Smells Like Teen Spirit

So many times I can remember sitting, drugged out of my gourd, on a living room couch in my teen angst trying to decipher to lyrics of Kurt Cobain, thanking God for afflicting this slim fop of a musical genius with a Springsteen- esque constipation problem that made his singing voice sound like church to me.

More times than not, I would roll joints on that same living room couch thanking God for bestowing that same affliction onto the brooding Adonis-like frame of Eddie Vedder, whose trance like bellowing and psychotic blue eyes made my knees weak.

A handful of times, I sat, high on whatever was passed to me, staring at a Soundgarden album cover, swaying to the biblical melodies that emanated from behind that same living room couch, and wondering why God made Chris Cornell so ugly.

Maybe it was the drugs. Maybe it was my toxic and dysfunctional upbringing.

It was probably the drugs, though.

To be lucky enough to be a teenager during the moment in musical history when Seattle sounds inundated MTV’s monopoly on young teen minds was to be a musical maverick- it was to be a self appointed music critic, turning up one’s newly pubescent nose to “poppy” sell out bullshit (fuck you, Snow- nobody knows what the fuck “Informer” was about anyway-you are not Vanilla Ice!) and instead, luxuriating in hard edged, plaid shit clad movement music, whose message was nonconformity, replete with hairy pitted, anarchy loving, high cheerleaders who became the new video vixens for a generation of stoners who were precariously situated between generation X and generation what the fuck ever.

Dock Martins. Chokers. VHS copies of the movies SINGLES and HEATHERS.

It was a good time.

Or maybe it was the drugs.

The friends I had when I was this age were like me, young and naive and hurt, trying to navigate their way through life parentless, or at least, lacking basic parental guidance and love. We were each other’s parents.

Drugs were our love.

The music was our home.

We would follow our ostracized gay friends to the peer by the West Side Highway and sing Morrissey and Odyssey songs and wrap ourselves in our plaid shirts and kick Doc Martin boots together and pretend we were the center of the universe because for a time, we were.
This was the primary reason why I wanted to make Seattle my next stop on my endless arbitrary venture across this crazy country.

Seattle. The evergreen city in the burning state. The final hand in the time zone clock. The last shift.

One thing that took me by surprise when I entered the city is the sun. It was still early enough before it had gone down, and because of the time shift, I was on top of it. Entering a city before the sun goes down has become an obscure blessing to me on this trip and I greatly appreciated it. And Seattle was a real city- replete with Starbucks and traffic and parking meters and real radio stations. Yay!!!

It was like home, only nestled in a bed of evergreen trees and fog.

But this time, the sun was out, I was surprised, I had always heard of Seattle being this sunless haven for gingers, like Ireland with better food.

I drove into the city and was really tired, my stint in Indian country made me tired and stinky and somewhat constipated since I was subsisting on a diet of truck stop beef jerky and Smart water.

When I got into town, I passed a graffiti’d up mural of Scott Weiland. I checked into a hotel on the corner of Oh My God and Holy Shit.
Even though the place was pretty much in Skid Row, it was beautiful. It was right in the middle of Japan town, where most of the urban Asian live. There were people outside doing Tai Chi, and some just sitting on benches meditating. And homeless.

Lots of homeless.

They were really nice though, they said hi, waved, and didn’t show me their penises like the homeless in New York.

I unpacked listening to PLUSH from the pathetic speakers of my laptop. I wondered what ever happened to my Doc Martins from high school, and if I should stop somewhere in Seattle and buy another pair, just for shits and giggles.

I stepped out into the city with a newfound bravado that made me walk like a jock looking for a fight. I found it soothing, even though after about 2 blocks I realized I was scaring old people and the meek homeless.

There was a Starbucks on practically every corner of Seattle. I camped in one, and like the pretentious assholes I always made fun of at home; I ordered a latte and plugged in my computer to write my blog.

I was posted up by the peer- Seattle sits upon a beautiful river that is green and calm, lo lying and provides a beautiful vantage to the city goers who travel around. I looked out the window and saw the Space Needle and a sign for Mt Rainer in the distance.

The smoky sky looked like a movie ending. Seattle was calm and chill, much like its people, and the horizon added to the allure of this sleepy city. The laid back nature of the beautiful homeless made the city seem like a Disney movie at eh end of a bong. And it made me hungry.

I passed a restaurant on my way back to Skid Row that boasted of the best crab in the world. Dungeness crab, apparently one of the things the city is famous for.

I ordered some, as well as 6 oysters on a half shell. This was the first real meal I had since I left home. It was amazing. The crab was served chilled, which is what they do here. The oysters were sweet and sublime. I sat outside and watched the sun tuck itself into a balmy night. The music started slowly and steadily, like hypnosis. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, it was all around me. All around downtown.

When I left the restaurant I headed towards the water again. There is a park right before the peer, with more homeless, nice, no dick showing homeless.

