The thing about distance walking across an expanse of desert, is that you don’t go anywhere. After a half day steady pacing, crossing one arroyo after another, up one small slope, across a flat distance of shrub until another arroyo, then down another small slope to cross the flat sandy wash and then up another hill… and on and on… at some point you realize that the distant butte in front of you is no closer, that the distance behind you from where you started is neither here nor there, and that you are simply not going anywhere. The curious part though, is that you do move. You start early in the morning with a distant butte as a goal and walk and walk and walk and only when you have forgotten and just become the walking, do you find yourself somewhere else. It is as though the heat waves have just picked you up and carried you on the wind across the land, and the butte you wanted to reach is now right there, but you forgot about walking a long time ago. 

The mind just can’t handle it, the perspectives, the slowness. A mile on a flat, rolling desert expanse is nothing. Ten miles is where the heat waves blur the lines between this world and somewhere else. Twenty or fifty miles is where you lose yourself. The mind wants something to move, something to happen other than just the repetition of every arroyo in front of you looking just like the one behind you, as if you are walking around in a magic circle and crossing the same one, over and over. 

Noon is the turning point. The land lays flat straight out in all directions, the sun bears directly above you while the shadow world disappears under your footsteps. The heat waves form a distant, perfect circle around you, the light washes or chases away all color and while the butte you are headed to floats out on the horizon, your mind escapes to itself, into its own shadow and retreats. That is when the wind picks you up and you move. And of course, you have to be totally alone. Magic is seldom shared. 

I was on a walk once, such as this. How I came to be there, the wind had long ago washed away. The wind is the other water of the desert, and always it blows, always, blows. Sometimes it is just a cooling touch, other times it is devil mean, kicking dust in your face, in your hair, your eyes, over and over. Occasionally it will whip into a frenzy and slap you around from all sides, at once. It is the wind world, the other dimension added to the flat of the land and the white of the sun. Whatever vestiges of mind, thoughts, cares may remain after noon on a desert walking, the wind will strip away, whip away and when you are light as a feather, then things move, and you go somewhere. Distance, travel is a consequence. 

So it was on this walk I describe. Somewhere behind me a broken down truck sat parked along some stretch of maintenance road along a drainage canal along the Rio Grande. Somewhere behind me were a world of cares, of concerns, dreams and disillusions of a young man. And somewhere behind me were three days of remembering my young life, sitting by a river remembering everything I could, day by day, hour by hour… wondering where it went wrong. 

I remembered everything of my twenty year old life, what I could. After that there wasn’t much to remember that wasn’t a repetition. And without memories, there wasn’t much to think about. The remnants left after that, the wind just took away, or the sun stripped away, or I simply let go into forgetfulness. After that I just started walking. By the time I was on this particular walk, I’d been wandering around in the desert for almost four weeks, from forgotten and going nowhere, chasing illusions that floated on the horizon and walking on the wind. 

This was out along the Rio Grande river north of a reservoir in the southern part of the state of New Mexico. It was an empty expanse that stretched for some thirty or fifty miles in most directions without encountering much. There were some dirt roads following some of the drainage ditches along the river, a couple ranch houses further north and west, but once you crossed the river, there was nothing but scrub, sand, sun and wind. It was a good place to lose yourself, and maybe forever.

This is where I was on this particular day, heading north walking a wandering towards a distant dream. As I did, to my right, east and somewhat south of me, stood a desert mountain. It had been in my awareness since I had arrived out there, a quiet part of the surrounding terrain despite its size. I had walked north of it, south of it, west and east up to it’s low terrain. It was a nondescript short range that gathered momentum as the land flowed up from the river to become steeper and steeper until it became a hill, then mountain. It was a broken piece of a larger range that continued on both south and north. But this section stood alone, with the north end the highest point a rocky jut at the top. As peaks go, it was average, except where it stood, out alone. 

In every other detail it was completely unremarkable, hard to get to, of no particular height, dry, colorless. But it was there, and on that walk this day I decided to climb it, because it was there and I was there and there was nothing else to do. I had walked north, south, east, and west so the only other direction, was up. 

But it was a couple of days later, after I had gone to the butte in the sky, and back to my little camping spot, before I did climb it. As it would be, it was the last thing I did before returning to the world from my trek in the desert. And now, so many years and travels later, I find it curious that I should remember it so clearly, and for it to resurface with so much intensity. It is odd sometimes what you realize as time goes by, what really stands the assault of time, what the real pillars of your life are. 

It was a hard climb. Like everything out there, it was in reality much bigger than it looked, farther, higher up. I had left at first light to escape the heat, trading it for the coolness of the early morning. Even so, I still found myself in the midday sun scrambling up the last two or three hundred yards, slipping on loose rocks and pulling myself up by grabbing onto bushes as the slope got steeper and steeper closer to the top. I did finally step onto the top ridge line and then breathing hard without pausing, walked along the spine to the northern point. Once there, I set down my small pack, took some drinks of water and then as I looked around, and around, realized where I was. I was three places at once.

One. I could see everywhere, everything. First were all my walks, from there to there to there, the ghost trails of every one or them. But there was more. I could see the length of the river, and all the fingered arroyos leading down to it from both sides. I could see the lake to the south, the flats below me, the butte in the north, the sloping mesa further out west. And still more. The climb had taken me higher than I had thought, and there was nothing around me for miles but low level flat. It was far away before the land started to rise anywhere. To the west I could follow the mesa out and away to a far distant freeway, and beyond out into the foothills of the Gila Wilderness, an expanse of mountains that repeated themselves off into the distance until they blurred. They filled the whole western skyline, hundreds and hundreds of square miles of peaks, shadows and echoes. To the south, there was Elephant Butte Lake, blue on blue against the brown and sand toned shores of the desert containing it. It filled the lowest part of the huge flat valley below me, dwarfed by the stretches of land around and away from it. The valley gently sloped for miles from the foothills of the Gila down to the Rio Grande and lake, then up again to rise into the ridge of mountains upon which I stood. Over the ridge line and down the other side, another wide stretch of land flattened out. I could see White Sands National Park, the whole of the missile firing range surrounding it and look across to where another range of mountains rose into peaks on the eastern edges, that again repeated themselves, wandering off, losing themselves into the distance. Looking back to the river southwards beyond the lake, I could see the landscape stretch down and away towards the lower and hotter flatlands where agricultural fields lay and blended into distance. 

Turning to the northeast, I could see the Malpais or ‘badlands’, volcanic lava flows that broke into deep fractures and created a black purple ribbon across the land that was impassable by wagon, horse or foot. Further north in the distance another range of mountains, the southern Manzano range rose up and away. And directly north, the river and roads and irrigation canals all ran away in parallels into the Bosque Del Apache Wildlife Refuge. The red overgrown mesquite that grew all along the way laid a huge washed blood streak on both sides of the river that just got smaller and smaller the further one looked. I could see everything, and never expected it. I never imagined and was stunned. 

Two. I was in the middle of the world. All around me a huge bowl went out and out, down the slopes from where I stood, across the desert expanses surrounding me until the edges rose into mountains, then into sky curling back over me. The noonday sun pounded down on me while the mountain held me up perched on it’s thumb. It was as high up, as it was low down. Around me three hundred and sixty the line of the horizon circled me at eye level, neither far nor near, always the same distance, a magic circle. As I kept turning around and around, with the wind buffeting me this way and that like hands, I became almost dizzy with the loss of perspective. Had the world tipped upside down, the mountain becoming a cloudy sky and the sky the blue blue lake below and the river the horizon that ran all around me, I don’t know if I would have known the difference. I was in the middle of the world. 

