On the Suzuki Court

—

From the journal of Henry Mitland

13. On the Fifth Circuit

Further notes after an Archeological Society meeting, undated

[continuation of entry 12; should be read in conjunction with 12] 

One hearth inside, two outdoors, the former sheltered in make-shift housing, branches made fronds, perhaps as much or more vegetation than the immediate locale supports, more tramped into the place. The interior hearth has a hard residue of ash heretofore unencountered by the archeologist: layered, desiccated ash, condensed repeatedly into a hard, clean breaking strength.

Repeatedly. The hearth would have had to be reused many times, ash uncleaned, allowed to layer. Coupled with no evidence of enduring habitation, I conclude that the make-shift housing was allowed to remain, ash left untouched; site abandoned, the ash dries, protected from the wind, until its creators return to burn on top of the remains. The site enters the archeological record because it was used, re-made, many times, the impossibly condensed ash clearest indication of re-use.

A hearth left untouched, artifacts of diverse, far locales radared there as well [see entry 12, ed.]. Hearth the focus of consumption, common, essential creative act. But hearths later become other things: crematorium of life lost or abandoned; seed of pit houses later made kivas; bonfires of social excess which contour humbler days. We may all acknowledge the necessity of making remains, but what remains become divides heaven and hell and makes many inbetweens. We fight over exits, as though exits are our entries in other form.

At this site this hearth is culturally stopped. Those arriving for days to week trade symbols received in essential mutual ignorance. The hearth is stopped at common consumption and gratitude, the what must happen later, ever present exit of death which makes life, here forever delayed. For these traders come from different worlds, perhaps of different languages. Hearth left untouched perhaps to stop petty fights which could disrupt future trade, then becomes symbol of its own, hearth unfinished, housing for return, promise of future benefit, trade a new home, a burning without consumption, where loss is replenished before one’s eyes through exchange.

Future, restricted benefit: those who made hearth continuing have license to return. Departing their make-shift housing left aright, they have one more home to make their world, home inhabited in diverse tongue of meaning, sustainable because not really understood, understanding a hindrance. But homes are never universal: restricted to those of unfinished hearth, trade made of greater value through that restriction.

So symbol here begins in pettiness: delayed fight over what hearth is becomes platform from which cultures can be seen.

—

From the journal of Henry Mitland

14. On the Suzuki Court

Four Corners 

[Four Corners, the intersection of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and its surrounds, houses many ruins and artifacts of the Anasazi, prehistoric pre-Puebloans thought to have collapsed c 1250-1350. “Anasazi” means “enemy ancestors” or “ancient enemy” in Navajo. This has often been taken to mean “ancestors or our enemy,” presently resident Hopi and Navajo being historically enemies, but this need not be the meaning, as noted shortly. The Navajo, numerically and geographically dominant in much of the area, are of uncertain origin. Anthropologists believe they are migrants, placed as early as the 1300's, as do many Navajo themselves. Some Navajo, however, entertain the possibility that they are as locally old as the Hopi or Zuni, both “Puebloan” peoples considered descendants of the Anasazi. While “ancestors of our enemies” facially seems to mean “ancestors of the Hopi,” etc., another interpretation, based on the blunt as is translation “enemy ancestors,” “ancient enemy” is possible: that the enemies of the Navajo were indeed derivative of the prehistoric culture--as are the Navajo themselves. That is, “enemy ancestors” can mean “(some of) our own ancestors are our enemy.” Anthropologically profoundly mistaken, this latter view might nonetheless have meaning at the marginal encounter of present origin stories among the various resident peoples, Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, etc., as Mitland discovers. Each culture has an origin story placing neighboring peoples derivatively. Sharing “enemy ancestors” across peoples could create a meta-origin housing the people specific origin stories.

