Take Joy!

We pass through this world.

We’re the only animal which understands that it must die, that its time here is transient.  And so we are surrounded at all times and in all places by mysteries.  There is the past, which we remember but can no longer touch or affect: a magician’s backward-facing glass in which the dead are still alive and the old are still young and can be seeing going about their affairs, ignorant of our gaze, in tiny bright pictures with the sound turned down low.

There is the distance, that blue trembling elsewhere on the rim of the horizon, beyond which – perhaps – everything is different, new and wonderful. 

And there is the invisible future into which we constantly travel with our baggage of hopes and promises and longings and fears.

—Katherine Langrish

What He Said

Once upon  a time, the gods were in your own backyard.

R.I.P., Iva Yarborough

John's mother died on Thanksgiving morning, after several days in the hospital followed by two weeks in hospice.

She whom you loved and lost
is no longer where she was;
she is now wherever you are.

        —St. John Chsrysostom

Missing October

A couple of weeks ago we drove up to Madison County where John grew up. These pictures were taken from the overlook on I-26, which goes through/over what used to his grandfather's farm.

I try to be a good and [fairly] responsible citizen most of the time, but in October all bets are off. I spend the month walking, if possible (it wasn't this year) or sitting outside absorbing autumn. I am a witness to the glory that is October—specifically that clear and golden light and that impossibly blue sky. I sit on the side porch and watch leaves falling, listening to them tink, tink, tink on the tin roof and slither off onto the ground. I drink it all in—the hawks wheeling and calling high in the blue, bare branches silhouetted, a single maple leaf spiralling down . . .

If there is an afterlife, it should be a perennial October—autumn leaves, ripe apples, squirrels darting everywhere (and burying more damned black walnuts), the little birds rustling in the fallen leaves, the river brown and choked with leaves in the shallows, Ysabeau and Kali stalking voles down under the feeders, an occasional fat, sleek bear passing through . . .

This is the overlook—we figured it at a 25% grade. My knees carried me up, but slowly, protesting all the way . . . the path is a quarter mile or so from the parking lot, I think.

But this is the view from the top; it was worth every step. This is home; how could I have ever lived anywhere else?

The only bad thing about October is that it doesn't last nearly long enough. It's November now, of course, and while it's still warm, the leaves are still falling and there's still some color . . . it just isn't the same.

It's November now, and time to get down to business: making lists and gifts, getting the woodpile organized (five cords and counting), readying the chicken houses, on and on and on . . . October's gone, and there won't be another one for an entire year.

That's why I'm irresponsible in October; I don't want to miss a single minute. What if this is the best October ever? What if I die and never see another one?

I want enough October glory stored in mind and body to last me . . . forever, if need be.

Missing October

A couple of weeks ago we drove up to Madison County where John grew up. These pictures were taken from the overlook on I-26, which goes through/over what used to his grandfather's farm.

I try to be a good and [fairly] responsible citizen most of the time, but in October all bets are off. I spend the month walking, if possible (it wasn't this year) or sitting outside absorbing autumn. I am a witness to the glory that is October—specifically that clear and golden light and that impossibly blue sky. I sat on the side porch and watched leaves falling, listening to them tink, tink, tink on the tin roof and slither off onto the ground.

If there is an afterlife, it should be a perennial October—autumn leaves, ripe apples, squirrels darting everywhere (and burying more damned black walnuts), the little birds rustling in the fallen leaves, the river brown and choked with leaves in the shallows, an occasional fat, sleek bear passing through . . .

This is the overlook—we figured it at a 25% grade. My knees carried me up, but slowly, protesting all the way . . . the path is a quarter mile or so from the parking lot, I think.

But this is the view from the top; it was worth every step. This is home; how could I have lived anywhere else?

The only bad thing about October is that it doesn't last nearly long enough. It's November now, of course, and while it's still warm, the leaves are still falling and there's still some color . . . it just isn't the same.

It's November now, and time to get down to business: making lists and gifts, getting the woodpile organized (five cord and counting), readying the chicken houses, on and on and on . . . October's gone, and there won't be another one for an entire year.

That's why I'm irresponsible in October; I don't want to miss a single minute. What if this is the best October ever? What if I die and never see another one?

I want enough October glory stored in my mind and body to last me . . . forever, if need be.

This is what you shall do.

Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone who asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men—go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers of families—re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.

—Walt Whitman, the preface to Leaves of Grass

"We're like pests."

“I wish we were not so flexible. We’re like pests. We can live in every type of environment, from Alaska to Namibia. We’re omnivorous. We’re like cockroaches, rats, and bandicoots.

“You have seen the slums. Look at the horrible conditions we can live under and still have reproductive success.

“No other species has such a huge tolerance. For the earth, that is the unfortunate part. If we had a very narrow tolerance of pollution and food and all these things, maybe we would take more care of the earth.”

—Dr. Asad Rahmani, quoted in The Virginia Quarterly Review's article "India's Vanishing Vultures" by Meera Subramanian

Read This . . .

“When Columbus got off the boat, he asked us who we were. We said we’re the Human Beings, we’re the People. Conceptually the Europeans didn’t understand that, it was beyond their conceptual reality. They didn’t see us. They couldn’t see who we were. Historically speaking, we went from being Indians to pagans to savages to hostiles to militants to activists to Native Americans. It’s five hundred years later and they still can’t see us. we are still invisible. They don’t see us as human beings, but we’ve been saying to them all along that’s what we are. We are invisible to them because we are still the Human Beings, we’re still the People, but they will never call us that. They taught us to call ourselves Indians, now they’re teaching us to call ourselves Native Americans. It’s not who we are. We’re the People. They can’t see us as human beings. But they can’t see themselves as human beings. The invisibility is at every level, it’s not just that we’re tucked away out of sight. We’re the evidence of the crime. They can’t deal with the reality of who we are because then they have to deal with the reality of what they have done. If they deal with the reality of who we are, they have to deal with the reality of who they aren’t. So they have to fear us, not recognize us, not like us. The very fact of calling us Indians creates a new identity for us, an identity that began with their arrival. Changing identity, creating a new perceptual reality, is another form of genocide. It’s like severing a spiritual umbilical cord that reaches into the ancestral past. The history of the Indians begins with the arrival of the Europeans. The history of the People begins with the beginning of the history of the People. The history of the People is one of cooperation, collectivity, and living in balance. The history of the Indians is one of being attacked and genocide, rather than a history of peace and balance. The history of the People under attack, the Indians, in an evolutionary context, is not very long, it’s only five hundred years. The objective of civilizing us is to make Indian history become our permanent reality. The necessary objective of Native people is to outlast this attack, however long it takes, to keep our identity alive.”

- John Trudell, Santee Sioux (from People of Color Organize, via Towanda's Window)

Gil Scott-Heron, RIP

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
About a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution WILL put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

—Gil Scott-Heron

The Gospel According to Bob

Most people think
Great God will come from the sky
Take away everything
And make everybody feel high

But if you know what life is worth
You will look for yours on Earth

-Bob Marley (by way of comments on The Archdruid Report)