I came upon a group of teenagers sitting down, smoking weed, drinking, listening to BLACK HOLE SUN on a boom box situated under a sleepy pit-bull with a black bandana around his neck. He belonged to one of them, but was treated like he was loved by all. It was like he was the homeless teen mascot. I sat and watched these children. It was an washed crew of about 11- 5 girls, 6 boys, about half of them looked slightly brown, one of them was fully Black, none of them really looked like me, but that didn’t stop me from feeling like I was looking in a mirror. These children were all teenagers, fiercely in love with each other, deep into an angst that drew them away from their toxic home lives, into the arms of one another. One boy, who liked like an Indian was recounting the story of why he left his home in Indiana. He was arrested for drug possession and did a bid in county for 7 months. When he was released, he couldn’t even get his driver’s license in Indiana (apparently, you really need a driver’s license in Indiana to function) so he left and came west. His girlfriend, whom he met on these streets, was born and raised in Seattle. She made it so he never wanted to leave. He put his arm around her and kissed her like she held the only oxygen he was bred to breathe. Teenage angst love. The kind of love that rules all your decisions, and fuels all your poetry. The benchmark for all your future heartbreak. They reminded of how I would hold onto my friends at that age, and listen to Morrissey’s THERE IS A LIGHT THAT NEVER GOES OUT in the dark, high on that same living room couch. I stood there and listened to Soundgarden play, giving their beautiful little world a soundtrack that sounded so familiar to the one I claimed when I was their age. Seattle had evoked within me a deep and warm sense of nostalgia. I sat with them on that pier and I was 17 again also, fretting the prying flashlights of cops, taking tokes of mystery joints, closing my eyes and swaying to Chris Cornell’s art. Yet there I was staring them down, dissecting them like they were subjects in a fucked up experiment. This was not the spirit of angst. This was just my geriatric ass trying to create a moment. So I backed away. Slowly, I can only imagine because of the strange old Black lady with the camera, the young people got up from the park and moved on. I let them leave without saying a word, just a smile- my way of showing them that some old people do get it. I guess they didn’t want to see it. They were too wrapped up in each other. And the music.

When I walked back to my hotel, a nice homeless woman told me that she liked my sweater, and that I should be careful walking these streets alone.

“A young girl like you shouldn’t be alone out here.”

I thanked her and watched her go back to sleep in the park with the rest of her tribe, who welcomed her with open dirty blankets.

I got back to my room and got into bed, and felt completely alone, until I turned on my computer and listened to IN UTERO and fell asleep, dreaming about being 17 again. I suppose it was seeing the young people. I suppose it was being jetlagged from the time difference. I suppose it was a lot of things. But sleep didn’t come easy that night.

White Lives Matter

About in the middle of Montana (this is the only way I know how to direct, the state is so vast and at times seemed abandoned by people and peopled by cows and sky) is the site of the Battle of Little Big Horn.

The Sioux Indians are a conglomerate made up of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota tribes of the Pacific Northwest. They had already been relegated to small slice of lands in the Black Hills of South Dakota by 1875. Robbed of their original native land and their dignity, some, under pressure from the federal government-fresh off a war win after the “War of Northern Aggression”- conceded and languished on the bespoken acreage. The problem was at this point “manifest destiny” had spread westward like a plague, not only to the Native People, but also to their sacred food and cultural source, the bison. These majestic animals were being hunted to almost extinction. The Sioux Indians relied on these animals for food, hides, household good, and wampum, so on.

Sitting Bull, a wise shaman, medicine man and Indian Chief would not be cuckolded. His distrust and contempt for the pioneer population impeding on his native land inspired him, and his faithful warrior, Crazy Horse, as well as others, to move west of the reservations to land labeled, “unceded territory” at the time (Montana, parts of Wyoming). The Sioux set up camp, and life there, as the Bison that they relied on so heavily was abundant. They lived peacefully in unceded territory, until…..

In the early 1870’s General Custer and other prospectors learned of gold in the Black Hills, which sat square in the middle of Indian Territory. The federal government, which allotted the land to the Indian tribe, attempted to buy it back from them.

The Indians refused.
That’s when the shit hit the fan.

The term, “Indian Giver” is derived from this situation. The government giveth, and then snatched the fuck away in a series of massacres the history books now refer to as The Great Sioux War.

How great it was, I imagine, would depend on whom you asked.

The Battle of Little Big Horn was the first battle of this war, which started as an ambush upon a peaceful Sioux camp.

Sitting Bull’s defiance and perceived “disrespect” to the American Government was slowly eating away at the bucolic picture of perfect pioneer life the General Grant tried desperately to paint on the overpopulated urban areas of the New America of the 1870’s. New York and San Francisco’s population was booming and the adventuresome spirit of exploration had caught hold of so many immigrants who began seeing the Native land dwellers as an alien force that was keeping American progress stagnant. No doubt they had President Grant to thank for this ideal- a Military man at heart, and quite the spin doctor- he took Thomas Jefferson’s vision of Manifest Destiny and ran with it like an obedient tight end. The pioneers began encroaching on Sioux land, began digging up terrain and violating the earth that the Sioux view as “Mother” in their creation stories.

Like Columbus in the West Indies, who landed in Some Jamaican man’s backyard and claimed his house in the name of Spain (discovery and exploration-yay), the pioneers snatched land from the Native owners and began gutting the sacred Black Hills of all its minerals and riches-at least they tried to at first. A lot of the Native warriors were straight not having any of it.

As retaliation, Grant sent 3 factions into Unceded Territory to try to cut the “problem” off at its inception- Sitting Bull was the chief that most of the warrior got their “ok’s” from, and Grant thought that if he could make an example out of the man who so vocally called the White Men thieves and scum, then he would secure his legacy as the president who truly opened the Pacific Northwest for this people.

To do this, he employed the famous General George Armstrong Custer, a man who loved poetry and was zealously devoted to his wife, to lead the 7^th infantry, motley crew made up of immigrants and politicians, to annihilate the “Indian problem”.

The plan was this- Major Marcus Reno would take a small group of men to charge into the camp situation along the Big Horn River. Gen Custer would follow with 2 more battalions of men, flanking the camp at both sides, and attacking when the warriors were occupied trying to hold off Major Reno.

That was the plan; it didn’t quite go down that way.

The site of the battle sits high on a slight sloping excerpt of land. Green and still, silent. Sad. You have to pay $11 to get in and the money doesn’t go to the Natives of the reservation but the park system. Oh well.

Immediately upon entering the visitor’s center I am hit with depictions of Grant and Sitting Bull, fixed opposite each other, staring out at the visitors, almost asking them to choose a side before they enter.

“You are a fool to make yourselves slaves to a piece of fat bacon, some hard-tack, and a little sugar and coffee,”- Sitting Bull’s words.

