Amber Foxx's Blog, page 44

The Smell of Books: Aromatherapy

In my freshman honors seminar on current health issues, a discussion of the impacts of screen time on sleep and stress digressed into a discussion of paper. My eighteen year old students all declared a liking for paper. They found the increasing tendency of professors, myself included, to put all assignments and syllabi online and to accept all “papers” only though an online course management system frustrating. These students want to read as much they can on paper. They say they understand it better. Some also need to write outlines and first drafts by hand. Computers are for revisions, for them, not for creativity. They like the tactile quality of paper, the way it looks when you read outdoors, the peaceful energy of holding a book, and the smell of bookstores.

Their sense of community and happiness when they shared this last thing fascinated me. The smell of books in second hand bookstores and libraries, as well as the smell of new books, is a kind of aromatherapy for them. It takes them into the world of quiet pages where all the stress and intrusion of electronics stops.

How often have you heard that young people are overly attached to their phones and live by technology? This group liked places and events where they had to be phone-free, whether it was going to church, or spending two weeks at a camp where phones weren’t allowed, or simply turning the phone off and settling down with a paper book.

I just packed up five paperbacks of Shaman’s Blues to ship to winners in my Goodreads giveaway. It was somehow special to see each book and wrap it up. The love of paper is alive and well. When I gave away the same novel as an e-book on Booklikes twelve people entered. When I gave away the paperback on Goodreads, close to eight hundred people entered. That could have to do with the price difference—a free paperback feels freer—but it might also have to do with the smell.

For a lot of people, paper is alive in some way that plastic is not. Perhaps the energy essence of a tree comes through in its reincarnation as words. I read e-books and paper books, but I only read the paper ones in bed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sacred Dirt

As anyone who has read my books and this blog knows, I’m intrigued by healing and mysterious phenomena. Something I found in a closet a few weeks ago got me thinking about miracles.

 

El Santuario de Chimayo in northern New Mexico was built on a site sacred to the native Tewa people. It is known as the Lourdes of the Southwest. In keeping with the nature of this part of the world, it does not have healing waters like Lourdes, but healing dirt. The architecture is simple and beautiful, like all old churches in New Mexico. A fence around the churchyard is covered with testimonials, tiny crosses and other small works of art, placed there by grateful people who were healed. Inside a small room to the side of the main sanctuary is a hole in the ground. Legend says that with a loaves-and-fishes kind of abundance, this hole never gets deeper, though year after year people have been scooping small amounts of the dirt from it for healing. The priest who was there the day I visited told me that skeptics suspected him of filling it up with dirt from somewhere else while no one was watching. He said he didn’t. According to the Santuario’s own web site, though, the sacred dirt is in fact replenished from nearby hillsides.

I packed my little plastic bag of Chimayo dirt when I moved from Santa Fe and forgot about it. This winter I was cleaning a closet and found it in a box. Hm. My sprained left middle toe was taking way too long to get well. Placebo or not, a little dust bath of this soft beige earth did wonders. The next day it didn’t hurt to walk.

My experience wasn’t a miracle, more like a placebo-induced acceleration. I was due to recover. But real miracles apparently do happen.  Dr. Larry Dossey wrote a fascinating editorial on documented miracles, some of which took place at Lourdes. Miracles don’t seem to happen to a particular person for any clear reason. Devout people who are suffering are not always healed, but some are.  Those who are healed don’t always have patterns of faith or behavior that predict susceptibility to miracles.

“These cures happen not just to those who have saintly dispositions, fierce determination, or positive thoughts, but to reprobates and passive quitters as well. Exceptions can be found to any psychological pattern yet advanced. I rather like this confused state of affairs. It suggests that no one has a monopoly on miracle cures … We ought to come clean and admit the obvious: we don’t know why spontaneous healings happen.”

What we  do know with certainty is that they happen. The International Medical Commission of Lourdes keeps meticulous records of its healings, and of before and after diagnoses of those who receive them. The miracles have to be proven by modern medicine.

