273. dreams and visions
from Hungabee
from the sheer
south face of
(near
rising high above
the Great Divide
June 20-22, 1971
First Day
An inventory
reveals that these are the possessions I have amassed since
around the time of the Crack-Up: camping gear; Chipewyan’s
pemmican; sundry papers; notebooks from the past; mosquito
repellent; a high-powered auto flashlight Rev would take
with him everywhere in his blue Buick Electra, which I
thanklessly un-amassed him; a white starched and pressed
doctor’s coat and stethoscope; 00000 catgut and nylon
suturing; surgeon’s scissors; the World Book
Encyclopedia Vol. ‘M’; four issues of ‘National
Geographic’ containing articles on Canada’s Northwest; a
sleeping bag worn through at rump and feet; a French horn
that toots false for missing a precious valve, which I
un-amassed my very own self also for good reason; pots and
pans; no, I left them with the old man; Canadian Government
brochures on Banff and Yoho parks; old mementos from college
and afar; several sundry and heavily intellectual books; a
little cash I found in one of them; a motel but no car; a
pile of other stuff; and an altered and more loved form of
my old self.
From this I have
created an idea world in which time moves in two ways at
once, from past to present (old notebooks), and present to
future (this year’s writing), i.e., in which the author,
while absorbing past and present, real and imaginary,
launches himself into an improved future whole and intact
and preferably reborn.
....................
First Dream from
Hungabee
The
author-dreamer becomes increasingly exuberant until he is
unintelligible, symbolistic in the extreme, self-aware on
twelve levels, i.e., aware of being aware of his
self-awareness, etc., accepting whatever he sees at all
twelve levels of reality at once, finally seeing himself as
a semi-divine rescuer.
He races about
the broad sunlit uplands naked but for knapsack, holding
private meetings with lost parts of himself, eating berries,
elkmeat and pemmican, proclaiming reconciliation to the
stalking ptarmigans and snow lilies, then tiptoeing south
along the razor’s edge of the Divide until, poised
straddling border and Divide both, near Eureka, Montana, and
standing erect as a solid brown mass of writhing muscle;
scratched; and trailing strands of moss and hemlock in his
hair; he is ready to rape the minds of the waiting continent
with a new solution.
Whereupon,
instead, he bathes like a beaver in a glacial stream, dons a
white uniform and resumes his post unheralded as an
emergency room doctor in a local hospital heavy with the
fried-out pain of culture-shocked indigenous Americans,
outside the West Gate of Glacier National Park, waiting for
a higher calling beside the Going-to-the-Sun Highway.
....................
I used to dream
about this corner of the planet from afar, Rev, and wrote a
poem to describe it once. Never did I understand the poem.
Ecstasy: maybe.
I think I feel an
understanding coming on. I think I feel my body hurtling
down this Dividing ridge with arms and legs spinning like
propellers of a bombless B-52 out on a freak joy-ride, while
somewhere behind my breastbone a violent thumping like an
extended drum take-off accompanies my free glee.
I am high on
o-two. My skin is brown. Its corneum is in vibrant cycle
with the sun. My private member has a life of its own and is
set for landing. Has this joy come from God? Is this the
unity I have been seeking? Will this provide me with proper
equipage to return to earth? Will I be born again?
I believe in
rebirth. I think I do. I’ll go along with it.
Rebirth.
Here and now.
...................
Rev, would I be
accepted if I walked into
Wouldn’t it sucker
punch the sacrament? The words of your exhortations and
hymns would stick in the craw, Rev. You’d be out on your
ear.
But I understand
your religion better than ever.
If only a little
less imperfect in my experience it were; then – well – I
might more than
understand.
...................
Second Day
Why didn’t it hit
me until now, Rev, that my professional friend had loved me out of my
illness? In his own way, of course. In the silly intimate
psychiatric way such psychiatric friends have of ‘love’-ing.
And why didn’t I
realize I was suddenly feeling better because I had finally
decided to have faith?
In myself, that
is.
And wasn’t it forgiveness that I
felt when my friend assured me I was ‘all right’?
And can I ever
forget that these happy Christ-like and Christ-taught acts
of love, faith and forgiveness were discovered better,
though I would never have expected it, after I gave
up the church and its funny religion Jesus never taught?
...................
