the e-dict

Hi Friends,

As a young girl, I was obsessed with the notion of miners’ canaries, those innocent yellows who were brought down into the depths to serve as a warning for dangerous levels of toxic gases. When those caged birds stopped singing and fell from their perch, the miners knew it was time to evacuate the hole. Canaries are of a Sentinel Species, an organism used as an advanced warning of danger, as they are more susceptible than humans to particular contaminates. This little trill seeker was used as a life lantern well into the 20th century to detect too-high levels of carbon monoxide. At 7 or 8 when I first heard of this devastating methodology, I imagined myself as the miner at the front of the line, the one holding the metal cage, the canary so bright she lit the way through the dark, slick tunnels. I heard her song, then heard it go quiet. I remember being racked with guilt. How could I, I who had never actually taken a bright dandelion of a thing into the underworld, live after so selfishly stealing her song to save my own neck? Clearly, I had an active imagination, even then.

Today I am thinking of our dear canary as I work to make a new piece of the same name. I am trying to get out in front of the toxic levels of my own life and find I am both canary and miner at the moment. The question for me is this: can I maneuver through the tight, dark tunnels before my birdheart expires? Can I leave, singing to the surface, before toxicity in any part of my world overtakes me and mine? And what if I and my unfounded kharmic guilt are part of the poison? How do I leave that below deck and get above to bluer skies?

word of the day: mine

I am going down in the mine–the mine of my ownership, that which belongs to me. In this rendition of the metaphor, I am bird warning, excavating girl, and dark labyrinth. I am responsible for the depths and their contamination, and for making sure my feathered friend and I get out alive.  My therapist, who is part Jungian myth spinner, part ass-kicking soul trainer, believes in staying curious. She also believes in the power of art-making and storytelling as vehicles for self-awareness and healing.  Make your way through this life, she offers. Make art and learn from it. Kurt Vonnegut once used the canary archetype to describe artists:

“I sometimes wondered what the use of any of the arts was. The best thing I could come up with was what I call the canary in the coal mine theory of the arts. This theory says that artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are super-sensitive. They keel over like canaries in poison coal mines long before more robust types realize that there is any danger whatsoever.”

I agree with Kurt that we are more sensitive beings, we artist folk, but I don’t think we just keel over. We take in the malodorous and the magnificent and work our alchemy with all that we mine, bringing the muck and the magic back up to the surface, shining awareness on the leaks. Being a sentinel species for the planet is not easy, but I am grateful for these skills of detection–especially when I remember to turn them on within my own life–when I mine what’s mine. And when I get the hell out of certain dark chambers before all goes quiet. mine.

Love to all,

not-so-silent e