#graffitiman

Goodbye, Graffiti Man

“In a society of illusions, reality must manifest itself.” - John Trudell

Crouched upon the earth within a small dome of willow branches covered with buffalo hide.

Before that day, all I had ever known was the concept of God that white, suburban Texas had forced me to know. Spirituality confined to brick buildings, as if brick could house spirits. The wisdom of a Creator pressed in between the thick covers of a book. Laws. Rules.

Seven glowing-hot stones are gently eased into a small pit in the center.

Before that day, everyone looked the same. If you didn't, you were 'weird'. Unaccepted. Not worthy. What person doesn't want anything more than worth? Love is the ultimate expression of worth. What person doesn't want love? Follow the rules and you are loved. Love the rules.

Stones anointed with cedar, and sweet grass, their aroma filling me.

Before that day, the only system I ever knew was the system of laws and commerce. Money means everything. It is, after all, how you ascribe something worth, is it not? You don't question laws. They are there for your protection, certainly not to exert control. Certainly not as a form of commerce. Certainly not as a form of extortion.

In the darkness penetrated only by the red hot glow of seven stones, a gourd of water hovers.

Before that day, I was lost in a society that I had never really belonged to. One I could not relate to. A society of smiling lies. Strip malls. Pretentiousness as beauty. Arrogance posing as wisdom. Parking lots and highways instead of trees and rivers and fields. Your soul is not your own, they say. It belongs to the God of shopping malls and brick.

The steam slams into  me. Rolls over me. Through me. I am doused in heat, covering my near-naked body in a vapor so thick my breath catches in my throat. There is darkness. There is silence punctuated only by the catching of breath in the chests of the others that I sit shoulder to shoulder with. I can not see them, but I can feel them. The vapor acts like a conductor, channeling our  living energy into something I want to describe, but language has not grasped the ability to form words that would give truth to..

Another gourd of water. Another rolling wave wrapping around me in the darkness.

BAM!

The drum.

BAM!

The drum.

The rhythm begins. The sound of the drum punctuates the darkness, the silence, my breath. It feels like my heartbeat adjusts to the rhythm, finding time. Every cell in my body pulsates to the rhythm in the darkness. Reality slips away.

Wa-han-canka. The  Healing Song. I don't know the words... but words are not needed here. Only spirit.

I find my voice. It follows the others, the sound from our lips and lungs merging into one. The Universe is laid bare before me. The reality of Spirit. Free from bricks and concrete. In the heat of water and stone and fire and air. Sitting in the dirt of my mother, covered with the branches of time beneath the canopy of the Great Buffalo. God doesn't have a face. What need does God have, of a face?

God is the Universe. We are made in his image. The spirals of galaxies exist in our eyes. Our Spirits are our own. There are no excuses here, no rules, no books, no bricks. There is only darkness and song and love.

When I emerge from the Inipi, the hot summer air feels cold against my skin. I look to the sky, strewn with stars, galaxies, suns, and moons. I look upon the face of God.

I am reborn from the womb of my Mother the Earth, who has taken from Father Sky so that she could breath into us life.

I am born. I am at peace. I am accepted, if only by myself.

I am loved.

We eat, and laugh. I listen quietly as the Old Ones tell stories around the fire. I have found my place. Here in the field beside the fire, beneath the canopy of the Universe.

We hug, and laugh some more, and say our farewells. There is a society of strip malls and highways we must return to. I don't want to leave, I don't want to forget this feeling.

As we pull onto road, my friend and Brother puts a cassette in the radio.

“Hustling.

Hustling on down, Hustling Street.

Rag-man, rag-woman, paper bags full

Street age alerts in tenant child's eyes.

Sidewalk playgrounds, got to beware,

Junk man's in the shadows,

Dealing his junk.

Beautiful Sisters deal themselves around.

Beautiful Brother's not so beautiful anymore.

So much older than the day before,

Makes everybody tired,

Of being poor.

Graffiti Man's got something to say...”

Before that day everything was the same.

~In memory of John Trudell