Kamryn Kobel, “’He Had Never Been Crazy’: Curing Through Cultural Orientation in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony ,” 1st Place
Orientation depends on understanding your location and existence in relation to your surroundings. When you are severed and disconnected from your surroundings and cannot locate yourself among them, physically or mentally, you become disoriented. Leslie Marmon Silko explores concepts of orientation in her novel Ceremony, which follows the journey of a young Laguna Pueblo man named Tayo as he searches for his deceased uncle’s lost cattle. While he searches for the cattle, he simultaneously searches for a cure to the sickness he suffers from since returning from his deployment in World War II. When he returns from war, Tayo has lost connection to all that surrounds him—the landscape, his body, the flow of time, and his family, as his Uncle Josiah and cousin Rocky have passed away. The trauma of war and loss that Tayo endures disorients him and manifests in a nauseating sickness. Tayo’s “sickness” is a physical manifestation of his disorientation within space and time—thus, to achieve a cure that makes him physically and spiritually well, he must reorient himself. Tayo reestablishes a connection with his surroundings and his culture as he locates himself within time and place; this orientation creates a healing sense of presence within the world and within himself. In highlighting cultural orientation as cure for dislocated or spiritually and physically diseased Native people, Silko demonstrates Vizenerian survivance, the necessity of recognizing and centering the ongoing presence of Native cultures as cure in the present and continuance in the future.
When Tayo first returns from war, he is sick, restless, and feels as though he does not fit within his surroundings—he is disoriented. The physical sensations that Tayo experiences do not connect to the present moment. Instead, they reflect Tayo’s traumatic flashbacks and confusing memories, demonstrating the disorientation he feels within time and place. While lying on Rocky’s mattress, “He pulled his knees up to his belly and writhed in the bed, fighting back the gagging. He felt the old mattress then, where all the years of Rocky’s life had made contours and niches that Tayo’s bones did not fit . . . he called for help . . . and arched his back away from the mattress” (Silko 30–31). Tayo feels the “contours and niches” of Rocky’s mattress, his physical surroundings, that were made by “all the years of Rocky’s life.” He is sickened by this intersection of past and present, gagging from the sensations he physically feels and the memories that confuse his reality. Tayo struggles against his surroundings, both physically and mentally, as his “bones did not fit” within the mattress and the memories of Rocky they hold. Tayo cannot locate himself among what surrounds him, neither within time nor space, and the sensation of this dis-location sickens him; he gags and calls out for help, trying to escape by “arch[ing] his back away from the mattress.” In this moment, Tayo’s disorientation within time and place are linked to his grief, his trauma, and his illness.
Throughout the first half of the novel, Tayo’s traumatic war memories continue to get confused with his current occupation within the present moment. His sense of hearing triggers traumatic memories, turning events happening in the current moment into a relived past that makes him feel ill. Tayo struggles with this disorientation when he hears his friend Harley eating grapes. He notes that “… any hollow crushing sound he heard—children smashing gourds along the irrigation ditch or a truck tire running over a piece of dry wood—any of these sounds took him back to that moment. Screaming, with mud in his mouth and in his eyes, screaming until the others dragged him away before the Japs killed him too” (Silko 44). The sensations that Tayo experiences in the present moment, including the sounds of Harley eating grapes, children playing, and truck tires, trigger traumatic flashbacks to his time at war and his cousin’s death, manifesting in nausea. His past and present are tangled and confused, which distresses Tayo and makes him physically ill. He cannot differentiate between the current moment and the violent trauma and loss of the past. Any physical sensations, such as sound, that should orient him within the current moment confuse him instead. Scholar Jude Todd also notes this disconnect from the present, identifying how “Tayo loses awareness of the present moment and lapses into reveries in which even pleasant thoughts lead him to relive scenes of unspeakable inhumanity and evil…. He does not dare to recall good times with his brother, Rocky, because these recollections transform into war scenes that Tayo viscerally re-experiences, right now, in present time” (1). As Todd notes, Tayo “loses awareness of the present moment” as physical stimuli transform his present into his traumatic past. His senses, in this case his sense of hearing, lead him to “viscerally re-experience” these memories within the present moment. His senses do not orient him—rather, they disorient him, confusing his present with his past and removing him from his physical location in the world and in time. Like Todd suggest and as his aversion to crunching sounds demonstrates, Tayo cannot locate himself within time or space because he cannot comprehend his relationship to the past, which keeps getting tangled with his present. This causes Tayo’s disorientation and, consequently, his sickness, as memories are triggered by “The sound of the crunching [that] made him sick” and he must get up and walk away from Harley to avoid vomiting (Silko 45).
