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i went in search of america
partook of lakota spiritual rites
slept & woke in the autumn cool
learned the medicine of water
& met with open air & the scent of pine
which resided within me immemorial
& i found that i was cleansed of the need to search
& that america was not only territory not only ideas
not one race or another but the communion
of these forces & a way of seeing
the true grandeur of life...
i went abroad in search of myself
& learned quickly that i am markedly american
yankee english-speaking but also a thinker a student
a universal person that other languages other lives
other ways of seeing were well within my grasp
& that becoming free was as simple
as acknowledging the wholeness of character
that is latent everywhere & awaiting vision...
i returned to native shores & sought to complete
an exploration of myself my people
my angle within it all
by never ceasing to explore
the advening intervening shots of meaning
of what is what might be what has not yet been
& i would read with more religious readership than ever
about the tragedy of life as lived in the human soul
the infinite gift of freedom & its terrible challenge
the hope inherent in every beginning
& the ease with which beginnings are discarded
for false semblances of endings...
now an inexplicable war has come to us
& there is the temptation to let go of study
let go of persistence & fly headlong into history
to craft interpretations that fit the mood
or fit the moment to assuage real perils
with a legend of convenient mumblings
& at the brink of a reformation of our entire history
in this moment when we boast & brandish
& make violent threats to fit the mood
i am searching for america for the medicine of water
the beginning that gives life
& which must never be diminished...
© 2002 Joseph Robertson
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WRITING & NAMING: the medicine of acquiring knowledge
Joseph Robertson
Language is that point of contact in the abstract, that plane where the intellectual life within us is enabled to assert itself as part of the overall experience of living. Language is that plane where the individual self is allowed repeated attempts at manifestation. What takes place in the process of writing, in the spilling of ink or the posting of digital characters, the slip toward defining a landscape, however brief, is the sanctification of an individual, and by extension of the human condition as such...
Not every person is a writer, by trade, nor should they be, but there is something about the act of writing that serves the writing individual as if it were a medicine for selfhood, a healing venture into clean waters. Especially so when its intent is to be expressive of secret regions of the mind or to lay out new experimental vessels for such expression. [Keep reading...]
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