Three. And I was at the most alone place… Nobody in the world knew where I was, nor particularly cared. There was even an absence of myself, long since burnt by the sun, whipped by the winds, memory bared, stripped to bone. Who stood atop that mountain was simply presence without thoughts, dreams, hope or fear. There was no where left to walk, nothing to do, but be and let the wind blow. It was an explosive solitude, the concentration of expanse and days, all falling within themselves like a black hole at the center of the world. I was utterly, alone. 

Nobody climbed this mountain. There was no reason. It was not high enough from the ground to attract a climber. It was too hard to get to for a hiker. It was too dry, too gray, too hot and too hidden, hidden in plain sight. It was the face in a crowd one can’t remember, a book with no title, nowhere on the map, a place that didn’t really exist, and visited only by the elements. 

I sat there all day, out on the rock thumb, doing nothing much, because there was a fourth… my magic walk ended that day, because whatever I was looking for out there, was found. Or at least the search was over, and I knew it was time to go back to earth. I knew going down the mountain, my steps would slowly get heavier and heavier until I could no longer walk on the wind, and my steps would lead back into the world. I knew it was time to go, to fix my truck, to drive, to talk, to begin again. But I knew I had the day, so I sat on the top, in the middle, alone and at the end, until watching the wind and the sun have intercourse on the horizon, on a bed of violets and roses, in an ectasy of crimsons. 

There are many ways to be alone, in a crowd, in a cave, in secrets… but now as I remember this and wonder why it is so strong to me, more than double the years since, I can’t say, and perhaps why I write this, to remember. It was a powerful day, one of the bearing points by which I have navigated my life. It was my Everest perhaps, that experience which stands alone, as that mountain does now. Perhaps it was the day that I fell in love with this earth, seeing too much all at once, overwhelmed and lost to the experience. Maybe it was the magic, that other world of animals, of Shangri-las, of angels, elves, sorcerers and mystics that I walked in for those rare days on the wind, within the sun. Perhaps it was the lightness of being, having been washed cleaner that anytime before or since, a feeling where the wind blew through me, the sun warmed my inner soul, the earth offered me to the heavens. Perhaps, but why should it matter now? 

The facts are that I had wandered out into that environment depressed from too many drugs, to much angst, too much hormone, drama and romanticism. I parked my old, gray ‘58 Chevy under a random tree along an endless stretch of straight county, maintenance road, took a small pack with too little food and headed out not knowing where I was going. It didn’t matter what was in front of me, nor behind me. My truck didn’t matter, the fact I didn’t have enough food didn’t matter… Whatever happened or didn’t, didn’t matter. 

I suppose I was searching for something, for peace, for meaning, for something maybe less definable. But really it was a lost wandering, a hopeless quest, a reach for the unattainable, a display of spiritloss. Without a trace of direction, I simply left my truck along the road, and walked on down where I could have driven. Eventually the road stopped as it neared the marshes at the upper end of the lake and I continued followed the slowing river down through the mesquite and up on the edges of the mesa. After a time I found an old stone structure that offered some covering from the wind and sky, and stayed the night, And the next, and the next, and next. 

I started watching the river during the days. Along that stretch of its length, the Rio Grande is a slow moving shallow waterway that meanders its way through sandbars, from one to the next, is about fifty feet wide and knee or waist deep depending on the flow. Usually it runs a clear color tinged by greens and browns, but some days when it has rained further north, it turns into a muddier mix carrying silt and runoff. I started watching its slow flowing endless motion, surface patterns, wind ripples, swells, currents, reflections… the leaves and twigs and mosses, the ducks and snakes and frogs, the fish, the silt, the bottom. Sometimes I would wade out into it, sometimes lay down and float, but mostly I just watched, and wondered. 

Wondered where it had all gone so wrong, why was it so bad, all of it. I began remembering, trying to recall the first memory, the original one, working backwards. I remembered the neighbor’s dog biting me very young, then before that the sidewalk in front of the house, then throwing a toy truck against a wall of my room, then vague images of my mother, always there, always. And I worked at it, hours. What else to do? The river went nowhere and neither did I. Eventually the earliest memories were exhausted and then I started a slow, methodical recollection of the next memory, and then the next, and next, determined to remember everything. Somewhere it was there, I could find it, where it went wrong. 

It became an exercise, my kindergarten class, first grade, who was the teacher, the school yard, friends, the walk home, the creek, the tree I used to climb, the yard of my parents house, the outside porch, the bunk bed in my room, throwing out my mom’s cigarettes, baths… As it went on, the girls I liked at ten, at eleven, the ones who liked me, Marcy, hiking, fishing, Halloween, my sisters, parent’s parties, skiing, travelling to see my grandparents, my uncle, Ohio, Colorado, New Mexico, the accident, hospital, junior high school, high school, drugs, bullies, teachers, summer camp, Herb, Pat, Bruce, wood class, reading class, gym, Toni, Kim, Sarah, my grandmother, divorce, diary, summer days, frisbee, walking to school, walking… There was so much to remember from the last five years, but sometime on the fourth day, sitting by the river in a dead stare, I couldn’t remember anything much more. Three and some days, my life, total, everything. All that was left was staring at the river as it went on, singing a soft gurgling, laughing a gentle song. 

After that I started walking, and became an animal. It started by hunting them, a jack-rabbit or cottontail, a poached duck, once a carp to add to my dwindling food rations. I was losing weight rapidly, and hunger was mind consuming. I would head out in the morning to some point of reference, the lake side, or a hilltop, down an old jeep road a cattle rancher had cut, and take my .22 rifle. It was an accurate tool and I killed with efficiency or not at all. But the walking started to quiet me down as I started to float across the landscape without realizing it. After a while I began to accidently walk upon deer, then a coyote much to the surprise of both. 

I came to understand how quiet, sensitized their worlds are, and shared it. Once there, it got hard to hunt anything despite the hunger, then impossible. Maybe it was listening to the conversation of two wild ducks thirty feet away, or watching the pointedness of a tracking coyote, or just not wanting to hear a gunshot in the peace, but I put the gun away and became one of them. I became natural, as quiet as the land, a silence that stretches to infinity. Now the game was to see who would sneak up on who, because the animals always know you are there if you are human, but not each other. In their world, one of them, I would just appear and they would be so surprised, especially the deer, who were experts at vanishing with nowhere to hide. After a while though, as I grew quieter and less and less, I just fell to watching them, and to where I began this story, to simply walking. 

So why the recounting of this all, in this self absorbed, perhaps romanticized version of my memories, some twenty some years later on, as if I am still sitting by a river and trying to remember everything, the cactus, snakes, quail, sunburn, cattle, the fire, blisters, boredom and dreams of food. What is significant about a depressed twenty year old wandering around in a heavy duty disillusionment, wallowing in pity and despair and an ego centric retelling of it at an age twice that now? Why does it matter anymore now than when it did-not-then? 

This. Perhaps it is not my story. 

Once in junior high school, through some unlucky turn of events, I ended up travelling across town with my friend’s father. I was pressed up against the passenger side door as if he had the plague wanting, waiting to get out and dreading trying to have a conversation with him. But he was no fool, and hardly said anything, except about half way to wherever we were going, he leaned over slightly and said this… 

“I’m just gonna tell you one thing.” I didn’t say anything, but remember it snagged my attention. He said, “There are no big things, just small ones.” He paused for a minute, then finished, “No matter how big it seems now, it’s just a small thing somewhere down the road.” 

I always remembered it, the only thing he ever really told me, and now that I am the age he was then, I would add, “And nothing is personal – not secret, not dream, not compliment nor offense, not desire nor experience. Somewhere down the road, nothing is personal.” 

