I begin with small archaeologies.

Small archaeology, lesser gods.

In a parking lot downtown I saw bird

tracks frozen in ice.  I heard bird song.

I watched perfect tiny dancing.

The archaeology of the small and real.

Ice can sign and stone can speak, if we listen.

Small archaeology.  Lesser gods.  Pursuing

these I will rescue memory.  Other things

will be lost but not this.  I am trying to

rescue memory.  I listen to ice and stone.

This is the future.  Everything is beginning.

Listen.

 

I remember a music.  There was music

playing.  This music was always playing 

and everyone was listening to it, always.

It seemed we were always listening to this

music and the music was always playing.

There is nothing more silent than forgetting.

There is no sound so loud as remembering.

A din.  A din in my ear it is the sound of 

remembering a time when there was no

forgetting and the music was always playing.

This world is quiet.  Listen.  I hear the sound

of voices.  In this silence I hear the sound

of voices that echo through the long distance

to this place we have come and in silence I sit, 

remembering.  I hear voices, musical,

laughing.  I listen to the silence of forgetting.

I will not forget.  Here in this place I have

come to there is no forgetting.  In the silence

of forgetting that surrounds me I will listen

to the voices of my life.  This silence to me is

learning to remember.  I am learning to 

remember a world that might have been

and never was.  I am trying to rescue

memory.  This is the future.  Everything is

beginning.

 

I see him clearly, could reach and touch

him.  He squats beside the river with the 

two stones, turning them in his hand.

He begins to strike one against the other,

hesitantly, then with assurance.  A rhythm

is created.  He chants in time with the

pounding and as the flakes begin to scatter

on the ground the chanting takes form and

he tells, with his song, a story:

 

I woke from the dream with the pounding.  With

this rhythm the dream time is ended.  I woke as 

from a long sleep.  As these stones take on shape

and form so does all that has gone before me and

all that will come after me is known.  I work from 

the dream with the pounding.

 

The dream time is ended.

 

I see him clearly, hear his song, watch the 

flint take on a cutting edge.  I saw him wake

from the dream time and knew it had begun. 

The rhythm of his song became cutting edge

of flint.  This was the beginning.  The song cut

like a weapon into stone, the cutting edge, the

awakening from dream time.  Shapeless rock

into weapon, song to idea and the choice, his

choice was to create a weapon of love.  Power

was gained by rejecting power.  He sang:

 

 

I want no power.  I have awakened from dreaming

changed stone to weapon and many secrets are

known to me.  I want no power.

 

This weapon I have made is a weapon of love.

In love the struggle begins.  The choice I have made

will echo through the ages. 

 

 

History is perfect.  As perfect as fiction.

The push and shove of the wars that connect

us, each generation, like chainmail in

medieval armour.  The rise and fall of empires

and the names around whom continents were

to have spun.  History is perfect, like fiction.

A line strung between points A the past and B

the explainable present each generation hauls

to the next like sailors weighing anchor on

a sea without end on a voyage that goes

forever.  History is perfect.  Hauled by

each of us from one day to the next and

pounded into place like boards in a scaffold.

We stand together in this world.  We stand

together like standing on a scaffold with the

line of history strung in a noose around our

necks in each moment of this explainable

present.  History is perfect, like fiction.

Great and small archaeology.  Lesser and

greater gods.  Pursuing these I will rescue

memory.  Other things will be lost, but not

this.  This is the future, everything is

beginning.  I am learning to remember

a world that might have been and never was.

 

"And yet it moves," said Galileo, under his

breath to the pope.  After having gazed into

the long distance there was no shifting back

to earth as the centre of it all with sun and

other planets spinning god guided around it.

But Ptolemy, whose static world was freed to

spin in space twelve centuries later by

Copernicus (the other Thorn in the Papal side)

wasn't wrong, in any way that mattered, 

simply by virtue (perhaps the only one) of

seeing further than most men of his time.

