Blood Memory

                Awcomon How coud one not be attracted to a title like that it screams from its spine bold white letters on a black jacket

a book about buffalo

reading yesterday he learned that Plain Indians had pictorial calendars painted on buffalo skin to document memorable things that happened that year

                                               in 1833 only one image THE YEAR THE STARS FELL

on 13 November was the largest recorded meteor shower an estimated 72,000 per hour

                                                                                                likely

a blood memory stored in everyone who witnessed it

 

from this text he plucked a quote as he did a day earlier Abraham Joshua Heschel  

                                                                                        “Prayers are humble answers to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer and return to the mystery by which we live. Who is worthy to be present at the constant unfolding of time.”

he plucked from John James Audubon who in 1843 confessed to killing four buffalo and taking only their tongues

          “What a terrible destruction of life, as it were for nothing, or next to it.”

                                                                                     and plucked from the prophet Brigham Young “If we do not slay when we do not need, when we will need we cannot slay.”

what these quotes have conferred to his blood  its memory

                                                                   is that human beings are wastrels

    every day he tries not to be

1509,  Tuesday,  13  1. 26

1212,  Wednesday,  14  1. 26