haps any language. It's magic. Everytime I have made an emphatic
pronouncement invoking the word never, whatever follows that I
don't want to happen happens. Never has made a fool of me many
times. The first time I remember noticing the powerful effect of
this word I was a student at Indian school. My best friend, Belinda
Gonzalez, and I were filling out our schedules for spring semester.
She was Blackfeet, a voice major from Yakima, Washington. I was
a painting major and checking out times for painting and drawing
courses. She suggested I sign up for drama class with her. I said
no, I will never get on a stage. Despite my initial protest I did sign
up for drama class and soon was performing in one of the first all-
native drama and dance troupes in the country. Never is that
powerful!
And it doesn't matter when the statement is made, never makes its
cruel spin as it hunts down a dreaded fate. It must be quite attrac-
tive in the epistemological world, a being with dark, luminous eyes,
the physique of a cat. You will get on a stage, or in this case, you
will move to Los Angeles at some point on your journey because
you have just foolishly stated to a circle of friends that Los Angeles
is the last place in the world you would live, you would never live
there because it's smoggy, too much traffic, too many strangers
and besides it's going to fall off into the ocean after one too many
earthquakes, or one too many stupid movies.
So I moved to Los Angeles, into the heart of the beast, just off
Hollywood and Wilcox to an apartment complex harboring a myr-
iad of fools like me, some who probably made the same statement
regarding the possibility of moving to Los Angeles, using that
same word, never. Needless to say I was in shock as a new arrivee,
from a quiet adobe condo near a bird sanctuary in Albuquerque
where the daily music of life was the song of the sun moving across
the sky, doves swinging on the telephone wires and other birds who
considered the Rio Grande river valley a spa for their personal
renewal.
I spoke with the crows before leaving for Los Angeles. They were
the resident storytellers whose strident and insistent voices added
the necessary dissonance for color. They had cousins in California,
and gave me names and addresses, told me to look them up. They
warned me, too, what they had heard about attitude there. And
they were right. Attitude was thick, hung from the would-be's and
has-beens and think-they-ares, so thick that I figured it was the
major source of the smog.
And then there were the beautiful days when the perfume of flowers
was everything and there appeared to be nothing else in the world,
not the violence, the winos breaking bottles in the alley, the Spice
Girls going up Hollywood Boulevard on a double-decker bus with
low-flying helicopters accompanying them. The crows' cousins kept
me company in that sometimes lonely and strange place as they
paced the ledges of the crumbling buildings in my neighborhood.
One of the crows lived two neighborhoods down from me. We lived on
the third floor. He introduced himself to me shortly after I moved
in when we met one day in the hallway. He gallantly took off his
silk hat and bowed, said, "My name is R—, we take care of each
other here." His slick black hair was perfectly groomed, his clothes
shiny with money. Heavy music came through his door, and he had
a steady stream of company, a perpetual party. He was always
polite though the crowd of buyers grew large and raucous. Last I
heard he was evicted for selling drugs, this crow with manners and
a taste for the fine things in life.
I've considered using the power of never by trying for the opposite
effect. For example: I will never win the lottery, or there will never
be peace in this world. It won't work. It never will.
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