shaken
strong, not strong enough, still
and always
in the center
waiting
steady in listening
to its own
music, tha-rum, tha-rum, tha-rum.

Last week's class felt simple and subtle. One person shifted from trying to do what she thought she should be doing to what her heart already knew how to do.

Issues that arose: Who and what do we love? Who and what are we ready to forgive?

The Power of the Third Chakra

Moving on up, we have arrived this week at the third chakra in the chakra course I am teaching.

The third chakra is located at the solar plexus.

This is the 'energy pump' for the rest of the energy body, as well as the place where we experience our individual power. Power is a word that is rife with connotation, some good, some bad, but if we think of the power of the third chakra in a more neutral way, like the power provided by a lightbulb in a dark room, or the power of an engine in a car, we can detach a bit from the 'ego' part of power and still allow ourselves to appreciate our own uniqueness, individuality and the ability to manifest that in the world.

Here is my favorite quote, from Marianne Williamson, about manifesting our own power:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Leonard Breger, Harry Cohen and the Question of Art

We all know that most art is questionable.

So in my latest video of my artist friend Leonard Breger, Leonard and his friend Harry Cohen have some fun making art and asking important art questions. There is also music by Beethoven, a glimpse of Laurel and Hardy, and some sexy legs on San Francisco's Bernal Hill.

Enjoy.

Second Chakra: The Passion of Orange

Last week was an orange week. First the flickering orange of Halloween pumpkin light decorating the steps and windows of city buildings, then the Giants winning the World Series and the streets of downtown San Francisco erupting in crowds of fans wearing the orange and black colors of the team, and of course the burnt and brilliant oranges and golds of autumn warming the autumn sky. ( And autumn IS warm in San Francisco--it's our Indian Summer.)

Orange is also the traditional color of the second chakra, which was our focus in the last class. Someone asked me yesterday how the chakras got associated with certain colors. I have no idea. To me it just seems to be a logical progression--the denser lower chakras are associated with the denser, warmer colors and the higher,lighter chakras with the cooler blues and purples. One person I read has an interesting theory about the colors moving from the hot red lava of the center of the earth (first chakra) out through the warm orange and yellow of the second and third to the green of the grass growing on the earth's surface on to the blues and indigos and purples of the sky.

Whatever its origin, orange seems an appropriate color for this chakra having to do with creativity, sexual relationship and emotion. It is traditionally where we hold and express our passion, as well as any conflicts or obstacles associated with areas of our life that we are passionate about. The class, appropriately enough, felt lighter and warmer and more playful than the very grounded first chakra class last week.

Naturally, we all reflected on successes and obstacles associated with our own creativity and to creating meaningful and appropriate relationships. I am always astonished at how quickly, when given a chance, our own intuition can deliver up insight and direction.

In my own meditation, I was offered a gift--a ripe and juicy orange.

It's helpful to remember that this passionate gift of creativity and meaningful relationship is always there, all around us, ready to be peeled and tasted.

The First Chakra and Ganesh

The eight week course on the Chakras that I'm teaching is off to a great start, with a wonderful group of people whose backgrounds include flower essences, dream shamanism, EFT, personal organizing, massage and more. As usual, I am learning much from the people who have brought their gifts to the class.

The first week was an overview of the Chakras, with some energetic, meditative and creative exercises. Last week we worked on the first chakra, which has to do with grounding, support, shelter, finances, the physical body. I am posting this image of Ganesh, who in the Hindu tradition is the deity of the first chakra. Ganesh is also known as the remover of obstacles, and has brought me this past week a great deal of opportunity to reflect on when and how I put my attention on obstacles rather than solutions. The removal of obstacles is often a simple shift or liberation of attention which brings the solution home.

Thank you, Ganesh!

The Chakras: Your Seven Core Energies

Image: Ik Ongkar-Chakras, by Ranbassi




I am excited about the new class I will be teaching this month. Here’s the description:

Your 7 Core Energies: Cultivating the Power of the Chakras.

