July 4th continues, some ranting then Sun worship

I get to this place, and I just wanna tear at myself with a kitchen fork -- tear all the flesh off my bones that I may finally feel the breeze.

****

It's like a shit I can't take -- except I'm the shit & I'm the rectum & muscles trying all at once.

****

The Sun just broke through the clouds and toward my face, and I smiled and laughed, and tomorrow this will all be nothing.

****

I'm falling in love with the Sun. I've always been in love with it -- as a kid, barrel-chested & spindly-armed, my olive limbs dangling, I would hunch over at the beach, digging sand crabs. I would feel my back turning brown, I would feel the touch of the Sun. It warmed my chest and face, it sank in, and made me feel better. I've always been in love with the Sun.

July 4 writing practice continues... weather and the virutes of solipsism

The storm clouds are lifting outside -- some light brilliant against a grey background. The wind music has started up again.

I can't help feeling my moods connected deeply with the weather. Sometimes it seems like my moods create the weather -- but the scientist in me believes vice-versa. that my moods are reflected in the weather, and that when it changes, so do my insides. Oh, for the summer to finally arrive and unhinge me from myself.

****

I have such an urge to be torn asunder. I want nothing left, only the void, and my crystal-clear body consciousness.

****

I'm in no position to talk about anything but myself. If I become slightly detached at this point, I still only come to myself honestly as subject - matter. I cannot, at this point, speak honestly any other way.

I rely heavily on Kabir, "In his twenties, Kabir was very concerned with Kabir."

Fucking great -- because I am. The cult of the I -- what am I anyway -- what is hiding under my grandmother's sunday skirt. Where are my hobgoblins, those beautifully unruly bullish parts of my personality that run unchecked through my darkest sleeps. I want to meet them -- not in my own film, either.

I came up here to test my sanity, amongst other things. To "come up against it" as it were. It surprises me when it happens. Normally am amplification of my Judge's Voice "You are insincere, you are a faker, you cannot even begin to realize the beauty in a flower, much less commune with it." i don't know where this voice came from, or what it's doing here, or what it's afraid of, but I'm tired of it, and instead of killing *myself* -- I might attack it instead. I don't want to be understanding, it isn't. I want it gone -- if that means understood & assimilated (psychological birdsong & flowers) then fine. Let's Do It!!!

Whatever it is that's keeping me from flying into the glare of that lake in the distance & going through that light into a fullness and voice so far incomprehensible to me; what ever keeps me from flying through the glare and into the voice -- universe -- reality beyond. I want to deal with. Kill, destroy, love, understand, heal, nurture -- I don't care, I am tired of not living. Now.

****

July 4th, some sky, some religion, much writing exercise

The clouds cleared for a minute, and to my West there are greyish, pale Angel's Slides coming down out of the sky. "When I was young we were told to be extra good when we saw those, because angels come down 'em from heaven."

Well, I'm extra Me -- whether that's good or not I'll leave to a higher count.

****

I can't seem to shake my Judeo-Christian - Protestant & mostly Catholic foundations. When I reach down there to pull them out, it'd be like cutting off my feet, or pulling the bottom grapefruit out of a pile. They'd all fall. I'd fall. I might have to start at the top & skim & remove & edit and release until I am there, and nothing that I am is resting on those Roman Catholic bricks -- and then throw them out into the river.

****

I feel like sitting here writing about how much I wanna write. It's none of the main things I think about anyway. It's not really an altruistic purpose, either. It's pretty narcissistic & self-centered. I want to see someone read something I wrote, see their faces soften or harden, and maybe a glint of recognition or humor as they catch some subtle cosmic joke in it all, and had it back to me saying "that's really good -- I really enjoyed it" with a boyish and youthful naive charm. I want to be the one who "knows." I want to be the teacher, the knower, the kind-of outsider who has relevant observations. I am embarrassed of this fact, and it stifles my writing.

It's good to read people who are full of themselves, like Bukowski or Miller. There's good stuff in there, and they know it. it might not be prophetic, or universal, or even literature -- but there's some good stuff in there. I want to participate. I want to be a writer -- one who'se read. One who people enjoy. I hypothetically know that can't be my motivation -- and it might not be -- its just a wish.