Anasazi Four Corners extends far deeper into Arizona and New Mexico than Utah or Colorado. Far Northern Western New Mexico contains the remarkable Chaco site, with buildings meant to last hundreds of years. They did so, surviving in outline even into the present, more than 700 years later. Reasons for the collapse of Chaco have varied within southwestern archaeology; presently, evidence of violence accompanying the abandonment of Chaco gains more notice. Among some Navajo, Chaco is taboo; one is not to go there. Yet other Navajo work and reside at the Federal Government Welcome Center there. The Hopi seem to consider Chaco an abomination; but whatever stories cultural agents (e.g., elders) have are kept to themselves. Archaeologists have been told that whatever happened there will never happen again, but nothing else. Since Hopi and Zuni are thought derivative of the Chacoan collapse, Anasazi as “enemy ancestors” might be appropriate, for the Hopi are clear in their rejection of these ancestors. Whether or not the Navajo are as old as the Hopi, their term “Anasazi” may be telling us something of the Hopi.]

Silence supporting shifting sand, trickle stops of movement, each space propping grain as still and complete as canyon surround. Fractals of solitude supporting greater fractals. A universe not grand but exterior to any concept of completeness mustered. We walk, cascading worlds unfelt, our feet divinity incomprehensible even if properly explicated.

I walk with a Hopi, mid-thirties, old enough to know escape is a word mostly useful only against itself. We walk a canyon where we should not be, the vastness of city elsewhere revealed here through desolation, our constant talk of world which is the only world dispersed into silence. Individual reified through the severing of speech, existence raw awaiting its coming helplessness, existence known in the failing fall. We ride a vast force which rides us as well, our being a fractal pause, a Leibnizian monad, a point necessary so integration can come. But perhaps not to come, does not come, our fractal being just a pause before loss.

I come out here to pause the integrations which lose my self. Perhaps self arises through a surfeit of time, time so abundant it absorbs all of evolution’s necessities and still remains unfulfilled, we the remainders after evolution’s compulsion. In this canyon there is no reason for my existence. I step and change a world soon forgotten. I become caprice, existence’s other name. I am the nexus of my causes, causes which have no place here. Yet here they as I are. Destroyer creator which is Being, as fickle as the word God.

This Hopi walks here often, severing himself from reason, from all the propelling are’s that are. Walks outside his past, apart from his ancestors. Yet his ancestors encountered this same land, fled it in reverence, made it refuge in reverence, in mesa and clan; impotent in themselves, always needing others, flew from the existence of I am into the saving net of we are. Ran from this land to live with it. Ran from their ancestors because–well, maybe that is all we can ever do, the act of running the signature of existence.

He pauses, worlds collapsing to support his feet, points in a direction made meaningless by the canyon.

“Chaco is that way.”

No introduction to comfort this presentation, to tell me not to worry because, really, I already know what shall be said. No, Chaco is that way, through that cliff and whatnot else, through trivial unimaginables which block meaning, which distance us from something we would, in terror or not, call us.

“An elder was invited to a conference on Chaco. Paid in food to act ancient, mysterious, silent. Asked what Hopi knew of Chaco, it’s fall. Some know, he says. Some are told. It was wrong, what Chaco was. It will never happen again, he says. Make a paper out of that!”

Here, his words fading outside human existence, my walker is a rebel. He speaks to me because no one will listen to me in his world. Standing outside all worlds, he speaks what he doesn’t know, what no one can really know. He speaks doubt, doubt always of foreign home.

“It will never happen again. What built Chaco we forbid. We forbid our anger of origin. We forbid that there be only one place. We forbid centrality, grandeur. We forbid what you are still trying to become. We await your fall, your exodus from yourselves, your run towards us. You still build grand and expect people to come to you. What will you do when there are too many feet to stand in one place? It has already happened. You called it Holocaust. You called it World War. You call it yet still walk towards it. Our origins never saw world war. Ours saw something weaker, and that was enough. But you, you’ve seen more and still want your eyes filled.