Tayo’s physical sensations continue to trigger the disorienting reemergence of traumatic memories throughout the beginning of the novel, including when he is out drinking with his friends. When he uses the restroom at the bar, the toilet leaks, and “It was soaking through his boots. The sensation was sudden and terrifying; he could not get out of the room, and he was afraid he would fall into the stinking dirty water and have to crawl through it, like before, with jungle clouds raining down filthy water …” (Silko 56). As with the sound of crunching, the sensation and smell of the water bring Tayo back to his deployment and entirely remove him from the present moment. Tayo feels the water “soaking through his boots” and smells the “stinking dirty water,” and these sensations of touch and smell are “sudden and terrifying” because he can’t reconcile the physical stimuli he experiences in the present with the war memories attached to them. Neither his body nor his mind can contend with the simultaneous coexistence of the physical world around him in the current moment and the memory of these sensations from his past. Because of this, Tayo cannot understand his own location among the past, present, or the world around him. Rather than orient him in his body, physically and temporarily, his senses confuse him instead, creating a mental separation between him and his surroundings.
Tayo is so disoriented and sickened by everything that surrounds him that he yearns to be removed from the physical world altogether. While lying in his childhood bedroom, surrounded by memories of Josiah and Rocky, he requests that the shades be pulled down, claiming “He felt better in the dark because he could not see the beds, where the blankets followed smooth concave outlines; he could not see the photographs in the frames on the bureau” (Silko 31). When he is removed from his surroundings, Tayo cannot be disoriented because there is nothing to exist in relation to. Without seeing the beds or the pictures, he does not have to exist alongside them or the memories that they evoke—he can be un-oriented, outside place and time. Being completely detached from his surroundings alleviates him from his disorientation and thus from his sickness, evident because he “[feels] better in the dark.” If he disconnects himself from any physical sensations, such as the sight of the beds and picture frames, then nothing can remind him of the past that he feels entangles him. Removing himself from what disorients him temporarily relieves him of his illness, but it does nothing to re-orient him or cure him.
This method of coping with his trauma, this pseudo-cure to his “sickness” that temporarily makes him feel better, is similar to his desire to be “white smoke,” as he had been while he was hospitalized before returning home: “white smoke had no consciousness of itself. It faded into the white world of their bed sheets and walls” (Silko 14). As with his desire to disappear into darkness, Tayo believes that he can cure himself by completely removing himself from his environment, by fading and having “no consciousness” of himself. While he lays in Rocky’s bed, he thinks, “He wanted to go back to the hospital. Right away. He had to get back to where he could merge with the walls and the ceiling, shimmering white, remote from everything” (Silko 32). Rather than struggling against his disorientation, he wants to become “remote from everything,” including what physically surrounds him. At this point in the novel, Tayo can only find relief from his illness by completely disconnecting from everything around him; “remoteness” or distance, then, becomes a way to escape the trauma he has experienced. Tayo believes that he should go back to being white smoke at the hospital because while there, “[he] didn’t feel things sneaking up behind [him]” (Silko 123). While he is white smoke, the past does not exist for him, and he can’t “feel” it behind him. He cannot be disoriented or lost within the flow of time if there is no flow of time, no past, present, or future to surround him. If the past does not exist, then the present does not exist in relation to it, and therefore Tayo can escape disorientation and the grief, pain, and sickness he feels as a result. Rather than suffer through a confused, disoriented existence as he struggles to locate himself within time and place, Tayo wants to un-orient himself by becoming disconnected and remote from his surroundings and his past.
