Barbara's Stories

Energetic and Spiritual Growth and Evolution
Contemporized Rites of Passage for Women

The following pieces were written by Barbara to celebrate her passage through her Vision Quest. Barbara is a performing artist, teacher, and writer who thrives on creating dramatic and meaningful musical events. Barbara embarked on a Vision Quest in search of her "family". Although she has created what she feels is the best life for herself she heard a call to journey to her roots. Her journey takes her back through time here and now, introduces her to her ancestors, her guides she never thought were there, and places her firmly within the midst of her family - even though the form is unstructured. Barbara emerges as a Vision Quest Elder finding her way to bring to the world a new form of family.

MASKS

I have my mother’s face. We never looked exactly alike in person because I inherited my father’s red-Irish coloring. But in black and white photos, the resemblance between my mother’s and my features is uncanny. So much so that on the Sunday after her funeral, the old ladies at church all started calling me by her name instead of mine.

There was also some resemblance between my mother and her younger sister. My mother was by far the prettier of the two, partly due to some childhood illnesses endured by my aunt, partly that their lives took such different turns – my aunt raising four children on a remote farm in Montana that initially had no running water, whereas my mother lived the life of an Army officer’s wife, traveling Europe, and eventually setting up housekeeping in several pleasant suburbs. But the difference in their faces was evident even before their lives took such drastic turns.

In my parent’s wedding photo, my aunt is there by my mother’s side, as her Maid of Honor, and she has such a sour look on her face amidst the other smiling members of the large military wedding party. Even in the photo of her own smaller wedding, where she and my mother’s roles were reversed, she does not look like a radiant bride. The family features always looked so pinched and tight on her.

She and my mother didn’t get along very well, and because we lived so far away, I had very little interaction with her while growing up. But eventually the two sisters found some common ground. Later when my aunt became involved in my mother’s eldercare, I began to brush up against the tough mean-spirited personality of my mother’s younger sister. One day, sitting with them both in a nursing home, when Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s had confined my mother to a wheelchair and to silence, I heard my aunt start to compliment her on the color coordinated outfit the nurses had dressed her in, saying, "You look so pretty with your matching earrings and blouse. Are you pretty? Well, the nurses say we two sisters look just alike, and I know I’m not pretty. So you must not be either."

On my Vision Quest, I defined my search as "questing for a family that is not trying to destroy me." Certainly, my struggles with my aunt are part of what I think of when I do an accounting of my unsatisfying family relationships. And now that half the relatives I grew up with have passed away, including my aunt and both my parents, I was focusing on rekindling communication with cousins, and finding a new family of friends, and perhaps a husband to enjoy the second half of my life with.

Two months after the final ritual on my Vision Quest, I vacationed with some old friends at a scenic Adirondack retreat center, and became acquainted with a new couple in their 50s who were about to get married. One morning, the bride-to-be had a table-full of us laughing through breakfast as we watched her sensuously unwind a sticky bun looking for the pieces with the most cinnamon, and licking the icing off her fingers. She approached every novelty with a childlike glee, determined to get what she wanted. This couple was a great deal of fun to be around, very relaxed about the wedding plans, and we found we had many common subjects of interest so made sure to exchange email addresses at the end of the week.

But I was most struck by how much this woman looked like my aunt. Except that she looked entirely different because she was so happy. She had the same short stature that many women in my family share, but it was her face that looked so familiar. Oddly enough, the resemblance was strongest when she laughed freely. But I had never seen my aunt laugh freely – her laughter always had a sadistic edge to it. I began to study this face because I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing. More than once, her bright laughing face caught me off guard, and I had the eerie sense of seeing my aunt’s face, transformed, appearing from beyond for a moment, behind this jolly image before me. It was as if I was getting a chance to glimpse who my aunt might have been without her mask of bitterness – perhaps what God intended her face to look like, what she now looks like in heaven.

The mask I made for my Vision Quest included a thin ribbon, fastened at the hairline, coming down through the center of the forehead and passed my nose – a ribbon which swung freely from side to side like a stray hair.. I got the idea for this from the Disney animated movie, Mulan, where the title character, a daughter who is the only child of an aging warrior, takes her father’s armor, and military commission, to masquerade as a man, taking his place in war. Besides the many reasons that I identify with the story’s heroine, I love this movie for the graphic animated use made of mask images and split faces throughout the show. The most brilliant device is the stray hair that moves across Mulan’s face. When she is in total disguise, the hair is long, thick, and almost completely splits her face in half. When she is more whole, or in despair, or at a turning point, the hair becomes shorter, fine and wispy – and her face does not appear split. This image continues to change throughout the story, depending on her state of mind.

Mulan’s family is with her on this adventure. Not her father and mother whom she deceives as she rides off into the night, but the images of her deceased ancestors who are awakened and sit in the rafters of her family house-shrine, and who bicker above her as she sets off on her journey. One old crone brags that her children never caused such trouble as Mulan has – her children all became acupuncturists. One man, betrayed by a family guardian, was beheaded and stands grimly holding his talking head under his arm. They are aware of her problems, are concerned about her, and send some animal guides to help her. When she comes home, successful, the ancestors rejoice, laughing, partying, (tossing the beheaded smiling head across the room like a beach ball) – happy for Mulan in her success.

When I quested for a family, I was thinking of new family members – that were alive. I never expected to receive any help or support from past ancestors who were not helpful or supportive when they were on the earth. What could my memories of them contribute to my life now? But I’m beginning to see things differently. What if my ancestors are perched in the rafters of my life, caring about me, still trying to guide me? I’m not sure I know what to make of this image. But as I try to piece it together in my mind, I find that one character is clearer than I expected – because I now know what my aunt looks like when she is laughing freely.

FABRIC AND FIRE

The gold colored metal was formed into thin undulating impressionistic flames, and they moved in a subtle springy manner as the rabbi pulled the doors of the tabernacle open to reveal several ornamented torahs.

