The writing life

In an ideal world we would honor our gifts everyday, and our gifts could be the perfect banana nut muffin, or child education, or philanthropy.  Some of us have waited to be transformed by a really cool inner gift.  I wanted to be a novelist, and kept waiting for the novel to get written.  I wanted to be a world traveler, and kept waiting for the train to show up.  Finally I thought, “Hmmm.”  With that profound thought a new direction began, one in which I just started doing something.  Anything.  It was poetry, I loved it and it calmed me down on nervous days.  Y’all who were born with a silver keyboard attached to your wrist—well I’m jealous, but as my redheaded grandson says, “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.” 

And I’ve been writing, in fits and starts since my Dad died.  A dear friend and sometime muse, Anne Perry, wrangled me into an online poetry group back then, and that Texas group read my sad, wilty little poems and were very kind.  Friend Ronnie Tomanio talked me into reading for a poetry group in Portsmith, NH, and that got a poem published in the local paper.  (yay!)  Thus began the cycle of sending out and waiting, sending out and waiting.  Receiving the many no thank yous.  Finally, Comstock Review accepted a poem and there I was, a REAL poet.  Maybe not a GOOD poet, but earnest and certainly sincere.

Since then there have been more journals saying, “Yes, thank you,” but each time I read over a poem for the second time it looks awful.  Really awful.  Time and rewrites and patience improve subsequent readings, but there is rarely an unflawed jewel. 

Because I’m interested in how poets come to this landing pad so individually, several poet friends will soon be talking about their own work here.  (You know who you are.)  If you are of the poetic bent, please talk to me about your own process.  I've got some questions for you...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Fixing the car was a straightforward task,

like writing a sentence from beginning to end. 

Noun, predicate.  Noun—

Predicate. 

Take the wheel off, put the wheel on. 

But entropy works in the smallest corners of the universe,

and chaos manifests in each word—

of every sentence, every leaking valve.

Blown fuses. 

Breakage.

One misplaced lug nut. 

One superfluous adverb.

How can I write poetry when the Napa Auto Parts store

doesn’t carry small yellow boxes neatly labeled,

“inspiration,”

“richness,”

“angels with rusted wings?” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(and does that question mark go IN the quotes or OUTSIDE?)

Hospice On-Call

After spending a few hours with an elderly woman who was trying to survive one more episode of severe chest pain, after sitting at the bedside and spooning bits of medicine into her so that her pain might be eased, after wiping the cold sweat off of her grey face, after drying the tears of her two faithful daughters and assuring them of one more day, after all of this I found a churchyard labyrinth and walked it slowly, watching each foot move me away from my goal and then toward my goal and then away from my goal.  The goal never moved.  My own heart calmed and dilated and beat again, and again, and again.  Soon I reached the center and stood quietly with my beating heart while cold air moved into grateful lungs and snow swirled softly through a gray morning.  

An early Valentine

Ted Kooser sent out valentines for many years to any woman who asked for one. I asked for one (I pleaded…) the last year he sent them and I still treasure the postcard mailed from Valentine, Iowa. Here are two websites featuring my main man. The first has a video of him reading, the second website discusses his valentines.

http://www.tedkooser.net/

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/books/review/Nussbaum-t.html

The year after he quit sending out valentines I emailed him this one. He was kind enough to reply with a thank you—he’s just that kind of courteous.

Valentine for Ted Kooser

Hanging my newly cleaned raincoat

carefully outside

your front parlor,

I stand and wait,

construction paper heart in hand.

Here you are at last

—familiar neighbor—

speaking of connection and kindness;

of hard work,

passion,

and love’s lonely offices.

This valentine is for you,

who sent out so many into a wintry world.

Several years ago I had a “come to Ted meeting” with the poet himself. He was speaking at a writer’s conference in Columbus, Ohio, and gave a Q&A on poetry. Graciousness itself, Mr. Kooser listened to all manner of self-promoting puffery from blue-haired ladies wanting to be discovered by this most non-flamboyant of the laureates. (And I speak with some respect for these ladies, as I now quickly enter their ranks.) I asked him why we should write, when it had all been said so eloquently before.

He gave a good answer, but I want to hear your thoughts before I pour out his wisdom second hand. Why should we write? Create? There’s a lot of hurting in the world today—how do our little efforts make a difference? Send me your answers, either here, on fb, or by email and I’ll put together a compilation.

