This morning the aroma of plants and earth after rain saturates and refreshes me. I feel like a plant who was in need of rain, and it came. Yesterday was a long day, a short night in a series of long days and short nights. I knew the owls to the right of the car Saturday night as we drove down, after the film showing from Tucson to Patagonia, were a message, a warning. I felt death. Then, almost immediately after, a bright light fell straight to the earth in front of us. It was not the elegant arc of a star or heavenly body following a circular trajectory. It was sure fall. Later, after we unpacked and discovered the new home of my beloved friend, we gathered under the stars. The last time I had been so present with the stars, moved with them, as the earth moved was at ceremonies mid-summer. The vision of them rekindled that fire. I carry it with me wherever I go.
It’s sort of like freeze-dried vision.
I have a friend who is physically present, beautiful even in her physicality. She has taken good care of her body all of her life. She shines with vitality while she walks the earth. Yet, when she dives into the ocean and swims she transforms into a water being. She has left the earth and concerns and thoughts of earthliness behind. Her earthly self pales, just as a wet rock that is shiny brilliant with color when wet is not recognizable in the same way when dry. I become myself when I am with the stars. I dive and fly. In that night sky is an exquisite loneliness. The beginning and the end live there. Eternity is described there. Our human roots may extend into the earth but it is the sky that defines our spirit.
That night, as death nudged my heart, friendly bats swooped joyously around us, happy for the companionship, and the three dog spirits who took care of my friend and the house joined us beneath the stunning sky. I hadn’t seen the Milky Way in such detail in a long time, not since the Amazon River in Peru. I accepted the warning as a gift as we quietly communed there.
Yesterday the fulfillment of the prophecy came in the sudden death of a relatively young Creek cousin who grew up in Okemah but lived in the Sacramento area most of her life. Her life made a rough path. Her last stint in prison, for something stupid and not worthy of a prison term: drugs and the need for vision in her painful world--she’d emerged with a resolve to be transformed. She was writing her story just as she was attempting to rewrite her life from a story of soap opera to one of shining purpose. We all gathered around her to sustain her, just as we gathered around her spirit last night. Strange how life is, or should I say strange how death is—it was her mother who was in the hospital struggling for healing. It was her daughter who left first.
I embrace this day for what it will bring. It appears easy to make such a statement, as easy as tapping out the words on the keyboard, but what does that really mean? Do I embrace hurricane devastation? Do I embrace the other natural and unnatural disasters that characterize these times, the foul governments, the roving evil ones who scoop up our children? I am once again reminded of the Mvskoke word, onvkckv, which is more than a word, it makes a deep image of meaning that provides the resonance of culture and is why we are still here despite the gifts of terrible tests. It’s a word that means compassion, an over arcing compassion, a compassion that provides a vision of meaning that is the size of the sky filled with stars. When we are there, in that word, in that sky, we can see the sense of it all, and keep going.
9/26/05
Final version, May Your Journey Be Beautiful
May Your Journey Be Beautiful
A little rain has blanketed the earth
Swallows fly out from their adobe house:
Above the door of this adobe, just as we’ve flown up from sleep—
Led by prayers and coffee.
The sun’s great house is shimmering.
We smell gratitude; it tastes of sage and dust.
We’re relish breakfast; we know times when there was none.
Where did these bananas come from? And who picked the coffee beans?
Did anyone sing to the young plants
Pushing urgently from the creative earth?
It’s all happening at the kitchen table: we visit, talk politics.
Who’s fired; who’s hot and not, who’s left and who will return, and how
The price of gas is a perk given to the flunkies of ruin.
The train runs through the pueblo making rough music but doesn’t stop.
We joke: it’s laden with uranium, cattle and oil.
It’s going somewhere else for now. They’ll dump the scraps here later.
We get the politics, just how are we going to dance past this pain?
We needed a little rain.
Later I walk concrete in town to the tribal summit
Datura flowers are closing; someone has to stand guard with the night.
Even mystery needs to be held tenderly.
A Dineh brother stumbles up from the dark with his hands open, for rain:
Hey aren’t you the musician? He asks me for money, for a drink.
I ask him for his name.
We visit, talk politics: it’s the same.
We needed a little rain.
Rain. Rain.
May your journey be beautiful from the sky to this hungry earth.
c Joy Harjo September 2005 Albuquerque
A little rain has blanketed the earth
Swallows fly out from their adobe house:
Above the door of this adobe, just as we’ve flown up from sleep—
Led by prayers and coffee.
