dedication
what follows is dedicated to birds, the land and waters they touch and fly over; the people who help save, protect and steward the land and water; the many who have loved our home and shared its beauty and wonders. I thank you all for your dedication, for sharing your wisdom and life energy; for passing on the good and sharing the wonder.
subtitle
- sometimes a fable, weaving
our connections to birds,
meandering rivers and dragons,
fermenting miso and consciousness,
wetlands, our extended kin and ancestors,
our mentors, and Wisdom.
Inspired by actual events
and a sense of place and belonging
by a woman who addresses the reader
on behalf of the earth
the elements of dragon ~ 1 end on the top of page 5
I went down to the river. I thought I’d do my qigong exercises there because I’d been wanting to get back to the swimming dragon exercise for months. Earlier in the week I had a reading with the astrologer who fugues language and astrology into a verbal pyrotechnics. This was also months delayed. But the first thing she says is that we are both water dragons. It was the year of the dragon. I knew that. I didn’t know I was a water dragon. And I also learned that my osprey are sometimes also known as water dragons.
One trip up to the Cape with Lynn we had a blow out on 95 in Connecticut. We stopped but traffic kept whizzing by. Heart and head were pounding. All I wanted was to get off the highway. But a trooper made us stay on the highway and made me get in the car. The car felt like a thin metal box. I was certain a car would hit me. Lynn was outside speaking to the trooper. I was bracing for impact when I noticed that a dragon had curled up on the right side of my skull. I don’t know how but I could see it. Neither Lynn nor the trooper noticed when I got out of the car to ask if I could stand there. I was still scared but I felt a layer of safety between me and the highway. Curled inside my head, the dragon felt like the reassurance that you get with a friendly hand on your shoulder. This was the first time I was aware that dragon paid me a visit.
I have since learned that there is a dragon for each element. In Chinese healing culture the elements are metal, wood, water, fire and earth. But I’m thinking there is another element that might be locked up in our skulls. It only comes into play when a certain symmetry is met. It could be age coupled with PTSD on a cold highway in Connecticut. Or it could be that my zodiac came round to dragon time. Elemental dragons only come once in a 60-year cycle.
~ ~ ~
This small river gets more and more crowded by the phragmites, aka the common reed, as it moves under the highway. I met a man seining for bunkers near my favorite spot to sit, between the broken boards that time and weather opened in the bulwark. These fish are also known as bunker heads, menhaden, moss bunker, plain old bunker or even American sardine. Menhaden comes from the Native American word munnawhatteaug which means "that which manures." The Native Americans would use the menhaden to fertilize their crops. There’s a whole lot of stink in those fish but it’s a good stink and good for a lot of things.
The man told me he used to go out that way, pointing where Shark River goes under the little, local bridge, with some friends when he was a kid. The river thins even more as it moves under Route 18. He said there’s some kind of beachhead out there and they’d stay for hours. He wonders, like I do, if it’s still there. He liked the birds we saw on the river in front of us. A poor excuse for a river by some, we both agreed, but we also agreed it’s the river we know best. He didn’t know the names of the birds we saw, heron and egret. But he knew the fish he caught were less plentiful and didn’t think his ration or the osprey’s take, was the reason. Me neither. We’re both not sure what the many likely reasons are. But we hope things get better. We were looking out on this little sand bar in the middle of this part of the river. From where we stood to across the way, I’d say it was probably less than a football field. It’s a sweet spot for birds. The sand is soft like at the ocean’s edge and there’s thread-like grooves from the water running in miniature rivulets down the slopes of the sandbar back into the river’s streaming. Depending on the time of day you’re looking, but almost anytime there is sun, the water, the sky, the gulls or the osprey on the distant cell tower, the redwings swaying on the tall phragmites to the left, the river’s moving song, coming in or going out back to sea, the salted air, the cypresses holding court to the right– all of these river elements, rises in your eyes, arms, and chest and fills the deep breath you’re inclined to take with sweetness. I was standing there after the fisherman left. I had a thought to turn toward my car and then head home and start dinner. But I couldn’t move. Something happened. Joy rose like the tide and pulled me into a place I never wanted to leave. Suddenly, these words filled my head, ‘I am water dragon. ‘
What follows is everything I know that led me here.
(narrator’s notes)
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