the pelican

once more with feeling

a new t-shirt

yesterday the wind blew and a little moisture spit at us through dark gloomy clouds. a cozy inside day of hot tea and grilled cheese and movies with friends.

and now it’s just an absolutely clear warm beautiful and perfect early autumn day outside. blue blue sky and bright yellow sun. the leaves are just starting to turn a little. the grass is still green. the tomatoes and peppers seem to have made it through the first real chill last night. got some spicy soup simmering on the stove, kind of green chili with corn and carrots and potatoes. door open to the backyard.

cats toasting themselves in the sunshine, breezing through to rub against my legs and grab a quick snack of dry food and then it’s back out onto the grass. just a slight nip in the air, brisk but not cold. new moon and equinox just on friday. rosh hashanah. maybe ramadan too. a multi-dimensional cosmic weekend of previously cold moist and windy saturday giving way to a fresh clean washed and brushed fall air of great sunday beauty.
 
so it’s sweater weather, which i like. have on a old favorite braided sort of cream colored cardigan that zips. it has a tiny little angel pin up on the collar by my shoulder. she was given to me by a good paralegal friend i worked with a few years ago when my mom was in the hospital. jeans instead of shorts. socks for two days now. right now it’s these cool blue psychedelic bug socks with orange toes and heels that go with my wupatki t-shirt, which has a blue blue sky like today above some red cliffs of the ruins with an orange golden spiral sun.
 
the spiral is right smack in the center of my upper chest, sort of heart chakra area, which is where i tend to spill at least a drop or two of just about everything i eat or drink. this way, with the spiral, it creates a perfect target area with a sort of built-in points zone and delineated scoring system for stain landing areas.

t-shirt seems to go with the colors of the day. and yet, it adds an extra strange dimension to it as well. been thinking a lot about petroglyphs, indian ruins, etc. just back last week from a brief whirlwind readers digest condensed version tour of the southwest. went to moab, arches national park, canyonlands, then down to page, arizona, through monument valley and the navajo park and then spent a day at the north rim of the grand canyon. then from there to santa fe, with a trip to wupatki, painted desert and petrified national forest on the way.
 
saw some magnificent things. amazing rock and stone formations. of all kinds. canyons deep and twisted and layered variegated colors and textures. can’t even describe it, and even though i took about 800 pictures, it doesn’t do it any of it any justice. vermillion cliffs. castle valley. and lots and lots of old ruins and indian stuff. lots of amazing petroglyphs -- some as old as 2500 B.C. and some as recent as about 1300 A.D. or so.
 
there is some older guy in utah who’s kept the indian lands on his ranch pretty much intact. one of the best preserved sites. he just didn’t tell anybody about it, and left it all alone. was in last month’s national geographic i think. just patrolled the grounds with a rifle regularly. kind of sounds like my crazy family homesteading here in the mountains of colorado. he picked up a few arrowheads, but pretty much left it all as he found it. lived with it all for most of his life. and he’s not too impressed with the scientists and archeologists who have shown up lately to catalogue and preserve and label and theorize.
 
the whole four-corners area, this big magnificent series of high plateaus and mountains and canyons was once a completely inter-connected civilization with farming and animals and stone buildings and pueblos and cliff dwelling societies. everywhere. they find more stuff all the time. barely a fraction of it has been recovered. walnut canyon, gila cliff dwellers, mesa verde, grand canyon, bandelier, chaco, canyon de chelly -- just so many sites. came across one right smack in the middle of a subdivision in blanding utah, which also had an exceptional collection of indian artifacts from the whole area.
 
it’s a strange thing and a sad thing and a weird thing and a cool thing to check all this stuff out. empty farms. crumbled stones.

it’s strange because it doesn’t seem right at all, to be picking around in cemetaries, nope. it just doesn’t. no sir.

and there is something about it. i mean wupatki really does have an eery silence about it, even though the national park guide book tells you it does. it really does. they all do. it’s so still. there is a profound sense of absence.
 
