rattling bones—my ancient stories

The first breath of a spring day is surrounded by orchids in my room. Tension is hunted down in the body, then breathed out. Bones are let down from being folded up overnight. Deep breathing releases the dark river that pumps inside my body. This river can’t be heard but speaks when clogged. These bones can’t be heard but rattle when I remember, when I dig into an ancient story. The moment just past is ancient. I remember it. My bones rattle.

When still, I sense the bones of the earth. The bones of those who crawled upon the earth, or flew above clouds, are the same bones inside of me. The same bones hold the same wisdom. Bare bones let us know life is impermanent. You don’t have to believe Buddha. Accepting the passing of life brings the presence of peace.

My own bones rattle over the moments that have passed within the hour and at night in the dark when the stars of the desert are the only light. The ancient stories of the day, of yesterday, crowd my bed. I excavate the gems of wisdom left behind.

When I remember my father, buried many years ago, I rattle his bones. An altar with photos in a corner of the house brings memories. Among the frozen smiles of relatives staring back in quiet sepia, a smile is about to burst across my father’s face. What language will he speak? Creole, English, or a mix of both? The English words gobbled up by his accent never were digested. To understand him, we had to study his movements. The way the corners of his mouth turned up in a smile. Clasped hands were used for contemplation. Massaging the head was worry. Sleeping was dreaming.

I remember watching him inhale freshly cut grass, making each moment infinite—binding his inner silence to his personal river and bones. He was inside peace. I could see it on his face. It was a peace I wanted and thought I could create. But my attempt at creating serenity ended in idleness and increased experiences of loathing. I had scraped together things, people, and memories I didn’t embrace in life and tried to dump them out. They appeared to be in my way. Afterward, there was simply a void.

After sitting meditation for decades, I find peace exists in and of itself. It presents itself in time and season. In fact, peace has nothing to do with “my” life. What I create isn’t peace at all. The peace I saw on my father’s face didn’t come from discarding things and people as if they were rubbish. Everything in his life, pleasant and unpleasant, hard and soft, was present in his life and he accepted it. He used the hard things like marble to carve out peace. The likable and unlikable things and people were the chisel.

As a sharecropper’s son in Louisiana in the early 1900s, my father’s life was made of things others had tossed away. He salvaged furniture and brought worn clothes back to life. The pig’s head, ear, tail, feet, and snout, leftovers his family was given by the family who owned the land, were pickled, turned into hog head cheese, or the skins were fried into what was called “cracklin’ ” (fried rind). The gumbo he loved to make was a soup of things that were useless to those who didn’t know about scraping together a life.

I remember my father’s ritual of gumbo making and the wisdom of such scraping together of things. The fish stock was made from scraps of fish. Money was scraped together for the ingredients of the soup. My father’s hands shucked oysters, medium-sized shrimp, three crabs, dried shrimp, link sausages, garlic, green onions, shallots, bell pepper, celery, filé spice, and secret things. To continue the preparations, breathing in and breathing out, he lifted the knife. Pulled back his fingertips. No words. Only his presence was heard.

Making gumbo for him was not cooking. It was a ritual of his past. The bones were rattling. His mother’s spirit was present, her hair long, down her back to her feet. She smoked a pipe just as my father did every day. She stood behind her son who had aged. She was his ancient story and therefore mine. Without acknowledging her, I can’t know my father’s wisdom. Without their wisdom, without the wisdom of the earth, there is only a miserable self, unconnected to the moon. And in this disconnected self I can only speak of myself, empty of everyone and everything, where my stories are self-indulgent and irrelevant. When I see the past as ancestral wisdom, then everyone and everything is there in the moment. Only then will the bones rattle and the wisdom emerge from the ruins of who and what has been diminished or lost.

My father chopped and cleaned the fish, pulling the vein and waste of the shrimp or excavating the part of the crab not to be eaten. Gumbo is a soup of sacrifices. This giving of life, this exchange of one life for another, must be acknowledged. The handling of the bodies must be kind. These sacrifices must be done in awareness, if done at all. I breathe my father’s life, the life of his mother, and the life of the animals whose bones do exist.

The roux, the gravy of the gumbo, made with flour and oil, requires attention, just as ancient stories do. Being lost in thought leads to burning the food. Lost in thought we miss the dance of onions, garlic, celery, and bell pepper snapping in hot oil. Stock made days earlier is poured into the pot. Seafood is layered in time. Slow hours simmering in a tall pot lengthen the silent prayer of the day into years to come.

When the extended family arrives, prays, eats, and falls on the sofa with full bellies, the transmission is complete between father and daughter. I had observed his concentration. That day I chose a cook as my teacher. I chose the preparation of food as a ceremony, where cooking was not cooking. Together, my father and I chose the ancient work of stooping over the fire to prepare food for the community. We ate the food as medicine, the food that was prayed over, meditated with, where the bones of the animals were lifted in honor.

Through the river, wind, and mountains, the bones say, the forms of life come and go. Impermanence is serenity. The ruins are forever being created and our excavations remain perpetually an activity of unburying the wisdom of our bones. Be still and unafraid. Like time, we will go into eternity and leave our bones to be rattled when someone digs into our story.