A different kind of communication

I’m going to let Buffy Sainte-Marie speak on the topic of telephone – because this song is what came to my mind first when I read Sunday Scribblings‘ invitation …

Moonshot

Off into outer space you go my friends
we wish you bon voyage
and when you get there we will welcome you again
and still you’ll wonder at it all
See all the wonders that you leave behind
the wonders humble people own
I know a boy from a tribe so primitive
he can call me up without no telephone
See all the wonders that you leave behind
enshrined in some great hourglass
The noble tongues, the noble languages
entombed in some great English class
Off into outer space you go my friends
We wish you bon voyage
and when you get there we will welcome you again
and still you’ll wonder at it all

An anthropologist he wrote a book
he called it “myths of heaven”
He’s disappeared, his wife is all distraught
An angel came and got him
His hair was light, his eyes were love, his words were true,
his eyes were lapis lazuli
He spoke in a language oh so primitive
that he made sense to me
Off into outer space you go my friends
we wish you bon voyage
and when you get there we will welcome you again
and still you’ll wonder at it all

– Buffy Sainte-Marie

Buffy Sainte-Marie reportedly wrote this song after talking to Christian scholars who had no idea that indigenous people had been in contact with God before the Europeans came.

This song is from the album Moonshot of 1972. If I remember correctly, Mister, can’t you see (written by Mickey Newbury and Townes Van Zandt), another track from the same album, played on the radio, was the first thing I ever heard of this wonderful singer. I listened to her a lot all through the 1970s and still have most of her albums.

– Niebla

A door

Not the da Vinci original but a copy from the protestant church in Haigerloch, southern Germany. The person to the left of Christ is clearly a woman. This painting is older than Dan Brown’s The da Vinci code but would lend itself very well to Brown’s interpretation.

And the door in the back, where does it lead?

Posted for Inspire Me Thursday, where the theme is “Doors”.

A philosophical elephant

Maybe, if I weren’t an elephant
caught in a china shop,
I could afford to be cautious,
but asking that of me
as things are just is not human.

– Giancarlo Scardanelli

Written using the words cautious, human and maybe from 3WW.

Sky and earth

Cloudy ember sky
One-lined highway salamander
stretching into it

– Niebla

This was written in response to a 3WW contribution with a stunning American highway and sky photograph at Piece of Pie.

A desert dream

A gecko on the ceiling in the yellow adobe house at the foot of the dune, a scorpion about to enter my boots on the floor. The tear of a dew drop. A breath from the window opening moves the light white cloth that covers me on my wooden cot. How I wish that this breath of air would never end. It could put a stop to the scorching hot day that is about to begin and might deter the figures in black cloaks and hoods that are after me. I’ve fled to this place from society, and society wants me to return what I owe. Everything is borrowed. It’s only just and equitable that the black figures will come and get me.

– Surendra Sparsh (© 2007)

Originally written in German (Ein Wüstentraum). English version posted here for One Single Impression.

Far from Darfur

“If we were in Darfur, you would not be having this margarita, your spring fever would die quickly in the merciless sun, and that lace –”
“This lacy thing of yours?”
“This tiny lacy thing of mine you have your hand on would be considered extremely sinful.”
“Tell me more, my beautiful princess from Darfur.”
“Not princess – former gum wrapper artist and marketer.”
“I love you for what you were, what you are, will be, might be. And how about taking care of that spring fever now?”
She gave a happy sigh. She was so lucky. Not many of her sisters were.

– Niebla ( © 2008 )

This shorty was built around Raven’s mini challenge words margarita, gum wrapper, spring fever, Darfur, lace.

I am on a different planet

I am on a different planet every day,
and today’s planet is small – the horizon
curves nearby, and I’m afraid I’ll fall off
if I walk more than a mile. Five miles,
and I’d be standing on my head.

This planet is blue and patterned, as if
somebody had traced curves in the sand
on a beach. It is a pleasant, grainy,
sandy blue. I am barefoot. The blue
sand feels good under me. I’ve tentatively

walked and noticed that the sand gives
way but that the patterns reassemble
after me. There is a breathing under me
as well, as if the blue planet were alive.
I’ve dug in the sand to see what’s under-

neath – there’s more sand, and it’s
cooler. I’ve eaten some sand; it tastes
like margarita mix and quenches both
hunger and thirst. I should not eat too
much of it, though, because this planet

has no toilet. But then, on the other
hand, who would notice if I went
right in the sand? I am the only being
here, not counting the planet itself.
Who just told me, clearly and audibly

in my mind: You’re not alone!
I’m here for you. A lot of good
that does me, I thought, out here
in space, with not another planet
within hitchhiking distance. Again

the planet spoke: I am but an
instance, and a small one. I will
vanish, and you with me, but we
will take form again, you’ll see.
So do not worry – we’re just

a droplet of time. Patience!
Before I knew it I was back
from Planet Blue and knew
it all had been a dream. To be
lived through again in some

form – again and again.

– Niebla ( © 2008 )

Inspired by the above photo posted for the lesson/lessen and/or streak prompt by Two for Tuesdays. So where’s the lesson? Where’s the streak? Hidden somewhere on Planet Blue, I imagine.

Eternal gearbox

The future of the planet
is rewriting itself
continually
through trillions
of forces acting
on it – in or out of
mesh and more or less
in and out of sync

– Niebla

Written for Sunday Scribblings #108 – the future of the planet.

Note
I feel that we are inevitably drifting – being driven, driving ourselves – towards more mesh and sync, as painful as it may be. One way to look at globalization.

Dead suburb

The brown houses
up on the hill,
tower-like,
where the big
families lived,
still forbidding
in detonated
scowl, their will
to ignore now
relegated to un-
inhabited rubble
in ultimate irony –

now they can
no longer pretend,
as they used to,
that further down,
in the ground,
by the big old
grey tree, did not
rot the bodies of
those brought here
and killed for
ethnic cleansing,
as they were
laid bare by
the spring flood.

– Niebla ( © 2008 )

The painting Hallowed Ground this was inspired by is by Rick Mobbs.

Note
Perhaps I should explain what prompted me to write this. It refers to the civil war in former Yugoslavia, in which atrocities were committed that are hard to believe. The cynical term “ethnic cleansing” refers to the ruthless killing of people based on grounds of ethnic or religious difference (Serb, Croat, Bosnian muslim). People were “collected” in their village, marched to a “convenient” location, shot or clubbed to death and buried in mass graves. Some of this is shown in all its brutality in the movie Savior from 1998.

Poses at Hopi Point

“Stop!”
I turned around.
There was a girl in her late teens, a redhead with freckles, somewhat chubby, in blue shorts and a bright red t-shirt, who was looking at me.
“Were you talking to me?”
“I was. There’s nobody else around, is there?”
It was true – it was early evening, the sun was about to set, and the two of us were the only visitors left.
“Would you mind taking a picture of me?”
“Be happy to.”
She handed me her camera, a tiny, shiny digital thing, gave me quick instructions on how to use it, got close to the rocky abyss and posed, chin raised, hand on hip.
I took several pictures of her.
“That looks so cool,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“Those blue mirror sunglasses you have on, the way the sun is reflected in them. – Could I maybe borrow them for another picture?”
“Ok. But let me also take one of you then.”
That’s why I have a picture of a freckled redhead wearing my sunglasses at Hopi Point above the Grand Canyon.
Her name was Helen, she was from San Bernardino and waiting tables in Las Vegas. She told me before we parted ways, and I remembered for some reason.

– Niebla ( © 2008 )

Contains the 3WW #83 words stop, reflected and picture.