The sun’s great house is shimmering.
We smell gratitude; it tastes of sage and dust.
We’re relish breakfast; we know times when there was none.
Where did these bananas come from? And who picked the coffee beans?
Did anyone sing to the young plants
Pushing urgently from the creative earth?
It’s all happening at the kitchen table: we visit, talk politics.
Who’s fired; who’s hot and not, who’s left and who will return, and how
The price of gas is a perk given to the flunkies of ruin.
The train runs through the pueblo making rough music but doesn’t stop.
We joke: it’s laden with uranium, cattle and oil.
It’s going somewhere else for now. They’ll dump the scraps here later.
We get the politics, just how are we going to dance past this pain?
We needed a little rain.
Later I walk concrete in town to the tribal summit
Datura flowers are closing; someone has to stand guard with the night.
Even mystery needs to be held tenderly.
A Dineh brother stumbles up from the dark with his hands open, for rain:
Hey aren’t you the musician? He asks me for money, for a drink.
I ask him for his name.
We visit, talk politics: it’s the same.
We needed a little rain.
Rain. Rain.
May your journey be beautiful from the sky to this hungry earth.
c Joy Harjo September 2005 Albuquerque
9/13/05
May Your Journey Be Beautiful, take two
A little rain has blanketed the earth
Swallows fly out from their adobe nest as we’ve flown up from sleep
For coffee and the news—our dreams shooting roots into the earth.
Memory has its own breath, watches over us with the vision of eagles.
Politics dominates the kitchen: who’s fired; who’s hot and not, and how
The price of gas is a perk given to the flunkies of ruin.
And where did these bananas come from?
Who picked them and did anyone sing to those young banana trees
Pushing urgently from the creative earth?
The train runs through the pueblo making rough music but doesn’t stop.
We joke: it’s laden with uranium, cattle and oil.
It’s going somewhere else for now. They’ll dump the scraps here later.
We get the politics, just how are we going to dance past this pain?
We needed a little rain.
I walk concrete in town to the tribal summit
Datura flowers are closing; someone has to stand guard with the night.
Even mystery needs to be held tenderly.
A Dineh brother stumbles up from the dark with his hands open, in the rain:
Hey aren’t you the musician? He asks me for money, for a drink.
When are we most ourselves on this journey?
c Joy Harjo 9/05
Swallows fly out from their adobe nest as we’ve flown up from sleep
For coffee and the news—our dreams shooting roots into the earth.
Memory has its own breath, watches over us with the vision of eagles.
Politics dominates the kitchen: who’s fired; who’s hot and not, and how
The price of gas is a perk given to the flunkies of ruin.
And where did these bananas come from?
Who picked them and did anyone sing to those young banana trees
Pushing urgently from the creative earth?
The train runs through the pueblo making rough music but doesn’t stop.
We joke: it’s laden with uranium, cattle and oil.
It’s going somewhere else for now. They’ll dump the scraps here later.
We get the politics, just how are we going to dance past this pain?
We needed a little rain.
I walk concrete in town to the tribal summit
Datura flowers are closing; someone has to stand guard with the night.
Even mystery needs to be held tenderly.
A Dineh brother stumbles up from the dark with his hands open, in the rain:
Hey aren’t you the musician? He asks me for money, for a drink.
When are we most ourselves on this journey?
c Joy Harjo 9/05
9/12/05
The Trouble of Not Learning to Say No
Instead of “no” she said:
When is she getting married? What if it’s raining or there’s an early snow?
What if my neighbor dies, and there’s four days?
You say you want a tent? You want to put it here?
What if the tent flies away or catches fire from the candles
You want to set up along the adobe wall and around
the perimeter?
And where will the tent come from? And who will bring it here,
set it up and take it down?
What if they have doings? And what if the neighbor dies?
I don’t want strangers walking around here, coming in and out of my house to set up
candles or the tent or a dessert table.
Who’s making all the desserts?
And you want it here? And where will you put all of it?
What if everyone comes from all over the country, even those Oklahomas and
the in-laws, the ex-laws and outlaws?
And where will everyone park, especially if the neighbor dies?
And you want to bring in the jazz singer who will sing in the tent
Surrounded by candles and all the in-laws, ex-laws and outlaws?
And what happens when the punch is spiked by every stash hidden in the dash of their trucks?
And then everyone starts dancing?
