Leslie Marmon Silko - Ceremony (1977)

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You don't have anything
if you don't have the stories.

Leslie Marmon Silko
Jungle rain had no beginning or end; it grew like foliage from the sky, branching and arching to the earth, sometimes in solid thickets entangling the islands, and, other times, in tendrils of blue mist curling out of coastal clouds. The jungle breathed an eternal green that fevered men until they dripped sweat the way rubbery jungle leaves dripped the monsoon rain.

Leslie Marmon Silko
I will tell you something about stories.... They aren't just entertainment. Don't be fooled. They are all we have, you see, All we have to fight off illness and death.

Leslie Marmon Silko
Here they were, trying to bring back that old feeling, that feeling they belonged to America the way they felt during the war. They blamed themselves for losing the new feeling; they never talked about it, but they blamed themselves just like they blamed themselves for losing the land the white people took.

Leslie Marmon Silko
Then they grow away from the earth then they grow away from the sun then they grow away from the plants and the animals. They see no life. When they look they see only objects. The world is a dead thing for them the trees and the rivers are not alive. the mountains and stones are not alive. The deer and bear are objects. They see no life. They fear. They fear the world. They destroy what they fear. They fear themselves.

Leslie Marmon Silko
But as long as you remember what you have seen, then nothing is gone. As long as you remember, it is part of this story we have together.

Leslie Marmon Silko
He made a story for all of them, a story to give them strength. The words of the story poured out of his mouth as if they had substance, pebbles and stone extending to hold the corporal up...knees from buckling...hands from letting go of the blanket.

Leslie Marmon Silko
For a long time he had been white smoke. He did not realize that until he left the hospital, because white smoke had no consciousness of itself. It faded into the white world of their bed sheets and walls; it was sucked away by the words of doctors who tried to talk to the invisible scattered smoke... They saw his outline but they did not realize it was hollow inside.

Leslie Marmon Silko
Being alive was all right then: he had not breathed like that for a long time.

Leslie Marmon Silko
Distances and days existed in themselves then; they all had a story. They were not barriers. If a person wanted to get to the moon, there was a way; it all depended on whether you knew the directions-exactly which way to go and what to do to get there; it depended on whether you knew the story of how others before you had gone.

Leslie Marmon Silko
The only way to get change is not through the courts or — heaven forbid — the politicians, but through a change of human consciousness and through a change of heart. Only through the arts — music, poetry, dance, painting, writing — can we really reach each other.

Leslie Marmon Silko
As long as the hummingbird had not abandoned the land, somewhere there were still flowers, and they could all go on.

Leslie Marmon Silko