I like feathers! I've ALWAYS liked feathers! I used to collect feathers since I was a toddler. I remember going to the Philadelphia Zoo when I was like 2 or 3 with my Grandparents, parents, and my aunt, and finding feathers all over the ground everywhere. My grandmother got a plastic ziplock bag, and started filling it with the feathers I kept finding. Most of them were BLACK. I also grew up raising chickens as a kid. I had all the feathers I could ever want at the time.
Not only that, but I'm part Native American. (Mescalero Apache Nation) and since I was in the 6th grade everyone kept calling me Pocahontas (an that was LONG BEFORE there was a Disney cartoon). It was my nickname, probably because I wore feathers in my hair everyday.
If you want to know how it feels to be judged by how you look, for being different, then I dare you to go a whole year wearing feathers in your hair, or on your glasses, among yuppies, when it's NOT IN FASHION and you will KNOW how it feels to have visceral HATE and prejudice targeted at you for NOT CONFORMING. feathers have an incredibly special meaning to me.
I DID NOT want to be like the yuppies in New Jersey. I did NOT want to be a superficial, fake, nasty, hatefully bully, nor to be told WHAT I ought to THINK, the way I ought to talk, dress, live or conduct myself.
Each time they picked on me for wearing feathers, the MORE I wanted to wear them. For every brat, bitch, stuck-up snob that started shit with me, I wanted to be MORE whom I was inside. Those feathers represented who I REALLY WAS, and that I was NOT ONE OF THEM. In the 5th grade, I went from being a popular person, to being friendless on principle. And, my ENTIRE Middle School experience with only a few exceptions was utterly horrid. I use to get beaten up, brutalized, picked on, accosted, and not just by my peers in my own grade, or older kids, but by a teacher, whom also allowed my victimizing to occur and enabled it.
Back then, I was religious, and I used to practice Christian pacifism which meant that if I was attacked I couldn't retaliate nor exact revenge, however, if someone else was in trouble I could stand up to their attackers on their behalf like a martyr. Not only that, but I had to forgive, love, and pray for my abusers.
Honestly, I would NEVER teach this to anyone today, because I think it's a horrible way to live, and enables victim-hood.
Feathers represent a number of things. For one they symbolize the element of AIR. Air or Wind is kind of a theme with me. My Astrological Ascendant/Rising-Sign and my Moon/Lunar Sign are both LIBRA which is a Zodiac Sign associated with the element of AIR as well as INTELLECT or the MIND. Libra also is known for its association with a love and appreciation of Beauty or beautiful things (arts & nature appreciation). Yet, feathers themselves are firm, but they flex, and have give to them. they can cut THROUGH the air, or give LIFT, and can hold the bird in the air while in motion.
My Sun/Solar sign is Virgo, which is the Earth sign, also a MIND sign. So, yeah, I'm mental...
Feathers can also, at times give things an "earthy" feel... -dunno why....
Its
ironic that I'd suffered so much for my heritage, or for the audacity
of wearing feathers, when several times since I'd graduated high school,
feathers had been in fashion several times to be the "in" accessory for
HAIR or, whatever.....
Oh,
but Great Spirit for-fend I should EVER speak the TRUTH about this to anyone whom is a FULL BLOODED Native American, whom all LOVE to jump
all over me, breath down my neck, and pile on all sorts of HATEFUL
words, or threats, about how I'm NOT a Native, how WHITE my skin is,
that I have BLUE EYES, or how they want to RAPE me.... and make me
"their woman but not their wife", or whatever that's supposed to
mean...
I
find that I often gel really well with other mixed bloods like myself
of Native American descent, because FULL BLOODS are SCARY, MEAN, NASTY,
HATEFUL, PREJUDICED and SEXIST. Let's NOT EVER do anything like that
again....
