2
Miles was spinning as he hung onto every word. He knew all this stuff already, but he’d never heard it connected so eloquently, so ferociously unapologetic, so spot on and to the point that he couldn’t even remember what it was that he thought about the world before this moment. It all seemed so obvious now, how could anyone be so oblivious to the true nature of things that they simply close their eyes and let the current push them towards certain disaster?
Convenience. It’s far more convenient to jump on board with someone else’s muddy flow, than to break away and carve your own path through untamed territory. Now he could see it all around him, couldn’t escape it if he tried. Convenience consumed every corner of the market and littered the streets, with both plastic, and the souls of those unwilling to conform to the cookie cutters of the human factory.
But the saddest part, were those who had been successfully homogenized, lost in the convenience of forgetting the world as their phones become more aware than they are. Retaining just enough sentience to sidestep the pile of people in need of basic human rights. Ignoring the plea to pay attention to what’s becoming of our self-absorbed species. Escaping any personal responsibility for the future of humanity, because, “Sorry, I don’t carry any cash,” yet simultaneously ordering Amazon’s latest acquisition before the fad fades away, and all while the actual Amazon is burning to death.
He couldn’t go back to the version of the world that he had learned to halfway exist in, so his feet didn’t miss a beat, though his heart may have skipped a couple. He yearned for more of her unfiltered perspective, her knowledge, her answers, her questions, her unphased ability to see the truths of the world and to somehow remain upbeat about it all. He craved to know her, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t the dress this time. Well, maybe a little.
Just as he was trying not to ponder what exactly made the dingy dress sparkle in the morning sun, it whirled through the air as she spun a one eighty and stopped him dead in his tracks.
“Hey, you think I could get a little pinch of your tobacco? I musta left mine back at my place.”
He reached for his pouch as he contemplated the location of her place. He hadn’t even considered that she might have managed to eke out more stability than he’d been pretending to. Most folks he met on this street carried their lives on their backs, stripped down to the bare necessities of survival, which packed its own sense of freedom as their home truly was wherever their heart decided to be. All those others who fed the obsession of accumulating worthless things, were tightly tied down to the machine, as it extracted every last drop of their human sovereignty.
He already knew enough that he couldn’t picture her giving up a single drop of herself, not to any machine anyway. She was so incredibly comfortable in her own skin, which looked quite comfortable from his perspective, though he couldn’t imagine whatever sanctuary she must climb into each frigid night. An outsider to any conventional way of life, but seemed only a visitor to these streets that the others had escaped to. Could she be the only one?
Couldn’t be. She wasn’t one to run off and hide from the world in solitary confinement. She was a people person, though most of the people out here hardly saw her as a person, and she certainly had no online profile to prove it. No, she was not nearly as alone as he had felt for years, which could only mean that there was some kind of underground community of consciousness, a breeding ground for actual thoughts to come into this world, and a collection of free spirits to carry them out to it. He had to know this place. He had to know her. He had to know himself. He knew that he could no longer remain incomplete while there was a magical utopia out there waiting for him.
He tried to formulate the right words to uncover more of her mythical backstory, but before he could even decide which W to begin with, she disappeared into the shrubs bordering the sidewalk, presumably to never again be seen in this particular plane of existence.
A moment later, she emerged from her transdimensional travel with a souvenir box of perfectly chilled pepperoni and cheese, two slices, but she quickly shut the box before Miles could decline the secondhand snackatizer.
“Check it out, perfectly chilled pepperoni and cheese, just like from the fridge, but dare I say that this was far more convenient and way less toxic to the Earth?”
“Might be hard to get the inside people to sign up.”
“Oh brother, you’re telling me. Do you think the convenience snobs who won’t eat their farm fresh favorites unless they’re wrapped in plastic, are ever gonna eat something that’s been in the big and scary great outdoors?
Heck no, they’d prefer to gas a greenhouse and skip to the next season, or just order-in off of some brown person’s menu from a country obviously of lesser value than America, we’re the greatest. We have skyscrapers filled with luxury apartments and restaurants lining the block, of course, we also have an insanely large population of the homeless and hungry. But don’t worry, we’ll get the cops down here and clear the sidewalk before your paying customers ever show up, they’re definitely not gonna wanna have to look at this.
And so they don’t. And when they end their fancy night out, all a chitter chatter and tipsy on the way to the warm car, and the warm house, and the warm bed with four thousand thread count egyptian satin sheets, they don’t even think that someone here and now might appreciate their still warm styrofoam doggie bag, so they cram it into the back of the fridge for next month’s episode of Food or Trash.
No, I don’t think most people are prepared to do what we must in order to restore equilibrium to our species, and the rest of the living planet that we are a part of. To give up an ounce of personal privilege and share it with those less fortunate, to forget the indoctrinations of the self-served individual and remember that our most basic instinct, is that of community. But there’s a change coming, and ready or not, people are going to have to learn to become human once again.
But today we’re in luck, some kind soul felt it in their heart to share a little of themselves with the street, and for that, I thank you Unci Maka, Grandmother Earth, I thank you for showing us that we are not alone, that there are other Earth helpers out there doing their part, that people are beginning to open their eyes and hearts and wake up to the task at hand, and please help us to be inspired by all those that we meet as we share our love with every step we take, wopila tanka, aho, Mitakuye Oyasin.”
She finished that last bit up with her eyes closed, and seemed to have slipped off to another world by the end of it, or into this one. She had been praying. The pizza box was at shoulder height in one hand, the other held tightly a beaded leather pouch that hung around her neck. Miles didn’t know how he hadn’t noticed it before, didn’t know why he felt tingles all over, didn’t know the last time he’d prayed, and never to the planet itself. But he did know one thing, he was feeling pretty inspired alright, so maybe it was working already. But what was all that foreign language stuff?