it’s sad because it is gone. and not really respected. it’s a graveyard. and that’s what makes it weird. because it’s a tourist spot. a museum. full of looky-loo gawkers like me who read the guide books and walk the paths and look at all the artifacts and buy the t-shirt.

and it’s cool because it does something to the imagination. it speaks in a lost tongue that can’t quite be fully deciphered but is understood intuitively and felt in the heart and it shivers through the body with gentle dancing electric rhythms and scents. it affects my dreams.

and there is a sense of a closer contact with the people who lived here. people who respected and cared for this land long long before my ancestors came and put a highway through it. they farmed. they hunted. they built cozy little rock and clay homes and castles and kivas and ballcourts and palaces and structures. they made beautiful pottery and baskets and they painted on the great walls of rock and they carved their desert lives right out of stone.

petrified forest really kind of says it all. a magical place, no doubt for all the indigenous peoples of the whole canyon culture four-corners region. full of ancient prehistoric extinct trees turned to stone. or at least once it was, but as soon white folks found it, they started chipping away, breaking pieces off and hauling it away. jasper. quartz. all sorts of previously organic material flash frozen in time into minerals. and it’s all just been carted away. completely decimated. once it was full of crystals and solid trees of gems. now it’s a wasteland of tree trunks. a legacy of destruction. just yanked the beauty right out of the place and sold it all for a profit. amazing. though still it is worth seeing. what’s left of it. and at the base of the painted desert which is just that and nothing else can describe it. not only is it good what is left, but even better to imagine the beauty of all that is gone.

the whole southwest area feels of recent loss. a fresh wound. an empty maze. an intricately designed vase with a crack that let the real life trickle out of it.

it was a very social life. architecture. art. inter-connected with many nearby, though travel must have been mainly on foot. farms. hunting. domesticated animals. families. artisans and craftsmen and shaman and sportsmen and hunters and mothers and fathers and children.

just have to imagine what they must have thought of the petrified forest nearby.
 
understand of course that most of the native people seem to want to leave this stuff alone. let it lie buried in its piles of stone rubble and heaps of rocks and bones and belongings and abandoned canyons. let it rest in peace. in silence. let it go. let it pass away. let it remain undisturbed.

but instead what is found is materialized. dug up. nice pieces lifted. taken apart and dismantled and stirred through. made into an exhibit. reinforced with cement. asphalt walkways and metal banisters. drive-through points of interest on a map from here to there.

yet it as if this does teach us something. we want to discover it and preserve it and check it all out because we are curious. we want to understand. we want to see it. we want to touch it. almost as if we want to remember it.

for still i would stop the car and have a good look-see. stretch out my cramped legs after speeding through looking at this beautiful scenery through a windshield and walk around and feel the place. touch the stones. smell the plants. read the clouds.

nostalgia. what is gone. what is going. what will be all gone. and what is left.

one culture superimposes itself on another. new life is built on the remains of the old. what once was is no longer but something else continues.

a graveyard is a museum is a trash heap is a scared place is a material find is a national park is a church is nature is a cemetary is art is abandoned is reclaimed is lost is found is just a point on a map between here and there.

heraclitus says we do not can not just plain impossible to step into the same river twice.

then and now. the moment and what will come. waxing and waning. growth and decay. rising and falling. beginning and ending and beginning and ending.

the in breath and the out breath.

heartbeat. movement. impermanence.

a blue blue sky. red cliffs. green grass.

and a spiral sun.

posted by: limine at 17:44 | link | comments (6) |

out for lunch

today at work i ran out to get something to eat and a bottle of some expensive special tea with a live culture in it. i don’t really know if it does anything good for me or not, but the label says it does and i want to believe it so i buy it and plan to walk down the path by the river to sit and have my lunch and drink my special miracle cure raw living tea.

standing outside the store, i see a guy using the pay phone. he looks at me as soon as i arrive and smiles at me as though he knows me. like he’s been waiting for me. i smile back and i smile at his dog. i love german shepherds. so smart so quick so bright so much light in their eyes. i like him. i like his dog.