“We marched in lock step as you ever rehearse. Imagine the kiva foot drums calling as you, we circling, true place underneath all, circling the underneath, waiting to go back, all circlings to the same one place.

“The Chacoan Great Houses have many kivas. Some grand, for the many there. But many are small, to accommodate visitors of a single place. From a single place they come to one place. Many places told each to come to one place. Each Great House proud to be closer to one place than it’s rivals. All places pulled to one place until there was nowhere to stand. No circling around the one underneath. Just standing in one Great House or another, unable to move, unable to find a circle for all the people block each other directionless. Unable to circle they come to think their place one place, each Great House the only place. So many feet, soon climbing on each other, soon the vault of heaven replaces underneath. Climbing on backs, only a few can be on top.

“Underneath pulled back to show where all finally go. People fell from one another, the Houses collapsed. From this the ancestors of our ancestors were made. Not our ancestors. Our ancestors are the remains of these. Our ancestors turned from the strife of fall. The fallen, lost of place, knew world war, but were blessed of feet. Only feet, no wheel, no animals to slave us forward in war. They fought mightily, but smally, slowly, stumbling further and further to find enemy.

“Then came those who made our ancestors.”

This man yet forty is lying, too young to know secrets, still thinking secrets are powerful in their telling. No, their power lies in the belief that they are there, esoterica in the crannies we overlook to live. Elders, bound mostly to the coming end, they look, nudge something secret subtle here and there, sometimes doing so in public watch, magicians nudging under misdirected eye.

Yet forty, yet he speaks. To know your place is to destroy the place of others, their only defense not to listen. Self-silenced or be silenced, both a suffocation. Every place submerged in silence for the sake of other places, no place left, this final, objective knowledge known to none, our final solace, but solace unknown. He would not die of place for others’ place–so he tells his tell to me. Grand Justice I am, yet of no import here, impotence through which his words can flee. Words are made for no single world, yet can only reside therein. Their being lies in encounter foreign, where what is said is not what it heard, where meaning is chain untethered, unhinged, lost, anyway, to the sight we have. He tells me because I am new, different, futility.

“Those who made our ancestors, who came to our ancestor’s ancestors, these drunk with death, all vessels broken, all grain scattered, the act of planting just those grains trickling through our fingers as we gorge our mouths with all remain. Came kachinas to these, telling that rape of place was just to make another only single place, minute mountain in imitation of Chaco, Great House no one sees. No place may exist in its own; for your place to be there must be other places to go. Only rage made exhaustion offers existence unstarved.

“Stay where you are, they said, those who fly the ground unexhausted, who know no step of gravity, pulling us down to the one place where we cannot but consume each other then each ourselves. Stay where you are, do not roam to consume the horizon which ever escapes your mouths, leaving you emaciated desperate, so full of promise but never in any here. Stay where you are; but when horizon push roams towards you, go out to greet it, go and tell that place is made of many places, that place is inexhaustible when search is abandoned for stay. Tell them horizon is a trickster, as leeching as Chaco; tell them that this side of horizon they are your salvation, they your defense against horizon, far guard in sight, as you can be for them.

“Horizon is false escape where only desperation goes. Guard yourselves against travel; in that guard being is.

“So came clan, so came mesa, so came mesas, so came I.”

This canyon has no horizon, only wall. His words cannot entice a flight into forever; they in I are meant to stay, making his place shifted but still a here, through my presence place. I, Associate Justice, am not to leave, canyon trapped, walking far yet mazed in ground ascending to beat horizon. I could walk long here and never see outside, trails nuanced with marvels subtle, tales springing surfeit in my pauses, exhaustively free for accepting a trap as grand as horizon. In canyon you keep a place, no monster come unbidden into others’ sight.

Free for trapped impersonal. No mesa come calling to guard the world; no, I can walk unending and no guard will confront. My place is, but not of their theres. A rebellion against kachinas? Looks so:

“So came I, in my place. I guard my guards. Our paths are secure, well formed, our footsteps placed securely before us. Want to see? Look at our monied barter with you, our kachina carvings, our jewelry, well formed of symbol, clearly known, but not by you.”