And they’re coming in and out of the house?
And what if the neighbor dies?
c Joy Harjo September 5, 2005
When is she getting married? What if it’s raining or there’s an early snow?
What if my neighbor dies, and there’s four days?
You say you want a tent? You want to put it here?
What if the tent flies away or catches fire from the candles
You want to set up along the adobe wall and around
the perimeter?
And where will the tent come from? And who will bring it here,
set it up and take it down?
What if they have doings? And what if the neighbor dies?
I don’t want strangers walking around here, coming in and out of my house to set up
candles or the tent or a dessert table.
Who’s making all the desserts?
And you want it here? And where will you put all of it?
What if everyone comes from all over the country, even those Oklahomas and
the in-laws, the ex-laws and outlaws?
And where will everyone park, especially if the neighbor dies?
And you want to bring in the jazz singer who will sing in the tent
Surrounded by candles and all the in-laws, ex-laws and outlaws?
And what happens when the punch is spiked by every stash hidden in the dash of their trucks?
And then everyone starts dancing?
And they’re coming in and out of the house?
And what if the neighbor dies?
c Joy Harjo September 5, 2005
May Your Journey Be Beautiful
A little rain has blanketed the earth
When are we most ourselves on this journey?
The rain doesn’t ask, nor do the earth, plants and stones who drink in rain.
Politics dominates the kitchen: who’s fired; who’s hot and not, and how
The price of gas is a perk given to the flunkies of the emperor of ruin.
And where did these bananas come from?
Who picked them and did anyone sing to those young banana trees
Pushing urgently from the creative earth?
Swallows fly out from their adobe nest as we’ve flown up from sleep
For coffee and the news—our dreams shooting roots into the earth.
Memory has its own breath, watches over us with the vision made for eagles.
The train runs through the pueblo making rough music but doesn’t stop.
We joke: it’s laden with uranium, cattle and oil.
It’s going somewhere else.
We get the politics, just how are we going to dance past this pain?
We just needed a little rain.
As I walk concrete to the tribal summit
The datura flowers are closing; someone has to stand guard with the night.
Even mystery needs to be held tenderly.
A Dineh brother stumbles up from the dark with his hands open, for rain:
Hey aren’t you the musician? He asks me for money, for a drink.
When are we most ourselves on this journey?
C Joy Harjo September 2005 Albuquerque
Remember, this is a DRAFT ONLY.
When are we most ourselves on this journey?
The rain doesn’t ask, nor do the earth, plants and stones who drink in rain.
Politics dominates the kitchen: who’s fired; who’s hot and not, and how
The price of gas is a perk given to the flunkies of the emperor of ruin.
And where did these bananas come from?
Who picked them and did anyone sing to those young banana trees
Pushing urgently from the creative earth?
Swallows fly out from their adobe nest as we’ve flown up from sleep
For coffee and the news—our dreams shooting roots into the earth.
Memory has its own breath, watches over us with the vision made for eagles.
The train runs through the pueblo making rough music but doesn’t stop.
We joke: it’s laden with uranium, cattle and oil.
It’s going somewhere else.
We get the politics, just how are we going to dance past this pain?
We just needed a little rain.
As I walk concrete to the tribal summit
The datura flowers are closing; someone has to stand guard with the night.
Even mystery needs to be held tenderly.
A Dineh brother stumbles up from the dark with his hands open, for rain:
Hey aren’t you the musician? He asks me for money, for a drink.
When are we most ourselves on this journey?
C Joy Harjo September 2005 Albuquerque
Remember, this is a DRAFT ONLY.
9/5/05
I am a traveler in the last days of an American Dream.
I have watched the twin towers of commerce on the eastern shores of America destroyed by fire. I have witnessed a takeover of the presidency by an oil family who are determined to own every drop of oil in the world, and control all the lands and peoples because they are superior; they have white skin and Christianity. The presidency is allied with Christian extremists who don’t consider themselves extremists, rather Christian soldiers working to claim all this for their God, a god who gave them the right to kill Indians and gives them the right to takeover the Middle East. Christian and Muslim fundamentalists over the globe now battle for control. A giant tsunami swallowed and destroyed the coastline of Thailand, and other parts of Asia, killed thousands. Last week Hurricane Katrina destroyed the coastal south of the U.S.. New Orleans, a major city of over a million is underwater. The refugees of the tragedy are those without money or means to get out. Most are black, or poor whites. They are without food, water or shelter. We watch them die on the streets. Corpses swell and float in the water with trash and offal. We watched the explosion of the chemical plant in the ruins. Angry clouds spewed from the wound. A voice of authority on the storyteller box: the television, tells everyone that the fumes are not poisonous. We saw the smoke rear back and search the city for lungs. It takes four days for the feds to send assistance. The president is golfing.