when i leave the store, he is walking in the same direction as i am. he turns. i go forward. he comes back around the other side of the block. i walk across to the park and start down the path by the river and quickly find a place to sit. i have my tunafish sandwich and my tea and my wallet on the bench beside me. i look at the river and try to sort out the stress of the day and calm down from my walk and do a little breathing exercise before i start into my sandwich.

about three bites in, i am startled by the guy and his dog approaching from behind me. he says “hi” really loudly to me as though he knows me well and chucks his stuff down next to me.

the first thing he says to me is this is really weird but i’ve never been homeless  before. oh dear i said. i look up at him and put my sandwich down. i’ve eaten about a quarter of it, maybe. i wonder if i should offer him some sandwich but he starts talking to me and telling me how he’s out here from california and was camping and he asked some kids nearby to not make so much noise and they got upset and threw a bunch of rocks at him and hurt him. he says he went to the police to explain all this and somehow his trailer and all his stuff was towed away and he was put in jail. i’m not quite sure what for -- that part was a bit sketchy and lacking some details.

his dog, a beautiful older german shepherd with mild hip dysplasia, starts to whine at him and he lets him loose from his leash and throws a stick into the river for the dog to chase. i think the river is moving a bit too fast for him and i tell him so. the dog struggles in the rapids a bit but makes it back to the shore and barks at him to throw the stick some more. he does. this worries me, and his story continues.

he says he just got out of jail and while in jail his dog had to go to the pound. oh dear i say. oh dear. i bet he was very upset. and he says oh you have no idea! the guy actually looks relatively ok. he has a watch. a decent watch. his bags are scuffy. he has on a clean t-shirt. he doesn’t exactly look like the basic homeless sort. that is, not the boulder sort. the sort i am used to. he’s not a hippie, not a scraggly old dirty guy, not a kid with multiple piercings and heavy black eyeliner, no cardboard sign. 

he has nice sparkly blue eyes and a pleasant smile. he’s tan. he looks quite fit. he looks like he might work outside. construction or something like that. his hair is clean and he’s recently shaved. the dog barks at him and he climbs down the embankment to bring him back up. the dog wants to continue to play fetch.

while he’s down by the river, i resume eating my sandwich. couldn’t eat it in front of him, while he was talking to me, but still i didn’t offer him any. don’t know why. i wonder about that.

so while he is down by the riverbank i eat on my sandwich a bit. and i move my wallet over closer to my lap instead of flopped off to the side.

eventually he throws the stick for the dog into a rather deep area and i fear for an undertow kind of situation, and the dog is struggling in the water and so again i tell him so. he calls the dog towards him and we sort of coach him in to the side by some rocks. he pulls the dog out by his harness kind of roughly and dumps him on top of the rocks where the dog is unable to balance. he scrambles around with the dog and the harness gets all wonky, dog yelps and then they both sort of stagger back up the hill towards me. the dog is not amused and proceeds to shake the water out of his fur. he is very apologetic. i laugh. it’s ok i say. it’s only water.

meanwhile again i have put the sandwich back down. i can’t eat it. he continues his story. he says he has nowhere to stay. he says he is going to sue the guys who did this to him, and that the police have told him they found one of them and he’s going to have to tell him who the others are. and he has to stick around for his court trial. not sure if he means his, or the other guys.

i do not mention that i am a paralegal and work in a law firm. for a moment i consider it but i decide not to tell him. i do not question the logic or the holes of the story. i listen and offer sympathy. i could have given him the number for boulder county legal services or legal aid but i don’t.

it’s an interesting exchange because it’s not the usual sort of panhandling situation and i kind of want to believe him, but i feel cautious. he seems unreal. he followed me there. there are many loops and twists and missing bits to his story. he feels almost like he’s slightly scripted, but not in the polished way. in some other way. i can’t quite explain that. he feels strange to me. but i don’t care. there is something interesting about watching to him spin his yarn. he’s not drunk or apparently drugged. not desperate. he’s begging yet not begging.  in fact, he never actually directly asks for money.