Maybe I need to be struck down; lightning, plague killing off my whole family, interned in a concentration camp, lose my legs; before I can understand. Maybe I need to be a latin-american mother of 6 who has had a succession of alcoholic boyfriends who beat her & her children and who is now living in a hovel outside town and working in a rich person's house as a maid, and pretends to be stupid so they aren't threatened, whose children are going toward gangs before her very eyes -- off looking for fathers amongst their peers -- and who knows they could be wiped out any day, if not by another kid their own age, then by a cop, or a store owner who won't spend the night in jail, much less years. Maybe then I'd understand what it is to be human.

Maybe this driving force that haunts me always, whispering "faker," "charlatan," "impotent half-assed little white kid" into my ear would stand at attention and take my orders -- go to bed. Shut up. Sit down. You are nothing now.

Images of me pulling & tearing and birthing out of a reptilian chrysalis of complacency & politeness reign over the mountain landscape about; superimpose it and pull me back to the page -- pen dancing.

Normally, I would stop there but I won't today.

[to be continued]

July 4 still, musings and on reading and Arthur Miller

There's something to being alone up here, a young writer, reading. An author, amongst all this solitude and silence, can pluck loudly strings that send you, as a writer, flying. I was confident with Snyder, and now manic and self-absorbed with Miller.

I was envisioning taking speed-typing classes, so I could keep up with my thoughts, so I could let the original flow flow -- so I could be hyper. Instead, I just eat lots of food to slow down the flood, and watch a pen slowly sweep up after the last tracings of dust in which a party had ensued but you could only guess at it. There will be no typewriters up here -- I'll have to find a way to send all that energy into little sentences, or to somehow hold them in stasis as my slow mule of a hand plods silently along and I pick up the gems left on the road by my leprechaun mind.

July 4, dream, aspirations, Rilke

Woke my self up because I was licking the rough edge of my quilt, dreaming I was licking a beautiful woman's ear.

*****

I read 1950's era Snyder, and am so encouraged. "We might just make it -- maybe there is a way to live as my blood and psyche has always called me to, maybe I will be happy and healthy ("I" being "all")."

It's just so encouraging. Easy to envision myself living in a tribe/group collective, farming and gathering, and taking responsibility, writing poetry because it's important to write poetry -- the people writing for what's next. Feathers & furs and new information too.

****

Thoughts of college & schools welling up. Frankly, the perks of my privilege -- I'm white American for crissakes, even male. What does this get me? Right now, it gets me less "work" and more Work. Rolling & dancing & lavishing myself in Time, afforded me by this position.

Time out of the financial system -- privileged time -- time to think & find mentors and synthesize where nothing has existed before. I intend to revel in this, as I am now. I intend to lick up and take as far as I can every little opportunity (privilege or no) life affords me. I have done this, as long as it serves my needs and desires. The needs of growth and expansion, learning to support that expansion and make it communicable.

Help myself so much that it naturally helps everyone. Love and accept myself completely always as my practice.

"Take my practiced powers and stretch them out until they span the chasm between two contradictions ... For the god wants to know himself in you." -- Rilke, trans. by Stephen Mitchell

[this book, linked through the text or in the sidebar, deserves special mention. It's one of those books that can change your life, honestly. Near the time I spent at the lookout, I had it physically on my person for almost a full year. It's a beautiful translation (the folks who think Bly did a better job can jump in a creek)]

July 3rd, dream, quotes

Dreampt of a menege troi, 2 women, soft-skinned & poets both. One reading poetry (looked like Joy Harjo's work on the Southwest), the other sitting above me. It was wonderful -- I woke up happy.

"I think it would be misleading to call particles the entities involved in the most primitive events of the theory (quantum topology) because they don't move in space and time, they don't carry mass, they don't have charge, they don't have energy in the usual sense of the word.

Question: So what is it that makes events at that level?
Answer: Who are the dancers and who the dance? They have no attributes other than the dance.
Question: What is "they?"
Answer: The things that dance, the dancers. My God; we're back to the title of the book."

