To Be Humans Again

The salt of the Earth. That is what a man who loved people called us. And it seems to me we have fallen so far from that role it staggers me to imagine how did it happen?

A truly dedicated man who was somehow still playing the role originally assigned to all of us, Salt, who was named Sebatsiao drew pictures of us with a light box which enabled him to see through a lens what most of us cannot or will no longer see to show us to us, that man, taught me something true. It was in watching a documentary of the life of this man and his loyal wife that it was possible. For more than twenty years I have been trying to understand what I saw in an hour or two one day in the studio of a stone carver in Austin. I realized then that the trade of stone mason arose at the time men slaved to build pyramids. But why? I asked myself, would any human being willingly spend their one life in such a way? And no answer came except, well, they did...and the do still.

I have slowly seen that even in the lives of very adventurous humans who go into the unknown regions of reality as brave and lonely explorers at the behest of some calling...or some kick in the pants from behind...which? Both. Depending on what is needed at the moment. Oh, yes, I did not make a complete sentence. So what? I'll continue as of it is perfectly as it should be. Even in those lives, the explorers lives, one finds a point where the trailblazer vanishes into the stone mason chain. Have you seen that? Yet?

The photographing holy man I spoke of earlier became so sick of what he drew with his camera that he could go on no more living at all, unless, he found something else to behold to take him away from the Hell he had displayed so boldly before us. And he did.

Know what that man...one man, who listened to his wife ask, why don't we replant the forest that once was your home and is now a barren wasteland, did? As impossible as the idea seemed to him and others who heard it, they began to replant trees, tiny little plants. In 15 short years it had become a magnificent green forest again. You can go to Brazil today and tour it. Or, search it on the internet with the aid of sat-il-light and look at pictures drawn with the light there that are meant to depict its glory.

The man was restored himself. He who gave so much he almost died lives as whole man, Salt Man. Not just the great forests can be restored, humans!

Johnny Smith,

traveler to this land

longing to be human being

p.s. And the new forest in Brazil? Why, that is no longer owned by Sebatsiao's family that is a dedicated public park.