However, Tayo’s disorientation does not begin with his experience of war—rather, it is the result of years of alienation from his culture and community. As he grows up, Tayo suffers a disorienting severance of connection to his cultural worldview as he attends school. When he is a child, Josiah teaches Tayo and helps construct his worldview by telling him traditional Laguna stories. As a young boy, Tayo “had believed in the stories for a long time, until the teachers at Indian school taught him not to believe in that kind of ‘nonsense’” (Silko 19). The white education that Tayo receives is a colonialist enforcement of the Western worldview that separates and disorients Tayo from his own understanding of how the world works and his connection to his culture, as well as to place and time. While at “Indian school,” the white teachers tell Tayo that his cultural worldview, which he learned from Josiah, is “nonsense,” effectively severing his connection to it. This severance between Tayo and the things that are supposed to surround and support him, such as family, community, and culture, contribute to his disorientation because it prevents him from locating his place among them and establishing an orientation as to where he fits in. Thus, when he experiences the trauma of war and of losing the two people he loves most, Josiah and Rocky, there is nothing left for Tayo to exist in relation to. Without a connection to his culture, his disorientation as to where he belongs within the world worsens, manifesting in physical illness.
Although it might offer momentary relief, Tayo cannot and will not find the cure to his disoriented sickness and trauma by further removing himself from the physical world, his past, or his culture. Instead, Tayo’s cure comes from reconnecting with his surroundings and reorienting himself within time and space in a culturally coherent manner. To become oriented, Tayo must reintegrate himself into his surroundings and understand where he himself is located in relation to past events and to the world around him. Reflecting on trauma and memory in “From Matter and Memory,” Henri Bergson writes: “[A]lready we may speak of the body as an ever advancing boundary between the future and the past, as a pointed end, which our past is continually driving forward into our future” (110). For Bergson, our physical body is our link to the present moment and the world around us. We exist in our presence as we embody our physicality and as we understand where we are located in relation to our past and future. Presence, therefore, accounts for the present moment in time as well as the physical sensations we receive from the world around us as we occupy it—the sights, smells, sounds, tastes, and feelings we get from existing and being present within the world. We exist as the present, as “the boundary between future and past,” and we orient ourselves through this presence, both within the flow of time and within the physical objects and landscape that surround us. We understand where we exist in relation to everything around us based on the physical environment and the span of time around us. Our sense of presence orients us. Thus, to achieve his cure and rid himself of the illness that plagues him, Tayo must achieve a sense of presence to establish a center of self that is properly oriented by recognizing his relationship to the past and future, as Bergson identifies, and his own location as a physical being that exists in the present moment. Instead of separating himself from everything, either through darkness or “white smoke” to escape any kind of orientation at all (including disorientation), Tayo must fully occupy his presence to reorient himself.
It is the accumulation of traumatic disorientations—from war, from cultural displacement—that lead to Tayo’s sickness and displace and disorient him. In “Trauma Narratives and the Remaking of the Self,” Susan Brison argues that trauma causes a disconnect between oneself and one’s past. She writes, “Trauma undoes the self by breaking the ongoing narrative, severing the connections among remembered past, lived present, and anticipated future” (41). Tayo experiences this “severed connection” repeatedly, at school, at war, at the bar, and whatever connections between his past and his present that do remain are distressingly convoluted, not relating to each other in any meaningful or orienting way. He cannot comprehend the past, present, or even the future’s relationships to each other, nor his place within them, just as he can no longer recognize his relationship to his culture or the Laguna people. To heal trauma such as Tayo’s, Brison argues that one must put their past into a linear narrative form as a way to understand their place within it. She notes, “By constructing and telling a narrative of the trauma endured, and with the help of understanding listeners, the survivor begins not only to integrate the traumatic episode into a life with a before and after, but also to gain control over the occurrences of intrusive memories” (46). Brison argues that orientation and “control over the occurrences of intrusive memories” can be reclaimed by establishing a narrative that reconciles the past, present, and future into their proper places—a “before and after”—in a chronological, linear understanding of narrative and time. However, this method of healing, this “cure,” is not complete for Tayo because his cultural Laguna worldview does not adhere to the Western, linear understanding of narrative and chronology. Tayo’s cure must come from an orientation within time and place that incorporates his worldview as a Laguna man, one that upholds interconnection and simultaneity. Tayo must establish a presence through a connection to his Laguna cultural worldview rather than a Western one, which is what has contributed to his trauma in the first place.
