Who weren't the gods?

So much can be taken from and given to the gods, and in the myths so much the gods have created and destroyed. Perhaps it doesn't matter and it's as simple as a snow covered forest in the Northern Midwest. Or perhaps the question is essential, and what better place than to think about such matters than in front of a large hearth as the sun brightens a perfect snow and brilliant blue sky, with many neighbors to throw in their two cents.

New Lakes

Is it a lake or a pond, or swamp? All three are fine things, and what the locals call it gives the form and meaning to the body of water. To me it was a lake, because the locals called it a lake. It was a body of water covered with water lilies and surrounded by wildflowers, and deeply embdedded in the wildflowers were rabbits, possums, raccoons, and deer. I had run through the fields two months earlier and I learned I needed a hat because the bugs were vicious, and even with the hat they got the eyes and ears and neck and anything else. Paradise is guarded and you can't enter unless hardened, softened by swells, hands that don't move, the long burning sun of Paraguay. "I bought all of this land away from the developers. They wanted to put 36 homes in cul-de-sacs here, but I bought the land on both sides of the lake and I own the road that drives in to this park. 30 years ago I asked for an easement and 30 years later I am granting one."

"The first guy who owned this land owned all of it. He invented the RV with three winos in a barn in back of a bar. Was so damned big they had to tear down the barn. But he made millions but he was an eccentric. Criminal. His son bought him out, how many millions it took, I don't know. His son bought him out and now he's a near billionaire. His wife passed away recently. But he owned all of this, and made a great industry from what his father created with the winos in the barn in the back of the bar."

"I'm too old to chase away the rif-raf at night with my rifle. The drug addicts, the homosexuals, the hobos. I want to sell my land to a man who wants to build one home for himself and leave the land as it is."

"I managed 400 men in 4 plants. I've seen it go up and down. They are raising rates now and gas is too high. It runs in 9-year cycles, and this feels like one of them. I'm 72 and I've seen these things."

Looking for hidden transcripts

What would it be like to have no hidden transcripts? Would it be akin to a day among friends, playing cornhole, drinking beer, and grilling brats?

It's strange that at this hotel, people congregate out in the back courtyard at night, like they do in Brasil. Is there no hidden transcript here, or are they leaving the public transcript behind? Maybe the public transcript has gone away, and when there's no public transcript, there is no hidden transcript.

Perhaps this is what Moraline gets at with social media. Here, people grill and drink beer together. There is no large, alienating crowd, no mediating simulacra. Or perhaps people wind down at night and wear their hidden transcripts on their sleeves. It is small and intimate, perhaps that is where the good begins. The trouble begins with too much, too many people. This idea of surplus emerges again.

rain and mountains

The rain washes it away. It is far up there, the mountain. It has faced the sun and the sky like no one else. The rain comes and the snow comes.

There was that village, that village in the mountains. Do you remember the police officer in Argentina in his motor bike? You were trying to camp off a precipice. Instead of getting 'busted'; he helped you. He told you to ride to the military base. And there you rode past the destroyed bridge and met the attendant who said 'camp anywhere, I am not watching.' and from there the stars rained as if it were a day in southern Patagonia.

The River Etowah

My name is Toltec and I am from Guatemala. Since the gods created my people, I and my ancestors have lived free from the bondage of men. Many of my people have died bravely fighting other tribes and white men. And many of my people have died from spirits brought by the white men and rarely by their weapons. I was raised poor, unlike my ancestors, who ruled over my land. But as a child I knew I would bring my people back to greatness and lead them to a new epoch of prosperity and autonomy.

I left my land last year to drive a taxi in Rome. It was not the Rome of the great civilizations but a different Rome, one of men who lived off the land but in a harmony different than that of my people and culture.

Many times I would drive my taxi to the river to pick up those who had let the current carry them far from their origin. Many would be intoxicated by the native firewater. Many were women who would try to steal my seed and royal bloodline.

I lived with 3 men from my village and all were loyal to me. We drove two vans and never ceased working. We purchased the two vans for $4,000 and they ran well; the white men told us they could not run but we fixed them with very little effort.

It was a Saturday and it was warm and the sun was to set in three hours. I received a call from a white woman who spoke my language. I picked her up 30 minutes from my home by the entrance to the river.

She handed me a cold drink and I accepted. It was warm in my van and she was pretty. Several minutes later I felt dizzy and pulled aside the road.

"You look tired, mudvein. Your nigger skin looks darn near white."

"I feel very tired and cannot drive," I told her.

The white woman pulled me from my driver's station and pushed me to the back of my van. I could barely move. She sat in the seat that I had found in a junk yard and installed with my three village friends. She drove off..

When I awoke I was in a canoe on the Etowah river, the same river where I had met this white woman.

My leg was chained to the canoe and she she sat with her back to the current of the river. We drifted down the river and she handed me a paddle and told me to begin to work.

"I don't want to see you drown. It would be such a waste of a slave," she told me.

I paddled down the ancient river. We reached a muddy bank and I pulled the canoe up the steep slope. She walked ahead as I pulled the canoe. As she walked across an old log, it snapped and she fell. Even though I was in chains, I felt for her and asked her if she was injured. I could not break myself free of the ankle chain and come to her aid. But like a brave princess I knew in a past life, she brushed off her injury and told me not to delay the portage of her canoe.

She walked ahead of me and led me to a field.

A great deer danced across the field.

"I have seem you run. I have seen your brown skin. You run like that animal. You are an animal, why I've got you chained. You will make us shelter now."

I took the paddles of her canoe and took her clothes to bring them together to make us shelter. Even though I was her captive I felt close to her, as if we had met at a mountain filled in its valleys with the blood of men I had killed when I was king.

But we did not, at first, go into the shelter I had built for her. I took the pale skinned woman and pinned her to the earth the gods had made for me. I pressed my lips to her and rid her of what remained of her garments. We joined and I put my people's spirit into her.

"I am free. Who is the man who has freed me from this curse of a river?"

"I come from warriors who have filled these rivers with the blood of brave warriors."

I threw my chains into the dark waters of the river.

I kissed my native princess. I carried her to my canoe and we drifted into the waters, now full with the rain and spirits of the river gods.

We arrived at the new shore and men came to our canoe and offered their fish and berries and bowed to us.

"There were men who were called Niggers who were said to eat anything. What is meant by this is that they were men of the river and of the earth of the gods. They could take the mud vein and turn it to life and food as did the gods when they made man and woman from the soil of the earth and mixed such life with the rain of the heavens. We now see the gods have returned to give new life to this river and this earth. We, as humble creatures of the gods, thirst for a new life and a new world. We will eat anything you, as our king, and she, as our princess, will give us."

Old Mountains

The roses, the nights of clear stars, the rocks the shepherds throw at goats while my wife makes love to me in bright sun. Lord, you have given me your Earth.

Deep Sand

Deep Sand

The light of the moon
appears in the sand
of the deep desert during
the night. Even the
horses sleep in its shade.
Even water hiding in barrels
for the wash of sheep skin
or butchered cattle
covers itself from a light
that brightens darkness,
never making darkness
complete, total, or at rest. 
In the morning there
is sun but little talk of
the moon. What happens
during the night? Why can't
we sleep? What is outside
hovering next to our
effort to fall asleep in the
sand, rocks, and dry scrub?
I can't say the moon is not
a wild horse. His breath visits
you for a slight moment in
the night, and the night, the
night is not the sun's death,
it is the patient pleading of
one star which awakens horses
in the North in dry Argentina.