I don’t want to hate Christianity. I loved the Book of John in those years I took myself to church. There is wisdom there, and Jesus is a medicine man. I believe he is a son of god, and so are you, and so am I. We are sons and daughter of a father/mother God. I also loved the love poems in Song of Solomon.
Yesterday I went to church with my friend at the pueblo. I haven’t been inside a church to a service in years. I decided to attend in the right spirit. I respect my friend and I respect what takes people to religion. It’s often that need to attend to spiritual matters, to find comfort and direction. Sometimes it’s fear. It’s fear that established churches and religion in our native communities. We were forced to bow down to their Christianity. We were forced to their religious schools and beliefs. Force has now turned into habit.
What I appreciated and took part in was that sense of community, of love and compassion. Prayers filled the church and hung there. Some had the force of will and light and they traveled. That’s what I took with me.
Then we went out into the plaza for the dances; these were the Indian expression of that community, that love. The difference? A single white man was the authority in the church. It was an authority invested in him by a council of other males. The only female acknowledge was Mary, as a mother of the divine. In the plaza the female earth was the primary force. Men and women were in balance for the service of love.
I am trying to remember everything. To take in every detail of wherever I am of whatever I hear because that articulation will translate into a depth of articulation of meaning in all layers of consciousness. At least that’s what I believe at the moment. I also want to sing about it but must get the last nasty sting censor out of my head, my hands, my voice, and my heart. It is gone. I thank you censor of the gift you have given me. Now, leave.
A highlight in the gift of the day of yesterday took place in the kitchen, between serving the people who came to the house to eat a feast of posole, chile stew, potato salad, bread, desserts, fruit drink, and tea. We turned up the radio and danced in the kitchen on the linoleum floor. We turned and rocked to rock oldies, disco and bluesy heartbreak. We know those songs, the articulations of them in our souls and know what those songs are born from—like us they have emerged from the depths of raw knowledge, pain, from every social and spiritual ill that has been catalogued in Indian country, all over the world. I brought out my saxophone and wailed. I played by heart, or by ear. We're still dancing.
Today is Labor Day, so I will work. Of course there is a history, a story behind the dedication of this day as a national holiday. I don't mean to belittle it. Our labor is our gift, our service. Here it goes. Sing it to: Love and Happiness by Al Green. A classic. We wouldn't have Al Green without the musical caldron of New Orleans. Wouldn't have most of our music. Mvto.
I don’t want to hate Christianity. I loved the Book of John in those years I took myself to church. There is wisdom there, and Jesus is a medicine man. I believe he is a son of god, and so are you, and so am I. We are sons and daughter of a father/mother God. I also loved the love poems in Song of Solomon.
Yesterday I went to church with my friend at the pueblo. I haven’t been inside a church to a service in years. I decided to attend in the right spirit. I respect my friend and I respect what takes people to religion. It’s often that need to attend to spiritual matters, to find comfort and direction. Sometimes it’s fear. It’s fear that established churches and religion in our native communities. We were forced to bow down to their Christianity. We were forced to their religious schools and beliefs. Force has now turned into habit.
What I appreciated and took part in was that sense of community, of love and compassion. Prayers filled the church and hung there. Some had the force of will and light and they traveled. That’s what I took with me.
Then we went out into the plaza for the dances; these were the Indian expression of that community, that love. The difference? A single white man was the authority in the church. It was an authority invested in him by a council of other males. The only female acknowledge was Mary, as a mother of the divine. In the plaza the female earth was the primary force. Men and women were in balance for the service of love.
I am trying to remember everything. To take in every detail of wherever I am of whatever I hear because that articulation will translate into a depth of articulation of meaning in all layers of consciousness. At least that’s what I believe at the moment. I also want to sing about it but must get the last nasty sting censor out of my head, my hands, my voice, and my heart. It is gone. I thank you censor of the gift you have given me. Now, leave.
