Shamanic Letter (2)

Among the Buryat of Southern Siberia shamanism is usually herditary, but sometimes one becomes a shaman after a divine election or an accident; for example, the gods choose the future shaman by striking him with lightning or showing him their will through stones fallen from the sky; one who has chanced to drink tarasun in which there was such a stone was transformed into a shaman. But these shamans chosen by the gods must also be guided and taught by old shamans.

The role of lightning in designating the shaman is important; it shows the celestial origin of shamanic powers. The case is not unique; among the Soyot, too, one who is touched by lightning becomes a shaman, and lightning is sometimes portrayed on the shaman’s costume.

-- Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 19


BOLT

Nov. 11, 2005

Again and again the bolts jolted
me from a sky I couldn’t see,
much less comprehend. I’d sit by
the heat grate in that apartment
in Spokane now 28 years in the past,
nursing a beer & listening
to Eno’s devolved arch-Pachelbel,
his variations splitting my brain
& tearing pieces off in disynchronous
waves of sound, there in the
placid and feral whiteout of
hard winter. Petit-mal spells --
jabs without a knockout punch --
would fire again and again
and again between my ears,
each unfolding in a bolt
of black dazzle, careening me
further and further down that
season’s most frozen soul forges.
In January as I sat there I
was torn open by ice forceps
and flint knives, jolly voices
merrily eviscerating the last
heat of God and father from
my heart and gut and balls.
Help me I cried as I sat nailed
to the grate, beseeching
my first and ever lost love
to find and rescue me from
this last roof of my snowbound
sanity. I was 19 years old and
one night short of breaking
completely down, travelling
through deepest winter in
the plush heart of an ice whale.
Was it Your hoary hand that
shielded me from the actual
consequence of my slack
and overrich expense of spirit
in all the booze and drugs,
preventing the Big One --
grand mal seizure, madness,
death, I dunno -- from finishing
the job just then. That’s how
I come to read that history,
my much-later and awakening
sense perhaps the sum of all
these totem songs having
feathered such strange and wild
wings. Last night I dreamt a company
of men were eating breakfast
in that apartment -- my father
(who seemed my age, or the age
he’d be when I was then 19) holding
court with the other bums, all
of them rough-looking, ungroomed,
and coarse, their clothes unwashed,
pee- and sperm- and blood-stains
mottling my father’s rumpled grey
pants. All of them were waiting
for a bus (which I always rode
back then, too broke from partying
to afford one). To catch the bus,
the dream made clear, was Death.
And then the bus was right outside
that old apartment and the men
were all hurrying off: There was no time
to say goodbye to my father: Some
older god (whoever You are) pried
him from my soul that winter
long ago. He simply was gone,
leaving me to pick up the
breakfast dishes and clean
the room before I myself had
to head off to Work. In truth,
while I wintered by that heat
grate at the furthest western shore,
my father was soon to meet Thor
at Iona in some factual figment
of a dream.) Before I left
I found a box in which
a few porn mags were
sandwiched amid a thick
stack of photocopied research,
stuff I hadn’t glommed in years:
Hatchlings all of the man
who stirred from that grate on a day
less icebound than before,
sure only that I had
somehow survived and must
get to work with pen and
penis and climb aboard
that dragon who marauds
every sea beneath heat
grates of nipple, beer and
amp, each a verb with dragon
scales. World and word
once tore me almost
full apart: Ever since I’ve
been trying to bolt them
all back almost together
again, always just offshore
the place where Your
thunder cracks and roars.
I was born with an odd birthmark,
a red heart with an arrow
through it, upside down over
my heart: You fired that shaft
from up and down, its soar
and thwock from heaven or
its hell, and made this mess an art.