"...now, concerning the Greek mainland itself..." I said, to no one in particular.

Snapping suddenly to attention from what had felt like a total reality collapse vis-a-vis a heavy dose of high grade psilocybin mushrooms, I found my mind shockingly clear and collected... and suddenly under assault by several unexpected realizations.

Firstly, I realized that I had been babbling on about the Hellenic mainland - which, upon reflection, might have made sense if anything remotely connected to Doric or Ionian matters had been occurring in that moment.  Considering that I had just been in the midst of a final and apocalpytic confrontation with the ancient Nemesis of my people - the hideous, worm-mouthed Danes - deep in the high halls of their mythic home of Asgard, I was rather baffled as to why I was in the midst of delivering what sounded like a lecture on the nature of Aegean geography.

Apart from being long overdue for a "sabbatical" touring the ancient and sacred sites of said region, particularly those blessed with the capacity to offer alcohol, sex and opiates for hard American tax-payer provided currency - I couldn't for the life of me imagine why I would be babbling on about...

"THULE!!!!"

The piercing, high-pitched scream of an oceanic demon, like an Irish kelpie gone irredeemably rogue from spending too much time amongst disgruntled Christianized First Nationers, brought me prematurely into the second point of realization.

That voice was what had snapped me back to this reality - a reality which was possibly grimmer than the one I had left.  A reality which, at least at this moment, consisted of me realizing I was sitting in my own office, door carefully closed.  Carefully locked.  Painstakingly secured.  Lovingly dead-bolted, barricaded and protected by ancient sigils, spells and incantations (some of which would make the Wendigo blush).  And, most potently of all, graced with a sign that read in large, assertive letters "OUT OF ORDER".

The hammering noises, animal-fury growls and occasional shouts of my name in the previously referenced hell-birthed tone forced me to conclude that my current coordinates in the space-time contiuum put me at the University of Alaska, Anchorage... and that my cunning scheme to be located undetected, and hence unmolested, in the "annex" of the annex of the Anthropology department (which was in fact a storage area in the basement that I had found a way to semi-legally occupy by invoking my right as a Alaskan Native Person to do as I damn well pleased), had finally come to an end.

That voice.

None other than the infamous miscreant, Dr. Silms.  My arch-nemsis, my foil, my Jungian Shadow...

...my boss.

Fuck.


I will spare you the tedious and time-consuming account of the long stand-off, the tired, vexious and completely overwrought exchange between myself and the university's Senior Custodian, the on-call local locksmith, the poor adjunct psychology professor who happened to pull the short straw as the on-call HR liason for the day, and my incorrigible asshatted nerfclowning jackhole of a boss.  Delivered and riposte'd through a very well-built and, (as previously described) well-secured door of entry into my (until recently) secret lair, with myself doing very well if I do say so myself, in a particularly acerbic emotional environment complete with threats of termination, my own bold counters to (if I recall correctly) "burn this motherfucker to the ground with the dirt I have on you sorry Anglo bastards", with waves of distempered fungal energies flowing through my slowly sobering mind and soul.

I may have been half-coaxed, half-dragged out of a partially axed door...

So needless to say, the process was a bit messy.




"You're not even a fucking Inuit!"

This, again.  The same tired argument, thrown so... COLONIALLY (must check to see if that's a real word, later) in my face - it almost made me want to cry.  The abuse, the racism, the goddamn IMPERIALISM.  And after being dragged out of my own office, like some sort of criminal...

So of course, there I stood after this long, sorry and sordid ordeal - replete with screams, accusations, counter-accusations, desultory asides, embittered observations, savage retorts, and a few choice discoveries for the gathered bystadners that may or may not result in a class-action lawsuit against the university....

"Are you listening to me??"

UGH.  Yes, yes!  I am, you ugly roundeye asshat!  I screamed this all through what I thought was my throat, but it appeared to actually have just been through my third eye.  Considering the unblinkered ignorant lack of enlightenment of the being I was dealing with, it was sadly utterly ignored.  I found myself forced to respond via a more vulgar route.

