Saving The Indigenous Soul

An Interview With Martín Prechtel

The Mayans say that the other world sings us into being. We are its song. We’re made of sound, and as the sound passes through the sieve between this world and the other world, it takes the shape of birds, grass, tables — all these things are made of sound. Human beings, with our own sounds, can feed the other world in return, to fatten those in the other world up, so they can continue to sing.

Of Coyotes And Conversations

On the way to the chopping block, I picked up the hatchet. I laid him down, and he stretched out his neck. I swung the hatchet, but alas, not hard enough. He was wounded. His eyes caught mine, and I will never forget that look. They were soft, like a lover’s, and they said, “This hurts. Get it over with.” I swung again, and he was dead.

The Table

In a snap, the man folded the legs under the table and handed it to me. “It’s yours,” he said with such obvious satisfaction that I couldn’t tell him I didn’t want it.

Mezuzah

When I was thirteen, my mother gave me a mezuzah, a tiny piece of parchment inscribed with a Jewish prayer and enclosed in a small case. Though traditionally attached to the front door post of Jewish homes, it can also be worn around the neck.

When I Get To Key West

In prison, despite the stereotypes, I am not raped by a gang of women with a toilet plunger; no muscled-up stud with tattooed tits claims me for her “wife”; no one corners me in the laundry room and beats the crap out of me.

Photographs By Karen Tweedy-Holmes

After a lifetime of observing, photographing, and contemplating the behavior of many kinds of animals, domesticated, wild, and captive, I haven’t a shred of a doubt that they entertain thoughts, express feelings, and possess spirit or soul, and that each one is unique.

Lemons

The Kiss

1981: Sprite Lost, Sprite Found