And now take the time to write, knit, weave and crochet... I eat good food, I walk the dog and I care about what people think about everything. While I have shelter and sustenance, I am calm and peaceful, but I'm not assured that the serenity I live in now will abide if I were to lose my income and lived under a bridge. I do not live under any illusions that life is fair. I have had too much heartbreak to believe in justice and so have you.
We planned on going to the beach today. It’s going to be 95ﾟ here in Portland and 87ﾟ on the coast.
Why would we decide to go to the beach this weekend in particular, I don’t know? Being 3rd generation Portland resident I know what going out to the beach from Portland to any of the beaches on the Pacific coast looks like.
It means that on the 1st hot day of Spring, it will be most assuredly bumper to bumper traffic on both highway 26 and 30. If there’s an accident it will surely make a 90 minute trip and push it into 3 or 4 hours.
When it’s a sunny and warm day in springtime after a long, dark and wet Winter, everyone will be heading to the beach. Well, not everyone but a lot of people. On top of that, its Mother’s Day weekend.
So we decided to stay home. There will be plenty of time for us to go to the beach when it’s not going to be a major holiday.
Also I’m born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. We’re not used to hot and sunny days on the coast. We’re used to waking up to a thick fog or mist hanging on the Coast Range and burning off… maybe, later in the day. In the summer we bring sweatshirts to the beach and long pants to change into after we venture out into the ice cold Pacific Ocean. Even putting your toes in this water can cause them to turn blue, as well as your lips.
So because we didn’t want to fight traffic, we stayed home. Jesse came over, Hannah bought groceries and Jesse put his chef talent to work on a Spanish tortilla. As you see from the photos, it was a beautiful sight to behold and a marvelous gastronomical experience.
Jesse, with his extraordinary knife skills, cut potatoes to bake partially in the oven and broccoli to par boil and onions to caramelize. These ingredients were layered in a cast iron skillet. Then he mixed eggs and almond milk and all sorts of herbs and spices to pour over the layered mixture. While we’re all waiting, he cooked the bacon and the sausages in the oven.
It was well worth the wait. Since Jesse is a chef you can’t say that breakfast would have been better in a restaurant. We had our own restaurant type brunch right here at home.
I love being with the family: my two children who are here in Portland minus Tracy who is in Phoenix and my 2 grandchildren. And to my surprise they ordered me a new pair of Birkenstock sandals.
I don’t think we missed out going to the beach at all. No one was the least bit disappointed.
We ate all but one slice of the tortilla but I’ve noticed, when I looked in the refrigerator, that that one piece is disappearing bite by bite.
We had some repairmen from the electric company doing some work at the house today. Of course, Yum Yum the dog, would prefer that they weren’t here. So, she’s at the door checking their work and barking at them.
I was texting somebody using voice to text and this is what the voice recorder picked up when Yum Yum started to bark at them.
“Rock rock, eagle rock. Water, Water. It’s about 11, right? What, what, what?”
This story of elder women, whose wisdom is sought by the young sounds really nice but is not relatable to many and I might speculate, to most.
I believe I speak for many when I say, no one listens to me. No one thinks I have elder wisdom. No one wants to hear my stories, nor do they want to tell me theirs. No one has that much time for me.
Often, I’m not believed when I tell my stories or even offer my opinion on serious subjects. My education is not respected.
There are smirks when I speak. And they argue with me over what I know I know or what I might have just read. My knowledge is dismissed. I’ve learned not to press, instead I walk away silent.
However, I like being my age. I like the experiences I’ve had. I like looking back, as I have much more time for memories now. In fact, I have much more time behind me than I have in front of me.
So, I like at least to write or to tell myself the stories of my life. I hope I have a lot more time to write and to remember. I’m not there yet, though I know I will pass away, to wish to die as I have heard the elderly say.
I’m not holding my breath for a time I might be needed. Times when what I’ve learned will be interesting to someone. Times when others choose to listen or to read what I think.
Times have changed and I wonder if wise ones, crones, the grandmothers and grandfathers have a place anymore. Though I know that in some cultures the elders still hold value.
