always-coming-home
Always Coming Home
Things related to my obsession with Ursula K. Le Guin's Always Coming Home
41 posts
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Last Seen Blogs
Text
Leaving Home
I will tell a bit about my childhood and how I left my mother’s house with Verou, even before I went to the coast.
The year I was born in Ounmalin, the rains were late and when the Grass was danced, the hills were still golden and the people feared drought. I brought the rains with me, my mother Reads Twice said. The night I was born, the clouds had been gathering all the day before, promising but not giving, and as my mother went into labor, they cracked open and poured rain on the dry earth. My first name was Raining.
Verou was born five years later, close to the World, and when she was born, Reads Twice heard the first crickets of the year singing, and so Verou’s first name was Cricket. We were born dancing across the hinge, as they say, balancing each other in many ways along the gyre.
I loved her from the moment I saw her. She was a quiet baby with laughing eyes and a sense of peace about her that part of me recognized even though I was too young to know what I was seeing. Looking back, it was funny, a reversal, that she should carry peace with her, for we balanced each other out in another way, one I wouldn’t see until years later. I was born while our parents were still coming together. Varou was born when they were going apart.
I have said that my father was not well-regarded. The thing was, he knew it and resented it. He thought that people should see him as important, but did not wish to do the work to actually be important, central to the community. Coming from Tachas Touchas to Ounmalin, he didn’t have many close friends or family in town...maybe not any, because he always tried to place himself above other people, and who can be a close friend with that? His own family did not like him. His mother and sister raised him poorly. It is odd how far downhill trouble in a family can flow.
While Reads Twice taught and studied in the Serpentine heyimas, he spent most of his time in the Warrior’s Lodge, smoking and boasting, or with the Finders, talking about his few journeys as a young man and how he had done things so much better than people were now. I think he resented not having a son. His head wasn’t really on straight, I don’t think. I will never understand what my mother, who was studious and quiet and orderly and giving, saw in him to begin with.
When I was eleven, after I had walked in the path of the mountain lion for the first time, but had not yet gone to the coast, he took up with a younger woman from Tachas Touchas behind Reads Twice’s back and danced the Wine with her. He didn’t yet want to leave the house, because the woman wouldn’t have him in hers and because his family wouldn’t be eager to have him back either, but he resented his wife for not being as young and beautiful as she had been before I was born, and he told her so. Reads Twice reacted at first with sorrow and pleading, and later with anger of her own. There were ugly words often. I would take Verou and go far out on the planting side, away from the house, so that she would not hear too many of them.
There was one particularly terrible fight one night, when I wished the neighbors would come and stop it, but they did not. People are not always good at knowing when to step in. I cowered with my sister in the sleeping room trying to protect her and cover her ears, while in the hearth room, our parents screamed at each other and threw things. The sound of pottery smashing bothers me still, whenever I drop a bowl or a plate. He took his things and left, leaving Reads Twice sobbing on the floor. She didn’t come in to comfort us or even acknowledge that we were there, and at that point, Verou was crying hard. I was torn between the two of of, but I stayed with my sister and we fell asleep together.
The next day, my mother sat all day on the floor, not minding the wreckage around her, not making food or speaking a word to us, no matter how Verou begged for her attention. I set about picking up the broken pottery, the smashed wood, the glass, and trying to set the room into order. I heated beans and rice for us to eat, which my mother would not touch. She drank a little water and went to the outhouse, but other than that, did nothing else and would not speak. She did not sleep that night either.
The morning after that, I left Verou in the heyimas and borrowed a pony to ride to Maddinou to tell my aunt about the troubles. She came back with me and after a few days in her care, my mother began to live again, but she was not the same. She drank more than she ever had before and she was quick to anger with me and with Verou. We walked on tiptoe around her for weeks. My sister tried hard to make our mother smile, bringing her flowers and berries and clowning. I simply tried to avoid making her angry, but both of us failed in these efforts. This went on for weeks, with the wheel of her anger turning and tightening against her daughters.
