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Rowan Mangan

Writer. Mom. Wild Inventurer.

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Tricked

July 20, 2018 52 Comments

I was given a new piece of America last night. By a coyote.

Marty and I were coming home from our evening walk when we spotted the bouncy gait of the coyote in the pasture. Just a few shades off the tone of the gold-brown summer grass, he swept across the plain as if he owned the place. Which, of course, he totally does.

This is a drawing of a coyote.

When he reached the road not far ahead of us, the coyote stopped dead and turned to stare at us. We stopped too, and for maybe 30 seconds we all observed each other in silence before he upped and continued on his way.

As he disappeared up the ridge, we looked at each other and started laughing like fools. It couldn’t have been clearer if Loki himself had just booby-trapped our school lockers. Trickster energy!

So much about our recent life circumstances started to make sense when I looked into that clever, scraggly little face. Disparate pieces came together in that special way they do only when you have an unusually kooky belief system. You know, like I do.  

Every tradition on earth has a trickster figure loitering somewhere in its mythology, probably leaning up against a wall with a cigarette with one hand and a stolen chicken in the other.

Because I’m looking for America, I need my magical messengers to be very specific, and in Native American cultures, the numero uno trickster is Coyote. The stories about him showcase a cunning and mischievous dude who wreaks havoc wherever he goes.

Now, I wouldn’t have been quite so blown away by my own Coyote encounter if things hadn’t been quite so strange around here lately.

If my recent life were a Coyote story, it might go something like this.

…Then Coyote came to a settlement of white people, where everyone had a firm plan for the next stage of their lives. Pleased at the prospect of causing some delicious chaos, Coyote announced that he knew how to make all their plans work. They just had to give him a sack of meat and an indefinite amount of time.

The naive white people gratefully handed over everything Coyote wanted, certain that all their dreams were about to come true. Coyote laughed uproariously as he ran off over the hills with his meat sack slung over his shoulder, vowing never to return a single one of the white people’s calls.

I’m not going to go into the prosaic details of the past couple of weeks, but as you can imagine, uprooting your life and planting it down on the other side of the country involves a complex set of moving parts. Many of them interdependent. Many of them time-sensitive. And, unfortunately, a great many of them are reliant on other people following through on promises they’ve made. Ah, there’s the rub, right?

An artist’s rendering of our plans.

My naive white family and I mistook our hopes for reality, and friends, we got trickstered up one side and down the other. Trickster energy’s no joke: it will harsh your mellow but good. Yet as with so many scary or infuriating aspects of life, this mayhem becomes far less menacing the moment you see its wolfy little face and recognize it for what it is.

How can you tell you’re being beset by tricksterism? This is what I believe. When things start getting really crazy around you, like this-is-so-bad-it’s-weird crazy, like WTF-24/7 crazy… that’s some trickster energy getting all up in your life.

THIS IS A GOOD THING. And I’m going to tell you for why.

Tricksters are disruptors. They spurn convention, cross boundaries, and generally create disarray. But there’s more to it than that. In myth, tricksters have a habit of sauntering into a group of people and, as Paul Mattick has it, “shaking things up so that they can be reconfigured in a different shape.”

A different shape.

When I saw my Coyote and understood why he’s been showing up in my life, what I realized is just how much I’ve needed him.

Tricksters at work.

My family is about to move into a whole new life, and all our established structures need to be shaken up. More: they need to be shattered. We can’t create a new form for ourselves — in our routines, conventions, unquestioned ways of living with each other — without letting the current pieces shift around. That’s how we’ll re-form to fit our new life. The Coyote force wreaking havoc with our plans is helping us do that.

But fundamentally, it’s my own self that is in most need of some shattering and re-forming. I’m like a set of tiles destined to be a mosaic. And chaos is the artist. So smash me up, Coyote. Mess up all the colors and help new aspects of me to be born.

We can get so creaky, you guys. All the structures of self we build around ourselves can grow hard and brittle. And as any engineer of bridges or high rise buildings will tell you, what doesn’t bend is bound to break.

