Desert Snow
- Streams of beautiful lights in the night, but where is my pastureland in these dark valleys... It's snowing over the Zuni Mountains, fat, wet flakes dropped in torrents by looming overhangs of clouds. It's snowing over the roadcut on Route 40, the rudely clipped slice out of the hogback ridge softened by gusting peals of winter laughter. The yellow blare of headlights on the highway is muffled, temporarily. Here, in the winding almost-grid of Gallup neighborhoods, the dogs are quiet, hunkered down under porch steps and fallen elms down in the arroyo. The low clouds over the city are streetlamp orange, brightening the night to the color of a stand-storm.
I've been sculpting, knapping beer-bottles into rosary-beads and knitting chicken-wire and cloth into ersatz fetishes. Once again, I'm considering dropping out of polite society, quitting another respectable job, moving out to the woods, and trying to seek my fortune with my art. After much goading by family members, I reckon it's about time I got some writing published. There's a potential market for my masks and arrowheads in the Ramah Valley, between the Checkerboard (a series of disjointed territories under the auspices of the Navajo Nation) and Zuniland. There are colonies of practical almost-hippies out there, pretty women with a knack for orchard-keeping, and enough gallery space and odd-jobs to keep a refugee from a liberal-arts education busy for a while.
The more I think about English, and read about it, and listen to other people, students mostly, talk about it, the less I find myself wanting to continue teaching it. I'd love to teach limited linguistics in another context, where it wasn't a compulsory course, or, better yet, outside of a brick-and-mortar school altogether. I don't at all like the sort of person I'm, yet again, turning into in this urban place with its urban rules. To quote Jack Forbes:
"Our religion is not what we profess, or what we say, or what we proclaim; our religion is what we do, what we desire, what we seek, what we dream about, what we fantasize, what we think- all of these things- twenty-four hours a day. One's religion, then, is one's life, not merely the ideal life but the life as it is actually lived. Religion is not prayer, it is not a church, it is not theistic, it is not atheistic, it has little to do with what White people cal 'religion.' It is our every act. If we tromp on a bug, that is our religion; if we experiment on living animals, that is our religion; if we cheat at cards, that is our religion; if we dream of being famous, that is our religion; if we gossip maliciously, that is our religion; if we are rude and aggressive, that is our religion. All that we do, and are, is our religion."
I realize that the University of New Mexico will continue to enact a genocidal schooling program whether I'm there to be a minor iconoclast or not. I also do not dismiss the transformative and regenerative effect that iconoclasm is having on my students, and could well have on future students. Nevertheless, I am not convinced that, no matter how much of a maverick I may be, I am not doing more harm than good in living my life this way.
I don't know if writing articles for High Country News and selling masks at rural boutiques will necessarily be any more revolutionary, but I do feel drawn to the land out there. I've had enough close calls and funny coincidences over the past couple of years to reckon that there's somewhere that I ought to be going and something that I ought to be doing that goes well beyond my own petty ambition and cultural blinders. I've got a few hunches as to what that's turning out to be, but such thoughts have no place in writing.
The snow whispers onward over other anxieties down burrows and under sagebrush, beside hearths and writing desks, in many dreams inside this sleeping desert. You've been leading me beside strange waters...
"Was a cowboy I knew in south Texas
His face was burnt deep by the sun
Part history, part sage, part mesquit
He was there when Poncho Villa was young
And he'd tell you a tale of the old days
When the country was wild all around
Sit out under the stars of the Milky Way
And listen while the coyotes howl
And they go
Poo yip poo yip poo
Poodi hoo di yip poo di yip poo
Poo yip poo yip poo
Poodi hoo di yip poo di yip poo
Now the long horns are gone
And the drovers are gone
The Comanche's are gone
And the outlaws are gone
Geronimo is gone
And Sam Bass is gone
And the lion is gone
And the red wolf is gone
Well he cursed all the roads and the oil men
And he cursed the automobile
Said this is no place for an hombre like I am
In this new world of asphalt and steel
Then he'd look off some place in the distance
At something only he could see
He'd say all that's left now of the old days
Those damned old coyotes and me
And they go
Poo yip poo yip poo
Poodi hoo di yip poo di yip poo
Poo yip poo yip poo
Poodi hoo di yip poo di yip poo
Now the long horns are gone
And the drovers are gone
The Comanche's are gone
And the outlaws are gone
Now Quantro is gone
Stan Watie is gone
And the lion is gone
And the red wolf is gone
One morning they searched his adobe
He disappeared without even a word
But that night as the moon crossed the mountain
One more coyote was heard
And he'd go,
Poo yip poo yip poo
Poodi hoo di yip poo di yip poo
Poo yip poo yip poo
Poodi hoo di yip poo di yip poo
Poo yip poo yip poo
Poodi hoo di yip poo di yip poo
Poo yip poo yip poo
Poodi hoo di yip poo di yip poo." - Don Edwards
I've been sculpting, knapping beer-bottles into rosary-beads and knitting chicken-wire and cloth into ersatz fetishes. Once again, I'm considering dropping out of polite society, quitting another respectable job, moving out to the woods, and trying to seek my fortune with my art. After much goading by family members, I reckon it's about time I got some writing published. There's a potential market for my masks and arrowheads in the Ramah Valley, between the Checkerboard (a series of disjointed territories under the auspices of the Navajo Nation) and Zuniland. There are colonies of practical almost-hippies out there, pretty women with a knack for orchard-keeping, and enough gallery space and odd-jobs to keep a refugee from a liberal-arts education busy for a while.
