JoKoKo

 1 Naming “Grizz! Wake up! It’s time to go!” Grizzly Baby could hear her mother calling from inside the longhouse, and laughed out loud. She had already been up for hours. She awoke before the dawn, and waded down to the clear, cold salt water. She bathed, and said a little prayer to her long line of ancestors, naming each in the line until she got back to the beginning of the Saltwater People. She dressed, and gathered some nearby camas bulbs, devil’s club buds, fiddleheads, and a few gumboots from the base of the seaweed covered rocks. She thanked them all for the sustenance they would provide, and promised each one that their spirit would grow and flourish once it joined her own. It was not until she had prepared everything for the coming day, or perhaps days, that she heard her family begin to shuffle out of bed.  She whistled a loud, high pitched hummingbird call in response to her mother’s summons. Her mother gave a high “yew-uup” of celebration in response. There wa...

  2 The Moon It was dark, but that was okay. It was always dark. It had always been dark. The dark was the natural state of things. She couldn't even imagine something other than the dark. 'What else could there be? " she wondered, and then, startled, asked, "Who just thought that?" She knew herself. She had memories of the long, dark silence, recollections of the quiet solitude. She did not remember when she became aware though. She had always been, and, at one point she suddenly knew it. Knowing came with a host of questions and feelings.     "Where am I?" "What am I?" "Why?" "How?" "Who am I?"     The Who came easily. She was herself. She was the one who thought and existed and experienced. She knew all of her properties: her mass, her dimensions, her reflective index (though there was nothing to reflect, she reflected) She tried on different properties as well, assuming the affect that suited her best. Was she...