The Artists Liberal

I'm involved in a new project collaborating with some of my fellow Butler graduates. We're writing a news blog.  Find fiction and reporting and creative commentary all arising out of the liberal arts tradition. New(s) articulations. See us at http://theliberalartist.org/.

Ethnographic Perspectives on Laxyuup Gitxaala

The following is a paper I presented at the American Anthropological Association annual meeting in Montreal. November 2011.

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The question is easy: What are the changes undergone in archaeology under a collaborative setting, and why is it worth it? Experience speaks for itself in the moment, but the following is a representation of the transformation undergone in archaeology as experiences across time and space collide in the field.

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Part I: Katrena Leslie
Here is Katrena Leslie, our platform upon which we moved and lived across the water in the Gitxaala territory. And the boat floats, it bobs up and down, it rolls and leans. The people on board do as well, some tossed more violently than they expect, others lulled to sleep, and a few lulled to sickness. But Katrena Leslie is not inert, she is not some welded piece of steel propelled by diesel. She takes on as many roles are there are persons on board. She is a table around which planning and meals are shared at once. She is a location, central and mobile, pivotal in her role as mediator between perspectives and goals. And she is our guide, her belly full, like a well-packed backpack, of tools and data, books and food. And with her at our sides we were able to move through the territory, finding and visiting and experiencing disparate sites of knowledge with her as our constant. Katrena Leslie, she helped us see, from top to bottom, accumulated ways of knowing, oral histories beneath the ground, and caked on all our faces, evidence of having been and having done, and having seen.

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Part II: Lach Klan

So now we start moving across the territory. We begin as I did in Lach Klan, the village, the central home of the Gitxaala First Nation. And we, all of us involved, have been here, walked upon the anthropogenic deposits upon which the houses of our hosts and friends sit and have sat for many years. The island landscape is the space we navigate, but no matter how far we wander in kilometres and miles, we are never far from the village. Though physically inhabiting distinct geographic space, we are transported, in moments, far from the active practice of archaeology. The flat leaves of devil’s club are reminders, opaque windows through which the beam of the total station travels in space back to the people who call this home. The leaves and bushes and fallen trees were reminders of our purpose, to supplement a way of knowing. In these moments and otheres we carried Gitxaala in our pockets, as the global positioning handhelds might well have been called Gitxaala Position Systems. Anthropology and Gitxaala are old acquaintances, but now become more and more colleagues as their components are at once and always moving and contributing to what makes up the Laxyuup Gtixaala.

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Part III: Mapping

And we mapped, oh how we mapped. Got it. Yep. Got it. Face the prism toward me. Level? Let’s shoot in the next station. And so on across the sites.

Each laser beam from the total station a vision, each vision a point. The maps are a living, yawning thing, moving point to point across a landscape big or small. I learned on a skiff one evening from my friend Greg, that the people used to navigate their ocean routes moving point to point. Each point a point of reference. And so it is with topography, each point a way of visiting and remembering a place. And each map is a record of visiting, a physical (or digital) memory of a place, and a reference for the future. To map, for us, is to situate ourselves. Like a spider we stretch a web across a landscape, each point drawing us closer and closer to an understanding. Manufacturing an artifcatual world, a base upon which to live our work.

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Part IV: Practice

Let’s move to the real meat of it now. The practice of archaeology. The object of study, the culture area, the regional specialization. Archaeology takes place upon the map, upon the land, upon the anthropogenic evidence of time immemorial. Each percussion core, each ping an intrusion into the past. Archaeologists are time travelers, which is not to be cliché, but rather literal. Far from fiction, the practicing archaeologist, with each scrape of a trowel, passes from the present into the past and back again. It is the hermeneutic. It is the empirical.

But to examine what is empirical, is to get at that experience of discovery, of finding and unearthing. In examining the empirical in collaborative archaeology I find we are never confined solely to a square. We are never so myopic as to see only the silt in the screen. Nor are our practices so confined. Far from specialized we are mappers, and collectors, we are excavators and screeners, we are finders and fishers, explorers in residence, we are the makers of fires and pies. We are the screen tossers and the joke tellers. And some of us are less graceful than others. We are all these things at once, amalgamations, characters inhabiting a plot we write ourselves.