Dossey describes the case of man who was apparently cured by a sham treatment in modern medicine as miraculously as others were cured at Lourdes. Mr. G., an elderly man with advanced lymphoma that had spread to his bone marrow, chest, abdomen and lymph nodes was beyond treatment, but so debilitated his physicians wanted to admit to him to the hospital. To justify admission they had to come up with a treatment so they  “began irradiating a single lymph node in his groin, knowing this was a sham treatment that would satisfy the hospital authorities.”

Though he seemed ready to die at first, Mr. G gradually got stronger and gained weight. His pain subsided. He was discharged to a nursing home. Over subsequent months the masses in his body shrank. 83 at the time of his hospitalization, he lived several years  longer in the nursing home, and his physical condition returned to normal. He said he felt better than ever.

If Lourdes and Chimayo healings are placebo responses, some people must have more faith in the sacred power behind the water and the dirt than in the treatments they’ve been given by health care professionals—unlike Mr. G.

Imagine being so powerful in your own mind that you can change your physiology just by belief. This belief, as far as I can tell, though, is seldom if ever a belief in one’s own power but in something beyond the self, whether medical or divine. Every drug trial includes a placebo arm. The medicine has to prove that it’s more effective than belief alone in healing the body. A body which is made, in essence, of water and dirt.

When the laws of nature appear to be occasionally broken, what’s going on? Can something or Someone reach in from another aspect of reality and move molecules, or are these phenomena natural but not fully understood? Maybe some events are spiritual and others psycho-physiological—or maybe there’s no difference between the two except in our perceptions and our labels.

That’s a mystery I am content not to solve. Like Dr. Dossey, I like this uncertainty.

 

Work cited: Dossey, L. Canceled Funerals: A Look at Miracle Cures, Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, 1998; 4 (2)10-18,116-119

Santuario web site: http://www.elsantuariodechimayo.us/Santuario/windex.html

Virtual Tour of New Mexico, Part Two: Music in Santa Fe, a trip to T or C, and Desert Beauty

This started as a virtual tour of Santa Fe last week, but I decided to expand it to other locations as well.

First stop, music. Santa Fe Bandstand is one of the highlights of my summer. I enjoy the atmosphere and the range of artists, and as a writer of course I especially like watching the audience. Every summer I come up from T or C for a week or a few days, timing my trip for the performers I most want to see and hear.

Bandstand plays a key role in Shaman’s Blues. If you’ve read the book, see if reality matches your imagination.

Photo gallery

http://santafebandstand.org/galleries/bandstand-photos/

Not many videos available right now, but here are a few. My personal favorite among the bands in these videos—Felix Y Los Gatos. Love the blues accordion!

http://santafebandstand.org/videos/

This next stop on the tour is part of the “on location” visit for Shaman’s Blues. New Mexico Magazine recently featured an article on my beloved Truth or Consequences, where Mae moves in the beginning of the book. Read the article and you’ll see how an off-beat artist like Niall fits right in, and how a place like Dada Café just might happen. (I located it on Broadway in a building that has had a high rate of restaurant turnover.)

Turtleback Mountain is prominent in the picture that accompanies this article, and it’s in Mae’s view from her back yard.

http://www.nmmagazine.com/article/?aid=84968#.UxkFLdiYbDA

If my book or this “tour” made you fall in love with New Mexico, I recommend New Mexico Magazine as a way to keep the virtual tour going year round. They cover art, music, books, food, history, recreation, and their photography alone is enough to make the publication worth my subscription.

http://www.nmmagazine.com/

The final part of this tour is immersion in the natural beauty of the state. These pictures are not related to scenes in the book, other than the fact that one can’t drive on the interstate in NM without seeing something breathtaking, and that is part of Mae’s experience in her new home.

I discovered this photographer’s work at an outdoor art show in Santa Fe a few years ago. His way of seeing the world is attentive to grand vistas and subtle details, often in the same picture, and makes me feel the sacredness of the land.  He has a name that somehow suits his work—Amadeus Leitner.

The photo gallery could keep you in a state of exalted bliss for quite some time. Imagine the smells of sage and juniper, the breath of the wind, the texture of a rock heated by the sun, and you’ll be there.

http://www.amadeusleitner.com/

Welcome to the Land of Enchantment.