This is not my story. It is just ‘a’ story, and all the ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’ are just to offer it the best way there seems to be. If it is not best this way, go back and read it with ‘he’, or ‘she’ transposed. I do not care. Whoever walked off that mountain so long ago, walked into the dust and heat of the desert and disappeared. The person that met the sheriff at the pickup as a tow truck was being called, that asked the county worker with the sheriff to give him a jump, then drove out of there and broke down on the way home and hitchhiked… was a new person. That person went on to school and work and relationship, on to hopes and effort, success and failure, love and loss, meals, cats, vacations and jokes. That person went on. 

This story is a story of the bards, all our story, the nature of walking, the wandering that is our lives. The mountain peak is our source, where we rest and find inspiration, speak to the gods, listen to their whispers and rejoice in the blessing of it all. The river is our lives, ever changing and never, essentially a movement in place, the journey between young and old, the eternal trail of the caravanserai going from one oasis to the next. The land is our bodies, the textures, the senses, the coarseness, softness, the colors, the thousand hidden curves and hollows, reaches and retreats. The sky is our thoughts and dreams and prayer reaching out, out, out into forever blues, bliss. The horizon is the world, our goals, aspirations, accomplishments, dramas, songs, laughters, crys, ritual and propagation. The sun is our love and the wind is our souls, free, everywhere and always. This is your story as much as mine, a simple remembrance or something more, for you to know in your own privateness. This is a story of the bards, the river song in their voices, drum beat rhythm of their hearts, calling you to your own spirit. 

We all have our Everest, whether it is in a crowd or alone, spiritual or sexual, remembered or not. It is always there as we are always wandering around its base while it towers above, always chasing distant buttes floating on the horizon, buttes with names like wealth and fame and title, power and family and religion and the ten thousand other attachments that shield death’s promise. It matters not. The Everest stands, hidden by it’s size in plain sight, but it matters neither. It is the walking… every step taken that matters. It is the walking. It is the careful step by step experience of our lives that matters, not where we are coming from or going to, but the magic of the moment, as the wind picks us up and takes us where we need to be.

The tone and description of this essay creates an environment that successfully describes the perception of a group of stoners. The emphasis on the guys forgetting to bathe and it being unimportant, the excessive focus on the Honda’s characteristics, the distant required to get ‘far enough’ (1/2 mile)… these elements create an overall scene which serves as an effective backdrop to the storytelling. 

It is a very good passage when Ben starts telling the story of Chupa, immediately drops the reader right alongside the biker, the meanest of the mean, and engages one’s curiosity. Part of me wanted the whole essay to have this flavour and it ended all too quick, but understandably with the transition that happens. The transition is excellent, unexpected and emphasizes the last-thing-expected occurrence. It works for me. 

I also like how it is dealt with, stoner style. It reminded me of the movie ‘Shawn of the Dead’, where in the middle of the Zombie Apocalypse, a group of Londoners end up going down to the pub to deal with it. This story has a similar response, ‘let’s have a picnic on the table’. 

The structure of the narrative also has a nice setup / foreshadowing to it as the pipe is getting lit and things get toasty. The truck out on the black mesa also adds a certain vulnerability by the scene, a little spec of light out amidst the black desert around them. The overall straightforward development of the essay also works, as the reader is introduced through stages to the evolution of what happens. I think this may be one of the strongest aspects of this essay, how bit by bit scenes are described that contribute to a build up as the story develops. First there is an introduction to Chupa Cabra, then the significance of smoking, then finding an out of the way place, then the effect, then the story, then… The title is good too, immediately catches the reader’s curiosity. 

Perhaps there should be more of a bridge between the opening paragraph and the follow on story, perhaps a few lines or hints as to what happens, or even just a flat statement ‘I just never expected to see it.’ or some such solution. As it is, it disconnects from the opening setting. 

There is some tense (past / present) issues that need to be considered. Also, general punctuation and sentence structure might be considered at various points throughout the writing. 

I would try to make sure that any details keep adding to the general focus and surprise that develops and doesn’t wander too far from the essence of the narrative. Some random detail helps the feel of the piece and its material, given the state of mind of the characters, but some of the wanderings may dilute the impact of the story’s main focus. I might add a bit to the ending also… if I was stoned staring at something fifteen feet away with yellow eyes out on the dark mesa, I might do more than kick up some dirt and drive off the mesa… I might also have some parting thoughts.

There is a sense of sly, understated humor that permeates this piece that I really like. It is very subtle, but funny. An example of this is the dialogue, ‘…the steak here is really good… (then) yeah, that sounds good. I think that I want the lamb’. Another way this wry observation is used is in the effective listing of multiple things people are doing simultaneously… ‘grandma winning, aunt in hot tub, sister visiting, Danny and Josh playing penny slots, losing a dollar’. Listing all these activities as a flat report adds a light quality and creates a scene spanning multiple activities as one, an effective technique given the overall tone of the essay. 

The sense of movement is also effective throughout this narrative. I very clearly have a sense of the pace of the days spent in Las Vegas. The change in scenes keeps refreshing the story as new details are constantly added to the background. It creates an effect of sort of a series of scenes within a bigger scene. The bigger scene would be Las Vegas in general and all the rooms and bars and casinos are all the little scenes. I like this effect. 

There are segments of dialogue and description that work very well. The section when trying to talk Daniel into drinking is very easy, natural and the track of it ending up with talking about flavours is funny, again that knack for deflecting the reader. The real issue is trying to force Daniel who doesn’t drink to drink, and ends up talking about fruity flavors. The description of the Irish pub is an example of description that flows, each sentence leading naturally into the next. I like the bookstore too. 

Rewriting is the word that comes to mind when considering ways to improve; nothing big, just going back through and simplifying some sentence structures, making sure the preceding paragraph leads to the next, the relevancy of certain details, and so on – typical rewriting. In particular, I would pay attention to the way some sentence pieces are combined, as in the opening paragraph. I think shorter, more concise sentences would work without effecting the tone of the essay. A little more detail in certain scenes would also enrich the focus factor, 

I would also consider a spacing break between sections where there is a time jump, as between the first and second visits. As it reads now the transition is a little difficult for the reader to make. There are several places where this might be considered. 

The ending leaves me wondering. I like the last line as it captures the essence of Las Vegas, but it is a little too subtle for the ending. I would consider ways to strengthen this last parting scene. It is what the reader is left with and needs to be more of a statement or judgement or even snapshot, as long as it sort of summarizes the experience and leaves a clear impression.

Overall this is quite well written, with good movement, stark description, an economy of words, yet well embellished where needed. Upon finishing this piece the overall feeling I have is ‘movement’. The writing style moves quickly from place to place, time to time. The leader lines defining where the following scenes take place are a good technique for the nature of this story and work well for me, give me an anchor from which to tether as the pace quickly moves along. 

I like the description and considered words. The paragraphs and sentencing move easily from one to another with little glitch or snag. This is important to me in a piece that moves so quickly, covering both distance and time in a hurried storytelling style. It reinforces the subject of shoplifting which must have the same speed to it – well crafted writing for the subject. 

The dialogue is of the same flavour, short but reads naturally as a conversation usually does. It is very easy to read and adds support to the focus of the story line by not getting into unnecessary detail. The reader is exposed to the essence of the dialogue without any extras except to add a dimension of psychology, such as when Bibi asks David to ‘Tell me again’. 

The story is also a good commentary on values, such as when contrasting the fake cops with the NYPD. This is good material which the characters work through in their own adventure and discovery about fantasy, reality and the lines between. The whole essay does this on different levels, such as portraying the area where Bibi grew up against Santa Fe, her younger self against older self and indirectly questioning her values. Superimposing these levels on each other reinforces the essay’s general focus, never leading the reader away. 

