Maybe I'm disheartened with the human race. Yes, the human race. All of us clumped together. We are all guilty of the situation we find ourselves in today, where there is discrimination based on the vain differences of the color of skin, an irrational fear of alterity, and the instinctual and immediate assumption of a monstrous "other" the moment we are confronted with even the most miniscule of differences.

Sure, we "dance around" the subject of race. We still can't even concretely define it. It exists, certainly, but as something negative, something in opposition: we are always not-someone else; we never really are anything, because we fail to pinpoint what those differences really are and what it is that distinguishes one group from another. So, of course, we dance around the subject of race. What else can we do with a bottomless pit of an idea like that but fall down it?

The irony here is that we have already fallen down that abyss of an idea; the problem lies in the fact that we fail to realize it or understand what that "falling" means. We have no solid ground to compare it to because the culture we have been born into never taught us what it is we're supposed to be so afraid of, or so celebratory of.

I suppose I'm frustrated. The last class was very good, from my perspective. We asked a lot of very good questions concerning "race," ended up discussing personal experiences and ideas instead and still, people call this a "dance." What else can we do with such an ambiguous notion other than discuss our own experiences and bat around our questions? In order to concretize race into something definitive that we each can understand, we have to talk about our personal experiences with what we think it is, about our qualms with it, about our fears and about our frustrations, perplexities, and agreements.

I have the sneaky suspicion that we will never know what "race" really is, because I suspect that it is whatever we want it to be, or believe it to be in any given moment. We pass those abstract ideas on and the cycle continues. Perhaps race really is merely an illusion, but an illusion believed in so zealously by all of us that it has grown a personality and substance that has chained all of us. Maybe instead of griping over dancing around the subject of race, we should ask ourselves why we dance and whether that dance is really around the subject. Maybe it is subject, because, like race itself, the dance is just an illusory construct and all of us are prisoners in our own delusion.

There's nothing like sunset from the air. I saw it two weeks ago and have been dreaming of it ever since. Now, I'm looking at it from the ground. Just as miraculous. Just as worth it to be alive, for those five minutes in the day when the sky turns golden and pink and purple. Here, I've spent the day failing to dance with my feet, but it felt good anyway. My reward? I get to dance with my eyes. Never turn a good sunset (or sunrise, for that matter) down.

I guess I'm in a very good mood today. I've been thinking about miracles. The little ones and the big ones. I talked to the Tin Soldier yesterday. For the first time in months he was happy. I guess that's what happens when you let it all go for a dance in the rain. The good news is a possibility. Perhaps he won't be tin for much longer. But the past never leaves you. Hopefully, I'll be there soon, too. I can fill the tin with something other than emptiness like he filled me with disbelief and no way to left to doubt. It's hard to be a skeptic when miracles happen and people come back from the dead, right? This is one ghost I will not dance for. I'll dance with him. And even though I can't dance well, it'll feel just as satisfactory. That's always how it is when you're lead by someone who was born to be a dancer.

The sunset's over and life calls. At the moment, at least, I can say that there's always tomorrow.

Little Blue Hawk

When I was seventeen, I left the Rosebud Reservation of my birth and had nothing left to lose but my life. Like most Lakota in the twentieth century, I'd lost my father to shame and the drink that made him forget it. When I was you,g I often wondered if he was still alive. Now that I am wiser, I understand that he had been born robbed of life. But life will come again, beyond these imaginary gates. So says the Father. A'te he'ye lo.

If I had not been born an Indian, perhaps, I would know how to dream. Perhaps I would dream of owning the White Man's holy collection of refrigerators and barbed wire fences, and flushing toilets so that I would qualify to keep my children and so that the Great Father's Social Services do not deem me the dog they've made of me. But I would rather spit into the wind and give my shit to a hold in the earth, as it should be, than dream the White Man's dream. Ya'nipikta' e'ya u'-we lo. "You shall live," he says as he comes. Ya'nipikta. A'te-ye he'ye lo. The father says so.

When I took my first step onto the soil of the United States of America, in the state of South Dakota, I sought to save myself from the spiral of disgrace that the White Man's wheel had wrought upon us. I sought to shed my name in this White Man's world that had laid waste to the holy Badlands and Black Hills by covering them over with ribbons of cement, immigrants' toil, and Indian blood. So many trails of tears flow freely here, those trails have turned to rivers. I spoke the White Man's tongue and knew his god better than I knew my own. But like I cannot shed my red skin or my slanted eyes, I cannot remove the Indian from myself. To become the redemption for my own people, I set out upon the father's road, to learn the White Man so well that I should become him, in order to defeat him. Give me my arrows so that I may carve a grave out of my heart. Wanhi'nkpe mi'chuye.

