Trickster

 Have you an experience of the trickster in your life?

I'm becoming more familiar with how they operate in mine.

Here's how it started (this time)...

March 6, 2025 My journal notes:

Woke to light snow cover, 27 degrees. Then fixed coffee and sat down to read emails. Several times the electricity made lights blink on and off. By the time I sat at computer, the internet was off…though electricity blinked a few more times, it stayed on. Internet connection didn’t come back though the modem is on and lights look right.

So I’m on word, composing notes for today.

Trickster comes to mind. I'm taking a class on Paganism. In class on Monday last, I asked Matt what the trickster meant to him, since he brought it up…and he gave a long rendition of his life story, and I just wanted to know if he felt the trickster was how humor came along in times of greatest turmoil…and then it was time for class to be over. I think I now know that he likes to talk. But he is a good facilitator, and I learned a lot from him and the other participants.

Wednesday I felt so bad, I took a nap, and when I woke up, no more coughing. Of course I’d also taken all my normal meds. I had to cancel going to Sit and Be Fit. I only went out to get lunch at the Lakeview Senior Center, and take a photo of the lake being refilled with brown water, with geese and ducks sitting in it while strong wind blew us across the lake.

So I started blogging for next week and mentioned the used book I almost bought of Uncle Remus stories, and then said I “went down the rabbit hole” looking at where his museum had been that I had once visited. It was in Eatonville GA, where Joel Chandler Harris had been born. (Must wonder if he was related to the Chandlers of Coca-Cola origination.) Then there was his home and another museum in Atlanta (which I hadn’t visited) but it talked about how racism had made telling the stories less popular. That was why I considered buying the book in the library, that it was more rare these days of political correctness.

And while I was down my rabbit hole I met the star of many of Uncle Remus’ stories, Brer Rabbit. Ah ha. He was a trickster! It even called him such, and one story is about meeting the Tar Baby as devised by the mischievous fox. The smart but impetuous rabbit gets trapped by sticking to the unresponsive tar baby (or pine resin on a doll) and says do anything to me, but don’t throw me in that Briar Patch, (which of course is his home.)

The interesting thing I also learned was that in Atlanta, school classes still visit the museum where a black man tells some of the stories in character. He says that he prefers the original from Africa which was then repeated by slaves to white children in the south. The character of Brer Rabbit as trickster is central, and in other cultures, including Native American, the character was sometimes a spider. But the main story line is the same.

Trickster in my own life?

It's how things can get turned around and I find my choices lead to something much better than I expected, Or maybe they lead to much worse outcomes, which then give me more choices.

I still feel like the agent of my own life. Am I ever the trickster?

I admit to right now wishing I were the trickster, when thinking of my vulnerability from my reliance upon different federal programs that are being threatened.