A successful effort portraying the feel, environment, tension, development, activities and so on of shoplifting. The title is apropos, not too flashy, but catchy, leading directly into the first paragraph. I like the opening paragraph a lot. 

While I like the first paragraph very much, the transition to the second loses me. Perhaps a space break would help, or a repetition that this is happening before the first paragraph somehow. Also the statement of stopping shoplifting is confusing, the timing… ‘I stopped shoplifting when I turned 18, but now at 19 when I met David…’ or something like that. 

It is probably my thing, but I don’t like colons. They are very hard edged and break the flow of reading to me. When I do use them, I use them for impact, similar to crying ‘Fire’ so might suggest to consider different styling instead of colons. I don’t mind them after the lead in lines, but after that wished they would go away. The dashes used near the end of the story work for me, but fit into the same category. They are used once and have good effect. 

I don’t know if I want some moralizing or what at the end, but maybe a bit more observation or consideration. Has anything changed, not as fun, has the adventure of it dulled… I’m not sure but it seems to drop off. Otherwise this is quite good writing and I really don’t have much to critique, other than wondering about introspection. The subject brings up judgements so that has to be balanced some way. The cops are a good angle on this. Nice writing.

This is an interesting approach to the subject matter. I like the overall structure that is being developed, that being a contrast between general facts and statistics to a very personal reality. I think this approach is a solid baseline upon which to work out the development of the essay. It emphasizes the reality of general guidelines, and yet also how meaningless such facts are when taken to a single experience. The fact that twenty percent of traumatic brain injuries are caused by car accidents is of little human value when talking to one instance. Humans can be counted but they are not numbers, and that is what the essence of this story seems to be to me. 

Once the factual base is laid out, I very much like the descriptions of individual examples of day to day reality for Sarah… muffins bought not taken, difficulty hearing simple words, and so on. These descriptions clarify for the reader the ‘lingering effects’. 

Maybe the strongest aspect of this writing is the ‘pragmatic’ (in the writer’s own words) tone that the voice of the piece carries. It is sincere, matter-of-fact and offers simplicity to the reader without inviting an excess of emotion. This encourages the reader to continue the narrative and openly consider the material within, a difficult subject. 

I like, whether intentional or not, many of the broken snippets of the writing. I realize this writing is not finished, but think that some placement of some of these phrases and unusual wording combinations add much to the description for the reader… attention indivisibility, uninvolved tones… Phrases like these both confuse and intrigue, offer insight. 

I might suggest as a title, simply ‘An Insult to the Brain’. Other than that, I might also suggest to not worry about any sort of footnoting or references. I trust your orientation so I trust that whatever facts you are presenting are close enough for the narrative’s purposes. 

Some of the material could perhaps be simplified into shorter sentences, more concise phrasing… even incomplete sentences would work given the subject matter. Also while the facts are great, the story is better. I might consider edging towards simplicity, maybe describing just one day and then adding facts as needed. Oftentimes focus on a smaller scene can give greater perspective than trying to describe it all. The paragraph ‘My memory is not so great, not so…’ seems to me the best paragraph and could be continued on in that same voice. There is enough medical information; now Sarah is speaking as a statistic of one – this is where my interest wants to go.

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Harley-Davidson: the Cost of Rebellion 

The Harley-Davidson motorcycle evokes a fairly packaged image in most people’s minds when mentioned. Images that are usually visualized are gangs of riders like the Hell’s Angels, a renegade or outlaw looking like Mad Max, or a heavyset guy in dusty chaps with a beard, tattoos and attitude. Ask yourself, when you think of a stereotypical Harley motorcycle rider, what do you think about? For what it is worth, my personal image is a bearded, beer-gutted guy in ripped leathers and mirror sunglasses that may or may not have just gotten out of jail. 

Regardless of what particular image one may conjecture, the stereotypical Harley rider is usually depicted as someone on the edge of society and standing for some mix of freedom, rebellion, individualism and patriotism. Given such consideration, it may then come as some surprise to profile the average buyer of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, which by the way costs between 15 – 30k, before any customization of course. That can send the price stratospheric. 

That average purchaser for a Harley-Davidson motorcycle during the year 2008, was approximately 47 years old, married and had an annual household income a little over $84,000 a year. Ninety percent of the buyers were male, and 30 percent of them had bachelor degrees or higher. Half of them had owned a Harley before their last purchase while the other half were new to the market (Knol). That’s it. So if this is the average profile of the person who buys a Harley, how is it that most of us carry such a different image around in our minds? How can the popular image be so different from the actual transaction? Also, how do you market such an item associated with street gangs and rebels to an upscale market that has most everything, especially the status quo image? 

Simple. You tell them they don’t need it. You sell them ‘Freedom’. You use slogans like, ‘Outrun the Sun’, and ‘Live to Ride, Ride to Live’ and ‘The Road Starts Here. It Never Ends’ (Textart). And you display graphics and photography showing a bike, a beard, a road, and a woman. Simple. Everything a cooped-up middle manager could want. 

I asked my sister’s husband and her twenty year old son about this. They both are motorcycle aficionados, ride often and hang out with motorcycle types of all kinds. My brother-in-law is also in his mid forties and makes a pretty solid income. In other words, he fit the profile pretty well and so seemed like a good resource for information. 

“Doesn’t it seem a little schizo to sell these bikes to obviously high wage earners so they can dress down and look like they just got out of jail?” I asked. “I mean, the bike cost 25k, the jacket $350, the chaps $150, the boots $200, the helmet $600 or 800, and the gloves $100 or so…” I trailed off. 

My sister’s husband just said, ‘You forgot the $200 sunglasses.” I nodded. He smiled, then continued, “Yea, it’s totally schizo, and you have to get them dirty before you ride it, too.” 

I didn’t understand so he went on explaining. “The last thing you want to do, is look like a ‘suit on a bike.’” 

After thinking about this for a moment, I then asked, “Well, don’t you think that sends an antisocial message, a bad role model?” 

My brother-in-law looked at my nephew, who nodded knowingly, then he returned to looking at me and simply said “Passive anarchy,” adding, “Means just what it says.” 

“Passive anarchy,” I repeated. Fascinating, never thought of it… the underlying attitude of the suit gone biker, the middle to upper class, responsible citizen paying some $30,000 plus taxes, fees and licenses to participate in a delusion of resistance, chaos and freedom by riding a Harley, or ‘hog’ as the slang goes. Before I could respond, I suddenly remembered one of the latest advertising blitzes from Harley-Davidson. It is an ad depicting the TRUEBLOOD Iron 883 – Exclusively for Vampires. That is the bike with the slogan ‘Outrun the sun’. Makes sense if you’re a vampire. Definitely pushing the edge of social norms… a long ways from the office. 

“What about discrimination?” I asked. 

My nephew jumped right on this. “They discriminate against everything. It’s part of being in the group. The bigger the group of Harleys, the more they discriminate.” He looked at me a minute, then apologized. “I mean if you get one alone, they’re usually really nice people, but if they start to congregate… it’s the group that discriminates.” 

“Against what,” I asked, stunned. 

Again they looked at each other, making me question my intellignece. “Against anything that’s not a Harley.” My nephew answered, then looked triumphant. “Mainly other bikes, but people too if you don’t conform, if you’re too young, if you’re a woman, the police, the government, corporations, other countries… and cars.” 

“Conform?” I queried, still stuck on the first item. 

“Yea, look like biker, drink beer and talk about American made,” he finished plainly. 

