The Crazy Life, Koyaanisqatsi
When I moved to the city five years ago for my boys to go to school, boys of similar ages lived on both sides and one street behind our new house. So when my son recently said he had no one to hang out with, it took me a minute to remember that the last of those 3 families had just split apart, and as had happened to the previous two, the teenage son had gone off with some fragment of his previous family. I do not mean to pass judgment. I myself am divorced and remarried, and only as a gift of God were no children left as collateral damage to my previous failure. I have been thinking about my little residential intersection, and wondering if I am justified in multiplying it among the other streets and intersections in this country of 300 million people.
I returned last week from another trip to the Hopi reservation. I returned with a Hopi rattle, a rattle of the type given to children to remind them of the form of their universe. The rattle itself represents earth, with the blue of the oceans in the center and a swastika symbol showing its rotation. The sun’s warm rays surround this, and markings around the side are the Milky Way galaxy and constellations. The handle of the rattle is the earth’s axis, and the sound of the rattle is the vibrations sent out along the axis to the earth’s vibration centers to resonate and keep the planet in balance.
My novel 2012: Under the Witz Mountain is the story of the Mayan hero twins, the heroes of the Quiche Mayan creation story Popol Vuh, translated across time to the end of our own age. The Mayan hero twins prepare the world for the coming age. The Hopi also have hero twins. The creator’s first created power was his nephew Sótuknang, born to put the universe in order. The nephew created Spider Woman to be his helper on the earth. Spider Woman created two beings from earth and saliva, and they became her sons Pöqánghoya and Palöngawhoya, and these two twins were stationed at the north and south poles, respectively. The Hopi hero twins keep the world, once created, in balance. Their duty is to keep the world rotating on its axis, and to send out a song that keeps the world in balance. This song is either a call for good or for warning, and is transmitted to creation as vibrations through the resonating centers of the earth.
It has been written that the Hopi made a covenant with God more than a thousand years ago to do spiritual work to try and keep the planet in balance. It’s not their tribe or a sacred mountain they have been trying to save, but the whole big ball of the earth. It is understood that many are working against the twins, both outside of the tribe and within, and it is by no means taken for granted that the twins can set things right. Rather, without the cooperation of humanity living in a more rational way, the efforts of the twins over the millennia may not be sustainable. There is a Hopi word for times like this. It’s called Koyaanisqatsi, translated ‘life out of balance,’ ‘a state that calls for another way of living,’ or simply, ‘the crazy life.’
In his book 'The Invention of Prophecy,' Armin W. Geertz points out that ritual songs of the male Hopi are sometimes tragic and darkly fatalistic, explaining a coming apocalypse on the failure of Hopi leadership, and an embrace of koyaanisquatsi. The more earthy female ritual songs are more likely to be hopeful, and appeal to people to change their destructive habits. One female song from the 1960's is about the traditional Hopi leader who threatened to hang himself when his Hopi wife refused to cook for his white hippie girlfriend. The song ridicules hypocrisy, as if men might see their foolishness and change their ways before the coming apocalypse.
So do you ever feel like the axis of your world is falling out of balance? The twins are sending us signals, the sound of the rattle in our heads, trying to move us back to a balanced center. As a species, we don’t seem to have a very good track record of listening to those vibrations, the groaning of the earth or the whispered nudging of God. In Arizona I came across an old photograph of Hopi Katsina dancers performing for the Shah of Iran. What were their rattles trying to tell the Shah of Iran? Actually, in the photograph it rather looks like the dancers were trying to run the other way. Dance for the Shah? Why not? It’s Koyaanisqatsi. The first turn-off to get to the reservation is the Hopi-land McDonalds. Hopi-land McDonalds? Why not? It’s Koyaanisqatsi. Some Hopi may look on unapprovingly as the crazy life encroaches on their territory, but many in western culture seem to live at the center of Koyaanisqatsi and never see it, never recognize it as a fail
ing.
Is there a connection between being disconnected from the earth and disconnected from our neighbors, and our spouses and children? Is earth our mother, the origin of our molecules, and can we turn our back on mother and still love our family? I am by no means an authority on the Hopi. It seems to me, however, that the culture values a simple and self sufficient life in community, with faithfulness to the creator. That’s not an anthropological conclusion, it’s a feeling. The alternative is Koyaanisqatsi.