When she screamed at Verou that it was our fault her husband left, that in making her a mother we had made her ugly, and threw a pot at me when I tried to step between them, I had enough of it. When she fell asleep on the hearth, drunken, I quietly set about packing baskets for my sister and I. We slept a few fitful hours, and then before dawn, we left that house for good.
I thought about going to our aunt in Maddinou, but it was too close to Ounmalin and she might try to make us go back to her sister’s house to benefit her. It would be a very long way for us to go on our own, but going to our grandfather in Kastoha seemed like a very good idea to me. It was the furthest away from Ounmalin that we had any family and our grandfather and his second wife were good people and well-regarded. They lived in a large household with her daughters and their daughters and son and daughters in law and sons in law and an assortment of children, so I thought they might make a little room for us in all that big house with all those people.
I will tell about that journey another time, though.
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
A Name Coming
I am going away from my second name. To continue to be Inumi would be to refuse to gyre, to instead close the circle. In this much, I can let things change. In this much, I can keep my souls together.
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Everything is Broken
Sometimes it feels like everything at Goats Do Roam is falling apart. Ever since he came home, Kadaka and Yestik fought, each fight more terrible than the last, with Kadaka screaming and throwing things at my goestun-brother, cursing at him and any of us who tried to come between or calm the storm. Finally, after the worst fight of all, in which she threw pottery at Yestik, at me, at Verou, we told her it had to stop. Her response was to take her children and leave our house and Kastoha-na altogether.
After that, Verou decided she was going to go away to Wakwaha on the Mountain for a few months, to practice with the glass guild. She promised to come home before the Summer Dance.
If losing Yowai was like losing my right hand, losing Verou (even for a short time) is like losing my left. I have to remind myself that I know where she is, that I know she is coming back. She is not lost, just gone for a time. I tell myself that it is the same with Yowai, that I know he is coming back, even though I don’t know when. I couldn’t say anything like that to Verou, though...she would be angry because I won’t let him go.
I can’t seem to do anything well now. Maroy and Hwovon (who is spending more time at the heyimas now) and Yestik and I rattle around in this house like beans at the bottom of a jar. All the times I wished for quiet, I wish I had those moments back now.
But we keep going, between the four of us. We make our meals together. Yestik mends the roof, keeps the house solid. Maroy and Hwovwon tend the garden. I bring in foods from Coyote’s house, early buds and tender roots, wild herbs and mushrooms, young cattails and more. My bees go on making honey. Life goes on.
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
A Dream of Coyote
Yowai walked into my sleep last night. In the dream, we were in some small room far away. Faceless people led him into the room and we were alone together for just a moment before they came and took him away again. We didn’t even have time to embrace; I was reaching for him when they took him. I spent the rest of the dream looking for him in a strange city.
It was hard not to cry when I woke up, alone and the moon low in the sky. I think he’s still alive. I think he might still come home to the valley. I could not sing his name at the World. Would not. Verou and I had a terrible fight over it, but there is a place in my heart where I know that he might yet come home, and I will hold that place for him until the wind tells me otherwise.
1 note
·
View note
Text
No More Words
Yestik has come home to the valley. Yowai has not. My bones knew when they left that it would be this way.
My goestun-brother found his way home, limping from half-healed injuries made harder by long travel, heavy with his sorrow and fear of telling me that Yowai was lost. My husband disappeared one night when the wild pig people of the south peninsula attacked the village where my housemates stayed. In the noise and confusion and fire, Yowai disappeared.
The villagers helped Yestik to search for him, but no trace was found. There’s still the hope that he somehow escaped and survived, but after so long? He would have found his way home by now, like Yestik, who spent months searching up and down the peninsula and even the range of light.
Hope is the most terrible thing, though, because somehow I still have it. My bones do not say that he is dead. My mind and heart argue with my bones, but I will not sing his name at the World. I will not. I cannot. Not yet.
