Many Layers of Knowing

Many Layers of Knowing, 

By fisherpal - See all my reviews

This review is from: When the Eagle Flies with the Condor: A Novel of the Sixties (Paperback)

"When the Eagle Flies with the Condor," is not a simple or undemanding book. Most good works require something from the reader and this book asks for your attention. You will be immensely rewarded if you can read it through as I did, cover to cover, in a weekend.

The story covers a period I'm familiar with - the rambunctious sixties: the rebelliousness, the quirkiness, the easy love, the drugs, and of course the war. These are all background attributes, but as the characters move smoothly among them, they create their own personal history which becomes a rich and colorful fabric with them in the foreground.

Bernie is an unlikely heroine, bold and sometimes obnoxious with her bossiness, yet tender and giving to a fault. Her life epitomizes the loose world--a dynamism that lasts a decade. Though she dabbles in the major events of the time, including anti-war protests that rock the nation, she chooses instead to care for and live among the natives of Bolivia, thus providing the novel with tension and an intriguing sub-plot involving Che Guevara. Her brother, Nick, is the love of her life, who, becomes disenchanted with his at an early age and opts to enlist and deploy to Vietnam. Here, he meets the third leg of this literary threesome, Spirit Deer, a native American Pawnee.

Nick and Deer are brothers in spirit and Deer gradually becomes enamored with Bernie through her letters to Nick. He and Nick share their fears and longings through the long Vietnamese nights and Deer gives Nick the support he seems to need, facing death, and the shams of the modern world.

The book has many layers of knowing - historical, romantic, an exotic land, religious, native shamanistic ritual, and the spiritual and all-consuming love of mother earth known by the natives as Pachamama.

Don't miss "When the Eagle Flies with the Condor, a novel of the Sixties." You won't regret it. 

Slices of Life

In the New Mexico desert, the ruins sprawled as they had for centuries, loose and broken like carelessly discarded baubles in the sand, ancient products from the sweat of skilled masons who had produced them a millennia before.  The people -- they were called the Anasazi -- had wandered off somewhere between the tenth and twelfth centuries to integrate with other Pueblo cultures of the southwest, but their ancestors remained here, buried in the red earth and ancient volcanic eruptions.  The Anasazi: the ancient ones.

They entered the canyon northeast of Pueblo Bonito but he was moving very quickly, making it difficult for her to keep up. He walked west, his eyes focused on something ahead, something she could not see.  The hot winds blew down the mountains in an inverted arc while the sun toasted them as brown as the forgotten race who lived there.  She followed him, chattering now and then, wanting attention but getting none.  She ran ahead, climbing the walls as he passed by, poking her head through windows and doorways, then jumping down in front of him.  She clowned from the stone tops and occasionally he'd smile indulgently but then continued on his pilgrimage, his face stern and opaque.  He trudged off towards Bonito, glancing around now and then to see that she was following.

They wandered through the multi-dwelling structures and could almost smell the dung-fueled fires whose smudges were captured in the petrified remains.  They examined the low-slung passage ways, the cooking hearths, kivas and sleeping stations, all in a remarkable state of preservation, efficiently designed by the strongly matrilineal society with an eye towards function.  He ran to a pile of rocks and scrambled to the top, searching the plains, his hand shading his eyes from the final blast of a dying sun, a gesture reminding her of those who had come before.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I can feel it."

"Feel what?"

"Like a. . .voice. . .like a message. . ."

"That's not funny," she said.  "Please come down."

She looked up and waited.  There was no laughter, no crooked grin.  The winds blew and still she waited for the insult, the irreverent epithet.  But he stood on this rock, face flushed, the muscled rib cage marking cadence with his breath, looking west towards the hills.  She was sorry now that they had come.  She felt as abandoned as the ruins surrounding them.  

Finally he slid down, his face red from the heat, and caked with clay.  He was tired now and they both smelled of sweat.  "Come on," he said and took her hand and they walked to the lee side of one of the dwellings.  They lay down in the shade, sharing a single can of Coke between them, listening to the voices of generations: ancestors, progenitors, the mothers of races.

From "Voices" Copyright (c) 2011 by Sue McGhee

Lost, a short story

An excerpt, entitled "Lost,"  from my collection of short stories now appearing on http://www.amazon.com/

                                        

My breath is labored but I ski diligently down the hill. The wind whistles past my ears and I feel the tender pat of snow on my face. It is late afternoon and I am cold, but he is here. I feel him. I listen for his voice.

I fall spread-eagle, skis askew, spraying snow in all directions. I am light-headed but I rise to my elbow and try to think. My head clears but I have lost my goggles from the fall. Without sun, there are no shadows; without goggles, there is no depth perception -- everything is flat. I stand, helpless and stunned and look overhead: roiling sky and furious snow. My body is old and abused and I cannot decide what to do. Stragglers hurry towards the bottom of the mountain like frightened animals searching for shelter.

How long has it been, I try to remember, since I waved to the excited tourists swinging overhead on the last chair lift of the day?

A ten year old," I called. "Look for a lost boy." My throat still throbs from the yelling. They leaned forward, straining to hear with knitted brows and good intentions, then looked ahead expectantly to the "Tips Up" sign and prepared to unload. An hour. It's been an hour.

A shelter of trees looms before me. I ski towards the trees. It is dark here and I blink to adjust my vision. I want to linger where it is safe and think of him. I want to think of Jason. I lean for a moment against a tree. It is rough against my back and I want to sink down into the snow. But I wait, wait for the breath to return.

Bird," his dad said. "Watch those boys ski, now. See how loose they are? how graceful? They're not all tight and stiff, you see." And it was true. As tykes, they swooshed down the mountain on either side of me, like new born comets blazing sky trails. "They're in control though, Birdie," he said.

And they were, of course. They were his sons, so they learned well the first time. And when Jason came to us late in life, he learned from them, his brothers.

Jason says, I'm here, Mom.

I listen. I use my poles to straighten; my back and legs throb. I plop one ski and then the other to come out of the soft powder beneath the trees. I raise my face to the wind. Dear God, I think.

A ten year old. A lost boy. An avid mountaineer; an apprentice to the wild. Still, I pray.

"The poles, Birdie, use your poles," my dead husband yelled. "Plant! That's right. Plant! Good girl. Now, lean back just a little and keep those skis straight. Fine, Bird, you're doing fine."

I head down the darkening slopes. Yes, I think. I'm doing fine. I had the baby and now you're gone.

(c) 2002 by Sue Mcghee