An artist cannot do anything slovenly. Jane Austen

The process of poetry isn’t just the inspiration. Inspiration means “to breathe in” and when a good idea for a poem arrives, it’s like breathing a mysterious understanding into the brain-pan. But air doesn’t stay in the lungs. It goes out into the body and chemical reactions happen and lights turn off and on and switches are thrown and you keep living. That’s the work of breathing. The revision process, in which the raw material of mystery is coaxed into a poem through a process of tradition, language, music and self-reflection, is actually the most instructional part of the process for me. I saved one “farm to shelf” process a couple of years ago. You can just read the first and the last version to see how it changed, or look at the iterations.

REVISION—a case study

Jan 26 early am.

It creeps in, like the fog.

Understanding, or at least cognizance of

A greater life. Life in my head has been

Constrained, misspelled, unrealized, but

Planned at each step by my willing heart.

Now I look at the results of all the planning

And see that long ago I fell from a great height

And have, ever since, been dreaming a life on the

Fly. The ground comes up quickly beneath me.

How beautiful the berries growing on the wall.

(I wrote this in about 10 minutes. I didn’t see the fog/cognizance connection until 12 hours after writing. I DID see, even as I wrote it, that I was borrowing heavily from both Frost and somebody else and I have to find out who. Japanese…maybe a haiku writer? The last line is a direct lift.)

(Jan 26, 11pm)

It creeps in, like the fog.

Understanding, or at least cognizance of

a greater life. Life in my head has been

constrained, misspelled, unrealized, but

planned at each step by my willing heart.

Now I look at the results of all the planning

and see that long ago I fell from a great height

and have, ever since, been dreaming a life while I

fall. The ground comes up quickly beneath me.

How beautiful the berries growing on the wall.

(changed fly to fall. Rhymes with wall and also makes more grammatical sense. Life on the fly sounds “flighty” and also as if I could rise up again like Superman. Those two “ands” are bothering me but they’ll wait til tomorrow.)

Jan 27, noonish

It creeps in, like the fog—

this understanding, this cognizance of life.

In my unwilling head, life has often been

constrained, misspelled, dissipated—

but planned at each step by my willing heart.

Now I look at the results of all that planning

and see that long ago I fell from a great height

and have, ever since, been dreaming as I fall.

The ground comes up quickly beneath me.

How beautiful the berries growing on the wall.

(more grammatical corrections. More substantive. Here I am finding that the general palette of the first rendition, while giving the direction, language and theme of the poem, may have been unclear, grammatically. That it wouldn’t make sense to the general reader. Now I am becoming the general reader and looking for it to make sense outside of myself. I changed unrealized to dissipated in the fourth line for the alliteration. I strengthened the connection between the unwilling head and the willing heart. What about Satori for a title? Hmmmmm…..)

Jan 27, 4pm

It creeps in, like the fog—

this understanding, this cognizance of life.

In my unwitting head, life has often been

constrained, misspelled, dissipated—

but planned, plain and simple, all of life planned

by my poorly managed heart.

Now I look at the results of that planning

and see that 57 years ago I fell from a great height

and have, ever since, been dreaming as I fall.

The ground comes up quickly beneath me.

How beautiful the berries growing on the wall.

(It’s really a nuisance, thinking about a poem. I need to leave it alone for a day or two, but instead I keep coming back to push it around a little. )

January 29, 2008 9am

Kensho

Kensho refers to the first perception of the Buddha-Nature or True-Nature, sometimes referred to as "awakening". Kensho is not a permanent state of enlightenment, but rather a clear glimpse of the true nature of existence.

Cognizance of life creeps in, like fog—

My certain earth gives way to truthful sand:

I had, in my cave-blind sight, a life

constrained, misspelled, distracted, misplaced—

but planned, all of it supposedly planned

by an unwitting head and an unwilling heart.

Now I greet the results of my so-called plans,

recognizing that 57 years ago I fell from a great height

and have, ever since, been dreaming as I fall.

The ground comes up quickly beneath me.