0 notes
Text
Quiet Time
Yowai and Yestik are off. I know it was foolish, but after they left, I went up on the mountain where I could watch them walk down the Old Straight Road towards Telina-na and beyond. I watched them come in and out of the shadows of the oaks, walking along the river on the Road. Yowai looked back and waved one last time before the road took them out of view.
Once they’d gone, I’d meant to come back down and work in the garden or make more paper or knit or go look for early wild strawberries, or any of a hundred things that could be done, but instead I sat in the tall grass on the hill, looking down the valley and hoping against all hope that they might come walking back, watching the road until the sun went down and the first stars came out over Grandmother Mountain.
0 notes
Text
A Journey Down The Inland Sea
Yestik and Yowai are getting ready to go on a long journey for the Finders Lodge, to the south: all the way down the inner coast of the inland Sea, along the Range of Light. I have a bad feeling about it, but every time I’ve tried to tell them, my heart has risen into my throat and choked off my words. Yowai has promised to send a message whenever they come to an Exchange, so that’s at least something.
I’ve asked Olunho to make a ring for me to give to Yowai. She is a renowned silversmith in Wakwaha. I gave her a silver bangle that my mother once owned to make it from and secret words for the inside of the band.
All of our house are helping them to prepare for their journey. Hwovwon and Kadaka and I are sewing new clothes for them: sturdy hemp pants with many pockets, linen shirts dyed with indigo and onion skin. Verou is knitting them socks, and hats for cold nights. Maroy is making them packframes of bent oak and leather, as well as special walking sticks. I’m making them small books so they can keep records of their travels.
I don’t like that they’re going. I really don’t like that they’re going, but we are sending our love and care with them. What else can we do?
0 notes
Text
Summer Coming
The hills are green and blooming! I’ve been gathering early wild foods, as usual: dandelion greens, purslane, nettles. Varou gets the dandelions themselves to make dandelion wine for the summer.
0 notes
Text
Heading towards the World again
Another rainy season behind us. All is well in our house as we get ready to dance the World.
Kadaka’s ankle is almost healed; she only uses a cane now when she has to walk a long way, and there is less shouting when the house is busy. Her oldest son came inland with a girl from the Fifth House, from Chumo, and they are thinking about making a home there.
Yestik and Yowai both joined the Finders Lodge, since Kadaka won’t be traveling far again. I don’t like the idea of Yowai being gone on long journeys, but what can I say? I miss him when he is gone. The two of them went to Sed right before the Wine, to talk to people in the milling art there, and came back with stories and some new tools to add to the workshops here. Kita kept me company while they were away; she has become a well-mannered dog, very good with sheep, trustworthy around the house and the pens.
Verou and Maroy are well, as is Hwovwon. Just after the Grass, I went up to Wakwaha on the Mountain to talk with the healers there about Hwovwon’s aches and pains, and to ask about my own, as I approach the hinge of my life. One of them gave me a song to give to her, as well as herbs to add to her bath, and a special tea. They said that the hot springs are the best thing for her, so it’s lucky we live in Kastoha.
0 notes
Text
Winter Festival Clothing
Verou surprised me this morning with a new winter festival outfit. It’s so lovely, I almost cried when I unwrapped it. My little sister is a wonder.
It’s a long black linen dress embroidered in Serpentine green, running water patterns, spirals and gyres, with little bay pearls and beads of serpentine and jet. The sleeves are slashed open to the shoulder and the skirt to the waist, to show the mossy green underdress, long sleeves with more embroidery at the wrist. And there’s an indigo blue shawl, folded and dyed in such a way to make it look like striations in stone,
I’m going to wear it when we dance the World this winter.
1 note
·
View note
Photo
And so, summer is over. We spent a few more days at our summer house after finding Kita. I woke up every morning with her nose in my ear, breathing her sweet puppy breath in my face, and never wanted to leave our quiet meadow. But the year rolls on, and our responsibilities to Goats Do Roam called us back to Kastoha-na, in time for Yowai to dance the Water.
