I Dreamed I Was St. Boniface

 Rising inward, my prosthetic dream

bled out onto your snow-covered bed.

Pink with iron and welcome limestone, met

in karsts of prescient somnolence.

(red and white at their very best)

That which dreamed itself your bedsheet

they would say a Saxon field.

Your naked feet, embedded, pink upon the snow, yet

drawing up into your mouth.

(a liturgy of ancient wisdom songs)

 Bloodless blood and Brahmsless Brahms,

"In whose honor, sacramental chef?"

Pale white bones in oaken chapels, set

about the silk and garnet implements.

(for those who would so eat their God)

Thunder, splayed among an amaryllis,
paused, unspoken, in a shrinking sky.
As I cut the Donar Oak you bade me, "Let
them be as though their See shall free them.
(We can sing the verses of the night)"

atypical eros

Two rounds

with Saturn, a classic cut

above my eye.

Red, green-yellow, blackish blue wound,

glimmering in hemo-luminosity.

Why is it all so bloodybeautiful?

Standing before

the fake-stone Buddha, white

in meta-silence.

Graciously receiving all the birdshit it deserves,

silently minding, as Vaihinger feared,

another case of "Bird Fancier's Lung".

Atypical Eros

with cross reactivity to yolk sac,

and getting sicker

by the moment (of naming things),

things that stand naked inside me,

naked in infinite love.

Fuck flattery

and bend to the swain of Gomorrah,

whose Byronic youth

would to you, tonight, so rend and cloy

the sacristy of Salome

with whitely silent truth.

Zeno's Paradox (The Down)

I did lose my common view
             amidst the closeness of your down.
Slight and fine as faerie breath,
             between swadhistan and nabhi.

Not that cherished tuft tomentum,
             crowning crest of lotus-lips,
But that softness, in above-ness,
             diaphanous, in sparse array.

Though truly rapt to breathe so near
             your oodhious aigrette canopy,
And coax your sacred delta's dew,
             unconstrained, I'd sip the dew in full ecstatic reverence.
But at this site of downy wisp,
             a kiss would seem most true.

I think no thoughts, though think they me
             a raging serous centrifuge.
My kiss: A heedless, formless equus,
             lame as Ovid's lorem ipsum.

Rapt, and doubtless, (unrequited),
             half the distance could I fly.
Half again and half again in hubric contrapedal love,
             unconstrained, I knew my math was un-Pythagorean.
My common view cannot recur, like Oodh, you've cancelled lesser fragrance.
             Once a condor, now forsaken only by the code of doves.

"Widerstehe doch der Sünde" Stand Firm Against Sin (or something like that)

I broke out of my Vajrasattva retreat in 1975 to sneak into the city.  My plan was to go to Ira Cohen's pad and listen to Glenn Gould on those supernatural head-phones.  A friend of mine was (I hoped) still pad-sitting Ira's place and I felt that I required tonal rehabilitation and, at least, a spigot that would offer hot water.  Ira was off doing some kind of psychedelic poem/play written by Greg Corso.  They all knew me; Corso, Ginsberg, Cohen, et al, because of the intricate mutual connections of New York Dharma Bums.  I was, however, very young, not at all city-wise and certainly not qualified to be a real bum.  My only claim to possible Bum candidacy derived from an early encounter I'd had with Kerouac when I was about five years old.  The details of that encounter made for an interesting story and they were all rather amused by it.  Greg called me white-phantom-cake-boy or maybe it was white-cake-phantom-boy.

It didn't work out however.  My retreat master caught me, sent me off to the store to buy some stuff, made me some soup, and returned me to my cell with a prescription for atonement.  The atonement for breaking retreat is to practice Vajrasattva.

(I regret not knowing how to chain these videos together)
part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SDpIyVhZKA
part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1GrX32kpH4&feature=related

Tomo Geshe Rinpoche.

