052405

Recently, I've been hanging out with Chris, who was my best friend
from when I was 13-16 years old. Our friendship ended abruptly when his
parents divorced and he went off to Seattle. Now he's experienced
poverty and the pleasures of this world; he's been a door to door
salesman and been in more than a few fist-fights. How different from
the innocent rebellion of our youths!
In the old days, I ate countless meals with his large Mormon family:
nutritious simple meals. I read countless books to his little sister,
Janelle. And he's still Chris; he's so full of life and yet he doesn't
understand life. Me, I live half-dead, sustained by my superior
understanding.
For instance, we were just hanging out in a coffee-house and playing
chess. I drank twice as much coffee as he did and beat him twice, both
times because of his rash moves. He's actually a much stronger player
than I am.

Also, the other day, I paid $6 to visit The Favell Museum, which has a
collection of Indian artifacts and more modern art work along Indian
themes. It was a fantastic, out of the way place. I saw a musket used
by the Indians in The Modoc War; I've visited the rocky, desert
battleground many times.
There were innumerable arrow and spear-heads, most still in usable
condition. It's easy to dismiss these but they are a fact: a primitive
piece of technology created by a human who lived in an entirely
different world, just hundreds of years ago. There were no sewing
machines, pianos or airplanes.
When viewing the arrow-heads and baskets from the arid Eastern Oregon
region, I did some reflecting. The harsh, slow life of those Indians
must have created a consciousness in some ways similar to mine, molded
by similar deprivation and similarly saved by slow-moving grit.
Such is the life of a desert warrior: meals of snails and lizards,
laborious hours spent chipping obsidian, and then the bloody grace of
the hunt or combat.