We walk a tortuous trail, some of us. Perhaps most of us, especially now. For those of us who must always walk in at least two worlds, we navigate these roads in tandem, but they are not necessarily parallel — indeed, probably most often they run in very different directions.
It’s hard to keep your feet on the ground when you’re forced to walk in different directions simultaneously.
We are at our best when all roads lead home — for us, a cultural and spiritual and historical and ancestral home, a community and commonality of place and purpose. But for some of us, even that is not possible, not literally, anyway. We are forced to make a home, sometimes out of virtually nothing. This is especially true of those of us who were denied our real homes, by intent or circumstance, in our earliest years of life.
We are not, white stereotypes notwithstanding, particularly nomadic peoples. Even those among our numbers who, long ago, moved camp routinely did so to specific purpose; no wanderers in the wilderness, we. We traveled, too, far and wide, for purposes of trade and marriage and geopolitical congress. And there have always been those among our umbers who were ultimately forced to live far from home. And those numbers, of course, rose exponentially with colonial invasion and the removal and reservation systems that it brought as part and parcel of its own warped interpretations of both divinity and destiny.
But we are of this land, of its earth and and sky and waters, its animals and plants and winds and sacred directions. And even when we cannot return “home” in the literal, physical sense, all of these we whom we share our world are our guides, lodestone and compass, North Star and sacred fire all at once.
We learn from them all, and we find our place in this world in relation to them all — even the smallest of the wildflowers, the tiniest of insects. They travel, too, especially now as climate change sparks a new great migration of beings of all sorts, and their sense of purpose, their instinct not merely to survive but to thrive, has much to teach us.
I’ve written about the insect spirits here in the past, and the plant spirits with whom they share the soil:
Camille once told me that, had she not become an artist, she probably would have been an entomologist. She loves insects, and they inform her work in ways that are beautifully unexpected in an era where they are so undervalued. As I said in the post last year in which we introduced Camille and her work:
Insects, of course, are woefully underappreciated in the art world, as in the larger society as a whole. They play significant roles in every ecosystem, crucial to the survival of the habitat and the other species that inhabit it (including our own). And so many of them, when examined closely, are so beautiful in their own way. Coupled with her other favored motif of the plant spirits, it turns her work into a joyous tribute to our multi-legged, winged, and antennaed brothers and sisters whose existence is too often neglected or forgotten.
At least one indigenous culture, one found on the other side of the globe, shared her appreciation for beetles, particularly these big, bold beetles with the folding wings and iridescent appearance. In ancient Egypt, they were keepers of thresholds of other worlds. In this one, they perform a similar function in much more quotidian terms, and do so mostly unnoticed; we so take for granted the earth beneath our feet that it’s rare that we notice the entire civilizations who live their lives at such a level . . . and yet, our own ecosystems would not survive without their presence and their contributions.
The same is true, of course, of the plant spirits: beings tasked with no less a responsibility than making the very air itself breathable. Those of us who style ourselves “human” tend to forget that breathable air is not a given; when the act itself is involuntary, an autonomic response, it’s too easy to take it for granted, to live by the wholly unconscious assumption that we will always be able to do it.
But we have degraded our ecosystem, including our air, and to a large degree have already sent it well past one of many cascading tipping points. Climate change is here, and it is very, very real, and the extent to which we as humankind survive it may well depend in no small part on the respect we show, going forward, to the plant spirits.
And still, the small creatures persist. It is early March, still winter by the calendar’s reckoning, and yet a honeybee joined me indoors today. It’s early days yet for their survival, but as endangered as their own numbers are, it was heartening to see that they have returned already to this place.
Other such creatures are arriving daily, too: those who fly, those who walk, those who move in other ways. The worms are beginning to appear, and so are the beetles. And it is the latter small spirits that put me in mind of today’s featured work. From its description in the Other Artists: Pottery gallery here on the site:
At the Four Directions, tiny scarabs rest among delicate blue flowers on this miniature traditional-style pot by Camille Bernal. Hand-coiled of earthy red clay, the little pot bears a silky slip in an ivory shade, accented with scarabs and plant life in soft natural colors. Pot stands 2.25″ high by 2.75″ across at the widest point, with a 1.25″ opening across the lip (dimensions approximate). Top view shown below.
Tewa clay; plant-based paints
$125 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
I’ve also written about the role that scarabs, specifically, play in our larger world:
Today, we tend to think of scarabs as belonging to a faraway land — specifically, as gatekeeper spirits of Ancient Egypt — but in truth, they live and thrive in nearly every corner of the world, including our own. They are truly creatures of the earth: The only places where their numbers reportedly are not found are in the oceans and on the icy land mass we call Antarctica. They do manage to survive in the Arctic climates to the north, however, burrowing deep into the soil. There are said to be more than 30,000 discrete scarab species in existence, and their numbers reportedly constitute a full ten percent of all of the earth’s beetle population. In my own homelands, a common one is the June bug.
To most of the modern world, such modest creatures, of such a humble station, are regarded as insignificant at best, and frequently an object of revulsion. Our world should rethink its understanding of these spirits of the earth. Another common scarab is the dung beetle, a creature reviled in popular culture but one that performs an essential role in ecosystems all over the globe by keeping animal waste (and thus, the potential for outbreaks of disease that accompany its accumulation) under control.
. . .
In the photo, the pot is angled so that the scarabs sit at the ordinal points: Northeast; Southeast; Southwest; Northwest. It’s a representation of the Four Directions, but one that differs from the more classic invocation of the cardinal points of North/East/South/West. It doesn’t matter; in some traditions, the ordinal points hold similar power and sway. Perhaps more to the point of our themes this week, the ordinal points are what link the cardinal points around the wheel, the threshold spaces, the interstices, between the obvious dividing lines that mark life’s path around the hoop.
Perhaps that is the lesson for today: to look around, to take note of the world around us, even when we are in an in-between phase. It’s easy to feel stalled, trapped, mired in futility and insignificance. But the scarab reminds us that everything plays a role in keeping our world revolving — and evolving — in harmony.
As I said, these tiny beings have much to teach us. In these days when resistance is mandatory, we can learn well from them about how to resist, to persist, to insist upon survival — not merely for ourselves, but for the generations to come. These will not be easy roads, but they are ours to travel.
The scarab, like the other spirits of his extended clan, reminds us that we can do it, one step at a time.
~ Aji
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