Clan of the Cappuccino

As you might have guessed, I am a fan of Jean M. Auel’s Earth’s Children series, a group of books that includes The Clan of the Cave Bear.  When I first encountered these books in high school, they burned me alive with inspiration.  I wanted nothing more than to run out, hunt for my meals, and make medicines from teas.  I read up on survival and other Paleolithic ideals and conventions, and I was itching to put this into practice.  The only problem was, I had a soft heart and could never be a hunter.  Although, as a hoarder, I’m pretty sure I’ve got gathering skills. 

            I just discovered the final book of the series was published last year.  Some super fan I am.  I will say that the fifth book in the series, which was published in 2002, left me a little flat.  It didn’t have the drive or passion of the first two books, and it lacked the interesting dynamics of the third.  The fourth book was a long read, and a little too contrived, but it was a story about traveling from the Ukraine to France before the euro rail was invented, so I cut it some slack.  Rereading the books, however, has begun to light that same fire in my belly for all things Cro-Magnon!

            I am a white American, which means I love borrowing ideas from cultures that aren’t all about the Gap and Starbucks.  So while reading the books, which have a heavy theme of animals as totems and spirit guides, I began wondering what my totem would be.  Surely the Gap isn’t my totem … but maybe Starbucks is!  I do love coffee, and I’m already marked with a mermaid tattoo! 

            Joseph is already sorted on this issue.  When I met him, he already had pictures and wall art in his apartment depicting the gray wolf he identifies with.  Joseph has wolfish qualities, too.  He’s loyal, fiercely protective of his pack, and he’s a bit aloof.  (Don’t worry, he gave me none of that “lone wolf” crap when we were dating.  I would have socked him in the stomach for it … maybe my totem is the Boxing Kangaroo!) 

            So all the while I was rereading my way through the series of books, I kept thinking which animal would embody my spirit?  Which animal do I have such a kindred connection to that other people would recognize the qualities that connect us right away?  I have a few favorite animals, but favorite animals aren’t necessarily totem material.  For instance, lately, I have liked owls.  But I like owls as decorative motifs, and I don’t think I embody the wise owl spirit.  I have a list of animals it MIGHT be.  And I have a list of animals I would WANT it to be.  But even these “small” lists just make me feel like saying Noah’s Ark is my totem.  Why not?

            My desire for a totem has been getting to me.  I even tried a couple of YouTube meditations to find my Animal Spirit.  But the voices on these videos are too annoying and too fast for me to really get into, and (didn’t think of this) I don’t know how to meditate.  It was very frustrating.  I had to form an image of a “happy place” and when something came to mind like my bed, the narrator would say something like, “perhaps it is a meadow near a babbling brook, or perhaps it’s a mountain side with trees all around.”   Crap!  I was supposed to be in an outdoorsy place?  Okay.  Hang on.  Okay, there, I’m in a forest. 

            “Now, you see a path,” the narrator tells me. 

            Uh, no I don’t.  Hang on.  Thinking … thinking …

            “You start down the path,” the voice continues.

            I said hang on!  Geez!  Okay, I guess I’ll just make a path, stomping through some forest I made up in my head.  Why do I see a refrigerator in the tree branches?  Never mind, ignore it. 

            “You encounter an animal.”

            Oh, this is it.  Whatever animal I think of will be my totem forever … why can’t I think?  Think think THINK!!!!!

            “Now ask your animal …” oops!  Gotta hurry, I guess I see a Muppet!  Wait, a Muppet?

            “… if it is your Spirit Animal.  If the animal is not, continue along your path until you meet the next animal and ask it the same question …”

            Nope!  Lame!  Way too hippy for me!  I have a religious view.  I have ideas about the universe and how it works.  Why do I need to do this 1970’s I-wish-I-were-an-Indian-so-I-can-pretend-I-have-more-culture-than-Starbucks-drinkers crap?   Why do I NEED a Spirit Animal?  It just seems like something people make up to make themselves more important, anyway.  It’s not like I’m going to be attacked by crackheads some day and will be forced to call out, “By the power of EAGLE!!!” and have an eagle swoop down from the sky to carry me into safety, and scare the crap out of the crackheads at the same time. 