In our culture, often the elders are put away or choose to live distant from family and friends, in retirement homes or if they need assistance, in nursing homes or they spend their days alone at home.
People are busy holding down one, two or more jobs just to get by. They query each other, “has anyone called grandma or grandpa today or aunt Phyllis or aunt Elaine?” “No” is most often the response, I’ll try to get there tomorrow or I’ll try to call this weekend.”
I know it’s not just me who holds little intellectual or spiritual value to anyone. It’s not for lack of love for I know I am loved and loved deeply. But I know many elder care workers. This story is far too common when the crones, the grandparents are dropped off to pass away, unwanted.
I am glad when I hear that there are those elders who are still respected and still hold value in their communities. I listen to the “wisdom speakers”. Some of them are old and some of them are quite young. Their wisdom gets me through life.
I listened, even as a child, to my grandmother and to my mother when they told me the stories of their childhoods and their lives as wives and mothers and their careers. I loved hearing about their joys, their heartbreaks, what it was like to live in a different era. I wish I could remember more of what they told me. Sometimes I wish they were still here today so that I could tap into their wisdom.
But this is not my story. The crone, the wise elder is not my experience. I’m finding it easier to be quiet more often.
………………………………………………….
Below is the original post that inspired my response.
One day you wake up, look in the mirror and see the crone, the hag, the elder, the wise one grinning back at you. She’s laughing; you thought she would never catch up to you, but she’s here! I tell you this is the place to celebrate, sing, dance, do ritual, howl, rage, laugh, keen to honor the old woman that is knocking at your door! Fling open that door now! We living in the times when your elder wisdom may be the very thing we need to carry on. The young folks starving for our wisdom and they might not even know it. Ancestors been walking through my dreams, knocking on my door, saying before you come to dance with us, call your wise women to lay down their down to the bone truths. This wisdom is needed now, folks are thirsty for the tongues of the grandmothers. Come on In – sit a spell, I ain’t going nowhere, I’m right here. Let me tell you a story and maybe you’ll share a few with me and the rest of the world that longs for the stories yet to be told.
When we were kids, Dad said we had to choose one of the many gardens in the backyard to keep weed free.
Mom worked nights and so slept during the day. On weekdays we were in school but on the weekends Dad was home and he liked to keep us busy. He was a big believer in chores. In the cold months we usually had to help with the dusting or other house work but in the summer we had chores outside.
Of all the gardens, I chose the garden underneath the nook windows that had a row of Japanese Quince. This side of the house faced North and so was generally shaded by the house. It seemed to be the perfect environment for the Japanese Quince. It was always damp under the bushes. A little bit of dark green moss grew on the surface of the dirt.
In the Spring, the bushes broke forth in riotous blossoms. They were, what I thought was a perfect shade of pink, with a hint of orange giving them a deep hue of salmon.
Nothing grew underneath the hard stems covered in wicked thorns. The moss did a good job of acting as mulch creating a weed free environment. You would only need to get close to the bushes for those thorns to seemingly reach out and grab your hair or your clothes. If you were that unlucky you would probably end up with a tear in your sleeve or end up crying trying to untangle your hair from the thorn.
It was strange that a child would prefer these bushes to any of the other flower gardens in the yard. But I loved them and I love them to this day.
And now that I look back on that time, I think it was not at all strange that Dad would let me choose a garden that needed no weeding. You were the best dad in the world, Dad.
“Get a black rooster”, he said. “Keep it 30 days, then after, bring it to me”, he said, his eyes squinted behind thick cigar smoke.
He is big and white with close cropped grey hair that stands on end in a military style crew cut. He has an imposing bearing and a deep voice. His glasses are modern and wire rimmed. His fingers gleam with rings with diamonds and other precious stones and his wrists with bracelets and an expensive watch. Around his neck are strings of beads in black and red and others in pure white. I couldn’t guess his age… maybe 40s or maybe 70s. He exudes a casual sexual energy, a pervading sensuality. He laughs often and with ease, but some how he is serious, serious as a heart attack. When he speaks, you are compelled to listen.
