Captain’s Log Week of 1/17/20, Mexico to Tucson
This blog is about living aboard a boat in the Pacific Northwest and snow-birding to Arizona while training an artificial intelligent mental health virtual assistant named Rubi ready to provide support in the traumatic aftermath of COVID-19.
As a family we took a trip to Los Algadones, Mexico, known to be a tourist trap just across the border. And though not the real Mexico, we enjoyed bartering for additional things to decorate the RV. I bought a nice kitchen rug woven in the central part of Mexico. It was beautiful and I bartered only a bit as I realized the skill of the people who made it by hand and its true value. On the drive back from Mexico, it was preplanned for me to split ways and meet up with my friend Gary Evens, in Gila Bend. We met at the only “memorable” place in Gila Bend, the Space Age Restaurant. Gary was a fellow entrepreneur who had worked with Lynn at Hospital Jobs Online. He happened to be snow birding in Arizona in his vintage Toyota Winnebago Warrior RV and we had arranged for him to pick me up there after our Mexican trip so I could go to visit friend Terry Jackson, and attend a Powwow in Tucson.
Both remembering that Lynn’s spirit was with us, we set out, at a snail’s pace, in Gary’s old Toyota and after hours of driving and reminiscing, spend the night with Gary’s friend Stephanie, just outside of Tucson.
The next day Gary arranges for my own private tour of Gammon’s Gulch, a ghost town movie set. Stephanie and Gary met on the movie set where their mutual filmmaker friend was using it as a location to film his 12 westerns in 12 months series. I was impressed by that filmmaking endeavor as well as Gammon’s Gulch and made a mental note to explore the possibility of telling stories in the western genre as the woman that maintained Gammon’s Gulch was a joy.
The next day, Stephanie, her two young children, Gary and I met with Terry, coauthor of Wild and Wise Women Around the World, to experience a Native American Pow Wow. I had no idea what to expect other than Terry telling me to dance only when invited, and when she invited me, I’d have to where a shawl out of respect. Terry had a shawl ready for me, arranged it over my shoulders, and shoulder to shoulder, we were out in the middle of the gymnasium, shuffling around to the beat of drums in a circular motion around the dance floor. It was a drum beat that reverberated the soul and I was curious of the meaning behind all the dances. Some dances, had solo dancers, and were quite elaborate. Most were group dances. Not all invited white folk to dance along. And at one point, the dancing was interrupted, and I wasn’t allowed to take photos with my GoPro. An eagle feather had been dropped! Terry came over to me to explain that this was a sacred ritual to indicate that things must be put back in order. It was not right for a sacred eagle feather as part of the regalia, to touch the ground. The elders did a little ceremony and before I knew it, the drums were pounding again, and the Natives were back to dancing.
The next day, Gary and I met with Terry for lunch for a sort of friendly debriefing of the shared experience. As a white outsider, I was confused by what I had seen. The meaning of the dances, drums, music, chanting, the Eagle feather ritual, were all lost on me. I was waiting for Terry to tell me some pow wow meanings and maybe even some inside information about shamanistic spirit quests in relation. I told her I got the impression of how important and serious each dance was by the very serious expression on each dancers face, and was expecting some revelations from Terry, but instead she told me the general themes and variations of Northern and Southern style dance beats and had nothing much to share. I realized that perhaps she too, did not know. It occurred to me as we talked deeper, that the meaning of the dances and rituals were lost for the whole tribe! I doubted this and thought that perhaps I was just not privy to this information as an outsider. What was certain was they were dancing a dance that essentially was the representation of a culture that had been slaughtered and oppressed, the details of their culture were maintained in the details of the dance moves, but the meaning was forgotten! I was utterly disappointed.
Gary and I made it safely back to north of Phoenix, at James parents where my RV was and that evening got a phone call from an old filmmaking friend, Alex. We got talking about the pow wow and rituals and he told me he had been invited to a few Mason meetings. And how the mason secrets, were just the ritual itself. He said the secret was that the ritual didn’t have any meaning, but the ritual was a representation for knowledge that they guarded. Which he thought was just the ritual itself. What a weird circular logic! I wondered if my grandpa may have been a mason because growing up, my mom had been a Job’s Daughter, the branch of the Mason’s designed for female kids. I remember trying my mom’s old robes on as a child and my mom telling me about how she guarded the rituals and held their secrets. When I asked her what the secrets were, she said it was the process of the ritual itself. I thought it was crazy.
Perhaps I am right. Perhaps that kind of thinking, and the lack of meaning, is what made my mom susceptible to going mad?