How beautiful the berries growing on the wall.

really changing now, although the last stanza is still recognizable. Found more inner sounds. (sand, planned, creep, greet, dream, beneath, sight, height, life, like, blind, ground, grow, certain, earth, all, fall, wall) I keep trying to take out words. If I can make sense of the whole without the word it’s probably not a necessary word. Unless beautiful. And putting “recognizing” in was good---to know again. This teaches me that I am not really learning this for the first time. I looked up Satori which is evidently a permanent state. Kensho seems more appropriate to my fleeting understanding of life.

Jan 29, 11am

Kensho

Kensho refers to the first perception of the Buddha-Nature or True-Nature, sometimes referred to as "awakening". Kensho is not a permanent state of enlightenment, but rather a clear glimpse of the true nature of existence. (from Wikipedia)

Cognizance of life creeps in,

like scattered light through fog—

My certain earth gives way to truthful sand:

I had thought, with cave-blind sight, my life was

constrained, misspelled, distracted, misplaced—

but planned, all of it supposedly planned

by my unwitting head and my unwilling heart.

Now I greet the results of my so-called plans,

recognizing that 57 years ago I fell from a great height

and have, ever since, been dreaming as I fall.

The ground comes up quickly beneath me.

How beautiful the berries growing on the wall.

It seems to be better. Now I had best leave it for a month to let it gel. That’s the hard part!

February 7

Kensho

Kensho refers to the first perception of the Buddha-Nature or True-Nature, sometimes referred to as "awakening". Kensho is not a permanent state of enlightenment, but rather a clear glimpse of the true nature of existence. (from Wikipedia)

Cognizance of life creeps in,

like scattered light through fog—

As certain earth gives way to truthful sand.

I had thought, with cave-blind sight, my life was

constrained, misspelled, distracted, misplaced—

but planned, all of it supposedly planned

by my unwitting head and my unwilling heart.

Now I greet the results of my so-called plans,

recognizing that 57 years ago I fell from a great height

and have, ever since, been dreaming as I fall.

The ground comes up quickly beneath me.

How beautiful the berries growing on the wall.

I couldn’t leave it for a whole month! now I’m pondering the fourth line. Its not truthful enough, but today isn’t the day for altering it.

Feb 14

Kensho

Kensho refers to the first perception of the Buddha-Nature or True-Nature, sometimes referred to as "awakening". Kensho is not a permanent state of enlightenment, but rather a clear glimpse of the true nature of existence. (from Wikipedia)

Cognizance of life creeps in,

like scattered light through fog—

As certain earth gives way to truthful sand.

I had thought, with cave-blind sight, my life was

constrained, misspelled, distracted, misplaced—

but planned, all of it supposedly planned

by an unwitting head and unwilling heart.

Now I greet the results of my so-called plans,

recognizing that 57 years ago I fell from a great height

and have, ever since, been dreaming as I fall.

The ground comes up quickly beneath me.

How beautiful the berries growing on the wall.

only a change in the head and heart line, but I decided to send this one in for a contest.

Feb 20

Kensho

Kensho refers to the first perception of the Buddha-Nature or True-Nature, sometimes referred to as "awakening". Kensho is not a permanent state of enlightenment, but rather a clear glimpse of the true nature of existence. (from Wikipedia)

Cognizance of life creeps in,

like scattered light through fog—

Certain earth gives way to truthful sand.

My life has been constrained, misspelled,

distracted, misplaced—

but planned, all of it seeming planned

by an unwilling head and an unwitting heart.

Now I greet the results of my so-called plans,

recognizing that 57 years ago I fell from a great height

and have, ever since, been dreaming as I fall.

The ground comes up quickly beneath me.

How beautiful the berries growing on the wall.

I keep revising, even though its been sent off somewhere. Cave-blind sight, while a nice reference to Plato’s cave, didn’t fit

March 15

Kensho

Kensho refers to the first perception of the Buddha-Nature or True-Nature, sometimes referred to as "awakening". Kensho is not a permanent state of enlightenment, but rather a clear glimpse of the true nature of existence. (from Wikipedia)

Cognizance of life creeps in,

like scattered light through fog—

Certain earth gives way to truthful sand.

My life has been constrained, misspelled,

distracted, misplaced —

but planned, all of it seeming planned

by an unwilling head and an unwitting heart.

Now I greet the results of my so-called plans,

recognizing that 57 years ago I fell from a great height

and have, ever since, been dreaming as I fall.

