gandhi flower: 12/1/10

The river, flanked by highway, however sensitive the architect, pains me in the same way releasing an arrow into the heart of a delicate creature would. It is necessary, sophistication; destruction in order to feed the mass. With no emotion, cars, trucks, pointed east or west, drive in the rain leaving behind a mixture of water vapor and pollution.

It rains in the Rockies. On a train, the gentle jostling, two stories above the ground looking down as a bird in flight might. Every detail cataloged until the sum is seen, then the gaze grows as sheep graze pasture. Beauty abounds where any third of the the whole is nurtured.

These mountains and rivers, this land, known to me as mother but to many more, as Colorado, stretches on, steep the south, steep to the north. The names of these places or these people come and go like the rain on the window. My full view; my total attention is paid to nature and I know not one single word or name to call her by. I only call her "mother" for she bore such beauty as only the female of any gait, wing span or otherwise, could. Snow falls and I remember.

It was two years, on this same train even, rolling through the Rockies, I said good-bye to the mountains and deserts that had occupied my life for so long. I had grown, tethered to intention and held by passion in the fissures of mountains, climbing high above the themes that weigh down most in this culture. I traveled humbly in the canyons of the desert, learning solitude; silence. I was letting go, I was promising my love to another. I was to grow again as a sailor.

All of that was behind me. I travel east today with no ambition; I am complete, ready to grow again.

I see the footprint of sophistication expanding in its irrepressible absurdity: Tyvex covered plywood, bare concrete foundations; New houses closer together than poles on a horseshoe pit. In typical American "style", houses built in stark contrast with their surroundings. This is what it means to live in the Rockies; this is the rugged romance of life dying before my eyes.

These houses, strangely enough, remind me of my indian; the shred of my soul that remains man after my total disillusionment. I feel the mountains, even aboard the train. I feel the comfort of the cold, of the presents of the mountain goat and I feel the forests of the north west as the precipitation passes high above them bringing the snow to cover these peaks for another winter, as it has been for since the vastness of recent history. I feel the canyons, the vessels who carry the frozen ocean melt through one of the driest parts of our world, onward to home; to the sea from which it came. Even though I know sophistication has brought an end to that cycle, I still feel it; it is the the intention of mother and it is still. I feel a part of this world; this intention; these winds and rains and the snow; these creatures; these goats, more than I do among the sheep who graze on the browned grass of a culture holden to a prosperity, not of intention but of rejection of nature. I've graze with them until I choked. I spit it out and now everyone offers me some of theirs.

I am not ungrateful. Though I appreciate the efforts of many and the offers of community, I breathe better in the mountains. I feel better drinking the water from the stream.

Now the snow, pines and shrub stacked against the sky, fly high beyond where I can see from this window. I think how the people of these mountains moved down to the plains before winter came. The were led by the elders; by wisdom. The tradition was passed from father to son; from chief to warrior; from spirit to man. When the wisdom has been forgotten; when the elders advise the young to "sophisticate"; to shun nature in their prosperity. It is warrior spirit alone that rediscovers the path.

Without a boat, bicycle or much to speak of, I'm growing again, returning to the beginning, to begging again as a warrior in spirit, to travel the path away from sophistocation, far enough to find balance.

I turn to this pen as so many turn to the hand-held attention clinchers that sound and giggle in their pockets. I express not to another under social scrutiny, but to paper; a mirror of my thinking. The indian in me sings in this land. Even aboard this steel chariot a connection is made. Rhythem transcends. Rolling along the track, through the canyons and meadows of the rockies, which a harmonica; a voice, the rthym rises from deep. The song is simple and sounds true to the heart; the body that produces the sound- it is the song of the human, sung long ago but the people who lived under the sun, sanf in the rain and prepaired for winter. Thirds of the whole- one is enough in troubled times to show connection to intention. As seed grows to tree, and tree to fruit: mind body soul; thirds of the whole. I feel my nature calling out, the male beneath the fabric, the man dumbed with deodorant and fine grooming screaming a war cry.

My warrior spirit is not violent for the bloodshed yields to solution to the plight of a people. The violence is simply frustration in response to sophistication; it is natural, violence, but it is expressed as a tree in a city- coerced in its growing and groomed to fit the surroundings. I cry my war, I don't throw it through windows or shoot it into cities. I disagree with those who give in, who say there is no good in refraining from the way of sophisticated human economic pursuit. I accept my role as the one to be left behind; forgotten by the glamor of stupid animals. I will in the lest, know the taste of fresh water. And if I find a woman, if we have a child that child will know the taste of fresh water. That child will know the beauty of nature, not the blackness of strict desire.

Just as nature itself is no longer understood, my love as well is as a whisper in a city. I yield to the flow to show me. I give more space to the rest become whatever it will. The foundation is not worthy of redecoration; the walls are stained with the blood of innocent, the same walls upon which we hang our art. Senslessness prevails. We preceed on momentum alone; out-of-control.