Primal Roots, A Continuing Story
All of my stories, save one, on Medium have been nonfiction dealing mostly with experiences and ideas in education. I have also published a novella of fiction this year and am now working on fiction that attempts to fill in some of the enormous blanks in our magnificent, but unwritten, common history, ancestry, and migration from Africa. The following is a proposed beginning of a series of that fictional work, a celebration of our common roots.
It is time for your walk old man, your chezman said a daily walk in nature would help you calm your jittery heart, body, and soul. She suggested that you might receive aspiration from the surrounding trees. So I put on my coat, it is early December in eastern France along the edges of Lac Léman, a historic corridor of human movement/migration. The walk starts on a dead-end street at the end of which is a gate into a thick, overgrown, old boxwood forest. I pass through the gate as I have so many times, but this time a blaze of white in the ivy catches my attention. I clear away the ground cover and pull out a staff of solid hardwood. It is as white as a desert-dried bone and about 2 meters long, thick enough around that I cannot close my hand on it. There is a little curl at the very top and a knot at elbow height to curl my forefinger around. It is a magician’s staff.
I continue on the path to the center of the wood, a place of magic itself. It is a clearing inside of two concentric circles of chestnut trees. The outside circle is 13 trees, evenly spaced. The inside circle is 8 trees, evenly spaced as well. The clearing within has 5 concentric circles of cobblestones, the outside 3 circles are 3 cobblestones wide and the inside 2 circles are 2 cobblestones wide. There is a single center stone. It is covered with fallen leaves, as I brush them aside the stone has the green glow of jade. The whole area is covered with rotten brown chestnut leaves and brilliant star-shaped yellow leaves of field maple. On the side of the clearing is a stone table, 30 cm thick, but broken in three pieces, it is surrounded by 5 stone stools.
I have been here many times. It is just a short walk from the house, but today the pattern of colors on the ground and the filtered autumnal light through the trees seems exceptional. I brush the leaves to the side with my feet to better see the stones. The center stone has the attraction of a jade centerpiece on the crown of a queen. For the first time I see a pit, a small pocket, in its center. It is filled with rotten leaves and dirt that I pull out with a finger. It is just bigger than the end of my new staff so I stand up, take the staff in two hands and use the end as a sort of drill to get to the bottom of the pit. As the staff hits the bottom I feel a pulse, a vibration. I pull the staff out quickly, running my hands over its hard texture. I place both hands on the staff again, forefinger around the knot, and put the end back into the pit. Again I feel the pulse, the vibration, building in intensity and traveling through my body. I find myself in a thick fog. I stand still, raise the staff from the pit, and see the sun through the haze. The fog slowly rises and I see a man seated at the intact stone table. His skin is the color of burnished bronze.
The man has his hand raised, palm up and in my direction, apparently offering me a seat in front of him. “Come,” he says, “we can share some stories” He is dressed in east indian clothing, his head covered in a turban. Within the turban, on his forehead, is a figure in bronze of a man seated in the lotus position. “Share some stories?” I ask.
“ Yes, as you reach the end of your days. You may remember being enchanted into life with stories, perhaps it is time for balancing that beginning. We may be able to influence a shared outcome.”
“The story should start with you, Do you have a name, how do you come to be here.”
“The questions have complex and deep answers that will need some time to explain and to understand. I am known by many names, in many places. To some, I am a woman and to some a man. I have stayed present and ubiquitous to provide understanding and compassion. I share stories and I appear to special people at exceptional times and places.”
We are seated at the stone table, unexplainably intact and surrounded by a stone bench. We are in the woods that I walk through routinely, but today, particularly, they breathe magic: wood rot, mushrooms and moss hanging from tree limbs filter the air and sunlight. The morning had started with a meeting with my naturopath, a healer. I think of her as my shaman (chezman, or in fact, chezwoman). I am feeling my age and am maybe looking for some rejuvenation. She had suggested walks in nature, finding a synergy of aspiration to become myself as life flows downhill. I had the feeling of having fought my way to the top of the hill, now it was difficult to go with the flow on the way down.
“So you have some stories to share with me, where do we start?”
“I suggest that we start at an important turning point, Just as humans leap forward in communication, first with music and then with the beginnings of language. At a time when humans kept to the shadows and trees to stay alive. They mostly gathered nuts, seeds, roots, and fruit for food. They had only just a few more words than many of the surrounding apes, but through complex sequences of mutations and natural selection, they had relatively sizable brains. Brains just waiting for acts of invention. With the mental conditions in place for these inventions it happened more or less simultaneously for multiple groups of these early humans.