Making a Western, linear narrative that strictly defines past from present does not work for Tayo because it does not adhere to his cultural worldview—rather, it feeds into the Western education and erasure of culture that disorients him and creates his sickness. Tayo cannot locate himself within time, space, or culture by enforcing a strict separation between his past and his present or between himself and his surroundings. As Conrad Schumaker writes, “[For] Pueblo and Hopi …. The view of the world is one of cycles, of receiving and giving in a circular relationship, a relationship not with ‘nature’ (an abstract concept that reveals our culture’s separation from what surrounds us) but with a particular place and its beings” (34). Schumaker notes that the worldviews of Pueblo and Hopi cultures are not shaped by the understanding of time and space as linearly separate, but instead as circular and connected. The Laguna are a Pueblo people, thus, Tayo’s cultural worldview accounts for connection, rejecting the Western “culture’s separation from what surrounds us” and championing a “circular relationship” with “a particular place.” Therefore, to gain orientation, Tayo must integrate himself into a presence that accounts for an interconnected relationship to his surroundings, including his past. Jin Man Jeong agrees, noting that “Since Ceremony was published in 1977, Native scholars have pointed out that Native Americans maintain their own unique notion of time that is not in accord with the Western European concept of linear time” (2). Rather than establishing a linear narrative that separates past from present, Brison’s method of cure-through-narration can help Tayo only if it corresponds with a cultural worldview that upholds connection, circularity, and intertwinement. His presence cannot be defined by drawing boundaries and separations between himself and his surroundings, whether that be the environment or his memories; instead, Tayo must find presence through a fluid understanding of his interconnected existence alongside what surrounds him, including his past and the physical world.
This concept of Tayo’s cure coming from a cultural understanding of a connected sense of presence within the world and within the flow of time appears at the beginning of the novel, when he thinks to himself:
He could get no rest as long as the memories were tangled with the present, tangled up like colored threads from old Grandma’s wicker sewing basket when he was a child… He could feel it inside his skull—the tension of little threads being pulled and how it was with tangled things, things tied together, and as he tried to pull them apart and rewind them into their place, they snagged and tangled even more. (Silko 6–7)
Tayo recognizes that his distress comes from the way his “memories were tangled with the present,” and how he cannot differentiate between events from the past and the current moment. Tayo attempts to put his memories into a linear narrative, but doing so only disorients him further, portrayed when “as he tried to pull them apart and rewind them into their place, they snagged and tangled even more.” Tayo tries to put the memories into what Western ideologies understand as “their place,” or the past. But creating a linearly narrated organization of his memories doesn’t orient him among them because, as scholars note, this kind of organization doesn’t fit within his worldview and only separates him further from his culture. Scholar Michelle Satterlee also identifies Tayo’s misguided desire to rearrange the memories that surround him into a linear narrative. She writes: “He wants to pull the memories apart and travel back in time to put the order of events back into place, hoping to separate the traumatic memories from the non-traumatic memories.” Further, “Tayo is terrified by memories that take him back to the war, yet these traumatic memories are inextricably linked to his past before the war and relationships to Rocky and Uncle Josiah so that the two types of memories cannot be separated” (Satterlee 78). Tayo believes that this separation of past and present, which Satterlee identifies as an impossibility due to them being “inextricably linked,” will cure him, but the “memories cannot be separated” from Tayo’s presence. He cannot just “pull the memories apart” and reorder them into a clearly defined linear narrative that his Western education has convinced him will be the cure. Neither can he pull the memories apart from his physical sensations, as they, too, are inextricably linked. Instead, he must reorient himself through connecting to his presence, which includes his physical surroundings and a circularly interconnected flow of time, to understand where he exists in relation to them. While it is true that “constructing and telling a narrative of the trauma endured” will help Tayo orient and cure himself, as Brison argues, Tayo must do so in concurrence with his cultural worldview (46).