--Enhance your ability to perceive your own energy and the energy of others
- Discover your unique energy gifts
- Clear internal obstacles to relating authentically to others and manifesting your gifts in the world

In this course, we will use the chakras, the ‘spinning wheels of light’ that make up the energy body, to guide us on the journey to our own wisdom. We will combine techniques of meditation and energy perception with practical and creative exercises that allow you to cultivate your abilities in Grounding, Creating, Power, Love, Communication, Seeing, and Knowing. Open to beginners as well as those with some experience in energy healing and the chakra system.

When: Mondays 7-9:30PM, October 18- December 6, 2010
Where: 36th Avenue near Balboa (call for exact location.) San Francisco
Cost: $265


My own studies of the chakra system began when I was thirteen and started meditation practice. These studies were further developed in my training in Reiki and in clairvoyant healing classes in San Francisco.

I initially developed and taught a variation of this course in Cusco, Peru, to tourists and local residents. I am always delighted to see how easily we westerners can come into our own wisdom using this ancient Eastern energy system.


To register, email me at lisagarrigues@yahoo.com

I look forward to seeing you there!

Leonard Breger Post-Cave Artist

When I first met Leonard a friend who was with us said to me, "Why don't you make a movie?"

So here it is. The first of a series of short videos about my 90 year old "Post-Cave Artist" friend. In it you'll find some extraordinary non-rectangular art, and Leonard will lead you in and out of his experience of the Altamira Cave.

The Return of the Dreamspinner

Photography by Arayo

I like it when my fictional characters find new places in the world to see and be seen. So I am happy to report that you can now buy an anthology which contains my story Dreamspinner at a site called Anthology Builder.

Anthology Builder is a unique concept: previously published stories are available to collect in an anthology of your own making. You choose the stories, the title, and the design. You'll find some classics by Edgar Allen Poe, Charlotte Perkins, L. Frank Baum, and Jane Austen, as well as living writers like yours truly.


I have put together a collection called Seeing Around Corners: 15 Fantastic Fictions which contains my story as well as 14 others by dynamic and original writers.

Here's the intro to the anthology:

"A woman who invents a language that sees around corners. The heavy metal return of Crazy Horse. A class full of goblins. Breasts with a mind of their own.

Take a deep breath. Your journey around the corner is about to begin."


You can take the journey here.

DeCaffeinating

After a Cold Morning of Patrol Duty Police Officer Shearer and Chief Allec Enjoy Hot Coffee at Mac's Cafe, 01/1973
Originally uploaded by The U.S. National Archives

Because it's the time of year for spring cleaning, I've decided to do a little spring cleaning on my own body and quit my coffee jones.

I started drinking coffee when I was 13. It had been an old friend for many years, but recently I felt the friendship has gone sour. It had become an annoying and overbearing co-dependant relationship. My coffee 'friend', like all addictions, continued to insist that I stop what I was doing and do instead what it wanted me to do, ie head to the nearest Starbucks, or it wouldn't let me proceed with full attention to the task at hand. And if I tried to ignore its persistent demands, it would punish me with exhaustion, fatigue, and'oh-I-can't-possibly-think-straight-without-my-cuppa-java.'

So I threw the bum out. Just a little over a week ago. Yes, I did have the classic
Coffee Withdrawal Headache, but it was pretty mild. More than anything, I just felt tired, one day sleeping in two- to- four hours shifts for a total of about fourteen hours.

I am replacing it with a decaf green tea Chinese herbal concoction. Already I feel better.

The Sidhe Have Visited My Room Again

I was inspired by watching a documentary about the poet Gary Snyder at tonight's San Francisco Film Festival to return to my poetic roots and post a poem instead of prose.





(Originally published as "The Visit" in So To Speak, George Mason University, Winter/Spring, 2002)



The Sidhe have visited

my room again, moved the pieces

of furniture, left footprints

all along my floor and walls.

Petals from a strange and sudden

flower still float on the water

in my sink of dirty dishes.