"I AM INDEED!" I retorted, loudly - maybe too loudly.  "ON BOTH COUNTS!"  We were in Dr. Silms office.  Indoors.  With other staff present.  And guests.  Someone official from the state might have been outside.  I was keenly aware of some last lingering fuck that I had urging moderation under those circumstances.  I was having difficulty receiving its wisdom fully though, it seemed.

"Based on what evidence, EXACTLY?"

Damn you Silms.

"Goddamnit Silms, this is a distraction!  And an outrage!  How dare you!"  I yelled back.  I think I yelled rather than screamed.  Last Fuck seemed a mite relieved at least.  What could have been the sage hand of a venerable ancestral spirit seemed to place itself gently upon the back of my soul (or would it be soul of my back?) in approval.

"You attack me in my own office - interrupt critical anthropological research - embarrass me and insult me in front of other staff members..." I continued, gaining momentum.

I was brutally cut off though.

"You were tripping tits in a storage locker in a unversity-rented warehouse -"

"That was my office-"

"-TRESPASSING-" Ouch.  Ok, that was Loud loud.  I really always forget that his voice can get so LOUD so quickly.

"ILLEGALLY..."  As if the point that trespassing was against Alaskan State Law was lost on me...

"But..." I attempted to regain the offensive.

"...ILLEGALLY" He continued as if I wasn't even there. "and illegally occupying; AND! forced to exit the property while physically restrained!"  He finished with a smug fury that can only be born from the dire self-satisfaction of watching your most hated foe suffer in front of you.

"I made... every good faith effort to come out and confront you and your torrent of... abuse, the distortions of the FACTS, your, your... and your outright SLANDER against my professional character..." I saw him about to launch off again but this time was ready to smack down his hijacking of the conversation.  "...AND WAS THWARTED BY YOUR INCOMPETENT DIRECTION OF THIS DEPARTMENT AND THE EFFORTS OF COMPETENT PROFESSIONALS TO AID IN MY EXIT FROM MY OWN OFFICE!"

That took the wind a bit out of his sails.  The bastard.  I heard shuffling outside the door - based on the amount of shuffling, muttering, breathing and clunking, I was fairly certain that everyone in the building had gathered in the reception area to hear this.

It then suddenly occurred to me that I had made a very unconnected disparagement of the Dr.'s capacity to run the department that was bafflingly interlinked with his direction of the opening of the door to my lair, er... office, which I confess was heavily compromised by the sheer quantity of psilocybin I had consumed and its lingering impact on my motor function.  Had the asshole simply waited ten more minutes (after yelling back and forth for approximately 45 or so) I could have comfortably and easily exited my office through my own means - but nooooo, someone had to be impatient, and angry, and asshated, and verbally exacerbate my agitation and impairment... which may have caused me to confound my own security and turn it into accidental imprisonment.

This realization was assisted in no small part by the gentle hand of ancestral reassurance slowly turning into a vice grip of restraint and demanded discipline, somewhere between my 2nd and 4th thoracic verterbra.  The pain did manage to refocus my attention on several things: the building fury of Silms, the fact that I had gotten closer to him in the course of that last outburst than was wise or comfortable (for either of us I'm sure), the possibility that he might have a slight rage erection forming - and that I was still a little too under the influence of said psilocybin to trust my first instincts for rebuttal during this part of cross-examination.

Whatever the case, and ancestors be damned - its still his Godsdamn fault, and he can pay the five figures in damages done to the door, frame and walls of what was storage unit A/A-18C.

Anglo imperialist bastard.  I spat in my own mind.  At least I hoped that was just internal monologue.

Dr. Silms started in again, with a lower and more violent register to his voice.  He definitely had at least half hate-wood going.  His proximity was now beginning to verge on menacing and was triggering animal instincts to leave.  Rapidly.

"If you think for a second that I'm going to take that sort of bullshit from some borderline, crusted, drug-addled Inuk-wannabe..."

"WANNABE?" I yelled.  "Wannabe???"  This was absurd and disgusting.  My wounded pride short-circuited ancestral and animal wisdom.