Charles owns Botanica Manuel. In the front window of the storefront, in a seedy part of town, he stocks herbs and incense, oils, statuary of the orishas, and malas of many colors. A life size statue of a black Latino peasant, stands with its feet among paraphernalia. This is Manuel, beside him is a statue of Manuel’s wife. This is Charles’ “dog”, his personal spirit guide, guardian and servant. But in the back, behind a curtain is a different scene, a different world. His shop is small and crowded, though from what I gathered, is not the source of his relative wealth.
Charles is a Santero, a priest in Santeria and a practitioner and priest of Palo. He is not to be messed with. It’s something you just know, you can feel it. There is danger lurking and yet a profound love.
I know as I follow my mentor, Don Cosentino, through a black curtain into a tiny room, that I need to keep my mouth shut. There are chairs in a circle. The space is dark. It takes a while for my eyes to adjust in the darkness. There are others sitting closely together. There’s an air of anticipation.
Today, as I write this post, my memory fails to recall everything in this room. It is cramped with many accoutrement but there is a vision that no amount of time can erase. Next to me appears to be a fire pit. There are railroad spikes, dirt, ashes, bones, a nganga filled with sticks and other things I can’t make out. There’s a chicken’s head that from the bloody neck, appears to have been freshly killed, and a goat’s skull. I see ornately beaded walking sticks and against another wall, drums bedecked with bells and woven shoulder straps.
A nganga is an iron receptacle or a cauldron used for ritual and is used as a source of power. It can contain many things such as sticks, feathers, railroad spikes, graveyard dirt, ashes of humans and animals and animal skulls and they have been known to contain even a more power source, a human skull. It is within this cauldron that the spirit of the dead resides, or as it is known as, the dog. This spirit does the bidding of its owner and assists in divination according to the pact made between them. Manuel is Charles’ “dog” to do his bidding.
About the time it started to feel very close, Charles walks in. He is dressed all in white. He appears to have a crippled foot on which he can barely put any weight. He wears a pained expression. Charles is now inhabited by Manuel, a former slave in his life on earth, who was injured in work and by abuse. He sits and greets us with familiarity and affection but with a certain authority. He is handed a cigar at least 8″ long and 2″ in diameter. An assistant offers a light. He pulls on it until smoke billows into the air, hindering our sight. He appears blind and yet seems to see every detail of each person in the room. We are in the presence of the living dead.
Manuel, once he is settled, begins to call out each person in the room. He tells them about their lives, he chastises them for their faults, he encourages them to do better, at some, he shows disdain and anger. I become worried as he hasn’t called me out yet. He has not made eye contact with me. Perhaps, he has nothing to say to me… but then he turns to me, without any type of expression on his face, and I know he’s looking at me, though his eyes seem blind.
I don’t remember what he said. I didn’t… couldn’t record him. I was paralyzed. I heard the words but couldn’t “hear” them. Even now, when I let myself go, I can remember the gentleness in which my heart was revealed. It was no use to try to obscure secrets buried just under the surface. He called them out… one by one. I remember the rumble, the powerful sounds coming from his throat, his mouth, that caused me to tremble and the tears that came unbidden. Then, his voice became clear like an instructors, “get a black rooster and after 30 days, bring it to me.”
What happened after that, I don’t know, but all I could think was, “where do I get a black rooster”. I knew without a doubt that I was going to do what he asked. I stepped out of the back room behind the curtain, into the sunlit shop. It felt like I had left one world and entered another. I felt slightly disoriented. Charles came behind and others in the shop gathered around him. He was not limping. Amidst the chatter, I made my way to the counter and asked the man standing there where I could find a live black rooster, as if I was asking a clerk at the drug store where to find the dandruff shampoo. Without hesitation, like he got this question all the time, he wrote down an address. I took it.
The bright LA sun was still shining. “I might as well go pick up this chicken while I’m out here”, I thought. Like that wasn’t weird enough, I did it. I found the address in a part of LA I’d never been before. There were blocks of warehouses and delivery trucks. I pulled over in front of a building and parked. Like I knew what I was doing, I entered a large dim and dust filled warehouse. There were cages of poultry of every kind. A man approached me and asked in Spanish, ¿”que quiere”? Luckily, I speak Spanish. Timidly, I asked for a black rooster.
