Ty Nolan

(this review duplicates what I've posted on LJ)

This is a **wonderful** book. As the title suggests, it's legends, but also the thoughtful reminicenses and personal history of Nolan, along with recipes (delicious! I have tried them), links to pictures of artifacts and artwork (and sometimes just to funny stuff—like a closeup on a rabbit’s nose). It's an intimate, generous book.

On a couple of Wednesdays, I’ve shared parts of it that I’ve especially loved (entries href="http://asakiyume.livejournal.com/tag/coyote%20still%20going" rel="nofollow" target="_top">here, under the “coyote still going” tag)—things like that in the story of the girl who was “Aiyaiyesh” (stupid/inappropriate in her behavior), the girl isn’t punished, but given a way to be in society, or the concept of reality being flexible in the deep past, which is why animals could shift forms.

What strikes me overall is the grace and balance between the traditional tales and Nolan’s own stories of his own experiences, and his thoughts on healing, different cultures, and the power of story. He tells two versions of the story of Dash-Kaya, or Wawa-yai—a monster who drinks human blood and eats human flesh. In both versions, the monster’s demise involves exploding into tiny pieces—these are mosquitoes, which still drink human blood. Nolan reflects,

Dash-Kaya or the Wawa-yai don’t suddenly vanish—but they become something you can live with on a daily basis.

He says that he’s used this in dealing with addiction: it’s not that the issue disappears, but that you can manage it. Later he talks about the difference between curing and healing—you can be healed even if you can’t be cured.

He has more thoughts on language and how different languages let us express different things:

If I look out the window and see a car go by, that’s exactly what I can say in English. But in Navajo, a speaker has to express whether or not the viewer is in motion, or is stationary. The car must be described as moving towards one or moving away. Is the car stationary, or is it in motion? The wonderful irony is—Navajo, the traditional language of a people who were often shepherds—is much more expressive in discussing technology than English.

Imagine a rocket shooting through the air. A scientific observer must be aware of the fact the rocket is not just moving—it is also rotating. It is also moving in the context of Earth, which is not only moving, but simultaneously revolving, while it circles the sun. Navajo is very good at expressing movement.

This made me reflect: what would it be like if we could express things in the languages best suited to express those things?

And then he told a funny story about expressing the concept of far away. At one point he did some work in remote portions of Saskatchewan:

That happened with my mom, where one of my sisters asked how I liked Bermuda. I had never been. When I asked my mom why she was telling people I had been in Bermuda, she was like the Saskatchewan Elder—“I just knew you were really far away, and the furtherst place I could think of was Bermuda.”

He told a Japanese story that particularly moved me, about an old man up tending his fields high on a mountain, and looking down, seeing that the ocean has disappeared, and all his neighbors in the village walking out onto the sea floor in wonderment. The old man knows what’s happening—that this is a tsunami, and that soon the water will come rushing in and drown everyone—but how can he save them? If he yells, they won’t hear, and he doesn’t have the strength to run all the way down the mountain to warn them in person. So, he sets his fields on fire. His neighbors see the smoke and rush up the mountain to help and save them—and so are saved, themselves, from drowning.

Nolan concludes, “We never know what it is we need to save. We have no way of knowing which legend, which Story, which plant, or teaching we are going to need to face the challenges that are coming.”

But I liked the story because it shows how what we see, and understand, of a situation is so incomplete, and it’s only later that we may, maybe, see more of what was going on. And so we rush forward to to save someone, not knowing that really it’s he who’s saving us. God that’s beautiful.

Coyote Still Going really has so, so much to offer you—traditional tales, a look at what it’s like in Native American communities today (up in Saskatchewan, Nolan recalls that “the community entertained itself by playing bingo over the radio, since there was no television,”), thoughts on language, culture, and healing; recipes sweet, savory, and spicy; and art (like this Transformation Mask, which shows a human face within the blood-sucking, flesh eating monster of the tale I described above). And Ty Nolan is sharing them with us directly: this is another self-published book. If you read it and like it, spread the word!
… (plus d'informations)

(this review duplicates what I've posted on LJ)

This is a **wonderful** book. As the title suggests, it's legends, but also the thoughtful reminicenses and personal history of Nolan, along with recipes (delicious! I have tried them), links to pictures of artifacts and artwork (and sometimes just to funny stuff—like a closeup on a rabbit’s nose). It's an intimate, generous book.

