Time is an Enormous, Long River

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Time is an enormous, long river, and I’m standing in it, just as you’re standing in it. My elders are the tributaries, and everything they thought and every struggle they went through and everything they gave their lives to, and every song they created, and every poem that they laid down flows down to me – and if I take the time to ask, and if I take the time to see, and if I take the time to reach out, I can build that bridge between my world and theirs. I can reach down into that river and take out what I need to get through this world.

Bridges from my time to your time, as my elders from their time to my time. and we all put into the river and we let it go and it flows away from us and away from us until it no longer has our name, our identity. it has its own utility and its own use and people would take what they need and make it part of their lives.

Utah Phillips, Bridges
on The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere with Ani DiFranco

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