The sun is setting, and though no human talks the earth
speaks clearly. My voice is stolen from me because in the conversation of life it
is my turn to listen. The insects chant loudly, telling the story of their
short lives. They spend their time on the ground, always looking up at the
tremendous world around them. Though they are small, they know of their own
importance. Without them, the kingdom would fall and the frog could not croak.
The frogs sing the story of their metamorphosis. They begin in the water, small
and in danger of all things. They grow and change, as all things do, until they
step out of the swamp. They are strong and become master of both earth and
water, their growth the key to the evolution of us all. They sing a song to the
inhabitants of the wetlands, as they jump up to meet the masters of the air.
The birds recite their ancient poems, telling the others of their travels. They
speak first of their mothers, who taught them how to fly. They tell of the
language of the wind and the world from above. They explain the nature of
freedom. “We are all free if we choose to be, our freedom comes from the
bravery to follow the wind and face those things that seem impossible.” The
birds recite their epic poems and speak of the dangers of the land. The caiman
is quite. Sitting in the murky water his eyes reflect millions of years. He has
witnessed the earth change and has come to know that all things die and nothing
can last forever. His armor was built eons ago but all those he was created
along side have returned to the ground. He knows of the nature of death and
fears nothing save extinction. He carries the wisdom of balance and watches as
another day ends in the wetlands. The sun melts behind the line of palm trees
in the distance, and the symphony plays on. I sit alone by the water, both prey
and predator. Along the edge of the swamp, in the darkness of the oncoming dusk
steps a creature. She moves without making a sound. The jaguar leaves nothing
but soft footprints behind her as she lurks, a secret queen. She listens to the
song of the wetlands, and stairs me right in the eye. She knows, she knows the
story of the universe, she knows the story of me. Her spots are the mark of her
ancestors, the scars of her evolution. She crouches to the ground and I can
feel her spirit, for I am learning the language of the jungle. She knows all,
she stairs me in the eye, and then, she disappears. The sun is gone and the
moon begins to rise in the east. Tonight it is colored orange and is perfectly
round. It sends the intense heat of day and his companions to bed and calls to
awaken the creatures of the night. I begin to walk, the symphony has ended and I
have taken what I can from its ancient knowledge.
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Thursday, July 16, 2015
how do i fix it?
I stood online waiting to check my
bag for my flight. It was taking a very long time, as things often do in Latin
America, and I felt a shiver go down my spine as I thought of a man in need of
charity. Earlier that day I had not intended to come home, and here I was,
headed back to the giant head of the snake that is imperialism. And as I stood
there, waiting for someone to weigh my bag I thought of a man I had seen on the
street that day in La Paz. His feet were swollen, and he wore sandals that were
breaking in the frozen winter nights of the city. His eyes were squinted shut
and he bumped into things as he waddled from one point to the other. Life was
clearly punishing him, life had decided that this old man in his years of old
age would suffer, and be tortured by the evils of inopportunity. This mans
crime? He was born a slave, one of the people who are captive to the corruption
of their own government and the government of the United States. This mans
crime, is that he is not important enough for anyone to give a shit. This man
will be cold tonight, his shoes could not protect his broken and infected feet,
and I was going back to the death star, the head of the snake, the country that
is exploiting and ignoring this man.
I have been home for a few days now
and I am having some trouble rationalizing why the amount of wealth in the
world is spread so thin in some places and yet layered so thick in others. The butter
that is wealth has failed to melt into a more even layer. It is as if we do not
understand that the world has globalized, but we are so connected. We speak
something like 5 or 6 languages all over the world; we listen to Katy Perry and
Pitbull all over the world. Everyone knows who Obama is, everyone knows who
Kanye West is. The world does not exist as a place separated by oceans or
mountains anymore; we exist as one globe, as one people. We must forget the
labels we have clung to for centuries in order to remember that we are
connected. Let labels like, black or white or native die, let labels like man
and woman die, we must remember something that I think we all have forgotten,
we are all one people, human people.