I was attending the Bar Mitzvah of an old high school friend’s thirteen year-old son. I’d been in this same synagogue a few years before, for the Bat Mitzvah of another high school friends’ daughter. But this time, I found myself far more fascinated by the huge modern metal sculpture that housed the torahs and seemed to represent the burning bush that scriptures tell us Moses saw as part of his journey while leading his people out of Egypt and receiving the Ten Commandments. It seemed so fitting that these Holy Scriptures should be housed in a symbol of the story that they told. Suddenly, tears sprang to my eyes. Because, unlike the first time I saw this springy sculpture a few years ago, now I knew that the remarkable impressionistic flame tabernacle that had been chosen as the centerpiece of this house of worship was a truly inspired image – it looked so real. And I’d seen it before, recently, in a natural setting.

Four months before I considered embarking on my Vision Quest, I bought some cotton fabric on sale. Winter scene fabric bought in the steamy month of August. It had snowy blue images of deer and a stag in the forest, with snow covered tree trunks, roots, and branches. I wasn’t sure how I was going to use it, but lately had been making small quilt pieced bags for fun and to give as gifts. I was pretty sure parts of this design would prove useful in something. The more I studied the fabric, the more my attention was drawn away from the obvious focal point of the deer into the odd twining patterns of the roots and branches.

My Vision Quest began the week after Christmas, so my first few months of walking in a natural setting to prepare myself for the process took place in the winter woods, with snow on the ground. It was pleasantly similar to the look of the fabric. And when I saw some deer in the distance of the snow-dusted forest, I knew I had to get going and piece together a design of cloth with my winter scenes.

So I pondered this fabric, eventually settled on a design, cut my triangles and laid the pieces in position to appraise my work. One side had a central square sporting a solo blue stag gazing back at the viewer, set off by a quartet of small framing black triangles. The next fabric was one of my favorites, a salmon mosaic with tiny gold painted bricks among the swirling pavement-like pattern. The largest color triangles were a toile of light and dark tiny snowy blue roses that almost matched the winter stag’s coloring.

The other side had the same large blue rose triangles on the outside. The next fabric was a realistic black and dark blue representation of a starry night that added a mystical feeling, especially since it was inside the flower layer. This is one of my favorite visual themes with these fabric designs, to put a miniature starry night sky inside a larger field of delicate flowers, reversing the natural order. The next layer, which incorporated the smallest triangles, were cut from the most interesting, abstract, and movement-like sections of the snowy trees, branches and trunk patterns. I made sure to arrange them so that they seemed to swirl around the central square – a little like the salmon mosaic on the other side, but tighter and more intense. The center square had me stumped for a while, but I finally settled on an unexpected dark red toile with an almost black tiny leaf pattern.

Yes, that was the arrangement that said what I wanted to say. Still couldn’t put into words what I was reaching for, but at least I had gotten closer to expressing it in fabric. This quilt piecing hobby has taken me by surprise in the last few years, but fortunately, my fabric obsession seems to be behaving itself – I’m not spending large amounts of money on it, I’m not tempted to take on a larger queen bed size project. But this activity certainly does seem to have a hold on me. Why?

Eventually, I began to think in terms of "seeking particular energy fields" and the combinations of energy between the fabrics/patterns/colors. I can feel my body’s energy shifting as I move into middle age and somehow playing with these fabrics has helped me adjust to the changes I feel inside. I am drawn to more subtle sophisticated color combinations than I was a decade ago. And now, walking through the Barbie aisle of a toy store can make me dizzy – that trademark hot pink has a discernable affect on my eyes, my state of mind, my skin surface, even the air quality is changed in that one toy store aisle - and now it’s far too powerful and intense for me. But I can remember hot pink was the color I chose for my teenage bedroom carpet - it was the only color that spoke to me back then and I simply had to have it.

A few months into my Vision Quest, I was taking an hour-long walk in the middle of a workday. There was nothing special about that day, or that walk, or my thoughts, until I came upon three bushes that seemed to be moving. I stopped to try to figure out what I was seeing, looked more closely, and there was no explanation for it. These three winter bushes, with no leaves, branches intertwined, all in a row, seemed to be receding from the rest of the landscape and quivering as they moved. But of course, they never did move away, just gave the illusion of receding. I looked at them for a long time, not wanting to move closer or step back for fear of the image disappearing, going back to normal, and robbing me of the opportunity to calmly examine it.

For I was calm, there was nothing about this experience that was frightening. But as certain as I was that this was not a trick of the light, or an imagining, I was also fairly sure that if another hiker came along, they would not be able to see it. Silently, I tried to put into level-headed words how I might describe what I was seeing. Since the scene appeared so dreamy, it was important to me that I not just give myself over to it, but to engage my cool skeptical logic while observing this phenomenon, so that I could better related the experience without being dismissed as crazy.

The closest I could get was to say that the bushes almost looked as if they were above a great heat source. The way the light in the air is refracted by intense heat so that images seen through the heat seem to waver – is the closest description I could come up with. After I had pieced together that scientific explanation to myself, it dawned on me that someone else (who was more thrown by the experience, or had a less scientific mind than mine) might describe what I saw as a burning bush.

Actually, I’d seen something like this before, usually when taking strong antibiotics. Several times when I was miserably sick as a child, I remember seeing my mother in the doorway of my room appearing to recede into the distance, until she was tiny. I told her about it, but she just dismissed it as a side effect of the medicine or the fever. But now my interpretation of these childhood observations has become slanted towards an explanation that involves my mind moving rapidly into a healing/changing mode. And isn’t that what a fever and medication should be trying to do – not make you sicker, or mask the symptoms – but push you toward healing? You have to change in order to heal, or to grow, or to switch direction. If you are dropped into that "change mode" quickly, isn’t it more likely that your mind might let you actually see the dramatic shift?

