As our Landcruiser roars down the Yu Shu highway I wonder if this winding stretch of road will ever take us anywhere. As mountain ranges rise and fall, and we keep moving west, there is a common theme. A feeling of isolation penetrates the souls of all who pass…
As the day breaks, I wake up to find the fog of my breath engulfing my vision. Shaking it off, I slip out of my sleeping bag, into my boots, and out the door of my tent. The sun greets me with a warm smile and I squint back at her. I hope that she will stay with us, for our plans will take us out into the mountains this crisp, September day.
Back at the tent, I kick at the opposite side, hoping to stir up my guide, Dorje, a local Tibetan.
“Rise and shine, beautiful!”
“Man, it’s too early. You got to let me sleep.”
The son of a Nomad, he had lived in this region his whole life before moving to the city of Xining to further his studies in English and Tibetan Medicine. His knowledge of the culture and nature of this barren place is why I have chosen him to accompany me on my trip.
It takes us just under an hour to pack up our things and gulp back some chunks of Tsamba, the local staple food consisting of a mixture of barley flour and butter tea. It bears some resemblance to little globs of cookie dough, though it’s sometimes hard to swallow down. In any event, we eat, pack up, and head out.
Anticipation speeds up my stride as I swiftly move through the rocky path, forging further into the hills.
“Let’s get going, bud. We only have one day and we have a lot of things to see.” I say, hoping to encourage a speedy pace.
“You foreigners always want to see everything all at once. You need patience, and I need more sleep!”, he jokes.
Dorje fights back thoughts of sleep as he struggles to keep up with my excitement. Today is a day that I have looked forward to for quite some time. After years of dreaming about it, I am finally out on the Plateau. This has been my hope for some time now, to hike through the middle of nowhere.
Being at an altitude well over 3000 meters, there isn’t much plant life. As we walk, marmots scurry back to their holes, burrowing their way through the ground. Their meals are few and far between. Some settle for the bush and brush that rests scattered across the ground, shivering in the wind.
We walk to the beat of two sounds: our footsteps and the swirling wind. There’s not much to see so far, yet I take in this rare silence as a blessing. Finally, in the distance I see a sight to behold: vultures circling the grey mountain tops, swooping in and out of my view as they dash to the ground and then back up into the sky.
“What are those birds doing way up here? Are they vultures? Man, they’re huge!”
“It’s a sky burial. A Tibetan funeral ritual. They carry the body up to a high place, chop it up, and lay it out for the birds. It’s been going on for hundreds of years. Just one of the many ways that the Tibetans connect with the Earth. It’s spiritual.”
“How so?”, I inquire.
“They believe that the birds will help take the deceased’s soul back up to heaven.”
“Wow, that’s really something.”
This is quite a difference from the funeral customs I had grown up with, yet similar in the slightest of ways; ashes to ashes and dust to dust. We give our dead to the ground and the Tibetans give theirs to the sky. I’m beginning to see that there is more to this vast land then just scattered plants and animals. It is also a home for people, and they have adapted to become a part of the scenery, at one with their surroundings.
As we walk further from the path and I look down on the crumbled ground a thought occurs to me; I could be the first person in history to ever take a step on the spot I am now standing. It’s hard to believe that a place like this could even exist. It is a land that seems to stand still in time, stirred up only ever so often by shepherds, yaks, sheep, and curious people like myself. Dorje tells me that when he was young he would come out here with his father’s sheep and just sit back and enjoy the silence. Only a rustling of weeds, or the bleat of a sheep would interrupt his perfectly quiet world.
“The sun will go down over those mountains in about half an hour. we should set up camp”, Dorje says.
While I scan the area for shelter from the wind, Dorje already has his pack off and is pounding tent pegs into the earth.
“We’re in the middle of an open valley, open and exposed to just about everything, and this is where you want to set up?!” I ask, half joking, yet half serious.
Dorje looks up and simply says, “What are you scared of? There’s nothing out here but the wind and the mountains. The best view is right smack dab in the middle of it!”
Friday, December 26, 2008
Friday, November 28, 2008
Short Story - The Wolves
By Brett Gitzel
Once there was a boy named Justin, who grew up without the kind of love and affection that most 12 year olds took for granted. His mother and father sustained him, but from a distance, in the least sense of the word. They lived in excess, unaware of this disinterest; perhaps in the same way desert sand is not aware of a lost, hopeless traveler. Busy with enhancing their own lives, they seemed to think that their son was self-sustainable, like a pet or a house plant, needing water and food only every once in a while.
