the pelican

Sunday, September 24, 2006

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 15:44 | link | comments (6) |

Comments:

#1 24 September 2006 - 17:19

You paint an amazingly beautiful picture. I have been in most of the places you name and love revisiting them through your eyes and words. Thanks.

mafidl

#2 25 September 2006 - 02:35

I, too, know these places and feel sorry for the mindless alterations and thefts carried out against them.

behindtheblink

#3 25 September 2006 - 03:54

Beautiful and loving portrait. Thank you for sharing.

InMyLife

#4 25 September 2006 - 07:08

Me too, all of those places. I remember loving Canyonlands so much, taking a week long hike in the park and leaving the projecticle points I found, perfectly intact, knowing that another visitor after me would probably scoop them up and pocket them.