In the previous post I mentioned two Tibetan Lamas who not only edified me, but also instructed me in the most subtle aspects of the Lion's Roar martial system.  After some consideration and some scattered FB messages I decided that more information about my Tibetan teachers would be meaningful.  They were both fascinating individuals and I will tell my stories about Tomo Geshe Rinpoche first.

Tomo Geshe Rinpoche was indisputably one of the most distinctive, brilliant and important Lamas of the twentieth century.  He officially belonged to the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism and was the third highest ranking monk of that school, the first and second ranks belonging to H.H. The Dalai Lama and H.H. The Panchen Lama, respectively.  I say that he officially belonged to Geluk because, like the Dalai Lama, his perspective, knowledge and activities transcended the limitations of sectarianism.  As is well known, Buddhism teaches that the consciousness of a being survives death and reanimates another body after a certain period of time.  It is believed that ordinary beings are not able to control that process at all, and that once rebirth has occurred, conscious knowledge of the previous lives is blocked.  In Tibetan Buddhism there is however a special tradition of highly developed masters taking rebirth deliberately into a circumstance that would afford them the opportunity to basically pick up where they left off.  Tomo Geshe Rinpoche belonged to this unique class of masters.

The first Tomo Geshe (1866-1936) was one of the most renowned masters of Tibetan Buddhism.  The image to the right is a photo of his mummified body.  In 1937 he took rebirth into the Kazi aristocracy of the kingdom of Sikkim, on the southern border of Tibet.  His father, Enche Kazi, was personally responsible for enabling many famous westerners' access to Tibet and its vast mysteries.  A short list of these westerners includes, Anagarika Govinda, Alexandra David-Neel, Marco Pallis and Giuseppi Tucci, all of whom helped open the door of Tibetan wisdom for the first time to the western world.

The amazing and miraculous stories about Tomo Geshe would easily warrant an entire book.  When he was still an infant he told his father that his monks would soon be coming to get him, to take him back to Tibet.  When this later actually happened, Tomo Geshe greeted each of the monks, calling them each by name.  He even recognized his previous pack-mule and upon stroking its head, the animal began to shed tears.  This second Tomo Geshe was extremely humble and, at the same time, never intimated by anyone.  This fascinating trait was just as it had been with the first Tomo Geshe.  Everywhere he went he incessantly offered help to anyone in need and was respected by everyone, regardless of religious or cultural affiliation.  He was particularly famous for making and distributing medicinal pills called rilbu.  These pills are a little hard to explain because their manufacture requires a combination of conventional medical knowledge and alchemy.  Tomo Geshe would make these pills (sometimes including such substances as desiccated snow-lion's milk) and effect miraculous cures.  Another incredible feature of Geshe Rinpoche's rilbu was that they were often self-replicating.  He would have a dozen or so of them in a little pouch and after an entire day of administering them to the very ill, there would still be about a dozen or so of them left in the pouch.  I entirely respect the attitudes of those who dismiss this out of hand.  If I had not seen this with my own eyes, I would be one of you myself.  It was in 1974, I believe, Tomo Geshe came to New York City and I had the opportunity not only to meet him, but I also spent a considerable amount of time with him.  Another faction of the Sikkimese Kazi clan was living in New York at that time and through my association with them, I was asked to serve as Geshe Rinpoche's valet for a number of weeks.  My Tibetan language skills were limited but not so bad in those days.  Rinpoche also spoke English fairly well.  When I first met him, he laughed out loud upon seeing me and declared, "My goodness, you're so tall".  Later, at my apartment when we were alone together for the first time he said, "If there's anything at all you want to know, please ask, and if I can't remember, I'll do something to find the answer."