“Go to Sturgis if you want the real deal,” he added. 

“Sturgis?” They rolled their eyes at my question. 

“Just the largest motorcycle rally in the country. All Harley’s. Every August. You don’t show up there on anything but a Harley,” he said, adding warningly, “Just check the Sturgis police record.” 

“Ok, ok, “ I said listening to him, then went on. “But what is their main discrimination?” 

That is when the conversation stopped. They looked at me as if I had asked the mother of stupid questions, and were shocked into silence. I think they felt bad for me, for my ignorance. After a minute though, me being family and all, they both looked at one another and said simultaneously in a really sincere single voice, “Metric.” 

I took in the gravity of their confidence with a hush. “Metric,” I repeated, and they nodded. It was almost a religious moment. 

My brother in law then summarized it for me. “If you’re into Harleys, a broken down piece of rust by the road is better than the sleekest fastest Metric – Honda, BMW, Yamaha - anything that isn’t American. It’s all brand snobbery based in patriotism. Harley’s really aren’t the best bikes; they just think they are.” Then he added, “Just be careful who you repeat that to.”

The following day, I found myself surfing the general diversity policy and some of the various discrimination workshops about age, gender, income and so forth available to employees of Harley-Davidson as part of their employment resources (Harley / diversity). After all, Harley-Davidson Inc. is a corporation, complete with a stock ticker that reads HOG (read into that what you will). The revenue generated from sales in 2008 was a little over 4 billion dollars. They sold some 218,000 bikes in the US, and worldwide they sold another 97,000 units. They sell bikes in Europe, Asia, Latin America and recently launched a network to establish dealerships throughout India. In other words, doing everything a corporation should be doing – growth, training, marketing, legals, and profit (Harley / relations). 

To get a first hand look at the actual bikes and sales environment, I decided to go down to the local Harley dealership and speak with one of the salespeople to gain a closer perspective, try to understand why someone would spend 30k plus to look like they were looking for a job. 

I also wanted to see if the attitude of the dealership reflected the prejudices of its collective consumer base, out there riding around. Upon walking in to the sales floor, the first thing that struck me was all the polish. Everything shined. The bikes were beautiful, red, blue, black, grays and chrome. A few were showcased up near the front, customized, accessorized. Behind them rows of other bikes in various colors and styles lined up, town bikes on one side, touring bikes on the other. I spoke with the salesperson, Cody. He looked like a mechanic, with a short day beard and a baseball cap. After explaining to him that I wasn’t really looking to buy a bike, but rather just wanted to know why someone would buy one, he summed it up like this. 

“People wait their whole lives to buy one of these,” he said with a casual swing of his arm. “Anybody can buy a Yamaha, Kawasaki, BMW but when you buy a Harley, you’re part of the Family.” I nodded, encouraging him to go on. “This is America at its best, American made. When someone signs that paper purchasing their bike, they’re part of it now. I’ve seen people cry,” he finished. 

“That’s amazing,” I said, then went on to mention about the classical image everyone has of a Harley rider. 

“Yea, I know,” Cody continued. “It’s not really like that, just makes for a good spotlight that people focus on. You probably know all about the average customer we get in here,” he said referring to my introduction. 

I nodded and then asked “Which bike do you own?” 

He hesitated, then said quietly, “I don’t own one.” After a second he explained, “Can’t really afford one yet. I used to work for the Yamaha dealership for five years. Now I’m waiting…” Then he looked at me with a sharpness in his eye. “Did you drive here?” he asked. Tit for tat. 

I finished my research by walking around the showroom floor, looking for any other possible signs of discrimination, at the t-shirts, the jackets, the bumper stickers, the belt buckles, wallets, hats, sunglasses… but it was all pretty clean. Looked like the only real discrimination was ‘metric’, and I recalled with understanding my brother-in-law’s advice, “Just don’t ride a Yamaha over there.” 

Later, reflecting on all this, I considered the embedded contradictions in the Harley-Davidson business model. The corporate actions actively recruits upper income buyers with all the spiff and shine they can offer on the showroom floor, complete with all possible paraphernalia to support the image and show that you’re part of the club. Everything is professional, polished and caters to the values of the social strata of the buyers. The employees participate in health benefits, retirement plans and vacation days. The legal teams defend discrimination lawsuits over sexism or ageism that creep up from time to time, but overall the business is a responsible member of the global economic community. 

From there it filters down through the buyer to the street, where a different set of values takes over, ranging from jovial attitude to downright maliciousness. And the queer thing about it is that at a group level it morphs into a quasi-rebellion from the very structure that sold them the bikes in the first place. It’s as if the rebel has stated that he / she wants to ride off into the sunset away from it all, and Harley-Davidson has created the perfect product on which to do so - and will sell it to him / her, if they can afford it. They’ll set the rebel up with the wheels, all the gear, the training, the financing… whatever they need to find freedom, and buck the system. I remembered one last piece of advice my brother-in-law mentioned also, after I asked him more about a ‘suit on a bike’. He said “Yea, that’s bad, but not as bad as a ‘poser’. Nobody likes a Poser. They’re neither a Suit nor an Outlaw.” 

There is also one last thing that remains to be mentioned, something I have become uncomfortably aware of, a subtle change in my thinking from having done the research and interviews necessary to write this article. I’m a long ways from ever considering buying a bike and riding off down the road. But I’m a lot closer than I was. Maybe I’ll start a small savings account. After all, I have Cody’s business card.

Diversity. Diversity at Harley-Davidson. Harley-Davidson USA. http://www.harley-davidson.com/wcm/Content/Pages/Diversity/diversity_main. jsp?locale=en_US&bmLocale=en_US

Motorcycle & Customer Data. Retail Sales of Harley-Davidson Motorcycles. Harley-Davdison USA. http://investor.harleydavidson.com/registrations/registrations_statistics.cfm

A Unit of Knowledge. Harley-Davidson motorcycle sales, shipments and revenues. Knol, 2009. http://knol.google.com/k/harley-davidson-motorcycle-sales-shipments-and-revenues#

Textart. Motorcycle advertising slogans. Textart.ru Help Systems. http://www.textart.ru/database/slogan/motorcycle-advertising-slogans.html

I am holding a new print of Red Hawk. It is a fine, high resolution image, measuring eight by ten inches, printed on a high quality, one hundred percent cotton rag paper with archival inks, otherwise known in the industry as a ‘giclée’ (zhee-clay). It is a sepia colored reproduction from an original glass plate negative taken one hundred years ago. This print will last another hundred years if properly cared for, framed behind glass, away from moisture and direct sunlight. It’s like a very fine watercolor in its texture and sheen, very soothing and peaceful to look at, with a soft reflectiveness rather than the harsh, high gloss the way so many photographs are printed. Around the image is a two inch white border that will act as the matting when this print is framed. 

The photo is from 1905, titled ‘Oasis in the Badlands.’ Red Hawk is sitting on his white horse, which is taking a drink from small pool of water out on the high plains of South Dakota. The horse is leaning forward with it’s legs slightly splayed out while he is leaning back and looking forward. Behind him in the distance is a range of low mountains and around him is the tall, wind blown grasses of the prairie. He is elaborately dressed in beaded leathers and wearing a full headdress, which streams down in eagle feathers from the top of his head half way down his back. A bank of dark storm clouds cover the sky above him and stretch down to the horizon behind him. It is considered by many, the quintessential image of the Sioux Indian in his native environment. 

