Some would say this is a story about failure. Black Elk hints at this idea, suggesting that it is because of his failure, because the visions that were supposed to save his nation came to "a pitiful old man who [could] do nothing" (xxi) that, in the end, "a people's dream died" (xxv). I, however, disagree with this idea. And don't go getting your panty's in a wad thinking that I disagree because I want to disney-fy the story. I'm not saying that Black Elk was succesful. I might even agree that he, in many ways, failed his people. However, when I read this story, I didn't feel like it was about failure.

What I felt, instead, was this deep, aching sense of loss.

It started with Black Elk's description of lamenting, at the beginning of the section. He says that as he wept, he " thought of the days when my relatives, now dead, were living and young, and of Crazy Horse who was our strength and would never come back to help us any more" (xxiii). Loss. I could feel it oozing out of this section, and I kind of imagined him trying to find the words to describe what he felt like at that moment. A lot of this selection, for me, was written in a very matter a fact manner. His sentences lack flowery language, vivid descrptions, Its more the story itself that is vivid, unbelievable, the story itself that gives the words beauty. and here, in thsi section, I felt like he was baring up a little piece of his soul. And it reminded me of when I would go to my grandmothers house in Puerto Rico and we would look at old pictures of my mom and her three brothers. She would always tell these hilarious stories, and my mom would periodically chip in a detail, or (more frequently) assure me that every not-so- honorable story told about her was 100% false. It was hilarious, actually, and one of the best part about visiting. But there was also this sense of loss in the stories, of how together the family was and how spread out they are now, one brother in Florida, another in North Carolina, the last in New Jersey, my mother in Texas, all of them with their own, separate lives, and my grandmother, divorced, living alone with her new husband in a tiny, wooden pink house on a tiny, tropical island. I remember that as I got older, I would get this... this ache, sort of, as we drove away from her house when christmas vacation was over and it was time to head back to the lone star state. I would look back, and she would be standing there on the porch, leaning against the door frame of the house she had finally finished paying off, waving, smiling, and I would ache.

I sort of got this same feeling when I was reading Black Elk Speaks. And I know why it was loss that I saw in this story, Now that I've compared it to my grandmother, I know. I felt that Black Elk, with the death of his peoples dream, was losing his place in the world, and he was going to have to relocate, to find a new place, and the only way he was going to be able to do this was if he confronted what he felt was his failure and transformed it into something that would bring good things to the world, whether they were the good things he was originally aiming for or not. I think that the reason I felt that ache at the end of my visits to my grandmother was because she too, had sort of lost her place in the world. Every parent does, I guess. I feel like when you have kids, they're such a big part of your life that once they leave you have to sort of readjust, figure out what to do with yourself. It's possible I would never have recognized that loss in my grandmother if we hadn't spent so much time looking at the bajillion photo albums lying around her house. But since I'd gotten a sense of what life was like, back when, I sort of understood how she'd had to reinvent herself once they went off to become parents themselves.

Black Elk says that "the Power of the World works in circles" (xxvi), and I do agree. I feel like anyone who's heard the explanation of the circular food that Mufasa gives Simba in The Lion King, with lions turning into grass once they die and being eaten by antelope, can at least aquiece that the circular theory of the world has at least a little bit of merit. But how does this configure into my "loss with life" theory I've described above, with loss being acquired and transformations required throughout life? I've sort of described it in a linear way, it seems.

The first 30 second of so of this is Mufasa's explanation for the circle of life.

Except it's NOT linear. Black Elk lived this story, this line story, from Point A to Point B. And then what did he do? He told the story, he circled around to the beginning so that others would know what had happened to him. And my grandmother? Yes, Points A and B were involved in her life was well. But didn't she also, through the stories she told me, also circle around? Obviously, stories aren't the only things that make life circular. But I feel like they're a big part of the circle. And I also feel like they help point out to us the other parts of life that are circular. When my grandmother would tell stories about my mother as a kid, I was always surprised at how similar she seemed to have been to me, and how now, her parenting style was SO similar to what my grandmothers had been. I dunno. I saw circles in those stories, and I'm pretty sure that as I get older, I'm going to see a lot of circles in my own life.