“To Christianize and civilize the Indian and train him in the art of peace,”- Grant’s words.

Both statements etched on the exhibit entrance like mottos lauded at an election.

Foes. Unequal in the matters of Artillery, and of heart.

The entrance reminded me of the protest photos of Ferguson, and the tumult I longed to be a part of when I entered Missouri.

Custer’s plan to curb the Indian insurgence came to fruition in the misty morning minutes of June 25^th.  Only the curbing didn’t belong to the great army of the new Union.

They, actually, got their asses handed to them by the mighty Sioux warriors who took up arms and chased them down to the lowest ravine of the Little Big Horn River, and picked them off ants coming out of a molehill.

It was a poetic site. Sitting Bull’s grandson recalled his patriarch telling him a story of a Union soldier shooting his horse n the head to provide a barricade, because he knew he was going to die.

Imagine, trying to make a barricade out of a dead horse in order to buy yourself precious moments of time that really just staved off the inevitability of death that lurked all around you, in the misty morning of a perfect Montana June afternoon.

I imagined the sun was settling down against a pallet of deep indigo, the wind calm, just as it was on the evening I went up to the battlefield.

All along the battle lines lay markers, to commemorate the dead, and when they could, the exact places where the dead fell. The front of the battlefield looks like Arlington National Cemetery- the artless white stones that mark the lives and deaths of the Union solders- Solitary markers that stand above the gravestones-neat and uniform in perfect patterns that flair out into a square.

Down the trail there are the Indian Markers, these are of a darker stone, and more sparse and unaccompanied. Limber Bones and Closed Hand fell at the cusp of a lonely hill about 40 yards from the chest of the river. There weren’t too many Indian graves because they were victorious in this battle.

And this was the only one.

When I went into the back of the Visitor center, which doubles as a gift shop and museum, there was a filmstrip playing about the Great Sioux War.

I sat down next to an older man who looked way too tired to be out in the middle of nowhere like this, and his wife, who held his hand and stroked his arm as he fidgeted uncomfortably in the seat. He had a veteran’s hat on, and an obvious handicap from what I could not tell.

When the film begins, a giant map outlays the land of the United States and Indian Territory in the 1870’s. I watched in awe, even after the Civil war had ended, a war which vastly divided this country along what seemed an extended, protracted, unending line that solidified an emotional border of resentment and racism that to this day has yet to be crossed. But the country and the territories of this time were pretty equal. The Native Man existed in a land that took up most of the Pacific Northwest and the belly of this country, until the Sioux war.

The film continued, introducing us to sweet pale General Custer, the nation’s rock star. He was not the most decorated Civil War soldier, but for reasons unbeknownst to me, the most famous. The most loved, with his crystalline blue eyes and wavy boyish blonde hair, and his manly super mustache, he was poised and proper- a gentleman and a soldier-filled with the wholesome Anglo qualities that make up a hero. Ulysses Grant loved him. And when faced against the dark force of the brooding uncircumcised red savage, America chose its side and loved him too.

When he finally fell at the battle (it is rumored but not confirmed that Crazy Horse killed him in the fight) and word spread back to civilization, all white hell broke loose. The government dispatched infantry after infantry to hunt the Indian insurgents to the end of the continental earth. Cries of “kill the savages” entered as refrain to long sung soldier battle songs. Posters of dead Indians piled at the feet of the likeness of Custer popped up along both coasts. America wanted native blood for the white blood that was shed at Little Big Horn.

And they got it, adopting a ruthless campaign to cut down any Native camp they came across and attacking- slicing and shooting until the last child fell. Many times these camps were man less-the army slaughtered women, children, and the elderly.

I noticed the veteran next to me twist in his chair again. Was it the thought of killing unarmed civilians that didn’t sit well with him, or the thought of dead American soldiers that unnerved him?

According to the film, and much to the country’s delight, after being chased into Canada (after burying two sisters and his mother from an ambush by soldiers at their camp), Sitting Bull surrendered.

He and his supporters were taken into custody and forced to sign another treaty-why? I don’t know, it wasn’t like America would take heed to the treaty if their whim so suited them- that ceded all Sioux Black Hills land back to the United States.

Indian Giving.

Thanks Giving.

He was held as a prisoner at Fort Yates, Stadning Rock agency, which lay at the border of Montana and South Dakota, and there he languished on minimal provisions and almost no contact with family or tribe until he was shot in the head by an army officer for not mounting a horse fast enough. He died in poverty and disease in a prison on the reservation that he believed made a mockery of the sacred relationship that his people cultivated with his beloved land.

The last words he spoke were the mantra by which he lived and died-

“Don’t trust the White Man.”

When the film ended, I walked outside to tour the gravesites and the monument that was erected to the fallen, and to the Indians who were slaughtered thereafter.
The Indian monument lies separate from the war monument, like a segregated schoolhouse, far from the main battlefield.

I stood and took pictures against the backdrop of the falling sun, and saw the old soldier saluting the battlefield. I watched in amazement for a moment. It wasn’t until the sun caught his skin in such a way, that I realized this man was brown. Browner than I thought when I was sitting next to him, his tanned arm now exposed, positioned sharply at the side of his head, his wife at his other side, waiting with baited breath, to walk her love back up the trail after he pays his respects.

Respects to whom? A decimated population whose only crime was fighting back against a tyrannical government and psychotic army who took the head of their children as payback for the lives of white soldiers who signed up for battle?
Much like the Haitians, who pay reparations to France for killing 5 white people in the war for Black independence, the Red Man paid for the precious life of General Custer.

But who will pay them for their lost land, for their lost lives, for their lost souls?

After the war ended and the Indian “insurgence” was properly dealt with, prospectors and pioneers settle the land and hunted to buffalo at will, especially the population that grazed along Indian Reservation borders.