Second Dream
KOTCHILE SA RAN NIKHENIHA
The two
brothers who go (render themselves)
unto the
moon.
Origin of the lunar race.
A Hare Legend
At the beginning of the
world, there were two brothers who lost their way; they were
separated from each other, and set out on a search for each
other around the Foot-of-Heaven, it is said. This is how it
was in the beginning, in a time long past.
At first they were
nothing but little boys, and they said to themselves:
Let us see which of us
can run the fastest. Let’s see who shall be the most nimble in
making the tour of the Foot-of-Heaven.
They parted in opposite
ways, grew, aged, and never met again until they were crawling
along with greatest difficulty on crutches.
‘Who are you?’ said the
one to the other, not recognizing him.
‘You see, I shall tell
you. At the beginning of the world, my younger brother and I
said to ourselves: let us run about the heavens, in order to
know who of us is the more powerful, the more fleet’.
‘What, do you remember
that?’ said the second. ‘But this brother so presumptuous,
that is myself. Alas! Yes, my elder brother, I wanted to put
all things in a better order; I wanted to see all, know all.
How far have I gone? I no longer remember. Then make me
remember, oh my brother!’
‘I’, returned the elder
brother, ‘have made the earth multiply. “Are not my legs light
and nimble?” I thought. Then, I made the tour of the
Foot-of-Heaven along my course; and having done this, I have
made the earth multiply; but I too have made myself miserable
by my presumption’.
Then he continued:
‘Let us proceed as if
there were to be a new world; let us repair man’, said the
elder brother.
Suddenly a great mountain
rose up:
‘This mountain which has
been put there, I suppose? Go into it, my brother; penetrate
it’, said the elder brother.
The younger brother went
into it; suddenly the mountain spread out, dilated; it
exploded, as it were, and after it had filled the earth, the
old man left it rejuvenated and seemingly a child.
Then the mountain resumed
its earlier proportions.
‘I too would go into it’,
said the elder. Perhaps we shall meet again later’.
The elder entered in his
turn, and the mountain expanded anew, dilated, burst; and the
second old man left it rejuvenated, seemingly a child.
Then the two old men,
again become children, or young boys, said to one another:
‘It must be that we have
become again that which we were in the primitive world, when
we inhabited it, at the very beginning of time’.
‘When we shall care to
carry out our plans about this world which we have toured,
then we shall carry them out in so many years. We are going to
put everything in order again, we are going to kill the giant
man-eaters and murderers, the lions too, the whales and other
marine monsters too; we are going to pursue them to a great
distance, we are going to do away pitilessly with all that is
evil. We are going to live off of meat that we shall cook by
throwing hot glowing rocks into a vessel of water; with roots
we are going to weave ourselves impermeable pots. It is in
this way that we shall become more human than we have been in
the past, on the primitive earth’.
Thus the two brothers
contrived in concert. They lived anew for a long time, and
were once again overcome by old age, after having seen their
youth renewed.
Thus it is that they say
that in the great long ago THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS REMADE MAN
(Kfwe dene naessi)!
.....................
Third Day
Delkrayle Was the
Wrong Kind of Indian
Delkrayle was
just the wrong kind of Indian for me, is what I keep telling
myself.
What ever became
of Delkrayle, mj?
She went back to
her home to become Prime Minister.
A woman?
Prime Ministress.
We had a fight before she left. Seeing I had dropped her
roommate for her, she thought I would drop her for somebody
else. And since she was what she was, I could expect the
same of her. She didn’t show up for a date and I was
convinced. There was no ground left for meeting. So we broke
up.
You broke up!
over suspicions? How did she treat you when she was with
you? That’s what counts.
Royally.
And how did you
treat her?
You’ll have to
ask her. I think I treated her as a prince should treat a
princess. That’s what I tried – I wanted to. I wanted to
talk to her prince friend in
How do you treat
a princess, mj?
You treat a
princess with respect and deference and honor and duty and
responsibility and worship… and love.
Did you love her?
Yes. But I didn’t
know her well. We only dated a month, and I was working. But
for that one month I was a changed person.
I don’t know what
to say.
What do you mean?
That’s what I
mean. If I’m a princess, then why don’t I affect you like
she did?
If you were like
she was, Dlune, I would have cracked up all over again by
now. A guy like me rides high just so long and then cracks up.
