Tuseday Muse

It has been a few weeks now since I jumped back into this try at blogging. I don’t think I have quite gotta handle on what I am trying to say yet. I am not even sure why I feel the need to throw this out into the ether. If you are along for the ride, bear with me and mind the bumps.

I started a post the other day and haven’t finished it to my satisfaction, so this isn’t it, but in that meandering try at prose I mentioned a book I grew up with here in Texas. Since this is the day of the internet and Google, I did a search for the title I remembered. Found it almost immediately at Biblio.com, someone had it for sale…short story long, I ordered it and will be reliving my early years over the next couple of weeks reading “Texas Sketchbook, A Collection of Historical Stories From The Humble Way”.

Just to keep with the idea behind the title of this Blog, here’s a bit about Boone, NC I came across today:

Boone

'Boone, the most elevated county seat east of the Rocky mountains, is 3,222 feet above the sea. Its population numbers 200, and lives along a street rising
and falling with the hills. No majestic mountains rise around it, consequently there is less of the attractive that distinguish most mountain county seats. Near the stream which flows on one side of the town, Daniel Boone, the famous hunter, is said to have camped while on a hunting tour. It is from this camping tradition that the village took its name.' (1883, Zeigler, p. 267)

'When we had ridden into its single street, which wanders over gentle hills, and landed at the most promising of the taverns, the Friend informed his comrade that Boone was 3,250 feet above Albemarle Sound, and believed by its inhabitants to be the highest village east of the Rocky Mountains. The Professor said that it might be so, but it was a God-forsaken place. Its inhabitants numbered perhaps 250, a few of them colored. It had a gaunt, shaky courthouse and jail, a store or two, and two taverns. The two taverns are needed to accommodate the judges and lawyers and their clients during the session of the court. The court is the only excitement, the only amusement...(continued to p.39)' (1889, Warner, Charles D. p. 36)

The site isn't all up but there is some great historical references...Western North Carolina Heritage. Go have some fun with history.

Ambivalence: Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu

It has long been a theory of mine that the myth of our lives is created in the reflection we see in the eyes of our loved ones and friends. It is through our trying to live up to the myth created around our lives by those who watch that we surpass the mundane.

Stowe Boyd (no relation that I know of) seems to feel it also:

Ambivalence: Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu: "Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu

There is a common expression in Xhosa (Zulu), I have read, umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu which means 'a person is a person through other persons'. This is just as true for the nomad as it is for the villager, perhaps even more so, despite the distance and the time that holds us apart from others we know and love."

“A person is a person through other persons”, you are forced to live up to the myth you create by living up to the myth that others create about you. It’s all so circular, you have to wonder…wander as a nomad, live as a villager…it’s still the reflection of your life that you see.

Just as it is the brightest lights that cast the darkest shadows, the strongest bonds are those linking travelers to the unmoving world, but they are loose ties, hardly felt, like the embrace of the Earth holding us, or the push of the wind at our backs as we move ahead in the night. We are defined by our circles, but for the traveler these are loose, flowing, light: not a box and a book, but instead a bedouin's robe and a song or two, songs to be sung alone, or with others over the next rise. Travelers are never more themselves than then, sharing our innermost songs, singing the circles, telling our own tales. and then, moving on.

I can see I will need to keep track of what stories Stowe has to tell.

Thanks to Shelley Powers at Burningbird via The Magpie Nest…