"YOU ARE NOT A GODDAMN INUK!" He screamed... screamed with a fervor that would make a Baptist preacher performing an exorcism at a revival proud.  He slammed both hands down on the desk between us to reinforce the point and loomed in over his desk.

"THAT is not, nor has EVER been conclusively proven."

Dammit fungus, you are not helping me now.

"THULE..."  He growled.  Growled, like a rabid dog or like the last living polar bear hell-bent on revenge for its entire species.  "Scientifically... you can not PROVE a negative!"

"Exactly!  My point the entire time!  I'm glad you finally are coming around to see my side on this." I smiled, broadly.

However, my victory in the moment would prove to be... painfully... short-lived.

To be continued...

Running Red Wolf Would Like to Talk About Time Management Skills

And now for something completely different... An essay written in earnest about the complications of Shamanic practice. I hope you enjoy this guest piece! - Doc Thule

Running Red Wolf Would Like to Talk About Time Management Skills

----

My brother and sister shamans, its so good to finally see you all gathered together in one place.  It only took us three months, about 150 emails, text messages and phone calls trying to coordinate, reschedule, re-coordinate and negotiate when this circle was actually going to happen.  So before we get to calling in the spirits of the directions and creating a sacred vessel in which to do our work, I have to ask each one of you here (from a space of deep love and understanding towards my fellow healers and medicine workers) one very important question:

What the actual fuck? 

No, I’m dead fucking serious here.  Don’t give me the stink eye, Blue Wolf Cloud, I’m absolutely fucking sick of this.  Three months?  For real?  We’ve been doing this intertribal circle for fourteen years now, and it still takes an act of the Creator Spirit to get us to drag our sorry feather-clad asses into the same space to sit long enough to do our fucking jobs?

Do any of you know what a fucking calendar is, or how to keep track of time?  We didn’t each build our own fucking medicine wheels aligned perfectly to the cardinal points and demarcating the transit of the seasons just for goddamn art projects, did we?  And you know what Half Moon Feather, I don’t give a flying fuck that time is an illusion, or that we’re all living in the Great Moment, because I have better fucking things to do than try to get each one of you flaky fucks to pay more than a Condor Father shit’s worth of attention to the day of the fucking year and stick to a plan more than five minutes out. 

Thunder Bird help me if you aren’t going to make me go all vision quest on your initiated asses with this bullshit.

Look, I know us shaman motherfuckers do alot of fucking drugs.  And- what’s that Red Cloud?  “Its not drugs, its medicine”?  You are one to fucking talk, aren’t you?  I see the way you hit the peace pipe; so don’t you tell me that “you’re just going to do one more journey before you call it quits for the night”.  Yeah, I bought that line for the first few years, but that shit doesn’t fool me anymore.  That ain’t sacred tobacco in there. I checked, thank you, and let me tell you: you need to Slow the Fuck Down with that shit, bro.  Like Whoa.

But like I was saying before I was rudely interrupted: I know we do ALOT of fucking drugs.  Don’t get it twisted, I’ll pop a peyote button and go talk to the ancestors as quick as the next medicine man, but I also keep one fucking foot in the middle world, you know?  And I at least have the fucking decency and respect for each one of you asshole reflections of the One True Self to keep a calendar and actually maintain the fucking thing.

Earth Mother fucking protect the next one of you that bitches about me being a tight ass about time, or not going with the flow, or letting Ego get in the way of Spirit.  Somewhere in those sorcerer spaced-out minds of yours is the ability to look at clocks and jot down an important fucking date or two.  I seem to recall you all being REAL fuckin’ punctual back when your Teachers told you be somewhere, somewhen for your initiations.  Do I have to go into the spirit world and summon up some of them to remind you about how to fucking read a clock?  I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to know their pupils are so on their shit that they forget to even tell their fellow shamans that they can’t make it to a Solstice Sun Circle until three weeks after it fucking happened. 

Yeah Water Spider Woman, I’m looking right at you.  And don’t wave that feather fan at me unless you fucking mean it bitch, so help me I will totally go Wolf Spirit all over your fucking Spider clan ass.

Now if one of you dopey motherfuckers can spark up the white sage and rattle in some fucking directions, we can light this candle.