A highlight in the gift of the day of yesterday took place in the kitchen, between serving the people who came to the house to eat a feast of posole, chile stew, potato salad, bread, desserts, fruit drink, and tea. We turned up the radio and danced in the kitchen on the linoleum floor. We turned and rocked to rock oldies, disco and bluesy heartbreak. We know those songs, the articulations of them in our souls and know what those songs are born from—like us they have emerged from the depths of raw knowledge, pain, from every social and spiritual ill that has been catalogued in Indian country, all over the world. I brought out my saxophone and wailed. I played by heart, or by ear. We're still dancing.
Today is Labor Day, so I will work. Of course there is a history, a story behind the dedication of this day as a national holiday. I don't mean to belittle it. Our labor is our gift, our service. Here it goes. Sing it to: Love and Happiness by Al Green. A classic. We wouldn't have Al Green without the musical caldron of New Orleans. Wouldn't have most of our music. Mvto.
8/30/05
Singing for the Child Who Knew the Truth
This morning in the traffic stall on I-40 I sang. I sang for the little girl who a few years back during one of our parties at the b&b told Sue P., as she offered the flower in her hand: God lives here. This is not the god of empires, of grandeur, or the god with a hand out for money from the poor with which to build towers of gold for worship, and not the god who has deemed women unfit for equality. This is the humble god who goes about creation with absolute compassion and comprehension. I sang for her, this girl, this child who has disappeared to the north with her mother. Her mother was a dynamic young law student. Now she calls down drunk; she makes promises to bring the girl back for a visit, or starts fights because she is lonely and angry. Her daughter stands near her when she calls, her companion on the journey. They appear lost somewhere between the heart and America. I had forgotten the story until Sue P. reminded us last night. Does the child remember? And what of the child in all of us?
Incongruities and a Gift
I don’t appear to fit anywhere neatly under this sun. My life is woven with incongruities.
I am a wanderer with (almost) two homes, a sociable loner, a poet, a female saxophone player, (private) singer of Mvskoke songs when males are the singers, a jazz player who doesn’t play jazz, an Indian who doesn’t look “Indian”, a poet who occupies an endowed position at a university who doesn’t act like the typical professor poet, a speaker who is most often silent, a performer, a dreamer. Maybe that moniker fits best: a dreamer. Dreaming is the one place in which the incongruities snap into a continuous, mindful grid. The distinctions don’t matter. They all fit. I am able to fly beyond time, beyond the biting rulers of the kingdoms of human societies. My spirit occupies the spirit world without the dressings of shame, criticism and awkwardness that have characterized my emerging life. The dream world appears closer to the real world. There are no lies. Here is the source of poetry; this is where songs open their mouths to sing.
With this I walk out onto the island, after flying more than a few thousand miles to come home for an anniversary weekend. I’m barefoot, still smelling of dream residue. ”I’m home,” I say to the mynah couple who perch every morning on the telephone pole. I wonder where the cardinals are who sing around the house and yard here. One of their relatives was just assisting me in that other place. I acknowledge the mango tree so bushy and lush with a golden crop. The banana trees have a tightly woven society. They are healthy. The papaya trees should have been planted elsewhere. One thrives anyway; the other is a bit of a runt. The young coconut tree is close to my heart. A bluish lizard is doing pushups on a branch.
The sun has called me out. The earth has called me here. We are surrounded by ocean, by a cool breeze off the Ko’olau’s carrying good luck. Here in this morning light none of the incongruities matter. I am a spirit who is made of the same stuff as all of this life. I greet the morning, offer tobacco and I am greeted in return. This morning I am given an unexpected gift. The sun is bright with a blue star in the middle. The blue turns to turquoise then back to gold. These colors are woven into ribbons of energy. They spiral through time and touch the earth. The earth responds with green strands of energy; they mix. We are in communion, all of us out here in the morning--even the cat who’s been meeting her boyfriends under the house for parties has stopped in awe. We are all part of this gift.
August 27, 2005 Honolulu
I am a wanderer with (almost) two homes, a sociable loner, a poet, a female saxophone player, (private) singer of Mvskoke songs when males are the singers, a jazz player who doesn’t play jazz, an Indian who doesn’t look “Indian”, a poet who occupies an endowed position at a university who doesn’t act like the typical professor poet, a speaker who is most often silent, a performer, a dreamer. Maybe that moniker fits best: a dreamer. Dreaming is the one place in which the incongruities snap into a continuous, mindful grid. The distinctions don’t matter. They all fit. I am able to fly beyond time, beyond the biting rulers of the kingdoms of human societies. My spirit occupies the spirit world without the dressings of shame, criticism and awkwardness that have characterized my emerging life. The dream world appears closer to the real world. There are no lies. Here is the source of poetry; this is where songs open their mouths to sing.
