misplaced mama

So. We’re all really sick of this fucking drought over here. My two year old knows rain only from books and stories I tell her. Her newsetLadyBug magazine’s theme is Spring rain showers and mud puddles and she asks me, “Mama, can we go get some rain at the store?” The store? The store? Hell yeah, hunny. We’re going to go get us some rain. But not at the store. Rain from the store sucks. We’re going to go do a rain dance. We are going to dance so hard, kick up so much dirt that that the sky will have to give us a shout-out.

If the government can fuck with the weather, so can we.

So we pack up our rain dance basket with:

1 weather stick (a lovely 3 foot long stick that my little nephew gave to me a while back. He spent hours widdling the bark off and presented it to me as a magical staff. Gotta love that kind of 12 year old).

2 unknown Los Angeles area bird’s feathers tied with hemp to the above weather stick. I found the feathers the night before I went into labor with Mia. They hung above me on the light fixture in the dark little room she was birthed in.

1 Owl feather given to me by my long lost friend Liz.

1 cunga drum

1 bracelet of bells given to Mia by our Midwife for Sula.

Dried beans, coins, seashells and herbs of offerings to those who live above, below and within (we brought lemongrass and meadowsweet because they were about to get thrown in our compost as they were too rancid to eat). Supposedly there is a special and sacred herb that the Hopi would use to offer for rain.

1 jar of green clay and a paintbrush to paint out faces.

Faith that somewhere we hold a bit of Kachine knowledge and beat.

We meet up with our friends Katie, Logan and Lily and together we drive through the stinky, constipated city and begin to ascend up to the top of South Mountain.

We painted the kids faces; circles for the girls, traingles for Logan. Mamas got special moons on our cheeks. We found the sacred spot with Logan (3 years old) as our leader. He led us to a flat rock-bed on the side of a hill where we could clearly see the brownish-yellowish-greenish layer of dirt/smog/nasty stuff that was causing the valley severe constipation. That was the layer that needed to be washed away by the rain, we told the kids.

We sprinkeled our offerings. We beat our drums. We shook our rattles. We dancecd. We danced like rain would sound. We did the Thunder-Clap. We laughed like we were volted with lightening. We hopped like frogs. We made up a rain song. We looked to the West and and tried to seduce the gray clouds that might have been passing by.

One raindance down. I thought all day long about how it has to work. Why not? We came from this Earth, from this dirt and this sea.

That night I was outside in my backyard breathing loudly in Half-Moon Pose, trying to keep my balance under the dark new moon and I felt a drop. It landed on my lifted left thigh. I layed down on the grass into sivasana and felt exactly 4 more drops of rain. And then nothing more. Not really anything to blog about…

The next day our dear friend Casper came over. Casper was born to a Hopi mama and a Navajo papa.

“Casper. The girls and I did a rain dance up top South Mountain.”

He laughs. I can only imagine what he thinks of my niave whiteness and all my careful questions about Hopi culture and the prophecies he sometimes refers to.

“Yeah, it didn’t really work.” Sigh.

He chuckles again and then tells me, “I remember when my grandma used to tell me how when she was little and they needed rain she’d sit on her porch and look up at the clouds and call them over to her. Just like that, she’d listen to the stomp and chant of the kachine and call the clouds over. Then it would rain. That was like 90 years ago. Hard to believe. Now the weather is so fucked up, pollution and shit messing up the cycles that even when we call upon the weather, it doesn’t work anymore.”

Oh great.

Have we completely lost the pure communion with Nature that brings upon harmony and prosperity to earth and it’s inhabitants? Do we actually have a powerful relationship with the universal cycles that just lays dormant? Are we that controlled to think that our weather connection is a channel on TV? Have we stepped beyond the point of no return where we wonder why the weather is totally wacky yet we are pretty unwilling to do anything about it like:

-walk -get involved in cultural movements -walk -pray -support alternative fuel sources -destroy all city Hummers and towering SUV’s (hehe) -talk to Nature and treat Nature like we would our dear friends.
-Learn to grow food -Shop fair trade and sustainable -walk -Stop shopping so much -Stop buying from big nasty companies that just piss all over the environment (learn who those people are). -Turn off the TV -Eat more greens -Breastfeed our kids for a long, long time -Teach kids we can’t buy rain and most things we are able to buy aren’t worth jack-shit -See some light in everything we look at, everything we touch -walk -build homes that are extentions of the Earth -Listen to nothing. Really listen. -Rain dance -Sun dance -pray -Learn to use our hands to heal -Walk -Slow the fuck down

I must take my own advice.

Anyway, it still has not rained. My skin is like leather. My hair is brittle. I am thirsty all the time. I live in a dust bowl. I have dark circles under my eyes. I wake up with cracked lips. And on a side note it’s been a really bad day hence my long-winded whine. I spent my last $13 on the worst kids movie ever made (Doogal) at the theater in a mall where I sat with other mothers whose rings on their left hand could seriously feed a small nation. Seriously. My husband gave me shit not only about dragging him to see the crappy movie, but dragging him to the most evil place on Earth: Fashion Square Mall. He told me to never take him back there again until he has tattoos all over his face and 2 gold front teeth so he can scare all the bling bling away (this needs a whole other entry entitled My Husband is Insane). Yes, he needs it to rain, too. Rain makes us all happier people. Nicer people.

We’re going to try the raindance again on the full moon. Why not.

The universe is our greatest teacher, our greatest friend. It is always teaching us the Art of Peace. Study how water flows in a valley strteam, smoothly and freely between the rocks. Everything—mountinas, rivers, plants and trees—should be your teacher.
-Morihei Ueshiba (O Sensi, founder of Aikido