When Coyote comes into our lives, he shows us that we can’t rely on those things we thought we could rely on — people’s behavior, what’s knowable or predictable, where the edges of our reality really lie.

And you know what? When we can no longer take that shit for granted, it’s time to open our damn eyes. It’s time to say, okay, Coyote: break me open, shake me up. Let me become a swirling, colorful new creature born of today — not five years ago, not thirty years ago. Today.

It’s worth breaking for. It’s so worth it.

This is a drawing of a coyote.

Tonight, on my walk, I looked up at the craggy line of the ridge far above me, and there he was: silhouetted against the sunset, gazing down at me. I smiled and waved; I couldn’t help it. Coyote was too far away for me to see his face, but I promise you, he winked, took a drag of his cigarette and drawled, “You’re welcome, Boo.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This article originally appeared on Rowan’s Wild Inventures substack newsletter. To subscribe and get all Rowan’s posts in your inbox, head over to Wild Inventures on substack now. 

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Filed Under: Loving Inventures, Parenting inventures Tagged With: coyote, mythology, native american mythology, plans, shattering, trickster

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Comments

  1. Sean Mangan says

    July 20, 2018 at 7:36 am

    Splendid stuff, my dear whippersnapper. Seldom have I seen such an elegant silk purse made out of no more than a coyote’s ear. xxxxx

    Reply
    • rowan says

      July 21, 2018 at 3:35 am

      Shucks, Paw. That means so much xoxoxoxo

      Reply
  2. Carol says

    July 20, 2018 at 8:45 am

    I love this post Rowan, as part trickster myself I’m just realising how powerful that magic is, we are the edge makers, and then when others reach that edge we’ve made another one. Have you read the book ‘Trickster makes this world?’ Xoxo

    Reply
    • rowan says

      July 21, 2018 at 3:35 am

      I see you, Trickster! Love that book! x

      Reply
  3. Paula M Keogh says

    July 20, 2018 at 8:57 am

    Brilliant piece of writing. Trickster energy sparking through it. I particularly loved the ending, Boo!

    Reply
    • rowan says

      July 23, 2018 at 8:44 pm

      You’re the best! 🙂 🙂 🙂

      Reply
    • rowan says

      July 23, 2018 at 10:38 pm

      You’re the best! 🙂 xoxxo

      Reply
  4. Christina Lawler says

    July 20, 2018 at 10:02 am

    I wish that an ex friend of mine knew about the trickster, and didn’t chalk up the demise of our relationship so simply as a story about my personal character. Especially as it is plain to see now that everything was working as it should have been.
    I told a story myself about that relationship. What it meant. One likes to think the ground they walk on is solid, but in reality it’s a lot more like cloud hopping, where some of the clouds just randomly change shape and let you slide right through. The thing is when you fall you’ll eventually land more safely, and get better at cloud choosing.
    Anyway I love your perspective and your post.

    Brilliant

    -C

    Reply
    • rowan says

      July 21, 2018 at 3:37 am

      I hear you. Thanks, Christina.

      Reply
  5. Sonya Versluys says

    July 20, 2018 at 4:55 pm

    Great post! Love this! From a fellow “disruptee”–smash me up, coyote!

    ~Sonya

    Reply
    • rowan says

      July 21, 2018 at 3:38 am

      Thanks, my cobber! May we all get smashed to hell and rise up smiling. x

      Reply
  6. Irene Keogh says

    July 20, 2018 at 5:53 pm

    Nothing changed but everything changed. How you think about something determines your reality. May we all find that trickster when we need her.

    Reply
    • rowan says

      July 21, 2018 at 3:39 am

      Absolutely! So well put! xo

      Reply
  7. River LaMoreaux says

    July 20, 2018 at 9:00 pm

    Wonderful, as always! I feel that the US is going through a similar shake-up meltdown WTF re-forming right now. So it ties in with your search for America too. Well done!!!