After a few minutes, the bushes went back to normal. I stayed a while longer, realizing that I was on sacred ground. At least it was sacred to me. After an uneventful walk back to my car and an ordinary drive home, I looked at my quilt pieces and gasped. The swirling snowy branches around the red leaves, inside the starry field – that’s what it looked like! Well, not really. I saw no flames, or red color, and the stars overhead were not visible in the afternoon sun. But I had captured the essence of it before I saw it. If, after the fact, I had tried to interpret my experience into fabric, I couldn’t have done any better.

The image seemed to have already taken root in my mind, and I brought it into the material world with the fabric before my mind actually projected it onto a real bush. It reminded me of Richard Dreyfus in the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" where he carved his mashed potatoes into the shape of the mountain he was being led to. Later, when he saw the mountain itself for the first time, he gazed at it with a look of wonder and recognition. I told my Vision Quest guide about both the burning bush and the quilt pieces, marveling that I had purchased this fabric before the idea of the Vision Quest occurred to me. She just smiled and said, "Do you now understand that there are larger forces at work around you, moving you through this Vision Quest?"

I’ve since read several other accounts of Vision Quests, and apparently "seeing a burning bush" seems to be a fairly common guidepost. What does it mean? I believe it means that your mind and body’s vibrations are ready to change, and morph into the new life you are being called into. I’m not sure about this, but it made me take a second look at the Moses story. It’s remarkable how similar the format of his story is to the structure of a traditional Vision Quest. Life in a place where you can not stay, but must move forward or die. Separation from all that is familiar. Moving into a natural setting wilderness. Wandering, not knowing where you are going. Seeing a burning bush. Seeking guidance from the powers that be. Realizing that there need to be new guidelines that you will live by in the next phase of your life. Bringing those guidelines and the story of your vision back to the people in your life. Moving into the promise land.

Surely there is a world full of Bible scholars who will argue that I’ve got this all wrong. But it seems pretty simple to me. Moses’ story often gets reduced to a stern teaching of the Ten Commandments. But now I think that interpretation misses the point. We are supposed to look at the whole story as being of equal importance – not just carve the last part of it into stone and forget the journey he took to get there. Moses sets an example and the story gives all the guideposts of a Vision Quest. We are supposed to follow his lead, take each part of it, and relive it in our own quest to move into the new phase of life that takes us closer to whom we are meant to be.

The Judeo-Christian tradition is sorely lacking in teaching the Vision Quest process – even though there are such strong solid examples of it in the literature. Or are there people out there who know this but just don’t talk about it? Why was I never offered this Vision Quest process of personal growth in the confusion of my youth when I could have benefited from it so richly? I asked for help again and again, but got answers that were not as useful – read the Bible and pray, go into therapy, help the homeless, count your blessings, exercise and eat right, try medication, donate to charities, give up your idealistic view of the future and settle into a sensible adult life. Each piece of advice carried a tiny bit of truth, but nothing was offered to me that is as natural, useful, powerful, organic, and Biblically based as a Vision Quest.

Perhaps the artist who designed the golden tabernacle at my friend’s son’s Bar Mitzvah, with its shimmering quivering flames that made me cry in recognition of its realism, truly knew what was being depicted. Maybe not. Maybe it was just a deeply felt, imagined piece of artwork. But I know what I saw, and I’m not going to stay quiet. This process and accompanying phenomenon is part of our culture’s spiritual tradition. And it should be as common as Christmas. Everyone should understand that the ancient truths can rise up out of the ground and come alive any ol’ day. In some ways, a Vision Quest is earth shaking. And in other ways, it’s no big deal.

NATURAL SETTINGS

Went for a walk this morning – on the beach. Watching the waves is so soothing and meditative. The longer I watch, the more different patterns I see – rolls of foam sliding toward me, receding water kicking up around rocks and shells that are wedged at a defiant angle, the changing shape of two waves as they intersect and merge. Black sand mixed with tan in the most subtle and graceful blending. Tiny rows of bubbles arcing in one direction as the tail end of a wave slides up onto the shore, and arcing the other way as the water retreats. Seagulls, feathered shoulders hunched, standing in the cold sand.

Half a dozen big dogs come loping along the beach - out walking their owners, who talk and laugh under the cloudy sky. The dogs chase each other in and out of the surf, forming momentary alliances and then dashing off in opposite directions. They weave and dance together in a pattern similar to the flock of birds that are soaring above and lighting on the fishing house roof at the end of the pier. After a series of "hellos," the dogs and their humans make their way up the beach. Their big playful paw-prints form another layer of patterns in the sand at my feet.

At the onset of my Vision Quest, my guide advised me to make a habit of spending time in natural settings. The three main rituals of the Quest were designed to take place in the wild – woods, mountains, desert, beach, lakeside – whichever I preferred. I needed to prepare my mind to hear what those wild places had to say to me during those rituals. The more I prepared in this way, the more I would get out of it.

I asked her if sitting by the fireplace at Starbucks counted as being in a natural setting. She had the good grace not to laugh out loud at this ridiculous suggestion. But at the time I started my Vision Quest, sitting by that fireplace was the closest I got to "communing with nature" on a regular basis. She explained that it seemed I was enjoying that relaxing setting and was getting something out of it, so I should continue to spend time there. But it was only an imitation of a natural setting. And I needed to be exposed to the real thing in order to activate the Vision Quest.

On the first evening of my final Threshold ritual, I needed to build a campfire to heat up my homemade soup, roast an ear of corn still in the husk, and make a cup of hot tea. I had been a Girl Scout for several years and went to "sleepaway camp" where they taught us basic outdoor survival skills. During my wild college years, I enjoyed several rustic outdoor weekend events with the medieval historic recreation group I belonged to, during which I cooked over an open fire. Actually, I’ve always felt that my primitive outdoor cooking skills were better than my regular cooking abilities in a fully equipped modern kitchen. So when I couldn’t get the flame going at my campfire site, I was surprised and annoyed.

