Green Grass Running Water - Thomas King

People are complicated. They're very funny and confusing and all other sorts of things I suppose. I think that is what usually brings me most down to earth more than anything else:

A chance encounter at a point of unique identity.

I realize that no one is quite sure what they're doing and why except for the point that its to make it through the day and to do things as they know how. Creatures of happenstance, elements of style.

And so in this I think stories and narratives rely on our experiences and the vastness of them to relay important understandings of our fellow personhood to each other. Not that these are sole truths or ultimate foundations to base all identities upon but that in ourselves we find ourselves. In others we find ourselves too.

I have a prominent memory of a friend telling me they often think of a thing I said where we describe things only by existing things we're familiar with. I don't remember saying that but I sure do believe everything is referential, everything is connected, everything is informed by a chance encounter. We know what we know and will know what we will know. We will find the gaps in the language and associate their fillings with what we can.

Now, to fill a gap, Green Grass Running Water is something I was meant to read in college in a post-colonial literature class, and something I regretted an inability to read at the time. And so, in that guilt, I finally bought a copy a few years back now and it has sat on my shelf, hoping I can pull my shit together finally, 6 or so years late.

A more appropriate introduction would take into account the primary narrative device of the book, that of  varying indigenous origin stories riddled with reference to popular culture, real history, and a certain other big Guy's take on things. Or, less playfully, the Christian patriarchal white supremacist genocidal nature of the colonization of the Americas that is ongoing to this day. The book is both funny and playful and heartbreaking. My only comment that I would have to add is on its ending and I won't bother since I know that we should probably just stick with telling it right this next time.

In the middle of reading this I watched the following movies with some shared themes that I'd like to recommend. None of it was planned but sometimes you read slow/seek those similar things to broaden your scope (and watch a lot of movies):

• Once Were Warriors
• Charlie's Country
• Black Girl
• La Llorona