Virtual Tour of Santa Fe: On location in Shaman’s Blues, Part One

 

This week, take a look at some of the art my characters see in the book.

 

Manitou Galleries, works in glass inspired by Native traditional art. First stop on the gallery tour in the book. http://manitougalleries.com/artists/Ed_Archie_Noisecat
Next stop is the Worrell Gallery, which was still the Frank Howell Gallery in the year I set Shaman’s Blues. Bill Worrell’s mystical sculptures, paintings and poetry shared space with Frank Howell’s reverent portraits of Native elders. There had always been a Worrell deer shaman or two outside as well as a few of them inside. They have titles. I call them deer shamans. The scene in Shaman’s Blues where Mae and Jamie start to have a serious discussion of shamanism and a tourist says something funny takes place here. http://worrellgallery.com/
The Howell Gallery has moved to Canyon Road. This link to Howell’s posters shows some of the images I have Mae looking at earlier in that scene. http://frankhowellgallery.com/j25/artists/frank-howell/posters
Blue Rain Gallery, glass, pottery and paintings. The blue glass bird sculpture that provokes a significant revelation is set here.

http://www.blueraingallery.com/artists/nancy_callan

http://www.blueraingallery.com/artists/tammy_garcia

http://www.blueraingallery.com/artists/tony_abeyta

http://www.blueraingallery.com/artists/preston_singletary_and_ross_richmond:_a_collaboration

The whirling sculptures at the Mark White Gallery. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QloFhVK9Gb0
This next location is the store where Mae finds the corn mother fetish.

http://www.keshi.com/categories/fetishes

 

Enjoy. Don’t you wish you were there? Next week, more!

Interview with author Amber Foxx

Originally posted on Saints and Trees:

Please welcome guest Amber Foxx to this week’s

Saints and Trees

. Amber writes the mystery series featuring healer and psychic Mae Martin. Amber’s professional training and academic studies in various fields of complementary and alternative medicine, as well as her personal experience and travels, bring authenticity to her work. She divides her time between the Southeast and the Southwest, but Truth or Consequences, New Mexico is HOME.

No murders, just mysteries.
Love is a mystery. Every person is a mystery. Every life hides a secret.
The first Mae Martin psychic mystery
Published December, 2013

View original

Shaman’s Blues Released!

                                            Shaman’s Blues

                           The second Mae Martin psychic mystery

Mystery crosses between the worlds and romance gets turned upside down in Santa Fe, the City Different.

Mae Martin gets a double-edged going-away gift from her job as a psychic and

healer: beautiful music by a man who’s gone missing, and a request to find him.

When she arrives in her new home in New Mexico, aiming to start life over as she comes to terms with her second divorce, she faces a new challenge in the use of her gift. Her new neighbors are under the influence of an apparently fake psychic who runs the health food restaurant where they work. When Mae questions the skills of the peculiar restaurateur, the woman disappears—either to Santa Fe, or another dimension. The restaurant’s manager asks Mae to discover which it is.

Finding two missing people proves easier than finding out the truth about either of them, or getting one of them, once found, to go away again.

Seeing a Ghost

Once in a while, writing paranormal mysteries, I need to introduce a character who is no longer alive. In Shaman’s Blues, Mae has no concept of ghosts at first, but Jamie, an anthropologist’s son, assures her that every culture has them.

Ghosts fascinate us, even when we don’t believe in them. People sign up for ghost tours of historic districts, and some choose the option to get the presumably haunted room at a B&B. Part of the attraction in ghost stories is the curious pleasure of safely experienced negative emotions. There is something frightening about an encounter with the dead, and most ghosts are said to have fallen into the place between worlds through tragedy. By seeking out ghosts, we can dip into terror and sadness for a quick swim and come back out, invigorated by the plunge.

It’s different for the ghost. Stuck in the crack between two worlds, attached to earthly life yet incapable of living it, looking, perhaps, for one particular soul, the ghost must be frustrated, bewildered and lonely. No wonder they behave badly sometimes. It can’t be much of an afterlife.

I say that lightly, but at the moment that I met a ghost, I was scared to the bone. It was quite some time ago, but I can still feel her when I think about her.

The cold is what made her frightening.