--Finklelstein quoted in The Dancing Wu Li Masters p. 332

"... Where is the fiddler and where is the dance? [The Judge]"
"I guess you can tell me." [The Kid]

"I tell you this. As war becomes dishonored and its nobility called into question those honorable men who recognize the sanctity of blood will become excluded from the dance, which is the warrior's right, and thereby will the dance become a false dance and the dancers false dancers. And yet there will be one who is a true dancer and can you guess that might be?"
"You ain't worth nothin."
"You speak truer than you know. But I will tell you. Only that man who has offered up himself entire to the blood of war, who has been to the floor of the pit and seen horor in the round and learned at least that it speaks to his inmost heart, only that man can dance."

-- Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy (no page # written down)

The peyote ceremony -- my night of Dark. Self-acceptance afterward.

"You came forward, he said, to take part in a work. But you were a witness against yourself. You sat in judgement on your own deeds. You put your own allowances before the judgements of history and you broke with the body of which you were pledged a part and poisoned it in all it's enterprise."

-- Blood Meridian, Judge Scene

I seem to be doing a good job of running away up here. I don't go down out of the tower much, I read, and think, and just *sit* here. I have been socked in pretty good too. ["socked in" refers to being clouded in, it's like being in a dead calm, and you can't see anything, sometimes not even the base of the 50 ft. tower. The lookout can't watch for fires, but can still work as a radio relay so they keep them up in the tower as long as they can stand it. Many don't last 3 days, I lasted 30 consecutive days fogged in. Many bets made and lost in the ranger station when I pulled off that new record] When the weather warms up, I might be out more. I don't know that, though. I mean, I read up here when it cheers up, too. Maybe I'm supposed to read, maybe I'm not a nature poet, or fanatic, or shaman -- maybe it's just the people I respect are. I don't believe my transcendent faculties are non-existent, just maybe atrophied. Who the fuck knows anyway.

These people around me -- even the radio tech -- he said "Oh, I couldn't sit inside and read -- not on a good day, anyway." And Russ, "I didn't get as much reading done as I'd hoped -- I was too busy investigating the landscape." If I know him -- he'd be out in the wind naked right now having some transcendent experience, realizing God in a cut on his leg from a beargrass frond. But I sit here and write, and theorize. I spend all my time in the city socializing, running around; and now that I'm out in a beautiful setting, I read. What a dick.

July 2, impending boss visit

Grey day. It's noon, and I've read more Dancing Wu Li Masters, and took a nap. I dreampt I was fishing on the coast -- it looked like somewhere around San Simeone. I caught a barracuda, and had a running commentary about barracudas going in my head as I reeled it in, and lifted it into the air by the gills. It turned slowly into a mackrel.

My boss today said he was going to come out tomorrow to "talk with me about a few things." My mind went wild! Paranoid, schizoid ponderings as to a possible list of things I could have done wrong, that he wouldn't talk about on the radio.

My mind raced: Somehow, my thought life and "real life" transposed and I told a bunch of people that I was hunting in the Bull Run with my slingshot; I left a gate open last night when escorting the FCC camp crew home, that someone was scanning channel 3 when I was talking to the bus, and I said something not PC and they called and harassed him; or the FCC caught the one "fuck" that slipped out of my lips over the radio; or that one of the bosses picked up on all the banter on channel 3 which is supposed to also be official business only even though it as late at night. That someone saw my bus enter road 10 late and night and reported me; that all my relays I've been doing on the radio are inappropriate and I need to be more professional; that I'm fired (a reason I haven't thought of yet; that someone was listening to channel 3 late last night, and I said something about the local people that they didn't like). (restatement -- but could be severe; that I wasn't supposed to talk to the owl crews, and that when I spotted that truck the other night I shouldn't've said anything -- (a distinct possibility); that when the ranger heard me talking about the badness of burning plastics, he went to T [the supervisor] and told him my political views were immature & inappropriate to a forest-service employee; that when I told that ranger about my hike up the butte, he told the supervisor and it wasn't OK for me to be trudging around like that; that since I was in a politically-sensitive zone, they'd been opening my mail and found out that I am hunting grouse; that I don't need to offer radio assistance to every person needing a relay, and that it is unprofessional; that there's something I said or did that offended someone or was unprofessional or inappropriate to the forest service or my position in it, and it was or wasn't on the radio, and that I'm in trouble, and must lose my position here -- and that I lose his respect in some way -- that's it.

