"Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses" by Luis Alberto Urrea

I was trying to select a quote from this piece that I really enjoyed, and it was hard narrowing down to a page. In the end, I couldn't avoid writing the whole paragraph. There is so much "stuff" there. Urrea's use of details is exemplary. There is a couple pages of information, emotions, and inferences in that paragraph alone. He is drawing you a picture, and as we all know, a picture is worth a thousand words. Although this quote has not much to do with my entry to do, I thought I'd share it.

"Night on the reservation is like night nowhere else. They say flying saucers visit the Sioux land. Flying saucers and ghosts. When you're out here, there's a blackness that's deeper than black. The stars look like spilled sugar. you can hear the grass sometimes like water. Like somebody whispering. And the weird sounds of the night animals. Anything could happen. You get scared, and it's for a reason that hides behind the other reasons behind the silence, and the coyotes, and the dogs barking, and the eeries voice of the owl. It's that 'this is not your land. This is their land. And you don't belong.A thousand slaughtered warriors ride around your camp, and you think it's the breeze. And they wonder why you're here."

This story is another example of love breaking boundaries. Joni's and her husbands love broke their cultural divide that left them on opposite sides of continually conflicting people. Her husband lay outside their reservation. He lay in the prejudiced towns that surrounded the reservation. Those that thought themselves as cowboys rounding up these savages. She lay on the inside. Those that kept with the old ways. Those that from the moment they were born, had a disadvantage. Nevertheless, they fell in love. Love, the universal theme (along with loss of innocence as Mr. Meguerian pointed out) comes up again.. probably because Ms. Marohn gave us this story because it related with Phaedrus, but still. They go through the stages of love, the 'divine madness' . At first, they are in puppy love. He points out how everything is funny. They are wild for each other, and they elope, against the wishes of basically everyone except the reader. Then, they move to California. She gives up her people, her life, to be with him. What a deep love it must have been. Their souls must have been growing wings pretty fast. Yet somehow that light dims. Joni becomes an alcoholic, and dies in a car crash. Pretty sad ending to what seemed like a great romance.What happened? I can't tell you for sure, but I can say she partly become an alcoholic because of another love, the love for her people. She longed for South Dakota. She looked with sorrow upon the palm trees, completely understandable. I guess her soul was confused. She needed both her loves to let her grow her wings (cliche). I guess we all need a lot of things to grow. We all need different things to get by. Whereas, Ms. Marohn survives on fruity bunnies and Kambucha, I may survive on steak and Dole Juice (Orange Mango Peach, it's the best), although not together. That's just beverages and entrees alone, don't forget dessert.