The ground comes up quickly beneath me.

How beautiful the berries growing on the wall.

It’s a nice poem. Maybe it’s time to let it be. . . .

April 4

Kensho

Kensho refers to the first perception of the Buddha-Nature or True-Nature, sometimes referred to as "awakening". Kensho is not a permanent state of enlightenment, but rather a clear glimpse of the true nature of existence. (from Wikipedia)

Cognizance of life creeps in,

like scattered light through fog—

certain earth gives way to truthful sand.

My life has been a misspelled, distracted art—

but planned, all of it seeming planned

by an unwilling head and an unwitting heart.

Now I greet the results of my so-called plans,

recognizing that 59 years ago I fell from a great height

and have, ever since, been dreaming as I fall.

The ground comes up quickly beneath me.

How beautiful the berries on the wall.

A Praise-song for my co-religionists

In 1970 there were about 40 Bahá’ís on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Compared to the thousands of Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims at the university at that time 40 may seem a paltry sum, but believe me, 40 young Bahá’ís in 1970 was a force to be reckoned with. The hub of our activities was the Stewart home, and the lot of us struggled and prayed and tried to fast* and lost control and made plans and taught our Faith and lost our Faith and found Faith again. We sang a lot. Some of us left the country and found larger lives than we could have imagined. Sometimes we studied. All of us became more than we were.

That fall one of the wild men of the past, Von Scherb, a street musician and visionary, offered us a job as gleaners in a cornfield. We could work and send money to the Baha’i fund**. We piled into several old cars sans seat belts, sans parental guidance, sans schoolwork and headed out to the field, which had been harvested by machine. We had a pickup truck (driven by Von, who would take our harvest to market) and we set out into the stubble like large and feisty mice. We picked for years it seemed. Years and lifetimes. By noon we were exhausted and the truck was not even a quarter full. We must have had food to sustain our wasted bodies after such intense labor, for we worked more lifetimes until the truck was about half full. That night we all dreamed of corn stubble and hidden ears of corn. The nicks and cuts on our hands reminded us for days of our good work. We made $40.00 for the fund and felt righteous.

Today I walked a harvested field looking for the hidden ears, but all of them had been eaten by deer and mice. I thought of Von, now long dead, and thought of him, singing on street corners with his ukelele to make enough money to attend the Jubilee*** at London’s Albert Hall in 1963. It took him a year to save the cash, but he made it. And when his mother died and left him a mansion in Brazil (Bray-zle), Indiana that he couldn’t heat, he held meetings about the Bahá’í Faith there, burning furniture to keep his guests warm and serving them hobo coffee (made with an egg), popcorn and ukelele music.

We don’t “do” shrines for ordinary folk these days (did we ever?), but I’d like to propose that every time we see a corn field newly harvested under a blue Indiana sky, we offer up a prayer for the soul of Von Scherb, born a Hoosier, but a true and fleet footed citizen of this new world we inhabit. And I’d like to remember the young people of 1970, who have settled into various lives of service around the world. The fire they caught from the likes of Von they helped nurture into a steady blaze. They trusted enough in the goodness of an All-Loving God to throw their futures into a nascent religion. Those of us still on the planet continue to ride the white-water of transformation, but at the end of this short life we will have at least half a truck of field corn to show for our labors. Half a truck of corn, a lifetime of mistakes, wounds, some small service and lots of beautiful children (in both this world and the world to come).

* We fast every year for 19 days from sunrise to sunset. You can imagine how hard that is for teenagers. At 60 it’s almost too easy, but at 17 it was like a life sentence at Alcatraz.

**The Bahá’í Fund: local, national and international Baha’i activities are funded exclusively by registered Bahá’ís.

***The Bahá’í Jubilee was held in 1963 at the Royal Albert Hall in London, England. Bahá’ís from around the world came together for the first time and celebrated the closing of the first century of their religion, and to consult together on the future. It must have been an amazing time.

There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.