    Reply
    • rowan says

      July 21, 2018 at 3:39 am

      Ooh, great point! Thank you, River. Always appreciate your feedback xoxo

      Reply
      • River LaMoreaux says

        July 23, 2018 at 1:57 am

        Your picture captions crack me up btw.

        Reply
  8. Barbara hiller says

    July 20, 2018 at 11:31 pm

    Just love love this faboulous new blog

    Reply
    • rowan says

      July 22, 2018 at 4:51 am

      Thanks so much, Barb! 🙂

      Reply
  9. Trish Hammond says

    July 22, 2018 at 8:07 pm

    Love it.

    Reply
  10. Wendy Wyatt says

    July 23, 2018 at 4:25 pm

    Love the Trickster energy… Have you read the book; Daily Coyote by Shreve Stockton? A wonderful trickster tale about a woman who moves from NY to San Francisco but determines she prefers NY and moves back deciding to ride her Vespa on the back roads of America to get there… along the way she is enchanted with Wyoming and once back in NY, decides she’s going to move there… and then she meets Charlie, her coyote companion… a magical story! You can also find her on Instagram.

    Reply
  11. Cami Pack says

    July 26, 2018 at 2:13 am

    Omg, so beautiful! When you said you realized you needed him, something in me shifted, grew light. When you said, “I’m like a set of tiles destined to be a mosaic,” it made me gasp. Love, love, love this. Thank you.

    Reply
    • rowan says

      July 26, 2018 at 7:30 pm

      Thank you so much, Cami! I really appreciate this.

      Reply
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The perfect paradox in the title of Amie McNee’s The perfect paradox in the title of Amie McNee’s beautiful book, We Need Your Art.  New episode of Bewildered out now! 🎧🎨🫶
You know the story that the culture tells us about You know the story that the culture tells us about art—that it’s only something to do if you have spare time, or it’s only for the idle rich? That’s not actually the culture’s agenda… 

We’re talking about what’s really going on with art in the culture on this episode of Bewildered, featuring our very special guests Amie McNee and James Winestock.

The culture’s real agenda is to get you to stay in the left hemisphere of your brain. 🧠

Why?

Because if you do, then you continue to give your life for cannon fodder and give your labor for billionaires—you aren’t questioning the status quo. 

And as soon as you get out your paintbrush or sit down at the piano, you open up a way of thinking that creates where there was nothing before—that creates everything from amazing art to solutions to climate change. And that’s revolutionary. 👊

To hear more about unlocking the true power of art and joining the creative revolution, tune in for the full episode and find out why making art might be the most important thing you do for yourself—and for the world. 

You can listen to Bewildered episode 102: We Need Your Art with Amie McNee and James Winestock, access the show notes, and find links to resources on our website at the link in our bio—or on your favorite podcasting app. 🎧
Hey there, Bewildered Cahoot! We have a very speci Hey there, Bewildered Cahoot! We have a very special episode for you today as we’re talking with our friends and fellow creative revolutionaries, Amie McNee and James Winestock. 🎨

Amie is a writer, author, and creativity coach whose new book, We Need Your Art, is out now.
Her goal with this book is to remind you that you are here on this earth to make things and to use your incredible brain to create—and that art isn’t just a hobby, but vitally important work.

As Amie describes her work, “I basically just bully people to make them create things.” (Spoiler alert: It worked for Martha!)

If you’ve ever doubted your artistic worth, this conversation will remind you: The world truly needs your art, now more than ever. Listen to the full episode and let Amie’s contagious passion help you take your art seriously—and help change the world. ✨

You can listen to Bewildered episode 102: We Need Your Art with Amie McNee and James Winestock, access the show notes, and find links to resources on our website at the link in our bio—or on your favorite podcasting app. 🎧 

@inspiredtowrite
Did you know that true kindness is a superpower? ✊🌼

In this episode of Bewildered, we’re talking about the way that true kindness—starting with kindness towards ourselves—is actually a deeply subversive force in our culture.

