Yurt (Turkic) circular tent of felt, skins, etc., on a collapsible wooden framework; widely used in Central Asia

Words to Accompany My Blue Sky Child

WORDS TO ACCOMPANY MY BLUE SKY CHILD

Truly I have had enough difficult hours in my life. Yet at different times, and in different places of my life’s work, I have called myself blessed, for the life I have been granted has been both long and rich. I say long because inside a single skin and a single lifespan, I have been privileged to experience almost everything that humankind—since the time of Adam, or the apes, if you prefer—has had to go through to rise to its present state. I have been a gatherer, hunter, and herder; a school boy, a university student, and a professor; a trade union journalist, a shadow politician, and quite a few more things. Today I am the chieftain of a tribe, a healer, an author, a father and a grandfather. I know how to slaughter sheep and how to hunt marmots with or without weapons. I know how to skin them, cut up their bodies and prepare their meat in different ways; I know how to tan their pelts and how to cut and sew them into different pieces. I know how to cobble, how to do carpentry, roll felt, set up and take down a yurt, shoe horses and break in their young; I know how to milk goats and mares and how to let their milk ferment to kumys and distil it into schnapps; and I know how to support birthing cows as well as women, and much more beyond. During my lifetime, I have lived in an indigenous, feudal, and communist society. Today, I move about the country on horseback, by car, or by plane. With my shaman’s whisk, a truncheon, or a laptop, I alternate between living in the indigenous culture of the post-Socialist Tuvans, the rising tribal capitalism of Mongolia, and the enlightened state monopoly of Western Europe. Finally, my life has been rich because I have always found myself at the focal point of each epoch and have pursued all my tasks and each of my professions with passion.