It's impossible to write about Native life without humor-that's how people maintain sanity.

I stood there in the shadowed doorway thinking with my tears. Yes, tears can be thoughts, why not?

Veils of love which was only hate petrified by longing--that was me.

Coming down off the trail, I am lost in my own thoughts and unprepared when a bear chugs across the path just before it gives out on the gravel road. I am so distracted that I keep walking towards the bear. I only stop when it rears, stands on hind legs, and stares at me, sensitive nose pressed into the air, weak eyes searching. I have never been this close to a wild bear before, but I am not frightened. There is no menace in its stance; it is not even curious. The bear seems to know who or what I am. The bear is not impressed.

Add there was that moment when my mother and father walked in the door disguised as old people. I thought the miles in the car had bent them, dulled their eyes, even grayed and whitened their hair and caused their hands and voices to tremble. At the same time, I found, as I rose form the chair, I'd gotten old along with them.

Love won't be tampered with, love won't go away. Push it to one side and it creeps to the other.

If life's a joke, then suicide's a bad punch line.