A-fuckin’-Ho!








(by Andrew Killilea)

A primer on the Norse Mythological Cycle - an Inuit Critique

"Oh man, oh man, oh man - I am TRIPPING my face off." I said, to no one in particular.

At least, that's what my notes said when I had a chance to review them several days later. Apparently I was a bit hung up on that fact, and decided to dedicate several pages to the implications of this particular neuro-chemical experience.

I was headed to Valhalla... or Asgard... it was impossible to keep track of Norse mythological geography at that point. I had been told that we were going to meet Odin All-Father: Spear-Shaker, Vili's Brother, the Master of Riddles, Lord of All Aesir.

Gotta Whole Lotta Awesome wood-carved Propaganda

Or something to that effect. This is what seemed to blabber out of mouth of the Electric Acid Viking rendition of Thor the Destroyer who was escorting me at a feverish pace towards my appointment with destiny. A cold weather Danish military encampment swam around us within a bizarre hurricane of aural and temporal cues as to the actions and intentions of tens of thousands of Einherjer prepared to ride gloriously into battle for either death or glory for their King and Kingdom.

"Valhalla, must be Valhalla", I murmured.

"How do you know of our camp's name??" my captor/spirit guide yelled at me, throwing me against the nearby wall of a hardened winterized shelter.

It was hard. Very hard, physical reality reminded me.

"Ow" I offered in response. The impact caused the world to break apart and swim around like pieces of plastic in a snow globe. Just existing was also starting to get HARD.

Thor's eyes went wide, and then narrowed in simmering antipathy. "He will pay for this treachery with his life's blood", he spat through clenched teeth, before grabbing me again and continuing our interminable shuffle towards Odin's chambers.

Time seemed to collapse and loop in on itself in no particular direction. anthropomorphic sea otters danced around the edges of my vision - cavorting with Svartalfen temptresses. I knew intuitively it was merely a distraction, designed to take my attention away from more important matters... such as concentrating on preventing my molecular structure from dissolving.

Suddenly, the dream collapsed in on itself. Mainly because I had been thrown face first onto the floor of a Cyclopean throne room, resplendent with shining jewels and the grim faces of warriors who would gladly die at a word for the pleasure of their monarch.

That, or a pimp military-grade winter shelter overloaded with electronics and bored, cold Danish defense contractors. Distinctions were truly beginning to feel irrelevant.

For some reason only known to the mercy of the Ancestors, I didn't look like Vin Diesel.

I lay on the ground for what seemed like an eternity, contemplating the entangled nature of quantum particles and electromagnetic repulsion preventing me from falling deep into the gravity well of the planet. I also contemplated the possibility that my nose might have been broken by the impact with the ground. I was stunned to realize that since I had, by the blessings of Sedna, landed more on my cheekbone than my nose, it was only a gash in my face that was bleeding - and not smashed nasal cartilage.

The realization of this stroke of fortune allowed me to slowly tune back into the reality simmering and percolating within the demichamber of Odin All Father. Human voices coalesced alchemically from the buzzing and howling swirling around the room.

Sadly, those voices spoke the bastard tongue of Man - Danish.

"What the hell is this trash and why is it leaking bodily fluids into my antiseptic environment??" bellowed a voice filled with malice, authority and the sickly-sweet smell of mead kept just a little too long in the bottle.

Either Odin or some sort of Mayan Death God - taking my chances, I assumed Odin.

I heard some disdainful murmurs from the ring of warrior god/defense technology specialists hanging ominously around Valhalla's mighty meeting hall. A place of warriors and stories of heroism - a space for laying cunning plans and stratagems - a place where a young Danish conscript could get away from it all in isolated prefab encampment far away from intoxicants and the possibility of intercourse with anyone they might want it from.

I heard (or perhaps felt), my Electric Acid Thor the Destroyer preparing himself to launch into what was probably the most exciting opportunity to look awesome in front of his superiors he'd ever had. "A traitor, a spy and a miscreant, sir!" he screamed with gusto, beginning his epic tale of my capture. "A man filled with the lies and cunning of a wolf, the Great Demon Fenrir himself - Sun-Swallower, armbiter, most misbegotten of Loki's broodmares..."

