There are few smiles in this universe.
He who moves through it has an infinite
number of encounters that wounded him.
However, you don't die in it.
If you die everything starts all over again.
— Henri Michaux
...
There
are two nights. The second one comes behind the night that everybody
sees. This second night is under the darkness. It tells the shaman where
the pain is and what caused the sickness. When the second night comes
it makes the shaman feel that he is a doctor. The power is in him to
doctor. Only shamans can see this second night. The people can only see
the darkness. They cannot see the night under it.
— Joe Green, Pyramid Lake
NOTES
— Henri Michaux (French 1899-1984) from the poem Night of Inconveniences in The Night Moves (La Nuit Remue 1935 Gallimard), trans David Ball.
— Joe Green, speaking in English of the spirit of the night as the source of power, recorded by Willard Z Park, in Shamanism in Western North America: A Study in Cultural Relationships. (1938 Northwestern U)
—
This presentation of the image of this northern Great Basin petroglyph
boulder with the juxtapositions of disparate poetic insights does not
imply any cross-interpretation or attribution. I do so with the greatest
respect for each. So, why do so? To open space for absence, losses,
solitary gestures — a fourth dimension, perhaps. On this planet today
millions on the move, hope for shelter, for food, for safety — one more
night, one night at a time. Some never find it. The wounding, the
healing, a hoping.
Glance at the sun. See the moon and the stars. Gaze at the beauty of earth's greenings. Now, think.
— Hildegard von Bingen (German Benedictine abbess, c. 1098 – 1179)