When driving into the campground’s main parking lot, I had read a sign that sported a friendly cartoon Smoky the Bear in his park ranger hat announcing that the current risk of fire in the forest was low. I thought, "Oh good, one less thing to worry about." After watching the fifteenth match fizzle without igniting my little A-frame pile of logs and tinder, it occurred to me that perhaps what the sign meant was that there had been a lot of rain lately and starting a plain old campfire was going to be more difficult than I expected. I’d even bought a plastic bag full of nicely split logs when I checked into the campground, and the label said they were doused with lighter fluid – but even that didn’t seem to be helping.

The three college-aged guys in the campsite next to mine were hooting and hollering, swigging beer and sporting a huge campfire with lots of dark gray smoke that reached up into the trees, which told me that these tough guys were using a great deal of lighter fluid. Maybe they would offer me some, or even give me a burning stick to get my fire going. But I didn’t really want to alert them to the fact that I was there by myself. They may have seen me from afar but probably assumed I was camping with a friend. What I really wanted was to be self-sufficient and survive in this campsite wilderness by my own wits. And I was trying not to interact with anyone unless I really had an emergency. So the whole three-day weekend, the only person I spoke with was a woman who came over to tell me that a bear had been sighted just on the other side of the nearby restrooms. It made me nervous. This weekend was filled with more dangers than I had expected. Fortunately, I never saw the bear, but I was pretty sure if I did, he wouldn’t be wearing a friendly park ranger hat.

Cold soup and a raw ear of corn was not what I had in mind for dinner – and my plans for the rituals of the next two days involved a big blazing bonfire. I was not ready to give up on my vision, so I sat down and tried to get in touch with my inner mountain woman. What I needed was wood that was drier than the wood I had bought or had found lying around nearby. Where was I going to find drier wood? Rising quickly, I stealthily entered my small lean-to cabin and opened the door to the wrought iron wood stove whose smoke stack rose up through the roof. Inside, left by a previous camper, were three half burned, very dry pieces of firewood. In a few minutes, natural flames were dancing up from my campfire, and a hot dinner was soon to follow.

While I enjoyed my after-dinner tea, I tended the fire. Logs fell, cracked, and shifted position regularly so I continued to push the outer wood closer to the burning core. The fire was strong enough now that the store-bought logs could be incorporated, as well as some of the damper natural wood from the forest. When I was ready to put the fire out, the unburned wood I had placed around the outside of the fire was drier than before, and I put a few half burned pieces back in the wrought iron stove to help start tomorrow’s fire. I would have that blazing bonfire for my ritual!

This was all a lot different than sitting in the wingback chair at Starbucks with my pumpkin flavored latte, watching a green-aproned, expresso-brewing, professional "barista" kneel down on the café au lait colored carpet (sporting a steam-swirl motif) and repeatedly pumping the ignition button to spark the pilot light so that nicely balanced gas flames will flicker around the flame retardant foam that has been carved into permanent and stationary log shapes. This is not a fire! That thing tucked attractively into the back corner of my neighborhood Starbucks is an architectural detail, an interior decorator’s concept.

How did this happen? How did I get so removed from what is real? – from the natural world? When I was younger, I used to know what a real fire looked like – it has smoke, soot that gets on your hands, white-gray ashes, a distinctive smell, crackling sounds and hissing snaps, wood and flame that are in constant motion. When did I lose sight of what I know to be true? When did I become so easy to deceive? What other parts of my nature that I was in touch with during my youth have I become separated from? Surely that is part of what the Vision Quest is for, to set me back right, in touch with the natural world, reality, and my true nature - so that I recognize what is real when I see it.

Six months after my three-day threshold ritual, I stand on the winter beach and ponder these things. I’ve become better at seeing the patterns of nature. The tide is coming in and each new wave reaches closer to where I stand on the tight packed sand. I take a few steps forward to examine the tiny bubbles rising in the shallow water as a wave retreats, and then the next wave catches me by surprise. I start to back up, but the water slides towards me faster than I expected and it soaks the tops of my waterproof boots. I laugh as I continue my silly retreat, trying to pick up my pace till I am running backwards because I don’t want to turn around and lose sight of the ocean.

The wave subsides, and I look at my awkward advancing and retreating footprints in the sand. Just like the dogs, I have made my mark on the landscape. But it only lasts for a few moments. The next wave blurs the edges of my boot-prints and water swirls a bit in the deep heel indentations. The next wave smoothes the sand’s surface. And the following wave takes the sand back to it’s natural untouched state. There is no sign that the dogs or I were ever there.

CINNAMON AND ACORNS

This year, after Thanksgiving dinner, I found myself taking my empty dessert plate (still sticky with pie crumbs) into the kitchen for a second helping – of turkey. I just love pumpkin pie, but for some reason, this year after dessert, the turkey looked more appealing to me. As I stood next to the sink, listening to other guests laugh in the dining room, tearing chunks of dark meat off the carcass, I marveled at the changes that have taken place in my diet, and my overall relationship with food, since my Vision Quest.

I’ve never been much of a cook. My appetite is not very strong. I eat several times a day just because I know I should. The scent of food cooking can catch my attention, and I’m happy to go out for dinner with a friend. But other than that, preparing food seemed just a companion to housework: chores that are necessary to keep your life in order. Decades ago some people called cooking and cleaning "women’s work" as if that diminished their importance. I guess I believed them, because I’ve always thought of both as drudgery – something you would pay someone else to do if you could afford it.

