Excerpt from American Canyon
When my mother returned from India, she pointed at the house, at history. Do
we know who lived here before? She asked if any Native Americans lived in this
part of California, in Benicia, on this hill. She knew I went to the Maidu Bear Dance
on the third weekend of June, just before the summer solstice. The Indian-American
had met the American-Indians in the Sierras and found some kinship. Why was
she asking about Benician history? She would rather buy a new track home over an
old Victorian, and through rituals and the burning of spices, through wall hangings
narrating myths, through the planting of her thulsi plant that is always found around
houses in India, she would make it her own.
My mother said she wanted to move into a house that followed vastu shastra. It’s like
feng shui she told me. Vastu is derived from the Sanskrit word for house or shelter,
while shastra means system. Of the five main points one should adhere to, our house
violated four of them—houses should not be shaped like ours in an L, there should be
no bodies of water in the north or south, ours being situated between Lake Herman
and the Carquinez Straits, no irregular shaped plots, and the open space around the
house should be on the north and the east. What will happen if we don’t live in a
place according to all these rules? All of our troubles are tied to this house, she said. We
have to move.
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