He looks canyon walls surround, not for exit, looks as though exit where never known or rumored, looks to confirm what world is.

“Clearly known of symbol. We know what must be done and where, this the gift of kachinas, gifts we brought to each other; the mutual bringing making Hopi. Our ancestors so gifted made us.

“To know us, look at what we do not do. Rarely do we give you turquoise. Look at Chaco. Whole rooms were full of turquoise there, piled up, hoarded, made one place. We avoid what they stored to return to one place. We fear it; it does not fly, it falls toward somewhere else.”

There is no we here, only him. Which is why he speaks. He would break out of his people, but into a canyon, his voice ricochet until lost, guarding his people against himself.

“Look at the Navajo, their jewelry so centered on turquoise, presented, not made, found in symbol unwritten, no gods to draw the lines. Some Navajo say they too are as here as we, they too from the ancestors of our ancestors. But they refused the kachinas, refused yet did not continue the unending eating. They say the turquoise should be released, not abandoned. Released, sprinkled far, into you. What do you see in turquoise? What does it tell you? What can we not say we see?”

What can we not say we see, a place common to all salvations. Salvation is a policing, inhabiting no single man, always of men, an awe as commonplace as common sex owned of none. Salvation is evolution stilled, timeless yet extensive, so as foreign to self. He is in the trap which can become endorphic release, the giving up of what was never had, the submission to purpose otherwise called salvation, salvation a trait of Homo, not self, victory of language against the crying infant who tried to command through words nascent. Holiness is of people, not persons.

Yet he turns, French turns, staid arrogance which denies all finality of ownership, turns to the enemy of his people, more populous, surrounding prison, too dominant to be ancient, as are the white turning brown against their will.

“The Navajo speak of Spider Woman, first weaver, who looms culture from the elements, human world from greater world, looms story and places people within that tapestry, taught people how to weave so they could do the same in humble form. Yet their jewelry bursts from this. There the rock controls, still surging forward from the heat; no tight lines of only meaning to present to the world and ourselves. No jewelry of symbol we will not completely reveal. No, the best Navajo Jewelers are not certain what the rock is saying, but know it is saying, their economic necessity pushing pulling threads into tapestry far unknown, we too grounded to see.

“Spider Woman is as vast as Navajo land. She confines us, but we do the rest, we glued to the fine lines of our story, beautifully, reverently drawn. She is no spider overhead–we make that spider ourselves. Hopi walks the web, we its strands. We are caught in what made us, us walking on our bodies for support.”

What escaped Chaco is still in flight, skimming across money’s flow. Symbol incomplete, waiting to be held in mind, growing, attaching, exploding into our caverned lives. Then thread pulling thought, making a beyond akin to species. Or so the kachina fear. Chaco and kachina are not so far different, both preventing something from fleeing into its making.

We are all caught in what made us, Hopi. Why else would making make, child pleasure of its creator, God asking us to return Being a good long while. Yet something some Navajo throw into a far; something we have long tried to force into a before. You do not think the Chaco war done, placing your declaration in this canyon never heard. But by me.

This canyon silent contains his thought. His prehistory need not be accurate, merely acceptably ambiguous. Story of now is what he confronts, truth the resolution of story to story. He tosses his story far, into me, he Hopi made Navajo jeweler, something not of men placed in me for display. Crystaled silence he would have me be, containing something to marvel at. And after marvel–well, he will be gone by then. The jeweler does not know the later discard.

Canyon filled of silence, we two standing, said all gone, as silent as the space between grains of sand; what greater, grander thing unknowable does canyon space support, our talk the perimeter of that support. What does our desperate, futile understanding keep at bay from collapsing this space? We talk and listen to keep space here, then move apart, perhaps to expand its domain against collapse, perhaps this the jeweler’s function beyond all pay.