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Trickster Is Us
| Article
# : |
18370 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1990 |
3,450 Words |
| Author
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Annick Smith
Annick Smith is a writer and filmmaker who lives in the
Blackfoot Valley of western Montana. She is co-editor with
William Kittredge of The Last Best Place, A Montana Anthology.
Her essays have appeared in the anthology Montana Spaces and
in such journals as Poets and Writers and Montana. The
Magazine of Western History. Smith's film credits include
Heartland, a prizewinning feature film about a pioneer family
on the western plains. |
The first stories are always animal stories. The first paintings, the first religions, the first expressions of human consciousness were born in the imaginations of hunters and gatherers huddled around some precious fire on a plain where wolves spoke to each other and owls answered.
In the beginning, before there was time, was union. Life-giving Sun took as his mate the dark and fertile Earth. From this marriage (which is creation) emerged a fantasia of life forms living in harmony and equality, like a song with no words. The song sufficed for millions of years. Call it Eden.
The making of our human story begins with a trickster in the shape of an animal. In some American Indian cultures he is Coyote (see THE WORLD & I April, 1990). Others call him Raven. In the Judeo-Christian myth, he is the Serpent. Like the sun, Trickster is usually male, but unlike the sun, he is cunning and duplicitous, often funny, sexy, prone to mistakes, prideful. He is a survivor among mysteries - curious and changeable - like us.
The trick he plays on humankind is the double-edged gift of consciousness, and therefore language. Language can be seen as a process of naming, and naming implies both separation and relationship: I, the namer, stand distinct from you (or it), the named. Yet we can observe each other, learn, communicate, speak.
In About Looking (Pantheon, 1980), John Berger says:
The eyes of an animal when they consider a man are attentive and wary. The same
... (1995 of 19765 Characters)
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