Justin lived at home in silence. Faint glimpses of his parents happened so rarely that they seemed to be dreams. As his contact with people diminished and his connections with love and companionship continued to crumble, Justin slipped into an internal world. A world at first filled with all of the creativity and determination of a small boy, only later to fade into empty silliness bordering on insanity.
Justin’s mother made sure that the boy was always well dressed and proper. From his desolate frame hung a pre-determined wardrobe, swaying, like it would from a coat hanger. His food consisted of air sealed meats, cheeses and just about every other prepackaged snack a boy could want. His body wasted away from a lack of nutrients and substance, yet his blue eyes flowed like water. This was beauty unseen, value unknown.
His mother and father made no small secret of his accidental conception. His mother’s upbringing prohibited the possibility of an abortion, which disappointed his father.
“My mother would murder me! I just can’t.”
“Well, that is simply unacceptable. I will not allow our lives to be ruined.” he coldly stated.
“You think that is makes me happy?!” she swelled, fighting back in anger.
Justin had been their inconvenience from the beginning. The biggest relief to this stress was the money that they had been born into. Throwing money at Justin’s lonely childhood had been one of their only parenting tactics.
Being abandoned by his parents in his own home left scars too deep for healing. Something of an empty life consumed the boy. Hope and desire faded, leaving him too lonely and confused for a boy his age to maintain any resemblance of value or happiness.
Justin lived internally. Inability to socialize with the other students at school resulted in him being home schooled at the age of nine, though “school” would be a generous word. His mother was nowhere to be found.
“Justin, you do whatever you want. There are some books in the study. Just don’t bother me, I’m very busy.”
A whirlwind of books lay strewn across the study, but the only books not collecting dust were the ones his limited reading level allowed; about nature, about it’s animals and plants, the things that lay only a few hundred yards away from his bedroom window. His only interest left to cling to was in the backwoods. In a time when every feeling seemed to have left him, his curiosity remained.
Giant spruce and oak trees engulfed the property, enclosing a vast expanse of 3 acres of Kentucky blue. Yet mystery pushed Justin out beyond the property. His life was out in the wilderness, far beyond the land deeded to his father.
No one seemed to notice Justin spending so much time out in the forest, a forest that stretched from one county to the next. Critters of all shapes and sizes slithered, cooed, and crawled through this vast expanse. Day after day, Justin would move through the forest as a fly on the wall, watching birds gather near a puddle, squirrels quarrelling over an acorn, or deer slipping in between trees with the greatest of grace and ease. He knew which berries he could eat, and which ones to stay away from. Most days, he wouldn’t even pack a lunch.
One day, still as a stone, Justin’s finger made a perch for a sparrow.
“Oh, what kind of bird are you? I really like birds”, he whispered. “Are you a friendly bird? I once knew a boy in school that was friendly. He gave me some raisins from his lunch. That was the nicest thing anyone has every done for me. He was a good friend. Do you want to be friends with me?”
At that moment, the sparrow turned to Justin, kinking its neck in what seemed to be puzzled interest. Justin mimicked the sparrow, also intrigued by this creature settled only inches from his face. It seemed as though they were sharing a joke. Suddenly, Justin squawked,
“I like you Mr. Bird! You’re my best friend!”
With that, the sparrow was off, flailing its wings for its life, fleeing the noises coming from this strange boy. Justin’s finger dropped like a rock, his smile cracked like a broken window.
Nevertheless, Justin’s most satisfying discovery in the woods was, by far, the wolves. Every once in a while, in the evening as the sky faded dark, Justin would come across a family of wolves satisfying themselves with their latest catch. Justin knew to be as still as silence in these dangerous situations, yet there was one thing that kept drawing him back to these scenes; the young wolf pups were always well taken care of. While breaking through the flesh of a poor little mouse or squirrel, the older wolf was always sure to break off a nice fleshy piece for the youngster. At these times, for reasons unknown to him, Justin would salivate.
Back at home, Justin would sit and dream of the wolves. So wild and ignored by the world, the wolves lived lives full of love and companionship. He would spend time in the study drawing, the best that he could, pictures of the wolves. He gave them names and squealed at the thought of being able to meet these wolves. Those days, thinking about the wolves, seemed to breathe new life into his body.
