The Best Stuff I Read This Week

We humans must revere the earth, for it is our
well-being. Always the earth grants us what we
need. If we treat the earth with kindness, it will
treat us kindly. If we give our belief to the earth, it
will believe in us. There is no better blessing than to
be believed in.

— N. Scott Momaday / “One: The Dawn” / Earth Keeper

When the great herds of buffalo drifted like a
vast tide of rainwater over the green plains, it was a
wonderful thing to see. But there came a day when
the land was strewn with the flayed and rotting
remains of those innumerable animals, slain for sport
or for nothing but their hides. The Kiowas grieved
and went hungry, and it was the human spirit that
hungered most. It was a time of profound shame, and
the worst thing of all was that the killers knew no
shame.

— N. Scott Momaday / “Two: The Dusk” / Earth Keeper

The earth is not impervious to the presence of
man. We humans have inflicted terrible wounds
upon the earth. The scars are everywhere visible,
even here where Dragonfly brought up the sun and
where I was given my sacred name. The arbor is
now a ruin, for it came into the hands of uncaring
and visionless people.

— N. Scott Momaday / “Two: The Dusk” / Earth Keeper

The planet is warming, and the northern ice is
melting. Fires and floods wreak irresistible havoc.
The forests are diminished and waste piles upon us.
Thousands of species have been destroyed. Our own
is at imminent risk. The earth and its inhabitants are
in crisis, and at the center it is a moral crisis. Man
stands to repudiate his humanity.

— N. Scott Momaday / “Two: The Dusk” / Earth Keeper

But it is the present and
the possibilities of a future that must concern us.
Ours is a damaged world. We humans have done
the damage, and we must be held to account. We
have suffered a poverty of the imagination, a loss of
innocence.

— N. Scott Momaday / “Two: The Dusk” / Earth Keeper

How many lifeless things
are placed each day between us and the living earth?
A friend in Brooklyn told me that his little son had
gone out to watch workmen breaking up a sidewalk.
He was fascinated to see earth under the cement. He
had never seen it before.

— N. Scott Momaday / “Two: The Dusk” / Earth Keeper

Are we
to witness the eclipse of our civilization? Or are we
to take the chance?

— N. Scott Momaday / “Two: The Dusk” / Earth Keeper

N. Scott Momaday

February 27, 1934 – January 24, 2024

What I’m Listening To:

I’m going to the soul hole, and I’m never coming back
Never coming back

— @ / “Soul Hole”