I'm afraid of losing his respect in some way. I'm afraid he'll be disappointed in me for some reason. I'm not getting fired -- I'm not really scared of this, it's a smoke screen for me being afraid of disappointing some supervisor and having him "just live with it" but always thing lower of me, and I won't be privileged or "good" in his eyes after this. That's what I'm worried about. Nothing else. I'll just breathe, drink some tea, and relax -- how bout that.

What if -- rant: Question for a 2-year-old

What if you were sitting at the base of a mountain and it meant nothing to you. What if the beauty didn't. What if you just sat there, empty, and the mountain did, too, and there was no hum between the two, to , too.

What if you were sitting amongst it and it wasn't a Chinese landscape painting replete with geomantic implication? What if the wind were just cold, and the clouds were just wet, and you didn't even want to be out in it? What about that?

What if, when you walked around amongst the shrubs and grasses, they were just shrubs and grasses, and you couldn't hear their singing, or their heartbeat. What if they bothered you?

And the only thing that shook you was lightning, or death?

What then?

What if climbing endlessly on an escalator going down, in a mall, towards the phosphorescent lights, over babies and puppies and wives, and what if you never reached the white linen suit at the top? You were bloodied anyhow -- it would stain through.

What if all this struggling in the hooked nets pulling at your flesh, the thorns and places were just that? What if this was your gift, a plain of broken glass to distill happiness from; no shaman to save you in this land of grey suits and yellow ties. What if?

And you never deserved it, and even that didn't matter?

*****

What if that hole in your stomach, that kitchen-drain, black-hole thing that you fill with thick foods; what if they didn't work -- and it just kept sucking and howling and didn't let up? Would you pull your hair? Would you walk in the sunlight on sidewalks amongst the people? Would you?

What if, what if there are no answers -- never were, and this was all just made up? Like little kids in a sandpit in kindergarten digging to China for fun? A candy-cane -beamed structure to hold you above. What then?

What if this really was a place where a stranger could stab you in the back for no reason? Along an alleyway, after dancing, and drinking; and forgetting. What -- what if it was dark out, and the gruel dribbling down the middle of the alleyway didn't smell so good, and everyone else had walked ahead, and you were alone amongst the garbage bags, bleeding, and staring at the orange reflections of the streetlights dimpled in pools on the street.

This two-year-old in line in font of me in the grocery store just stared back -- the begged-for bag of candies in its brittle orange cellophane hanging from his forgotten fingers, eyes wide and staring.

He never did answer me.

Sunday, AM -- Grey still, Wu Li Masters

I'm reading the Dancing Wu Li Masters, by Gary Zukaf, and my first batch of honey-meade/longevity tea is out. [Kombucha tea] It is vinegary, my stomach is hot with it -- and I've almost got indigestion. I'm a little high -- either from the tea or the book, or both (probably both).

************

There's nothing here but a brick,
and a bone.
A bone on dog's
breath.
A street where I've never been,
and maybe some houses.

In the mornings,
when I unwrap my
fingers and eyes --
inspect the wounds --
sort the stones, and stand -- soft-boned
and new.

When the grey approaches
this butte like a lid.
The wide gets close,
and the glade becomes
moor.
Howling waste.

Plunged or lifted I don't
know. I can't figure.
Up or down -- in the
Catholic's dance. Is this
up,
or
Down.

You can't be here,
anymore than I am.
This frame,
presented,
can set you down and
gargle your throat for you,
medicinal syrup for your
virus.

But you can't be here.

short fiction -- bear dreams

He sat at the plywood-topped desk, scribbling a letter to a far-off and dry-hot state. Outside, the wind howled and gusted -- causing the little cabin to creak and gargle like the digestion of some wood creature. When the pale-luminous grey sheen outside broke, and patches of cloud scurried past, ghosts grey-cloud and errant, he could fairly see the field of rhododendron and humped grey-yellow beargrass below. The Butte had transformed into some howling waste, a moor, or tundra inviting all manner of sounds and sights previously invisible.

