the badlands

the other day, i was showing judy pictures of my trip to pine ridge and beyond, and I came across a video i took on my digital camera of the badlands. i was trying to capture how quiet everything is.

this morning i realized how entirely impossible it is to capture that. imagine... let me upload my video on to my computer (already we have the buzz/fan of the computer), i am sitting in a room or house with air conditioning and refrigerators and someone doing the dishes or eating crunchy cereal -- and i am supposed to hear that silence again by watching this video. Or i am outside where there are cars and people and sidewalks and construction, pressing "play" on my camera screen wishing silence could play out of the speakers and return me again to the calm of the land.

imagine sitting on the grass... and still feeling so distance from the true, rugged, unpopulated land.

the badlands hold the crumbling earth and let it sit there quietly and delicately. occasionally a bird will land on a fragile piece of consolidated dirt and it will slightly tip itself out of place and tumble as far down as its weight will carry it.

this land might seem scary... and lonely. but we need land like this. it holds the pain of humanity and lets it dry up and stay and take shape and fall apart. it is beautiful.

the calm of the land. i need that calmness sometimes, when i am hurting, to just let myself be the brittle fragile formations. to be in the quiet and solitude that listens and is silent and respectful to all that our soul is trying to hear and listen to and love.

the city has a different allure, the run-ins with strangers and unexpected encounters. things to buy from every corner of the world. a lot more things in general. pavement, covering up what used to be, containing the trees and the rivers to parks and pathways we visit when we get the extra time. time to be in nature.

well what if we are nature? part of it, i mean, not just visitors to it? it is part of us... for as long as i live, i hope the badlands and those hills in south dakota can hold that same silence... that they can always be a place to revere and respect what is desolate and fragile. that the only song you can hear is the wind and the insects and the birds. that the hum of everything else will have the respect to shut off and listen again...

sometimes

sometimes there is absolutely no reason to be spending my time on the internet.
sometiems my body and soul are ready for a change long before my conscious mind even begins to contemplate one.
sometimes i'm in an unexplainable mood that wants to do nothing but read a silly book about high school romance, fearing lost potential, and going on an epic adventure.
sometimes i need to get out of the city. badly.
sometimes i have poetry inside me waiting to be writen.
sometimes the thing i'm most afraid of doing is exactly what i must do.
sometimes the time is ripe for whimfully buying a plane ticket to visit a far-off soul-friend.
sometimes a simple visit to the farmer's market can keep me gleeful for the rest of the day.
sometimes i need a night all to myself for painting and singing loudly to sad love songs, even when i'm desprately in love.
sometimes my visions of a better world can harness my life into a place of complete dedication and hard work.
while other times i wander completely "off track" and into a quiet space of input and solitude.
sometimes, when i'm feeling particularly wise, i realize and appreicate that there is absolutely nothing wrong with my life or me.
sometimes i make it my entire bike-ride to work without stopping. without even thinking about how badly the hills hurt. just breathing, meditating, and wishing the air weren't so polluted.
sometimes i feel lost because of my need for direction. my need for a vision. my need for creating my future. and all the uncertainty that lies therein.
sometimes i just need to keep going with my dreams.
sometimes it takes pushing through.