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Part V: Fishing

What better after a long day of swallowing flies than a fresh-boiled crab? Nothing. Except maybe halibut stew. And so we come to fishing. We come to the anecdotal, the fantastical stories of halibuts reeled in by hand. The personal feats of touching live crabs. The unsure looks of a man tasting urchin goo for the first time. Fishing, and stories about fishing, occupied a primary space alongside Katrena Leslie. Indeed it enveloped us from all angles. Each return to the kitchen was the beginning of a rising tide of fishing stories. And once again, as water seeps through the stones of a fish trap, the fishing stories permeate our lives and experience. We are transported in time, suddenly glimpsing and embodying bits of practices ancient. Five more minutes of five thousand years of history played out on Katrena’s decks and with our hands. Not ethnoarchaeology, not experimental archaeology, the collaborative is experiential archaeology. Katrena hosted the sea creatures upon her deck and there we mingled, learning names and gaining insight into character. Names and knowledges we’d carry with us into the excavation units, into the auger’s bucket and into the corer’s tube.

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Part VI: Midden

Fish eaten and bones discarded. Shells picked clean and crushed underfoot. Such is the creation of midden. Midden, the heap upon heap of heaping helpings of human being. The excavation units come alive with it. Shells pouring out of the walls and clacking as they hit the ground. But the fishing allows a new vision. The shells, the shapes, the hues, the sizes are all suddenly familiar. They are not discard but living and slimy and revealing ways of life that have come and gone and stayed. Surely we cannot uncover a salmon bone without tasting tasty sockeye. Same goes for urchins. And as our vision becomes embodied in our tongues, so too does it become refined. Slowly, like eyes adjusting to the dark, a collaborative vision is born in archaeological practice.

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Part VII: Abalone

Enter abalone, iridescent, shimmering and shapely. The shell of value, the shell of controversy. The shell now supplementing understandings of statistical significance. Abalone lives deep in the archaeological and Gitxaala imagination. It crawls upon the wet rocks and hides. But there are those with vision good enough to see. They bring experience, they bring memory and practice and a pinch of good luck to these places normally unseen. In our case the underground. Each fragment of shell that emerged from Ks’waan was another piece of evidence tying together the labour of archaeology, the land we worked on and the fishing practiced. EU NS1 filled to the brim with abalone shells, overflowing and soon filling the house basin. Work slowed and was never the same. We saw, we learned, we experienced and we found. Surely such experience cannot be insignificant.

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Part VIII: Transformation

Archaeology has undergone transformation in Laxyuup Gitxaala. Like salmon running we’ve been pooled and trapped behind the stone walls of an archaeological feature. The Gitxaala have created the world, shaped it and know it intimately. In collaboration we come to inhabit it, swim around and move from border to border. When the tide rises we can drift out and away and come back again. When the tide is out all we know is intersection between ourselves and others. The stories told in collective gatherings, around shared meals follow us into the field where they articulate with the same landscape we ourselves interact with.

And all this upon the platform. The platform its own feature upon which experience is free to transcend the person, the work and the memory.

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My thanks to the Gitxaala Nation for allowing us to visit and work in their traditional, unceded territory. This research made possible by Charles Menzies and the Laxyuup Gitxaala 2011 summer team: Greg, Teddy, Russ, Naomi, Kenzie, Kisha and Andrew. Thank you all for your participation and a fun summer.

Arriving

Welcome to the Northwest, where eagles sing and scream, where sea planes soar over harbors and the greenest greens you've ever seen tower over towns. 

I've arrived here for fieldwork. To head out into remoteness, to dig, to talk and to think. This thing we do, anthropologists, this thing called research is an interesting place to visit. Apart and strange, outside the university the researcher is a baffling presence; hailing from far away places, transient, lonely, with vague purposes even remoter.

Arrival is process, one of making place, making a place. All beginnings are arrivals.Arrival is the beginning of the creation of memories. Memories that come to construct the familiar.

Arrival is experience. Touch and feel and sense; new smells of ocean and the sounds of eagles flapping. Seeing, becoming part of landscape by contributing to it, by taking it in, literally embodying. Arrival is moving and pausing. 

