Counting Coup by the Light of the (Super)Moon

under the oak beech
tree Saturday night 

 

A couple or so weeks ago, I met a wolf leading an Apache-Inuit man down the street.  The wolf, named Ee-see (phonetic spelling), allowed me to touch her, to pet her from head to tail, for nearly three minutes, all the while leaning hard against my legs.

 

 

I told my friend Mike that that counted as one wolf coup and that I would celebrate it at the next full moon.  (Mike responded that he wasn't sure who had counted coup on whom - Ee-see, or I on her.)

 

Tonight, I celebrated.  (I hope the Butcher from Pittsburgh wasn't looking out his windows this time, not that it matters.  I think he has come to expect just about anything coming from my property.)

 

I danced in the dazzling light of the nearly full moon.  Wearing a tanned deer hide over my shoulders, I carried a fan made of crow feathers I've found over the years.  The counting coup ritual is supposed to be carried out in the company of other warriors who could attest to the bravery and success of your deed, but there was no one to vouch for my coup.  

 

I sang a song of Ee-see and her man, Chief, quietly so as not to disturb the neighbors.  Of course, a couple of dogs heard it and began barking, but not consistently.  I sang to the Moon and she joined me, her mouth forming a circle as she howled Ee-see's part.

 

At first hiding in the shadow of overhead oak branches, I moved out into the alley between my house and The Butcher's.  (The surface was level and better lit.)  I dipped and swayed and pranced in a circle to the imagined sound of drums and dozens of voices repeating my story, until my legs got tired and I was out of breath.  That was enough.

 

The fireflies twinkled in place of the stars.  A soft breeze came up and rustled the oak leaves.  The magic of the moment was waning, so I stood still and quiet, listening to the sounds of the night: mosquitoes humming in my ears, whispers of the leaves in the breeze, dogs half-heartedly barking now and then, a cat yowling at a rival for its territory.  The urban sounds faded from consciousness as I stood, arms stretched out from my sides, letting the intense moonlight shine down over me and my tiny patch of earth.  I felt whole and at peace, grateful for the opportunity to touch a wild thing and have it touch me in return.

 

Things like this don't happen very often in a lifetime, and should be cherished and remembered for the rest of one's days;  celebrated with song and dance and joy.

 

And moonlight.

 

 

 

(A little bit of Bruce doesn't hurt, either.)

 

(Mike, when you touch the bear, I'll come celebrate with you, deerskin, crow feathers and all.)

UNDONE

The last straw for me with FB came this morning when I opened my account and was visually assaulted with images and messages from other peoples' accounts about what they liked, what was on their minds, and so on.

I must be getting old.  I can't take the unending barrage of images of people I don't know, and information about other Facebookers, every time I check in.  Plus, Facebook makes it too irritating and difficult to secure my privacy (We are FB.  Privacy?  You ain't got no privacy.  You don't need no privacy!  We don't have to protect your stinkin' privacy!*).  So, I deleted my account (**).

 

I guess I'm just not sociable enough for social media.

 

(*Sorry, Alphonso.)
(** I think...I hope!)

Oh, No! What Have I Done?

I swore, up and down, right and left, that I'd never - ever! - open a Facebook account.

I opened a Facebook account.

My bad; way bad. 

The second mistake I made was trying to pick a few people from my email file to tell about my FB site.  I thought I would be able to open my email list and click on the two or three names I wanted.  But, no-o-o!  FB doesn't work like that.  Quicker than I can think, my entire address book was uploaded onto FB.  Even faster than that, any of those people who also had FB accounts suddenly appeared on my screen, under the heading People You Might Know.

Okay; at first.  I had forgotten I had some of these folks in my address book, but they are friends, so it was okay.  Surely I had some control over the selection of email addresses...right?

I'll never know, because faster than a speeding bullet or a bolt of lightning, or ice melting in the Mojave, hundreds...thousands...billions of other faces tore across the screen.  Who are all these people?!  Friends of friends of friends of friends - crikey, even Bill Clinton didn't have this many "friends of”! 

The images became a blur, a morphing confusion of features I almost recognized, moving too fast for my aging brain to register clearly.  I was getting seasick, despite sitting still in front of the monitor.

Then they started slowing down.  One group looked as if they’d fallen into a blender, all the bits and pieces mashed together into an amoebic blob.

I had a sense of dread come over me by the time the reel of faces faded to black.  If these unknown faces are polluting my Facebook account, is mine now embedded in theirs?  Am I going to have to hurt their feelings by denying their Friend requests?  Am I now responsible for remembering strangers’ birthdays, anniversaries?  Sending graduation gifts to their offspring?  Sending greeting cards at the appropriate occasions?  Will I be asked to sit their houses, children or iguanas while they vacation in the Bahamas, or Paris or Spain?  Or to lend them money?  Give them an extra body part?  (Actually, that might not be so bad, provided all they want is some body fat.  I have lots of that to spare.)

