eee! I love that wonderful feeling when a book chooses you... when you hold it in your hands and it's exactly where you are right now. The words and themes woven through the pages are just what you needed to hear. The external world mirroring the internal world and bringin' you some new magical tools for the road. The sweet, sweet magic of synchronicity brought No Word for Time: The Way of the Algonquin People, by Evan Pritchard into my world recently. I wake up and read a few pages by salt-lamp light in the morning (ha!) and feel my native blood run stronger through my veins, however faint it is among the rest. My soul remembers this way of life. My heart knows its poetry. I ache for it...aaand road trips :)

(I spy blooms & shrooms!)

>> quotes from Evan Pritchard <<

"There is no word for time in the Micmac language, nor in most Algonquin tongues...time is relative and elusive in nature." (11)

"I can't count the number of Algonquin people I've known who have never worn watches in their lives...It has to do with dignity, perception, and many other less tangible factors such as energy flows and vibrations...Perhaps it also clouds the perception of real time, which is at the heart of physical reality....Time separates us from the past and future, but in Micmac, the emphasis is on the here and now." (12)

"Many native people...need to get away from clocks in order to be themselves." (20)

"Each person is a part of Creation both as an individual and as part of a group and, although the needs of the many outweigh the needs of one, the needs of Creation outweigh the needs of the many, so there is a balance between the individual and the tribe. The tribe has the right to include or exclude whom it wishes, but cannot tell anyone how to think or what to do.
The Algonquin person is therefore free to follow his or her own heart as long as it doesn't endanger others within the group. It's not that the people don't work together in cooperation, they do. But the harmony among a community of elders which many outsiders marvel at comes from a deeper place, a place of freedom. Those who don't wish to be there shouldn't be. Harmony has nothing to do with coercion and control, it has to do with affinity, or perhaps a stronger word, love." (139-140)

"Balancing the bold individualism of the Micmac is the principal of nen-djak, or "family." ...There is a social structure which dictates everything invisibly, and that institution knits the native world together into a cohesive community where no one is left out, everyone belongs and has a job to do. Men go off hunting for months at a time and come back unannounced...People leave meetings when they want and come back when they want. People "follow the spirit" so much, it's hard to keep up with them, and you're not supposed to. These are "the Freedom People." They fight for freedom, for themselves and others. On an interpersonal level, Micmac and other Wabanaki people are equally sensitive about "control issues," and I have learned some important personal lessons: communication works better than control most of the time, but it takes courage. Much of the pervasive dignity of the people comes from having the courage to claim these simple freedoms at every moment." (142-143)

"The essence of time is not a clock, it is the relationship between planets, moons, and stars and how they tug on one another gravitationally as they waltz through space." (149)

"There is no word in Micmac for "goodbye." In a world without time, everything is cyclical." (148) "...the Algonquin language has taught the people who speak it to look more closely at the wonder of nature." (135)