There is a story unfolding and I have only to wait a bit longer to welcome it again. I am thankful for all the life everywhere, thankful that I've been able to sense the old in the very familiar, the continuous ebb and flow of this journey. Sometimes I reminisce about things of the near past, how troublesome the world appeared to a few of us. We just had words with us, nothing more. Then I think to myself, get over it, move on, onto new things, don't let that nail of the past keep you from opening new doors, move there, see that? There, that is where the path clears and that is where you go to find new patterns.
One night a group of poets and I sat by the San Juan river across from a moonlit cliff-face watching us from the Navajo Nation side of the border and spoke aloud words and poems. We were drunk on life. The river was drunk on snow melt. The land was the designated driver driving us through another sleepless night. We were a collection of songs. The stars above us blistered with strands of liquid light and we floated among the cottonwoods like clouds. (This is one of those 'turn the page moments'. Must get on, get on. . . move. . . )
I've been in many situations in many places lately and the same discussion arises. I wonder if I could look at this discussion and view it as a wound I keep opening up. If I just pour a little salt on it, will it burn and recoil and leave me again so that I may continue to eat the apples of this forest ? I wonder, when we can truly be beyond our masks, the ones we cannot remove because we bank on our own defeat over and over again. I turn inward to seek land, but the land was never there. Our flags float above a square acre of blowing wind, and I hear the joy and the cry of my people and I drive away with my books.
In Vegas, a few months ago, I had the opportunity to speak to an English tourist. He was exploring the Californian desert and chanced upon hearing that a famous DJ would be spinning for the club we were about to go to. By coincidence he came upon four Indians standing in line behind him. "I've never met 'real Indians' before!" he said excitedly.
We should have said "INDIANS! WHERE? YEE YA'!" and pulled out our camera phones to capture these exotic creatures.
After introductions were made he said "shouldn't all your last names be like charging buffalo or flying eagle?" I said no, were Navajo, we've all been 'Yazzified' or 'Begayed'. My cousins all have names that were given to their grandparents by the trading post owners or by wandering priest bent on saving our savage grandparents, so it was casually funny, in some respects to talk to this man from afar, whom would have probably found himself more at home over a bowl mutton stew on my rez than there among the flashing lights and silicon. But then, that would be boring and it just doesn't sound as sexy to say: what happens on the Rez stays on the Rez. That sounds more like a death threat. During the conversation, I went down the list: 1492, boarding schools, genocide, relocation, uranium, George Bush, meat is murder, etc. . ." Until I faced that fact that I was only regurgitating information that I've somehow embedded behind my right molar to appear out of nowhere when issues like this should be the last thing on my plate. When I should be having that thing called fun. It was interesting though. to say the least. There we were in the Palms Hotel and Casino, four Navajos looking rather average an uninteresting, with English names stamped into our ID cards, being reminded of how far removed we still are in the memory of the world; trying to explain, at least I was, any little bit of history to a complete stranger. I was probably just talking to the air and flashing lights again.
Afterwards, I was told by that same person that I was very "articulate" . . .!?
One night a group of poets and I sat by the San Juan river across from a moonlit cliff-face watching us from the Navajo Nation side of the border and spoke aloud words and poems. We were drunk on life. The river was drunk on snow melt. The land was the designated driver driving us through another sleepless night. We were a collection of songs. The stars above us blistered with strands of liquid light and we floated among the cottonwoods like clouds. (This is one of those 'turn the page moments'. Must get on, get on. . . move. . . )
I've been in many situations in many places lately and the same discussion arises. I wonder if I could look at this discussion and view it as a wound I keep opening up. If I just pour a little salt on it, will it burn and recoil and leave me again so that I may continue to eat the apples of this forest ? I wonder, when we can truly be beyond our masks, the ones we cannot remove because we bank on our own defeat over and over again. I turn inward to seek land, but the land was never there. Our flags float above a square acre of blowing wind, and I hear the joy and the cry of my people and I drive away with my books.
In Vegas, a few months ago, I had the opportunity to speak to an English tourist. He was exploring the Californian desert and chanced upon hearing that a famous DJ would be spinning for the club we were about to go to. By coincidence he came upon four Indians standing in line behind him. "I've never met 'real Indians' before!" he said excitedly.
We should have said "INDIANS! WHERE? YEE YA'!" and pulled out our camera phones to capture these exotic creatures.
After introductions were made he said "shouldn't all your last names be like charging buffalo or flying eagle?" I said no, were Navajo, we've all been 'Yazzified' or 'Begayed'. My cousins all have names that were given to their grandparents by the trading post owners or by wandering priest bent on saving our savage grandparents, so it was casually funny, in some respects to talk to this man from afar, whom would have probably found himself more at home over a bowl mutton stew on my rez than there among the flashing lights and silicon. But then, that would be boring and it just doesn't sound as sexy to say: what happens on the Rez stays on the Rez. That sounds more like a death threat. During the conversation, I went down the list: 1492, boarding schools, genocide, relocation, uranium, George Bush, meat is murder, etc. . ." Until I faced that fact that I was only regurgitating information that I've somehow embedded behind my right molar to appear out of nowhere when issues like this should be the last thing on my plate. When I should be having that thing called fun. It was interesting though. to say the least. There we were in the Palms Hotel and Casino, four Navajos looking rather average an uninteresting, with English names stamped into our ID cards, being reminded of how far removed we still are in the memory of the world; trying to explain, at least I was, any little bit of history to a complete stranger. I was probably just talking to the air and flashing lights again.
Afterwards, I was told by that same person that I was very "articulate" . . .!?