Tayo’s first reintroduction to his cultural worldview and his own occupation within that worldview comes from Betonie, the old medicine man. While visiting Betonie in his hogan, Tayo looks around to see “… layers of old calendars, the sequences of years confused and lost as if occasionally the oldest calendars had fallen or been taken out from under the others and then had been replaced on top of the most recent years” (Silko 120). Betonie’s calendars, representing the flow of time, are mixed up and out of order—they are not linearly organized in a manner that the Western world would understand. Instead, the past and present exist alongside each other, with the old calendars mixed among more recent ones. Tayo perceives them as being “confused and lost,” becoming disoriented as he follows the “concentric shadows of the room” and feeling “dizzy and sick” while standing among them (Silko 120). The interconnected circularity of Betonie’s traditional hogan disorients Tayo because he cannot comprehend what surrounds him physically or within the flow of time. Since his surroundings do not adhere to the linear Western worldview he has been taught to uphold, he struggles against them, much like he does among his memories while lying in Rocky’s bed.
Betonie, however, is completely oriented and present among his surroundings. He tells Tayo about the history of the hill that his hogan is built on, which existed long before the city and highway that it overlooks. He tells Tayo that “It is that old town down there which is out of place. Not this old medicine man” (Silko 118). Betonie has achieved a stable sense of presence and orientation within the world, among the town, the hills, and the history that surrounds him. He is not “out of place” but oriented among the intersections of time because he understands his own presence. The old medicine man serves as an example of orientation to Tayo, demonstrating that once he achieves a sense of presence, he too can find orientation among his surroundings and within his culture. As Jeong notes, “From [Betonie’s] perspective, the past is not a self-contained, uniform, and petrified entity that lacks any connections to the present. Rather, it is a living thing that continually intervenes in the present and waits to be reinterpreted and re-created…” (8). Like Betonie, Tayo also experiences his past “continually intervene[ing] in the present and wait[ing] to be reinterpreted,” portrayed through the traumatic flashbacks of war and illness that he suffers from. In Tayo’s case, he needs to reinterpret and re-create his presence within the world and within the flow of time in a way that connects and unifies rather than separates. This perspective that Betonie offers Tayo acts as an example for Tayo to model after and catalyzes his journey towards orientation.
From Betonie’s example, Tayo starts the process of reorientation as he begins to feel a deeper sense of presence within the world and within the flow of time. After the first night of Betonie’s ceremony, Tayo “… took a deep breath of cold mountain air: there were no boundaries; the world below and the sand paintings inside became the same that night. The mountains from all the directions had been gathered there that night” (Silko 145). Tayo’s connection to his culture and surroundings has been sparked, and from here he can begin the process of reorientation. Instead of disconnecting, of becoming removed and remote from his surrounding and from the flow of time, Tayo now embraces connection; he breathes in the “cold mountain air,” literally taking in the world around him. In doing so, he welcomes the sensation of having “no boundaries,” recognizing the eternal and simultaneous existence of “the world below,” the cultural sand paintings, and the mountains. In this moment, he notes how they have all interconnected and “gathered” together in both place and time as they join from all directions, including from the past and the future. Just as Betonie’s newspapers have no boundaries between past and present, Tayo begins to understand the flow of time and the landscape around him as being eternally interconnected with each other and with himself, rejecting a Western worldview and embracing his presence among the intersections of place and time.
Equipped with a better understanding of how to situate himself within place, time, and culture, Tayo begins to fully engage in his presence and connect to the world around him. When he does so, he becomes better oriented and less ill. Tayo establishes a sense of presence by literally physically connecting with the earth—by having sex with Ts’eh, who is the embodiment of the nearby mountain, Tse’pi’na. Tayo meets Ts’eh during his journey, and she tells him that she is “a Montano,” a member of the Montano family, as she points to the Black Mountain range where she says her sister lives (Silko 223). Thus, when Tayo sleeps with Ts’eh, he fully connects, physically and emotionally, with the landscape and demonstrates his presence within it. While having intercourse, “He was afraid of being lost, so he repeated trail marks to himself: this is my mouth tasting the salt of her brown breasts; this is my voice calling out to her” (Silko 181). Tayo uses his physical presence, the tastes and sounds he experiences, as “trail marks” to find orientation and prevent himself from getting “lost.” He understands his own existence in the world based on his relationship to Ts’eh, who is the earth, and where he is in relation to her. He uses the places he physically connects with her as points of reference to locate his own presence, which in turn orients him. The taste of her breasts and the sound of his voice serve as these “trail marks,” orienting him and helping him establish where he exists in relation to them.
