It’s Ok to Weep

Even if my eyes are characteristically dry, let me tell you that it is ok to weep, even if, for you, like me, that weeping only comes on the inside, suddenly, at an unexpected moment, and if only for a moment, jerks up through your chest. Before I/we/you soldier on.

There’s no moon out, it’s very dark, about 2 degrees above zero, and I just came back from an after work couple-mile walk up a frozen dirt track out into the empty, silent, rolling prairie. Emptied prairie. Such wide open land, stretching to as far as you can see, but… The life shot; no fire next time.

Everybody knows the dark isn’t really dark; you just have to get used to it. I am very used to disappearing into the dark. My feet plant themselves lightly into the ground, so only the closest animals (survivors who live in the dirt, may they stay blessed) will know of my passing.

The countless stars. Mass across the black sky.

I have walked this Earth for thousands and thousands of years beneath the hot sun or cold wind and the bright or dark sky, and still never a day or night is the same.

My exhaustion level is much recovered from the point it was a couple weeks ago.

I walked up and down the frozen grass hills beneath the sky of stars, alternately thinking about our work up here on the Rez, or the ’bout-to-go national Ecological Health Movement, or the silence and emptiness around me. Making my way up a larger hill, at the top I let my head fall back to stare up at the stars. Directly overhead they seemed to have exploded outward, like from a single giant star themselves, with billions of others faint like glowing yellow dust in the black behind.

Our slaughter of countless souls across the world. People and animals. Our tiny, stricken, beautiful planet. Hundreds if not thousands of years of not acting right; of defining ourselves by ignorant mindless violence. Our crushing, murderous behavior as if a fuck you to God and Earth’s abundance and beauty. The damn shame of this ragged, emptied (dreams died in the bloody snow) Oglala prairie. Our emptiness.