Joy Harjo's Web Log

Last night the moon appeared to swagger at the end of King Street as we headed into Alan Wong's for a dinner with an old friend. Earlier swam the waters at Ala Moana Beach Park and felt the current full and fat with the moon. And before that learned Greek dances at the Greek festival. Recalled being underage in an Indian bar arguing with a tall native guy from way up North, Chippewa or something who kept insisting I was Greek, not Creek. A woman at a table across the pond loses it. First I hear the bottles breaking and automatically think it's related to some kind of wedding ritual. She runs past the banyan to the other side of the pond with the perfect lotus flowers. The band keeps playing. Each of these events is real, but now as I write them they have become scenes in a dream. Isn't that reality? How reality works? Then we recreate, reshape it according to our recollection. I can translate it all through different filters, like the gel filters we used to attach to the stage lights at our Indian school stage productions. One filter is paranoia, one is fear, one is sadness, one is joy, one is compassion...

So then does energy equal matter?

Tonight I'm lonely for poetry. The moon is hidden under clouds tonight. It's one other night in millions of nights. I still need to drag the trash down the hill.