Red Hawk went on his first war party in 1865 at the age of eleven, with Crazy Horse against U.S. Army troops. He probably just held some reserve ponies away from the action while his companions went out and raised mischief, but he was there all the same. Over the next twenty years or so, he participated in some two dozen battles, including with Sitting Bull when he was twenty two, the Battle of Little Bighorn, which Custer ‘did not win.’ As time went on, he became a chief and after the Indian Wars ended with the defeat of the American Natives, he lived a long life and actually attended the fiftieth anniversary of Custer’s Last Stand in 1926, before passing on sometime afterwards. 

The photo itself was taken by Edward Sheriff Curtis, renowned photographer of the American Indian. A couple of years before taking this photo, Curtis had spent three days touring the Battle of Little Bighorn with three of Custer’s Indian scouts around 1900, and had an intimate knowledge of the battle. Over the next few years he travelled to South Dakota several times taking photos and meeting the local tribes and peoples. Red Hawk was one of those individuals and after meeting and befriending him, he asked Red Hawk to pose for some portraits and the described photo is one of those pictures. Two years later, in return, Red Hawk bestowed upon Curtis, his Indian name, that being Pazola Washte, meaning ‘Pretty Butte’. 

By 1905 when this photo was taken, Edward Curtis had been photographing Native Americans for some ten years. His first 1895 photograph was of the daughter of Chief Sealth of Seattle. Over the next thirty years and after receiving a grant from JP Morgan in 1906, he went on to capture over forty thousand photographs of the North American Indian. He became the singular photographer of the disappearing way of life of the Native American. He respected the tribes and their members and gained their respect and confidences in return, allowing him to witness and photograph many private gatherings and rituals unavailable to many other photographers of the time. More significantly though, is that Curtis had a unique touch and sense of aesthetics when photographing, and captured many timeless images of the people who were his subjects. 

He also understood that he was documenting a disappearing way of life. As the Native American People were slowly being changed by and adopting to a much changing world around them, Curtis was passionately trying to preserve what they were losing. Often he would have to place his subjects against backgrounds that did not show modern day influences, such as non traditional clothing or metal tools or telegraph wires, buggies and other developing technologies of the time. Also, he asked his subjects to dress or pose in ways that were staged, ignoring the theater of it while trying to catch glimpses of a disappearing heritage. 

I am aware of this as I look at the print of Red Hawk, who never would have been dressed up in his full ceremonial outfit to ride around on the plains, except if he were meeting with other chiefs or going to a celebration or ritual of some kind. Normally he would have just have been dressed in his daily clothes, whatever was comfortable and warm, the equivalent to our blue jeans and pullover of today. He dressed up for Curtis, and to have his picture taken and then a couple of years later, gave Edward Curtis an Indian name as a show of respect and honor. 

Edward Curtis’s ‘White American’ life however, despite his contribution to the future by the artful preservation of the Native way of life for following generations, was not as honored, being one mired down in drama and debt and eventual shame and poverty. In 1916 his wife sued for divorce, and it was granted three years later in 1919. As part of the proceedings, the court ruled that she was entitled to take ownership of his studio and all of his collection of glass negatives. Rather than allow his wife custody of his life’s work, he and his daughter Beth went to his studio and destroyed the entire collection of glass plates himself. After that, years followed where he was forced to sell off the rest of his rights and property, sometimes for pennies on the dollar, as he was often desperate for cash. After his death in 1954, much of his remaining work was discarded, destroyed or simply lost to the dust bin of history. However in 1970, the value of his efforts were ‘rediscovered’ and several large collectors bought and began collecting what was available and preserving what could be found. One such depository, The National Archives, offers a library of approximately 1000 digital copies of his originals, which are public domain, and which can be downloaded, and is how I came to meet Red Hawk. 

The raw digital file, is a high resolution copy of a scan of the original glass plate, which produced copper colored images when used to make a print. On screen, it is scratched, covered with dust, is spotted and unevenly lighted. Even though it is interesting as it is, with digital restoration, it can be repaired close to its original quality and clarity, which can then be used to produce fine reproductions such as the one I just printed. I restored this image about two years ago, a process that took me about four or five hours. First I had to crop the image, strip out the sepia coloring and reduce it to black and white. Next, I tilted the photo to straighten the horizon so that the angle looked right to the eye. After that I did some quick balancing of the light levels to start to separate the whites and blacks in the photo, slightly sharpened the clarity of the overall image, and then once that was done, got down to work. 

I created a grid across the image separating it into about a dozen squares, then had to increase the size of the image about four hundred percent, which had the effect of filling most of my computer screen with just one or two of the squares of the image. At this size, dust particles and tiny scratches are sizeable and with a combination of a series of Photoshop tools, I started to blend, heal, copy over and otherwise repair the image to a high degree. It becomes a monotonous task, going from one dust spec to another, one small scratch or inconsistency to another and methodically blending them into the overall image, cleaning them up. Once done with one square, the only thing to do then, is to move to the next, working across, then down like slowly going through a tic tac toe game. 

It takes time… and for a while when doing so, I am simply concerned with the mechanics of the process. But at some point the repetition of it numbs out my attention and I can go blank, just end up staring at the image, such as Red Hawk, at his clothes, his horse, his weapons, his landscape. That is the point where I am no longer doing Photoshop, but rather polishing a window pane, cleaning off the dust, and looking back into the past. It is literally looking into, not at, but into the past. As I work on the horse’s mane to clean up some grit, I wonder what the horse’s name was. The Indians named each other after rivers and weather and animals, like ‘Crazy Horse’, but what did they name their animals, like his horse, ‘Runs Wild, Likes Apple, Snorts When Spooked?’ As I clean up the fuzzy beading on his leggings, I wonder about the woman that must have done the work, how much time it took, if she found it boring. Was it his wife, his daughter, a gift? I start to wonder about what ‘he’ was like, the man, and what his day to day life was like. 

History tends to flatten out lives, just through the crush of time moving on, and we forget that the day to day lives of our ancestors were just as eventful and mundane and complicated as our lives today. Red Hawk didn’t just chase buffalo around on the plains wearing loin clothes on painted ponies day after day. No, he had to deal with horses being stolen, and shoes wearing out and white men shooting all the food, and crying babies in the next teepee and rain on festival days and travelling to pow wows and trains cutting across the skyline belching smoke and so on. This photo of him posed on his horse is just another day, when this photographer talked him into having his picture taken. And now a hundred years later, as I am restoring his image, wondering about him and breathing life into his past, I am whispering to his ghost. 

As the process continues, I eventually finish each of the squares and then reduce the image back down to the original size to fit in my computer screen and see that indeed, it has become much clearer. I then use some filter adjustments to address the sharpness of the image, enhancing certain areas more, fading others, and then do the same with the contrast and levels of lighting. I pull him and his horse out of the background, making them brighter than the sky. I burn down the whites of his feathers, soften the blacks in the shadows underneath his horse and once satisfied with the overall balance and crispness of the image, reintroduce the golden tones of the original sepia print. The result is Red Hawk has presence, has come alive again. The window is clean, and I am stepping through Alice in Wonderland’s mirror, into a windy day on the South Dakota plains in 1905. 

I’ve restored a lot of images over the last few years, not just of Red Hawk or Curtis photographs, but all kinds of antique imagery, entering all kinds of worlds for the hours that it takes to repair and enhance the photos or illustrations. After the hours on the native peoples of the Curtis collection, some hauntingly beautiful, I’ve delved into the whimsical world of Australian Ida Outhwaite, and her fairy illustrations from the 1920’s. They are a collection of innocence, a world uplifting, whimsical and magical, all from a small woman who later lost both her sons to World War II. I’ve worked on old postcards from all over Europe, bird illustrations from Mary Ellen Eaton’s turn of the century artistic abilities, Hawaiian fish drawings from around 1910 and miscellaneous snapshots from anonymous people found in antique stores – wedding portraits, family outings, studio shots and moment in time freezes. Sometimes staring within their worlds, such as into a beautiful wedding portrait of a single woman, it seems sad that the photo has fallen away from her family, or anyone she knew, and has come to me, a stranger, to remember her life, to wonder about her, to restore her photo and memory. 