Jane Austen

Once upon a time, I found myself in the presence of two Elvis impersonators, a gang girl reading Jane Austin and an assortment of actors, longing friends, new family and a turtle cheesecake. Maybe more. The wedding had its own story—true love almost missed, almost grieved, almost forsaken. Cruel families, sad childhoods, dogged determination. I (a 50 something Grandmother) went to give the bride away and who would have missed an opportunity like that? I left early on a Friday morning, driven to the airport by my son in law and 5-year-old grandson. It was early and I forgot to hand over the Firefly series I had promised to pass along to the son in law. My hand luggage (all my clothes PLUS the Firefly series, 4 DVDs in a box of increasing weight) was carried on my shoulder through everything, for what if the airline sent my wedding clothes to Houston? As indeed happened to a gentleman ahead of me. Almost casually, the check in person in Columbus said to him, “oh, your luggage was sent to Houston by mistake. Be sure to take care of it when you arrive in Atlanta.” He staggered onto the plane under the weight of that misfortune.

It was in Charlotte that the two Elvis impersonators swiveled up to the gate, turned their muscled backs covered by leather and studs and fringes to the airline workers and watched the crowd. They stood like statues and watched like the best secret service men, one tall and one short, for twenty minutes. The woman next to me spoke Spanish, I spoke English, but we now had two Elvis impersonators in common and we carried on an increasingly giddy conversation. I surreptitiously searched them for tell-tale gun bulges and coiled wire coming from behind an ear but saw nothing. I had a vision, possibly Divine in origin, of a phalanx of Elvis impersonators guarding our President. They would walk solemnly beside a bullet-proofed black stretch limo, scanning, always scanning the crowd. They would wear white fringed leather jackets and black pompadour hair that no wind could shake. They would sing as they walked, like prisoners in a chain gang—softly, with grunts and moans and beautiful tremolos. They would sing about hound dogs, and shoes and true love. And the President would find his heart at ease, surrounded by a force-field of pure joy.

But then I got on the plane to Atlanta, behind the man whose luggage went to Houston. He was truly staggering now, with hands to forehead, and he was moaning. The stewardess greeted his pain with some murmured concern and after looking at his luggage sticker reassured him that his luggage would meet him in Atlanta, that the woman at the gate was mistaken, that the sticker was hard to read, that he was in the right universe and tilting at the right windmills. The Elvises swaggered onto the plane ahead of me, fringes swaying rhythmically.

I had brought Emma along to read, that Jane Austin book that takes a little work because the main character is so wonderfully unaware of herself, while we are watching her from a higher moral ground, of course. I had been reading the book in snatches for several weeks and was within just a few chapters of being done. Having seen some movie versions of the book didn’t give the meat of it. Emma as a book is very satisfying. How great to know that there is one beautiful, young, rich and educated aristocrat to whom I am morally superior. I am grateful that Mr. Knightly has the patience to work with the girl and I think her truly humble attitude toward learning bodes well for their future relationship. Of course the whole aristocratic lifestyle and economy of the Regency period of England was based on the false assumption by many that money just appeared or didn’t appear. The millions of inhabitants of the British colonies who were slaving away for a minimal existence in sugar fields or on tea plantations—well, it stirs the darker emotions in me. So I read Jane Austin with even more of a sense of moral superiority, even while I buy goods made in China for pennies. . .

I was met in Atlanta by the bride to be, the beautiful Bria. When I saw her last she was puffy from weeping from some poorly managed endocrine problems. I had seen the endocrine problems blossom before my eyes, but when Bria tried to explain her symptoms to an array of doctors they sent her home with anti-depressants. She was persistent and eventually a doctor found the subtle thyroid condition.

She has a college degree now, and had been working out for several years and I was greeted by someone who was almost a stranger to me. She is now so full of light and energy and hope and love. I just basked in her warmth and she kept telling me how lucky SHE was that I had come to be part of the wedding. Ha. I was surrounded by youth and love. It was better than a spa.