They did this at the behest of President Grover Cleveland, which I am sure was a final “fuck you” to the Godless savages who had dared spill White blood.

I got into my car and saw the veteran. He took his hat off before his wife helped him into their camper, his hair was thick and black, and his limp pronounced, but his face, his face seemed satisfied.

I drove away toward Flathead reservation and saw about 15 bison grazing peacefully in the distance.

Red Man

Montana bodes some of the most beautiful skies I have ever seen. Thick, sensual clouds caressed by a diaphanous cerulean- like whipped topping that blurs the horizon containing silk like hills of green and dark brown. It looks like a real live Bob Ross painting. Big sky country is most suitable for this place. The sky demands your attention and awe. I drive past a small expanse that is Wyoming into a state that houses horses and cows grazing freely at every bend. Country music on the radio as well as 2 NPR stations.

Tractors and pickup trucks, but not in the inbred white trash way.

This expanse of highway is easy to drive, straight and unencumbered with speed limit signs or state police, or even exits. It looks untouched almost, as if God was saving this part of the world just for himself.

My purpose for coming here was to visit 2 Indian Reservations, the people of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and the Flathead Indian Reservation that housed some Sioux as well as the Confederation of Salish and Kootenai tribes. The reservations are on opposite sides of Montana and quite different in geography. The Northern Cheyenne’s tribal lands are flat, peak less and dry, and much smaller than the Bitterroot land by square mileage. But still breathtaking. The first building I came to when I hit the reservation’s border was the college. It’s a modest structure, with a beautiful awning in the front to help you find it. Chief Dull Knife College was founded in 1975, specifically for the education of the Native people of the land of the Cheyenne. I went to an HBCU, so I felt akin to the students and faculty there. They were doing sacred work. They knew it.

I went into the building and spoke to a woman named Millie (Black Feather), a sweet, zaftig smiling woman about 5 feet tall. We exchanged niceties and she let me look around. I asked her about the programs and cultural activities on the reservation, and she happily told me about a POW wow on the neighboring Crow reservation that was going down this weekend.

She also told me that the college has a great Native Studies program that specializes in Indian language and History. Cheyenne’s language originates from the Algonquin language stock. There is also a Boys and Girls club situated on eh campus, as well as a Job training and readiness program, a GED program, and a recovery meeting, which is held once a week in the campus library when the Catholic Church is not available. Also, there are times when the college has food drives.

Lame Deer, the city named for the Cheyenne Warrior who would not surrender at eh Battle of Muddy Creek, is a focal point in the reservation and college takes its students to this site every year.

Millie and I talked for a while about teaching, education and so on, and then she took me to the main drag in the center of town. She wanted me to see the People’s center buildings, but I wanted to talk to the people. We talked for a while longer and then we parted ways. I walked around town for a while, trying to get a feel for the place.
Almost every man I saw had a car, had to apparently, there isn’t a really reliable transportation system on the reservation. Children ran around with no shoes on, looked after by smiling mothers and grandmothers. Tents were up in parking lots, and at midday, people were deeply sleeping under them. Dogs populated the street like they do in the third world.  I came to building that was boarded up and saw a beautiful mural on it, one that depicted old Indians marching toward a meth needle. A large eagle screamed in your face, admonishing. The word, “Genocide” was scrawled at the bottom of the mural. I stood there for a while, trying to swallow the pain in my throat that welled up when I saw two young women staring at me, smiling, with not a tooth between them. Drugs have hit this reservation. Hard. The Cheyenne have evolved past alcohol and are now dealing with a full on crystal meth epidemic.

A small skinny whisper of a kid with the word “DOPE” stamped on his hat came up to me and asked me if I like the mural.
“I do.”

“I can take you to some more if you want.”

I followed the boy, he called himself Thomas because his mother was Catholic, and his father called him “Great Whisper” after his grandfather.

He was a light brown slip-tall and lanky with huge eyes and hands. His mouth was flat and wide against his face. His nose made his profile look like the Crazy Horse statue. At first glance one would almost assume he was Mexican. But he was full blood Native American.

“My boy does a lot of these, he’s really talented.”

Truer words have never been spoken. The brick canvas was covered with a scenic rendering of the same hypnotic Montana sky that beguiled me. A giant blackbird kept watch over a group of Indians on horseback, focused on a burning teepee next to a railroad track, broken, trudging through Indian land. A flowing river kept cadence with the warriors, as if it were on their team.

“I can show you some of mine, if you want,” he blushed.

“Yes, please.”

I put the boy in my car and we drove up to Lame Deer High school, the only structure of what seemed like the road to hell. It was not paved, just uneven dirt and rocks that I am sure left school busses broken every year and confounded my poor VW. Thomas was silent and at ease in the car, the opposite to my awkward nervousness-what if this boy tried to rob me? What if he killed me? My New York spider/rat sense wasn’t tingling, so I tried to make to small talk and asked him about the school. He was a student here, he said after he graduated he would probably join the army like his brother. From talking to him and looking around the reservation I realized that this was the plan for many Native men. Even at the college there were scatters of young boys in uniform registering for the coming semester’s classes.

We pulled up to a lonely high place on the opposite side of the building’s entrance. There was a silhouette of a naked Indian woman, drawn in all Black, glowing beams of white, surrounded by coyote and prairie dogs. This was the antelope woman. When a Cheyenne draws a woman with likeness of animals around her, this is homage to her fertility, her beauty. She will never be drawn naked, like the Victorian, her silhouette will be shaded and she will be ensconced in life.
Thomas was truly a talent.

“You know, you’re pretty amazing. Have you ever thought of goin to art school?” I smiled at him; squinting from the mothering sun that beamed so intense it seemed to sit witness to our conversation.

He just smiled. “Nah, not really. It’s something I like to do, to pass the time, you know?”