On a couple of Wednesdays, I’ve shared parts of it that I’ve especially loved (entries href="http://asakiyume.livejournal.com/tag/coyote%20still%20going" rel="nofollow" target="_top">here, under the “coyote still going” tag)—things like that in the story of the girl who was “Aiyaiyesh” (stupid/inappropriate in her behavior), the girl isn’t punished, but given a way to be in society, or the concept of reality being flexible in the deep past, which is why animals could shift forms.

What strikes me overall is the grace and balance between the traditional tales and Nolan’s own stories of his own experiences, and his thoughts on healing, different cultures, and the power of story. He tells two versions of the story of Dash-Kaya, or Wawa-yai—a monster who drinks human blood and eats human flesh. In both versions, the monster’s demise involves exploding into tiny pieces—these are mosquitoes, which still drink human blood. Nolan reflects,

Dash-Kaya or the Wawa-yai don’t suddenly vanish—but they become something you can live with on a daily basis.

He says that he’s used this in dealing with addiction: it’s not that the issue disappears, but that you can manage it. Later he talks about the difference between curing and healing—you can be healed even if you can’t be cured.

He has more thoughts on language and how different languages let us express different things:

If I look out the window and see a car go by, that’s exactly what I can say in English. But in Navajo, a speaker has to express whether or not the viewer is in motion, or is stationary. The car must be described as moving towards one or moving away. Is the car stationary, or is it in motion? The wonderful irony is—Navajo, the traditional language of a people who were often shepherds—is much more expressive in discussing technology than English.

Imagine a rocket shooting through the air. A scientific observer must be aware of the fact the rocket is not just moving—it is also rotating. It is also moving in the context of Earth, which is not only moving, but simultaneously revolving, while it circles the sun. Navajo is very good at expressing movement.

This made me reflect: what would it be like if we could express things in the languages best suited to express those things?

And then he told a funny story about expressing the concept of far away. At one point he did some work in remote portions of Saskatchewan:

That happened with my mom, where one of my sisters asked how I liked Bermuda. I had never been. When I asked my mom why she was telling people I had been in Bermuda, she was like the Saskatchewan Elder—“I just knew you were really far away, and the furtherst place I could think of was Bermuda.”

He told a Japanese story that particularly moved me, about an old man up tending his fields high on a mountain, and looking down, seeing that the ocean has disappeared, and all his neighbors in the village walking out onto the sea floor in wonderment. The old man knows what’s happening—that this is a tsunami, and that soon the water will come rushing in and drown everyone—but how can he save them? If he yells, they won’t hear, and he doesn’t have the strength to run all the way down the mountain to warn them in person. So, he sets his fields on fire. His neighbors see the smoke and rush up the mountain to help and save them—and so are saved, themselves, from drowning.

Nolan concludes, “We never know what it is we need to save. We have no way of knowing which legend, which Story, which plant, or teaching we are going to need to face the challenges that are coming.”

But I liked the story because it shows how what we see, and understand, of a situation is so incomplete, and it’s only later that we may, maybe, see more of what was going on. And so we rush forward to to save someone, not knowing that really it’s he who’s saving us. God that’s beautiful.

Coyote Still Going really has so, so much to offer you—traditional tales, a look at what it’s like in Native American communities today (up in Saskatchewan, Nolan recalls that “the community entertained itself by playing bingo over the radio, since there was no television,”), thoughts on language, culture, and healing; recipes sweet, savory, and spicy; and art (like this Transformation Mask, which shows a human face within the blood-sucking, flesh eating monster of the tale I described above). And Ty Nolan is sharing them with us directly: this is another self-published book. If you read it and like it, spread the word!
… (plus d'informations)