You can keep me down where I belong. If I want to take off
again I’ll let you know, because I know you can take care of
that too, Hmmmm?
....................
Words never make
it
They take it
Fake migrations
Against the grain
Of history and
time
In space,
Rupturing the
apogees
From their
circuits,
Breaking the
relationships
Between particles
and parts.
Hard hearts
Wear words,
Not arts.
.....................
Dlune.
What?
She didn’t go
back.
Delkrayle?
She was killed in
the Crack-Up.
Mj!
I couldn’t
remember. She was…. (cannot talk)
It’s okay….
….cut in half.
Ngheew!
At the Divide.
(Hysterical…..:)
How could you not tell me?
It came back. I
said – remember? – there might be a thing or two I was
forgetting? That’s how it felt.
What should we
do?
(unable to talk)
.....................
Sentences are
elongations of wits,
Are imputations by
pieces and bits
Against the nature
of us.
We in our hindered
sidecars
....................
Put it in where
it was left out so I can walk straight up: in my book.
Then put me in
there too.
You’re in there
and extremely
important. And I love you for it.
...................
Cheating on the
Spirit World
Mj, now pay
attention; now listen:
the only time in his life a Blackfoot climbs a mountain is
the time when he goes up to find his ‘medicine’, which means
his ‘vision’. He hikes to the top and sits there, exposing
himself, not eating, debilitating himself until he sleeps
and dreams dreams, and until the dreams in his weakened
state begin to take hold of him like powerful medicine and
make him a new man. Not every Blackfoot brave does this, and
since white man came, not a single one has had a remaking dream. But
those who did once, were the wisest and strongest and are
still told about by the old men who remember them or know
their stories. ‘Indian’ myths are the dreams or visions that
Indian men dreamt or saw in their youth at the tops of
mountains, the ‘foot-of-heaven’ or ‘sky-earth’, as they
said. The best myths, the ones that tell the people the most
about themselves, are the ones they remember the easiest.
Mj, I’m going to
wait for you here. But at the end of the sixth day, if you
are not back, I can come up to meet you on the seventh. Is
that alright?
I’d rather make
it three. I don’t know if I can last six.
When I come, I’ll
bring you something to eat.
Would the
Blackfeet approve? Isn’t that cheating on the spirit world,
so to speak?
We’re not
Blackfoot, are we?
Don’t worry about
me so much, Dlune. I’ll be back: a new man. Just for us. And
you’re going to be a new woman. I’m not running off at the
sound of heavenly voices that only I can hear, am I? This
trip is for us.
Come on, let’s get some sleep, we have to get up early. I
need strength and you do too.
Good night, mj. I
love you.
Good night, baby.
Nonverbal scene:
half moon drops behind Hungabee and light fades:
How!
....................
Third Dream
ELTCHELEKWIE ONNIE
The Two Brothers
A Chipewyan Tale
Part III
274. comments on Part
III of the two brothers tale ELTCHELEKWIE ONNIE
This
was the last part of the long tale mj had begun sending his
parents verbatim in December because it was his favorite of
Chipewyan’s tales. He had started telling it in the ‘second
attempt’ and had returned to it in the ‘fifth’. The younger
brother had shot an arrow disobediently, gotten whisked up to
the sky-earth and then, once there, been charred in the face
so the mythic huntresses, Dlune and Delkrayle, would not take
to him. He disliked being disliked, however, and removed the
char. Whereupon they ravished him between them in bed all
night until he fell into a hole in the floor of the sky-earth
and stayed there trapped between two worlds, between the
mythological above world and the ordinary earthly world, for a
long time.
In
Part II of the story, sent to Rev and Jo in the ‘fifth
attempt’, a wolf had finally dug this poor young boy out of
his hole. Now free, he had run into Dlune and gotten revenge
(for her having ‘made
him’ sleep with her; ha) by ripping her clothes off her.
Then Dlune had
gotten revenge for that
by releasing a million wee beast-like things she had under her
power. But she hardly could have avoided doing that, you had
to admit. For, as soon as her breasts were exposed, all of the
earth’s evil and all of its malevolent beasts and Christian
missionaries like Petitot who wanted to strip really human
people of their humanity, all escaped out of the cleavage at once, for how could
she stop them, all laid bare now as it all had been, as it
were, as she were, and all the little wee beasties were
now filling the earth with suffering.