I stood silent to agree, even though every cell in me wanted to scream, “FUCK NO!!! NURTURE THIS!!!!”
We drove back down to the town center by the college. By this time conversation flowed easier.

“Why do you have so many knives in your car?”
“Because I am a woman traveling alone across the country,” I answered.

He laughed. “Yeah, I guess. At first I thought you were gonna kill me and put me in the trunk.”

His smile was so pure, like stock photo footage. Looking at his profile against the scenery out the window was like watching puzzle pieces at the moment when they slide into each other, fitting perfectly.

Down the paved part of the road he rolled down the window and called out to a pretty dark brown girl pushing a full stroller with 3 more small ones behind her.

“Hey- stop a minute- hey!”

The girl was his sister. The children were his younger siblings.

“NIgga, I been look for your ass!” She chastised her brother and stared into the driver’s seat and looked at me with a contrite smile, as if apologizing for her greeting.

“It’s all good, I was just showing this lady around. What’s your name?”

I wanted to tell him my name was something spectacular like, “Sexy Feather” or “Expensive Flip Flops”.

“Breeanne. Nice to meet you.”

Thomas’ sister was named Jennifer, she wouldn’t tell me her Indian name, she was a shy, thick bodied, beautiful teenager who chewed gum with her mouth open and cursed at the young siblings, which apparently she took care of as if she birthed them. She and Thomas had the same father who was dead; the younger ones had the same father, who was deep into a meth addiction that caught their mother as well.

They were on their way to the college to go get some food to put away for the week.

Everyone piled in my car, since there was no room for the stroller in the trunk; we affixed it to the roof since the ride was only about ½ mile.

This was an amazingly fun ride for me, even though I was silent, listening to Thomas and Jennifer go back and forth about food provisions and bath times and their mom- I had a fantasy that when I got to the Mexico leg of my journey I would smuggle a Mexican family across the border in my trunk. My brother has since talked me down from this fantasy, as he is unwilling to front the bail money that it would take to get me out of prison if my plan failed, so this was my second best attempt.
Interesting how God works.

When I got back to the College, Millie was just leaving, about to get into her car. One of the little ones opened up the door even before I had come to full stop. He hadn’t any shoes on, he ran straight for Millie and she picked him up and smiled at me.

“I see you made some friends,” she covered her eyes from the sun.

“I did.”

“Thomas, we got the pictures from last year’s spirit run up in the library. You should stop in there and take a look.”

“Oooohh,” Jennifer teased.

“What’s the spirit run?” I asked, now holding one of the children who climbed out of my car. He had two pieces of the raisin bread from the loaf in my back seat in his mouth.

Thomas had participated in a Cheyenne tradition that pays homage to the ancestors who were tapped in Fort Robinson Nebraska in 1879. They were locked in the Fort with no food water, or heat for 5 days. A group of them tried to escape and were shot immediately upon exit. Some, like Chief Dull Knife managed to escape make the long, rigorous journey back to their homeland.

400 miles. The run begins in January, just like it did in 1879, through Nebraska back up to the reservation in Busby Montana. Thomas had completed the spirit run twice, which I assume was why he was so skinny, he had a runner’s body.

I fell completely in love with him when I found this out. He smiled at me, that same, perfect flat smile and took his little brother from my arms.

It was then that I understood why he would never go to art school; he would never leave this land. He knew it. At that moment when he looked at me, he knew I knew it too.

“Come on,” Jennifer commanded, and like ducklings everyone fell in line and followed her up to a trailer in the center of campus where the food pantry was.

“Thank you,” I said to Thomas before he brought the rear of the brood.

“Yeah,” he replied, sheepishly, and then hugged me, and turned and walked away.

Maybe it was Thomas, or the immense beauty of the land contrasted against the abject poverty but I was almost moved to tears as I drove away.

Face Time

Once upon a time, deep in the majestic Black Hills of South Dakota, where the air is never balmy and the elevation makes you feel closer to the creator, some douche bag decided to carve four presidents’ faces into the side of a mountain.

Why?
I don’t know. I guess this was the time in history (defunct…sure!) when White men were feeling extra self-congratulatory and wanted to wipe the face of the Red man in their self-congratulating Asses. This is my only guess.

Somewhere, between the Kansas Nebraska Act I took a turn into another time zone and what seems like another life.

I will affirm this- the Pacific Northwest is beautiful. South Dakota air is crisp, clean and clear, even the mist that stirs gently around the zenith of the hills in the backdrop of highway setting looks pure, like driven snow. The truck stops are cleaner too, or the truckers have just taken to shitting and doing meth in their cabs.

There are 10 people per square mile in South Dakota.

There are 26,000 people per square mile in New York City.

I90 west is a straight shot through this state. I drove the expanse to my destination- Mount Rushmore. The site of four guys’ faces.

A Brief History- Gutzon Borglum was the son of Danish immigrants who had way too much time (and too many wives-his father was a Mormon) on their hands in the Idaho territory. Gutzon grew up and became adept at sculpting. His artistic passion led to an obsession with scale, and one day, probably while he was smoking peyote he stole from an Indian, looked at the choppy, uncarved stones of the Black Hills and thought to himself, “You know what’s missing from this rock? Like four guys’ faces.”

Since he was pretty famous at the time because of his other work (I don’t know what his other work was, I am sure you don’t care) Doane Robinson and the United States Government thought this was a great idea.

Doane Robinson was a South Dakota historian who thought a great way to preserve the rich culture of the Lakota Sioux Indians who populated the area (before manifest destiny) was to place atop this mountain the face of the president responsible for manifest destiny along with three other dudes who were president too.  This idea, he thought, would make South Dakota more historical.

Self. Congratulations.

The mountain itself sits high atop a peak in Keystone South Dakota, apparently the only city with electricity (this was the perception coming off the highway) in an 80-mile vicinity.