I've arrived here, in the Northwest, ready again to set out anew. To the ocean, to floating scapes of sea and land and group. I'm here to see how archaeology arrives, by boat and plane and skiff. By tool and question and boot. By poetic narrative, perhaps. Tonight archaeology arrives and tomorrow it stays and the day after it leaves again. My job is to see and experience and write it.

Listen:

On the Future of Anthropology

Almost three and a half years ago I wrote an entry on this very blog describing my thoughts on the value of anthropology in the future. This entry, On the Future and Anthropology, is one of the biggest sources of traffic to my blog. Evidently many people around the world search for the terms future and anthropology.

Since then the character of the blog has changed nearly as much as the thoughts and experiences inside me. And I feel obligated to offer some updates with regards to the role and future of anthropology.

My feelings on the state of the world and the values that anthropology has to offer have not changed significantly. Anthropology has precisely the nuanced, worldly perspectives which can give important meaning and insight into contentious issues of human rights, violent conflict, capitalist ethics and the like. The future and anthropology are almost certainly well suited for each other.

However, the future of anthropology is far less certain. I've now been a student of anthropology for nearly six academic years and this past year has made something abundantly clear to me: anthropology spends its days around the world learning things, but sleeps with its head in its ass.

Since the original post I've entered a graduate program and anthropology and I am undergoing the academic and professional training of its future practitioners. I have found that as graduate students we are not taught how to write, how to teach, how to engage, how to listen or even how to speak. We are instead taught how to become effective and tactical academics, working to succeed in an academic system that almost any professor will say is broken.

As students, we learn to write for publication and not for an audience. We learn that presentations are venues to place information in front of an audience, instead of presenting it to them. We learn that teaching is a form of employment and a hassle conflicting with what our truer academic goals should be. And we take these lessons and apply them in classrooms full of young undergraduate students. And we take these lessons and apply them to our own classrooms full of our peers. And we take these lessons to anyone we know who might, for a minute, entertain a masturbatory exposition on the theoretical context of our research.

This is only one experience and it is not intended to reflect on the abilities and motives of my colleagues, professors or mentors. It is also likely that other departments better emphasize the possibilities of contribution in anthropology, or at the very least, the encouragement of innovation. However, I must at once place blame on the individuals as well as the structures. We are agents, each day making decisions to contribute, create or re-create.

Professional anthropologists complain of the stigma attached to writing for popular audiences, but do not confront it. They sit bored to tears in graduate seminars listening to bright students drone on illustrating an astounding ability to retain and comprehend (without contributing to knowledge), but they do not change the format. They endlessly pour over poorly written term papers, but do not teach writing.

They complain and wait for tenure honestly, I think, expecting to change the system when they have the clout. But to change the system whilst sitting atop its structure would place careers and standings in jeopardy. Change will not come from the top, it will not come in time.

There are glimmers of hope, those individuals who would demand that we find a voice before all else. And it is precisely a voice that anthropology needs to find. Not a unified voice necessarily, but one that is spoken clearly. Not an applied voice necessarily, but one that engages. Not a popular voice necessarily, but one that appreciates an audience.

As a musician, an artist and, perhaps, a scholar, I have come to recognize the role that performance plays in every day of life. Writing a term paper is a performance. Writing a journal article is a performance. Presenting a paper is a performance. Teaching is a performance. Celebrating with colleagues is a performance.

Performances do not need to be perfect. In fact, it is the imperfections which make them lively and real. Their value lies in creating a shared space of communication, translation, listening and reflection; what have I heard and seen, what have I learned and taught, what have I created and how have I shared it?

Anthropology needs to learn to perform instead of present. To create instead of write. To engage instead of teach. As students we should demand a change in vocabulary and expectations to follow. If anthropology can do these things, if we can do these things, then the discipline will have a bright future. If we cannot, then anthropology might as well stay where it is.

Obscura

sitting back in the blackness, pupils wide as pennies, the spring breeze blows the trees. and the classroom shudders.

Turbine

Regarding Dog Shit

Beat

The Waveland

So it went.

...