All
this having been caused “by the disobedience of the young man
and the malice of the woman,” as Chipewyan always loved to
throw in, explaining moral points in the middle of the story
without even asking for a gratuity.
And
now, at the beginning of Part III of the tale, the younger
brother was still up in the sky-earth wandering around and
wanting to get back home, poor kid, and having a lot of trouble getting
home, to put it mildly. And mj wanted this last part of
the tale to be fit in at the end of The Remaking, precisely
here, because ‘getting back down and home to mundane reality’
was the theme of the very last part of both these tales.
That is: of the Chipewyan tale; and of mj’s own, his Remaking
story. And each tale shed light on the other.
But
what was really happening? How was the younger brother having
so much trouble? In what way? He was probably homesick, for
one thing, missing his older brother, who now made more sense
in his absence; or was simply anxious to get his feet back on
flat, solid ground again, finally, after what should have been
more than enough sky-earth insight, perspective and
experiential wisdom by now, for any half-baked kid brother,
gained from such a dizzying, windy, high-altitude, low-oxygen,
foodless, waterless, debilitating, back-breaking,
rock-crumbling, slippery slope of a life-threatening
situation.
Okay,
then, asked younger pundits: why did the ‘younger brother’ not
just go back down to the flatlands then?
Well,
that was the perfect question right here. Because: apparently
it was not always as easy as one might think. For certain
people. In certain situations.
The
tale, said older pundits, was trying to teach the lesson that
he who spends time
in high-flying places often finds it hard to come back
down to earth again. Not physically, so much, but
mentally and emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. It
was an interesting phenomenon. And it was a critical subject for
mj lorenzo AND HIS WORLD, as mj saw it. And so, he
wanted it addressed in this final section of The Remaking,
therefore. Right here.
It
looked like it was the perfect tale, in fact, to get him back down AND GET
HIS WESTERN WORLD BACK DOWN TOO FROM ITS TOO-HIGH-falutin
PLACE, had he or they been having TROUBLE leaving such a high
place to go
back down from; as indeed they ALL IN THE WESTERN WORLD seemed
to be having, not excluding mj lorenzo.
The
tale had probably been told over the years by older braves
more experienced with the uncanny world of intoxicating high
mountaintop experiences, to younger braves less experienced.
It might have been told during vision quest trips like mj’s,
trips when several braves at a time went up into the very
highest peaks to very heady high places where they would try
to seek dreams and visions, trips like those Dlune had
described as standard for most braves in her part of the
continent, in the good old days before White Man came and
ruined everything.
But
mj, of course, had no older Injun-brave mentor on his Hungabee
vision quest as those young braves would have had during their
vision quests. The closest thing he had was Dlune, who could
come up and check on him.
275. Dr. Lorenzo’s
tender thoughts on the last part of Eltchelekwie Onnie
If it
ever had happened, Dr. Lorenzo said, that a given youth (or
group; or people) refused
to go back down to reality, back down where the rest of the
human tribe lived their basic daily humble life, and
refused day after
day, for some inscrutable, inexpressible, perhaps
heartbreaking reason too deep for intellectual or social
comprehension, too deep for that youth (or that people) to be
reached by rational persuasion; and if that youth (or people)
had then heard this
story, heard it recounted neutrally, gravely, ritually,
yet caringly, and also with an occasional smile and a sense of
humor, by a vision
quest mentor DURING A VISION QUEST; then this third part
of ‘Eltchelekwie Onnie’ might have been the gentlest and most
perfect way to hit
exactly the right spot inside him (or inside that people),
whatever that inscrutable button might have been that needed
pushing, to get him (or those people) to go back down finally
and deal with mundane reality again.
Dr.
Lorenzo, not surprisingly, therefore, loved this last part
of the long Chipewyan two-brothers tale, ELTCHELEKWIE ONNIE, and loved it
to pieces. If only he could have known its author, he would
say. If only he could have written it himself. It hit a nerve
because getting back down to humble earth intact after
going up to high places was a HUGE issue
for mj lorenzo. As any ninth grade pundit might have
seen who had made it this far reading mj lorenzo’s manual of
self-healing, The Remaking. And furthermore, the Dr. was
convinced it was an equally huge central issue for his
culture, his people, especially his neo-Calvinist U.S.
