Week 10 Story - The Dance of Bees

Once there was a boy from a family of giants. He wasn't like his five older brothers. Where they liked to run and fight and roughhouse, he liked to sit, to think, and write songs. His brothers teased him often, and he felt all alone. His brothers were wrestling one day, and he couldn't concentrate with the ground shaking and the trees trembling. He wandered away through a mountain pass and found a valley--peaceful and quiet. There were large purple roses covering the ground, and it was quiet except for the wind. He thought he could write music calmly here. He started to settle himself onto the ground, nestling himself amongst the flowers. He heard a small yelp, and hopped up in alarm. He unfolded some of the petals on the largest flower, and found a plump girl--not a giant--nestled within. 

"Watch it, mister!" she humphed at him. He blinked in confusion. 
"Don't you even know what you've done? You've crushed the flowers!" she said, getting to her feet and settling her hands on her hips. She was wrapped in an ochre and black dress flecked with gold, and barefooted.
The boy didn't know what to say, or what to do. He stared at her, searching himself for a defense, or perhaps--judging by the way she was glaring--an apology. 
Suddenly she softened and said, "You're a giant? Why aren't you trampling all my lovely flowers just for sport?" 
He shrugged. 
Finally, he saw the hint of a smile grace her face. "Fine," she said. "You'll come with me, maybe there's hope for you yet."

He followed the girl through the flowers, trying not to step on any lest she yell at him again. When they reached the mountain pass on the the other side of the valley, the girl began to pull herself up the cliffside. She didn't need any help, being much stronger than her size suggested. He followed her up to a spacious room in the side of cliff and only peeped inside because he couldn't fit. There were other pudgy members of her family, dressed in the same ochre-and-black garb, all working on one task or another. One woman, the only one wearing all gold, was at the center of the hive, tending to the children. The boy watched them work as they turned dust into sweet food, built storage containers, and cleared away debris. 
"Soon we have to go back out and dance," the girl said.
The boy looked at her in confusion.
"We have to dance, in the flowers. We work with the sun, the flowers, and each other. It's how we make sure that everyone lives good lives," the girl explained. Sure enough, many others in the cave started toward the opening. They were all impressed with how kind and gentle the giant was, and how he was careful not to trample any flowers as they made their way down the cliffside to the valley.

The boy watched the girl and her family whirl and dance through the flowers, gathering golden dust and throwing it in the air and all over their arms and legs. They laughed, they were joyous in it. And they were careful not to damage any of the flowers. The boy was delighted, and came back every day to watch them dance.

Every night, when the sun set, the boy started home to see his mother, his father, and his five brothers. Every night, the girl stood stubbornly in front of him, and he knelt to listen to her warning: "Do not teach your family of our flower dance. They are too big and too rough, they will break the flowers and we will all be devastated." He always nodded his assent and headed back through the mountain pass. 

One night, after he returned his brothers teased him about missing their horseplay. They demanded to know where he had gone. The boy didn't want to betray his friend's secret but he missed his brothers. He just wanted to share the Flower Dance with them, and maybe they would think it was as lovely as he did. So he told them about the valley full of purple roses on the other side of the mountain pass. 

The next day, his heart no longer weighed down with secrets, he happily headed to the mountain pass to see his friend. But as he walked the road between the peaks, he noticed that rocks trembled and fell into his path. He heard shouting and instantly recognized his brothers' voices. He ran to the valley, and saw his brothers throwing each other around the valley. They stomped and mocked each other, they jumped and spit, laughing and punching and kicking. To the boy's dismay, the flowers were destroyed. Bodies of purple roses were strew around the valley. Not one remained in tact. 

In a panic, he ran to the other side of the valley. He stepped up to the opening of the cavern, peering inside in the hopes that his friend or her family would be hidden safely inside. But it was too late.

His friend was gone. The Flower Dance had come to an end, and so had the Bees.  

"Solitary Bee" by Alvesgaspar
via Wikipedia

Author's Note:
This story is very very loosely based on "The Youth that Joined the Deer." In the original story, a young man finds a community of Deer people, who die to feed the community then are revived. I found that one of the main take-aways for me was "responsible consumption" and "respectful relationships with nature." I kept the theme but told the story in a different way: the deer of 2018 are the bees after all. They do so much to keep our entire human community alive and we aren't really trying to help them survive. I tried not to anthropomorphize my characters too much to keep with the Native American style, but I really am a one trick pony when it comes to writing--I can only do people. Anyway, save the bees!

Reading Notes - Native American Tales (Reading B)

For the second half of the Marriage Tales section in the Native American unit, I noticed only a few more distinctions. For one thing, none of the people are given names. Places and ceremonies have names, but none of the characters is given a proper name. In my Native American philosophy unit, we learned that oral history is really important in the Native American tradition, and that the stories are used to connect all generations to the values and homeland of the community. Stories are used to teach people about what's important to them and to their community. Maybe that's why many of the protagonists are nameless. 