I was a college student on Christmas break visiting my sister and her husband, and my boyfriend and I stayed in the attic bedroom of their old house. In the dark before dawn the alarm went off, and my boyfriend got up to go to work. We spoke briefly, kissed goodbye, and he left. Wide awake, I stayed in bed under a heap of quilts and blankets, hoping I could go back to sleep. Our shared body heat had made cozy nest of the bed and I didn’t want to get up early on my vacation.

I snuggled the blankets around me, and was suddenly chilled. I wasn’t alone. A woman’s head and shoulders floated on the far side of the room. She stared at me, her face stern and judgmental over a high collared dress, her hair pulled back in a severe tight bun. I was terrified, not by her apparent resentment, but by the deep, unnatural chill. At the same time, I thought her features were like the country comedian Minnie Pearl.  I’ve cited Stephen King’s Danse Macabre in a book review before, and it fits here: comedy and horror go hand in hand. I pulled the blanket over my head until the cold went away.

Prior to that, I didn’t believe in ghosts. I’m not sure I do now, either, but it’s like what anthropologist Michael Harner says about shamans not believing in spirits. They don’t have to. They know.

When I Read Poetry

 

I love reading insightful discussions of the meaning of a poem. Since my favorite bloggers were on a poetry theme this week, I decided to take on the challenge. It was much harder than I imagined.

When I read poetry I am so struck by the power in the words, and the images speak to me so directly that I am stumped when it comes to saying what it means in other words. I can say why the verse speaks to me, but I have to discuss it as a direct experience.

Among the many reasons I never tire of Yeats is the subtlety of the meter and rhyme. The flow is so natural, nothing feels forced to fit. My favorites beg to be said aloud. The rhythm is the feeling as much as the words are.

Yeats’s Crazy Jane poems feature an aged woman who defies convention, argues with the Bishop, and has a deep spiritual life—on her own terms. She had a wild, passionate youth without concern for propriety—many lovers,  only one of whom she loved—and she also loves God. The woman in the cycle A Woman Young and Old is not identified as Crazy Jane, yet I think of her as the voice of those poems. The stories and attitude are the same. Carnal and mystical within one breath.

Sharing  some lines of Crazy Jane, so perfect I need say nothing more.

Crazy Jane and Jack the Journeyman

 

I know although when looks meet

I tremble to the bone,

The more I leave the door unlatched

The sooner love is gone,

For love is but a skein unwound

Between the dark and dawn.

 

A lonely ghost the ghost is

That to God shall come;

I—love’s skein upon the ground,

My body in the tomb—

Shall leap into the light lost

In my mother’s womb.

 

But were I left to lie alone

In an empty bed,

The skein so bound us ghost to ghost

When he turned his head

Passing on the road that night,

Mine must walk when dead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Still here, really! But Amazon Dropped All Draft2Digital Authors

 

If you looked for my book on Amazon and found it had suddenly vanished, be assured it has not gone out of publication. It is still available on Barnes and Noble and Kobo and i-Tunes. Amazon had a dispute with Draft2Digital and this was Amazon’s decision how to resolve it. I apologize to anyone who wants my book through Kindle or Create Space. I will get it back up soon, but have to jump through a few hoops first. Hope to have it done in a day or two!

On Yeats’s Psychic Wife

 

I became enamored of the poems of WB Yeats when I was nineteen and still love to read them. I can recite some by heart (The Fascination of What’s Difficult, which I learned while I was working as a theater choreographer, includes the line “My curse on plays …”) A college boyfriend won me by being able to recite Lapis Lazuli (in a little Greek bar that inspired the one in Snake Face.) I created a dance cycle for the Crazy Jane poems, and also a solo dance for When You are Old. While I was reading the poet’s autobiography, I discussed his interests in mysticism and Irish mythology with a friend who was an English professor. She was quite sure Yeats’s wife George (yes, a woman named George) faked being psychic because it was the only way to win his heart away from Maude Gonne. His other passions, Irish patriotism and theater, lived in her, and she was beautiful, so the only way to compete was to communicate with a spirit world that announced itself by the smell of roses. I don’t know if it’s true or not but her hypothesis would make a good story.