Not only did Tomo Geshe quickly and easily answer most of my questions, he also demonstrated what he had meant by "do something to find out".  Geshe Rinpoche possessed remarkable divination abilities using various methods that included, manipulating his prayer-beads, dropping rice grains on a plate, looking at patterns of birds in flight and melong.  The melong, which is Tibetan for mirror, is a small metal disc that is polished on one side so as to function somewhat as a mirror.  It is not like what we generally consider to be a mirror in that the metal's ability to reflect an image is quite limited compared to highly reflective modern mirrors.  In any case, it can function as a conventional mirror in a crude way.  However, its real function (besides being an esoteric symbol of the mirror-like nature of the mind and the insubstantiality of all phenomena) is to concretely manifest images of information.  In this function it is like the use of a crystal ball among the Romani.  In the hands of a true master like Tomo Geshe Rinpoche, the melong can produce images that are just like watching a small television.  I have seen this.  Rinpoche once joked that if he had no vows he could be a millionaire just with his melong.  Of course, beyond it being a very funny remark, it was also completely true and yet another testament to his complete disinterest in self-gain.  Regarding the miracle of the self-replicating rilbu, here is how it happened.  One morning I was informed that Rinpoche wanted to go to Freehold, New Jersey.  I learned that there was a large community of Mongolians there who were particularly devoted to the Dalai Lama and to Tomo Geshe.  Accordingly, we boarded a transit bus and made the trip there together.  As we left New York City and traveled through some bustling, predominately African-American areas of New Jersey, Rinpoche clutched my arm tightly and asked me, "Are they fierce?"  I couldn't tell if he was joking or not, as was often the case.  When we arrived we were met with great ceremony and tremendous emotional outpouring.  Rinpoche tirelessly ministered to thousands of devotees all day long.  He also administered many rilbu -- many more than were in the pouch when we started out.  I know this because, acting as his attendant, I was holding the pouch the entire day.

Interesting as all of this may be, there is in fact relevance to the previous post.  Although Tomo Geshe Rinpoche himself was not at all trained in (or personally interested in) martial arts, he knew that I was.  He was the one who actually brought the subject up.  I had a million questions about Lion's Roar because at that time there was only very sketchy data available from very few Chinese sources.  And I wasn't just interested in facts or history, I wanted to practice it.  With his encyclopedic knowledge of Tibetan history, culture, spiritual practice and "highly classified" monastic specialties (and on one occasion, a melong version of a youtube clip), Tomo Geshe Rinpoche was able to give me an in-depth Lion's Roar education that would have been completely impossible under normal circumstances even for a Chinese person -- much less, a Bak Gui such as myself.

A brief word about sectarianism in general and in Buddhism particularly:

Tomo Geshe Rinpoche exemplified the ideal attitude regarding sectarian differences.  He advocated the avoidance of two extremes.  One is the extreme of ruining one's heritage by homogenizing all distinctions into mush.  The other extreme is to paralyze the possibility of the evolution of knowledge by fixating on mere images of the past.

For those interested in more information about Tomo Geshe Rinpoche, I have included a couple of  links:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/158567785X/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1585674656&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1D3QZ9CCYD2Q24P51D23

http://www.domogesherinpoche.org/

Lion's Roar

It is with more than a little reluctance that I shake the hornet's nest of opinion regarding the various styles of martial arts.  Of all the martial arts traditions, styles, etc., by a great margin, Lion's Roar is the most comprehensive and most effective of them all.  The Lion's Roar system has sired many offspring and also has many satellite systems.  So, if your favorite system is one of the offspring or satellites, there's no need for you to become defensive.  To get this out of the way early, here is a list of the more well known derivatives: Lama Pai, Hop Gar, Pak Hok. Bak Mei, Fut Gar, Choi Lee Fut (the Fut part), Mongolian Bokh and the Russian Systema.  These above listed systems are totally derived from Lion's Roar but there are also many others that have adopted, or perhaps adapted, certain elements of Lion's Roar into their systems.  There are a number of reasons why this occurred but before addressing that, I'd like to identify what makes Lion's Roar so special.  Lion's Roar is a uniquely powerful system because it combines integrated training in five important areas.  These are: Purpose, Resolve, Perception, Energy and Technique.  Training in any of these five areas can result in significant benefits but the integration of all five is what makes Lion's Roar superior.  I'll describe these five areas in very general terms but keep in mind that the traditional way of Lion's Roar is to integrate all five areas into practice.