On one particularly cloudy day, Justin set out into the woods. Leaving behind his home, his invisible parents, and his nature books, Justin set out to scratch his curiosity. With a desire for companionship and a lack of rationality, Justin went looking for the wolves.
After searching the woods for quite some time, Justin spotted the pack. He happened upon them cutting through some freshly killed rodents. The larger ones were sure to mouth some over to the pups. It seemed as though all of the adult wolves were responsibe for taking care of the pups. Fascinated by this interaction, Justin was intrigued by the ways of the wolves. He held great admiration for this community.
At this point, a new sensation rose inside of him; something so foreign to him that he almost forgot what it could mean. The feeling that rose within him was the feeling of desire, the desire to be a part of something. Seeing the wolves interact was a thing of beauty. He recalled his nature books with their mountains, forests, sunsets, lakes, rivers, and of course, their animals. None compared to the scene that played out before him. Justin came to an understanding that seemed to spark a flicker of hope inside his emptiness; the understanding that he was now home. He would leave his past behind. This dark place, this denseness of green, was a place of hope. The wolves had taught him that there is life beyond existence.
“When you go with the wolves,” he told himself, “you’ll have a new home.”
His experience in the woods had given him a place of refuge, and in the process, a place much more desirable than his past hope of a hug from his father, or a kiss from his mother. Those hopes had been dead and buried long ago.
In the thickness for the forest, Justin slowly exposed himself from the shadow of a tree and moved toward his new family, the wolves. In his mind, the wolves were his mother, father, sisters and brothers. With his face filling with dusty tears, salt poured down onto his shirt.
Looking down he thought,
“The wolves don’t wear clothes like me.”
At once, he stripped down, out of his mess of clothes. His body stood naked and free as knees knocked together and his dirty paws reached up to squeeze the salt silt from his eyes. Opening them, he felt reborn!
He thought of the wolves warm fur, the warmth he would feel in the night. He remembered a schoolmate, rolling and laughing with his pet retriever, and he thought of the wolf pups. The idea of rolling and playing out in the nature with his new brothers and sisters made the blood beneath his skin flow to places that had been dry for so, so long.
As he came out from the shadows, Justin stepped further away from his lonely past. The wolves turned to see his body tracing a silhouette in the moonlight. Moving away from their pile of bones, and still hungry, they slowly made their way towards the boy. Justin, with his hands raised in thankfulness and his mind as clear as the day he was born, naively entered into his fate.
Once there was a boy named Justin, who grew up without the kind of love and affection that most 12 year olds took for granted. His mother and father sustained him, but from a distance, in the least sense of the word. They lived in excess, unaware of this disinterest; perhaps in the same way desert sand is not aware of a lost, hopeless traveler. Busy with enhancing their own lives, they seemed to think that their son was self-sustainable, like a pet or a house plant, needing water and food only every once in a while.
Justin lived at home in silence. Faint glimpses of his parents happened so rarely that they seemed to be dreams. As his contact with people diminished and his connections with love and companionship continued to crumble, Justin slipped into an internal world. A world at first filled with all of the creativity and determination of a small boy, only later to fade into empty silliness bordering on insanity.
Justin’s mother made sure that the boy was always well dressed and proper. From his desolate frame hung a pre-determined wardrobe, swaying, like it would from a coat hanger. His food consisted of air sealed meats, cheeses and just about every other prepackaged snack a boy could want. His body wasted away from a lack of nutrients and substance, yet his blue eyes flowed like water. This was beauty unseen, value unknown.
His mother and father made no small secret of his accidental conception. His mother’s upbringing prohibited the possibility of an abortion, which disappointed his father.
“My mother would murder me! I just can’t.”
“Well, that is simply unacceptable. I will not allow our lives to be ruined.” he coldly stated.
“You think that is makes me happy?!” she swelled, fighting back in anger.
Justin had been their inconvenience from the beginning. The biggest relief to this stress was the money that they had been born into. Throwing money at Justin’s lonely childhood had been one of their only parenting tactics.
Being abandoned by his parents in his own home left scars too deep for healing. Something of an empty life consumed the boy. Hope and desire faded, leaving him too lonely and confused for a boy his age to maintain any resemblance of value or happiness.
Justin lived internally. Inability to socialize with the other students at school resulted in him being home schooled at the age of nine, though “school” would be a generous word. His mother was nowhere to be found.
