Postcard

Just got a postcard in the mail from Joey. It's from New Mexico, a state I've always wanted to visit. You may or may not know this about me, but there was a brief but passionate year and a half of college (or uni as the brits would say) where I loved to study anything and everything native American. This largely included the Pueblo cultures, and Chaco Canyon, a totally fascinating ghost-indian-town in New Mexico...my closest thing to leaving town at the time was a potential internship working on a site in the Chaco Canyon area (archaeological site) but I ended up doing too many freakin pantomime shows and lost focus on my anthropology degree.

What's funny is I use the same knowledge every day here in LA - I mean, we basically live in a world of booming Chaco Canyons, aka cities that are alive as CC once was, fully-functioning, evolving, people-driven metropolises that will inevitably morph or vanish in our distant future.

The problem with America is we think we're OLD. We think this country has been around and owned by Americans forever, but honestly we're a bunch of toddlers! quite literally. We're fat, skinny, black, white, mexican, asian toddlers running around playing and getting real serious and pretending we know what we're doing all the time. We come from a country that has barely any history besides a little birthing and some womens' voting rights. Truth is, there were people here millennia before we showed up with our guns ablaze, and they were living extremely complex and fruitful, and much more epic, existences. They had gods and harvests, peace and war, gold and turquoise and complete societies. Roads, homes, pueblos, and Land. They loved the land, they were the true cowboys, roaming the mesas and mountains and canyons, worshipping the mysteries of the Earth like they were intended. Our science barely scratches the surface of the power of their beliefs.. I'm talking in generalities here which is probably not ok since there were so many dozens of native American societies, but you get my point.

In other words, when we say we lay claim to New Mexico and call it our own, it is as much a figment of our imagination as thinking that a kid playing with GI Joes in his parent's house is actually fighting battles with tiny figurines. It's great imaginative play, but obviously none of it is real. It works for us in the moment (believe me Los Angeles is a future archaeologist's dreamland) but I like to remember where we came from when looking out at where we might go. Like a tree growing from roots to tip of branch, we're still stretching but we can't think we're a sycamore when we're just a fledgling bush.

Slow down America. Remember who we are. And what we're doing here. Let your imagination wander, but don't forget that we own nothing, we come from nothing, and we're likely creating nothing with longevity. How far will the work of a real estate broker take him? Far enough to find a few dollars. But he who builds a road and follows with no regards for money, carves a path for the people to follow into tomorrow. I hope that in 1000 years from now the roads we build and words we write will last.

Mikie