Au Revoir

Poised in the here and now. Turning to face a hidden world. Plunging into an ocean of pure possibility. Swimming in a secret sea. It flows through my mind like a deep ocean current, a fluid riptide of ideas and information, alien, otherworldly, yet hauntingly familiar.

Took you long enough.

What?

Not much of a walker, are you? Me neither, I used to be, but that was before I got civilized. I have been waiting for you.

What do you mean waiting?

You went and got yourself too civilized, that is bad, bad for everybody.

You sure talk alot.

I know, its what I do.

Where are you headed?

What difference does it make? You have no place better to go.

Where are we going?

I am going to the mountain.

Which one?

Does not really matter.

You travel pretty light.

Don’t need what I cannot get out here.

What are you?

I am me and I was alive when living meant something. The animals all know their names, but men call them other things because it is easier to make something up than to learn something. I have been across this country, I used to be a good walker. I was invisible in those days, so I could watch everything, birds, animals and people. People are the easiest to be invisible with, cos they mostly ignore you anyway, creatures of the forest are something else. Somewhere along the line I got careless, and people started noticing me, but lately I have been getting invisible again. I have seen things. Some I wish I had not, but I got to know that there is some good in any bad, if you learn from it.

Does it not make you angry, seeing the way your people are/were treated?

We made deals, and any deal is only as good as a man is honest. We should have known that, but we were men, and we were not honest with ourselves.

What about what’s happened to the land? The destruction, the waste!

There are those that say ‘It’s ours to use up’, I think that is stupid. A lion does not bother ‘owning’ land, he knows he is going to die, but the land will go on without him, owning means nothing. So he goes about the rest of his life, he eats, he sleeps, he mates and he dies, he thinks it’s a pretty good life, and lions are smart folks. That’s the way it used to be with people, but too many of us are getting ‘civilized’. Most figure it’s the only way to survive in the world today, and I guess if you are gonna live with men, they’re right. I would rather be invisible.

You have not asked me my name.

I have not given you one yet. Follow me to the mountain, there you will find your true name.

Spirit making a passage for himself, Spirit making a breath for himself, Out of me, out of me, He sprang from the ground, everyone saw him, He sprang from the trees, everyone saw him, Spirit making passage for himself, spirit making a breath for himself, Out of me, out of me, Here on the outside, Everyone saw him, He looked back at them, Everyone saw him, Spirit making a passage for himself, Spirit making a breath for himself, Out of me, out of me. -Hiwuna(Asiatic Eskimo)

The world before me is restored in beauty. The world behind me is restored in beauty. The world above me is restored in beauty. All things around me are restored in beauty. My voice is restored in beauty. It is finished in beauty. It is finished in beauty. It is finished in beuaty – The mountain chant(Navaho)

The peace you seek is not in the mountains, nor the streams, nor in the valleys or in the sky. You will search the world over, but you will find it in your heart. What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. – the dying words of Crowfoot, Blackfoot orator(April,1890)