THERE THERE

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This is a 2018 novel about urban Indians in Oakland, California. I'm used to reading novels about Indians that are set on the rez rather than in the city, by Louise Erdrich and Sherman Alexei or - going back further - by D'arcy McNickle. Either way, these 4 are all very good native writers and you get a sense of what it's actually like in an everyday way. The title is a quote from Gertrude Stein: there is no THERE there, the Indians are rootless, they have no homeland. It's pretty grim. But plenty of the Indian spirit and way of seeing the world shines through in this story leading up to a pow-wow, written from the point of view of 13 different characters.

If you are a fan of TRANCE DANCE, then read this quote from 'There There' about powwow dancing:

"Now you young men in here, listen up. Don't get too excited out there. The dance is your prayer. So don't rush it, and don't dance how you practise. There's only one way for an Indian man to express himself. It's that dance that comes from all the way back there. All the way over there. You learn that dance to keep it, to use it. Whatever you got going on in your life, you don't leave it all in here, like them players do when they go out on that field, you bring it with you, you dance it. Any other way you try to say what you really mean, it's just gonna make you cry. Don't act like you don't cry. That's what we do. Indian men. We're crybabies. You know it. But not out there." he says and points to the door of the locker room. 

Orvil looks around the room and sees all these men dressed up like him. They all needed to dress up to look Indian too. There's something like the shaking of feathers he felt somewhere between his heart and his stomach. He knows what the guy said is true. To cry is to waste the feeling. He needs to dance with it. Crying is for when there's nothing else left to do..... He tries to shake off the feeling of feeling like a fraud. He can't allow himself to feel like a fraud because then he'll probably act like one. To get to that feeling, to get to that prayer, you have to trick yourself out of thinking altogether. Out of acting. Out of everything. To dance as if time only mattered insofar as you could keep a beat to it, in order to dance in such a way that time itself discontinued, disappeared, ran out, or into the feeling of nothingness under your feet when you jumped, when you dipped your shoulders like you were trying to dodge the very air you were suspended in, your feathers a flutter of echoes centuries old, your whole being a kind of flight. To perform and win you have to dance true.

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I offer Shamanic consultations, usually by skype, in which we can talk over anything you want to talk over. I may use the Medicine Wheel, Journeying, Astrology, Tarot or anything that works. And it centres around listening to ourselves in a deep way. I work on a donation basis, and I am happy with whatever is easy for you: I love this work. Contact: BWGoddard1@aol.co.uk

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