Like most modest and dignified American historical attractions, a small, garish tourist town popped up at the bottom of the mountain. There are reptile farms, bear shows, a mystery cave that dares you to come inside and not be petrified out of your own natural mind, a museum dedicated to the history of the life of the sculptor and his White polygamist friends…It’s all very exciting.

The drive up the mountain requires an extra tank of gas-it is so steep that you really can’t travel more that 40 miles an hour, which is just as well.

When I came to the mouth of the Mount Rushmore, I was greeted with many state flags, some Indian, none confederate. I was a skeptical, thinking that the entire hullabaloo for a rock carving was bullshit.

I was half right.

The faces are seen immediately as you drive up the steepness of the terrain, like rocky sirens, tempting visual reward for your journey. The site itself is quite peaceful-almost the complete opposite of the dated shit show mountain town that goes on at the bottom of the hill. I stood at the mouth of the mountain and looked around-there were families from different parts of the country, busses full of tourists, a small squadron of missionaries who barreled out of a church van wide eyed and sweet faced, a Muslim family who didn’t speak English who kept looking over their shoulders, a gang of bikers clad in dusty leather who kept staring down the Muslim Family, and 2 other Black people.

Truly a cross section of Middle America.

When you walk close to the sculpture, the first face you see is that of George Washington, which I suppose is intentional, he is the father of the country. Next to him is his slave screwing homeboy, Thomas Jefferson, deep in the cut is good old Indian killing Teddy R, and lonely, lanky abolitionist Abraham Lincoln is set off to the side a bit, like the fat girl at the Junior Prom. George Washington, being the front man of this band is the only one with shoulders and clothes on.

I took heaps of pictures, and naturally I wasn’t the only one. There are so many perspectives from the bottom of the rock, after a while I couldn’t help but to admire the artistry-the look on their faces were not stoic like I imagined they would be. The eyes seemed alive, pensive, but animated. Teddy, the only one with facial hair, seemed just a little bit sad, lonely even.

I walked up the presidential trial which takes you up towards the faces-not too close, but closer than the beginning where all the flags are. Then I was drawn in. Maybe it was the outlay of the jutted rocks that encapsulated the exhibit, or the greenery that garnished the faces, but I wanted more. The closer I got, the better the lens I used on my camera, and I couldn’t get intimate enough. I found a park ranger and asked them if they were going to lead any hikes up to the top of the mountain.

“Hey, no,” he said. “We don’t do that anymore, ok.”

I couldn’t place his accent, so in my mind he sounded like a Canadian.

When I asked him why he told me a story of Greenpeace. Apparently soon after President Obama was elected Greenpeace scaled Mount Rushmore and unfurled a banner protesting against political leaders who were denying climate change. On this banner, there was a picture of Barack Obama. Ever since then, climbing up to the top of the faces was prohibited by law.

I was upset-I felt that standing on the Presidents Trial looking up at these quiet faces was nothing but a cocktease. I wanted to get closer, I wanted to see more, I wanted to touch the rocks and feel the wind at the top. I wanted to pick George Washington’s nose. I wanted to brush Teddy Roosevelt’s mustache. I wanted to put my finger through Abe Lincoln’s assassination head hole. I wanted to see if Thomas Jefferson had Sally Hemmings’ number in his pocket. Alas, all I got was some pretty cool pics from down below. On the Presidents Trial, there are markers that give the sightseers facts about the carving of the faces and the presidents themselves. I walked around and read some of the facts- no one died carving the faces, it took 17 years to complete, the presidents were chosen by Doane Robinson. On some other markers there were facts about the men on the rock.

When I got to Thomas Jefferson’s marker, I was standing there with a family reading in amazement about Jefferson’s accomplishments- the Louisiana Purchase and such- and they lamented when reading about his family about his children, some who did not outlive their parents.

“He only had 3 children grow to adulthood, what a shame,” the young portly wife said.

“That’s actually not true,” I chimed in. “He had about 5 more kids who aren’t on this marker with a slave named Sally Hemmings. My great grandmother, Beverly Hemmings, was his biological daughter. Naturally since she was illegitimate and Black they wont put her name on the marker.”
The couple looked at me with both awe and horror on their faces.

“Yeah, so I’m here kinda like a family reunion, visiting great gramps. Have a great day!”

When I got to my car at the end of the trial I saw the family again, and I waved to them vigorously with a huge smile on face. They hurried to their wagon and shoed their children inside before locking the doors and peeling away from the parking lot.

When my laughter had subsided, I wondered why the Rushmore people were so upset about Greenpeace putting up the banner. Was it because they staged a protest on the property, or because they used the face of a Black man on the mountain to do it?

After driving back down the mountain and eating at a restaurant that will serve you fries in the shape of the presidents’ faces, I walked back to my car and decided to go see the other face on the hills- Crazy Horse.

Crazy Horse was a great Lakota Warrior, born sometime in the winter season in Montana between 1840-1845. He was a shy and introverted warrior, given to psychic visions, and loved children.

Crazy Horse’s most notable battle was the Battle of Little Big Horn, under the command of Sitting Bull, where it is reported that he personally killed at least 10 soldiers of the 7^th infantry of the US Army that lost that battle under General Custer.

He was a proud Lakota; after the war was lost he would not conform to reservation life and in 1877 was killed while resisting arrest.

Maybe it was the fact that I had just left Ferguson. Maybe it was the fact that I had just left Mount Rushmore. But I felt more akin to this man that any other historical figurehead I had seen since I can remember.

The Crazy Horse monument sits atop the same grainy peaks of the Black Hills Mountains of the Sioux land.  Two men: Korczak Ziolkowski & Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear, one who possessed technical artistic acumen and one who remembered the face of the warrior sculpted it. Since no pictures exist of Crazy Horse, Korczak relied upon Chief Standing Bear to recall the stature of the Crazy Horse.