Moments later, clad in wool from head to leather-booted toe, the boy stood amongst the waist-high rhodies -- perfectly heather-like if it weren't for their gaudy clusters of pink flowers, lacy and showy as taffeta prom dresses. He stood on a dark-grey lichen-covered rock at the edge of the precipice, watching the mixing clouds roil in the talus bowl below. Wandering the game trails, he felt he could be anyplace -- anytime. The trees stood witness, stunted and limbless to the windward side.

Soon, he was loping and grunting down a road spur, wide arms apelike. Laughing, suddenly heard a muffled snap under leather and wool, way down at his left ankle. He fell, almost theatric, and howled his plight to the wind, rocking and cluthing at his ankle as the world tipped left to right like a view out a ship's porthole. But already, the ankle warmed and grew more control, and soon he was limping down the potholed red-dirt and gravel road -- bound for water.

He dropped easily into the small pit alongside the road where stones had been carefully stacked, sometime in the past, to catch a slow trickle of a spring coming out of the rock. He dropped to his hands and drank, no bow of reverence or thanks, as on other days. Only ears, sharp for the footsteps of some other carnivore, taking advantage of his vulnerable position.

He stood, hands hanging about his chest and jowls loose and dripping. Jumping out of the pit, he loped around the field looking for rotted logs to tear apart, the wind howled and circled, birds flitted from branch to branch -- keeping an eye on this strange newcomer.

Bleached white and already slumping into the earth like a fallen cake, he found a log. He kicked at it with the back of his foot, and it fell over easily, revealed the redwood-colored pulp beneath -- all run through with mazed coursings of grubs and carpenter ants. He fell to it with his gloved hands, rotted wood flinging into the air behind him. Lord knows what would have happened had he actually found grubs.

He looked quickly up. A sound vaguely like crunching gravel grabbed his ear. Crouching, he listened into the lukewarmm wind -- but nothing. He shambled on, looking for a place to sleep.

Some part of his humanity crept back in, synthesizing sounds out of the random chorus of the storm -- old men chanting, startled geese, trucks.

Disconcerted, he found a hollow in the leeward side of a low huckleberry bush and laid down. He pulled his cap over his ears and curled up -- marveling at the comfort.

Soon, the crisp flutter of little wings arrived behind him -- the type of sound that one catches only when the birds are too close to turn your head; eyes open, a smile on his lips, he tried to see the little visitor through the top of his head. It's little clawed feet created a ruckus in the dried leaves and grass. It fluttered off, soon to be followed by another curiosity seeker -- winged lilliputians inspecting their unconscious Gulliver. His heart warmed as he heard them gossiping on the branch of a nearby pine -- discussing the woolen anomaly. He drifted into an easy sleep.

Hearing something sharp -- he sat up quickly -- looking out over the bushes and stumps toward the road. He couldn't put his finger on it, but the presence still was; and he set his senses tight.

Suddenly a whack to the back of his head, as talons grabbed the stocking cap from his head, silent wings flapping as the sharp claws caught briefly in the tough thin skin to the back of his scalp. Before he knew it he'd jumped to his feet and swatted the cap out of the air, like a bobcat; throwing the large owl to the ground and breaking its spine. He stared, senseless. It didn't move. Kneeling, he stroked the downy-soft breast feathers and wondered at this calamity.

An image appeared of him, back in the tower and calm, winding together the last weavings of a fan of dun-grey feathers, by the light of a lantern.

Shuddering to, a huge fear of Bear waking him, he found him self again curled at the base of the bushes -- wind passing over him and only slightly tosseling the bangs of his forehead. Sad, he listened to the wind and wondered at himself.

