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| "Grandfather Storyteller" by Helen Cordero (Cochiti Pueblo) |
"But the child does not yet philosophize on this; for him the world is simply what it seems; he is shielded from speculation and abstraction by his own psyche.
He is not given the worst of the menial tasks. He is free, much as the creatures around him--that is, delicately watchful, not only of animals but of people, among whom life is not ranked subordination to authority. Conformity for him will be to social pressure and custom, not to force.
All this is augured in the nonhuman world, not because he never see dominant and subordinate animals, creatures killing others, or trees whose shade suppresses the growth of other plants, but because, reaching puberty, he is on the brink of a miracle of interpretation that will transform those things.
He will learn that his childhood experiences, though a comfort and a joy, were a special language. Through myth and its ritual enactments, he is once again presented with that which he expects.
Thenceforth natural things are not only themselves but a speaking. He will not put his delight in the sky and the earth behind him as a childish and irrelevant thing."
Paul Shepard
Nature and Madness
p8-9
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