We spent the next few weeks getting Kita used to the rest of the household (and them used to Kita - she chews things), shaking out all the dust of summer from pillows and blankets and rugs, and working to do our part to preserve the best of summer.
Happily, Kadaka is up and around with a cane, and much less shouty. Together, she and I, and Verou and Hwovwon have spent many hours pickling and preserving and smoking and drying various foods to go into the local storehouses, as well as that of our household. Yowaii and Yestik got up on the roof to make sure everything was sound, reglazed one of the windows that one of the kids broke while we were gone, brought in nets of trout for us to smoke. In a few days, we’re going to go picking wild grapes as a household, for raisins and jellies and winemaking.
As much as I miss the quiet mornings at our summer house, it is good and cozy to be home at Goats Do Roam. The nights are growing cooler, and we lit a fire for the first time. I fell asleep at the hearth, after a long day of cooking and cleaning and making ready for fall, and woke only as Yowai tucked me into our bed to where he’d carried me. I fell asleep again listening to the gentle crackle of wood burning and catching the scent of smoke and rain. Fall is a good time too.
1 note
·
View note
Photo
A strange thing happened this morning. We took a much longer walk than usual, taking our lunch with us. We stopped to eat, a couple of hours away from our summer house. It was a nice place, where people had obviously camped before, good water, a fire ring with recent ashes, smoothed out places where people had slept.
As we ate, I heard a noise over the trickling of the creek. It sounded like a small creature whimpering. We looked at each other, and then we started searching around to find what was making the sound. After a few minutes of looking, Yowai found a very young puppy, really too young to have been completely weaned, trembling in the brush.
He handed her to me, and she burrowed into my shoulder, trying to hide from the world, the poor little thing.
“I suppose Goats Do Roam has enough room for a very small dog, do you think?” he said to me. I rolled my eyes hugely and fondly, of course we do.
“She’ll need soft foods,” I said. “Maybe even milk? Could we bring a couple of the goats out to the summer house, or do we need to go back into Kastoha for her?”
“Let’s see how she does on meat broth with mush first, love.” he told me. I nodded. I didn’t want to go back into the town before we had to. It’s like this every summer, I don’t want to be under the roof of Goats Do Roam until after the Water.
The pup’s shaking started to ease, as she decided I wasn’t going to eat her. I offered her my hand to sniff and she investigated it with her mouth, little needle milk-teeth nipping. Yowai offered her a bit of dried meat from his pack basket and she sniffed it curiously. She took it from him but her teeth really couldn’t make much headway with it.
“I wonder what happened to her,” I said. “What people would leave a dog behind?” Yowai shrugged.
“No one good, that’s obvious enough,” he said. “Let’s get back to the summer house, get some food into her.”
“I’m going to call her Kita”, I told Yowaii. He smiled at me.
As we walked, I held Kita to my shoulder, telling her that she was going to have a full belly and a warm place to sleep, and later, children to play with, other dogs to be with, a place to be her home, and that we would never leave her behind.
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Summer Life
The first thing I notice when I wake up in the mornings at our summer house is the quiet.
No goats bleating or chickens clucking or dogs barking. No neighbors calling to each other. No Kadaka shouting numerous directions from her chair downstairs. No footsteps pounding on the steps as the kids run up and down, yelling to make sure everyone is awake for breakfast. No Hwovwon grumbling. Nothing but Yowai’s quiet breathing next to me, wind in the grass and trees, birdsong. Bliss.
The first thing I do when I get up (after yawning and stretching) is to go down to the creek to splash my face and bring a bucket of water back to the house. The sun is warm in the meadow most mornings, but by the creek, there is cool, damp air. The cold of the water shocks me all the way awake, every morning.
Yowai bakes bread for breakfast on the baking stone in our firepit. He brushes it with a little oil and drizzles it with a little honey. It is the best breakfast in the world on those mornings.
After breakfast, we sit for a bit, enjoying the quiet, the brightness of the morning, sunshine on grass that gets more golden every day. Yowai tidies up around the firepit, making sure our kitchen box is firmly shut. I shake out our pillows and blankets and make the bed.
