Trickster is in the Lines

I am one of those blessed with optical migraines rather than the head splitting variety, and they are an interesting experience. What happens is that I see a line of lights in my visual field that usually start as something like an angular arc of lightening (of beautiful neon colors, usually white, yellow, blue, and sometimes red). They start in the middle of my visual field and migrate, getting larger, to the outside of the visual field where they eventually dissipate. These show up when my eyes are open, and I usually notice them because it looks like there is a very irregular, glowing crack in my glasses. They are not painful, but they are distracting and I usually find I need to lie down for 15 or 20 minutes to let them follow their normal progression.

They are very beautiful, and although I wish I could render them more accurately and more dynamically, this static image

suggests something of their nature although they move and morph as they migrate to my peripheral vision. I call them my Eskimo Friend, because they remind me of Inuit geometrical art, which, as you may guess, is full of trickster figures. Often the shape of my lines will suggest either a raven's mouth or a wolf's head -- nice Amerindian images that I, no doubt, find to give some order to the chaos of the ocular migraines. I don't know whether it is the angularity of the lines, or the images really suggest such things, but the lightening show is a wondrous vision. Here is Inuit rendering of trickster/raven:

that clearly shapes and projects a recognizable visual image. My light shows are not nearly so organized or formed into so identifiable shapes, but the insistent symmetry and the contrast between such vivid colors suggests lots of the Northwestern indigenous art that I have seen. Take this example is an Timshian house (constructed in the Grand Hall display at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa:

Although my ocular migraines are not at all architectural, but the use of line, color, and symmetry in Inuit art strikes me as very familiar. If I were an artist, I would like very much to assemble glass works (probably layers of different colored class cut to show bevels of back neon light glowing thru) etched with the various forms of Eskimo lightening that I see during the experience. Somehow I would change the light so the images would pulse and the colors would morph through some version of the spectrum.

Well, such plans will have to wait, but you might guess I will still connect all of this with Trickster (what else on a blog like this). The gift of my lights, the emphasis upon edge, color, and symmetry, and of course the echoes I see in Inuit art are a fortuitous synchronicity that deepens my life. There is something life affirming in the visions -- perhaps only because they mean I don't have the more painful migraines, but what it suggests to me is taking life's journey as it comes -- wandering in trickster fashion and learning as I live. The Haida use the trickster as a shaman, and he/she guides us in our life's travels:

I want to be on that boat (which by the way is installed in a bronze version at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC. But I am also reminded of The Savage Innocents (a movie directed by Nicholas Ray in 1959) with Anthony Quinn as Inuk, an Inuit hunter who kills a missionary and runs from the police. In that movie, two women do a ritual, where they face either other and chant and breathe in tandem to exchange breath-spirit-songs. They do this in an ever increasing rhythm, that as I remember , drives (plus the desire of Inuk to be a good host and offer one of his wives) the missionary to the inappropriate and rude behavior for which Inuk kills him, and thus the conflict of the movie. Of course, I don't know whether (back in the early 60's) I was just impressed with the romantic wildness the of film, or thrilled by a snowy version of western revenge quest, or instructed by the the naive and arrogant missionary overwhelmed by the culture he goes to save, or simply astounded how the characters spoke without the use of personal pronouns. Still, I did know, even back then, I was glimpsing something of the range of human behavior that my rather blue-collar-West-Texan background did not include. I didn't know then how much I was projecting into the "Noble Savage" mythos (like some Europeans have always done), but the more I walk with Trickster and the more I have the visits of my Eskimo friend, the more I am able to simply appreciate the spiritual and aesthetic view that exists in Inuit art.

Go and do likewise..........