I really liked the stories from the Nlakapamuk people. "The Youth that Joined the Deer" was really interesting in more ways than one. First, I knew off the bat that they were Deer-People. I don't know why the hunter took so long to figure it out, but in keeping with the casual-impossible-phenomena theme, I don't think it mattered too much to him to get to the bottom of things. Until he shared the secret with his people. This story also embodies some characteristics of Native philosophy: sacrifice and working for the good of the community. The deer people were willing to be killed and restored, over and over, to sustain their community. The hunter was sure to teach his people and his children about responsible consumption. We don't just take, we acknowledge that something or someone is missing out on something (including life, maybe) so that we can survive. It's all about balance, as Dr. K is fond of saying. 

I also liked the True Bride story, also from the Nlakapamuk tribe. It was longer, but there were so many weird twists and turns that I was entertained the whole time. I also thought it was interesting because it seemed to be have been told--or at least written--at a later date than some of the other stories in this unit. Where before, all the characters were (or could be assumed to be) Native Americans themselves, this story made sure to point out that some people in the story were white. It also mentioned the layout of the houses and a public hanging. And I'm no American History genius but maybe some details were added into an old story, or this was a relatively newer story. 

And speaking of the evolution of stories: "The Girl and the Turkeys" was basically a Cinderella story with the twist of no happy ending. And I though that this was really cool for a lot of reasons, least of which is: Why would you want to end a story without "And they lived happily ever after?" Oh right--because the primary purpose of stories for communities with strong emphasis on oral history is to teach. So that brings me to my second observation: that every culture in the world has some version of the Cinderella story. There's versions from Asia, Africa, Europe, and now even the first people of the Americas. Either Cinderella was the first story ever invented, or cultural exchange has been happening a lot longer than we thought. 

I don't really know what kind of story to write based on these stories. I'm having a lot more trouble taking the themes in these myths and running with them far enough to make them my own without just copying the original. The most important and prevailing theme in these stories is: disobedience = bad. Which, all in all, is not a bad lesson. But people who behave don't make good stories, as I'm sure we all know. 

"Female Wild Turkeys" via Wikimedia

Reading Notes - Native American Tales (Reading A)

For this week, I read the Marriage Tales from the Native American unit. I really liked these stories because the tone was so oddly casual. There were wild things happening in every story and it was all so wonderfully understated. In "The Piqued Buffalo-Wife," a man had a child with a buffalo and the child came looking for him, and there was no description of what he looked like until the end of the story. Was he more human? Or more buffalo? No one reacted to the fact that the man had had a child with a buffalo either--they just helped the buffalo-child look for is dad. 

Also, the Native American myths remind me of the African myths in a lot of ways. First, there is the trope of "You Had One Job." In a lot of these stories, there is a character who gets a really sweet deal, and all they have to do is not break one rule. In "The Piqued Buffalo-Woman," the man married the buffalo, both she and their child become fully human, and she tells him not to swing at her with fire. Seems pretty simple and easy to avoid, right? Wrong. Like all the "You Had One Job" stories, the person breaks the one rule over something stupid. The wife didn't want to cook food for the man and all his friends, so he swung at her with a log from the fire and she and the child both become real buffalo and run away...which leads to the man being trampled, through a series of unfortunate events. In "The Bear-Woman," an insane older sister who was once the wife of a bear (who was killed by her father and brothers) plays 'Bear' with her little sister and brother, but tells them not to touch her where her kidneys are. The younger sister forgets, touches the older sister in the kidneys, and the sister turns into a bear and kills a lot of people in the camp...which leads to the older sister being shot in the head by her siblings, through a series of unfortunate events. It is worth noting that both of these stories are from the Blackfoot tribe. 

"Hunting Buffalo" by Alfred Jacob Miller
via Wikimedia Commons

Another thing that I noticed about Native American myths, which a little reminiscent of African myths as well, was the incorporation of casual yet impossible phenomena to anthropomorphize the animal characters. In my Native American philosophy class, we learned that "Natural Democracy" is the equal consideration of all being on Earth, and it is a prominent feature in many Native tribes' philosophy. For example, in the "The Woman Stolen by Whale-Killers," the whales steal a man's wife and drag her underwater. Her husband follows, somehow neither of them drown, and the whales have a large fire going in their home. The Shark, who is helping the man to reclaim his wife, helps the fire to get out of hand, and then all the fish are bringing buckets of water to put out the fire...that's underwater. Animals, rocks, and plants can be helpers and/or villains in Native American stories, like in "Splinter-Foot Girl." This theme is keeping with the Native American tradition of Natural Democracy: nature doesn't just exist in a separate/lower level from humanity, but we are all coexisting--antagonizing each other and helping each other, like one big family.