With this I walk out onto the island, after flying more than a few thousand miles to come home for an anniversary weekend. I’m barefoot, still smelling of dream residue. ”I’m home,” I say to the mynah couple who perch every morning on the telephone pole. I wonder where the cardinals are who sing around the house and yard here. One of their relatives was just assisting me in that other place. I acknowledge the mango tree so bushy and lush with a golden crop. The banana trees have a tightly woven society. They are healthy. The papaya trees should have been planted elsewhere. One thrives anyway; the other is a bit of a runt. The young coconut tree is close to my heart. A bluish lizard is doing pushups on a branch.
The sun has called me out. The earth has called me here. We are surrounded by ocean, by a cool breeze off the Ko’olau’s carrying good luck. Here in this morning light none of the incongruities matter. I am a spirit who is made of the same stuff as all of this life. I greet the morning, offer tobacco and I am greeted in return. This morning I am given an unexpected gift. The sun is bright with a blue star in the middle. The blue turns to turquoise then back to gold. These colors are woven into ribbons of energy. They spiral through time and touch the earth. The earth responds with green strands of energy; they mix. We are in communion, all of us out here in the morning--even the cat who’s been meeting her boyfriends under the house for parties has stopped in awe. We are all part of this gift.
August 27, 2005 Honolulu
8/23/05
Datura
In the last few weeks I’ve flown from Honolulu to LA, picked up the car in Long Beach, driven to Albuquerque via Tucson, searched Albuquerque for four to five month housing, prepared to teach classes at UNM, still trying to secure parking near my office and keep being turned down so I continue to refuse to pay for parking miles away—I will be finishing my last class in the evening, and don’t want to be the lone woman let off in a parking lot in the far reaches--, sleeping on the couch of a generous friend in the pueblo, writing copy and music for my next project, spending time with my family here, Indian market, etc etc. Life. So, if I haven’t responded to your emails, calls, please forgive.
A new poem (draft, mostly finished):
Datura
I know the dark; it is my work. Dusk is my doorway.
I’ve seen it all parade the damp cool earth within my reach.
Everything you’ve heard just might be true,
or not. Last night she kissed a beer goodbye, rolled off the highway.
I bear the thud and scrape of metal wings.
A boy blessed by prancing Indian ponies can’t see anything at all.
His girl is gone. He’ll never be famous. A gun on his hip;
It’s four a.m. the breaking hour just when he’s breaking through
The post-drug shaking. Come on and fly.
All the oil will all be gone in the snap of a wave.
All the guns, all the grief.
I blessed him as he walked the track of the disappearing moon
through a few traveler clouds; he was waving goodbye.
The cat you see is nothing but a shadow.
And neither are you, if you think about it,
Or not. A mother leaves her dreams for the cry of her feverish baby,
An old man floats effortlessly from the dark to the bright
Heaven of his people dancing in gratitude for rain.
We’ll make it through--
A crown of fledglings sleeps in their adobe nest made of river mud
On the wall of a humble house near the tracks in Isleta.
When dawn touches the trembling skin of earthliness we will emerge
From this realm of darkliness--
A rush of indigo through the white bloom of dawn,
Goodbye.
c Joy Harjo August 22-23, 2005 Albuquerque
And will put up an Mp3 of new draft of song(s) soon.
Other notes:
Be careful of monikers. Gary Farmer and the Troublemakers brought the police to the quiet abode of the CCA in Santa Fe for an Indian Market opening event last Thursday night. It was a little rock, a little blues, tame crowd. He invited me to perform either Friday or Saturday night for Indian Market. Couldn’t make it. He’s always up to something. Will be performing with him sometime soon in Toronto. Will let you know.
Was there to help open up a showing of A Thousand Roads, along with Chris Eyre, Rick West, Jeremiah (the Navajo gang member in the film) and Scott Garen. Warm crowd. My friend from up north, St. Lawrence Island brought me a gift of whale meat. Mvto.
Last night did laundry at the pueblo. My friend and I agreed that we do not/won’t hang our underwear out for public viewing. She and the neighbors are still pondering the tiny size of a huge neighbor’s underwear.
More later.
A new poem (draft, mostly finished):
Datura
I know the dark; it is my work. Dusk is my doorway.
