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Friday, January 26, 2024
Buffalo Gourds; A Fresh Look at an Ancient Plant
If one sees a metate and the mono that goes with
it, it is possibly 12,000 years old (plus the millions of years of age of the
stone itself), give or take a few millennia.
If it was carried from Beringia (the strip of land that once connected
Asia and what’s now Alaska), which is a colorfully absurd thought then it might
be 25,000 years old because the Beringians lived there, possibly, for 10,000
years; waiting for the ice to melt and forcing them to mosey down to The Land
of Enchantment, perhaps looking for and finding ‘greener pastures’. As they did not yet invent fry bread or even
have white or whole wheat flour (as the major grains were brought over by the
Europeans by way of the Steppes) and corn was still in South America, then the
question becomes: what did they eat?
And, especially, as the centuries wore on and droughts came and went,
leaving ancient tree rings proving drought; what did they rely on during those
times? The piƱon bumper harvest happens
every now and then, so one can’t wait for that, really. Amaranth wasn’t even around. There were lots of grasses and because of
that there were lots of ‘bison’, or what I think of as ‘buffalo”. So there was meat. What about tubers and seeds? They had a metate and needed something to
grind up with it. I honestly (this time)
think it was what scientists call Cucurbita foetidissima or Buffalo Gourd, the
common name that mysteriously first appeared in print in 1948 and took.
I have
seen my donkeys occasionally eat the ‘disgusting smelling’ leaves (and then
walk up to me and exhale on me, almost rendering me unconscious), so they and
just a handful of people sort of like the smell; nonetheless it is called,
roughly translated from the Latin, ‘stinking squash’. Well, lots of plants are named ‘stinking’
this and ‘stinking ‘ that but some
observant person(s) decided on ‘Buffalo Gourds’; a very powerful thing like a buffalo (…… I am
not sure but curious about what a buffalo smells like….aren’t you?) and as the
bison tended to roll around on the ground and on their backs and make huge
semi-permanent ‘wallows’ of bare ground that, fascinatingly, almost nothing
grows on after they are done….except, let’s say, the buffalo gourd which has a
huge tuber for a root; sometimes the size and shape! of a human being and is very capable of surviving almost anything,
and I am wondering if, by chance, buffalos liked to roll in the stinking leaves
for the special insect and fly repelling properties (one of the uses people are
looking into as I write) and maybe the side benefit of it being a cow
aphrodisiac or medication (think ‘zoopharmacology’; not my term but perhaps
coined by my brother!); they grew on
afterwards, and as the gourds have a distinct resemblance to a bull buffalo
piece of anatomy anyway and so some
observant person(s) back in the day decided to call this amazing plant “buffalo
gourd”!
I recently
encountered a petroglyph that puzzled me until I ‘realized’ that I probably
knew what it was:
The triangle shapes on the left side of the
‘gourd’ circles are the basic shape of the leaves; in fact the rock art
clearly, in my mind, celebrates buffalo gourds….and why shouldn’t it because it
was a main staple of the native diet; the seeds and hull ground up by the
metate into a fine flour to make a tasty sun-baked-on-the back-of-a-rock (or
metate) flat bread!
The point is that the buffalo gourd plant, what
with its high protein/oil seeds, huge tuber, extreme drought tolerance, insect
repellent and medicinal properties and its myriad other colorful aspects ( and
great for batting practice!); I bet a
nickel it’ll save the world!
Wednesday, January 3, 2024
Controlled Burn Dude
Saturday, December 24, 2022
Monday, July 4, 2022
SUSURRUS
Susurrus soothing solidified solace
Observing sound's romance with
Turgid agua creek banks and tall tremulous leaves, trees stretching yoga postures
Blue blue sky suggesting eternal value
To have and share vibrance ripples
Eddies upon Eddies upon Eddy's
Dancing rivulets of water/flow/times
Vortexian self-similarity like fractals
Doing the Schottisch one two three hop,one two three hop, hop, hop, hop, hop…
Affectionate mental love making because
There is no comparison to being with this Mistress, except true love and one- ness;
Is no substitute but a great gratitudinous
Ecstacy, kisses upon kisses
Deep intensity of sensitive chaos amidst
Forest glade and grass blade
The screenplay priceless photos
No fire other than the fire rushing pell mell
Along with multitudes of skirts up and no shame Anywhere.
Children running in almost mindless play
Glad tidings to all; happy to be right here
With a heart to feel the timeless joy and dances
Glance at the hand that so sublimely echos and mirrors the working man's hands and, oddly, the stones that speak of eons of effort
Don't really need a girlfriend cause this is Unconditional Love
such lover we come back to over and over
Honey dripping from her mouth
Water pouring out of her and nothing else to do but be naturally gorgeous and mysterious;
Susurrus is her name and flowing over rocks is her game;Nurturing the grassy banks and knolls
Frolic in the Forest Arroyo.
Volver Volver Volver , a tus Brazos otra vez
Pebbles and stones and boulders all cohabiting and each silently screaming,
Look at me on my billionth birthday today,
More or less. Yes I've been around these parts.
Volver a mis Brazos otra vez.
Thursday, June 23, 2022
Monday, May 9, 2022
TO BE OR NOT TO BE; THAT IS THE QUESTION.
When a woman loses a pregnancy there can be great grief and little support out there.
What do I mean?
A profound thing happens but often there are not clear reasons; mostly statistics for how often this happens; 25 per cent of the time, they say. It is not considered all that important in some ways.
The body or some circumstance has somehow made a decision to abort.
The mother can grieve but there is not a body of deep understanding; like a strange little secret about the mystery being cast out somehow.
No religious ceremony.
No burial
No Grave
No poetry to read
Few people to talk to…
No time off work
No money
No presents
Just no hopes anymore.
When a woman makes that decision,
In the situation of needing to do what
Nature does 25 per cent of the time;
Make a decision maybe once or twice in a lifetime
Then still there is no poetry to read
No service
No support
No clean path.
So these women have a lot in common in one way and so does the slave woman who is impregnated or the girl on her first date or a women in a myriad of situations like this who might still wonder what the child might have looked like or acted like.
Natural curiosity.
Natural thoughts.
Like the pain of lost love
Or the pain of losing anything
Or the relief.
We need to control our bodies
Like how our hands make something.
How we decide to be ourselves.
Or see our lives like falling leafs
And we learn to let other people just be themselves and not try to change them;
Turns out we pretty much can't anyway.
No matter how hard we try
Just almost impossible.
So it appears that life is about
Choices; for all of us, even,
Sometimes really really impossibly
Tough ones.
Still about probabilities and compromises,
Still about survival, just as our natural bodies seem to make tough decisions based on complicated calculus, so we, the owners of our bodies do the same and we attempt to Manage.
The unspeakable cruelty of a misogynist's
Prying into their bodies and lives to ascertain that perhaps the woman ingested a pill is beyond reproach and yet, this is the world we find ourselves in;
Where a woman cowers while a man who needs a free vasectomy gloats about his concern for life.
Shame on them; those men and their patriarchal religions.
A woman should never ever ever be under the thumb of a man or have a man pry into their lives and bodies.
Period.
This must stop and most of the world knows it, except for the uneducated, fanatics.
Shame on them; hypocrites as they send their tender children off to war to die in their places.
They open up the grief and pain and stomp around by suggesting they will codify their dominance and intrusion.
The pain
Cowards and true murderers in fact!
Dogs in mangers.
You who have no tools to be a mother;
Back off!