Kindness has the power to disrupt systems of cruelty and division, and it’s a rebellion against the scarcity, everyone-in-it-for-himself mentality that’s pedaled so widely (never more than now in this culture).

So if you want to be a rebel against the culture of domination and extraction and overwhelming force, be a rebel first by being kind to yourself.

You can listen to Bewildered episode 101: Out-Kind the Culture, access the show notes, and find links to resources on our website at the link in our bio—or on your favorite podcasting app. 🎧
Do you want to be really subversive and really sti Do you want to be really subversive and really stick it to The Man? 👨🏻‍⚖️
(Especially The Man as he is currently configured in our culture…)

Here is how to do it:
Be kind. 🥰

Be kind to yourself, and you will naturally be kind elsewhere. Keep in mind: Kindness is not what the culture tells us it is—foolish, passive, naive—no. Kindness is immense power. ☀️

If we can learn to tap into it in a way that is accessible to us, it is so much more powerful than the forces of cruelty that want to keep us in our place.

Hope you’ll join us for this new episode of Bewildered: Out-Kind the Culture. 💗

You can listen to Bewildered episode 101: Out-Kind the Culture, access the show notes, and find links to resources on our website at the link in our bio—or on your favorite podcasting app. 🎧
What’s something you accept about yourself? 🤔 What’s something you accept about yourself? 🤔

In this episode of Bewildered, we’re talking about the idea of training your “human”—the body, mind, and personality you were given at birth but is separate from your Self—and one of the steps is accepting your human as it is.

Ro has accepted that her human will never be consistent through a year. She’ll have months of being really on top of things and months where the things are on top of her. There doesn’t seem to be any way around that. 🧐

Each mode her human goes into feels like the ultimate personality. Like, “Now I’m myself! And this is how it will continue for the rest of time.”

But she’s getting much better at understanding that it won’t last—it is what it is right now—and just letting that be, as one season gives way to another, knowing that they do come back around as well. 🛞

The culture fixates on permanency and consistency—“Be the same creature throughout the year and for always”—but that’s just not how many people’s humans work at all.

To find out more about observing, accepting, and training your human so you can cultivate more peace and joy, tune in for the full conversation! 🎙️

You can listen to Bewildered episode 100: How to Train Your Human, access the show notes, and find links to resources on our website at the link in our bio—or on your favorite podcasting app. 🎧
Do you ever just catch yourself doing something an Do you ever just catch yourself doing something and think, “I have such a funny human. Look at it. Look what it does.” 😅

That is what our episode today is about—what it is to function inside the human that we’re given when we’re born. 🐣

And learning:

🤔 how it works
👍 what it will do
👎 what it won’t do

And maybe training it to be the best human and have the most fun as a human that it can.

It’s all on a new episode of Bewildered called “How to Train Your Human.” Check it out, it’s pretty fun. 😀

You can listen to Bewildered episode 100: How to Train Your Human, access the show notes, and find links to resources on our website at the link in our bio—or on your favorite podcasting app. 🎧
How do you know if you’re stuck in an algorithm How do you know if you’re stuck in an algorithm cycle? 🌀

Here’s how it works:

If something strikes you as interesting, the algorithm will instantly create the impression that everyone knows about this thing that you’ve just discovered—everyone’s talking about it, and everyone has the same concerns. 🗣️

Then what happens with that impression is that just by the force of the number of people, it makes it seem more credible and true. So even if I’ve only seen 30 people saying the same thing, my impression is that it’s probably about 75% of all people.

And if 75% of people believe something, there’s a very good chance it’s correct, right? That’s just what they call “Doing the math.” ➕➖✖️➗

And not only does it feel factually right, it feels morally right as well.