His library at Alexandria, the sum total of the

long distance we had come to that point in

time burned and now only fragments of the

world we call classical, survive.  But not even

fire can obliterate the distance he saw.

It is said that even his mistakes caused

discoveries.  Would Columbus have sailed

west unless guided, or misguided by the

Ptolemaic notion of the smallness of the

earth?  It was only small to Ptolemy because

he himself was able to see so far.  And yet it

moves.

 

Squinting into sunlight in 1970.  The sun is

shining on the day of my leaving.  In my mind,

the sun was always shining that first summer.

My memory is becoming perfect.  Squinting in

the sunlight.  Squinting into a perfect future.

Small archaeologies.  Somewhere someone has

a photograph of me standing by the highway

flipping stones into the ditch.  In this photo

you can see my backpack on the ground,

I am young and beautiful, we were all young

and beautiful then and we had a look about

us I don't see anymore like we have a secret

we are dying to tell the world.  Small

mythologies we are dying to tell the world.

The mythology of what might be.  The tourist

photo fixes me in time standing by the

highway that leads to this moment.

The sun is shining.  This is the future.

Everything is beginning.  I am learning to

travel light.

 

History repeats.  The line braids and ravels

like knots in a shaman's string.  Each

generation dangles at irregular intervals,

each like the other but separate, random. 

History repeats but not in Newton's lock step.

Rather like watching children play in a field.

For every action an equal action, random,

magical.  Run and fall and begin again.

History, like children playing in a field,

runs and falls and begins again.  Knots in

a shaman's string.

 

I remember a music.  Wovoka, the Paiute

said, "All Indians must dance, everywhere,

keep on dancing.  Pretty soon in next spring

Great Spirit come."  And so begins their dance

in history.  The plains Indian wars have ended

and the buffalo are gone.  All that history has

left is the dancing.  We must take all that

history gives us.  For every action an equal

action but what is made from what is given,

random, and magical.  From Texas to the tree

line, from the Mississippi to the Rockies,

Indians wearing magic shirts are dancing.

In exchange for buffalo and land they were

given stories.  They were given by history

stories of a great flood that cleansed the earth

of sin. Wovoka, like the rest could see around

him the greatest sin which is to take what

belongs to no one.  now they are dancing.

Dancing in history.  Dangling like knots in

a shaman's string.  I hear music.  I hear voices,

musical, laughing.

 

They walked on the moon.  They walked

around, made a speech about mankind, ran

an amerikan flag up a flagpole, stole some

rocks and left.  They said the steps they took

up there were leaps for mankind.  Humankind

I think shuddered that day knowing

somewhere deep in themselves the leap they

were making was to a history that should not

be.  The whole world was watching.

We watched on t.v. the boots descend the

ladder and trembled at the sight of the first

scar on the moon surface.  We heard the words

"one small step for man, one giant leap for

mankind."  We watched the flag of one nation

unfurled on our moon.  That day I think we

heard something else.  Somewhere deep in us

did we not also hear . . . "I am an angry god,

thou shalt have no gods before me."

 

The world is quiet.  Listen.  We wake each day

in the silence of forgetting.  Exiled to this

silence.  We wake each day in this world we

make together and it is silent, forgetting.

Event has piled upon event adding to

a chronology in which the line of history

resembles nothing but a short lit fuse.

We stand together each day in this world

we make and each day is the last for forty

thousand children and each day is a new day

for six shining bombs.  Since the war they call

the second, money in numbers higher than

imagination itself has been spent turning our

world into this silent armed camp.  The

explainable present is now unexplainable, the

only sound we hear above the din of silence is

I am an angry god . . . thou shalt have no gods

before me.  Small mythologies.  We are dying

to tell the world.  The world is quiet.  Listen.

 

Japhy Ryder said, "I have a vision of a great

rucksack revolution, thousands or even

millions of young people going up to the

mountains to pray and by strange unexpected

acts keep giving a vision of freedom to all

living creatures."  Thirteen years after Jack

wrote it I read it sitting on my pack in a camp

in the moutains.  There were hundreds of us.