The training of Purpose involves getting clear about one's motives and fear-based blind-spots.  In the Lion's Roar tradition we must not fight unless there is a clearly righteous purpose.  This sounds simple but when contemplated deeply, it is far from being a simple matter.  Incidentally, the Hop Gar system derives its very name from this first Lion's Roar principle.  The human capacity for self-justification is infinite.  So, the training in Purpose is on-going and fundamental to the system.  Specifically, this involves meditation on four issues: the uniqueness of human existence, the transitory nature of everything, the nature of suffering, and the reciprocal inevitability of action.  Students of Buddhism may recognize these four meditations.  Training in Resolve is a kind of psychological training that seeks to develop a highly refined level of deliberateness.  As one will definitely discover when first attempting this area of training, it is not so easy to actually do anything deliberately.  What we believe we are "doing" every day, all day, is really not doing at all but rather, reflexing.  Doing, as in resolved doing, is a unique type of deliberate action that is not a re-action to something else.  When this principle is properly understood and developed, a Lion's Roar strike simply cannot be deflected.  The training in Perception is particularly unique and useful.  In this training, we can learn to clearly perceive the opponent's energy, weaknesses and timing.  Being able to perceive and work with these vital data give an obvious advantage.  The Lion's Roar Perception training also has another feature that is hard for many to believe.  The advanced level of this training involves learning how to actually change the opponent's perception of what is happening.  It is also possible to learn how to significantly slow the action down so that you perceive everything in much slower motion.  Almost everyone has had an experience, usually an accident of some kind, where everything was perceived in slow motion.  In the case of a traumatic or frightful accident, this happens involuntarily.  In Lion's Roar however one can learn to produce this affect at will.  The Lion's Roar training of Energy is fundamentally similar to the various systems of Qi Gong and Yoga.  However, it also includes specific training for some extraordinary abilities like those that have been sensationalized in Chinese Kung Fu fables and movies for generations.  The ultimate of all of these extraordinary abilities is literal  invisibility.  The Lion's Roar training of Technique shares with other martial systems an array of methods to strike the opponent so as to disable him.  The main technical feature is to learn how to strike the opponent in three especially disabling ways.  These include, striking him at the same moment that he is striking out at you; striking him at a particularly sensitive or disabling area (like a dim mak point or the eye, etc.); and striking him at the peak of his inhalation.

Although its roots can be traced to ancient India and still somewhat recognizable in the very ancient systems of Kalari, there are in fact two distinct Indian lineages.  One is the lineage of the first Chan patriarch, Bodhidharma (Damo), whose knowledge of Indian martial arts formed the basis of the Shaolin system, and the other is the lineage of an enigmatic master named Humkara.  The lineage of Humkara is directly antecedent to Lion's Roar.  During the era of Kublai Khan (1271), the Mongols conquered all of China and a vast portion of the adjacent territory.  This is known as the Yuan Dynasty and was the first time in history that China was ruled by a non-Chinese emperor.  This greatly and deeply offended the strong nationalistic sentiments of the Chinese and even to this present day it is not unusual to hear these grumblings among the older Chinese.  When Kublai Khan set up his palace in the Forbidden City he also installed an elite force of Lion's Roar masters as palace guards and as his personal bodyguards.  The stories and legends related to these guards are countless and always include details of powers that are patently magical.  As Chinese Kung Fu nationalist encountered these Lion's Roar masters, they inevitably absorbed certain more obvious features of what they (the Chinese) considered to be the "evil art of foreign demons".

