another long while.

It has been sometime again.
a long long while indeed.

As can be expected when such a long time has passed, things are shifting. Have shifted. My relationship to “Black & Rural” is evolving, as well as my own relationship to my '“rurality”. I have just moved to a yet more remote location. I now live in a gritty little cabin. with an outhouse of my very own. I cannot speak to all of this here. This is not the place or the way. But all I can say is that this particular shift is of profound significance. It is some kind of anchor within me allowing greater and greater waves now to come my way. This is my sense. God help me.

I find I must more deeply now ask why my life seems bound to places rural and remote. And how this “binding” is to be of service to my fellows - regardless of race or creed. What is my being “Black & Rural” have to do with my existence. What has it to do with my love and deep respect of folklore and folkways and the telling of it.

what has it to do with the war between Palestine and Israel. With Russia and Ukraine. And with the countless others hidden from our view. what does my living quietly on the land, studying and telling folklore have to do with violence and bloodshed, with war crimes and devastated peoples.

what has it to do with the movement of the stars and the grinding of tectonic plates.

what has it to do with the cedar bugs and the mice with black bear and raven.

what has it to do with anything.

somehow, I feel that there is an answer that wants to be revealed in fits and spurts and in great swallowing waves, but only as it will. only as it will.

and with this the outworking of the work of “Black & Rural” will also shift. Exactly how, I do not yet know. but the first step is to live. Live. Be. Feel.

and then to act.

in the end,
through bone
through blood
through tears,
all I know how to know
is that each one is my brother—
though he may come with bombs
or with slave ships—
and must be perceived as such.
otherwise,
there is no hope.
no hope at all.