There are moments, days, weeks even, when the urge comes upon me to heal myself. My hero's are either dead or being born now so that makes the whole role model thing quite moot. So I do the healing myself. There is music in it, naturally, and taste....Lord God, the taste! It comes like metallic vegetables on the tongue. There is warmth behind my eyes which comes from the heat of the passions rising to the heart. There, transmuted, they travel to the conscious mind and build a tension. The way out is to pray a primal thing. Not the product of a book written my another human being or the politics of reason, it is an energy from the bottoms of the feet to the least stray hair on the head. It says, "All else is in this state and know it not. They have no need to know. They just obey. You alone can say no." It pushes me into the fire. I lose.

***

         There are not too many left now. Just a handful, really, enough to fill a tipi, keep the fire large and bright. They will fill the bowls for the pipe or sift the powdered Medicine through ever more wrinkled hands. They are falling. Three in the past couple of years. Never enough time, always a deadline. But the residuals are massive. Too much weight for the paper cup I tend to carry it around in. Or in which I carry it around. You see the difference? It's all in the nature of Life. Everything is alive. There is song and the gentle soft rhythms underlying the waterdrum that counts out the heart beat. They say the drum is a woman and they object to a woman playing it. That wouldn't be seemly. Much like not allowing a woman in her 'courses' to come anywhere near a Sundancer. 'Her power is too great, too scattered. The dancers are in to fragile a condition to stand it." "Yeah," I said, "and you know, there is a tribe in Africa where the men tamp mud up their butts and tell the women they don't shit." He looks at me. Shakes his head. Smiles. It is the 'you have no way of understanding' expression. I smile because I bloody well do and what's more, I have met Him.

***

         In the heart of the night, down hill toward morning, we left for a pee-break. By that time the Medicine has rearranged the very molecules of Mind and everything looks exceptionally clear. The stars dance, stuttering in their places. One night in the Nevada desert I heard two tribes of coyotes standing on opposite rims of a deep rill. They talked back and forth, challenging and never neutral. They laughed and shook their pricks at their rivals. Others bent low and spreading their hairy asscheeks, farted like Martin Luther used to do to drive away the demons. They were at it still when we were called back inside. From there it was straight up the mystic windpipe.

***

         Once Rick, the unexposed leader of us all, had a bad dream. He was awake at the time and that made it worse. His eyes bulged out like a hyperthyroid speedfreak and he wildly began to beg some invisible entity for the safety of his children. His wife, a Jewish witch, though she would no doubt take umbrage at that description, began rolling her eyes like a primitive Eddie Cantor and waving her feather fan shaman-like in secret movements. The air was bright with Spirit. No one could help him. It lasted until we all dropped from exhaustion.
         It was sunup. Before the red haired desert tribal beauty with her mixed blood two year old on her lap, in a straight line from East to West, were bowls of parched corn ground fine, a bowl of dried fruits, a bowl of dried meat, and a bucket painted brightly with birds and earth things. It held the Water of Life. If you have ever had to travel in the desert or been upriver in a rain forest, you know the supreme holiness of water. She sat smoking a ritual smoke rolled in a corn husk, blowing the smoke in distinct directions. This one had a thing she did each time, a script that let her remember everything and everyone in her morning prayer. This is the Law Bringer, the Pipe Carrier. This is the manifestation of The Mother. She chanted her prayer as usual. None of us could move. There was not a single sound as she went down her sacred list. Then she came to, "And protect the little ones." She meant ALl the little ones, all the innocents, the meek, the borning. Her daughter sat placidly in the lap of her Mother, stuffing corn meal into her light brown mouth. No one moved or spoke or breathed heavy. The child opened her mouth as her Mother reached the last syllable of the word and burst, "NO!". I nearly shed my hair. If there had been complete lack of desire to move before, it had become an impossibilty. What was the Mother to do? What could be said? She was still for a long moment. She took a deep draw of the tobacco and said, "My Lord speaks plainly."

***

         But those are dead fires. Some of the coals have made their parasitic way to other ground to other fires so they would be remembered. Now there are church meetings and all the men dress in white shirts and creased trousers. There is studious decorum. All is polite. A basket is passed after the services. The roadman is a professional and makes a good living off the worship of the One. Not that I blame them. They need to eat like all us grifters, que no?