Those things done, we go for a walk, gathering wood for the fire, looking for berries and other wild foods. Sometimes we see deer or Coyote, laughing at us in the manner that Coyote laughs at everyone and everything. We have a favorite spot where Yowai likes to fish and I pick blackberries. He gets so terribly serious when he’s fishing, I have to resist the urge to make jokes and splash him, even though he laughs when I do.
In the afternoon, we take long naps, read the books we brought, Yowai carves little figures from wood, I work on a basket I’m weaving or make drawings in my practice book. Long quiet afternoons, restful, full of sunlight and the scent of grass, oak trees, pine needles. Sometimes the breeze brings the scent of the sea, which is not very far away.
For dinner, I cook beans and rice with wild greens and herbs over the fire, or the fish that Yowai caught, or a stew with our dried meat and foraged vegetables if he baked extra bread that morning. We take our dishes to the creek to scrub them out and then turn them upside down to dry.
As the sun goes down, it starts to get cool, so I pull on my worn brown sweater, and we sit close together by the fire, telling old stories to each other. I make tea, usually mint or lemon balm or chamomile. I put my head on Yowai’s shoulder as we watch the stars come out. Sometimes we sit watching them wheel overhead until long after dark.
These are good days.
1 note
·
View note
Photo
Our summerhouse sits with its back to a hill, facing southward into a green and gold meadow, with a small, nameless creek nearby. The two end-walls are woven from willow withies, and we wall the rest with rough, light hemp/cotton tarps, dyed golden brown with onionskin and walnut hulls. When we go, we carry everything we need on our backs and in one wooden box with rope handles that Yowai and I carry between us.
The box is for food that we don’t wish to share with the squirrels or other sky people. This is our summer kitchen: we bring beans, rice, flour, salt, dried meat, herbs, berries and olives, a small jar of honey, a small jar of olive oil. We bring a small iron pot, and there is a flat stone outside the house that we use to cook on. We bring a clay jar and a bucket for water. We each have a stoneware cup, a wooden bowl, napkins, and a knife. We carve a few wooden spoons for us to use, once we are there. With what we hunt and gather, we don’t need more.
To furnish our house, we bring two large pillowcases, woven from red-dyed hemp, which we stuff with straw and grass to sit on, and two rugs, one for the day room, the other for the night room. The sitting rug is woven in geometric patterns in red, dark brown, and black wool. The sleeping rug is plain brown and black wool. We have a wool blanket and two cotton blankets, both indigo blue, and our pillows. I always weave a few baskets to use while we are there; they return easily to the earth afterward.
House drawing from Always Coming Home, p.22
14 notes
·
View notes
Photo
High, sweet, warm summer is here. Yowai and I are going to our five-post summerhouse in the hills to be alone and quiet, to soak in the sun, to see no one but quail and deer, Hawk and Coyote, to listen to the words of the wind in the trees and the crickets in the grass.
0 notes
Photo
Welcoming Summer
A poem by Inumi of Kastoha
Summer, you are welcome in this place
Bring your warmth to the hills
Bring your warmth to the valley
Bring your winds from the sea
Bring your winds from far away
Summer, be always easy
Summer be always welcome
0 notes
Text
Getting Ready to Dance the Summer
It is almost time to dance the Summer. There are enough Serpentine people in this house that with all the cooking and baking and making it sometimes feels like the house is an anthill disturbed by a passing sheep. Even for our big, noisy household, the noise is amazing, especially with Kadaka sitting at the center of it all, leg propped up, shouting instructions at everyone.
When I need time away from the wall of sound in our house, I slip away to gather wild foods. Elderberry is flowering, as is the manzanita and madrone; the blossoms make a lovely cordial. There are cattails, the bright green tips of the firs, ramps, dandelion and mustard greens, sorrel and purslane. It is early in the season, but the valley and hills offer abundance.
2 notes
·
View notes