Without hesitation, and within a couple of minutes, the man handed me a cardboard box with a young black rooster in it. I paid a small price and took the box out to my car and set it in my back seat like I did this everyday.
At the time, I was a graduate student at UCLA in the fields of folklore and mythology and my focus was Cuban spirituality. I would be writing about my experiences for my thesis. But this was not my 1st rodeo. I had lived with a Santero. I won’t go into my life with him now since I have written about it in other blog posts but suffice it to say, this was not new to me. Animal sacrifice was a natural part of this religion and I knew what I was in for. I knew the destiny of this black rooster.
I was living in Santa Monica, just blocks from the ocean, in a small garage conversion. I took the box out of my back seat and took it in to my small apartment setting the box down in my kitchen. The rooster was quiet and calm. It didn’t make a sound and it didn’t make a sound for the entire month that it lived in my kitchen. Perhaps, he knew his destiny, as well. Perhaps, he felt honored to be a part of this sacrifice.
Over the next 30 or so days, I fed the rooster and I talked to him and cared for him in every way. I was growing attached and began to feel bad for how his life would end. He would look up at me out of the bottom of the box with one eye and his head cocked as if to say, “don’t worry. I know what’s going on”.
After 30 days, I once again put the box with the black rooster in the back seat of my car and headed for Charlie’s botanica.
I don’t know if Charlie had written down on a calendar or in his ritual book that in 30 days I would be coming back but he didn’t seem at all surprised when I walked in the door. Maybe this was a regular occurrence and he knew exactly what was coming in the door. One of the people behind the counter took my box from me and headed through the curtain to the back room. The rooster remained silent.
Just as before, people had gathered in the botanica and had slowly drifted into the back room to sit in a circle to wait for Charlie to arrive as Manuel. Just as before, Charlie arrived. He addressed each and everyone in the circle, just as before. I grew impatient. I looked around for the box but didn’t see it.
Finally, in what seemed like hours, Manuel departed and Charlie sat there in front of us. Slowly, much slower than what I wanted, everyone moved in to the botanica to chat, perhaps to buy things that Charlie had suggested for ritual. Charlie motioned for me to stay seated and he left to say goodbye to the others.
A short middle aged man came to me and motioned for me to follow him through some curtains into a larger room behind the room where we gathered. I don’t remember a lot about this room except that it was more brightly lit and had the air of a kitchen with a sink with running water and tiled floors and I don’t remember what else because, of course, I was getting nervous. I felt cold. I felt a chill run down my spine as I stood there.Where was my rooster?
Charlie came in but didn’t look at me. He was prepared and he was going to do what he was prepared to do. This is what I remember… that I stripped to my underwear. Charlie approached me holding a large knife and my black rooster by its feet. My rooster didn’t make a peep. It hung there as though dead but its eyes were darting about. I was getting colder and began to shake.
Charlie held the rooster by its feet while he rubbed the live rooster all over my body from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. He was speaking but I didn’t understand what he said. He wasn’t speaking in English nor was he speaking in Spanish. When he was done with me, swiftly, with one slash, Charlie cut off the rooster’s head. The rooster bled into a cauldron where its head had landed, still with no objection.
It was clean and swift. The other man said that I could put my clothes back on and Charlie walked out of the room after he placed the rooster back in my box in a bag. I had previously received instruction that after the ritual I would take the rooster’s body to a graveyard and leave it there. I had looked up the address I was given and was prepared to leave the sacrifice among the dead.
After this, I didn’t see Charlie again until my next visit to the botanica. I had heard from other Santeros that after these kind of rituals there is a kind of exhaustion that takes place and I suppose that Charlie had gone to rest.
I guess there’s a certain kind of familiarity among law enforcement and cemetery personnel, because it was explained to me that finding dead roosters or other kinds of accoutrement in graveyards was not so strangely rare. But I was warned to be discreet. There were certain graveyards that were more tolerant.