Among the martial systems that are derived from Lion's Roar, the most obvious is Lama Pai.  This system maintains most of the Technical and Energetic aspects of Lion's Roar.  The Tibetan White Crane system retained even more of the Energetic content and also some fragments of the Perceptual principles.  As mentioned above, Hop Gar was originally distinguished by its emphasis on honor and righteousness.  Whether this emphasis exists today is questionable.  Without question, however, the serious ethical commitment that once required formal vows as a prerequisite for training no longer exists.  Another conspicuous Chinese martial system that adapted many of the Lion's Roar technical and energetic features is the Bak Mei system.  Bak Mei means White Eyebrow and, according to the Chinese, is so named because the Taoist originator had remarkably prominant white eyebrows.  The true story however is that the Bak Mei master got his name from his Himalayan hermitage which was located at the White Brow Mountain in Tibet.  This master, who was opportunistically loyal to the Chinese, was quite famous for defeating numerous Lama masters.  In the end however, the Bak Mei master renounced the Chinese nationalists and returned to life as a hermit.  The main feature of the Bak Mei system that links it to Lion's Roar is the distinctive use of whole-body Ging which they call, Geng Jak Ging (sacred power).  In summary, all of the derivative and hybrid systems that contain elements of Lion's Roar have their story, and they are all very interesting.

Today, realistically, it may be very difficult indeed to learn how to train in all of the five Lion's Roar principles. In my own case, starting more than forty years ago, I had to find different masters who had learned one or two of the training methods and then reconnect them all.  It would be even more difficult to do that now because martial arts has become such a commercial endeavor.  And there are only very few of the old masters still alive.  About twenty years ago I made an effort to seek out Lion's Roar practitioners who may have learned some Lion's Roar from Tibetan teachers.  I couldn't find a single one.  As far as I know, I may be the only Lion's Roar exponent who trained under indigenous Tibetans.  However, my Tibetan masters themselves did not possess full knowledge of all five principles.  Nevertheless, it was from my Tibetan masters that I learned the most important, subtle and elusive training principles of Lion's Roar.  These, combined with the other aspects of Lion's Roar that I learned from Chinese masters afforded me knowledge of the complete system.  Based on my personal experience and interaction with so many martial styles and systems over the years, my conclusion is that no system is more comprehensive and far-reaching than the Lion's Roar.

The following is a list of old masters under whose training and by whose generosity I received significant knowledge of Lion's Roar:  Tomo Geshe Rinpoche, Khenchen Palden Sherab Rinpoche, Gong Duk Foon, Gin Foon Mark, Chen Hok Fu, Luk Gan Wing and his brother Luk Chi Fu, Kwong Man Fong, and the incomparable Chew Yook Wing.

For a video sampling of some of the fundamental aspects of Lion's Roar Technical training, see the YouTube selections at the following channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/lionsroarsifu
and an old film of Luk Chi Fu:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qGSldBuj7A

For examples of the Energy training, see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk4NIQL6s2c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSyqAJUYJdk&playnext=1&list=PLA6659AAAF75D184E&index=27

A novel by M. J. Sullivan that describes a number of Lion's Roar features:
http://www.ebookmall.com/ebook/142813-ebook.htm

