So
who is to be the next young lady to be a " mistress of spices "?
And how is it to be determined?
.
The writing below, from the
chapter on turmeric in the book " The Mistress of Spices " by Chitra
Banerjee Divakaruni,
is a narrative which might
show something about this question. There is a reference to the
shore of the magic island
where the ancient India
wisdom teaching is given over, ltittle by little, to the few selected
beautiful young ladies .......
I think of the " old one "
as Ruth, some years from now, long after I ama gone,
as she is the teacher of our young
ladies here in the " Village of Wauwatosa ".
..............................................................................................................................................................................
page 34
" The dreams I do not
remember, but the voice that woke me
from them I will never forget. Cool and
grainy with a hint of a
mocking laugh in it, yet deep, deep, a voice to
plunge your heart
into.
.
" What has the god of the sea belched up on our shore this
morning? "
.
The Old One, surrounded by her novices, and the sun a
halo behind her head and shimmering many-colored imn her lashes.
So that I scrambling to my knees felt impelled to lower my own
sand-caked ones.
.
It was then I saw that I was naked. The sea had stipped me
of all, clothes and magic and for the moment arrogance even. Had
thrown me at her feet bereft of all but this dark, ugly body.
.
In shame I pulled at my salt-stiff haair to cover me. In shame
I crossed by arms over my chest and bent my head.
.
But already she was removing her shalw, placing it around
my shoulders. Soft and gray as a dove's throat, and the
spice-smell
rising from it like a mystery I longed to learn. And her hands.
Ssoft, but with the skin burned pink-white and puckered to the
elbows as though she had plunged them into a long-ago blaze.
.
" Who are you, child? "
.
Who was I? I could not say. Already my name had faded in
the rising island sun, like a star from a night that has passed away.
Only much later when she would teach us the herbs of memory
would I recollect it --- and my past life --- again.
.
" What do yiou want of me? "
.
Dumly I sstared at her, she who seemed at once oldest and
most beautiful of women with her silver wrinkles, though later I
would see that she was not beautiful in the way men use the
word. Her voice, which I would later learn in all its tones ---
anger
and mockery and sadness --- was sweet as the wind in the cinna-
mon trees behind her. A yearning to belong to her buffeted me
like the waves I had fought all night.
.
I think she read my heart, the Old One. Or perhaps it was
merely that all who came to her were drawn by the same desire.
.
She gave a small sigh. The weight of adoration is hard to
bear, I know that now.
.
" Let me see. " And she took my hands in hers that had
passed through fire, who knows where.
.
Too light, too hot, too damp. My hands freckled as the back
of a golden plover,. Palms where at midnight thorn-purple blood-
wort would burst into bloom.
.
The Old One had taken a step back, letting go.
..
.
" No. "
.
Each year a thousand girls are sent back from the island
because they do not have the right hands. It does not count if
they have the second sight, or if they can leave their bodies to
travel the sky. The Old One is adamant.
.
Each year a thousand girls whose hands have failed them
throw themselves into the sea as they sail home., Because death is
easier to bear than the ordinary life, cooking and washing clothes
and bathng in the women's lake and bearing childdren who will
one day leave you, and all the while remembering her, on whom
you had set your heart.
.
They become water wraiths, spirits of mist and salt, crying
in the voices of gulls.
.
I too would have been one of them, but for the bones.
.
They were why the Old One could not resist taking my
hands in hers again. Why she let me stay on the island though all
wisdom must have shouted no
.
.
Most important in a good hand are the bones. They must be
smooth as water-polished stone and pliant to the Old One's touch
when she holds your palm between hers, when she places the
spices in its center. They must know to sing to the spices.
.
.
" I should have made you go, " the Old One would tell me
later, shaking her head ruefully. " They were volcano hands, sim-
mering with risk, waiting to explode. But I couldn't. "
.
" Why not, First Mother? "
.
" You were the only one in whose hands the spices sang
back. "
.
..
BBBBBBB .
.
Picture below from the Milwaukee Journal of Ruth in her younger years
working the spices with her hands.
.
note: make sure to have all twelve up to the house, or perhaps
better yet, over to Billy's house,
to see the opening segment of " Meetings with Remarkable Men ", the
video on TV.
The scene is a rough mountainous region of Afganistan where Gurdjief's
Father says
" Every twenty years we aschkoffs gather here on the mountain to
test our art ".
The mountain is teeming with the peoples of the region as one by one
the famous
musician s of the area " play their art ". The winner is to be
that one single musician
who makes the mountain sing back, as this was a famous, said to
be, magic, mountain.
.
The second most asked question of Thomas Jefferson when he was our
ambassador to France in the 1780's ( after all those questions about
his startling red pants )
was about the secret salt mountain in the Ozarks in America, from which
a highly
regarded salt was taken used in the curing & seasoning of all sorts
of preserved meats & game & birds.
,
As per Jenni's suggestion, yes, post here the lovely few pages on " the
hand in very young children "
from the classic small book on teaching the very young by the Italian
physician Dr. Maria Montessori.
.....................................................................................................................................
.
.
.
'
.