Yeah, when they say you look this bad-ass, you know you're doing it right.

Realizing that it was now or never, I daringly chose to interrupt. "Excuse me Odin All-Father, I hate to interrupt your son, Thor the Almighty Warrior, High Lord of the Wintermark here - but do you high-born Aesir have a bathroom that the child of the Arctic Gods could use? Nature, and my little friend the psilocybin mushroom, is calling lustily for me to purge my stomach of at least three generations of ancestral pain, illness and guilt. And I don't suppose you'd want that all over the floors of... where.. when?.. ever we are currently."

All sounds and motion seemed to stop. I felt a million hard cold eyes burning with fire boring into the back of head and body, each one willing death by a thousand hard Viking daggers into me.

Realizing that I may have been completely misunderstood, I took a moment to consider what any sensible Inuit, surrounded by war-maddened Viking demigods would do.

At this moment, this was probably not to be considered sensible.

Coming up completely blank, I thought a quick review of what I might have said that could have been considered a faux pas.

Could it be that I had offended my hosts by not invoking the appropriate list of honorifics due the Lords of the Aesir? Or because I was still lying face-down on the floor in a pool of my own blood (and probably making something closer to a hideous Jabberwocky-like burbling noise)... or perhaps it was just that I had not used language even remotely akin to anything that the human mouth is supposed to ever utter - my mind and mouth comfortably detached by a beautiful wall of glossolalia?

"Oh yeah - I am still tripping face. Right, got it." I thought to myself. Maybe if I got up into a sitting position and tried again in a human-oriented register? Or maybe just yelled - yelling works wonders to break down communication barriers with foul-smelling Nordic barbarians. At least, that's what some ancestral voice screaming in rage at their murderous intrusions into our homeland, seemed to be saying.

But then I realized how much of a mistake Getting Up would prove...

I don't think we're in Valhalla anymore, Toto.

To be continued...

On Applied Anthropology, Arctic Climate Change, And Norse Irredentism

I don’t expect that the unwashed reader of this online tabloid often finds themselves amongst the breathtakingly sublime beauty of Greenland. Kalaallit Nunaat to its hardy indigenous natives - Gronland to its doughty, pseudo-barbarous pretenders, the Danes.

Who look much likes this.


I am graced by all the dark Goddesses of the Ice and Sea with the ability to return often to Greenland, almost as often as I wish, but never quite enough to satisfy a sort of infinite nostalgia for the place. Its glowing power and majesty always fill me with an intense connection to my heritage; and reconnects me to the power of the tundra spirits.

Some call it the blessings of Arnakuagsak, Goddess of the Sea herself, who bestows upon men whom she favors many and lavish gifts. The ability to travel far away from home and return safely. The ability to see deep into the future and the past. The ability to find game in times of dire need for the community.

Others call it the rampant abuse of grant money and my staff travel budget. No matter. For I am happy, even with a voicemail box filled to my mobile call carrier’s limit with angry calls from Alaskan State budget auditors.

The former Governor Palin’s affirmative action programs hard at work.


Fools. Audit me all they want. They will never realize that I falsified the identity of another professor and am utilizing the grant money usually allotted to a more senior (and tenured) position. For powerful am I with the ancient ways - and far too proficient in mainframe hacking to ever be discovered.

But in moments like this, staring out into the unspeakable beauty of the Arctic Ocean, I am often struck by how nerve-wracking and obnoxious it is for total strangers to blunder into my perfect moment - ruining it with their yelling and running and waving of firearms.

Turning slowly and carefully to not provoke the intruder into a display of their small arms abilities, I took in this intruder’s invasion into my moment of calm.

The tall, lanky, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, well-shaven, well-fed form that confronted me, sporting a dapper uniform properly made and manufactured to withstand temperatures to nearly 40 degrees Celsius below, could only mean one thing.

A Dane.

Rolling my eyes with exasperation, and muttering something in Inuit, I managed to stop his train wreck of worm-mouthed Scandinavian bellowings and utterations, affected whilst he cavalierly waved his Colt Canada C7 assault rifle in my general direction.