“Justin, you do whatever you want. There are some books in the study. Just don’t bother me, I’m very busy.”
A whirlwind of books lay strewn across the study, but the only books not collecting dust were the ones his limited reading level allowed; about nature, about it’s animals and plants, the things that lay only a few hundred yards away from his bedroom window. His only interest left to cling to was in the backwoods. In a time when every feeling seemed to have left him, his curiosity remained.
Giant spruce and oak trees engulfed the property, enclosing a vast expanse of 3 acres of Kentucky blue. Yet mystery pushed Justin out beyond the property. His life was out in the wilderness, far beyond the land deeded to his father.
No one seemed to notice Justin spending so much time out in the forest, a forest that stretched from one county to the next. Critters of all shapes and sizes slithered, cooed, and crawled through this vast expanse. Day after day, Justin would move through the forest as a fly on the wall, watching birds gather near a puddle, squirrels quarrelling over an acorn, or deer slipping in between trees with the greatest of grace and ease. He knew which berries he could eat, and which ones to stay away from. Most days, he wouldn’t even pack a lunch.
One day, still as a stone, Justin’s finger made a perch for a sparrow.
“Oh, what kind of bird are you? I really like birds”, he whispered. “Are you a friendly bird? I once knew a boy in school that was friendly. He gave me some raisins from his lunch. That was the nicest thing anyone has every done for me. He was a good friend. Do you want to be friends with me?”
At that moment, the sparrow turned to Justin, kinking its neck in what seemed to be puzzled interest. Justin mimicked the sparrow, also intrigued by this creature settled only inches from his face. It seemed as though they were sharing a joke. Suddenly, Justin squawked,
“I like you Mr. Bird! You’re my best friend!”
With that, the sparrow was off, flailing its wings for its life, fleeing the noises coming from this strange boy. Justin’s finger dropped like a rock, his smile cracked like a broken window.
Nevertheless, Justin’s most satisfying discovery in the woods was, by far, the wolves. Every once in a while, in the evening as the sky faded dark, Justin would come across a family of wolves satisfying themselves with their latest catch. Justin knew to be as still as silence in these dangerous situations, yet there was one thing that kept drawing him back to these scenes; the young wolf pups were always well taken care of. While breaking through the flesh of a poor little mouse or squirrel, the older wolf was always sure to break off a nice fleshy piece for the youngster. At these times, for reasons unknown to him, Justin would salivate.
Back at home, Justin would sit and dream of the wolves. So wild and ignored by the world, the wolves lived lives full of love and companionship. He would spend time in the study drawing, the best that he could, pictures of the wolves. He gave them names and squealed at the thought of being able to meet these wolves. Those days, thinking about the wolves, seemed to breathe new life into his body.
On one particularly cloudy day, Justin set out into the woods. Leaving behind his home, his invisible parents, and his nature books, Justin set out to scratch his curiosity. With a desire for companionship and a lack of rationality, Justin went looking for the wolves.
After searching the woods for quite some time, Justin spotted the pack. He happened upon them cutting through some freshly killed rodents. The larger ones were sure to mouth some over to the pups. It seemed as though all of the adult wolves were responsibe for taking care of the pups. Fascinated by this interaction, Justin was intrigued by the ways of the wolves. He held great admiration for this community.
At this point, a new sensation rose inside of him; something so foreign to him that he almost forgot what it could mean. The feeling that rose within him was the feeling of desire, the desire to be a part of something. Seeing the wolves interact was a thing of beauty. He recalled his nature books with their mountains, forests, sunsets, lakes, rivers, and of course, their animals. None compared to the scene that played out before him. Justin came to an understanding that seemed to spark a flicker of hope inside his emptiness; the understanding that he was now home. He would leave his past behind. This dark place, this denseness of green, was a place of hope. The wolves had taught him that there is life beyond existence.
“When you go with the wolves,” he told himself, “you’ll have a new home.”
His experience in the woods had given him a place of refuge, and in the process, a place much more desirable than his past hope of a hug from his father, or a kiss from his mother. Those hopes had been dead and buried long ago.
In the thickness for the forest, Justin slowly exposed himself from the shadow of a tree and moved toward his new family, the wolves. In his mind, the wolves were his mother, father, sisters and brothers. With his face filling with dusty tears, salt poured down onto his shirt.
Looking down he thought,
“The wolves don’t wear clothes like me.”
