What the Vultures Said

Today is my birthday, a day of celebrating. I'm grateful for storytellers, for my family and friends, for land, for creativity, for learning both easeful and hard, for deep thought and silliness, for songand much more. Here is an audio landscape, with found-sounds and spoken-word telephone calls. My hope is this evokes curiosity in the daily doings in your own life...the small things that are no small wonder. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe

Into Dark Solstice - A PoemWe have walked down this way before. Along trails hooved by deer’s morphing ancestors, where light-loving leaves give way to moist stone.We crossed these lands an orbit ago, the constellations just a little different, herding us into this shadow valleywhere day’s inbreath grows short, and nights outbreath long, where old calendars exhale completely, dissolving into dream around us. A valley of deepest shadow and reverence for light, when the bright one with whom we brew time is furthest from us, our fingertips barely brushing across the expanse.But now, let us pause in this descent,though we may already yearn to be passing through the valleyand climbing the far slopeand our fingertips to be clasping the bright one’s, then our palmsand on into union.Now, let us make a hearth here on this slope,circle round and share glimpses into the nests of our travel pouchesinto dust-cloaked treasuresgiven, gleamed, borrowed, birthed.From across oceans, home grown,from across constellations, sprouted in soil.As dust riding these treasures gives way to their tastes,may the biome of our heart-minds find creatures thereto wriggle and enrich us,tickle our consciousness. A pause, a breath,then a passing round of the embers who heard all this.For each a gentle red pulse.For each a lantern.May we then tread down into the valleyto join other circles,feel other embers and dusty treasures,and then to be in silence and let the embers go out. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe

Here we are.You. Me. I in my body, you in yours, they in theirs.I with my personality, upbringing, influences, opinions. You with yours, they with theirs.Yet here are ways we are more than ourselves. We overlap not only with each other, but with other species, and those in other times, and more.Wandering time and place, ancestry and other lives, from love’s dissolving of boundaries to the intelligence of species, here are explorations of of ways we are vast.Free Story & Media ConsultationComment and Subscribe here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe

I was cast out from my home. Or maybe I ran away. To dry lands. I’m hungry. I need to become something more, to shed a part of me that seemed intrinsic. And the waters are rising.A slow, meditative and moody song.Lyrics: I ran from all l've known to a dry land where nowseeking, seeking, seeking homeFortnights passed aplenty, & was living hungry learning from the serpents who hunted with the moon.One vast & star-pierced midnight, a man emerged from darknessSaid ‘These lands you love shall leave us soon.’He told me, ‘Floods they will course all across these creaturesThese creatures know it rightly, see them climbing from the sandsHe said ‘I dwell in stony ridges, high above the waters.Come dwell with me as we wait for land.’One dawn we were together, above the flooded badlandsHe said, ‘Watch the sun trail crossing the waters down below.’Long I sat there seeking, slowly growing patient’Til I had nowhere else to go.Stone to gold & gold to skyBones broke & scattered, once more & againStars who circle still long after they die Guides guide still once they are slainFloods seeped downward & flowed on to the oceanStone arounds on the ground was all I could seeThe old man passed… & plenty joined me with his passingAll he lived now lives in me.Now walk across these badlands, still learning from the serpentsfinding forlorn singers, cast out from their homesby instigating elders, wise as troubled watersI come to them in their time alone.I sing to them from heaven, deep within the watersI sing to them as air deep within the stonewith a voice of slither serpents, wise as desert daughters,where I wander is where I'm home.Subscribe & SupportFree Story & Media ConsultationComment and Subscribe here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe

It’s time to die, old man. Past time.You’ve fucked things up. I don’t even want to see you.Damn, and you’re afraid. What dignity will you be able to die with?Alright, old man, here’s a song to help.Subscribe & SupportFree Story & Media ConsultationComment and Subscribe here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe

Do gifts leave gaps?If I’m good at one thing, does it leave me floundering in another area?And here’s a big thoughts, on the level of our whole human species, perhaps our gifts leave holes.Here’s a meditation on self-awareness and our relationship with our living home.Subscribe & SupportFree Story & Media ConsultationComment and Subscribe here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe

If you’re working with stories and you’re not crazy, don’t worry, it won’t take long.Turkey vultures circle overhead. They’re not waiting until I die, though they wouldn’t turn down the meat. No, they have a message for me.Who’s speaking to you?Subscribe & SupportFree Story & Media ConsultationComment and Subscribe here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe

Imagine a map with no cities, no provincial or national borders, no names of colonisers claiming land.Instead, this map is dotted with mythic sites. It is a record of story-sites rooted in land, and webbed together.Hear more, in this melodic meditation, quoting Sean Kane’s excellent book, Wisdom of the Mythtellers, with a passage from a Haida origin myth.Subscribe & SupportFree Story & Media ConsultationComment and Subscribe here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe

As a young man, with my fabric of my life dealt a sudden and grave wound, when I most needed culture, India took me in.But my relationship with Indian culture and myth is complicated.I traversed story paths walked by sages for thousands of years, heard the tales sprouting from those places, found culture and community and meaning.And there is hierarchy, racism, sexism, caste, and other violences woven in.And it’s complicated.And it’s beautiful.After years of turning away from the myths and practices that once shaped my life, I was recently invited to tell a story from the Ramayan at a Bhakti festival here on Turtle Island. This live telling moves through love, exile, and betrayal; forest hermitages and monkey kingdoms; floating bridges and secret reasons behind the prince’s banishment. Along the way, we wonder at the villains in this story, and how they may be the story’s greatest servants. Subscribe & SupportFree Story & Media ConsultationComment and Subscribe here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe

Overwhelmed by rapid change in my life, inside and outside, I walked a beach in South India, my head spinning between continents. A fellow pilgrim’s rambling advice saved me. As did potatoes. As did a slug, years later, in a very different scenario.Intrigued? Confused? Have a listen to increase both of those.Free Story & Media ConsultationComment and Subscribe here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit storypaths.substack.com/subscribe