The Totems of My Life
I am not certain why or how it has happened, but I am surrounded by totems. They mean everything and yet they mean nothing at all. Just this week, Kim gave me a birthday/anniversary/Valentines gift she had had made for me by her favorite gift store in New York, named Domus on West 44th Street in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen. In Ancient Rome, a domus was a distinguished house of a person of substance. I am not certain I qualify as of substance or that my home is so distinguished, but it is all-important to us, so that alone qualifies it as a domus to us. The gift was very special and very appropriate and as such joins my collections of totems in a place of importance. It is a carved wooden ram from Mexico and is brightly, but tastefully painted in a typical native Mexican fashion. The Mexican aspect is perfect for out new life in Southern California where the Mexican influence is strong and our decor is heavily governed by Otomi native art. It joins other relics and artwork we have in addition to our kitchen decor and garden mural. But the strongest symbol is the symbol of the ram. This is not a complicated issue as my initials are RAM. Of course, that was not my name at birth, but it has been with me for sixty years, so it is very much mine by now. It dominates anything engraved with my initials, it is blended into my online passwords and it is in evidence all over my other home in Ithaca. There is no one in my family unfamiliar with my totem of the ram. This is especially so for my oldest son who shares the same initials and will inherit all of my ram totems.
Kim collects mermaids and she has always felt that she related to mermaids for one reason or another. Mermaids are a totem that are found in abundance and she has often felt that she has overdone her collection of them, but they are meaningful to her and they are in evidence liberally around our home. I have felt the same about rams at times, but this ram gift came at a time when I had not added to my ram collection for a long time and that, combined with the Mexican artifact nature of the ram made it a welcome addition.
As I sit in our living room watching the movie Black Robe, set in the wilds of the the Huron nation amongst the Quebecois, the Algonquin and the last of the Mohican, I am staring out at our lighted Juliet balcony where I have placed a larger-than-life statue of an eagle. The eagle may be the most common totem in America, but this one is larger and more beautiful than most. It stands about five feet tall on top of a three foot pedestal and is made of an almost petrified portion of an old tree trunk, shaped very much like a sitting bird of prey. On top of this wooden form is a tarnished metal eagle head with a regal beak and smoothed feathers. This royal totem stares out over our back hillside towards the ocean, scanning the horizon as an eagle might do, seeming to protect us from any harm, which is exactly what a totem is meant to do. In the bird category, we have metal hawks, owls, quail and roadrunners around the house that all pay homage to the eagle king that sets the pace for them all.
My other major animal spirit in my home is the noble buffalo (a.k.a. American Bison). As discussed at great length, I have a much larger-than-life buffalo now standing guard on my back hillside. He is the perfect counterbalance to the giant eagle perched on high. He too is at rest, but I’m guessing that with his entire boulder bulk and metal head and appendages, he weighed in at about 300 tons. I know the metal head alone weights about 400 pounds, and the limestone/granite rock that makes up our boulders width about 175 pounds per cubic foot. I can do simple geometry as well as anyone and I’m betting this puppy comes in at 3,600 cubic feet of rock. An average adult buffalo weighs about one ton, so it would be fair to say that this guy or gal (Kim likes to think its a female) is 300 times heavier and I’m sure it is 3X in physical dimensions. All of that says to me that it is a perfect balance to the eagle and a substantial guardian of our home. In addition to that totem, we have a smaller version of the same statue in our entry (done by the same artist who did my eagle). That is a 50 pound buffalo on the hoof made of rock and metal just like his big brother down the hill. He is the big guy’s inside man to protect our interior home.
Given my years in the exotic parts of the world, I have also collected many other totems like masks. I can see about ten tribal masks in the living room right now. They are mostly from Latin America and Africa with one from Southeast Asia (Papua New Guinea). Each one of them I collected on my travels. They are supplemented by three pumice (probably more lava rock than pumice) statues, two of which are heads and one of which is a full-body female. Ive never thought of these totems as protection, but I think many people would feel that they stand guard over us silently and effectively.
Mostly we have collected and displayed all of these totems for our own pleasure. They remind us of our rich lives and many travels. They remind us that we are not alone in this world no matter how often we default to that thinking. The natural world and all the collective memories of the days of our lives are always with us and a part of us still. I am comforted by all of these totems and always seem to feel the need to add to our collection and reverence of them. I look at one mask and think of buying it from a young boy on a grass runway in the Amazon. I look at the lava rock head and think of all the burial mounds across Mezzo-America where I spent six formative years of my youth. I see a soapstone Inuit dancing bear statue that I have had for thirty years and reminds me of my two wonderful years going from coast to coast across the breadth of Canada.
These days I can go outside and walk up and down the hillside hauling rocks and pruning the landscape, but I can easily imagine the years ahead of me when I am less agile and less able to go up and down the hills. I somehow think that these totems will protect me all the more in those days of my future. I may need the help to remember or I may be sharp of memory and just feeble of joint, but whichever is my destiny, my totems will accompany me as much as those important items that natives in the Isthmus of Panama or the Praetorians of Rome took with them into the ever-after. None of these will go with me into dust, but they will accompany me and make me happy up until my last minutes. In that purpose, the totems of my life will fulfill the noblest role they can in guiding me towards the immortal.
Your physical presence defines you as a person of substance