Joni Mitchell - Amelia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzjxIIhHYRA
I'm sitting in a hotel room in Reno. I'm showered and full of food from a hotel buffet. I'm drinking a coffee. I thought these things would make me feel refreshed and "normal" but they've done the reciprocal; I feel less like myself than I did 2 days ago as I feigned sleep on a desert playa, my body full of dust. I'm suddenly a stranger.
It's odd that we have built such structures as prudence, wealth, fear of authority, dictatorship. It's odd that we sometimes feel generosity should be repaid, that anothers love or success should be envied or condemned. It says something of us that we shun those in need and give to those who prosper. I'm not saying these things are necessarily wrong or right, just strange that we've moved in this direction considering the miriad of possibility we've been offered. And when I say "we" and "us" I suppose I mean "I" and "me."
I will allow myself a confession, of sorts, to maybe elucidate any point I might be moving towards: As some friends and I moved together through the desert, an overarching feeling of celebration moving between us, we had not truly accomplished anything and there was a forced love that was warm and not untrue but we were together and loving and that was our celebration, we found a gathering where some sat and some danced. Then there was a bad moment. A friend became hurt and despondent. She stood darkly staring into some form of nothing in front of her face. I tried to comfort her but there was nothing I could do, tried to understand but didn't know how to communicate with her. I didn't know what was wrong and there was no way to figure it out; she became a menacing black hole that grew deeper as I touched it. I became distracted and, overall, helpless. Another friend, holding some form of wild through his body all night, went to her and they parted together as he tried to calm her sorrows. As they were gone we had drank our whole supply of water and the dust was rising from the ground, permeating our bodies, drying up our bones to more dust, our skin was dust, our lips. Some wanted to move on but we had to wait among the dust for the return of our departed friends. We waited desperate and impatient. Then our wild eyed friend came from the shadows, running through us all with a gallon of water hoisted over his head like some kind of hero, rekindling our celebratory bodies, returning our sorrowed friend who was ready to move.
And I felt a sort of jealousy. Why, with all the love for my sorrowed friend, couldn't I calm and comfort her? Why, with all these dry mouths, couldn't I have found us water? Why couldn't I have been the friend and the hero? But then how naive, stupid and selfish is all of that? These are certain elements of myself that have grown from the buildings that have risen around me, from the teachers I've accumulated, from the experiences I've shared. I love my sorrowed friend but I could only comfort so much, I love my wild eyed friend and he brought us celebration and a form of salvation, and those are the most beautiful things I could ask, aren't they? They're nothing to lament. Though I have. It's difficult but not impossible to shake these terrible aspects of myself that I hold.
And I walked into the desert with some form of alone, faced aspects of beauty, sat next to magic. Some loved ones told me I would walk out with a different life, which I doubted, which I pushed aside from my expectations. Even on the drive out, dirty and burned, did I still see myself as before. But as I sit among all of this, something does seem different within me, which I'll fight to hold.
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