American people, whom John Calvin had raised to sainthood, one
and all, then left dangling up there in the air to dry out and
get all flaky and whacky and cracked up with poorly-monitored
egotistical saintly pride.
Dr.
Lorenzo loved to point out, especially when talking with high
school students, that this younger Dene brother would have
been ‘dead meat’
without the saving eaglet son in the last part of this story
called ELTCHELEKWIE ONNIE. The Dr. especially loved the fact
that the eaglet son was so uncompromisingly and hopelessly
devoted to the younger brother. The eaglet adopted the
poor younger Dene brother. Literally. Heart and soul. And
never went back. He even tried to find a way the Dene brother
could live permanently
with him there in the eyrie. But, this failing, he was still
the epitome of winged magnanimity, willing to never see
his beloved new and very human friend again if that was
what was required to save his friend. It would
hardly have been the end of the world, after all. If Dene
could never return to visit the eaglet son up there, he, the
eaglet, could visit Dene anywhere in the world, given his eagle flying
abilities.
And so
the little eagle son did everything he could to help Dene. He
hid Dene under his wing. He played tricks on his eagle parents
to protect Dene. He threatened to take his own life if his
man-eating eagle parents did not stop threatening to eat Dene
alive. And he even tore
out his own feathers and fit young Dene out with them.
He taught him to do
like he did and fly away. And
every time Dene fell on his sad ass trying to fly away, the
eaglet son rescued him.
Dr.
Lorenzo once told a group of southwestern U.S. cuentistas
(storytellers) participating in a week-long story-sharing
round in San Juan Pueblo – in ‘04, it was – that he felt it
was hard to find a better description of friendship in any
story ever written, anywhere in the world. And he added that
if he ever got stuck in a high place again – and such a thing
could happen any day of the week to someone like him,
he added – he would hope such a friend, male or female, might
come and help him with such a friendship as that of the little
eaglet toward young Dene. It would be hard not to follow a
friend like that, he said, back down to camp.
And
some felt that this was a deliberate indirect thank you to
Sammy Martinez, who sat in the circle that day, and who, after
Dlune, of course, had been the person who most often, over the
years, had brought mj back to normal life on the planet
whenever mj had gotten carried away by one ridiculous insanity
or another.
276. the end of
Eltchelekwie Onnie and of The Remaking
Then the old woman, who
lived in the great tent, said to the handsome young man:
“Come here and believe my
word, finally. I am going to find for you a way to return to
the earth from which you have come. I know a region, in this
upper earth, where there is an opening through which one may
observe the earth below. I shall let you go back by way of
this orifice.”
This saying, the old woman
cut up strong hides into whips and made a long rope out of
them, at the end of which she hung the young man by his
armpits. Then she lowered it through the gaping hole.
“As soon as you feel earth
beneath your feet,” she said to him, “let go of the cord.”
The old woman then dropped
the young man through the hole, and he descended for a long
time, for the distance was great, and the rope very long.
Finally his foot felt an
obstacle:
“I have come back to
earth,” he thought.
He let go of the rope,
which in the blinking of an eye ascended into the sky, and he
saw that he was… where? In the eyrie of Orelpale (The
Whiteness), the immense eagle who fed himself on human flesh.
All about the Dene, in the
nest of the man-eating eagle, he saw nothing but the skulls
and skeletons of humans.
He looked down, but he
realized with fright that he was far, quite far, from the
habitable earth.
Fortunately the little son
of the eagle had compassion for the man.
“He must be pitied,” he
said to himself; he is so young: “Hide yourself beneath my
wings, my foster brother,” he said to the young man. “And if
you see that day is coming, it means that my father, the giant
eagle, is arriving at the nest. But if the night comes, then
my mother is on the way.”
All of a sudden Dene,
hearing a great flapping of wings, took refuge under the wings
of the young eagle.
Immediately it was day,
and the male eagle returned to the nest.
“Ah! That will be the
smell of human flesh!” he said, scenting out in all direction.
“Is it surprising,” said
the eaglet, “when you bring me every day human flesh to eat?”
Orelpale, the father, left
off, and Dene took a measure of assurance. A moment later, the
sound of thunder renewed, it was night, and the female
Orelpale entered the nest with the debris of humans in her
claws.
“I smell the smell of
human flesh!” she cried with a flair and an air of
inquisition.
“Well, mother, is it so
surprising, when you bring it to me yourself?” returned the
eaglet.