I see a child walking towards me. It is my child. YOu will live, he says as he comes. E'ya ye'ye. Michi'nkshi mita'waye. Ya'nipi-kta e'ya u'-we lo.

In the plains country, where the buffalo roamed free so thick you couldn't see the ground for miles, I met my destiny. Sometimes, the father makes the wind blow in strange directions. I stood upon the White Man's highway, sticking out my thumb. Crazy for an Indian girl from Sioux country to trust in the good faith of the White Man of the United States. But not all preconceptions ring true across a population. Tell my grandfather that some White men have Indian souls and he would ring a string of turtles for protection around my neck to ward off evil spirits. I would set the turtles free. My heart was sent into the Badlands, running after my feet, and the Silvers stopped their bus for me and I denied them my voice for one whole moon before I finally gave it.

Since as long as I can remember, I've never been able to sleep at night. So I lay myself down when the sun comes up and sleep through most of the day. Phin says it's because I have a little bit of memory like he does. I say it's because I have a problem with nightmares and figuring things out for myself. The whole world's mostly asleep when the dark is out and that's the best time for me to sit and think through everything. I still don't understand why, when Phinnaeus goes, I stay. I've never been able to leave Early. She's too much a mystery and if I leave for even a moment, she'll reveal the answer, and I will have missed it. She was always something more than human for me and at the same time, something less.

I remember watching her once, when I was younger. She was standing in the middle of a rainstorm, thinking we were too young to remember.

"Stay her, boys," she said to us, leaving us behind in the Wheels, while she ran out into a summer downpour that ended up carrying half the state away. "If I don't come back, you won't remember anyway. But you just don't understand about water. It's the only way I can get to River." When we were little and too young to talk, she'd mention River every now and then. Now, she stops at rivers and stays silent, like Phin did after the ice-pick rod, for days. But rainstorms are different. She'll go out in them like it's the last thing she ever wanted to do in life.

Me and Phin watched her climb out of the car and run down the road and we climbed out of the back and stuck our faces to the window. When she came back, she was completely dry, as if not a drop of rain had touched her. This happened often. She'd run out into the rain, into storms that should've left her dead and drowned and she'd come back completely dry. Untouched.

"Damn it!" she always said when she got back in the car. "Damn it." Then, she'd remember we were there and look at us with a puzzled expression, as if we weren't supposed to be there, look ahead, stick the key in the ignition and start driving again without mentioning anything. So Phin and I grew up on the road with a mother called Early, who did everything she could to get soaked in a rainstorm but always came back out of it dry.

"I suppose, little brother, man," Phin said, "that she's just got herself followed around by a column of air. No rain for her, no sir. She's got a pocket waiting on her in the sky."

IT's only February and I'm already thinking of Eve. I guess it's appropriate. Her one year anniversary is coming up. A year ago, she was still alive, and probably more alive than most of us ever will be. She was unsuspecting. She had her whole life ahead of her. I only regret one thing: losing touch with a person like that, who did more in twenty-two short years than most people do in a full, long lifetime.

She was the first of four, but the rest weren't like this. There was always a cause, a reason: loss of intellect, leukemia, heart attack. But Eve died for nothing. There was no cause. No freedom to fight for, no ideology to save. Just...pointless violence because a teenager and a twenty-one-year-old were looking for money to blow and a thrill. So because of that, she got a shotgun bullet through her skull and four more pistol bullets throughout her body.

That's when I realized that I'd been wasting my time searching for the meaning of life. It really is 42. There is no meaning, except what you make of it, for yourself. In the end, we die alone just like we're born alone. The crowd surrounds us but we live our lives trapped behind our own eyes. All other perspectives are imagined.

I sang your song, Eve, probably twenty times yesterday. You're the bridge, you're the bridge, you're the bridge, and the point is to not be afraid. But I am afraid. I'm not a mystic. And I thought it was supposed to be me first, with the doctor's clock ticking so close now. Three-and-a-half years to go. I'll beat that, I'm sure now. As long as a tree doesn't fall on me, or I'm chosen for those mid-night games like you.

I'll dance like there's no tomorrow, Eve, like you did, because for all we know, there isn't. Everyone separates into factions: extremist this, zealot that, political left and right. The question is screamed out in the veins of all the people: "What do you want from us? What are we supposed to do? Sit back and take it?" So the bombs drop and the guilty and innocent, alike, are slaughtered. Nothing solves the problem.

Maybe you're lucky, Eve. You didn't get to witness this. The dead are the lucky ones. They don't have to deal with themselves, or the burden and the guilt the human race forever lays upon itself. No more searching for love or hate. Just eternal rest, eternal Oblivion. The cement must have been better than their eyes, when they left you lying there. No more fear. No more questions. Nothingness. For nothing.