But lately, food has begun to appear differently to me. The other day, I noticed a cinnamon stick I’d left out on my kitchen counter. It looked so odd – otherworldly, out of place against the chrome faucets, porcelain sink, and laminated countertop. It seemed as if it didn’t belong in my kitchen, but looked rather like a dried piece of bark on the forest floor of the nature reserve where I have been taking weekly walks. Later, when I was preparing an acorn squash for dinner, I was struck by how much it resembled the real acorns in my growing collection of leaves, birch bark, milk weed pods, and interesting stones along my dining room windowsill.

A few weeks ago, I channel surfed into a TV documentary on marketing research. One expert was explaining how important it had been for a particular French cheese manufacturer to learn that, if you want to sell cheese in America, you must understand that American’s think cheese is dead. We wrap it up in a little plastic body bag, and put it in the cold morgue/refrigerator – because that is where you put dead things. Apparently in France, live fresh cheese is not treated in this callous manner. Strangely enough, this is beginning to make sense to me.

So, with this new understanding of the life force in food and in the forest, being connected to the life force in my own body, I’ve been whipping up new recipes. The latest: a pumpkin and ginger snap flavored version of the warm noodle/raisin/cream cheese baked Jewish dish called Kugel. I did a trial run, made some adjustments, and then offered to bring the dish to two different friends’ houses for Thanksgiving. I’ve always been a slave to the accuracy of recipes, but suddenly my inner chef was set free and I found myself changing the proportions and making confident adjustments without being aware of what I was doing. I finally had to stop myself long enough to write down what this new recipe was turning into, so I’d have a chance of being able to repeat it.

But my favorite new cooking adventure is making butter. When working with my herbalist on improving my diet, she convinced me of the value of olive oil, and suggested I make a butter and olive oil mixture to use everyday on my morning toast. I remembered a vivid demonstration, many years ago, in my Kindergarten class where our teacher let the classroom of five year olds watch her make butter. I thought, "if I’m going to the trouble of melting butter, mixing in olive oil, packaging and labeling it, washing out the pan, I might as well make the butter from scratch." Armed with my electric mixer, a non-metal bowl, and a spatula, I soon learned to beat the heavy cream into whipped-cream, and then pull out about a third of the white frothy mixture to save for my fresh fruit at breakfast. Then I turned the rest into butter, squeeze out the buttermilk to add to the egg mixture for making French toast, and blend the remaining butter with some olive oil.

It all tastes great. But my favorite part is watching the transformation. From what looks like thick milk, to something frothy, to stiffer white peaks, to a more condensed substance that begins to look the slightest bit yellow, then a little more yellow and lumpy. Suddenly the buttermilk drops away from the solids, and I quickly pull out the beaters so it doesn’t all go back to being liquid. It is such a remarkable metamorphosis – like watching a baby turn into an old man. It doesn’t seem possible, but you discover it is perfectly natural. Just like the cinnamon and the acorns.

CLEARING OUT RAM SPACE

The Death Lodge, had more of an effect on me than I expected, both physically and mentally.

The assignment was to go into the woods with a list of all the things in my life that I would say goodbye to if I were dying – to shut the door on the part of my life that I had lived through up until now, and start fresh. Certainly, this ritual did not work alone, but was part of a larger process and the entire Vision Quest structure brought power to each section of it. But I was surprised to discover that this first ritual allowed me to immediately resolve issues that I’d been unable to resolve over the years - despite a large amount of effort in many other ways.

One of the people I discussed my Vision Quest with equated the Death Lodge process to the psychological concept of "acceptance" – explaining that through the ritual, I had somehow been able to disengage from the struggles of previous conflicts by accepting what had happened, and I was no longer trying to change the events or emotions of the past. Another friend pointed out that "acceptance" is the last stage of grief as outlined by Elizabeth Kubler Ross in her book "On Death and Dying."

On some level, I do believe that "acceptance" is part of what happened in my Death Lodge. However "acceptance" is not what my assignment was when I went into the woods. And if it had been the assignment, I would not have accomplished it.

What is the difference? I thought by "accepting" painful experiences that had happened, it felt like surrendering to the people who made them painful, admitting that they got to me, that they won in our struggle. And I was not willing to give them the upper hand. I would not take off the armor that I had constructed to protect me from new people who might hurt me in similar ways.

But the Death Lodge was different because death is a natural surrendering process. Later in my Medicine Walk (the second Vision Quest ritual, several months later) I became consciously aware of death all around me in the woods. I saw it in the leaves beneath my feet, the broken branches, and fallen trees of the forest floor. But the living trees seemed to feel no sadness, triumph, failure, gloating, or emotional pain in the process. What’s more, I could see that the old decaying wood around me was nurturing new life forms, as well as disintegrating into the fertile ground that new healthy trees were growing out of. Even though these images didn’t sort themselves into this meaning and enlightenment until my Medicine Walk, I believe I had already begun to observe this truth and it was affecting me during my Death Lodge experience. In this context, surrendering to death, letting my previous brokenness decay, and closing the door on my past was not that difficult. I could say, "I did the best I could in the past, but that Winter is over. Now it is Spring, and I’ll start fresh." This had a powerful, multi-dimensional effect. I had a few moments of emotion and tears in the Death Lodge, but they weren’t very disturbing. I began to see that this is all a natural part of the universal death/grief imagery. It brought to mind the Biblical talk about dying, and then rising from the dead – but I thought that was just a concept. It never occurred to me that it all might have a material reality as well.

I was amazed at how physically wiped out I was when I came out of the woods after just two hours of saying goodbye to my life. Perhaps this was augmented by the fact that my period had started on the morning of the ritual. You might argue that I could have picked a more convenient time to be sitting on an uncomfortable log in the cold woods. But from the reading I’ve done, it is clear that a woman’s period often starts the first day of these Vision Quest rituals – regardless of where she is in her cycle. Another strange sign that the body/soul connection is deep and profound during this process.

