Arial It Is I Suppose

Damn, what I wouldn’t give for a joint right now. What I wouldn’t give.. actually there’s a lot I wouldn’t give for that and the many other things i crave right now like a blanket to wrap me, like a mommy to rock me, like some earth milk to fill me to sleep, sacred state, flexibly confused and gone with the wind. 

This blog is about 9 years in the making. 

I thought it up as :be yourself first explain yourself later: in my mid twenties, when i was just beginning to discover that there was no end. There was no.. what i now refer to as “there”. 

8 months into living in NYC, BK, I called my longest running homie distraught with failure, with dizziness, with loneliness. :was it this hard when you moved? I’m failing, I’m having a quarter life crisis i swear: A year older than me and several moves in and out Columbus Ohio, she had sage words. :Yes. 25 is so confusing, moving to a new city by yourself is ballsy as fuck:

i had imagined a lot of cute outfits and a bowling league, new friends And a new found sexuality. I wanted to get some action in NYC... flirt, be cute, make all the boy moose go wahnn, get skinny, because my whole life will fall into place once I’m skinny. Once i look how i was taught i was supposed to look, ill have the attention, the ora, the me je ne sais qua, and life will flow. To my surprise, during a quest to finally address the massivity of being in my body and get to there, I found myself in a treatment center.. apparatenly i had a severe eating disorder. Severe enough for my eventual nutritionist to get really fucking real with me and tell me my quality of life wasn’t going to be great and i could die. 

In my thirties now and Ive lived about 11 months N O T wishing my cells into an over there some day scenario. A lot of time and money and inspection went into that, i mean decades and decades and moves from East Coast big city to Midwest Hometown Milwaukee. A place i vowed i would never return to. Never say never. I mean never. 

Now, amidst the colonial operation of c o v i d, during this journey of embodying who it is i might be, or we might be, i find mycells, my 14 year old Wheaton Terrier and our newest family member a 1 year old kitty, in Northwoods, Wisconsin. 

I’m taking the leap off reservation and onto land. Plot of land that my ancestors have been living on for the century. Before forced removal, we voyaged the Great Lakes area, Michigan a main berry and food forest... I really don’t know much about how we did things. I haven't

heard many stories but the ones i have heard all make me feel alive. They revive me with the likeness of my childhood, but i cant say why.. cause i was a SOuth Side Milwaukee baby. Maybe the tender curiosity that children possess freely never really dies, is alive, the old ways have a chance to resonate from this space which in most of us is likely dormant. I don’t know, I’d like to emulate what I’ve read of various Turtle Islander’s way of treating and living with children as sacred teachers. Don’t hyper romanticize this thru movie screen filters in the mind.  i think simple honoring of that tender curiosity and the gentle tending of a fire that breaks and forges the will of any particular being without judgement, is a many logical and physical things each day and night, and it involved not only a village, but land, and night sky, and sun, and a lot a lot of love and dedication to the physical world. 

We used to be animals, we used to be plants, we used to really drink from that great fresh lake. To really bath in our backyards. To really enjoy a star filled celestial tail no matter what part of the map we traveled too, shit was always lit. Our stories might have been fantastical to the colonized, but how many times did an Uncle have some crazy story about running along side buffalo, or wrestling with an actual bear. His skin mutilated with thick scars an ever evolving line with which the story became a circle. What would now be called regalia, Wrapped proudly around his neck was a stroke of both lifelong practices skill and happen stance. This elder telling Of his tangles with the wild 3rd dimension, the teeth of a black bear a remaining signature of his agility, fothright will, and clever capacity to dance because still he lives, for now. The day he danced with a bear was a good day today, as good as today, but he lives, so he dances. 

There is so much about this move away from Milwaukee, where i was born a little city kid to two teenage parents that i can hardly process, but i know i want to share this journey of moving to the Rez.

I want colonial people to know that Turtle Islanders are all different, are all unique. The attempted eradication of Indigneous Turtle Island people was successful on a mass scale. Colonial assimilative practices remain successful like a flooded basement that’s sat for years.  Hundreds of millions and millions of societies that forged a living paradise have been thru intentional long term genocide. Personally, i think the American government is hoping in the next two centuries to complete thus eradication of what they call the American Indian. I do not refer to mycells as such. I am a descendant of Turtle Island, this very land that i type from is in my blood so deep i smell home even in the changing winds brought here from the China’s, or the Russia’s. Lands whose real names we do not know, because erasure is now a global phenomena of imperialistic colonialism.     

I am from a people who should be living in Kansas right now, because that is where a great majority of our people were trafficked to. 

We were not removed the way a mobile home is moved, we were trafficked by experts. 

I wont go into the whole details right now, but in short, i am of a people east of the Mississippi River. This is a different story than ones American identifying people have been told. We are not Northwest Natives, or Southwest Cali Natives, or Plains Indians, were of the Algonquin Family tree that makes up the great fresh waters stretching to lands east by the great salt water. I like to call it that, its not the way I’ve heard anyone talk.There were many others in these parts, some allies, some enemies.

Life is nothing like what you think, i know this because i am still trying to understand what my responsibilities and purposes are as an Algonquin Kwe, with very little leadership guiding me. 

Our story isn’t what most expect. It isn’t what we expect. And it is one that will continue to change and morph as this terrifying colonial gravity continues to dance with the energies bending within the water planet and in the beyond, where we motion and journey around the Milky Way... 

The Milky Way, this is the indigenous way, in my book. My words.