            And what would I do with a totem?  Meditate on it?  Paint pictures of it?  Get a tribal tattoo of it?  That just seems so … AWESOME! 

            But here’s the kicker.  One of the websites said if we can’t find our spirit animal, we have to RELAX, because being stressed out may scare animal spirits away from us.  Well, that’s just great.  How can I relax when I don’t know what my totem is? 

            Well, I give up!  I will never be an awesome caveman.  So much for The Clan of the Cave Bear showing me how to live my life.  I’ll just have to drown my totemless sorrows by shopping at the Gap.  I may need a cappuccino to get me through this difficult time in my life.  Spirit of Starbucks, take me away! 

The Call of the Mammoth

When I was in high school and going through all of the career counseling classes they make you take to see what jobs were right for your personality, there were only two jobs I was interested in.  The first career choice I picked was to be a puppeteer.  (The fact that I made my own hand puppets from my own designs made me super popular with the ladies.)  And the second career choice was made after I read Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear at the age of fifteen: I wanted to be a caveman. 

            I figured I would take a year after high school and move myself up into the mountains to survive on foraged and hunted food.  I would make clothing from the animals I killed.  I would make medicine from the herbs I found.  And I would surely find a cave somewhere in the wilderness of Idaho which would make a good home for me while I lived on a sabbatical away from humanity and technology. 

            I wasn’t stupid.  I knew this was going to be a lot of work, so I began preparing for it right there, as a fifteen year old boy, by reading every book I could get on survival, herbal medicine, flint knapping, and cavemen!  It became one of my many obsessions in my life.  I learned about the Venus figurines of the Aurignacian sites.  I learned about the painted caves in France and Spain such as Lascaux.  The Chauvet cave was discovered my junior year and I had a folder filled with information about it.  English class was dedicated to writing short stories about cavewomen and art class had me busy.  I painted rocks my Art Teacher, Mr. Shook, brought down from the mountains for me.  I sculpted my own Venus figurines from clay and Mr. Shook taught me to use the small kiln to fire special glazes on them.  I also began sculpting small, votive mammoths which I glazed in browns, oranges, and terracotta reds.  I wore a mammoth pendant I made for myself around my neck, had a raccoon tail on my backpack, and sported a faux fur vest which I wore in my senior portraits. 

            I’m not sure why, but the idea of Cro-Magnon humans living in a world of ice and winter with all of nature against them filled my mind for a long while.  My art was their art.  My dreams were to go back in time and breathe that primeval air.  I was a scrawny little guy who went hunting every fall with his dad and his brothers and never killed anything due to a combination of clumsiness and a soft heart.  But in my mind, I could survive an ice age. 

            The idea still flavors my existence.  My mom buys me mammoth figures when she comes across them.  Joseph bought me a mammoth ivory pendant as a gift one spring when we decided to rent a cabin and get away for a while.  And I still love looking at those cave paintings in books and on the internet.  But the idea of being a caveman hasn’t struck me for a long while until now. 

            In T-town, with an icy Mt Rainier looming above my new front porch, I have begun to hear the call of the woolly mammoth again.  I take my dogs for walks, and almost every time, someone (crackhead or otherwise) has to stop me to ask if my dog Dinky is a wolf.  Dinky is Siberian Husky mixed with Border Collie, and he is usually in a state of shedding his fur.  But he’s half the size of a regular wolf, and his eyes are brown as can be, not yellow.   

            Sally, my other dog, receives no such attention. 

            So I’m not sure how this inspiration will manifest itself this time around, but it was much of my culture in high school the last time it hit.  Perhaps I’ll take up painting rocks again, or maybe I’ll get a mammoth tattoo.  Until I know for sure, though, I will walk with my wolf and carry a spear in my mind.  (Maybe I should carry the spear in my hand, it might cut down on the crackheads who talk to me on said walks.)