The CIA assassinated Che Guevara in 1967, do you know who Che
Guevara is? You may have seen him on a t-shirt, you may have seen him painted
on a wall and you may not have known it was an image of freedom and equality. You may
own something with him on it and be apart of the disease he tried so hard to
fight off. “The powerful of the earth should take heed: deep inside that
t-shirt where we have tried to trap him, the eyes of Che Guevara are still burning
with impatience” –Ariel Dorfman. The CIA assassinated Che in 1967 in Bolivia; do
you know why? Because he tried to fight for the man without shoes, because he
wanted the United States of America to stop exploiting the people of the world.
He wanted them to stop using the human brothers and sisters from places like
the Congo or Cuba in a game with the soviets. He wanted the people of the rest
of America to have a fighting shot at a good life. and we killed him. we killed
him and hid his body in a ditch with many other men. We killed a good man, who
only wanted to change the world. And do you know what he said when the men came
to kill him? “shoot, coward, your only going to kill a man.” Maybe Che’s
revolution is over, but he is not truly dead, and hope remains.
The American dream, the American disease. You will never be
happy until you own all the stuff in the world. Capitalism, an economic system
of greed that will never buy you happiness. The world is an unfair place, and
our government wont allow for the world to improve. The government is supposed
to be by the people, for the people, but the people are enslaved. The citizens
of the empire are enslaved, enslaved by media, enslaved by greed; they are so
enslaved that they cannot see any of the richness in their lives. The people of
the world are enslaved, they are enslaved because they spend all year growing
fruit for the people in the north and they get two cents for it, meanwhile your
at whole foods paying someone 8 dollars for it. The system is broken, the man’s
feet are broken, and maybe we cannot fix it, but Che believed we could. “I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people
liberate themselves.” –El Che So I faced a choice, as I stood online going home,
a choice that I will face again soon, what do I do? How do I reconcile where I
come from and where I have been? How do I fix it?
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Monday, June 29, 2015
Black on Black HIghtop converse
I sat in the portal of my tent, my home, and began putting my shoes on. As i did so i tried to
remember all the things that these shoes have come to know. These shoes have gone halfway
across a continent; and they have watched some spectacular things.
These shoes have sat on many buses,
looking out at the breathtaking beauty that is the Andes. They have slid along rocks in a crystal clear river in the jungle. They have gotten lost in
the canopy; they have watched monkeys fly through the trees. These sneakers, they have
known the western coastline at sunset and the fall of night in the desert. They
have climbed to see glaciers and crawled under electric fences. They have felt the earth breath underneath them and they have met the spirit of wachuma. They have danced
salsa with beautiful Peruvian men in a crowd full of people in celebration. They
have watched fireworks explode over a sacred place and conversed about
communism in a foreign language. They have touched disgusting floor, and been drenched
in the hot rain of the tropics. They have seen the sun set on mountains of sand
and listened as every noise in the dark echoed larger than life against the
dunes. They have seen both good luck and bad. They have crossed mountains and
picked coffee. They have hung inches from the floor as they rode across a
beautiful wasteland on a tiny motorcycle. They
have stayed on my feet through freezing cold and smoldering heat. My shoes have
stories that they could tell you, they have many things to say. They have
gotten lost, and found themselves in a place where the locals did not expect
them. They have received gifts from strangers, simply to welcome them to Peru. My
shoes, they have seen a woman without a home cry in thanks for less than four
dollars. They have seen cows take over roads and horses escape from their
stables. They have watched mist rise as the sun came up above Machu Picchu. They have walked across a dirt floor,
scattered with hundreds of guinea pigs and listened to a woman laugh and
discuss her life and culture. They have watched the world turn as they
conversed with Willie Nelson’s nephew. They have shaken with fear as a truck drove along the very edge of a mountain.
My shoes have gotten dirty. They have been
worn away in certain places, they have grown tired of walking and left blisters
on my feet, but oh could they tell you a story.
Friday, May 8, 2015
The Andes, they'll leave you breathless
"Whereas the beautiful is limited the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt" -Kant
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