The rock is unfinished. Since this exhibit is privately funded and sculpted with almost no state or governmental aid it is taking a lot longer to finish than its 4 man counterpart 16 miles up the road. Because of that it is also impossible to venture all the way up to the rock. All that you can see is his face- stern and stoic, but not serene like the presidents- angry, brooding, staring deliberately to the west, overlooking the native Lakota Sioux lands that he died protecting.

Twice a day the Lakota people come upon the property and dance, right under the gaze of their fallen warrior father. The dance is a dance that celebrates life; father sky and mother earth marry at the horizon and you trace your finger all the way around this union until you come back to the beginning-a circle. The women carry hoops that represent this circle, life, a yin and yang of ground and sky. The men carry the drums. In Lakota culture, women don’t play, they just sing. The men are responsible for making and playing and carrying the drums, and they play them to honor the women. Twice a day, the face of Crazy Horse transforms from the sullen severe etching that captures the face of a tormented gladiator, to a discerning, almost satisfied, father who looks on, watching over his children carry on the traditions he died trying to preserve.

What the complete sculpture will look like is rendered in the visitor’s museum of the Crazy Horse memorial ground.  At the bottom of it is a quote-

“My lands are where my dead lay buried.”

I say to Crazy Horse, if that is true, then this land is your land.

The St. Louis Massacre

In the history of the antebellum south, Missouri was both a free and slave state. Conspicuously tucked under Lincoln’s home state, Missouri was the anomaly of the new union. The state sent representatives to both sets of government. German immigrants, staunchly opposed to slavery, populated Missouri and Confederate sympathizers who saw no place for Black people in the state.

Because of these tensions, pro secessionists and Union supporters came to a bloody head on May 10 1861 in what was penned the St. Louis Massacre.  Union soldiers fired upon an innocent man. In retaliation, the population of the port city erupted in riots.

1861. It was a long time ago. But only if you measure it in years.

On August 9^th 2014 Michael Brown, a teenager, was shot to death by Ferguson Missouri police officer Darren Wilson. He was unarmed and shot with his hands up. His body was left in the street for 6 hours.  Almost immediately after the altercation, Ferguson exploded in riots and unrest. Soon after, a state of emergency is declared. Politicians converged upon the city, as well as news crews and opportunists looking to turn the tragedy of this boy’s death into a windfall of MSNBC appearances and bylines in the New York Times.

Young people took to the streets of Ferguson, angry, embittered, joined by people all across this country who wanted to come and participate in a moment that would become the cusp of the new Black revolution, the movement whose catalyst wore the face of an unassuming Black boy named Trayvon, and evolved into a fully-bodied armor of a hulking suit of a man-child named Michael Brown.

Hands up. Don’t shoot- now an anthem, sung out by a chorus of sign holding protestors that take to the street to remind the world that Black lives matter. Protestors who took to Ferguson Blvd, singing out their soundtrack in the midst of a bloody and expensive tumult that cost this city hundreds of millions of dollars and prompted the government to declare a state of emergency.

I arrived in Ferguson Missouri on Saturday afternoon.  West Florissant Ave, spread wide against the flatness of Missouri’s geography, is a two way street housing Pay Day loan facilities and Checkers Chicken spots. There is a Public Storage facility across from a church. Red’s Original BBQ sits across from Krispy Kreme. I noticed so many food stores I wanted to throw up.

What I didn’t notice was what I came to the city looking for.

People. The streets were almost completely empty. There was a quiet unease about the town, an unease that comes with emptiness.

I remember when I was a young teacher, standing on a Harlem street, watching in disbelief, 140 blocks south, as two billowy opaque black clouds ascended into a beautiful September sky where the Twin Towers used to be.
For days after, New York City seemed unpeopled, mute. As if opening your mouth or walking down the street would imply that you were complicit in the catastrophic tragedy.

This is what Ferguson felt like as I drove down West Florissant Ave.

It felt like I was traversing on a giant, precarious scab. If I drove too fast, if I called out too loud, the scab would slip, and the bloody mucus would ebb to the surface and cover me.

Suffocate me.

Choke me to death.

I can’t breathe.

I drove down to Church Street where the Ferguson City hall was. Saturday was a humid bright afternoon, warm and welcoming. I stopped in front of the building and took pictures. No one stopped me. In Fact, no one was outside. It’s Saturday, in August, when the sun is highest in the sky, and the streets are completely empty.

It looks like a ghost town, but with ghosts who are tired.

I drove down a street that lead me to signs, they said, I love Ferguson, paid for by the friends of Ferguson inc. These signs sat on sweet looking homes, almost palatial.

I drove down further into the town and came upon the police dept.

The building was gated. Protected by concrete barriers and metal gates.

As if the police needed protecting.

When I jumped the gate to take pictures I noticed that one on of the concrete barriers someone wrote, REST IN PEACE MICHAEL BROWN.

Two fire trucks passed me, and I almost fell when I was trying to jump the cop fence.

No one stopped me. No cops came out of the precinct to ask me what the hell I was doing there. I don’t even know if there were any cops in there.

I know what I was expecting when I came here. It was not to come upon the set of the Walking Dead.

Ferguson is not an exclusively Black city, much like most urban metropoli in each state.

The Blacks are not running around with scepters dipped in grape Kool aid walking on rose petals sewn together with human hair weave.

There are white people in this city. In fact, the white neighborhood is the place where you will see the I LOVE FERGUSON signs in abundance. On West Florissant Ave and Ferguson Blvd, where there is an influx of Black homes, there are no signs. There is nothing.

Where is this city? Where are the young people holding signs? Where are the oath keepers looking to arm the black citizens? Where are the angry masses singing swansong of the movement, HANDS UP DON’T SHOOT!?

Where is Rachel Maddow?

Where is Al Sharpton?