Bayanov's Account of Zana, the Abnauayu

In Abkhazia, Western Caucasus, relict hominoids are called abnauayu. While collecting reports in 1962, a colleague of Boris Porshnev, zoologist Prof Alexander Mashkovtsev, heard and studied the story of Zana. Subsequently, Porshnev took over where his late companion left off. The following information is borrowed from Porshnev's work "The Struggle for Troglodytes. " Zana was a female abnauayu who had been caught and tamed and who lived and died within the memory of a number of people still alive at the time of the research.  She was buried near the village of Tkhina in the Ochamchiri District of Abkhazia in the 1880s or 1890s. The manner of her capture is vague. Some said it was not a chance catch. Hunters familiar with an age-old technique tied her up, and, when she furiously fought back, hit her with cudgels, gagged her mouth with felt, and shackled her legs to a log. Probably she had already changed hands by sale when she became property of the ruling prince D.M.Achba who was the titular head of the Zaadan region. She passed into the possession of one of his vassals, named Chelokua and still later she was presented to a nobleman, Edgi Genaba, who visited the region. He took her away, still shackled and chained, to his estate in the village of Tkhina on the Mokva River, 78 kilometres from Sukhumi. At first Genaba lodged her in a very strong enclosure and nobody ventured in to give her food, for she acted like a wild beast. It was thrown to her. She dug herself a hole in the ground and slept in it and for the first three years she lived in this wild state, gradually becoming tamer. After three years she was moved to a wattle-fence enclosure under an awning near the house, tethered at first, but later she was let loose to wander about. However she never went far from the place where she received her food. She could not endure warm rooms and the year round, in any weather, slept outdoors in a hole that she made herself under the awning. Villagers teased her with sticks thrust through the wattle-fence, and she.would snatch them with fury, bare her teeth and howl. Her skin was black, or dark grey, and her whole body covered with reddish-black hair. The hair on her head was tousled and thick, hanging mane-like down her back. She could not speak, over decades that she lived with people, Zana did not learn a single Abkhaz word; she only made inarticulate sounds and mutterings, and cries when irritated. But she reacted to her name, carried out commands given by her master and was scared when he shouted at her. And this despite the fact that she was very tall, massive and broad, with huge breasts and buttocks, muscular arms and legs, and fingers that were longer and thicker than human fingers. She could splay her toes widely and move apart the big toe. From remembered descriptions given to Mashkovtsev and Porshnev, her face was terrifying; broad, with high cheekbones, flat nose, turned out nostrils, muzzle-like jaws, wide mouth with large teeth, low forehead, and eyes of a reddish tinge. But the most frightening feature was her expression which was purely animal, not human. Sometimes, she would give a spontaneous laugh, baring those big white teeth of hers. The latter were so strong that she easily cracked the hardest walnuts. She lived for many years without showing any change: no grey hair, no falling teeth, keeping strong and fit as ever. Her athletic power was enormous. She would outrun a horse, and swim across the wild Mokva River even when it rose in violent high tide. Seemingly without effort she lifted with one hand an eighty-kilo sack of flour and carried it uphill from the water-mill to the village. She climbed trees to get fruit, and to gorge herself with grapes she would pull down a whole vine growing around the tree. She ate whatever was offered to her, including hominy and meat, with bare hands and enormous gluttony. She loved wine, and was allowed her fill, after which she would sleep for hours in a swoon-like state. She liked to lie in a cool pool side by side with buffalos. At night she used to roam the surrounding hills. She wielded big sticks against dogs and on other perilous occasions. She had a curious obsession for playing with stones, knocking one against another and splitting them. She took swims the year round, and preferred to walk naked even in winter, tearing dresses that she was given into shreds. However, she showed more tolerance toward a loin-cloth. Sometimes she went into the house, but the women were afraid of her and came near only when she was in a gentle mood; when angry, she presented a scary sight and could even bite. But she obeyed her master, Edgi Genaba, and he knew how to bring her to heel. Adults used her as a boogey figure with children, although Zana never actually attacked children. She was trained to perform simple domestic tasks, such as grinding grain for flour, bringing home firewood and water, or sacks to and from the water-mill, or pull her master's high boots off. But she became the mother of human children, and this is the wondrous side of her life story, very important for the science of genetics. Zana was pregnant several times by various men, and, giving birth without assistance, she always washed the newborn child in the cold water-spring. The half-breed infants, unable to survive these ablutions, died. So, when