Thousands.  History is perfect.  These years

later I see the camp as perfect microcosm,

a tiny model of the world we would make.

It was as if the highway we took led to a

medieval village at Carnival.  These years later

I see we wore the costume of Harlequin and

our strange unexpected acts.  I see us in the

costume of Harlequin, dancing. For a moment

that first summer the line of history became

streamers on a may pole and we were

dancing, dancing in history.  My memory

is becoming perfect.  We were learning to travel

light.

 

There were hundreds of us.  Thousands.

We must take everything given us by history.

At every junction and outside every small

town and in long ragged lines on freeway

ramps in the cities kids with long hair and

back packs were standing flipping stones in

the ditch on the highway that leads to this

moment.  We were an entire city, moving,

restless.  That first summer, the time of my

leaving, I went to a city but it was at Carnvial

and the whole city wore the costume of

Harlequin.  We each of us became clowns in

the restless moving city I went to.  I remember

a music.  Everyone was listening to it, always.

I hear voices, musical, laughing.  I am learning

to travel light.  More light than time.  More

quick than light.  History gave us a moment

when thousands of young people were

learning to remember a world that might be

and never was.  We were learning to travel

light.

 

The only history we are not condemned to

repeat is the history of what has not yet been

understood.  Things exist only in their

perceived intention and in the long distance

we have come our tragic misperception has

led to this point of barely being at all. Our

future shall be nothing if not the celebration

of defiance.  We stand together in this world.

Together in a world spinning in space made

free by those who would see it.  In the

shadows of the power of the Third Reich

a white rose is blooming.  A small grop of

students, professors and workers led by Hans

and Sophie Scholl are passing leaflets,

encouraging an uprising.  Leaflets fluttering

like birds on a dark night.  Dancing in history.

The symbol of the group is a small white rose.

A white rose is blooming.  We wake each day

in this world like awakening in a field of

flower.  Someday we wil together reach out

and pick a small white rose.  Our future shall

be nothing if not the celebration of defiance.

This is the future.  Everything is beginning.

 

There were hundreds of us, thousands. 

The camp fires burn higher, bright eyes reflect

in the glare.  Hundreds of us, thousands.

I hear voices, musical, laughing.  My memory

is becoming perfect.  During the night the

moon rose, pale and full of magic.  Above the

sound of voices and music someone said 'to

walk on a thing such as thisis like raping a

god.' Small mythologies.  Lesser and greater

gods.  The mountains form a ring around us,

from peak to peak that voice echoes as if

forever.  Small mythologies.  The mountains

form a ring around us and in the morning

they glowed like gems in a necklace. 

We must take everything we are given by

history and for a moment in a camp in the

mountains that glowed like gems in a

necklace hundreds, thousands of young people

were standing together in a world we had made.

For a moment the line of history became

streamers on a mypole and we were dancing,

dancing on the day of our leaving.  We left for

a moment the explainable present.  We left for

a moment the perfection of history, the push 

and shove of the wars that connect us, each 

generation.  For a moment we held history in

our hands and we were dancing.

 

The inscription reads "a tous ceux qui sont mort

pour la civilization."  Small archaeolgies.  We are

dying to tell the world.  I hear music.  Music like

no other I have heard.  Chanting, rhythmic, 

insistent.  A madrigal and harlequin, dancing.

Wovoka sings "pretty soon in next spring Great

Spirit come."  Someone plays a nocturne by Satie.

In each note we hear the sadness of a world lost.

A world that might have been and never was. 

We can hear above the roar of the fire in the

Reichstag Wagner's Gotterdammerung.

The twilight of the gods.  From the shadows

someone hands to us a small white rose.  I hear

birdsong, I watch perfect tiny dancing.  Galileo

sings "and yet it moves." Small mythologies we

are dying to tell the world.  The struggle begins,

in love.  Near a battle filed in France cut inot

stone is the inscription "to those who died for

civilization."  Small archaeologies.  We are dying

to tell the world.