and, it’s true, i suppose i am somewhat of a soft touch and do give out money periodically when asked and even if i don’t i try to at least make eye contact and acknowledge that they are not invisible. smile. like to tip street musicians and even have a couple regular guys who are actually brothers who set up in a median near the highway who i give money to occasionally even though i am most likely in some way contributing to their habits. like to think that it’s up to them what they do with whatever money comes their way and if asked i will give if i can and not judge. or something like that. friends and other people lecture me all the time that i’m making their problems worse by giving but i do it anyway. but the boulder mall and surrounding area and the park are known for lots of homeless people and hippies and crazies and bums and all sorts. its part of boulder. i buy the homeless newspaper. i give away my lunch leftover take away boxes as i leave a restaurant whenever asked. i know their life must be hard and dangerous. yet there is some part of me that almost romanticizes some of them in their freedom from the unreal world. their daily survival. their reality show. sometimes they seem like great sages and wise men. gods in disguise. i just don’t know. i don’t know. i mean i don’t think this makes me a wonderful person or anything like that. and besides maybe i’m doing the wrong thing. but for the most part i like them. respect them. a few of the crazier or smellier or scarier looking ones i suppose i fear a bit. not keen on the aggressive ones. i don’t know i don’t know. for instance, the other day on my walk i ran into a guy in underpants under the bridge at the river who told me at the top of his voice that it was dick cheney who shot john lennon. is that so? and he said oh yeah oh yeah! and he smiled and waved so i smiled and that’s that. i don’t know what i’m trying to say.

but this guy was a bit different. he has a lot of story to tell. i empathize and listen. and wait for him to ask for money. and he doesn't.
 
he says he stayed at a friend’s house and i say oh that’s good so you know some people around here and he said yeah well i met this guy in jail. he was in for a DUI, but a very nice guy ultimately, a very nice guy.

he says he has to stay around to get his trailer and all his stuff and asks me if i know of a good pawn shop. i don’t. he says the kids that threw the rocks at him also messed up his elbow and he needs to get to a hospital in denver. he elbow does look a bit banged up from old and potentially more recent scars. the local hospital is only a few blocks away and i start to offer this information but he goes on about some other details. i ask him if he spoke with victim’s assistance at the DA’s office as they will have some resources for him. he says yeah he’ll look into that. yeah he’s got a name on a piece of paper in his pocket. he says he needs a place to stay where he can have his dog with him. i say i understand.

his dog whines and barks at him. his dog looks thin. i want to give the dog the rest of my sandwich but i don’t.

eventually his dog starts barking at him almost incessantly. and he says ok ok no talking no talking and then he picks up his stuff, hooks the leash on his dog, says ok well goodbye and heads off just like that. and i said take care i wish you well and we smile at each other and he’s gone. poof. wasps immediately come and start going for my sandwich and then for me and so i dodge the wasps enough to toss it in the bear proof latched garbage tanks and i leave shortly thereafter and i look around but there is no sign of him. he has vanished.

he never asked for money and yet i feel perhaps i should have offered it. even though i did this strange protective moving of the wallet maneuver. i wonder what he will do. where he will sleep. what will happen to his dog.

i walk back to the office with my expensive miracle tea and the chaos of exhibits and emergencies waiting for me in my office and all i’ve to get done in order to take a brief week vacation road trip next week and how i didn’t really have time to even take a break today.

and i drink my miracle tea and i wonder about everything. i wonder about his story. he had a good yarn. he had all the sympathetic elements, the fuzzy details, the needs for travel, pawn shop, doctor, the dog. but he didn’t just come out and ask. ever.

i guess that was up to me to offer.

but i didn’t.

and i wonder about that too.

posted by: limine at 23:47 | link | comments (11) |

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