When I came out of the woods and headed to a diner for breakfast, I was planning to order a healthy hearty bacon/eggs/potato special. When the waitress brought me my food, I laughed out loud at what I had actually ordered. There were waffles with strawberries and bananas, hot chocolate with whipped cream, and orange juice. Some Madison Avenue advertiser could have sold it as "the breakfast of sugar." I ate ravenously, and wondered if this was a sign that my blood sugar had dropped rapidly during the ritual.

On the way home, I stopped at a local strip mall to buy a thermos so I could take hot tea or soup into the Death Lodge with me the next day. I was soon distracted by the many store displays, found myself shopping for other things, and eventually headed into a ladies room. The face that looked back at me from the mirror over the sink was shocking, and frightened me. All the color had drained out of my face, I appeared as if I’d been deeply spooked, and my eyes had a dark haunted look to them. I’d never seen myself like that before – I looked like I’d just seen a ghost. I looked like Charlton Heston, in full distraught special effect make-up, playing Moses in "The Ten Commandments" movie when he came back down from the mountain after encountering God. I wondered if this was the result of that blood sugar drop I had suspected at the diner. Even though I’d had no internal sense of being worn out, or unusually physically compromised, it was apparent that I’d been through more than I had realized, and it was time to go home.

Twenty minutes later, I went straight into my bedroom, lay face down on top of my bedspread for a moment, fully clothed, contact lens in, with my feet still in snow boots dangling off the bed’s edge – and that is where I woke up four hours later having not moved an inch. It was the deepest sleep I’ve ever experienced – as if I literally passed out. Perhaps it was a little like death. There is more to this Death Lodge process than I understand. All I can vouch for is that it is REAL. More real than almost anything I have ever done. And somehow I now understand that death is not just something that happens at the end of life. If you are lucky, it can happen during life as well. And if you can make it a part of your regular life cycles, you live more fully. Isn’t that what some of the great religious prophets tried to teach us? Yeah, but it didn’t make sense until I experienced it.

Now, I have become aware that one of the results of this ancient Death Lodge process is that it had the very modern, desirable effect of clearing out the RAM space in my head. In the last few years, I’ve been worried that I was not learning things as quickly, was having a harder time recalling items from memory, was more reluctant to take a new process a step farther, didn’t want to move outside my familiar comfort zone into new activities or relationships. But after the Death Lodge, I slowly began to notice that my mind felt more open and supple and receptive. It seemed that I had deleted many emotionally charged past experiences and thoughts, and that process opened up some free RAM space in my mind. I also deleted thoughts that I wasn’t even consciously hanging onto – I would have eliminated them sooner if someone had just shown me where the delete button was! And with that, I won even more RAM space to work with. I am now much more adventurous – willing to try new things, learn new activities, take new trips, and live more fully.

Emotional memory is a funny thing. Apparently, it has physical components as well as psychological and spiritual ones. I’m so surprised and delighted that it was relatively simple to let go of so much stuffing in my head – all I needed was the right formula. I didn’t have to process every old or painful thought – just surrender to death, be willing to let parts of my past decay like an old log, and then hit the delete button.

LEMON YELLOW SWEATER

Last Sunday, I found a 100% cotton casual sweater, with a Gap label, at a consignment store for $12. It was a perfect fit, the style was simple, short (for my petite frame), with an interesting detail at the neckline and the bottom of the elbow-length sleeve – very nice for spring and fall. But the color looked awful on me – a cross between bone and khaki.

Since my Vision Quest, I have been more creative and free with my homemade craft projects and with tailoring my own clothes. I even dyed some quilting fabric with tea and achieved a nice result. I’ve seen Rit Dye and Color Remover in the drug store – why don’t I try to change the color of this sweater? I know it is 100% natural fiber, from an established company I recognize and trust – which mattered because I’ve seen foreign fabrics fade and run in the strangest ways. I thought I might be able to lighten the color to an ivory, or natural, or parchment, or white – any of which would fit with my wardrobe. Worse case scenario, it all turns out awful, I dye it black, and make sure to hand wash it – or just throw it away and chalk up the $12 to my education in fabric.

Two rounds with the Rit Color Remover (one cold water, one hot), and it turned mustard yellow. Didn’t expect that at all. And it still was an awful color on me. So I bleached it once and it turned plain yellow – an improvement, but still not a color I wear. So I soaked it in a bucket with more bleach for four hours and it turned a lovely, clear, even lemon yellow – which is a color I do wear and have earrings to match.

But the smell of chlorine was overpowering – I thought, "I’ll never get that out." Then, I remembered I have some swimmers’ shampoo, to get the chlorine out of your hair after swimming. So I washed the sweater in the shampoo and it smells great!

I never would have tried an experiment like this before my Vision Quest – to be so free with my creativity and risk taking, and to be willing to keep changing direction depending on the turns in the road along the way. I had no devotion to my image of the final product and I never could have foreseen the outcome. Now, a lovely new casual, 100% cotton, lemon-yellow sweater is one of the many gifts the Vision Quest has given me.

LOSING KEYS

My neighbors were away this past weekend, so it was my job to feed their goldfish. I was going to a concert that night and had already dressed in an outfit from my favorite French import boutique – tight ultra suede pants, clingy top, cropped fake fur jacket – none of which had any pockets.

I walked across the street, opened their door with the spare key they have entrusted to me, fed the fish, and walked back to my front door, at which point I realized I had not taken my house key with me, since I had no pocket to put it in. And my goldfish-loving friends were the only nearby neighbors who have a copy of my key. So I went back across the street, let myself in to their home again, and tried to figure out where my spare key might be in their three-story house. Believe it or not, because my neighbor is so well organized, I had my house key in my hand in five minutes. Disaster averted.

So I walked across the street, let myself into my house with the spare key, went upstairs to get my regular key, walked back across the street to put my spare key back in the little bowl above the home office desk in the kitchen, locked their front door for the third time, walked back to my house and let myself in. I hoped none of my other neighbors had been watching this silly escapade.