All this angst because I needed a Facebook account just to enter a contest sponsored by a television show I’ve become addicted to watching.

Will it never end?

(Edited 6-18-13)

Tuesday Extraordinaire

I touched a wolf today.

A young female, about 6 months old, similar in markings to the one in the photo above, but smaller, leaner, coat not as full; on two leashes, leading a man down the sidewalk.  I noticed her far down the street because she was loping along in a most un-dog-like fashion, almost sideways, nose to the ground, scanning side-to-side, as if tracking something.  As she (and he, on the other end of the leashes) came closer, I then noticed how large her ears were ("the better to hear you with, my dear") relative to her head, and her sharply pointed muzzle.  She was so unusual I stopped and waited for them to reach me.

Then I noticed the man.  About six feet tall, dressed in jeans, a blue cotton ikat-dyed shirt opened halfway down his chest, moccasins; two strings of large beads (18-24mm beads) around his neck (one looked like Arizona turquoise; the other, obsidian); long black hair, center parted, which fell down his back well past his ribs.  Beautiful brown eyes, equally beautiful smile.  I recognized him.  I had seen him at a convenience store in downtown a couple of days before.  His appearance and bearing are striking, in part because of his stride and his deep red-brown skin; in part because he doesn't look like any other person in this town of homogeneous men.

He looked as if he had stepped out of an old John-Wayne-western movie, or might have been a stand-in for Kevin Costner Rodney Grant in "Dances With Wolves."  The scene felt surreal, as though I had crossed the street into another place and time.  Weird  and unreal feeling, but exciting at the same time.

I asked him about his companion, guessing that it might be a coy-dog, or a German Shepard mix.

"No."  (That's all he said, just the one word.)

Well, what is it?

"She's a wolf.  Pure wolf.  Almost six months old, still a pup."

Wolf?  Really?

"I wouldn't lie to you."

He clicked his tongue and the wolf-pup loped back to him, standing between us, not looking at either of us, but scanning the road, the traffic, ears turning this way and that as she listened intently to all the sounds around her.  I put my hand near her nose, not certain if she would merely sniff it (as domesticated dogs like to do) or have it for a snack.  She gave it a cursory sniff, then looked up at me.

Grey eyes looked deep into my faded blue ones.  An intense gaze that began to make me uneasy.  She blinked and looked away, resuming her hyper-vigilant scanning of the world around her.  I had been dismissed as not important, no threat, put in my place.

I looked back at the man she was taking along on her hunt. 

Are you Native American, I asked?

"Yes."  Laconic, monosyllabic, yet friendly in tone.

What tribe?

"Apache and..."

My brain ran through all the names I knew for the different groups of Apache peoples - Kiowa, Mescalero, Chiricahua, Jicarilla, in preparation for asking my next question.  Bad habit of mine, jumping ahead like that, not listening carefully.

"...Inuit.  I'm from Alaska."

While my mind tried to figure out the logistics of that pairing of DNA donors, I asked the wolf's name.

"Easy."

Easy?

"Ee-see," he said, slowly.  She-wolf came back to his side.

Ee-see then stepped in front of me and leaned against my legs.  A wolf...leaning into my body.  My heart beat faster, really thumping against my chest. 

I reached down and petted her back.  Ee-see leaned even harder against me.  I rubbed her coat from her neck down to her rump, over and over again, lost in the moment.  Her fur was so different from anything I've ever felt before, dog-like yet not, soft but not - if that makes any sense.

I rubbed my hands along her sides, patting her chest and belly.  Then I touched her ears.  A soft growling noise rumbled up from deep in her chest.  No touching the ears, evidently.  Since ears are just a side-long snap from all those teeth ("the better to eat you with, my dear"), I moved my hands out of harm's way and stood still.  The wolf continued to lean into me, and I against her.

I extended my hand to the man, introducing myself.

What's your name?  (The man doesn't offer much chatter.)

"Chief."

(Nah, he didn't just say that to me...did he?!)

Is that your name or your title?

"I am Chief Golden Wing.  Please call me Chief."

(You just don't get smart-alecky with someone whose wolf is leaning against your legs, you know?  Chief, he says, so Chief it will be.)

What brought you to Hanover?

"I moved here."

(Okay, then.)

Well, thank you, Chief, for letting me pet your wolf.  I'm glad to have met you both.

"I didn't let you pet my wolf.  Ee-see did."

I know.

I touched a wolf today.  And...and, she touched me.

(Mike: that's 1 wolf-coup.  I'll celebrate next full moon.)