I have also worked on my own family’s history, black and white, grainy, out of focus, damaged memories. And like Red Hawk, as I work on their photos, again I fall into their world. One photo was of my great relatives, standing posing for a shot somewhere in Ohio. The photo is bent with a crease down the middle, splotched and ripped, faded and dirty. He, Godfrey, looks spooked like an owl, and she, Matilda, is much more suspicious, throwing a cautious glance at the photographer. They are both dressed up in matching suits, both wearing a tie, with him tall and lean and her wide and squat. He is wearing a pocket watch which dangles in front of him from out of his vest, and behind them is a huge half moon shape. He stands on the left with his right arm and shoulder cropped off, and she stands on the right with her left arm and shoulder cropped off. I don’t really know who they were, except to know that they are my relatives somehow, and this photo was from a collection sent to my father from somebody back East. What were their lives like, I asked myself when I started to touch up the crease in the middle of the photo, fill in the gash left by the rip near the right lower corner. We’re they churchgoing, farmers, drunkards? Did they ever travel anywhere, or meet Indians, or have horses? 

After all, they lived at the same time as Red Hawk, and this picture was taken some years after the battle of Little Bighorn, but sometime before the fiftieth anniversary. It is even possible that maybe on some train ride to the west to see the newly created Glacier National Park, that they may have seen Red Hawk, in the distance, or even passed him on a street. After all, the park was established in 1910, and the local Indians were part of the scenery for the tourists, selling them handmade junk, and dancing for nickels. It’s possible. I mean I don’t think my relatives ever travelled much and the Indians around Glacier were mainly Blackfeet, not Sioux, but it is possible, nonetheless. Most likely though is that Red Hawk lived his life in South Dakota and my relatives lived in a very small country town in Ohio and may or may not have had horses. 

For me though, the only real difference is that instead of Red Hawk’s story, this is my story. These are my relatives, my own lineage back in time. As I work on the restoration of this picture, polishing the time travel window that transports me back into their world, I am asking about myself as much as about them. How much of their lives, their values have I inherited? I can see the genetic similarities, the lanky build in Godfrey, the shape of the face, the lips. How much of their world view do I see, now a hundred years later? 

Then, as I am working around the nose of Matilda, I realize that she has the same nose as Godfrey. They must be brother and sister! Suddenly I also realize how little I really know about my own relatives, and think about the picture of the unknown beautiful woman in her wedding dress that I worked on, and ask, does it really matter. I have forgotten my own relatives, and am restoring a picture of strangers. These two people are as unknown to me as the young woman standing in her wedding gown, except for the names and the fact that they are distant relations. 

In fact, I am surprised to wonder at how suddenly Red hawk seems more accessible to me, because of Edward Curtis and his careful modelling and aesthetic eye, has preserved Red Hawk more for me than my own relatives. I hear Red Hawk’s story and I see his world. I know that it is staged, a photoshoot, but also know that Curtis has caught a deeper truth on his film, and the essence is as clear as can be against the tides of time. By contrast, my relatives, Godfrey and Matilda, look ridiculous, I mean, not only do they look like old world bumpkins, but why for god’s sake is she wearing a tie? I am embarrassed for myself. 

There are still other photographs that I have worked on, restoring their stories, and these are the most intimate. They are the early photos of my own existence, a present and on going experience. They are the photos of my family, my wife, and myself. When looking back into the windows that these images present, the detail is much more rich. I am always surprised at how much I really do remember, once I immerse myself into the meditation that restoring these photos becomes. Not only do I remember experiences, I relive them. Not only do I relive them, I live through them, when I wasn’t even there. Instead of bringing the past into the present, as with Red Hawk, I take the present back into the past. 

There is a picture of Mary, my wife, of her when she was a little girl of seven or eight. She is standing on the back porch of her house in New Jersey, dressed in a Sunday white dress with a big white bow in her hair, half the size of her head. She is standing looking straight at the camera, fearless as only an eight year old girl can be, utterly self assured. Her arms are at her sides, her long hair parted down the middle of her head. The day is cloudy and the trees look like it is early spring. She is a fairy, with everything but the wings. As I brought back the greens in the trees and the blue to the sky in this weathered and tattered photograph, staring at her, I have been there. I know about the bush beside the steps, the buckles on her matching shoes, her knobby knees, and the freckles on her face. It is a place we can both know about in our present day, in our conversation, in our memories. And likewise about her early trips to Ireland, and to the Bahamas, where I spent an hour working on the color of sea green waves while she stood to one side waiting, leaning against the balcony in the warm ocean breeze. Or the private moment in her graduation gown in high school, just her standing white against a yellow wall and brown carpet, saying nothing, just standing there. 

Then there are the photos of myself that I have worked on, staring into my own past existence, as I adjust lighting levels, remove noise and dust and shadows from a room and work on the highlights across my face. This is direct encounter, unfiltered through the lives of others. It is self portrait and self remembrance together, breathing life into the layers of my past that time is trying to compress. It is raw. Not only do I remember the time, the place, the full story… I remember my thoughts. Not only am I reliving and living through them, they are in fact, living me. 

It is not that I have to spend so much time on these restorations, if I choose to do one, since most are in fair shape. It is the fact that I am trained from so much other restoration, to really see into the photo rather than at it. I cannot separate myself from the history there, when I was in junior high school, when I had braces, when I was camping in Colorado, when it was, where I was, who was there… I just fall into these images, pulled into free fall, back in time and then coming right back into the present to live my life today and tomorrow and yesterday. I am still the thirteen year old with braces interviewing for a job last month, still hurt from my sixteen year old girlfriend and our over emotional breakup sharing a drink with my wife, still four years old suffering from a dog bite and trying to like my step sister’s new puppy so many years later. And I am also still singing my favorite songs alone in the forests even though I hike silently now, the songs are there. I don’t have photos of all these memories; the memories are photos of themselves. 

There is one photo of myself in particular though, that I worked on and comes to mind. It is a black and white photograph taken when I was six or so, a picture of myself proudly decked out in a complete cowboy outfit, standing against a wall looking straight at the photographer, just like Mary in her fairy pose. The outfit is all spif and shine, complete with a gun and big sheriff’s star, My blond hair was cut neat as clean could be, and I was smiling, as bright, and white as my star. I remember, I was so-oo proud. It was the star. I was the star. I was ready to go after those Indians, me and my gun and my star. 

Edward ‘Sheriff’ Curtis did a better job than I ever could have in my dreams. He did a better job than every Indian hunter that ever existed. He made Custer look like a joke. He single handedly captured thousand and thousands of Indians, locked them up better than the reservations ever did, introduced them into White America better than all the churches and schools they were forced to attend. And he did it with a camera and their cooperation. When I really look into the portraits of the American Indian that he took, I don’t see Red Hawk on his horse sitting under a darkening sky. What I see is a photo of his dignity. That is what Curtis photographed over and over and over, in the deserts of the Southwest, the islands of Alaska, along the rivers of the Northwest, and the high plains of the Dakotas, and why Red Hawk, wore his very best that day out on the South Dakota plains. He knew it. And when it was done, all he had to give Curtis in return, was a name, Pazola Washte, which perhaps was everything. 