The next day, I lost my car keys at the mall. After retracing my steps, leaving messages at the last two stores I’d been in, as well as the mall security desk, I was very grateful that I had put a spare car key in the change purse of my wallet – so didn’t have to call AAA to rescue me. What happened this time? I’m not sure but I think it had something to do with the fact that I was wearing another pair of the same style tight Parisian pants and the same pocket-less jacket. Anyway, I got home safe, but those keys are gone forever. I’m going to have to get duplicates made of my spare set. The following day, I found my house keys dangling from the outside lock of my front door two hours after returning home from my errands.

A few days later, I got into my car and headed into Manhattan to take a dance class. After class, I planned to do some Christmas shopping in the nearby Lincoln Center stores. As I approached the cashier at the American Folk Art Museum to pay for two boxes of unusual holiday cards, I realized I didn’t have my purse. Had the dance bag, but no purse. No wallet, no credit cards, no ID, no license, no car registration, no money. I asked if they would hold the cards for me and took the shop’s phone number. I dashed back to my dance studio, but the purse was nowhere to be found. There was nothing to do but head home and pray the purse was there – so I didn’t have to start canceling credit cards. But I’d parked my car in a parking lot and the fee was $10 to get it back. Fortunately, I keep an envelope of cash in my glove compartment, and that day it held $13. I drove carefully home, found my purse, and marveled at my absent-mindedness.

What is going on here? I hardly ever lose keys, let alone forget my purse. Somehow I think there is a part of my mind that is trying to get my attention with these "careless" mistakes. It wouldn’t be the first time I "forgot" or "misplaced" something in order to get what I needed, or to be motivated to head in a new direction.

When my aunt and uncle traveled in from out of town to my mother’s funeral, I drove the hour and a half south from my home without my wallet or license. Once I met up with my relatives and realized what had happened, I asked my uncle to do all the driving that day, chauffeuring me as I ran around town taking care of last minute details. It worked out surprisingly well: gave him a masculine task, assured that he and my aunt were included in all my last minute decisions, and allowed me to feel more "taken care of" by my relatives, which I had not felt much of during my parents’ final illnesses. But if I’d had my license with me, I never would have thought of asking for help just because I wanted it.

I know my subconscious tries to get through to me when I don’t know how to get what I want. Hopefully, I will get whatever message I’m supposed to glean from these forgetful incidents, so I don’t have to have a more disturbing "locked door/ no cash" event anytime soon. What doors will close as a result of my Vision Quest? I haven’t seen any doors shutting on me yet. What new keys have I been given that will open new doors? Will I "lose keys" in a more metaphoric way – like the ones on the computer keyboard where I write, or the different keys of music I sing in? I was intrigued to realize that each event was resolved by my own tendency to think ahead and habit of laying a safety net under myself. What larger backup-plan resources will the Vision Quest force me to use rather than staying comfortable with my layers of security in place?

I am still in the Vision Quest until the one-year anniversary of my Threshold Ritual, at which point I will return to the site of the original ritual to do the final closure on this remarkable process. When explaining to an old friend about all these changes that have been set in motion, I joked that I may not be able to return to the original site on the year anniversary – because if things continue to change as fast as they are now, I may be living in a different country by that anniversary date.

My neighbor with the fish is back from her weekend away, and all is well. I told her about my key search, and she laughed. Then she suggested that either I stop wearing these pocket-less French clothes, or follow the example of the Parisian fashion-designer who thinks clothes don’t need pockets and move somewhere where people don’t lock their doors – like Paris.

Hmm. Paris . . .
Do I hear the sound of a new door unlocking?

VIBRATIONS

A week after my threshold experience, I scheduled a massage. The Native American Vision Quest literature spoke about needing to "come back into your body" after the threshold experience. Even though I wasn’t sure what that meant, I thought a massage would help. When my masseuse saw me, she said, "I know this sounds strange, but I’m having trouble focusing on your face. It’s like you’re not quite in your body." When I ran into her on the street a week later, and asked her if I still looked the same, she said, "No, actually now you look very vivid, more than normal."

Toward the end of my threshold ritual, I remember huddling in my down sleeping bag, wearing three layers of clothing, with a wool blanket on top, and shivering with what felt like extreme cold. But it was mid-summer night’s eve and, the third day of my camping trip. The first two nights were warm enough for me to sleep on top of the sleeping bag with nothing but my beach towel over me as a blanket. I don’t think the shivering was due to the weather.

I think that "shivering" was what the Vision Quest guides call "threshing." When first reading about this ritual, I thought the "threshold" experience referred to going through a doorway as you might expect in a "rite of passage" (which involves a second doorway image – threshold/passage/doorway.) But, as my condensed version of the Oxford English Dictionary confirmed, the original definition of "threshold" had to do with "threshing" – shaking away the husks and leaving the rich kernels. A friend also pointed out the connection between "threshing" and "harvest," certain that there were good things to be harvested from such an experience.

I am beginning to believe that the shivering also changed some basic vibration in my body, which continues to show itself in strange ways. For instance, when I checked my Oxford English Dictionary, I didn’t need to use the magnifying glass. This dictionary is normally the size of an encyclopedia used in libraries, and the personal condensed version has had four pages photographically reduced to fit on one page so it becomes two large volumes that are sold together with an appropriately scaled magnifying glass. But since the Vision Quest, my close-up vision has improved far beyond what is normal and I can read the tiniest print with no trouble at all. My eye doctor insists that everyone needs reading glasses soon after turning forty. I turned forty-five the week after my threshold ritual, and I beg to differ.

Several friends have said that I now look and sound calmer. After the third person mentioned this, I started to get defensive, "Did I really look that nervous before?" No, they assured me, not nervous, just not as calm as I seem now. My soprano singing voice also changed dramatically. The top part became more open, clear, and lighter than before. But the bottom fell apart, and I now have almost no control of my blend between head and chest voice. My voice teacher confirmed these discoveries and recommended that I just let it play out for a few more months to see where everything settles before trying to fix anything.