The female eagle left off
too.
This could not go on
forever. Orelpale finally realized that there was a living
mortal in his eyrie. He was incensed by this, he was going to
kill the foolhardy one who came to brave his territory.
But the young eagle threw
himself between his father and the man.
“If you kill him,” he
cried, “I will just as soon throw myself out of the nest to
the ground.”
For fear of causing his
son’s death, the father eagle consented to let him live with
them.
Then the eaglet said to
the man:
“You can not live here
forever. My father may surprise you and kill you without my
knowledge. Therefore, take these feathers from my wings, adapt
them to your body, and try to fly around my nest. If you
succeed in making the circle three times, you are saved, and
you can fly on to your country.”
The young man then fitted
himself out, on his arms and his legs, with the feathers of
the thunderbird, and attempted to fly. The first time that he
set out, he fell and hurt himself badly.
But the young eagle
rescued him.
“Do it like this, and like
that,” he said to him.
And little by little he
taught him to fly with the help of his wings. Finally the man
succeeded, helped by the eaglet; he could do one, two, and
finally three circles about the eyrie; and immediately he flew
off towards earth, by means of the feathers of the charitable
eagle. That is the end.
....................
Dearest Dlune,
If all goes as
well as I’ve planned, you’ll be reading these lines today at
8PM Mountain Time shivering with cold, hiding under this
peak, and nursing wounds from head to foot after your hike
up. As you read I will not be here but will be waiting for
you in another place, and I shall explain to you now how to
get there. You have only two hours of sunlight left today,
and there are spots in the valley where you will have less
than that. You do
not have time to make your way back to the tent by the
route that you and I have taken up here, and there is
no safe shelter for the night high up on that west side.
However, if you hurry your cute fanny down the eastern side
you can reach
Dlune, if you
love me, follow my directions. I’ll be waiting for you at
the tent tonight.
I’ve spent three days up here thinking about the way I’ve
tormented and worried you with my self-preoccupation. If
you’ve had enough, it will be no problem for you, after the
way I’ve treated you, to leave me now and catch a ride home
to Chipewyan without regrets; but I’ll spend a sleepless
night without you, longing for your love, as I do right now.
I miss you already.
Rat-breast! Stop
staring at this piece of paper and get back to me before it
is too late!
Don’t come as
the crow flies, but as the eagle, who circles the
foot-of-heaven and drops to the earth below, and as the
beaver, who knows where it has to go and finds its way
bravely to a new valley, up a new stream, to build its abode
there for the winter.
Hurry.
All my love,
mj
…………………………..
The Thunder
Medicine
I don’t have to
drive the point home for you
do I
Rev
THAT
I could just as well
have made up and written
The Remaking
inside three
four-walled rooms
in
a failed gothic
ghetto
in
a moronic
oxy-flop dump
in
a running
breakdown that broke down crippled
with
no light or
breaker box
with
real check-it-out
West Filthy Delphia dog packs pissing halls
all sixteen dogs
at piss-pack barking once
this is really
God’s non-lying truth
with
the whole haggle
of hippies and hucksters
and hookers and
hook-ees
and hooked-ass
hipster hooked-ees too
needles to say
unchastely chased
to street
urine-stinking
beds and
all but me
even the pissed
land’s lord
and
offal-smelling care-taker-off-the-top
and after all
that
alone in the
place
with
my own
brain-scarred self
with
the sexless English
Queen’s gothic bay wind-eye open
to
noise and house
flies of the street
to
the stench of the
the catfights and
traffic brawls
to
blinding smog
to
the man who stabs
his wife across the street and wakes me screaming at his
newfound horror
to
annoying
nightmares that float in to wreck my nights
to
the hourly sound
boom of Lester’s black-ass poor-fuck’s
defunct
hangared on 35th
behind my decrepit Volks
stuck with six
blue-green flower stickers
waiting to take
my poor white ass to the grassy Methodist knoll
with
my door
triple-locked
the ringing phone
forgotten
with
plaster dropping
and backing up my drains
with
all the static
chaos that this might seem to hint at a bit
with
rarely eating and
with
hitting the
street not much
with
hunkered in bed
frozen in thought and
with
waiting for the
ICE TO BREAK
in here
for this mj
as it has already
burst out there somewhere for that mj
where is the
THUNDER BIRD I seek
the soaring son
of a prey-bird
that can outfit
me down from here?
