Or Why It All Depends on How You Look at Things
Last week, I was going to pursue that Flat Earth theme, but got distracted (again). I had a visit from a friend. My high-school buddy Harold stopped over on a trek through Europe, hot on the trail of Goethe. He told me a story from back west. Here it is.
In the Beginning, Coyote was swimming. He wasn’t swimming for fun, he was dog-paddling energetically but very unhappily because the world was water. (Coyote is the Trickster, he is Loki and Reynard, Seth, Maui, Brer Rabbit and Saruman – the one who is always up to some mischief, the discordant note in the universe, the one who insists on playing his own tune. He is the transformer; when he dies, he always comes back to life. He is beyond good and evil.)
Coyote called out to the ducks, who were paddling about nearby. “Ducks, he said, I’m sick of swimming, dive down and bring me up some mud in your beaks.” The first duck dived. It was gone an hour. It couldn’t find the bottom. A second duck dived – it was gone half a day before it finally came back up. Still no bottom.
Coyote heard Loon laughing in the fog. Loon looked pretty scary, with his mad bright red eye shining in the mist, but Coyote called out anyway. “Loon, he said, I’m surely drowning, dive down and find bottom and bring me some mud.”
Loon dived. He was gone two days. When he resurfaced, he floated up dead, belly up; the bottom had been very deep. Coyote grabbed Loon’s corpse and pried open Loon’s beak, and stuck way in the back of Loon’s throat was a tiny lump of mud. Coyote took it out, rolled it, kneaded it, patted it firm, and made it bigger and bigger until he could climb on top. Enough of it stuck above the surface to make a sand bar. Coyote ran back and forth, shaking water from his fur. My sand bar! he yapped and yelped, snapping at the air. Coyote could hardly contain himself he was so happy. No more swimming! This is mine, mine, mine!
Then Old Man appeared, Coyote ran around him, snapped at his legs, yelped and snarled “This is my sand bar, go away Old Man, I don’t like you here!”
“Take it easy, Old Man replied. I need your help. Man and Woman are due to turn up any time.”
“It’s my sand bar, mine! No humans! yapped Coyote, I’m not sharing!”
“Calm down, said the Old Man. It’s a big sand bar, there’s room enough, and besides you’ll like them. They’re new to the world and weak, they need your help. The world is filled with monsters, and those monsters they love the taste of human, so you have to help me protect them.”
Coyote snarled and whimpered and yowled, but the Old Man said I’ll teach you a trick for those monsters. If you can jump over one, he said, it’ll turn to stone. Of course, this was powerful magic, so Coyote thought he’d give it a try.
The first monster appeared, and Coyote leaped high over him and poof! the monster turned to stone. Now Coyote was happy, his feet had wings, his legs were springs; he was really enjoying this, so he raced off, leaping over monster after monster, all the way up the Fraser River. He was enjoying himself so much he did the Thompson River too, all the way to Kamloops. Dozens of monsters, all turned to stone.
Now, when Simon Fraser left Fort George on May 28th, 1808, the natives warned him it was tough going farther downstream. (After all, Moon had drowned trying the run in a canoe with Sun and Coyote.) His party left their canoes at Lilooett, heading overland, borrowing canoes farther down, all the way to where Vancouver would be one day. Nowadays, you can drive up the TransCanada from Hope past Hell’s Gate, and admire the pretty cliffs, watch tree trunks getting shredded like cardboard in the rapids, take the cablecar across at Boston Bar. It’s a nice trip. All the tourists see is cliffs, but they’re actually monsters. It just depends what story you’re following.
There’s another great rock story, but from the Campbell River this time. Grizzly wanted to jump from the mainland to Vancouver Island. Great Spirit said don’t try it, you’ll come to no good, but that big island was just teeming with deer and salmon, so Grizzly dug in his claws and tried to leap the Inside Passage. He nearly made it, but the tide was high, and one heel touched the water. He turned to stone; that stone is the only grizzly on Vancouver Island today.
When Harold told me these, I replied “Songlines.” He replied “Dreamtimes.”
We’re not unlike poor Bruce Chatwin, so intense, and so dour that the Arnangu wouldn’t even talk to him. As for singing for him, no way. He was looking too hard. He was being too serious, too earnest. Perhaps he’d have had better luck amongst the Secwepemc or the Tlingit. The lands of the Peoples Without Writing everywhere are crisscrossed with stories, thicker than any Texaco map. We modern westerners are too clever. We know so much, we’ve been writing it all down for so long now. We know what’s true, we know what’s not. It stops us from seeing far too many things.
I don’t know about you, but next time I drive up country from Vancouver, I’m going to pay attention to a different map from the one in the glove compartment. There are monsters to count. The first one is at Yale. I wouldn’t want to miss any.
SEASONS
The latest issue of Saisons d’Alsace, in the newstands on May 2nd, is a special issue on Haut-Koeningsbourg. Not only will you get the full history of the castle and the restoration, but there are a couple of articles a Canadian illustrator who seems to have spent an inordinate amount of time hanging around there, as well as a free copy of the DVD “Le Seigneur du Château”.
Here is the link if you wish to order a copy by the post.
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Left: magazine cover.
Centre: excerpt from a poetic essay by Dostena Lavergne on the elusive and unexpected nature of this whole business of myth-imagery, combined with a little photographic tour of the castle as you’ve likely never seen it before. (I’m sorry, there’s no English translation.)
Right: excerpt from an interview by Aude Boissaye
SIGNINGS
I’ll be signing books at the Librairie Payot in Neuchâtel on Saturday May 3rd at 3 p.m. and will be at the Geneva Book Fair on Sunday May 4th at 2:30 p.m for a debate entitled “Du pouvoir de l’imaginaire pour ouvrir les esprits ou la quête du beau au centre de son existence”, the title of which already has me somewhat confused, but I’m sure the organisers will explain in time for me to gather my thoughts.