A month after my threshold ritual, I moved up from the beginning to the intermediate jazz class at my NYC dance studio where I study once a week. I’d tried to move up to this class a year ago, but was overwhelmed. Now, I am able to do things there I wasn’t even capable of when I was younger, like balance my entire body in arabesque on the ball of one foot. It requires a degree of strength, stability, and I guess stillness, that I have never had before. But I can do it now.

Even colors are beginning to look different to me. For the last two decades, I have worn, and decorated my home with many vivid shades - burgundy, gold, aqua, cobalt blue, emerald green. Maybe it’s just that my face and hair coloring is softening with age, but I’m now attracted to much softer tones. Moss green became the color of my Vision Quest and showed up in many different ways: the shade of my new kitchen table and chair, the pebbles that made up my Power Circle, one of the fabrics I used on my mask. It was a while before it dawned on me that it is also the actual color of my eyes – the color of my vision. A friend of mine who used to do wardrobe color analysis tells me that each color has a vibration that you can feel when you touch it. I wonder if my body is seeking a new level of vibration and therefore, color.

And, lately, I have been scaring the heck out of the local squirrel population. When I take my weekly walk in the woods, squirrels suddenly break from the underbrush right at my feet, and tear off into the trees. At first, I thought they were jumping out at me. Then, this one squirrel in my garden came around a tree trunk at eye level, and suddenly we were face to face, about three feet away. I backed up, he cocked his head to peer at me with the other eye, then looked startled, screamed, "Yikes!" and bolted off the tree, across the street, and under a parked car. It was really pretty funny.

Apparently, I now get closer to the squirrels before they realize I’m there, and I am inadvertently sneaking up on them. Maybe I am moving through the natural world more quietly and standing more still, like my traditional image of a Native American. Whatever this change in my body is – it is real, recognizable on many levels, by the entire animal kingdom. Perhaps, I should wear a bell around my neck, like a cat, to keep from sending the next poor squirrel into cardiac arrest.

MY FATHER’S VISION

My father had the strangest light blue eyes. Lighter than a robin’s egg, more like a clear sky blue - almost luminous. My eyes are an equally strange arresting green, so that I am often asked if I am wearing colored contact lens. They are closer in color to my mother’s eyes, but I inherited their striking luminous quality from my father. But that delicate blue of his was an unexpected color in such a harsh man.

I’ve been finding myself pulling away from several old friends since my Vision Quest. Old friends who’ve seemed almost like family at some points. Friends who came into my early life at a time when my father was out of the picture, transferred on business or stationed somewhere else in the military. They came into my heart with something I needed, filling some gap that was left in me by my faulty relationship with my dad. And he hated them. So I hung onto them even tighter.

He said they weren’t good enough for me. Not as promising, nor as clever, or talented, or as intellectual. Not as self-disciplined, or honest, or straightforward as I am. Most compliments he paid me came couched like this – hidden in criticism or silence. As usual, I brushed him off. "You’re not good enough for my daughter" is such a cliché. And how did he know what was good for me? At times, it seemed he barely knew me at all.

Many years have passed. And I’ve been grateful for what I’ve gained from these friends that I chose for myself – their sensuality, their passion for living in the moment, their sense of style and fun. But lately, I’ve seen their lives take disturbing turns. Now that their children are teenagers, what had looked like normal wholesome family life (which seemed more respectable than my artistic lifestyle) is starting to be revealed as merely a façade of normalcy. Horrible secrets and deep set disturbing patterns are rising to the surface, and I’m growing more and more concerned about their children – all of whom call me Aunt Barbara.

What is wrong with these families? I see years of poor judgment caving in on itself. Repeated choices to put resources into the appearance of fitting in with the desired peer group rather than the kinds of advanced education and improvement of various health issues I have spent my time and money on. They have had careers full of "playing it safe," while I have taken dicey jobs with experts in my field, without health insurance because I believed the contacts and experience would raise me to another level. In my old friends, I now see a deep fear of change, a lack of courage and growth, an unwillingness to face the past. I see them grasping for quick solutions, and their growing despair about the future.

In contrast, after years of hard work, struggle, and holding to my dreams, my life is now healthy, happy, and more stable than ever. I have the sense of it just beginning to open onto a whole new set of possibilities. I’ve taken the road less traveled. And, as my favorite new quote states, over the course of a lifetime – "the easy road gets harder, and the hard road gets easier." It seems these friends took the easy road. And now, our different paths are really beginning to show themselves for what they are.

Everyone knows that relationships change over the years. It is not surprising to witness middle-aged shifts in every aspect of life. One of my shifts is to pull away from these old friends. I can’t help them now. I wish them well, hope to stay in touch, but don’t really want to spend much time with them at this point.

It is a stranger thing to discover shifts in a relationship I thought was long past. My father died ten years ago. And I’ve been relieved to have him gone. But it seems that relationships can reach past the years of contact, and continue to unfold beyond closure, and beyond the grave.

My father was wrong about a lot of things in my life. He stood in my way many times, and presented me with almost insurmountable obstacles due to short sightedness, a lack of understanding, a fear of losing control, and some untreated mental health conditions. But there were times when his vision was unclouded, and he was able to see the distant future clearly with those strange blue eyes. I think he would not be surprised by this turn of events. I think he recognized the kernels of these troubles in my friends’ lives so long ago, and called it for what it was. I believe he was able to look into the crystal ball of my life, and he saw me moving past them.

My future is so bright now. And my father saw it before I did. I’m glad he told me about his vision for me, even though I didn’t believe him at the time. I guess his eyes were clearer than I thought.

©Copyright 2005 by the author and Evenstar

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