I arrived at the graveyard sitting on a hill. It was late afternoon and the sun was bright but low in the sky. I walked among the gravestones and thought about what I had just experienced. I wanted this time to be personal and to be meaningful. As I mentioned before, I had experienced many things living among the Cubans but this was the first time I had been the center of this ritual.
I left the rooster next to a gravestone that was the oldest that I could find. I thanked him for what he had sacrificed for me. I walked slowly back to my car enjoying the sunshine and the heat. My body still felt cold. I drove through LA towards the beach and my home away from home.
Though I remember a great deal about this, still much of it is from my memory. Since I didn’t write down the details after they happened, all I have is my memory.
Though this story may seem strange and gruesome to you, my readers, to me these are, yes strange and extraordinary but they make up the person that I am today and I am grateful for that.
I realize that this story of mine leaves a lot that is not explained, But there’s more writing to be done and there are previous blog posts that go into some detail about living with a Santero and among the many Cubans that I met in the late 1990s.
This post is not intended to be instructional or specifically educational but it is true. Truer than true.
I’m coming close to the toe on the first sock of a pair. Haven’t I showed these to you already? I can’t remember.
They’re “DK Vanilla Socks” by Kay at Crazy Sock Lady Designs.
The design is simple and unadorned but not necessarily an easy knit. I’m using Spun Right Round’s Squish DK, which is a 100% superwash merino (wool). I prefer not using super wash or anything with synthetic material added to the yarn, but when giving a gift one never knows how the recipient will wash the item. As they say, “Better safe than sorry”. Right?
The colorway is called, “Quake”. It’s really beautiful with a solid but subtle grey background with shades of browns and blacks and darker greys interspersed throughout.
The yarn is sourced from South America and is dyed in small batches so every skein is unique in it’s speckling and saturation. It’s then rinsed in a lavender wash before it’s ready for us crafters.
If I have underestimated the amount I need to complete a pair of socks, I will not be able to find the exact same yarn. But I’ve never found that to be that important. I kind of like the variations.
Now I remember why this seems familiar to me. I used this very same yarn to knit a pair of socks some years ago. But those had a variation of yarn colors for the toes and the heels. You may remember.
Sock knitting is not my favorite kind of knitting but I was pleasantly surprised when pressured by my daughter to knit her socks that it was something I actually could do. I don’t know how many I’ve knit since that 1st pair.
Since I started knitting late in life, I’ve since surprised myself now that I can knit sweaters and scarves and shawls and hats and mittens and gloves and all kinds of things. I knit lace work, stranded color work, cables and all kinds of designs and patterns.
Nothing I knit is perfect but it just goes to show that you CAN teach an old dog new tricks.
It was April 5th, 2023 at 4 o’clock in the afternoon when happy hour began. It was just 8 and a 1/2 hours before the pink moon arose at 12:34 am on the 6th.
Coincidentally, I awoke just at 12:34 without prompting. There were no bells that rang. There were no sounds outside of the house nor light that entered my room. I simply awoke.
I wasn’t surprised that it was at just that moment that I stirred and sat up. These things often happen to me. They probably happen to you too and if you’re paying attention you will notice them. Perhaps you look at the clock just at 11:11 or 3:33. I often wake up at exactly 12 o’clock midnight. Always in my mind, the thought arises, and I say, “it is the witching hour”. I don’t want to think those words but there they are.
Without intention, my friend and I planned to get together on this date a week or more before, never occuring to us that there might be significance. Perhaps it did occur to her being that she is deeply knowledgeable in astrology. If she did, she didn’t mention it to me.
I texted her early in the morning wondering if we were going to meet at her house or go out for food. It was then that she said she wanted to go to the Sapphire Hotel having never been there before.
I was excited by this prospect having been there several times previously. I knew the food was good, maybe even better than good and I knew the drinks were exceptional and extraordinary.
The hotel is squeezed between a coffee shop and a framing shop at the end of a busy business district known as Hawthorn. It’s one of those areas filled with bars, restaurants, bookstores, ritual shops and grocers. There’s only a small sign on the window painted in gold announcing it’s location. The windows were dark but I could see the small candles that burned inside and the brooding ambient light, the only evidence that it was open.
