dirt

“Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.” 
― Jack Kerouac


Where would Jack Kerouac say to start?  Well, wherever you are, baby, don'tchaknow.  Here in a friend's house, walls adorned with paintings paintings and more paintings.  Must be an artist, that's where she starts.  Me, the "writer", locked out of words for long stretches of time, but only because I don't do it, it's there to do.  Jack would say look at the dirt here on the road.  Get a feel.
I got a feel so deep it's etched in my bones.  Know where I am.  Need new dirt.

This blog has to do with dirt.  That's why the address is Road Side Gems, even though the name of the blog is Reading the Sky... roadsidegems...that's the dirt and rocks alongside the road, always different yet the same, wherever you travel.  Always touched by the same moon.  Did you ever gather up dirt from a special place to bring home with you?  I've done things like this.... just little bits, put in some bottles or containers.  Dirt from inside the medicine wheel back when Sun Bear was alive, and Grey Antelope, too.  Rocks from the roadside in Durango, Colorado, where everything looked like turquoise.
Then there have been people who've brought back dirt from places like Machu Picchu, or the Grand Canyon.  I believe that was my old friends, Alan and Laurel.  Long lost now.  But I have the dirt.


“My witness is the empty sky.” 
― Jack Kerouac