give said the little stream

today i am in love with being alive. i am listening to magnolia electric co. and the song is entitled "give something else away every day," and i am glad to know the song "give said the little stream" from church and to have grown up with that in my wonderful foresty subconscious, singing singing all the day, give away, o give away. now i listen to jason molina's haunting voice over and over again, endless, this world, these loves we thought we lost, you are never helpless, you can move through this world, choosing and loving and making decisions and trying. to try is so divinely human. it pulls us all together. we think we are alone and different and separate, trying to make our way in our little blue space of loneliness, and here we are, really, connected to everything.

not just people. everything. go outside and look at the trees. oak trees, dropping acorns, they can be used for food or medicine, look at the manzanita with its smooth soft bark, look at cedar and ash. grass growing, and wild yellow weeds, and dirt and dust.

i live on a dirt road and i thank god for that. i drive on dirt and when i open my windows i breathe a cloud of dust and i become the earth. my car is dirty every single day and i love it. i am sick of concrete and pavement, that is not real to me, or life. i want to drive on dirt roads until my car disappears and i am on a horse with a wagon, and later, until my feet feel the pebbles and dirt clods beneath them, and i walk. and i walk and walk and walk,


across south america, across jungle and desert and mountain, under canopy of sky, i know secrets are there, whether spiderweb or celestial cloud, they are one and the same, this earth, this universe. the secrets that are divine are inside me, and i am glad to know it. and i am glad to have the freedom and luxury to not HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT SURVIVAL but instead feel gladness at walking through this earth and noticing the intricacies of life and rebellion and thought and instinct manifest.

since i was tiny i dreamt of being a hobo. i remember, nine years old in citrus heights, and there were railroad tracks through our neighborhood, dusty rusted old ones, and they went behind my friend alison blazer's beautiful stone-lined pool in back of her perfect tracked house where we had girly slumber parties, and i saw old tin cans and pocket knives and i knew THERE WAS LIFE OUT THERE. i told my carpool, "my dream is to be a bum." for a while it was my mantra, i want to be a bum. the words were crude but how great a gift from god to know that there is so much more than you. i don't care what religion or ethnicity you are. when you realize that, when you feel it in your blood and when you have the capability of becoming one with a speckled butterfly flying over the azalea bushes, then you are one with all creation and you are part of the divine.

in the world we have created, even in the american paradigm, there are culutural anomalies and there are rebels and freaks and vision quests. thank you sweet goddess for that. i want to get outside the norm, to take my body and mind and heart into every gale and rift that's filled with ore. thank you for coleridge and keats, for oppressors but mostly for the revolutionaries.

we can be part of a revolution right now. break through the concrete jungle and the poverty and self-effacement and sadness. you are great, whoever you are! your litter and paper bag bottle and depression and lice and dirty nails mean nothing. you are part of me and we can together into a land of the endless fiesta. come with me. i will look at you and say it and if you want to come, come.