The Sapphire Hotel has a dark and shady past, having once housed a brothel. Such is the history of Portland, Oregon. Like most, if not all port cities, they hold deep and dangerous secrets hidden in their past.
We were the 1st to enter. We left the daylight behind us and chose a table tucked against the wall, a candle on the table, already flickering in the dim room. The dark wooden walls and floors, the oriental carpets and red velvet drapery alluded to the mysteries that lay dormant.
“How many of the people who come here know of its history”, I wondered. I could name many hotels and restaurants with seeedy pasts that housed whores and entertained criminals. But Portland has become a city of transplants. Not many anymore have been around long enough to care about its past.
We pondered over the drink menu with its many strange names. Finally I settled on a “Wai Fai password”. Mango with dark rum and heavily spiced. She ordered an “Aquarius”, astringent with Campari, reminiscent of a Negroni but sweeter. We ordered salty, mapley bacon wrapped dates and Korean bbq wings so spicy it took two before my mouth and lips got used to the heat. We lingered over these, leaning into each other, as we shared what we had been reading, studying, doing and worrying about since we last met.
Time passed as we enjoyed each other’s company. Maybe it was an hour when we decided to order our entree. It would be a medium rare steak with chimichurri sauce, roasted and seasoned potatoes and steamed fennel laced broccoli for us both. It is a rare occasion for me to eat beef but knowing what I knew already about the food here, I gave it a try.
The steak was thick and tender, slightly pink in its interior with a spoonful or two of the chimichurri so as not to overwhelm the flavor of the beef. This was one of those times that I thanked the universe that I had given up on veganism.
Still the conversation simultaneously and continuously wandered from topic to topic in some organic way that only we could follow, as again we lingered over our food and our 2nd drink. Perhaps another hour or more passed, we weren’t counting the minutes.
Because my friend had named our dinner out, “fuck it”, having been through a bit of suffering lately, we added dessert and a 3rd drink. Dessert was a dark, appearing almost black in the candle light, lava cake on a large plate surrounded by a scoop of vanilla ice cream, more than a dollop of whipped cream and a drizzle of caramel. We wanted coffee drinks to counter the sweetness but my Spanish coffee was laden with rum, kahlua, tuaca and another coffee liqueur but I declined the whip cream. Her drink of choice was a surprising Campari laced coffee with a whip of Negroni cream. “What?”, You might say, but it was extraordinarily pleasant leaving the mouth slightly dry.
Again, we lingered. We had drunk and eaten to our pleasure limit. By now we had spent 4 lush hours and we weren’t done yet but we gathered up our coats and bags and reluctantly departed. We slowly made our way to the car while petting dogs along the way: The big, black 12 year old, with his muzzle turning mostly white, with cloudy, rhuemy eyes and the one year old meat head pittie who wiggled and jumped on me to my delight.
We had a wonderful time at the Sapphire Hotel. But all things must come to an end. If like Buddha says, “Life is suffering” this was a pleasant reprieve. Thank you, my dear friend, for this respite.
Here is my new interim project, Fingerless gloves, “Leaves” from Valknitting by Valentina Fezova – Georgieva.
Is there a point where a project is messed up enough that you just can’t gift it? Well, that’s how I’m feeling.
It’s not that it was a difficult pattern, it’s that somehow I didn’t hit the mark on stitch counts. I ripped it all the way back one time and then decided, even though it wasn’t perfect, that I would continue to complete the left one.
The Turkish yarn, “Alize”, is simply described (in translation) as wooley wool but makes up only about half of the fibre. The other half is acrylic. Not my favourite, but I was considering the ease of washing and drying them and it wasn’t unpleasant to knit.
I’ve started the second one of the pair thinking that the first could just be practice. If it turns out better, I can knit another to match the good one and then it could still be a gift, right?
I don’t know why but this small project has shaken my confidence in my abilities. Isn’t it strange how small things can have such a big impact.
I think these gloves are so pretty and worth a second chance. If I can knit sweaters and large and small shawls and mittens and hats and even do colorwork, lace and cables, shouldn’t I be able to knit some fingerless mitts?
eyeamdust 