Beneath the surface, moisture started pouring into the corpse. First, after a few days of rain, the soil saturated, the wooden box began to warp. And mud and worms and the occasional critter discovered this tasty trove. And they ate of its meaty parts. And the they defecated on the corpse. And soon, what was still left of the corpse was plump and crawling with bacteria. The eyes fell apart and holes opened up throughout the torso exposing the empty cavity where the organs had once lived. Nothing went to waste, some was eaten and what was not simply decayed more and more until it was no longer flesh, or goo, but soil. And this was the story of all pieces of this once-was person, from being to corpse, to goo, to ooze, to soil. The bones took much longer. And trees pushed roots through the cavity to disassemble the skeleton until no recognizable order could be found.

Eventually, nothing was left except fertile soil and compost. And that was that.

Tee Vee

Informed by Informing Information

Listen, I really don't get any joy when I come across indications that to be "American" is to be blatantly uninformed and reactionary, but I come across them all too often of late. No, I get it, all media has its slant and a line of people somewhere in the US is not, in and of itself, suggesting a plague of ignorance. But, there's something else at work here; that those people interviewed in the line who claimed they couldn't think of anything off hand (but might be able to research it) really wouldn't be able to create valid arguments because they simply don't have the resources.

Take, for instance, the new breast cancer screening regulations. And consider an example of the outrage that followed. Despite the fact that Sarah Palin's death panels were non-existence, this was seen by many as an act of rationing care; that the social/commun/lenin/mao/ists are corrupting America with big government legislation which is out to kill women to save money in order to provide healthcare to the illegals. Now, I spent about 20 minutes looking through not stories on the guidelines but the published report itself. I'm not doctor, and parts of it are hard to simply skim, but its not too difficult to see that the changes aren't earth-shattering, and (if you look at the previous reports) not unprecedented. Basically, this panel concluded, in tandem with the World Health Organization and other groups, that the risks of regular mammography in women in their 40s could not be overtly justified by the committee and should be left to the individuals and doctors.

The language is hardly absolute and inflammatory, yet the reaction is visceral. I see two reasons for this, first that breast cancer is a widespread, personal and highly emotional condition/issue for people who suffer and families that lose those people. A great deal of the reporting is clouded with testimonies of those who's lives were saved by a mammogram at age 40, or a mother who could have been saved had she been to regular screenings. Surely the human interest aspects of news are important, they make us care about issues that might otherwise seem foreign, but we cannot let emotional reaction prevent us from reading reports critically. I mean, if you read a news story that says doctors are suggesting that you do the opposite of what you know saved a friends life, wouldn't you attempt to figure out exactly what it was the doctors said? I tend to investigate those things that seem illogical to me.

Compounding this is the healthcare debate. The conservative zealots and politicians in the pockets of the insurance industry would do anything and everything to prevent passing any reform. Anything that even hints at some sort of change is painted as being forced upon us and destroying the America we love. Of course this has nothing to do with the actual science, the understanding of the science, or the value of human life but of campaign donations and political ideology. The result, I think, was a discourse fed by emotion and outrage in which people didn't have time to read the actual language; most were too busy writing witty and biting remarks to those that did not find the guidelines distasteful.

More recently, science was thrust into media debate again. Apparently, emails from an institution devoted to studying climate change were stolen. And, apparently these emails suggest that we are witness to the largest scientific conspiracy in the history of the age of enlightenment. ClimateGate. Scientists are corrupt, hiding data, spinning results and "tricking" the world into believe that humans are having an impact on global ecology. As to the details of what would drive scientists to do this, I am at a loss. I have not reviewed these thousands of emails myself yet, but the snippets I have read show some geeky scientist humor and discussion of problems facing climate scientists. Either this is just science being science, or this is evidence that the existence of global warming is still up for debate. Time to freak out.

To me this shows me what I already knew about science from reading Bruno Latour's Science in Action and studying an archaeological field school. Science is not pretty, its done by people who have their own motives and friends and enemies. Quote Gavin Schmitd in the NYT,

“Science doesn’t work because we’re all nice,” said Gavin A. Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA whose e-mail exchanges with colleagues over a variety of climate studies were in the cache. “Newton may have been an ass, but the theory of gravity still works.”

Now what he may have failed to mention is that Newtown's hypothetical jackassery likely made theoretical gravity what it is. There might be a lot of evidence to support climate change, but correlations alone do not a scientific movement make. We need to find the correlations and test them and believe them and tell others in order to make them true. I have said before that I think science is misunderstood by many who simply accept its authority. If you send a bunch of white men to college for a really long time and then they write long papers with big words, you're likely to believe what they have to say, especially because their really smart friends also believe them.