do I need to say
THAT
no one comes to
hold my hand
THAT
no one is asked
THAT
you are made to
think that I am somewhere and not here
THAT
even if I should
return to work at a ghetto sick-house
my mind will just
as soon be back between the white sheets
I am writing on
THAT
even if I drive
my car
eat my lunch
see my sick-house
friends
give my nurses
orders
ask for help
scratch my back
daydream
yes
go to the toilet
MAKE LOVE
my mind will all
the time be finding a new place for me to live
a new way of
living there
a new way of
believing in myself
a new way of
speaking to my friends who want remaking
and my friends
who don’t want remaking
in order that I
might pass muster
standing the test
of The Rogerian Fifth Rule
published once in
a Russell Sage project paper
and recommended
by the school of thought that says
the remaker
in a cool-ass
friendship with a remakee
or anybody
must always show
a certain
‘willingness to
be known’
THAT
I will do this in
order that they may know me and understand
the kind of
Crack-Up I have had
the kind of deep
freeze and lockup
the restless
ongoing I have had to have
so that if anyone
else will ever have it
they may know
there is a mind-school for the masses
because I
have been making
a man that we can love and live with and
have been making
a new way of understanding and believing that
MAKING SUCH A MAN
though the blood
might fight all the remaking change
IS A GOOD BET
will happen
is bound to
happen
because it
has already
started happening inside MORTIMER JACK
out there
and
is starting to
happen from there outward toward all three oceans
Arctic Pacific
to crest and flow
together in the
Indian
on whose shores
it all began in another age
and to drift from
there into the freezing
Antarctic
where it will die
far beyond our final death
and loss from
man-beast recall as we now know it xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
and
THAT-
it-all-began-within-us-as-we-are-now-potentially
BANG
and really SOCKO! CRASH!
always were and
could be stutter STOP!...
....................
to all misnamed
misprized Indians everywhere
from the Peruvian
from the hill
stations of Madya Pradesh
to the medicine
peaks of the
I hereby now
leave my one twenty-sixth of man’s pursuit of brain
my messed up pack
misery-wracked
pate and startled mind
my
glued-to-the-spot mound of bones
old life
and white
doctor’s suit
my scalpel and
suture
my wrinkled and
stained maps and piss-y notebooks
my ‘National
Geographics’
(thank you for
saving them for my proving, Rev)
my Blackfoot
legends
and that mindless
prig Petitot
rotten and without any sense though he
will prove to be and did
Sir Alexander
Mackenzie’s plucky trip journals
Kierkegaard and
Sartre etc. etc.
all my hoary
keepsakes
and mixed-up
personal shit
and all nineteen
heavy Bollingen tomes of C. G. Jung’s Collected Works
no
I’ll miss them
too often
and they ain’t
cheap so I’m keeping them
for the eagles of
this eyrie
but really just
the son
I hereby leave a
sandwich
and the paper
wrapper of the two elkmeat sandwiches
Dlune left for me
up here
on the Backbone
of the World
before she
climbed down off Wenkchemna’s bare shoulder
thinking I guess
that she could never fully outwit my sneaky tricks
knowing full well
somewhere inside her breast full of rats
that stretched
out naked on the south face of Hungabee
I had watched her
as she struggled all that way
from
down into the
Valley of the Ten Peaks to the road
and that I
of course
would have had to have an
appetite at the start of this
NEW LIFE
for which
with your new
auto flashlight in hand
Rev
for myself
I hereby leave my
old life
to run back down
to camp now
to give myself
fully and finally to her
when she at last
comes to meet me
I hope
my ultimate
insight –
what’s this?
..................
A NOTE FOR THE
EAGLE SON (tucked inside the elkmeat sandwich wrapper): mj,
if you should be near here and watching me to observe what I
intend to do next, then just remember this, that you will
certainly need to climb back down again and BRING YOUR
THUNDER MEDICINE TO ME if you expect to ever find out. Until
you do and after, even if you are here, you
you poltroon
you ridiculous
harlequin poet-bastard
you naked
earth-smeared Hungabee-worshiping prophet-priest
you king of a
doctor-patient, forever blind and meshuga mind-fucked
you would-be lover-prince
#!%$X
I admit I still love you
Dlune
