quote unquote [how to live at the end of our civilization]

 Everybody’s going to burn,” Mabel said. “That’s what I see now.” She was looking at the very dry, late September hills near Highway 80, just east of Fairfield. We were on our way back to the Rumsey Wintun Reservation, where Mabel was living at the time, after she’d given a talk to several students and faculty at Stanford University about her doctoring and basket-weaving. It was late in the day, early evening, and the thick autumn light had turned the hills ocher red. The ocher red color no doubt called up her Dream. She’d talked a lot about her Dream lately, and I knew enough to know what she was referencing: her vision of what would happen near the end of the world as we know it. “‘Everything’s going to go dry’, Spirit said. ‘No water going to be anywhere.’” “What can we do?” I asked. “How do we live?” Mabel began laughing, chuckling to herself out loud. “That’s cute,” she said, then, mocking me, repeated, “What do we do now? How do we live?” I was used to her making fun of me, of my countless questions — as used as I was to her talk of Dreaming. “No, seriously,” I countered. “If the world’s going to dry up and burn, what do we do?” She turned to me, took a moment to make sure she had my attention, then she answered, plainly, “You live the best way you know how, what else?”

--greg sarris [mabel mckay: weaving the dream (quoted by john b-r in an email)]