But science and medicine are human constructs and human practices. As such they are imperfect, and this goes beyond the whole test, retest and suggest tests for the future thing. The idea of pure fact, of the truth about climate change, is always going to be seen through a fallible, human lens. We cannot simply observe. We can only observe through our baggage, like the scientists who discuss, within their work-related emails, skeptics and journalists that complicate their lives.

Without going into a mini-version of my thesis, my point is that the coverage of events, and misunderstanding of what science is, lead to in this case, an inability for many to figure out what the hell was going on. If I might make make the elitist assumption that not all my fellow Americans are as unoccupied, investigative, cynical and academic as I am, I think I can safely say that John and Jane Doe, watching ABCs nightly news, would not go to such lengths as I have gone here to understand the debates. We find trusted sources, take them at their words, and are provided with convenient buzz words to utilize in discussions with our friends and family.

Unfortunately, that most of the country is simply fed info by their moving picture boxes is supported by the general sitgma of intellectuals, those rich elitists stuck in their books and out of touch with people. Though I experienced it in college, I find more and more in the "real" world that independent review and learning is scoffed at and ignored in the face of more palatable perspectives (those which incite the emotions). Thinking is generally unprofitable and a waste of money-making time and a lot of people won't make time for it. Thus, we find ourselves in a time when the Palin line counts as informed decision making.

A Rant of One Who Would Destroy America

Listen,

No really, listen:

You know how Glenn Beck talks about liberal leftists destroying America. This is what one really sounds like. SPOILER ALERT: I am an elitist and cynical, lefty hippie.

I seems that maybe Obama charmed his way to the White House following in the steps of George W. Bush. The biggest difference? Obama was legitimately elected, and no one wanted to have a beer with him; they just hoped that he would bring some progressive action to the presidency.

Sure it's too early to judge him as a president but it's not looking good. Take something like healthcare, quality and affordable healthcare. It seems he would let his own party not only butcher the concept of a public option into some meaningless, impotent moderate compromise, but he would also watch members of his own party threaten to block the bill the even coming to a vote. If I believed in a god, I would invoke its name and beg it to make Obama take a stand. I've seen nothing but pandering and inaction. If one really wants to close a secret torture center, one simply needs to close it. Instead, Obama offers nothing but waiting. Same with waging war. He continues to support the killing of human beings and recognizes an illegitimate Afghan leader. If you hate murdering humans, then simply take a courageous step, walk away and face the shame and ridicule that we fucked up. No, really. Finally, Gay rights have taken significant blows recently and Mr. Obama, who looked to be a friend of the LGBTQ community, a president who felt the need to support democrats in local elections, said nothing of the referendums on gay marriage and civil union.

We are not on good terms, him and me. His administration has been consumed of late with a debate with the standing on cable media, laying wreaths and with pandering to the right, the very people who didn't vote for him and oppose anything with his name on it. Here's how it works. Leaders lead, which means making decisions and taking actions that will get you criticism from your foes and your sell-out party members. I believed that Obama believed in what he said he believed in. So far, it seems he's on a one way street to sell-out-ville. But I am just a disgruntled liberal.

So, what of freedom and democracy and capitalism. Lies. At least in this current country. Freedom and equality are routinely denied to some at the hands of pseudo-democracy and capitalism. Listen, capitalism ensures the success of the rich and necessitates the plight of the poor. And its no mistake that the rich are married (though philandering) white men and the poor single black women. The American Dream is a fantasy that addicts the lower classes to a definition of success that demands materialism; own more stuff, be hotter stuff. But, then the middle classes need to own more stuff to out-stuff the lower class. Finally, profit, for the rich anyway, who own all the stuffs that the stuff-wanters want. This is all inherent in a system that places import upon certain types of personal wealth. Add in a side of corporate corruption and you have an exploitative invisible hand that crushes the masses while the top one percent suckle at its teat. Hello cynicism!