Before he could gather the thought fragments she had yet to shatter, she was off again with an extra pep in her step that only pizza can provide. Or tacos. She bounced around the corner to devour the fresh kill, but when Miles caught up, he walked in on an entirely different situation.
She was kneeled down next to an old man in a wheelchair, a veteran it seemed, flying a sign that asked for pity and prayers. He heard them discussing his upcoming operation, something with his heart, and then she warmed it for him with a surprise delivery of cheesy goodness, two slices. They hugged and laughed, she motioned towards Miles and whispered something that elicited two more smiles, and then as she turned to rejoin the caravan he called out, “Thanks baby doll.”
“Anytime Henry, stay warm out there, toksa ake.”
And as she stepped back into stride she fired off a warning shot, “And for the record, don’t ever call me baby doll. Henry’s an old friend and he’s in a wheelchair, and I don’t punch people in wheelchairs, but don’t think I won’t put you in one.”
“Got it,” was all he could squeeze out, not out of fear of having to roll to the bathroom, but from the astonishment he felt for who had to be the most intelligent, compassionate, and spellbinding creature he had ever met. And there was no way he was ever gonna call her baby doll.
“I’m sorry, that was pretty fierce, don’t worry, I’m not actually gonna beat you down. At least as long as you don’t mess up.” A brief chuckle crept out, and then a, “But for real tho, that’s another shift that we’ve gotta make if we’re gonna survive this. We have to once again hold the divine feminine energies of the world sacred, not as objects to be passed around to the highest bidder, and that begins with a complete upheaval of the patriarchal rhetoric handed down through centuries of colonial chauvinism.”
Miles was well aware of the unfair hand that women had been dealt, sentenced to stirring the pot and folding the dirty laundry of the man show, but even though he understood this and always held the women in his life with the highest esteem, he couldn’t stop the flash of guilt that crossed from his mind to his face.
“Oh don’t worry bud, we don’t blame you. Or I don’t anyway. This has been the way of developing a world since way before we wiped out thousands of indigenous languages, along with anyone who dared to speak them, which left ample room for the white man’s words to spread absurd concepts, such as the right to free speech. Or the right to private property, as if any one species could ever commit enough deplorable acts of oppression as to deserve ownership over a planet that we are an interwoven thread of, an equal partner, which didn’t sit too well with the first born sons of the boys club, so they just lumped their fear of the female form in with the rest of the inventory. Women were considered the property of their husbands, even in this land of liberated statues and belles, and anyone privileged enough to learn to read the language of the kings saw it plain as day, only men are created equal.
But like I said, this has been going on a long time, a long long time, like thousands and thousands of years, ever since the first king’s son set the record straight with the laws of patriarchal lineage, as it dawned on him that civilization was the key to preserving his seat on the throne.
And to this day, we hold his decrees with the highest regard, touting them as the fundamental building blocks that allowed us to climb out of the primordial swamp. The permanence of paternity could only be achieved by regulating fundamental human rights, like access to food, so they burned the forests filled with untaxable abundance and developed the first agricultural hierarchy, and of course the disease that travels hand in hand with a lower class meal ticket.
They also discovered that it was way more convenient to cage their prey instead of bothering with all that hunting mess, which freed up much more time to develop a written language worthy of writing the rules of wealth, including private property. But they had earned it, what with all that fence building and forest burning and all.
They owned the land, they owned the food, they owned the women, and soon they’d own everyone else too. With all the new work of tending fields and building castles, there was a lot to be done in this new world of convenience, so they devised a way to divide and conquer the free time of any left unenslaved.
Yeah, they invented time, or a way to capitalize on it at least. The once fluid workdays of supporting the community were replaced with a stagnant time clock of individual servitude, a human life was now quantifiable down to the second, and the second step was instituting the illusion of reciprocation, so they sold ‘em on money. They needed an incentive to keep them hard at work and loyal to the king, musta run out of cages or something, but the real kicker, was that they had to give most of it back through the taxman just for the right to exist on his private property.”
Miles was yet again speechless, luckily she still had plenty to say.
“So you see, the oppression of women goes back a long time, but the oppression of everybody goes back a long time. We’re all in this boat together, and the ship has long sailed on escaping from the quicksands of time.
And our languages of human superiority are here to stay, written in stone even, but although we’ve erased countless indigenous dialects through the great American white out, there are still a few kicking around that we could learn a thing or two from, as we begin to amend a little more freedom into our speech.
Like the word property, or even mine, they simply didn’t exist pre-colonial invasion. It would have been absurd to think that any one creation of the Earth herself, could ever claim ownership over the Earth herself, or any of her creatures, and that probably even included the women.
A matriarchal society wasn’t about women coming first, it was about the community coming first, and that included the harmonious relationships built with the rest of the natural world. But they didn’t have a word for nature either, because they weren’t something separate from the wild, they were an interconnected part of it, just as important as the birds and bees, but certainly no more so.
And that all brings me back to my point. Yeah, women must once again be held sacred, it’s one of the primary roots of our current crisis, but all of life must be held sacred. All of life has suffered under the oppressive thumb of those intent on progressing their power, and only once we wake up and realize that each rung on this ladder of oppression is not separate from us, but simply the fractionated pieces of our own collective authority to rise up, then, and only then, will we be able to climb to the top together and usurp the throne, as we hand the keys back to the only woman who was ever really in charge anyway, our incredible Unci Maka, or I guess you probably know her as Mother Earth.”