By the time the first drop of rain touched his face, he was almost ready to go back. He stood, suddenly large against the landscape -- the bushes that were a forest to him were now a plain. Walking clumsily back to the wooden cross-hatchings supporting the tower he couldn't bring himself to mount the stairs. He grabbed a beam and hefted himself up -- the wind only occasionally catching him vulnerable and making him wonder why he never took this route before. 4 stories up -- the catwalk loomed like a prison wall above him. He conceded, and jumped carefully onto the penultimate landing of the stairwell, mounting the last steps, he felt the Bear sticking to his bones -- warm and secure inside his blood. It didn't slip away as he opened the door and entered the warmed air of the cabin.

Fri. 20th June

This morning, I awoke with Marley's "Exodus" turning immaculately in my mind.

Every day has a different flavor and this morning's Tai Chi and Meditation were no exception. I allowed myself to fall 3 times during a right-leg kick, to relax myself enough to finally pull it off without pulling my center of gravity off to my hindside.

The meditation was good and long, but I found myself spending most of my time strategizing letters to Prescott college, or thinking Evergreen might be an option, etc. I didn't clear up as much as yesterday -- if that can be quantitatively discussed.

My water is ready. One minute.

****

I'm beginning to really love oats.

So, my walk back was eventful. I slowly walked, tugging at a rusted eyebolt sticking out of the ground (thinking of P.B. and how he loved things-rusted). It was set in concrete.

I stopped walking to roll up the right pant-leg of my gie -- and there was a yellow, triangular arachnid on it. I at first thought it was a huge tick, for it had a bloated triangular body, and all its legs were gathered up around its tiny head. But the legs, long and nimble, gave it away as a Crab Spider. It was gorgeous. It had an incredibly luminous-soft lemon-yellow body, with a tiny tangerine-colored pinstripe around it's abdomen. I gathered it up in my hands, heading for the nearest Beargrass flower cluster I could find. It was the closest color I could see in the surrounding landscape that would afford the spider camouflage.

It jumped out of my hand and scrambled into the grass.

Now, I'm here with a ready-to-eat bowl of oatmeal to my left. Goodbye for now.

****

"I think nothing is of any value in books excepting the transcendental and extraordinary. If a man is inflamed and carried away by his thought, to the degree that he forgets the authors and public and heeds only his one dream which holds him like an insanity, let me read his [poem], and you may have all the arguments and histories and criticism."

---"The Poet" in Complete Writings p. 248, William Everson

Inevitable romance fiction

[The physical position of Hickman Butte lookout makes it an excellent radio relay for folks working within the deep valleys surrounding Mt. Hood. Many wildlife biology teams used me in the capacity of relay as they did their work, because even when they were one valley away from each other, they had no line-of-sight, and thus no radio contact. In the process of doing this work, I inevitably noticed at least one pretty female voice, this fiction proceeded from there. Pseudonyms are being used, because real last names were used in the original piece.]

"Good Morning," he said, stepping gingerly by her sleeping form, a plastic cup in his hand.

She looked up, incredulous, as he opened the door and walked out onto the catwalk. She watched, transfixed, as he drank a bit of water, swished it, and spit it out over the handrail. It was a clear morning and she could see Mount Hood glorious to the East.

She was laying on a thick foam mattress covered with a ragged patchwork quilt that showed the flannel it was sewn onto in places where quilting was missing. Her pack and boots were stowed neatly in the corner by the door, and she was sleeping in her sleeping bag.

"Good night's sleep?"

"Yes, -- but... who are you?" There was something familiar about him, but she couldn't put her finger on it. Her forehead crinkled as she tried.

"My name is B.P., and your is Ms. Littlepine," he said as if it were a joke.

"That's it, your voice. You're Hickman Butte." Her face relaxed a bit at this recognition, but started gathering again at the edges when she started to recognize where she was.

"Is this Hickman Butte?"

"Yep."

Her mind raced. She remembered hiking a ridgeline the night before. They'd checked station 36, and got no response. She was tired, and the pack was pulling tight at her shoulders. She had stopped to adjust her pack when... when what... did she fall asleep?

"--you would might want a more comfortable -- Littlepine? You there?" He waved his hand in front of her face.

"So, I thought I'd invite you up finally. Our conversations had gone so well."

"But -- won't they be worried -- the crew. They don't know where I am."