Democracy would suggest that these masses might have some leverage. Nope. Politicians are in the pocket of the one percent, if they themselves aren't in the one percent. Obama, or Nancy Pelosi, or Olympia Snowe might have had meager, down-home beginnings but they've arisen to such a class and success that they have no personal stake in what the public wants. The public, the masses, support a public option. Yet, at the hands of insurance lobbyists, many politicians will press the congress to produce a bill that has exactly the opposite. But surely the masses could simply vote out these corrupt leaders. Except the masses mostly believe they have to choose between the lesser of two evils and not someone who represents their interests. Independent and progressive candidates are painted as left or right wing wackos who speak their minds, express exactly what they mean and make no concessions (for shame!). This has gone on for so long that the public does not take advantage of its right to elect leaders. For once, the decisions of the public matter, their apathy declares that contemporary politics and American democracy is dying.

And now I'd like to take a moment and criticize my favorite target: the media. That mostly electronic outlet that offers only lies, sensationalism and advertising under the guise of some perverted form of journalism. All the fair and balanced television media offer nothing of value except opinion, which the majority of people take as news. And yes, I am playing the elitism card, if that card is recognizing that those with independent, critical minds are portrayed as out of touch, ivory towerists. I'm not suggesting that I have a better perspective, but simply utilizing what my perspective gives me, an ability to recognize other perspectives.

Furthermore the media dupes us with stories of celebrity drama, "reality" shows, and a fetishism of death. Routinely, stories of import to the state of American life, stories that reveal the lies of politicians and stories that give indication to the worrisome and problematic state of the world are ignored for sensationalist reporting, empty accusations and "human interest" reporting which gives us a nice fluffy feeling in our hearts. In short, we are trained to ignore politics, realist perspectives and sad stories with bad endings and trained to consume and discuss sad stories with happy endings. The substance is left, then, to comedy shows which satirize the media and offer the only sane reaction to the state of things, laughter.

Also, people in the United States are routinely denied civil and human rights by a largely Christian, exclusionary paradigm. Gays cannot marry, gays are considered inherently sinful and shameful and somehow not normal, women are paid less, women are denied agency over their own bodies, immigrants are described as insidious invaders, Muslims are labeled as terrorists, blacks, by no coincidence, wind up most hampered by the capitalist system, state legislators routinely participate in state sanctioned murder, millions are denied rights to basic healthcare and I once got a parking ticket for parking in front of my own house. It's all fucked up.

And what is the solution? The collapse of capitalism followed by a humanist overthrow of the Christian, oppressive US government by the people. Realistically, I believe this would result in the dissolution of the United States and the establishment of new territories. Now, being the ardent and hopeless pacifist that I am and do not see violence as a necessary. I believe that the disenchantment of the people and a natural collapse of capitalism will throw these United States into such an identity crises that the current form of government and economic will be unable to stand. I believe it's happening now. Increasingly the wackos on all ends of the political spectrums are the only one's making sense. Even if their values conflict with my own, I find sanity in their ferocity to accomplish something in the face of the establishment.

Now I cannot predict the result. But I do believe that the America as we know it will fall and be remade. I believe that this will come down to a clash between secularism and religiosity. But, I hope, and here comes the utopia, that a state arises that promotes (in deliberate rejection of freedom and liberty and justice) tolerance and peace and humanism for all. This final thought, the naive utopia, is the only thing that gives me much hope these days as I become increasingly maddened and anxious and cynical at the hand of my overwhelming disillusionment.

Scientific Poetry

"I began with physical anthropology. I was taught how to measure the size of the brain of a human being who had been dead a long time, who was all dried out. I bored a hole in his skull, and I filled with grains of polished rice. Then I emptied the rice into a graduated cylinder. I found this tedious.

"I switched to archaeology, and I learned something I already knew: that man had been a maker and smasher of crockery since the dawn of time. And I went to my faculty advisor, and I confessed that science did not charm me, that I longed for poetry instead. I was depressed. I knew my wife and father would want to kill me if I went into poetry.

"My advisor smiled. 'How would you like to study poetry which pretends to be scientific?' he asked me.

"'Is such a thing possible?' I said.

"He shook my hand. 'Welcome to the field of social anthropology,' he said. He told me that Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead were already in it- and some sensitive gentlemen as well."

