The Garden

A long time ago, when I was a little girl, my grandma's yard was dirt. Not any old dirt but that sticky, white, gumbo clay that rez cars like to get stuck in.

Then when I was about 7 or 8 she decided to grow grass and plant trees. I would watch her tend to it and ask her anxiously when the trees would grow big so I can have a swing. She would laugh at me and say by the time they were that big, I would be too old to swing. I would be lucky to sit under thier shade at the age of 18.

Despite everyone telling her that gumbo can't grow grass, she still did it. She would proudly sit in her lawn, amongst her flowers and battle dandelions and clover. My uncles used to tease her that the front yard looked like a circus because of the lawn ornaments. One year she even had a windmill in the front yard.

As she grew older, she took less interest in her lawn, maybe it was too many takojas, maybe she grew tired with age and none of us noticed because she always seemed invincible. She would always talk of having a vegetable garden, though...someday, she would say. She wanted corn, tomatoes and the works. Basically everything to make her own salsa. She never planted that garden.
Instead, last spring, my Uncle Jerry planted a garden. It was almost the who;le side of his lawn. Boy, my Grandma was fired up.
Did you see your Uncle's garden? she would say as she did a drive by of his house. You just wait until fall, we will have a big cookout from just that garden. She would drive by and say "Look, just look, it's a bloomin'."
She was so proud of his garden and talked of making salsa from it all the time.
If you read me regularly, which I know I don't write as much or if you know me, then you know that my grandma passed away last July.
She never saw the fruits of my Uncle Jerry's labor or ate anything from that garden.
My uncle still made salsa and gave me a jar last fall. When I ate it, I imagined her saying it was the best salsa in the world. I pictured her letting tomatoes ripen on her windowsill from that garden, like I did.
He planted another garden this year. So did I, but mine is small and a salsa garden. this is his second year planting it, and this time without her.
She isn't here. But this is a story of life and how, no matter what, we move on, live, love, learn and grow with it.
Like a garden.

What's the matter with your "feel right", baby?

I love that line from the song that is on my video linky thing. So I got to thinking, what's the matter with my 'feel right?"

and wanted to blog it, see I gave up a job that I used to love but it go annoying after awhile plus the lure of my couch and doing my crafts there is awesome. No punching a time clock and my perks are strong ass coffee, TV all day, my couch, my cat, people stop by and visit and what not...it's really cool. I sell my stuff on a daily basis almost but right now am saving up for a BIG SALE.

Anyways here is what is the matter with my feel right, I sit by my front window. Which is great, but some things about my hood annoy me. I look out of it all the time like my cat, My cat watches intently because it's his hood too and he knows what is going on, he rules here. I live in a housing spot called North Ridge, one of the roughest in town but I grew up here so I can walk around the block without getting attacked by any dog except my Uncle Jerr's dog Brownie, who is rumored to have broken someone's arm and I holler "PUSS" at him everytime I see him and send him into Cujo mode.

Now one thing about here on the rez is, no one freakin knocks on doors, for fear of dogs I think is the original thinking or reasoning but it got to a point where everyone is just plain and simple fucking too lazy to get off their asses and knock.

HONK! HONK! HONK! HONK!

I get sick and tired of it because I am busy, and then I hear the annoying honk. I look out across the street or next door and sometimes it's the people that LIVE there beating their horn for someone to come out, peek out or notice that they are annoying the whole neighborhood with the incessant beating of their horn. Sometimes t's two of those motherfuckers about 3 houses away both beating their horns as if in competition as to who will come out the door first. This just bugs the crap out of me, and to make it worse no one here notices because they all think it is normal!! I don't know. *smh* It just bugs me when I see that out my window.