At once, he stripped down, out of his mess of clothes. His body stood naked and free as knees knocked together and his dirty paws reached up to squeeze the salt silt from his eyes. Opening them, he felt reborn!
He thought of the wolves warm fur, the warmth he would feel in the night. He remembered a schoolmate, rolling and laughing with his pet retriever, and he thought of the wolf pups. The idea of rolling and playing out in the nature with his new brothers and sisters made the blood beneath his skin flow to places that had been dry for so, so long.
As he came out from the shadows, Justin stepped further away from his lonely past. The wolves turned to see his body tracing a silhouette in the moonlight. Moving away from their pile of bones, and still hungry, they slowly made their way towards the boy. Justin, with his hands raised in thankfulness and his mind as clear as the day he was born, naively entered into his fate.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Writing Course Projects.
I am taking an on-line writing course for the next while and I thought it would be good to post my projects up here. The first 2 weeks required us to write poems. One thing I learned through the critiquing of my poems was that my style is more prosaic than poetic or rhythmic. So I worked hard on getting my poems to act/be more like poems. Here they are:
Autumn Existence
by Brett Gitzel
Indoor, brittle, cold, and settled.
I shiver, throwing gazes at the wall.
Daily News in open hand,
lost thoughts in the mind.
Furnace clicks an empty, vague, moan.
Depth, distant, rattled tone.
Outside, brittle, cold, and settled
An oak tree, disappointed, slumped to fall.
Leafy hues slowly stripped,
the summer slipped.
Skin dry as death, tempting flame, smoke.
Bitter wind snakes a coiled clench, choke.
In between, rustling disrupts.
Whirl awakes, sweeps at it all.
Stormy brew of leaf, dust, and yard,
roaming near, far.
shaking, gathered, lazy, flown.
Hollow, distant, rattled tone.
Inside out or outside in.
tremble, shiver, we share the monotone.
Fingers carbon black,
limbs withered and meek.
Divided by glass, together, on our own.
Not distant, yet hollow, rattled tone.
Oath to a dying woman
by Brett Gitzel
Lonesome, busy with useless chores.
Closed doors.
Not to notice. Not to know you.
To forget, not forgive. I am not these,
lost in the bliss,
I promise you this.
You walk on, the world turns off.
Sunshine shattered, birds dirty noise.
your regret, your grief.
Love stolen by a thief,
replaced with a kiss,
I promise you this.
The night is cold, my heart is warm.
Your dreams are dark, brittle hands pressed together,
broken prayer.
I wait for you, and hope renew,
to not dismiss,
I promise you this.
How will they remember you?
photos, memories, thoughts?
Will they at all,
when you fall,
Out of touch, out of view?
Yes, my friend, I promise you.
Autumn Existence
by Brett Gitzel
Indoor, brittle, cold, and settled.
I shiver, throwing gazes at the wall.
Daily News in open hand,
lost thoughts in the mind.
Furnace clicks an empty, vague, moan.
Depth, distant, rattled tone.
Outside, brittle, cold, and settled
An oak tree, disappointed, slumped to fall.
Leafy hues slowly stripped,
the summer slipped.
Skin dry as death, tempting flame, smoke.
Bitter wind snakes a coiled clench, choke.
In between, rustling disrupts.
Whirl awakes, sweeps at it all.
Stormy brew of leaf, dust, and yard,
roaming near, far.
shaking, gathered, lazy, flown.
Hollow, distant, rattled tone.
Inside out or outside in.
tremble, shiver, we share the monotone.
Fingers carbon black,
limbs withered and meek.
Divided by glass, together, on our own.
Not distant, yet hollow, rattled tone.
Oath to a dying woman
by Brett Gitzel
Lonesome, busy with useless chores.
Closed doors.
Not to notice. Not to know you.
To forget, not forgive. I am not these,
lost in the bliss,
I promise you this.
You walk on, the world turns off.
Sunshine shattered, birds dirty noise.
your regret, your grief.
Love stolen by a thief,
replaced with a kiss,
I promise you this.
The night is cold, my heart is warm.
Your dreams are dark, brittle hands pressed together,
broken prayer.
I wait for you, and hope renew,
to not dismiss,
I promise you this.
How will they remember you?
photos, memories, thoughts?
Will they at all,
when you fall,
Out of touch, out of view?
Yes, my friend, I promise you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)