Kurt Vonnegut recounting anthropology at the University of Chicago

Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons

Musings on Trains

And the people come out of the small towns,

and the cows come out of the cow towns,

and the ghosts come out of the ghost towns,

to wave at the trains

speeding by their backyards

and barnyards

and ghost-yards.

Hi train. Bye train. Predictable as the sun and the moon,

the Empire Builder barrels down.

-------

Howard talks a lot;

It's hard to get a word in edgewise.

But who needs words and points?

When the green is growing as the mountains rise up.

And the valleys open-up revealing rivers flowing.

Scene-scapes flying past the panoramic glass,

And Howard knows it all.

-------

A Native American smuggled hooch on board at Havre.

North Dakota.

He shared and was generous,

but he got somewhat mad rather quickly.

He just wanted to meet people, here and in the towns.

To Glacier west he was headed.

He wanted to meet me.

He'd never see any of us again,

not me nor Harvey.

"Please, do this for me," he said,

brandishing the pint of cheap whisky.

The 4 P.M. sun shone through the bottle.

Just a little bit more.

I declined. Drunkenness in transit,

whilst in the midst of Montana

seems a perilous business.

He would do it, he says.

I had to go.

-------

I sat next to a little boy,

in blue pajama pants,

who liked to kiss his mom.

All the while she stared off into the distance.

She was looking for signs of life.

-------

I met an old man

whose son

had a daughter

who met the president.

Obama, that is.

He told me of the changing landscape in Ann Arbor.

And of playing the flute,

In the Army band,

In Germany,

For John F. Kennedy.

He told me of a man,

Who tore down a silo,

An old, old silo,

And used the wood,

Polished by years of falling grain,

To build floors.

He was on his way

to see his old college roommates

in 'Frisco.

--------

The sun lays down a silvery glaze o'er the ponds.

It is morning in North Dakota.

-------

When the lights go dim,

the noises come out.

Creeks and rattles and clicks.

And clacks.

Listen: there's an eerie horn,

sounding as a ghost in the distance.

-------

Standing in my bare feet,

on a train platform,

in St. Paul.

I stretch my legs.

Spontaneity in The Lounge Car

I spent this evening singing softly. With newfound friends. On a ukulele a she-hippie did strum and I tapped a drum, homemade, sometimes brushing.

And our song rose and fell and reached its climax through meows and yelps and rolling tongues.

And there were no words, but the words were sung and some words were barely words at all.

And the melody drifted up and down a single arpeggio, inspired by a single string. With harmonies and rounds and reiterations bursting through spontaneity.

And Spontaneity. Randomly joining and listening and laughing. Feeling goosebumps as madness drifts to order and back again.

And its all music. Bringing us together in all that we have to share. Without names or stories or destinations we share. Music. Spontaneity. Travel and the Train.

And we've only been rolling a few hours. On this Iron Horse, the Empire Builder, crossing this majesty which is crumbling.

And we share our humanity. Whatever that is. Hard to define, but nonetheless lived out in our clamorous music. A strum, a chord, a rattle and a word coming together by chance on the train traveling through time and space, and the moon rocks with our song in the sky. And Ani keeps ringing in my head.

And we all crane our necks as la luna, she rises and casts here silver carpet upon the Columbia at twilight. And it falls to our feet. And we can step off this Empire Builder, through the empire and into worlds that have yet to be built and that are haphazardly built to some wild perfection and pass fluidly into some shared oblivion, like water into steam, which permeates the air and thickens the air and the community and condenses on the walls and runs down the walls and pools upon the mighty hooves of our iron horse. To fertilize and bring new life come the morrow.

And this is the train. And this is travel. And this is why I left and had to go back and will soon leave again.

And I write:

"Spokane. Take me as I am.

On this nostalgic car

Hurtling through a dark abyssive void,

going and coming and roaming and going

And moving, with no way of knowing.

And a girl strums softly on a ukulele.

And outside, in the window,

beyond my reflection,

there is only blackness.

And a line separating the lighter from the darker,

separating rolling hills from tree tufts.

And I watch the moon wandering in the window.

Back and forth, as right and left

its lunar wandering, meandering.

Whilst witness to this celestial dance,

soft conversation ebbs and peaks and murmers.

We fly back in time,

the moon following.