As usual, I'm an empath, so the emotion wells up inside of me and I package it within myself because there's nowhere for it to go. I turn the music up really loud--I can't take it. Too much love turns sour after awhile when all it is is stagnant. Love turns sour, like rotten milk. If you open me up, that's what you'll find. Underneath, I'm still a little girl, poisoned by the whispers of Seraphim and impossible dreams.

I turn to small things, like calendars filled with Hopper's sunlight, and soapstone, ready for me to carve what God tells me is inside. I already know. It's myself. As cold and lonely and imprisoned as the stone with nowhere to go and no means of getting there.

But that's life.

Lone Dancer

Note: If anyone's actually reading this, which I don't think is happening, this is a song and sounds much better with music.

I almost died tonight walking on a foot of ice.
Well, that's life and it's not so high a price.

When I got home, I picked up the phone,
called a friend and he said
"Well, you just don't get it, do you?
Do you know what it's like to wake up alone?"
And I said, "Sure," because it's all I've ever known.

So I wake up early every morning and craft my day,
I tell him make it worthy,
it's the small memories that stay,
but don't dwell in yesterday.

I live for the moment,
so the present won't pass.
I'm slipping and sliding
and hoping that someday, Someday comes.

But he said "Well, you just don't get it, do you?
Life just full of lies."
And I said it's no big secret that the baby grows into the man who dies.
He said "You're too young and never have had to wake up alone."
And I said, "Youth is the myth of age and it's all I've ever known."

I almost died tonight walking on a foot of ice.
Well, that's life and it's not so high a price.

I'm the lone dancer,
Time circumvents my answers.
I tread on thin ice
and I fall through.

I'm the lone dancer
and I endure,
don't ask for an answer,
'cause this is all I've ever known.

Silver Roots

Phinnaeus Silver was a Doctor of Philosophy at a small university in New England. His life was simple and his time was happy. His wife, Cassie, was loyal and loved him and gave him five children: Judah, the oldest, who liked to climb trees and buildings and who loved the power of words; when he grew up, he wanted to be a Doctor, just like his father, but in the discipline of literature. Annie, who dreamed of going to space, who kept her body in top physical shape even at the age of fifteen, because she needed to be at the top of the physical game as well as the intellectual; she studied physics and mathematics and prepared herself for aerospace engineering. Mato, who read away his time, dreaming of other worlds while ignoring school assignments, but somehow, always got by well enough for his parents not to complain. Olivia, who loved to watch things grow and spent her time in the garden, planting, whispering encouragment and stroking baby leaves so that they might grow tall and outlive her. Agnes, the youngest, who trailed her father like a shadow, and whose grasp of his ideas surprised everyone.

Phinnaeus's particularly close relationship with his youngest child began when she was just four years old, when Agnes walked into the study and planted herself in the big, leather recliner while Phinnaeus was talking to himself out loud in preparation for a lecture on Boethius's concept of time. He turned to her and asked, "Well, what do you think, Agnes? Do you agree? Is it all just now, do we exist in one moment and the illusion of linearity, or is the line of time what's true?" It was meant to be a rhetorical question, and as soon as he'd asked it, Phinnaeus had turned back to his papers. Agnes surprised him.

"Just the dot, Pappy," she said and Phinnaeus turned back around.
"What was that?" he said.
"Just the dot," she repeated.
"What dot?"
"The 'now' dot," she said. "No line."
By the time Agnes was six, she'd sat in almost all of his classes and understood it all, although sometimes with a little help.
"My little genius," Phinnaeus said, ruffling her hair. The girl smiled up at him before skipping off ahead down the sidewalk.

Despite her grasp of complex philosophical ideas, Agnes was a relatively normal child and balanced childhood and intellectualism with an ease that bewildered Dr. Silver's colleagues and that please him and Cassie. Agnes would come home from academic immersion and probing by intellectuals and jump into the family activities. She'd climb trees with Judah, stargaze with Annie, sit reading with Mato, and get full of dirt, gardening with Olivia. None of her siblings resented her in the least. They loved their youngest sister and boasted about her almost as much as their parents.