Imagine a functioning group of humans, maybe 10–15 individuals, with some contact with other groups, before there was any real language when individuals had names taken from their surroundings. There was a special spark in the eyes of these humans. This personal spark learned how to generate real sparks through flint and friction. This was the birth of a huge new power and it was accompanied, over time, by two other powers. Besides being gatherers these groups had been mostly carrion eaters, lacking the language for coordinated kills. Imagine breaking bones for marrow over the roots of giant trees. Some trees naturally amplify vibrations, and some with hollow segments do this very well. These humans quickly became drummers and used this for communication and pleasure. Music and rhythm are more primal than language.
Now imagine, yes, imagine, we have our group around a fire at night. They have basic names, they have some sort of language and music. What do they do? They sing and chant, and may just start to tell stories. They have a carving of a lion’s head raised above them opposite the fire. Let’s look closer at a particular group. They refer to the leader as Lion, and next to him is a woman they call Wind, she is a shaman, singer storyteller. She has them start with a silent bow in the direction of the lion’s head. All of them have a stick and a hollow log to beat a rhythm. Wind has a thin hollow bone that she blows into sometimes to make a unique sound. They work with limited language to tell a story together. Wind has asked Hawk and Gazelle to describe what they have seen today. They have come back to the camp after a scouting trip very excited and have pulled everyone together.”
“We climb Lizard Back, snake-like, silent. We see down, and fear,” Hawk says. “We know lion family there,” he says, drawing a circle at his feet. “We see big people here,” and he draws a second circle. “Lizard-back here,” and he draws a line, leaving the two circles on the same side of the line. “We here,” he says, drawing a circle on the opposite side of the line. “Much fear.”
“Ohh, lions we know, take care. Big people do not know. Do they dress as lions, do they lower head to lions, are they one with lions, are lions the one?” Wind asks all.
Lion stands up. “ We are one with lions, not one with big people.”
Hawk stands up, “Not fight big men, together make good hunt buffalo, zebra.”
Wind stands up, “ I have seen big men when I asleep. I see big men kill lions, take skin and burn. Big men not one with lion people.”
“Wait for them, go to them?” Lion asks. “Waiting is fear, moving is no fear. Get lions to move on big men, move lions with fire, lion people wait for big men, hide.”
Lion has two people light fires on the opposite side of the lion pride from the big men. Other lion people wait hidden in a gorge on the opposite side of the fire. The lions move away from the fire towards the big people, the big people move into the gorge. The lions attack the big people on one side and the lion people attack as the big people run. As the lion people regroup in victory they hear moans of pain. They find on the side a big man badly torn up by the lions, but not dead. “Kill or cure?” asks Wind. She has fear and suspicion of a big man cured, but she is a shaman, a healer. Wind takes the water gourd from her waist and puts it to the man’s lips. She takes a herbal pouch as well and covers the wounds with poultices. As she applies polstices to his legs she sees his wide eyes and hears his groans of pain, and then his eyes close. The big man makes a deep sound and tries to sit up, but Wind puts a hand on his chest. Wind gives him some more to drink and covers his chest with a big warm skin. Big Man closes his eyes and is unconscious.
Wind pulls a hollow bone from her rawhide belt and blows a soft haunting sound. She has found a bone with a hole along its length and plays with the pitch changes that happen when she covers and uncovers the hole. The others gather around and circle Big Man and drum softly on the ground with sticks, pound with their feet, and shuffle in a circle around Big Man, inert on the ground. They are all on Lizard Back as the sun starts to go down. Lion, with the help of two others, uses rawhide belts at Big Man’s shoulders and hips to lift him and they make a slow procession down the ridge to their fire. Big Man mumbles and grunts in pain and semi-consciousness as they carry him along. As the darkness surrounds the group at the fire they cut meat from a gazelle hindquarters with sharp-edged flint stones and place the pieces on flat stones next to the fire. They turn them, remove them, cut them into smaller pieces and pass them around for all to eat. Big Man’s eyes have opened, reflecting the firelight, he groans lightly and Wind passes him some meat. He smells it carefully, takes a small bite, and eats the whole piece. Wind passes him another and all eyes watch the two of them.
The next morning Wind comes to check on Big Man. His eyes are open as she washes the poultices off of his legs. The light is low and golden, the others are asleep. All is quiet. Wind’s long hair is down and her breasts swing freely as she applies the new poultices. Wind sees a big influence of her touch. She continues with attention to the wounds of Big Man’s thighs. Both look in each other’s eyes. Wind kneels with legs on either side of Big Man’s hips, hands over his mouth she rides and rides, sweat dripping on Big Man’s chest and biting her lips. Wind rests. She looks up to see Hawk across the clearing watching them.
To continue…?