I wanted to touch down in this city and be welcomed by sweet protest. I wanted to be pulled out of my car by over zealous cops who were frightened into violence as soon as they saw my black car and black face.

But I was not sated. I was left out. I felt like Ferguson abandoned me.

Much like the faces of the people of this city I longed to see contorted in anger, I was pissed off. I didn’t want to be happy. I felt empty and malcontent for a place that had the opportunity to truly change the tempo of the radical racial song that blared out through the stereo of the Midwest- the confederate flag holding license plates, the segregated proms, the police shooting unarmed Black people.

On Monday, Talib Kwali gave a free concert here. Common was here, as well as a whole bunch of celebrities looking to have conversations with young people and police officers. I wasn’t here to get autographs or videotape live music to upload to you tube. But it doesn’t matter. I missed the show.

What’s worse, what made my stomach feel hollow and hot was that the show does not go on. Because of what happened to Michael Brown and the discovery of the systemic racial practices of the police in this city and everywhere in this country, I wanted the show to never end. I wanted there to be a fire burning in the middle of town like the Olympics.

But the conversation had stopped. The fire was out.

Nothing.

It was a feeling I could not shake as I drove down Durst Ave to check into the dirtiest Days Inn I have ever seen in my life.

The next morning I woke up and scrubbed all the truck stop Days Inn dirt off my body.

I was ravenous. I get that way when I am angry. Or maybe it was the other way around.

I left the dirt hotel early with the concerted plan to get the fuck out of the city, since I had a 14-hour drive ahead of me to get to South Dakota. Back on West Florissant Ave, I drove past 1^st Baptist Church of Ferguson. It was the only time in this city where I saw a dearth of Black people. Black people going to church-dressed in church garb-high hats, children in suit pants and ties, pretty little Black girls with pressing curls blowing in the breeze of a bright Sunday summer morning.

I stopped, even though I was in jogging shorts, I went in.

The church was neither a megaplex or a humble wooden structure with just a steeple. The pews were comfortable, but not inviting. The people inside smiled, hugged each other and laughed like they were genuinely happy to see one another.

Minutes passed and row after row became fuller and fuller. I looked around. It wasn’t just full of Black people. It was full of everyone.

It was like the city, with all its population, shapes and colors, were waiting for this morning.
This service.

The organ began to play.

“We’ll understand it, better by and by…”

The choir came out and started to sing. Speckled with brown and white faces, they clapped in synchronicity as the congregation swayed and touched hands.

Pastor Stoney Shaw stepped out from the pulpit as if he had gold in his pockets. This was a face of a man with unabashed joy. Even amidst the emptiness and the strained race relations and negative media attention that inundated his city, He strode out to greet his followers with a look on his face of perfect peace.

Maybe it was because he was white.

Stoney Shaw is a pastor who has long been vocal about what has been happening in Ferguson.

“The city cannot go back to what it was after this, it mustn’t.” His words have been quoted in the paper. His actions charted online, opening up nights of prayer for the city and bringing in children to the church when school was canceled.

Pastor Shaw stood up beaming at his audience after the choir finished singing. He thanked everyone for coming. He blessed them for being brave and courageous as Christians. Then he prayed.

He prayed for the people of Ferguson. He prayed for their healing and then prayed for the families of the loved ones hurt. He stood silently for a minute. I opened my eyes and I saw some of the congregants crying.

“Healing does not exist in a vacuum. Neither does Christianity”, he preached.

“If you love, truly love as Jesus loved, then you must pray for those you love, and those who do not love you. This is what is missing now, here. We have no love for each other. If you truly love man, as you want to be loved, you would not run in the street destroying people’s property. If you truly loved the way Jesus loved, you would not burn down the place where you live.”

“If you truly loved the way you want to be loved, you wouldn’t shoot an unarmed boy to death.”

When he said it I felt the palpable inhale, the holding of breath in the congregation, and then the release. The crying out. The entire building exhaled in “YES” and there was a roar, a spirit that flew from under the pews into the air and filled the empty spaces with a validation that I sought outside these walls for the past 24 hours. But could not find until now.

The chorus started singing again.

Peace be still.

 As the collection plate went around, I couldn’t stop crying.

An older woman who looked like my third grade teacher, Ms. Pfeiffer, put her arms around me.

“There darling. Amen.”

She was a portly white woman with a peach cheeked smile and curly hair.

After the service, I wasn’t as hungry, but still needed food. I followed my GPS towards the outskirts of town and passed a coffee house about 3 blocks away from the police station.

The Corner Coffee House is a Middle America mom and popshop that sells everything from espresso to crepes. It’s quaint, unassuming, you would miss it if you were looking for it.

I came upon it easy, as if I was supposed to.

When I walked in, 3 teenage white girls were behind the counter. A Black family was having brunch. An interracial couple was arguing over coffee or tea.

A group of older women, 3 white, 2 Black, discussed an obscure book that I never read.

I sat down and ordered the eggs special and an espresso. And watched.

I wasn’t expecting a powder keg like I had 24 hours ago. I was just expecting people.
That is exactly what I got. The Black family was taking their daughter to the University of Missouri after their breakfast. The book club ladies wished the girl luck. As they did, I watched the father, beam with pride and hug his daughter. The couple in the booth kissed and drank tea. One of the teenage girls behind the counter screwed up my eggs. She apologized and gave me my espresso for free.

No one seemed to seethe with the anger I longed to see. They were just people on a Sunday morning. Navigating their life in the midst of a tragedy that has now labeled their home as a hotbed of the new civil rights movement.

When I finished my breakfast and got back on the road, the streets were still quiet.

As I was leaving, I took one more picture of the vast, clear road that took me to I 284 West.

Maybe it was the church. Maybe it was the food. Maybe it was the emptiness of the town against the backdrop of the beautiful morning. But I felt an immense sense of peace.