If you read my books, you know my father-in-law and the founder of the New Seminole Busimanolotome Osceola was a Baby Boomer and loved the Broadway "Tribal Rock" musical Hair. In fact he named his daughter after one of the writers-- and had me believing for a very long time that Jerryragni met "Hair" in Muskogee (yes, he was a great "kidder"). His favorite song was part of a group of songs that are heard in the finale. It's called "The Flesh Failures" and summed up for him what was wrong with America. Plus, you could dance to it in the swamp which was very important to him and us. We did it many times between giant cypress trees, looking for the most part just like those who performed it on stage since we were and are a cockamamie collection of hippies and Seminoles. Here are the lyrics:

We starve-look at one another
Short of breath
Walking proudly in our winter coats
Wearing smells from laboratories
Facing a dying nation
Of moving paper fantasy
Listening for the new told lies
With supreme visions of lonely tunes

Somewhere inside something
There is a rush of 
Greatness, who knows what stands in front of
Our lives? I fashion my future
On films in space
Silence tells me secretly
Everything
Everything

The song then segues into the upbeat hit song  Let the Sunshine In. Here's a version by Jennifer Warnes I've been listening too lately. Enjoy on this Earth Day. Make Earth Day Every Day. 

From a kid's  taunting rhyme to Whitman's sublime choice of words to describe his life in the world. All of that came rushing back to me when I saw that picture above, reminding me of my time with Nokosee up in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g (and other things-- and if you read my books, you know what I'm talking about). The picture-- from a recent post on Brain Pickings-- spoke to me of that wonderful, unforgettable time Nokosee and I lived in the Everglades. At first, as a city girl, the silence-- aside from the mosquitoes-- was the hardest thing to get used to. I had doubts about making it in what I use to think of as "bumfuck nowhere." That all changed after I saw the stars above me for the first time without any interference from city lights. Until that moment when I was up in a gumbo limbo with Nokosee and looked up at his insistence, I had no idea what was going on above me and what I had been missing all my life. It was a wildly thrown veil of stars across the night sky.  That picture above by Margaret C. Cook from a 1913 edition of Leaves of Grass brought all the magic back because that is truly how I felt in Nokosee's arms: taken away as if on a cloud. 

As for that childish rhyme, it all came true except for the last part: our baby Haalie came in a bithlo.

I love Pow Wow dancing. And I know it's a spiritual thing for Native American tribes which is cool. But the New Seminole do it because it's fun. Especially once a year at Ultra Fest in downtown Miami. There was a time however when I danced with Nokosee many times under a full moon in the deep Everglades at one of our secret hammock camps. Camp Disco had its own disco ball and if you've read any of my books you know how we got electricity to power it, the lights, and the music.  Ah, those were the days and nights.

That picture of me and Nokosee was taken on our wedding night at Camp Disco.