for months after i had met him, my eyes filled with tears whenever i thought about our encounter. not sadness, but not quite happiness either -- simply the ache of awareness, the sense that somehow our meeting had significance i wouldn't be able to decipher. when my mother told me he had sent me a letter which was promptly lost in the mail i quickly hid my tears in a musty pillow. it's embarassing enough to be caught crying. but over someone i'd met for four hours? but i'd never quite seen the land as it flowed through someone's veins. his tanned leathery skin barely concealed the mountain cornices and talus pilings laying beneath. i was captivated by him. my cousins and sister huddled in the kitchen, but i had his attentions monopolized. we talked about coal mining, about deadly explosions 100 feet below ground, about how cold the wind can be sweeping down from 9,000 foot mountain peaks. he's been a cowboy for 80 years. my grandmother and her siblings have always amazed me: the socialite, the stone mason, the bishop and the cowboy. finally i was meeting the cowboy! he lived in a tiny shack in a virtually uninhabited valley near tonopah, nevada for 35 years. alone, save for his cattle. he didn't heat his home: if his cows didn't get heat, neither did he. when the winter came he'd be snowed in for months at a time. in spring he'd head out on his horse for 6 weeks at a strech, placing raw eggs in the flour-filled saddlebags at his side. at night, he would painstakingly paint color on black and white photographs of his beloved ruby valley. in the 1940s he sent away for a 16mm movie camera. at my insistence, he pulled out some films. here's a bobcat i caught. here's the ranch in january. i gasp at the ridge peaks jutting valiantly into an ice blue sky. here's the town 30 miles away burning down. here's your grandparents when they were just married, 63 years ago. here -- here's some explosions in the night sky. i think, please, please don't tell me those glowing shapes in the 1940s nevada sky are what i think they are. oh yes, those are the atomic bombs being tested 60 miles away. fallout all over my ranch, all the time. here's my best friend charlie, a native american who taught me how to hunt for fish by weaving sticks into dams in streams flush with late spring. finally, this week, only six months later, i sat down to write him a letter. but how do you write a love letter to your grandmother's 80 year old brother? how do you say he's one of the most beautiful people you've ever seen in your life? how do you tell him you've heard he keeps collapsing off his horse and that maybe he's too old to work 7 days a week. how do you say i feel the mountains in your blood and it fills me with tears. how do you say please tell me every story you have about being a cowboy cinematographer. but i choked out a few lines, trusting that perhaps he'll understand them as well as he seemed to understand the watery eyes i turned away from him everytime he stepped into the kitchen for a glass of water. ************** in other news, to add to the indie emo hip hop discussion, i would like to second joe and archel's opinion of emohop. it certainly exists, and the boy i'm currently dating is a rapper in one of the groups archel mentioned, anticon, and i can report that not only does he wear thrift store tshirts and navy wool cardigans but that he owns every b & s lp and ep and that we get into spirited arguments over the nature of twee. and that he raps about things like being an office temp. love to all. -- kyla __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Great stuff seeking new owners in Yahoo! Auctions! http://auctions.yahoo.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+