Informant38

ΩOne time I was on the road and I was out of it a little from being on the road and the things that happen and the way the air is pretty strong with poison by the side of the road and I was over by this river up in Washington Chehalis or someplace up there and there was a wooden bridge I remember and the water was nice a lot of green grass on the banks and this Indian guy came walking up and I don't remember what we talked about but we talked for a little and he had a steelhead a pretty good size one as I remember it maybe 30 inches maybe more a big nice fat fish and he gave it to me or he wanted to give it to me but I wouldn't take it because I was living out of my backpack and didn't have the presence of mind to think what a wonderful sight it would have been to see a young man, which I was, fairly nice-looking and tan and strong, with a nice green backpack at his feet and a big silver fish in his arms, and how most certainly whoever would have stopped for that would have been someone it would have been good to know and the adventure of a different life another life the same me the same time the same numbers on the days and the years but new directions and new love and new people to talk to and remember but I was afraid really not practical but afraid of it and I think more deeply and in a spiritual sense I was being misguided punished and held back in punishment and because I was a good boy in that sense in the sense I had learned to let them do things to me without complaining and to follow instructions given in a certain tone I did what I was supposed to and said no I couldn't take it which I cringe at now literally cringe thinking about it and what a gesture that is especially to a man like that still holding the remnants of that way of being and what that fish had meant for him for them for thousands of years probably an unbroken chain of gift from land to family which is what that gesture is isn't it? Family. Here. Eat. It's a choosing. We choose that you get to eat, we want you to eat, meaning we want you to live...