On this nostalgic car,

the train at night."

And I dream of a life on these tracks. In my own private car, living on the rails. Passing through city after city, meeting these travelers, munching nuts from foreign lands and digging it. Playing music and sharing. And sharing.

The Journey.

Disdain.

Where is the voice of my generation?

It floats above, or below

in some indecipherable shape.

And so much comes between us.

So much that I hate.

I know nothing but disdain

it seems these days.

So much of the identity of our generation seems based on the left or the right. The either, or. The bipolar, dualistic character of contemporary politics. So divided are we that the call for reaching across this "aisle" seems futile. Any halfwit with an average wingspan can reach across an aisle. It's a given, small step for a (hu)man and a small step for (hu)mankind. My disdain spans this aisle, and it is no great accomplishment.

This disdain is not of intellect or politics. It is one directed towards anything that prevents us from seeing some common human familyhood. So far, our generation, in the face of a global (online) culture and global (climatological) threats, has resisted the call to accept the human. Focusing instead on aisles.

Get over it. Shake hands, hug, or simply smile at one another. There is no right, there is no wrong. No heaven and hell. Just make the most of it while you can. Or else we'll end up as a laughable reiteration.

Sunset in Suburbia

Listen: See those rosy reddish wisps,

wafting shapelessly in some summer's swansong.

Asea as aimless

Rem'nants of exhalation.

See familiar figures.

Silhouetted steel streetlights seem strangely sad.

Forlorn e'en ghosts bowing heavy heads.

Carrying some human shame manifest.

Casting an artificial, lifeless, pale gaze,

as we commute below.

Such contrast

Here in suburbia.

This dismal sprawl of marching urbanity.

Here horizons become more concrete;

Squarish sedimentary frames.

The wisps are gone.

We the Godless

We the Godless, often struck wordless: God bless you, God willing, God speed, Thank God, God damn it, Good God, I swear to God, For the love of God, My God, God forbid.

We the Godless, Expressionless.

We the Godless, Without morality. Apparently. For God created all that is good and all that turned evil, and to be Godless is to be liminal. Betwixt and between all. Here we hunt alone, for things and people and goodness that is unattainable to us.

Here we hunt, liminal.

We the Godless, Stateless. In senses figurative and literal, for these United States under God have no room for us. And as the Babe was born in squalor of yore, so do we find our Godless, harmless, intellects shunned into settings poor.

We are evil. Immoral. Cysts on society sound. Or so we are told.

We are sick and derranged. Sinners doomed to eternal sufferings. Or so we are told.

We are naive and cowards. Fearful of His wrath. We deny Him outright, blind to his outreach. Fools. Or so we are told.

We are corrupt and profane. Rapists, murderers, scourges. We are atheists. Or so we are told.

Ad nauseum, mind you, we are told.

In person, in words blunt and brutal. Or hints passive and aggressive. Or by means of subtle looks. Through billboards and by exclusion from religious expectations.

We the Godless, Unimagineable to some.

We are poor, helpless, foolish, lost little lambs. Baah. We the sheep, sans sheperd. We need saving. We need to see some grace, just a trip to mass, just a book of the bible, sometimes just a verse. Or so we are told.

These things we are told. These things are cast upon us. And only in irony does one accept these accusations. If there is a true collective godless identity it is a tolerant one. A thought full one.

We the godless, Inherently contemplative.

Nevermind the crimes committed in His name. Crusades and murders and rapes to the Holy Land and back to Rome. Bombs dropped by godful presidents of now and then.

Nevermind the deliberate outcasting by the righteous godful who refuse to look or recognize possibility.

Nevermind that we are meant to live in fear, silence and in perpetual moments awkward.

Friendless, Unrespected, Untrusted. Hated.

We the godless, Hated.

For what? For nothing. For actions neither passive nor aggressive. For seeing. For sight neither righter nor wronger. For appreciating people and those things that are good and beautiful and bad and ugly. For experiencing human life.

We the godless. Guilty for seeing, appreciating and experiencing.

We the godless. Human. And guilty of it.

On the airborne exploits of my dreams

I spend my nights dreaming

of things really real.

Fuck the fantastical.

I don't fly, I fall.

(If I'm mid-air at all.)