Meanwhile I have returned to looking at poor Godfrey and Matilda, my relatives, my heritage, my embarrassment. This photo is a disaster, everything that could be wrong in a picture, is wrong, the way they are standing as if for mugshots, the tall and wide matching suits and misaligned ties, half their torsos disappearing off the edges of the print, a weirdo moon background like some strange romantic theme that didn’t work. She’s squinting a little and doesn’t trust the photographer and Godfrey is just perplexed by it all, a deer in the headlights. Why did they pay the quarter to have this photo even taken, to preserve what? Where was Edward Curtis when my relatives desperately needed his eye, his perception, his respect? No amount of photoshop could ever place any dignity whatsoever into this image, not even if I started putting teepees and horses in the background, feathers around Godfrey and designs and beading all through Matildas suit, even if I put a papoose in her arms, it is hopeless. 

They are misplaced, in an unnatural setting. They would have been better photographed out in the fields, or on a Sunday picnic, or smoking a pipe on the porch of their house. Somewhere that would have reflected their places in the world, their presence. It is not that I am truly embarrassed, but rather that I recognize the artificiality of their predicament, the lack of authenticity, of soul. They were not bad people or as foolish as this photograph would suggest. This is just a bad picture, and perhaps I should be more kind to my heritage. I should… 

But as my eyes are drawn back to the print of Red Hawk, I know I will have to leave it to him. He will have to represent the dignity that I want in my heritage, which Curtis so exquisitely captured for him. It is the one thing that has the most resistance against the weight of time, which compresses everything down into layers of sediment as it goes on. Dignity is that which resists, the distillation of that which is best in a people, the diamond in the mud which we seek when we drill and mine through the layers of time. It is why Red Hawk today lives in the homes of thousands of people across this country, him on his horse, on the fireplace mantle, the office wall, the end table of the living room, where people who purchased this print for the fifty or hundred dollars on the internet or in a specialty print shop, have placed him in their homes. They are drawn to these images like Red Hawk, simple sepia colored flat prints in the age of color film, digital video cameras, television, internet and 3-D movies because… 

They are naked pictures, the last thing the American Native had as the modern world intruded upon their lives. They were being stripped of their land, of their cultures, their languages and often their lives. All they had left was the last remaining real value a human has before defeat, the spirit of the rebel fighting a hopeless cause just before giving into resignation, that final place of retreat before defeat, the final defiance, and Curtis was there to photograph it. But to do so, he paid the price and became one of them, and like them, was eventually destroyed by the same forces. Red Hawk… and Morning Flower and Atsina Maiden and Sitting Owl and Hopi Angel and Judith all represent the best of a heritage, that most resilient force against both physical destruction and the decay of time, human spirit, that shared by us all, Godfrey and Matilda, the fairy Mary, the young forgotten bride, Red Hawk, and me.

Jim and Sue had invited us to dinner, into the fine dining arena of the Hotel Bolderado, a plush establish with thick spongy chairs and a thematic color of burgundy running from the carpet to the walls. Surrounding us were works of art, mostly of leisure activities such as sailing or bicycling, and a few other paintings involving pianos and girls in fluttery dresses. Mary and I looked at each other, sharing a private glance as we both considered how much all this fun was going to set us back. 

Sue was chittering away as she settled into the chair being held out for her by the maitre d’ who had escorted us from the entrance. “It’s so nice to see you. We really should be doing this more often.” Mary laughed a little and chirped back in the same tone some expected remark. Sue immediately looked over to me as I was sitting down, “And Perry…” she went on, asking a different version of the same question, and to which I brightly offered some response as the four of us collected ourselves around the table. The waiter had materialized next to us and was setting water down and offering some suggestions about the wine list to Sue’s attentive encouragement. We all decided on a bottle of some obscure Pinot Noir and then sat back slightly looking at one another. 

“It’s so-o good to see you!” Sue squeaked again. 

I smirked and looked over to Jim, who hadn’t said a word since we had met. I was about to say something when Mary took my words away. “So Jim, how are you?” she asked pleasantly. 

Sue leaned over touching my arm while looking at Mary across the table and answered for him. “He’s unhappy.” As a group we all looked over at Jim who just rolled his eyes up in frustration, throwing a look over his shoulder, letting us see his irritation. Conspiratorially Sue continued, leaning towards us a little, “He just spent the afternoon with his accountant.” 

Aah… We all nodded knowingly, and then proceeded to stop while the waiter brought us our glasses of wine, a rich reddishness that matched the walls and floor in the low lighting and apparently, the mood. Once the waiter had finished pouring our wine and telling us his name and the chef’s name and all about the specials and finally left, we all took a long drink and then picked up the conversation right where it had been left hanging. 

“I guess the accountant didn’t have good news?” Mary asked Jim. 

Sue answered before Jim could think. “Oh, no, it was great news,” she said. “He just made too much money.” Jim groaned. I nodded. 

Mary frowned, then asked with a confused look, “So how is that making you unhappy Jim?” 

“Taxes,” Sue stated, getting an exasperated look from Jim, and returning a sharp frown. 

Mary was about to say something but I couldn’t take it anymore and just blurted out, “Well, that’s my kind of problem.” Both women stopped and looked at me. 

“What do you mean,?” Sue tossed back a quick second later. 

“Well,” I started slowly, looking over to Mary, and then suddenly announced “I’m self employed!” Sue’s expression jumped to surprise as I continued. “Yea, I just got it all in place, the advertising, the contacts, the equipment, phone numbers. I no longer have a job, I’ve hired myself!” 

“That’s great,” Sue said and looked over at Mary who was nodding. “He seems pretty happy,” she said to her. 

“He’s thrilled,” Mary said, “I’ve never seen anybody so happy to go to work.” 

I sort of shook my head up and down nodding. Then I looked directly at Jim. “So Jim, so what you’re telling me, is that if I’m really successful, then I’ll have problems like you?” 

Jim took a long look at me, having not said a word into this conversation which was circling entirely about him. We locked into a stare as he studied me while Sue and Mary went silent. I waited as he measured the logic of my statement, and the spirit behind it. He watched my eyes which were unflinching, narrowing his ever so slightly. I could see his shrewd business acumen run right into my naive enthusiasm. He knew it. I knew it. Whatever he was going to have to pay in taxes, was going to be more than I was going to gross all year with my newly established business. And yet I sat right there in front of him thrilled out of my mind at the actualization of my own self employment, while he sat miserable in the throes of his success. The contrast and irony finally defeated him. Slowly he looked around the table as we all looked dumbly back like little innocent lambs, and mumbled, “I guess I won’t fire my accountant.” 

“Oh you’ve known Rick for years,” Sue said to Jim. “Maybe you just need to pay him more to cut down some of your profit margin or something…” She trailed off as Mary and I chuckled slightly, then lifted our wine glasses to distract the moment. 

Jim sort of froze, looking at all of us. He was a tall man and had been holding himself semi rigid the whole time, but now after looking us over, after looking over at me again, beaming like the moon despite myself, pleased as punch at my own success, goofy stupid happy in the absurdity of it, Jim just shrugged. His shoulders fell forward, his face dropped a little, and he just shook his head. As we all just watched, a very sly grin stole across his lips, and as he reached for his wine glass, he just said, “Yea, OK. So how’s business?” 

“Great,” I said, or something equally inane. I went on then asking him for a job since he was doing so well, and then changed my mind saying maybe I should just change businesses and become a competitor since I was self employed and help reduce his problematic profit margin. But behind my nonsense, the evening had changed. Something had shifted in Jim and he responded with a growing lightheartedness as the evening went on. At some point he finally offered a toast. The chinking sound of the glasses echoed lightly in the thick atmosphere and after a solid sip of wine, we all agreed, the wine was very good, but the room was too red.