subsequently ZanaDzhanda, and the eldest daughter was Kodzhanar. The second daughter was named Gamasa, and the younger son Khwit, who died in 1954. All had descendants of their own, scattered across Abkhazia. There were rumours that the father of Gamasa and Khwit was in fact Edgi Genaba himself, but in the census they were put down under a different surname, and their family-name became Sabekia. It is significant that Zana was buried in the family cemetery of the Genabas, and that the two youngest children of Zana were brought up by Genaba's wife. Gamasa and Khwit were both powerfully built, had dark skins, but they inherited scarcely anything from Zana's facial appearance. The complex of human features, inherited from their father, was dominant in them and overruled the mother's line of descent. Khwit, who died at the age of 65 or 70, was described by his fellow villagers as little different from the human norm, except for certain small divergences. He was extremely strong, difficult to deal with and quick to pick a fight. In fact, he lost his right hand after one of the many fights he had with his fellow-villagers, but his left hand sufficed him to mow and do other work on a collective farm, and even climb trees. When old, he moved to the town of Tkvarcheli where he eventually died, but he was taken back for burial at Tkhina. The next stage of the Zana case was taken up by attempts to find her grave and skeleton. Here is what Boris Porshnev Says about his first effort in that direction: In September 1964, the archaeologist V.S.Orelkin and I made our first attempt to find Zana's grave. The cemetery was wildly overgrown and only the ten-year-old mound over hwit's grave could be picked out among the bracken covering the hillside. Nobody else had been buried since then. Zana must be somewhere near. We asked the old residents and the last scion of the Genaba clan, seventy-nine-year-old Kenton. He was clear that we should dig under a pomegranate tree. What was found there turned out to be the remains of one of Zana's grandchildren who had died early, for the profile that we established from the skull was extraordinarily like the profiles of Zana's two living grandchildren whom I  myself had met.  After two more expeditions the search party had still not found Zana's bones, though in a third attempt in October 1965, they found what are probably the bones of Gamasa, as they present slight, but definite paleoanthropic features. After the passing of Porshnev it fell to my lot to continue the search. I headed three expeditions to Abkhazia in search of Zana's skeleton, in 1971, 1975 and 1978, which merits a separate story. Our difficulty was that by that time the last scion of the Genaba clan had passed away and nobody knew exactly where Zana's grave was. We put in a tremendous amount of spade work on that hillside, digging sticky clayey earth under almost daily downpours. During the second expedition I was taken seriously ill with an illness which doctors failed to identify. We never found a skeleton that would fit Zana's features as described by witnesses. It was then decided to exhume the skull of Khwit, Zana's younger son, whose grave was still well indicated. Professor N. Bourchak-Abramovich assisted me in that digging. I brought the skull to Moscow where it was studied by two physical anthropologists, M.A.Kolodieva and M.M.Gerasimova. The results of the study were reported by me at the Relict Hominoid Research Seminar and the Moscow Naturalists' Society and published in 1987.  The exhumed skull of Zana's son, Khwit, exhibits a combination of modern and ancient features which aroused great interest amongst anthropologists (See Additional Photo of Zana's son at the bottom of this article) Anthropologist M.A.Kolodieva compared the skull of Khwit with the male skulls from Abkhazia in the collection of the Moscow State University institute of Anthropology and found that Khwit's skull was significantly different. Indicating it as the Tkhina skull, she writes: The Tkhina skull exhibits an original combination of modem and ancient features ... The facial section of the skull is significantly larger in comparison with the mean Abkhaz type ... All the measurements and indices of the superciliary cranial contour are greater not only than those of the mean Abkhaz series, but also than those of maximum size of some fossil skulls studied (or rather were comparable with the latter). The Tkhina skull approaches closest the Neolithic Vovnigi II skulls of the fossil series... On her part, anthropologist M.M.Gerasimova came to following conclusions: The skull discloses a great deal of peculiarity, a certain disharmony disequilibrium in its features, very large dimensions of the facial skeleton, increased development of the contour of the skull, specificity of the non-metric features (the two foramina mentale in the lower jaw, the intrusive bones in the sagittal suture, and the Inca bone). The skull merits further extended study. So the bottom line of the Zana case today is this: we have nothing but the words of witnesses to describe Zana's peculiar nature, but the hard and specific evidence of her son's skull goes a long way in making the testimony of witnesses more solid and trustworthy.

Text From: In the Footsteps of the Russian Snowman by Dmitri Bayanov. (1996, Moscow, Russia: Crypto-Logos, pp. 46-52)