At this point in the novel, Tayo utilizes his physical sensations—his presence—to orient himself, as opposed to the beginning of the novel, when his senses distress him and exacerbate the distressing tangling of past and present. While having sex with Ts’eh, Tayo notes how “He eased himself deeper within her and felt the warmth close around him like river sand, softly giving way under foot, then closing firmly around the ankle in cloudy warm water. But he did not get lost, and he smiled at her…” (Silko 181). Again, Tayo experiences physical sensations that connect him to his presence, such as the feeling of warm sand and water closing around his legs. This moment is reminiscent of the scene in the bathroom from the beginning of the novel, where the sensation of water around his legs makes Tayo panic and disorients him among his memories. However, now that he has a better cultural understanding of the intersections of place and time, Tayo uses his senses to locate himself rather than becoming lost among them. Previously, as with the bathroom, his time in Rocky’s bed, and with Harley’s crunching sounds, his physical sensations aggravate the tangled, sickening disorientation and demonstrate his lack of presence. Now, he fully embraces his presence, taking in his senses to ground himself within the current moment. With a better cultural understanding of his connection to his surroundings, Tayo orients himself through these senses, occupying his physical presence and comprehending his place within the world. His orientation is evident the morning after they have intercourse, as Tayo smiles and believes that “Being alive was all right then; he had not breathed like that for a long time” (Silko 181). He is “all right,” no longer disoriented and no longer sick.
The sense of presence that Tayo achieves while with Ts’eh orients him mentally, too, as it aids him in understanding the circular and interconnected nature of the flow of time. Tayo repeatedly dreams about Ts’eh after he has sex with her the first time and predicts their reunion. About this dreaming, Jeong writes:
On the one hand, the time in which Tayo dreams of Ts’eh is obviously the present. On the other hand, it is the past, for his dream is a memory of his former experience with her. Furthermore, it can be said that it is the future as well, fortelling their upcoming meeting. This mysterious time in his dream—the nodal point that simultaneously interweaves the past, the present, and the future—cannot be appropriately understood from a purely chronological dimension. (10)
Tayo’s relationship with Ts’eh, the earth herself, creates an intersection of time that Tayo centers himself within. His dreaming, which is a machination of his own mind, is “the nodal point that simultaneously weaves the past, the present, and the future,” as Jeong identifies—Tayo is the nodal point, the center of orientation from which all else surrounds him. The physical relation and presence that Tayo establishes through his intimacy with Ts’eh orients him in place, but also in time as it centers him within the simultaneous flow of past, present, and future. Rather than separate his relationship to and with Ts’eh within a past/present/future linear narrative, as Brison advises, Tayo understands the simultaneity, the weaving together of timelines, that he experiences in his connection to Ts’eh. Tayo’s orientation within time despite the simultaneous intersection of past, present, and future is possible because of his connection to his physical presence—because he can place himself among and within the natural environment of the literal landscape and of Ts’eh herself. His presence cannot be “understood from a purely chronological dimension,” and it doesn’t have to be—now, Tayo comprehends of this interconnection outside of the Western linear narrative that had disoriented him in the first place. His viewpoint adheres to the cultural Laguna worldview instead.