I’ve seen it all parade the damp cool earth within my reach.
Everything you’ve heard just might be true,
or not. Last night she kissed a beer goodbye, rolled off the highway.
I bear the thud and scrape of metal wings.
A boy blessed by prancing Indian ponies can’t see anything at all.
His girl is gone. He’ll never be famous. A gun on his hip;
It’s four a.m. the breaking hour just when he’s breaking through
The post-drug shaking. Come on and fly.
All the oil will all be gone in the snap of a wave.
All the guns, all the grief.
I blessed him as he walked the track of the disappearing moon
through a few traveler clouds; he was waving goodbye.
The cat you see is nothing but a shadow.
And neither are you, if you think about it,
Or not. A mother leaves her dreams for the cry of her feverish baby,
An old man floats effortlessly from the dark to the bright
Heaven of his people dancing in gratitude for rain.
We’ll make it through--
A crown of fledglings sleeps in their adobe nest made of river mud
On the wall of a humble house near the tracks in Isleta.
When dawn touches the trembling skin of earthliness we will emerge
From this realm of darkliness--
A rush of indigo through the white bloom of dawn,
Goodbye.
c Joy Harjo August 22-23, 2005 Albuquerque
And will put up an Mp3 of new draft of song(s) soon.
Other notes:
Be careful of monikers. Gary Farmer and the Troublemakers brought the police to the quiet abode of the CCA in Santa Fe for an Indian Market opening event last Thursday night. It was a little rock, a little blues, tame crowd. He invited me to perform either Friday or Saturday night for Indian Market. Couldn’t make it. He’s always up to something. Will be performing with him sometime soon in Toronto. Will let you know.
Was there to help open up a showing of A Thousand Roads, along with Chris Eyre, Rick West, Jeremiah (the Navajo gang member in the film) and Scott Garen. Warm crowd. My friend from up north, St. Lawrence Island brought me a gift of whale meat. Mvto.
Last night did laundry at the pueblo. My friend and I agreed that we do not/won’t hang our underwear out for public viewing. She and the neighbors are still pondering the tiny size of a huge neighbor’s underwear.
More later.
8/13/05
Power
Today left Tucson about noon for Albuquerque. Hot. Clear. The vistas on this journey are amazing. All afternoon storm clouds walk across far distances. Lightning laces the sky. Brief squalls are followed by sunlight. Near Socorro, about 90 miles south of Albuquerque thunder clouds accumulate in a beautiful, angry swarm. Mountains to the east behind this stirring monument of power are backlit by a blaze of sunlight. To the west is a black sky. I admire this tremendous building up, see the craft of eddies, the perfect and dangerous fists of winds. This power is beautiful, I comment to myself. I am an observer. I watch from a distance. The danger appears far away, an idea, a dream.
Then, we're in it. Slammed by winds that literally push the car to the edge of the highway. The downpour is harsh, brutal. I follow the red taillights of the white truck in front of me weaving through the turbulence. Then there are no visible lights, or lines in the highway. They're extinguished by the pounding of sheets of rain. I can see nothing. I am flooded by fear, adrenalin, in the midst of this power. It is an alive thing, this storm. It can kill, it can give life to the plants drinking in the rain or uproot them. It will rejuvenate the air we are breathing.
Maybe there is no such thing as objectivity. Or objectivity is limited as it roams around on the mental plane, making suppositions and creating exact measures of physical force and dimension, of matter.
And there's more. I'm crashing for the evening in a warm hotel room in Albuquerque. It's raining here, and a man on the northeast side was struck by lightning.
(First draft of a note)
Then, we're in it. Slammed by winds that literally push the car to the edge of the highway. The downpour is harsh, brutal. I follow the red taillights of the white truck in front of me weaving through the turbulence. Then there are no visible lights, or lines in the highway. They're extinguished by the pounding of sheets of rain. I can see nothing. I am flooded by fear, adrenalin, in the midst of this power. It is an alive thing, this storm. It can kill, it can give life to the plants drinking in the rain or uproot them. It will rejuvenate the air we are breathing.
Maybe there is no such thing as objectivity. Or objectivity is limited as it roams around on the mental plane, making suppositions and creating exact measures of physical force and dimension, of matter.
And there's more. I'm crashing for the evening in a warm hotel room in Albuquerque. It's raining here, and a man on the northeast side was struck by lightning.
(First draft of a note)
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