The more I think about English, and read about it, and listen to other people, students mostly, talk about it, the less I find myself wanting to continue teaching it. I'd love to teach limited linguistics in another context, where it wasn't a compulsory course, or, better yet, outside of a brick-and-mortar school altogether. I don't at all like the sort of person I'm, yet again, turning into in this urban place with its urban rules. To quote Jack Forbes:
"Our religion is not what we profess, or what we say, or what we proclaim; our religion is what we do, what we desire, what we seek, what we dream about, what we fantasize, what we think- all of these things- twenty-four hours a day. One's religion, then, is one's life, not merely the ideal life but the life as it is actually lived. Religion is not prayer, it is not a church, it is not theistic, it is not atheistic, it has little to do with what White people cal 'religion.' It is our every act. If we tromp on a bug, that is our religion; if we experiment on living animals, that is our religion; if we cheat at cards, that is our religion; if we dream of being famous, that is our religion; if we gossip maliciously, that is our religion; if we are rude and aggressive, that is our religion. All that we do, and are, is our religion."
I realize that the University of New Mexico will continue to enact a genocidal schooling program whether I'm there to be a minor iconoclast or not. I also do not dismiss the transformative and regenerative effect that iconoclasm is having on my students, and could well have on future students. Nevertheless, I am not convinced that, no matter how much of a maverick I may be, I am not doing more harm than good in living my life this way.
I don't know if writing articles for High Country News and selling masks at rural boutiques will necessarily be any more revolutionary, but I do feel drawn to the land out there. I've had enough close calls and funny coincidences over the past couple of years to reckon that there's somewhere that I ought to be going and something that I ought to be doing that goes well beyond my own petty ambition and cultural blinders. I've got a few hunches as to what that's turning out to be, but such thoughts have no place in writing.
The snow whispers onward over other anxieties down burrows and under sagebrush, beside hearths and writing desks, in many dreams inside this sleeping desert. You've been leading me beside strange waters...
"Was a cowboy I knew in south Texas
His face was burnt deep by the sun
Part history, part sage, part mesquit
He was there when Poncho Villa was young
And he'd tell you a tale of the old days
When the country was wild all around
Sit out under the stars of the Milky Way
And listen while the coyotes howl
And they go
Poo yip poo yip poo
Poodi hoo di yip poo di yip poo
Poo yip poo yip poo
Poodi hoo di yip poo di yip poo
Now the long horns are gone
And the drovers are gone
The Comanche's are gone
And the outlaws are gone
Geronimo is gone
And Sam Bass is gone
And the lion is gone
And the red wolf is gone
Well he cursed all the roads and the oil men
And he cursed the automobile
Said this is no place for an hombre like I am
In this new world of asphalt and steel
Then he'd look off some place in the distance
At something only he could see
He'd say all that's left now of the old days
Those damned old coyotes and me
And they go
Poo yip poo yip poo
Poodi hoo di yip poo di yip poo
Poo yip poo yip poo
Poodi hoo di yip poo di yip poo
Now the long horns are gone
And the drovers are gone
The Comanche's are gone
And the outlaws are gone
Now Quantro is gone
Stan Watie is gone
And the lion is gone
And the red wolf is gone
One morning they searched his adobe
He disappeared without even a word
But that night as the moon crossed the mountain
One more coyote was heard
And he'd go,
Poo yip poo yip poo
Poodi hoo di yip poo di yip poo
Poo yip poo yip poo
Poodi hoo di yip poo di yip poo
Poo yip poo yip poo
Poodi hoo di yip poo di yip poo
Poo yip poo yip poo
Poodi hoo di yip poo di yip poo." - Don Edwards