After this encounter, Tayo is able to orient himself without struggle and understand his location within space and time as it adheres to his indigenous cultural worldview. As he rides through the mountain searching for the cattle, he remembers when he hunted in the same location with Rocky and Josiah years ago. He recalls how “they had left the truck parked in plain view, at the edge of a pine ridge. But at the end of the day … they expected to see the old truck parked on every ridge that came into sight. They weren’t lost, because they knew where they were, but the green truck was lost” (Silko 190). This memory demonstrates Tayo’s newfound orientation—in the memory, the truck not being where they expect it does not distress them because “they knew where they were” and weren’t lost among the landscape. This reflects Tayo’s current sense of presence and orientation among the mountains and among his memories. When memories of Rocky and Josiah, such as this one, cross his mind, he no longer vomits or feels sick. After achieving presence, Tayo’s past does not get tangled with the present as it once did, and the memories are no longer a threat to Tayo’s understanding of his location within the world. Instead, they are seamlessly integrated into his present moment because he knows where he is, both in time and place. Just as Tayo isn’t “lost” and feels no distress because he is oriented within the physical landscape, he feels no distress or panic at the memories of Josiah and Rocky resurfacing because he is oriented within the present moment and knows where he exists in relation to the memories. This moment also reflects what Betonie tells him; just as Betonie asserts that it’s the town that is “out of place,” not him, Tayo recognizes that it’s the truck that is lost, not him—he has achieved a stable presence and orientation among his surroundings (Silko 118). Memories from his past no longer confuse and distress him; they can resurface without overtaking the current moment because Tayo is completely oriented within his presence and the past is no longer a threat to that stability.
Tayo’s orientation is further solidified when he has an epiphany that leads him to a clear cultural understanding of the flow of time and his place within it. As he searches the mountains for the cattle, he realizes:
The ride into the mountain had branched out into all directions of time. He knew then why the old-timers could only speak of yesterday and tomorrow in terms of the present moment: the only certainty; and this present sense of being was qualified by bare hints of yesterday and tomorrow, by saying “I go up to the mountain yesterday or I go up to the mountain tomorrow”… Rocky and I are walking across the ridge in the moonlight; Josiah and Robert are waiting for us. This night is a single night; and there has never been any other. (Silko 192)
This “present sense of being” that Tayo feels—his presence—is “qualified” by his surroundings within the flow of time; by yesterday and tomorrow. The past and future give meaning to his present, and Tayo now understands his people’s culture on a deeper level as “He knew then” why the old-timers speak how they do. He recognizes how “this night is a single night” because time and place interconnect into this singular, simultaneous moment, and he is not distressed or sickened by it. Instead, he understands how presence is “the only certainty,” and orients himself through it. Rather than trying to untangle and linearly separate himself from his past and his surroundings, Tayo finds orientation within the interconnectedness of all that surrounds him. He is fully integrated within his Laguna culture, applying Brison’s theory in a manner that corresponds with his own non-Western worldview to cure his sickness and trauma. The past, present, and future flow around him simultaneously, and rather than becoming distressed and disoriented, Tayo’s presence centers him and allows him to understand where he is located among them. His present moment is “qualified” and given meaning based on the past and future, by yesterday and tomorrow, and he uses these surroundings to understand his own location in relation to them.
Tayo’s understanding of his existence among his surroundings at the end of the novel starkly contrasts with the beginning of the novel, demonstrating how his rekindled connection with his sense of presence orients and cures him. At the beginning of the novel, Tayo thinks to himself, “Years and months had become weak, and people could push against them and wander back and forth in time. Maybe it had always been this way and [he] was only seeing it for the first time” (Silko 18). This quote portrays how Tayo had always recognized the cultural flow of time and place that surrounds him, he had just been disoriented within it and thus sickened by it—returning from the war is just the first instance of him “seeing it.” He notices the non-Western, non-linear nature of time, how people could “wander back in forth in time” such as Rocky and Josiah do within his memories, because it disorients him. However, after achieving a sense of presence, he understands the connectedness and knows that “He was not crazy; he had never been crazy. He had only seen and heard the world as it always was: no boundaries, only transitions through all distance and time” (Silko 246). Before coming to this understanding, Tayo had been sick and disoriented because he had resisted the interconnectedness; he now knows that “He was not crazy; he had never been crazy,” and that his sickness had not been caused by his cultural worldview, but it was rather a symptom of his disorientation within it. His disorientation, which stemmed from the trauma of the white indoctrination of Western worldviews, misled him into seeking boundaries and separations rather than connecting with his surroundings and with his memories. He now knows that “He had only seen and heard the world as it always was: no boundaries, only transitions through all distance and time,” and that his disorientation was not a result of the boundarylessness itself, but of his disorientation within that boundarylessness. Tayo’s resistance to the flow of time is what confuses him, and once he achieves a sense of presence that engages in the interconnected flow, he is no longer disoriented. At the novel’s close, Tayo accepts the interconnectedness of the Laguna worldview instead of struggling to establish separation between past, present, self, and surroundings. Through finding presence and connection to what surrounds him, Tayo achieves the cure—not by enforcing separation between himself, the world, and his memories.