So life went on until one day in the summer of Agnes's eight year. Twelve-year-old Olivia's plants were thriving, having been moved to her makeshift greenhouse. Judah was lazing around in his last summer before college and Mato and Annie were studying, as usual.
"Hey, guys," Olivia said, after she'd gathered them all together. "Let's do something together."
"Like what, Livia?" Judah asked.
"I don't know. Build a campfire or something. Just hang out," she said.
"Sounds good to me," Mato said, looking up from his book.
"Yeah, just put that down for a minute, all right?" Olivia said.
Mato sighed and dogeared the page. "Fine."
"Oh, come on, Matt, it's nothing personal," Annie said, poking him in the arm. "Plus, this'll be good. Our last stint together before Judah hauls off into the horizon of intellectual hermitage, right?" She grinned.
"Shut up, Annie," Judah said and rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, yeah," Annie answered.
"Ok, ok. Where's Agnes? She was just here," Olivia said, biting her lip.
"Oh, you know her," Mato said.
"Yeah. Probably lost in some book just like you," Olivia answered. He stuck his tongue out at her.
"Oh, come on," Annie interjected. "She's always late to everything."
"But she was just here! That's not being late."
"It's being vanished," Mato said. "But what else is new? She's probably with Dad."
"Ugh!" Olivia grunted and stomped her foot.
"It's all right," Judah said calmly. "I'll just go get her." He bowed out of the little clump they'd made in the backyard and turned toward the house. Agnes came bounding out of the door so quickly, it almost knocked Judah over.
"Whoah, there, missy! What's going on?"
"Sorry! I had to just get..."
"A book."
She nodded and blushed slightly.
"Well, I'd keep it far away because we're making a campfire. Come on."
Agnes put the book in her back pocket and followed her older brother back out into the yard where everyone else was.
"Ok. So marshmallows for s'mores, right?" Olivia was saying.
"Yeah!" Agnes exclaimed jumping up and down.
The Silver children set to work.

Agnes didn't realize what was happening until it was all over and by that time, of course, it was too late. She and her siblings had spent a good part of the late afternoon and early evening talking and singing, making s'mores and laughing about God knows what around the fire. Her siblings had tossed her around like a ball, a game they all played because Agnes was so little. She loved flying through the air and knowing that no matter what, someone would catch her. The five of them had developed a nearly perfect trust.

When they were done, with the summer air dry and hot around them despite the dark, with Annie's stars clear and bright above them, and with fireflies lighting up the air around them, blinking in time to the crickets' song, they put out the fire, covered the pit with dirt, and went back inside.

The burning started at the back of the house, so Phinnaeus's and Cassie's room got hit first. Sharing a wall with their room was Judah's and Mato's. The fire spread quickly. Annie smelled the smoke and was awoken by the crackling sound, and was the one who called 911. Olivia and Agnes were the first ones out, because they were at the front of the house, and they were the youngest. Annie ran back to get her parents and her brothers.

Phinnaeus had awoken to a room engulfed in flames, all exits blocked, and his wife already swallowed by them, screaming in agony and fear and calling out not for her own life, but for her children's. Annie ran back to find her father covered in fire, having run through the door despite the flames in order to get to his children. She watched him burn and ran without thinking to her brothers' room, knocking down the door and releasing the pressure, which released the fire and killed her instantly.

Olivia and Agnes were held by the state until the family's lawyers dug out Cassie's and Phinnaeus's wills. The two remaining Silvers, who happened to be the two youngest, would be sent to Georgia to live with Betty London, Cassie Silver's best friend and confidante, and her husband, Charles London. They lived on a farm where cotton grew along the fences and goats roamed the fields, where peanuts grew under the earth, where it rained oceans in the summer, and where the divide between human races remained at the forefront of everyone's mind.

Olivia was silent for a year after the death of her family, unresponsive, always staring off into the past. If only I'd just picked something else, she kept thinking. And she layed the blame on herself.

Although Agnes had the intellectual capacity of an adult, she was, essentially, just a child. Nearly everyone and everything she'd ever known was gone. She clung to her silent sister.

"Livia," she whispered. "Livia. It's me. Wake up, Livia."
But Olivia never answered. After a year of silence and numerous sessions with a variety psychologists, the Londons sent Olivia Silver off to an institution paid for by her inheritance. Agnes saw her once every three months until she turned fifteen. By that time, she couldn't take seeing her sister like that, refusing to eat, forced to be fed nutrition intravenously, saying nothing but the words, "I am guilty. I'm a murderer," if she ever said anything at all.

Agnes still remembered her family clearly and understood Olivia more than anyone could imagine. She thought back to the first day she'd exposed her affinity for ideas to her father, and to her assertion that time was a point, one, eternal ungraspable point and that the linearity of time was an illusion. It's funny, she thought, that I end up here, with the Londons in the deep South. Maybe two states over, from Faulkner's Mississippi. Olivia! she cried out in her mind. You've become Benjy and all pain is forever and ever and ever. Can't you make it joy, too? But she knew Olivia couldn't. Pain was more powerful than joy. Pain was sustaining and it corroded her sister away.