So how do we break out of this illusion of consensus and navigate through all the chaos and uncertainty? Find out on this episode of the Bewildered podcast! 🎙️

You can listen to Bewildered episode 99: War of the Worldviews, access the show notes, and find links to resources on our website at the link in our bio—or on your favorite podcasting app. 🎧
Like most people, you’ve got a worldview. 🌎 A Like most people, you’ve got a worldview. 🌎
And also like most people, you want to uphold and defend that worldview. 🛡️

Enter “apophenia”—a condition all humans are susceptible to—which Webster’s Dictionary defines as “the tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful patterns between unrelated or random things.” 🧶

Apophenia is often the chemical and mental scaffolding by which we uphold a worldview that, under scrutiny, may not hold up that well. 🤔

Or might not even hold up at all. 😳

Want to learn more about apophenia, conspiracy theories, fractured worldviews, and how we can all come to our senses? Join us for this episode of the Bewildered podcast! 🎙️

You can listen to Bewildered episode 99: War of the Worldviews, access the show notes, and find links to resources on our website at the link in our bio—or on your favorite podcasting app. 🎧
Do you ever find that in order to explain to someo Do you ever find that in order to explain to someone what’s really going on you need:

📌 a gigantic pin board
📰 newspaper clippings
🧶 a lot of yarn

If that is the case, you might be suffering from a condition known as “apophenia.”

On today’s episode of Bewildered, we’re talking about:

👽 conspiracy theories
🤖 algorithms
💔 a fractured sense of reality
⚔️ the war of the worldviews

All of this—and how we can come to our senses. I hope you’ll join us!

You can listen to Bewildered episode 99: War of the Worldviews, access the show notes, and find links to resources on our website at the link in our bio—or on your favorite podcasting app.
There is a wonderful artist we love called Amie Mc There is a wonderful artist we love called Amie McNee (@inspiredtowrite), who recently wrote a very cool essay on her Substack about not wanting a job. She said that if you don’t want to have a conventional job in this society, you will be seen as weak or lazy. 🦥

For Amie, it’s a very different sort of thing—it’s about not having a high tolerance for suffering and not wanting to suffer. Here’s what she says in her essay:

“We live in a culture that venerates toiling and drudgery. Because I have an intolerance for a life that doesn’t sparkle, I created a life that was filled with meaning and purpose. Ironically, to do so, I worked harder than I ever have before, but it was work that absolutely glittered. 💎

“Now I write, talk, paint, connect. I do it to make money. I do it because it lights me up. I do it because that is why I’m here on this earth. Life sparkles, yet I still feel like I'm getting away with something. I’ve snuck around a compulsory part of being a human being, which is doing work that sucks.”

If you want to hear more about creating a life that lights you up, instead of a life where you’re only a drudge for money, be sure to tune in for this episode of Bewildered. Let’s figure it out!

You can listen to Bewildered episode 98: Your Money or Your Life, access the show notes, and find links to resources on our website at the link in our bio—or on your favorite podcasting app. 🎧

** A note on this episode: We angered the technology gods somehow during the recording of this podcast, and they took away the video we faithfully recorded for you. We are making the appropriate offerings to those specific deities and we’ll be back in your visual field for the next episode! **
Our culture tells us to always put money in the mi Our culture tells us to always put money in the middle of our lives, and there’s a compulsiveness to this feeling of hoarding money and of making money. 🤑

In this episode of Bewildered, we’re talking about this compulsion and looking at what might fill our attention if we take money and jobs out of the middle.

Money is basically an abstract extrapolation of the barter system. 🪙🟰🐮

Our culture has turned it into something you can hoard when actually you can’t, not in any meaningful way, because on its own, money doesn’t mean anything. 🪙🟰🪙

We heard a quote in the context of addiction that said, “You can never get enough of something that almost works.” Money is an addictive thing that makes you want more and more and more of it because you’re trying to fill a differently shaped hole.

In this episode we’re challenging the idea that money should be at the center of our lives and proposing what kinds of things we could put there instead. Join us!

You can listen to Bewildered episode 98: Your Money or Your Life, access the show notes, and find links to resources on our website at the link in our bio—or on your favorite podcasting app. 🎧

** A note on this episode: We angered the technology gods somehow during the recording of this podcast, and they took away the video we faithfully recorded for you. We are making the appropriate offerings to those specific deities and we’ll be back in your visual field for the next episode! **
Our culture tells us that you need to put money… Our culture tells us that you need to put money…

💵 the making of money
🪙 the generating of money
🤑 the money-making-money-making-money

…at the very center of your attention, if not your entire life.