By the end of the novel, once Tayo has achieved presence among the landscape and flow of time that surrounds him, he understands his orientation through a cultural lens. He looks around, noting how “… at that moment in the sunrise, it was all so beautiful, everything, from all directions, evenly, perfectly, balancing day with night, summer months with winter. The valley was enclosing this totality, like the mind holding all thoughts together in a single moment … The strength came from here, from this feeling. It had always been there” (Silko 237). Tayo recognizes his place among all that surrounds him “from all directions.” He does not get lost within this “single moment” of convergence, nor does he get disoriented or sick within the past and present’s coexistence—instead, he can orient himself within the convergence because he understands his own center of presence in relation to the balanced day and night, summer and winter, and the familiar presence of the valley surrounding him. This understanding of his own place and orientation among the past, the landscape, and his culture empowers him, as he recognizes that it “had always been there” and he had only needed to reconnect with it. About Tayo’s cure, scholar Edith Swan writes, “So, the patient is healed as harmonic balance is struck, successively reinstating Tayo into various aspects of his personal, familial, social and natural environment, which makes him one with the Laguna view of cosmology” (314). For Swan, Tayo’s cure comes from “harmonic balance” that reinstates Tayo into “various aspects of his personal, familial, social, and natural environment”—otherwise, his surroundings. Tayo’s reinstallation among them essentially is his reorientation. In this moment, Tayo has struck the “harmonic balance” that Swan identifies—he sees the balance of the landscape and of the past and present as they surround him within this “eternal moment,” and he is oriented among them. His integration among his surrounding reflects his culture and makes him “one with the Laguna view of cosmology” and time, as Swan notes, portraying the role that indigenous worldview has on his healing orientation.
Through Tayo’s healing journey of orientation and connection, Silko demonstrates the importance of presence for the continued survivance of Indigenous peoples. In “Aesthetics of Survivance,” Anishinaabe theorist Gerald Vizenor discusses the concept of Native survivance. For Vizenor, “Native survivance is an active sense of presence over absence, deracination, and oblivion” (85). Native survivance, then, is the continuing assertation of Native presence and existence within the world and within the span of time—including the past, present and future. Native survivance as a counteraction to colonization and erasure of Indigenous peoples depend upon this presence and the refusal to remain disconnected from culture and community. Just as Tayo’s cure and survival depend on his ability to reorient himself by connecting to his presence, which includes the physical world around him, his history, and his memories, the survival of Native American communities and cultures depends on their continued presence and the assertation that they have always existed through their continued cultural practice and that they will continue to exist despite the efforts of colonization. Vizenor writes, “Survivance is an active sense of presence,” highlighting the importance of active and purposefully sustained presence within the world as form of survivance (100). Rather than succumb to the disorientation and sickness of Western colonization, destruction, violence, and war, Tayo’s survival through reorientation allows Silko to demonstrate the importance of active presence for Native survivance as a whole. For Vizenor, “Space, time, consciousness, and irony are elusive references, but critical in native history and literary sentiments of the word survivance” (98). Presence, particularly within time, space, and consciousness, creates orientation, which is a form of survivance in itself because it solidifies a center of continued existence, even within a world that attempts to harm, alienate, and erase you.
Tayo does not cure his illness by accepting the severance that white colonist indoctrination has fostered between himself, the world, his memories, and his culture. Instead, his personal survivance and the survivance of indigenous communities as a whole depend upon establishing and understanding their presence, both physically and mentally, in a way that upholds cultural values and worldviews. To be present is to be oriented and to understand one’s place among all things. To be oriented is to heal, and to heal is to survive—not only in the future, but in the present and in the past as well, to resist erasure and ensure continuance.
Works Cited
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