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3 Verdicts
When God is pulling together all the strands of the universe,
mixing with the DNA at hand to create a new human being,
there is a moment s/he can see everything that will happen
in this new life, how every decision and concatenation of
circumstance and coincidence will actually play out,
and in a voice that fills the whole universe for a moment
God speaks, with infinite gradations of irony and meaning,
one of three verdicts on that life:
"Man, that's progress!"
or
"If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise"
or
"That's fucked up, man!"
This is exhausting work and God then falls asleep,
awaking refreshed, remembering, imagining
that human's future as a kind of dream,
which like human dreams quickly fades,
And the human plays out his destiny alone
And this is why when we are born
we cry that we are come into this world
of so much beauty and pain
The backstory: I sent the note below to my friend Paul and a similar one to my kids on the 22nd and then the second note, with poem, a few weeks later.
5/22/23
Hi Paul,
Things just seem to be conspiring against me to an almost diabolical degree the last few weeks
so taking a break - a quick trip to SD and parts west. Hope things going well for you and
family. In 1980, I think, a Philadelphia sportswriter wrote a column at the end of spring training
about guys sent back to the minor leagues, and included a part about me heading off for OKC in
my '70 Pinto with 100,000 miles on it. Now in 2023 I'm heading off for SD in my 2009 KIA with
200,000 miles on it. Man, that's progress!
all the best,
john
Hi Paul,
Great to hear from you. Glad things have smoothed out a bit. I certainly understand how life its
own self can be a handful, and as far as kids go, I'm not sure it ever stops - at least not
permanently.
And as far as SD goes, I am once again in limbo of a sort - haven't heard from anyone in a week,
which happens. Really just trying to put a cool week together at this point the second week in
August. I'm committed to getting 5K together - pretty sure it's doable - and then just figuring
out what would be good to do. I have no shortage of ideas about that, but again now at that
point where day to day I'm not absolutely positive anything at all will happen. I am good to go
with Ben L. for another EW podcast, if and when we reach the point of being ready to do one.
So what I'm going to do on this long overdue rainy day is indulge myself a little and not only
send you what I am hoping is in fact a poem, but also some backstory.
I often think, especially in recent years, the pull for me out there isn't just my conviction that
there is something in Lakota culture that the world needs, but also that the country itself is
sacred. All the world is, I'm sure, but there, for me at least, it seems to come through so clearly.
So I was out there a few days early powwow week in 2015, and I decided to drive down to Pine
Ridge (300 miles) just to have lunch, basically, at Bettie's Kitchen. Bettie is the great-
granddaughter of Black Elk and her restaurant is in her home, which sits on a kind of ridge-line
south of Manderson - the exact site where Black Elk recorded or transcribed his Great Vision to
John Neihardt. Clay and I had lunch there the first time he went out with me in 2012. We were
invited to sit with Irma Maldonado, a very nice person, and a friend of hers. Irma is the great-
granddaughter of the legendary medicine man Chips. I guess I remember especially she asked
why I'd been coming out to SD the last few years and I said I had a vision, the first time I ever
said that out loud. She just nodded.
I took sort of the back way to Pine Ridge then in 2015, through Wanbli, to avoid the outrageous
fee to go just a few miles thru Badlands Nat'l Park to reach Manderson. As I crossed the White
River, an eagle flew across in front of me. A few miles later I stopped to pick up an older man
named Orson who was hitchhiking. This is still an hour or so from Manderson. He hit a deer
earlier that morning, disabling his truck. He asked where I was going and I said Bettie's Kitchen,
and he laughed and said he lived maybe a quarter mile south of it. Closest I ever came to a kind
of Field of Dreams moment. He invited me to come back the next year for a sweat, which I did.
I'm sitting here now thinking can I do justice to the full story of the friendship that's ensued - it's
not all one good thing after another - and the answer is no. I will say that last year Orson took
me for a tour I won't forget of the "Spiritual Path", the route Crazy Horse's parents took to bring
his body to Pine Ridge after he was killed. Then on the way back to his house we got in a crazy
argument about him drinking beer in my car - I never drink with people out there - and it's
illegal to have on the reservation. Crazy or wild is the correct word. People on Pine Ridge take a
certain pride sometimes in the description Crazy Oglala or Wild Oglala, and Orson pointed out I
was on his reservation and he could have me killed. I thought that was the end of the friendship
- I didn't see an alternative, but then he wrote a simple, sincere and complete letter of apology,
and I said ok.
OK - Orson's wife Gwen I believe is a genuinely spiritual person. She has health issues with
arthritis and a couple other things and feels marijuana helps her quite a bit. I like to grow things
and it's legal here to grow marijuana now, so I do. Don't sell it, but do give to folks like Gwen.
Somehow all this backstory seems relevant to me, driving down for a one-day 600-mile trip to
make a quick stop at Gwen's and drop off some weed and have lunch at Bettie's Kitchen and
then back to Standing Rock.
But I'd only thought of the strangeness of that old baseball story and 100,000 miles and now my
old KIA and 200,000 miles right before I left Michigan.
There are a couple of different ways to make that 300-mile drive, and both of them are through
what is to me this hauntingly beautiful and empty country.
As I was just getting started, still early morning, I was thinking about the note I'd sent to my kids
and you - Man, that's progress and so on, and I began to think of a couple of other possible
conclusions to come to about it. Stopped and wrote on the hood of my car this little attempted
poem that just seemed to come with the whole scene. I really liked writing it, in that place in
that moment, because it was all basically new to me except for the Man, that's progress.
So there's today's story and the attached -
all the best,
John
PS - got no anxiety whatsoever about sampling (plagiarizing?) Blake and King Lear in my poem
Related link: http://efqreview.com/NewFiles/v17n2/bbconfidential.html
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