It is morning and I

press my face against the air

trying to see in. The room is quiet.







My great-grandmother was small

and dark, and nobody knows

where she came from. Learn

from me, she says in her night voice

the web of moon cast

upon the earth. Feel it

trembling in your fingers

like a fisherwoman's net, and pull

the silver fish upon the shore.

They are heavy,but they are all

yours, every one of them speaking

an undiscovered language.



There is singing, the Sidhe said

brushing their lips against my ears.

It is all

Around There is a symphony

of wild sound beneath the surface.

Unmeasured and chaotic, the river

is always longer and wider than

you thought, and the bridge is never

where you expect it to be.



The Sidhe have come and gone.

They have rearranged the night

taken off my skin

and folded the difference

into my bones.







My great-grandmother lays the fish upon the sand

the ones with torn bellies and gaping mouths

the ones with knowing eyes

the ones already turning into flowers

She moves her tongue behind her teeth

and names them, one by one.





It is morning, and I am full

of forgetting. I drain the water

from the sink and begin to wash

the dishes. A single petal clings

to white porcelain. I leave it.

The rushing water sings. And I

in my waking slumber hum

the dim memory of an aching

distant music.



The ocean breaks.

My great-grandmother with her muscled arms

pulls, and hauls the net upon the shore.

Silver scales still luminous in dark waters.

Learn to cast the web of moon upon the sea.

And bring the fishes home, she says.

They are all yours.



---Lisa Gale Garrigues





Image: "Sidhe Queen" by Angie Bowen.

Avatar

Today I read a Yahoo news story which announced that there were 'hidden' anti-war, pro-environment messages in the film "Avatar."

Shocking.

I saw Avatar a few days ago. The script had every " Dances With Wolves" cliche in the book, but the movie was fun to watch, and the message was pretty clear: Don't Mess with Mama Earth.

Good Stuff: Those 'hidden' messages. Strong women characters. Fantastic visuals and special effects. A turncoat member of the "Jar-Head" Clan.

Dumb Stuff: White guy becomes 'hero-god' to blue indigenous colored people and saves the day. Silly tails growing out of indigenous aliens' butts.

Thank You

(photo: Lisa Gale Garrigues)


...for red and green.
...for veins and branches
...for the circle
...for the unseen tree
...for the light

Happy Thanksgiving!

Monkey on My Back

Several people have asked me what that thing is on my shoulder in my profile photo. So I will now let the secret out: it's a monkey. The monkey and I were in the backyard of a tiny café in a Peruvian jungle town called Salvacion, where I was on an investigative assignment for the newspaper Indian Country Today.

I have never really considered monkeys my power animals, preferring the grace of birds or the sensual power of cats, or even the tricksterish freedom of the coyote, or the haunting midnight song of the wolf. But here I am in my profile photo with a monkey on my back.

What’s up with that?

“Monkey on my back” is an expression which apparently originated with heroin users, who have said they have to feed their addiction because if they don’t it feels like they have a monkey on their back.

So this little monkey in my photo is a public confession that I am an addict. Not to heroin—much too costly and messy. But to a number of other things. To writing, for instance, this endless stream of self-generated gibberish which sometimes brings me to extraordinary focus and clarity, and sometimes just gibbers. To exploration, to the unseen image or realization or friendship that lies just around the corner, the boat tied up on the dock and ready to sail, the doors of the next train sliding open, the rickety bus to the next jungle town. To…coffee with one t-spoon of sugar and some cream. To a really good novel that seduces me into its world. To paintings whose colors and textures rearrange the blood in my veins. To the news that I can’t get on CNN, and have to rummage around the internet to find. To intelligent conversation.

Well, I could go on, but you get the idea.

I am also addicted to spiritual books and teachings that talk a lot about the Monkey Mind, that chattering and addictive self that won’t let you just sit under the Boddhi tree and be peacefully enlightened. I offer you this Self-Portrait-with-Monkey as a public acknowledgement that I am no longer fighting my Monkey Mind. I have it, as you can see, on a very thin string. But it will probably always have something to say to me. So now I just listen. And eventually, when it’s had its say, it usually shuts up.