Another thing wrong with my 'feel right' is there is this dude in the hood that lives on top block with all the other crazies (sorry Uncle Jerr) and he ha a nice ass Monte Carlo, he been workin out at the gym and he looks nice ass himself, lost alot of weight, he alright. But his fuckin stereo system in his car, I can hear him round the corner on top block and it's like WTF, my house is shaking from the bass. I have to turn my TV up and I have no remote. Cuz this bitch is drivin all slow through the hood like HEEEEY check me out, I'm fine as hell now. He makes me miss shit I need to hear on news and I curse you Joe G to gain it all back! *points finger at loud slow car*

What fucks with my 'feel right' at night are dogs. The mangy motherfuckers bark all night loud as fuck. It starts from one ends of town, west, and works it's way east in the middle of the night ....EVERY NIGHT. I'm fine with it unless I wake up at like between 3 and 4 and I hear it. Then my boyfriend told me his grandma told him that it was a ghost or somthing that runs through No Bottom Creek from the West to the East and it drives the dogs nuts. Now when I hear them barkin, and hear it get near my hood, I lay awake thinking of that ghost thing running through the creek behind my house, I think of how it could go off track and come through my back yard into my door and sppok the hell out of me and then I hear the dogs barking to the East and I know the ghost didn't get lost but damn I have a hard time going back to bed.



Anyway back to my window, someone is honking outside.

thank me

i was looking for a link that I put in my yahoo 360 blog like forever ago for my son

I read the blogs, then even read my blog on blogger for the past year



you know I am so glad I blog

if I ever get alzheimers everyone can see how nutty I was before that

i laughed, smiled, cried through my blog

and i thanked myself for writing it



if you ever have nothing to do, go back read your blog and thank you

what it do bro?????????

painting by Bunky Echo-Hawk
I was talking to my brother the other day as he was cruising through a poor sectin of town where he lives. He was at a stop when he noticed all these people sitting outside their apartment building around a fire that was in the grill or something. He said they were drinking beers, throwing sticks in the fire, listening to music, he didn't say what music but in my mind I was thinking Bob Seger or Fleetwood Mac. They were laughing and relaxed, just chillin.
He said, you know whats funny? Is that on the oter side of town there's these people that live in a big house with a 30 year morgtage, 2 nice cars in the garage and their teen age kids probably drive nice cars. They probably both work and never see each other so they cheat on each other, their kids are probably in therapy because they have these expectations their parents want them to live up to and they feel they will never measure up to them.
yeah I said. They probably put on a front in public, like the perfect family but the mom drinks in private and the dad cheats on her with some single mom chick thats a waitress at his favorite bar. They probably eat hamburger helper every night just to save money to pay for the perfect life.
I'll stay poor, I told him.
Imma go to the bar he said.
Imma crack a can of beer with my shades drawn so the cops don't see it, but I will think of you at the bar, I said
Later Sis, he said.

My brother Jesse's blog

I got permission from my brother to repost his blog that he has over a myspace, myspace sucks for blogs so I wanted it to be read here. Before I do that I wanted to post this picture for Sue. Above in the picture is my Great Great Grandma Molichika or Granm Molly. Back in the day she was a scadal kind of because she drove a car and smoked cigarettes. She always had a man to provide her of these things.
Next to her is my Great Grandma Julie who was Dick Wilson's mom. Dick was tribal president for many years while the tribe was in turmoil.
Next to her is my Great Grandma Louise, she married a man who didn't like her to speak Lakota. That is my grandma's parents. Grandma Louis used to cut my hair with a ginormous silver scissors, that I was sure would cut my ear off.
Anyways they are drying meat in the picture. Which was pretty much what they had to do back in the day, to carry through the winter, that is how it was. You couldn't go to the store and get meat at the drop of a dime. Life was harder back then. Times were tougher. The government wasn't quick to help our people, just more quick to hope we faded away.
Sometimes I think with all the technology we have and the more life moves on, we could be fading aways in some way. then I go to a dinner where wasna (made with dried meat) is served as an appetizer, and I know through it all we are still here, still Indian. And after reading my brother's blog, today is a good day to be Lakota. (Thank god I am not out drying meat because I have to)
Now
onto
My brothers blog and a song from my son

Angels on the Moon - Thriving Ivory


As I can't be what I perceive, I am not this body-mind or
any thing that I am conscious of.



As there must be something unchanging to register
discontinuity, I am not this body-mind, which is neither
continuous nor permanent.



As the person is a changing stream of mental objects that
I as the subject take to be my body-mind, I cannot be a
person. I am, but I can't be this or that.



As it is my presence, which is always here and now, that
gives the quality of actual to any event, I must be
beyond time and space. I was never born, nor will ever
die. -
Nisargadatta Maharaj


I at one point in time, I was not in control of my life, but surrendered that control to the ego. I never knew how to live in the now, but always lived in day dreams or mental movies of past events that i either really enjoyed or disliked. I had an abundance of garbage in my head. The ego kept me in fear of living in the now, but was always worried about how people would think of me. The ego was always talking, mental chatter they call it, never allowing me to experience life but always telling me whats going on in life like a commentator that will not shut up.

