tomorrow i will be sore.
many things to report.
first, it's good to see this guy back at it. to those of you whom i have promised call-and-response communication via email or letter, all apologies. also you, individual, to whom i pledged feedback on your 3rd person fictional travel memoir, i ask for your patience. i have been traveling.
1) Eastern Montana is a state of mind. The mountain ranges in the rearview mirror give rise to the feeling that elevated thoughts and moods must be self-manufactured, rather than refracted from the landscape. I hiked up a hill/mountain today, I wheezed up it, sweated, huffed, made peace with two deer who couldn't see me once I stopped moving and couldn't smell me with the prevailing wind, and I whooped once I got to the top of this hill/mountain. From its summit, the Pintlar/Anaconda range looked it could be caressed. Spring has arrived. The deer I encountered, with whom I exchanged meaningful glances and reflective gestures (ears pushed forward, mouth chewing grass, big dark eyes waiting for me to move), can go as high as need be now that the snow melt on this particular hill/mountain has passed. The rivers are up, the birds are singing, the little baby calves are frolicking, the dead carcasses of various are growing ranker (more rank? someone please advise) by the day . . . you know the deal: spring grants a certain focus to things.
But eastern Montana, on the other hand, is scrub grass and pronghorn, long stretches of road that enhance the solitude of being in a car by offering up no other cars, and of course the meandering hills that roll up and down and always remind me of a piece of toilet paper folded loosely on itself.
This is why I went east this weekend (Labre = La-bray.) I am now employed here, at this school, which is located just off the Northern Cheyenne reservation and come into being before the reservation was "created." Say what you will about injustice and good intentions paving the road to hell, this concept of "reservation" is right up there with the most ignoble ideas we humans have foisted upon each other. Anyway . . .
2) The Rez.
I am no expert, but the ennui and suburban navel-gazing, the comfort and green grass security, the utter sameness (which is an illusion - all suburbs are different, they just recall those stale "desperate housewives" "the corrections" "American Beauty" evocations in my mind that made me think that a local hardcore band called Floodplain was the nearest thing to salvation my sixteen year old, lust-filled heart could grasp) of much of Middle America is not a myth when applied to subdivision suburbs, but holds no descriptive purchase when applied to the old dying towns that live, and will eventually die, in the same region. Each town is its own thing, comprised of constitutive characteristics that elide first gazes because of their very Heidegerrian thingness.
To me, though, for reasons that have varied historically, the idiosyncrasy of small towns has only become real and apparent. I like cities, and I like small towns: I like living in small towns long enough to walk in a bar and have a bottle of Budweiser put down in front of me, because that's what I drink, and the person the bar knows this. I like (well, fuck - I'll quit waxing faux poetic about this, because the point is that I'm done with small towns for now - I am moving on to the Rez, a more complex social aggregate whose very ontological fabric is other to me) well I like a change here and there. And so I go, not quite sure what the fuck is going to happen and knowing for certain that I need to stop cussing, keep the beard closely cropped, and stay out of bars for the time being unless I want my tires slashed or worse. There are cars piled up outside of trailers, tepees, and of course the viewer is prejudiced, magnifying things that do not matter in the long run and ignoring the very vital, very realized factoids that pyramid together for the purpose of ascendance.
These are all good changes, not made out of desperation but reflection conducted within a distinct awareness that I am swinging at something I cannot see, hoping to connect. Believe what you will, of course, about fate and destiny and the machinations of intestinal fortitude rendered in stark relief within the malleable surface on which your eyes feast: we do make choices, and we do face consequences, but in certain instances we make choices blind, in good faith and opaque light. So. That is the news. Thank you and goodnight.
first, it's good to see this guy back at it. to those of you whom i have promised call-and-response communication via email or letter, all apologies. also you, individual, to whom i pledged feedback on your 3rd person fictional travel memoir, i ask for your patience. i have been traveling.
1) Eastern Montana is a state of mind. The mountain ranges in the rearview mirror give rise to the feeling that elevated thoughts and moods must be self-manufactured, rather than refracted from the landscape. I hiked up a hill/mountain today, I wheezed up it, sweated, huffed, made peace with two deer who couldn't see me once I stopped moving and couldn't smell me with the prevailing wind, and I whooped once I got to the top of this hill/mountain. From its summit, the Pintlar/Anaconda range looked it could be caressed. Spring has arrived. The deer I encountered, with whom I exchanged meaningful glances and reflective gestures (ears pushed forward, mouth chewing grass, big dark eyes waiting for me to move), can go as high as need be now that the snow melt on this particular hill/mountain has passed. The rivers are up, the birds are singing, the little baby calves are frolicking, the dead carcasses of various are growing ranker (more rank? someone please advise) by the day . . . you know the deal: spring grants a certain focus to things.
But eastern Montana, on the other hand, is scrub grass and pronghorn, long stretches of road that enhance the solitude of being in a car by offering up no other cars, and of course the meandering hills that roll up and down and always remind me of a piece of toilet paper folded loosely on itself.
This is why I went east this weekend (Labre = La-bray.) I am now employed here, at this school, which is located just off the Northern Cheyenne reservation and come into being before the reservation was "created." Say what you will about injustice and good intentions paving the road to hell, this concept of "reservation" is right up there with the most ignoble ideas we humans have foisted upon each other. Anyway . . .
2) The Rez.
I am no expert, but the ennui and suburban navel-gazing, the comfort and green grass security, the utter sameness (which is an illusion - all suburbs are different, they just recall those stale "desperate housewives" "the corrections" "American Beauty" evocations in my mind that made me think that a local hardcore band called Floodplain was the nearest thing to salvation my sixteen year old, lust-filled heart could grasp) of much of Middle America is not a myth when applied to subdivision suburbs, but holds no descriptive purchase when applied to the old dying towns that live, and will eventually die, in the same region. Each town is its own thing, comprised of constitutive characteristics that elide first gazes because of their very Heidegerrian thingness.
To me, though, for reasons that have varied historically, the idiosyncrasy of small towns has only become real and apparent. I like cities, and I like small towns: I like living in small towns long enough to walk in a bar and have a bottle of Budweiser put down in front of me, because that's what I drink, and the person the bar knows this. I like (well, fuck - I'll quit waxing faux poetic about this, because the point is that I'm done with small towns for now - I am moving on to the Rez, a more complex social aggregate whose very ontological fabric is other to me) well I like a change here and there. And so I go, not quite sure what the fuck is going to happen and knowing for certain that I need to stop cussing, keep the beard closely cropped, and stay out of bars for the time being unless I want my tires slashed or worse. There are cars piled up outside of trailers, tepees, and of course the viewer is prejudiced, magnifying things that do not matter in the long run and ignoring the very vital, very realized factoids that pyramid together for the purpose of ascendance.
These are all good changes, not made out of desperation but reflection conducted within a distinct awareness that I am swinging at something I cannot see, hoping to connect. Believe what you will, of course, about fate and destiny and the machinations of intestinal fortitude rendered in stark relief within the malleable surface on which your eyes feast: we do make choices, and we do face consequences, but in certain instances we make choices blind, in good faith and opaque light. So. That is the news. Thank you and goodnight.
posted by am at
9:34 PM
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