She and I got some pretty good Chinese food with a side of turtle cheesecake in the Atlanta airport atrium and waited for the next wedding guest coming from Chicago. We ate, we talked, we ate, we talked. I noticed the girl at the table next to us, eating her Chinese food with a side order of Italian. The girl was young, with a Goth/Gang look about her: tattoos, piercings, leather, dyed black hair. She looked tough. Each knuckle of her hand had a letter on it, spelling out something lethal, although I didn’t stare long enough to actually read an entire word. She was reading Pride and Prejudice, and was obviously pleased with something in the book, something with a pretty dress on, no doubt. I held up Emma so she could see it and she smiled broadly. “I’ve been wanting to read that for a while, but none of the airport bookstores carry it,” she said. We talked about Jane and her books while some part of me was having a pretty good time watching the conversation from a remove. Was this really an aging me having a sweet and lovely conversation with dangerous youth? The watching part of me was pleased. Both of us loved the men in Austin’s books. “You don’t meet men like that in real life,” she said. “I wish there were men now who were gentlemen, men who kept their word.” Bria commented about her own true love being better than any man of this generation, but Gang Girl and I looked at each other with the secret understanding that comes of experience. As Bria and I got up to leave I handed Gang Girl my copy of Emma. She didn’t seem surprised, but gave me a brilliant grin while around us sang the music of our people, our mighty people, leaving home and coming home again.

"We're all related through Noah." * (Mitakuye Oyasin)

My golden-haired, five-year-old grandson couldn’t wait for his turn to talk at the dinner table. “Do you know something special about Barack Obama?” he asked. His parents and I replied, in chorus, “No, what?” “He’s the first African-American President!” he yelled, so pleased with himself that he could say “African-American” with all the vowels and consonants in the right place.

“Do you know any other African-Americans,” I asked. This was a trick question and the adults looked at him expectantly.

“What IS an African-American,” he asked. He could tell it was a trick question. He’s pretty smart for a five-year-old.

His mother answered, “An African-American is an American who has family from Africa, even if that family was in Africa a very long time ago. And,” she said, “sometimes you can tell if they have ancestors from Africa because they have darker skin. But not always.”

Before I tell you the trick part of the question posed to my Oh, so smart grandson, I want to take us back to 1958. I, the tricky grandmother of this tale, was seven years old. I was in the second grade in Anderson, Indiana. There was only one child with dark skin in my school and this was fascinating for a child surrounded by only one ethnicity. I found her waiting in the kindergarten line-up one day and asked her, “Are you a …..? I can’t even think the word now without an internal battle, but it was already in my vocabulary in 1958. The other child just looked at me and I said yes you’re a ……., you have black skin, so you’re a ……. Tears began welling in her eyes. My teacher, Mrs. Poffenbarger, took her out of the line and I don’t remember ever seeing that fascinating child again. Mrs. Poffenbarger called my mother that night to explain what I had done. My mother took in ironings for grocery money in those days, and in 1958 she had rarely traveled farther than Indianapolis. My mother’s own mother remembered the country’s last public lynching in Marion, Indiana. My mother sat me on the kitchen counter that night and began a series of lectures about race and history and slavery and injustice. And about looking for gifts on the inside of the box, not in the wrapping paper.

Those lectures allowed me to grow up with a mission, even in Anderson, Indiana. My mission? To learn as much as possible about other cultures, other races, other languages, other ways of living. To be a part of creating a world in which children would not be hurt by ignorant prejudice.

I was feeling the weight of those lectures still guiding me last week, when my grandson asked, “What IS an African-American?”

Very gently I said, “Well, your great-grandfather is a famous African-American. (Lt. Walter J. Palmer, Sr, of the Tuskeegee Airmen.) And your grandfather (my ex-husband) is African-American. And your mother. And you.”

“No way!” he yelled.

I realized that he sees skin color, but because his cousin has dark skin and his aunt has light skin and his grandfather has dark skin and his grandmother has light skin—because of his history of loving hearts while seeing differences—he is able to see skin as love, as beauty, as a way of telling light from light.

He will learn the whole history of race, dominance, politics and power as he becomes older. But here is what he knows now.

“Yes, you ARE an African-American,” said his mother and father.

And he stood up, crowing,

“THEN I CAN BECOME PRESIDENT OF THE WHOLE UNITED STATES!!!”

A fundamental teaching of Bahá'u'lláh is the oneness of the world of humanity. Addressing mankind, He says: "Ye are all leaves of one tree and the fruits of one branch." By this it is meant that the world of humanity is like a tree, the nations or peoples are the different limbs or branches of that tree and the individual human creatures are as the fruits and blossoms thereof.

'Abdu'l-Baha, Baha'i World Faith - 'Abdu'l-Baha Section, p. 246

*title quote from Walt Palmer II

Mitakue Oyasin is a Lakota prayer meaning "We are all Related."