Now, it may be that at this moment, work and getting money has to fill a lot of our day, but it doesn’t have to fill our attention.

What we’re talking about today on Bewildered is what happens when you pluck the money/work cultural story from the center of your attention. 🎯

Let’s see what goes there instead. It’s kind of wild…

Join us!

You can listen to Bewildered episode 98: Your Money or Your Life, access the show notes, and find links to resources on our website at the link in our bio—or on your favorite podcasting app. 🎧

** A note on this episode: We angered the technology gods somehow during the recording of this podcast, and they took away the video we faithfully recorded for you. We are making the appropriate offerings to those specific deities and we’ll be back in your visual field for the next episode! **
In this episode of the Bewildered podcast, we’re In this episode of the Bewildered podcast, we’re discussing our very noisy culture and how different kinds of noise can affect us in different ways. 🙉

For Ro, when she’s in New York walking down the street during Sunday brunch time, she finds the noise of people chatting outside at restaurants enlivening instead of irritating. Its effect on her nervous system is net positive.

“And I don’t think that’s association or any sort of mental gymnastics that’s happening. I genuinely think it hits my nervous system differently because it contains a different emotional frequency,” she says.

Martha says that there’s a certain amount of reaction to noise that we can’t control.

For example, you could be habituated to traffic noise where you think nothing of it, and yet:

😩 It’s destroying your sleep.
〰️ It’s keeping you from alpha waves.
🌰 It’s triggering your amygdala to make you afraid.

And you don't even know that’s happening. 🤯

“If there’s an alarm call, you’re going to have a very strong reaction,” she adds, “and you can’t really control that. But there’s also a level in which you have some say, you have some deciding power, because it’s about what the sound means to you.”

Tune in for the full episode to learn how different sound frequencies can affect you (for better and for worse) and how to take a break from our increasingly noisy culture.

You can listen to Bewildered episode 97: Clamor and Birdsong, access the show notes, and find links to resources on our website at the link in our bio—or on your favorite podcasting app. 🎧
Are you a fan of white noise? 🤍 We find that w Are you a fan of white noise? 🤍

We find that white noise is not ideal for work, as it can set your teeth on edge a little bit. 😬

Luckily, there are other “colors” of noise that are more in the mid-range of what we can hear, where it’s like the sound is a bit blunted.

We particularly enjoy green noise, which is the one that supposedly sounds most like the natural world, and it’s very pleasant. 💚

You can play these different colored soundscapes on loops on YouTube—like ten hours of uninterrupted green noise—and it’s just wonderful!

It’s an inexpensive way to create your own personalized soundscape—for example, with green noise on your laptop and birdsong on your phone, for free—and positively affect your nervous system. 💚🦜

Want to learn more about the effects of sound on your nervous system and how to navigate an increasingly noisy culture? Join us for this episode of the Bewildered podcast!

You can listen to Bewildered episode 97: Clamor and Birdsong, access the show notes, and find links to resources on our website at the link in our bio—or on your favorite podcasting app. 🎧
Hey, folks, got a new episode of Bewildered for yo Hey, folks, got a new episode of Bewildered for you today!

Noise. Noisy.
(Some pronounce it noisé if you’re very sophisticated. 🧐)

We’re talking about noise—how our culture is even noisier than we know…🔊
And how our thinking brains can think, “I don’t notice any noise.” 🤷🏽
But our nervous systems know better. 🧠

We’re also going to talk about:

📡 frequency
🔇 silence
🐦 and birdsong (which is even more important than silence)

You’ll have to listen in! 🙉

You can listen to Bewildered episode 97: Clamor and Birdsong, access the show notes, and find links to resources on our website at the link in our bio—or on your favorite podcasting app. 🎧

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