Finally, what I like about monkeys is that they remind me so much of our own species--they are like tiny rambunctious humans that throw our own silliness back in our face. So I proudly wear this monkey on my shoulder because I think most humans take themselves much too seriously, myself included.

Susan Atkins Dies: Memories of Charles Manson and His Girls

Susan Atkins, ex-Charles Manson follower and convicted murderer of Sharon Tate, died today. Her death brought me back to when I was fifteen years old and stared across the room at Charles Manson.

The room was a courtroom in Los Angeles, crowded with spectators who had stood in line for hours outside to witness a trial that shocked the nation. Tate, more than eight months pregnant, and several others, had been found stabbed to death, apparantly in a brutal crime spree by a cult of drug-addled young people.

The doors of the courtroom had just opened, and I was filing into my seat with two of my high school friends. I had long red hair down to my waist and was wearing a green 'granny dress', and knee high boots. My teenage friends also looked like hippies.

Just before I found my seat, I turned to look at Charles Manson, the defendant, and found him staring at me. I had seen his face plastered all over the newspapers in Los Angeles---the crazy wide eyed stare that left no doubt that he was capable of doing the things he had been accused of.

To my shock, I found that the face I was staring into was not the same face that I had seen in the newspapers. "Charlie" was smiling at the three of us, a big wide beaming smile that indicated he felt we had come as supporters and welcomed that. His face had no trace of the craziness of that other newspaper photo. His smile was infectious, luminous, charming, as he beamed it across the room at us.

And we smiled back. Why? Because we thought he was innocent, we thought he had been framed. The societal and generational divisions of that time were so deep that some of us who were in the 'counter culture' thought that anytime someone who was relatively young and looked like a hippie was arrested, he or she must have been framed.

Linda Kasabian, one of the Manson girls who had turned witness for the prosecution, was speaking.

I don't remember exactly what she said, but I remember looking across the room at her and again being struck by how 'normal' she looked, this soft-spoken, dark-haired,conservatively dressed young woman.

Out in the hallway on break, I met "Squeaky" Fromme, another Manson follower who went on to be convicted for the attempted assasination of Gerald Ford, and who was recently released from prison just a few weeks ago.

She was blonde, tiny and pixiesh, with an open face and an earnest expression. She definitely could have been 'the girl next door'.

Except for the red X etched in her forehead, a protest emblem that all the Manson girls had put there as a symbol of solidarity for Charlie.

"Of course Charlie is innocent," she said. "How could they possibly be doing this to him?"

I was fifteen, raised on super-hero comic books and good-and-evil Westerns. Murderers weren't supposed to look like this, not like smiling charmers and sweet-faced girls next door. In the comic books and movies, you can always tell who the murderers are by their slimey aura and the evil they emanated.

Murderers were not Us. They were Them.

The Charles Manson trial shocked me out of that presumption. These kids looked exactly like me and my friends, and that was horrifying.

Despite all the talk of being 'framed', I sensed somehow that they had done the things they were accused of doing.

Later, after I became a criminal investigator and investigated many a murder trial, I learned how easy it is for a sociopath or psychopath to put on a convincing front. But I also learned how easy it is for a seemingly 'normal' person to slip in a matter of minutes from innocent to murderer--an instant of rage, a drug-filled evening, a descent into individual or group madness that in which you are convinced in absolute self-righteousness that 'the other' deserves to die.

"She deserves to die a horrible death, after all she's done," said a part of me when I saw Susan Atkins dying on the news. This was probably the part that knows what it's like to survive the murder of someone you love.

But another part of me, the part that I prefer to breathe into, saw that her attorney James Whitehouse had married this creature who did the unspeakable, this "sociopath." I watched him coaching her as she recited the Lord's Prayer and I saw the palpable love that passed between the two of them on her death bed.

And I was happy for her, that no matter what she's done, she was able to die next to someone who loved her.