The Bingo Palace
Title: The Bingo Palace (P.S.)
Author: Louise Erdrich
List price: $13.95
Amazon price: $11.86
The following is a dream I had while reading Louise Erdrich's book, The Bingo Palace. The story is set on the North Dakota Chippewa Reservation in contemporary time. In the dream I was one of the characters or a piece of all of them. I too was trapped by our culture, the long history and the poverty. The white social worker came into my bedroom to find me sleeping and when I awakened, I saw what she saw - the piles of clothing in my closet that only a few days before had been organized and on hangers.
I was Lipsha in his thrall and poetry over Shawnee Ray, and I was the little boy who was caught in the big machine of Social Services. I felt the weight of all of our shared histories over generations and the burden of being judged by the white woman. I felt an anger rise at her, at myself, at all the others, and simultaneously an urge to get up and tend to these things I'd let go.
I saw that we are all in it together and that only that acknowledgment would free me, free all of us. I saw that there is a wave of consciousness to ride that is the cumulative experience from the beginning, as well as the experience of the present - that to be in the present with the fullness of all that has come before requires a steady attention, a steady focus that does not allow the light, the dark or any element to take precedent.
This is the dream of Erdrich's stories that is awakening me to my own situation. Like Lipsha, I have been sprayed by the skunk and thus isolated by the stinking humiliation of not meeting the bear or the eagle of a more noble warrior's vision quest. But too, I get the skunk's message that "this is not just real estate… This way is not just a property to be commercialized, made slick enough for popular consumption."
So, in the midst of awakening to the cold stare of the prim, pale, social worker, I see that the order I had been trying so hard to maintain was a fabrication - another slick attempt to avoid the natural order which is the chaos of human conflict and resolution - the season of storm and quiet - vision and blindness - starvation and plenty. The chaos will not be denied. It will bury us in our well kept houses, flood our cities, shut off the power to our diversions, until we remember our relationship to the beginning - to the core of this story we live - cast in both the shadow and the light.