I have silenced my mind

I have never been more free in my entire life,

ever since, it seems like life has switched from black and white television to HD tv..everything is better when you allow yourself to become more aware of the present moment, it seems right because this present moment now, is all we have and is all we will ever have you could live your life resisting it or waiting for this moment to end so you could be happier later, why wait..

The buddhist call this seeing with the third eye, the eye that is conscious. ever since I have opened this eye, I have seen the world as a theater of the absurd. it seems like life is as less serious as i thought and I have learned to have more fun now..I went out a few weekends ago to a popular little college bar that had a dance floor which everyone in the bar was to afraid to dance on for fear of judgement..So I went out there and boogied, people laughed but i had not a care, for I was living the life they want to live, but are afraid to.

this is what jesus called bringing heaven down to earth..To live, not to wait to live but to live in peace and be at peace with yourself and the world around you. I am more happier with the people around me because i am more happier with myself.

This is what most unconscious people call losing your mind, which they are very close in there assumption but not totally..it is more like losing the control the brain has control over your life, the brain is a tool just like the rest of your body, a tool that loves to solve problems, if left uncheck it can create problems in your life so it can solve them..

So what are you waiting for, there is a life right in front of you to live..never resist it..there is a latin term for it "carpe diem" which means seize the day, there is no time like the present.

I will write more about this awakening, if you have any questions please feel free to ask.

my wussy boys

that actually is all three boys sleeping on one couch, so anyway i am on messenger trying to talk to someone and also on someone's blog reading while she fed her husband rotten potatoes and laughed about it

when one of my boys screams like a woman

WASP!!!

BEE!!!!

AHHHH!



he is on that same couch hiding under a blanket screaming, the oldest boy who is also bigger than me gets the broom and comes walking in like a warrior

and hands it to me.

my youngest son comes out of the room, sees me with the broom, sees the wasp and runs back in his room,

i hit it once, miss it and the one on the couch peeks from under a cover and screams again.

my oldest, biggest kid who can bench over 200 is standing in the kitchen while i swing furiously at the wasp-bee-thing. i hit it enough to make it fly out the window.

my tough bad ass kids go on doing whatever they were before that little wasp made my boys into daughters

damn wussy ass kids

Th Weekend Cometh, Pray for King James

The little hobbit dude in the pic is my boys' little brother James on their daddy's side. Any spare prayers can go his way as he is in the Minneapolis Children's Hospital this weekend awaiting the results of MRI's and all sorts of tests. My boys are worried and their dad is in Minnesota awaiting the results with James' mother. I baby sat James over here at my house a few times, while his dad had his turn at custody.

His mom is or was a hooker that broke up my high school sweetheart romance, in the end I could and should probably thank her for giving me the guts to get out of that relationship that was totally one sided.

All in all, we ended up being friends, not me and the hooker but me and my ex. We got past the petty shit and drama, got past our own egos and started being adults. We realize fighting is not good. We do what we can for our kids and I help him out with his other kids becase they are just kids and the siblings of my boys. Plus, their mom is young and preoccupied with her other kids.

I talked to her once on the phone, she called me a couple of summers ago all drunk and apologized to me for what she did in my life and said something that stuck out

"I should have listenbed to you back in the day Dana, when you told me to take care of myself and not depend on any man to make me happy. I should have listened to you." i said that the night I told her to have my man because I was leaving him for good.

She is now 28 and no only got fucked over by my ex, but other men.

Don't worry about it, I told her. I should have listened to my mom when I was 18 and she told me pretty much the same thing. 18 year olds are strupid and think happiness is in being a part of a couple, well not all 18 year olds, there are many that are the exception, but anyways I once said I wished I could write a book of life experiences for the 18 yr old population out there so they would know to think of themselves and their futures and not about love or what they think is love, but what 18 year old would listen?

My son once asked me, would you be 18 again if you could.

Fuck no, I said, I was too dumb back then.

Well, when did you stop being too dumb, he asked.

Shit, I was dumb yesterday, boy.