“Who are you? What are you doing here? Don’t you know this is a restricted area?” He half-growled, half-bellowed at me. At least the volume had decreased and the dialect had changed to something intelligible. Bloody Danish. Horrible language I mused internally.

“As a member of the Circumpolar Council of First Nations, I don’t feel as though I have to answer that question.” I responded, droitly. Reading his reaction, which was akin to throwing a frozen beet, blanched and drained of color into a roiling soup of red hot lava, I quickly and tactfully added “But I would be happy to volunteer a complete explanation for my presence here in exchange for one thing.”

The Danish conscript, torn between the affront to his young male machismo and some small instinctual cultural imperative to not callously murder unarmed civilians, paused to carefully consider his options. He turned briefly to look out over the cold, uninviting sea, littered with broken skeletons of thousands of pieces of icebergs, prematurely aborted by rising Arctic temperatures. Doomed to never know the glory of growing to unimaginable proportions and littering Northern Atlantic sea lanes like lurking limpit mines of death and horror.

I will destroy you. And everyone you love.


“That’s also an amazing weapon you’re holding there” I added.

The appeal to his heroic glory and subtle phallic potency mercifully shaded his thinking back towards civility and away from shooting me and dumping my body in the cold briny ocean.

“What is this thing you ask?? Speak quickly!” he retorted. “And it is a nice weapon, one of my favorites, ever. I could kill many Russians with it.” He added with eyes drawn into the squint of a childish homicidal fantasy.

“Well, first let me point out I am totally not Russian.” A fact I felt all too important given his now clear racist imperative for genocide against his Northern neighbors. “But I would ask that if you advise me as to why you and a well-armed regiment of the Danish Royal Army are grabbing some beach time on the northern tip of Greenland, I will happily return the favor, vis-a-vis my own presence hereto.”

“Our business is our own, Eskimaux!” His racial epithet cut deeper into my soul than the unnecessary ‘x’ at the end of it. “Wait, no - my apologies. Eskimo as a term is horribly inappropriate and I deeply apologize for my lack of consideration to the traditions and the cultural diversity of our Arctic Indigenous Population. What I meant to say is that our business is our own, obviously over-Americanized outsider Inuit speaker!”

My baffled and hurt stare, somewhat mitigated by his retraction regarding my ethnic and cultural history, overcame his brittle 18-year old Danish child conscript defenses. Thawing a bit, he continued.

“If you must know, we are preparing for something truly wonderful. Something that will truly redefine the course of the Kingdom of Denmark. Soon, the world will tremble again at the boots of Danish warriors, and our flag will fly high amongst the peoples of the world!”

“Well, in that case, then I think its only fair to mention that I’m here crassly avoiding my responsibilities to the University of Alaska, wasting American taxpayer money, and engaging in deep metaphysical work intended to reconnect with the spirits of the frozen North. That is to say, I’m tripping my face off off of 6 grams of psilocybin. Want some?”

The proffered baggie, containing my remaining stash of hallucinigens, was carefully considered by the teen epitome of Thor, God of War.

Just like this. But with acne and far less awesome.


“Thanks, but no thanks. I’m on duty. And there might RUSSIANS to kill.” His face split into a terrifying grimace foreboding blood, ruin, and cities yet to be sacked and burned.

“Ummm, ok, fair. That’s valid. I guess.” The sky behind him had turned electric orange fractal patterns. It was possible we were currently in Asgard. Nothing could be ruled out.

“If you’ll come with me”, he advised with a strange mixture of courtesy and menace, “you can talk to a Royal Councilor who can tell you more.” His eyes, burning with thousands of years of slaughter and conquest, indicated that my cooperation would be in my IMMEDIATE best interest.

“After you. All of you. All... wow. Umm, are you seeing this?” I asked dumbly. Neon electric fractal Viking Gods were both pillaging and cavorting with the entire collected myth cycle of the Inuit speaking peoples in an epic orgy of blood and procreation.

“Of course.” He replied. “I can see FOREVER.” At least, that’s what I heard.

To be continued....