"They're not worried. They know where you are."

A hiss of steam caught their attention, and he moved quickly over to the little propane camp stove, turning off the burner under a percolator-top coffee pot.

"Some tea? I don't have many kinds," he was pulling boxes of tea out from under a small cabinet, "but, well let's see."

"Wait, wait. Wait one minute. How did I get here?" she was starting to think something badly awry, but only in a modern 20-th century kinda way.

"Did you drug me?"

"Hell no!"

"Well, how did you get me up here? Why don't I remember it?"

"Well, I have this theory and it's kinda hard to explain." He was looking down, his face revealing both uncertainty and guilt. "I think I dreamed you here."

"Don't give me that --"

"Wait, wait. Let me finish. You see, over the past few weeks, I've gotten very interested -- no that's not it. Intrigued by you. Our little nightly conversations have been very nice. I've enjoyed them. I started pondering what you were like -- what you looked like. Then I had this dream -- last night, I dreamed that you came here. I dreamed that you were thinking about me at the same moment, and you came here.

So anyways, I woke up and here you were. I wasn't surprised in a way, the dream was very real. Dreams have been slippery for me lately anyway -- it's been harder and harder to tell the difference -- So there you were, sleeping peacefully, looking very nearly the way I expected you to look.

Don't be mad. How could I have anticipated this? I never expected this, it's nice I admit, but.." He flushed and turned to his tea making. "I mean it, if I had known it was a possibility, I guess..."

She was silent. Raised on one elbow, the sunlight coming in over the mountain's shoulder lit up her sandy-blond hair, luminescent. She looked down, breathed out a deep sigh.

"We didn't ---"

"NO, no -- of course not."

Now they both flushed. A childish air overtook the room, and neither would make eye contact. He handed her a plastic coffee cup steaming with tea.

"It's black, I didn't know if you did caffeine or not."

"It's fine, thanks." She seemed to ponder the situation a moment. "So -- you have the day off?"

*************

No date -- Snyder poetry

[There is first a copy of "Tasting the Snow" by Gary Snyder in the journal -- it's from the book The Back Country, and since I'm no good at HTML formatting at the moment I won't slaughter it by trying to set it in text here. Great poem though, read it if you can.]

I broke through something today. Something's cleaned out. It was a good day. I'm washed (action), and clean. Something's cleansed. Thank you, day.

*********

Over on the ridge that joins the butte to my South, the birds are all riled up. Almost like there's something coming up. Yelling, and jumping around. Maybe a bobcat or lynx is making its way up to the butte -- a bear. I'm sure that's what it sounds like when I'm walking around -- clumsy in my hiking boots.

*********

Tonight, lantern out, lying in bed, staring at the moon. I felt my vocation swell within me. I felt a contentment that I was on the path, *my* path. It became evident to me and I smiled. Thank you.

[At this point there is an arrow, pointing to the next page. It's a transcription of Snyder's translation of Miyazawa Kenji's "Moon, Son of Heaven." This is also in The Back Country. The last line is "So -- I -- hail the moon as Emperor Moon, this is not mere personification." Love that line to this day.]

Morning -- on becoming birds and meeting cougars

After doing Tai Chi, the boy settled in on the large chipped gravel helipad at the edge of the butte which had become his ceremonial ground.

He sat, relaxed, pulled his sacrum ("sits down bones") into order, and breathed in earth and heaven, breathed out glowing manifestation. His eyes relaxed on a small bunch of Bear Grass before him, and the Oscillation began.

As fast as the flickering of a fluorescent bulb, his eyes caught two realities. One a fuzzy -- unfocused bed of rock. The other, a lightwire matrix -- criss-crossed with infinite symmetry -- a holographic net holding together all that was. The nanosecond his brain registered this new view of reality, it shut it off. By virtue of his (relatively) calm mind, the vision instantly turned back on after the resistance lifted. Thus, the flickering. Almost too fast to be registered except in hindsight.

The flickering gave everything a translucent quality, and began itself to oscillate. The screen of the viewed reality slowly lifted and fell in with the oscillation rhythmically, as though breathing.

The back was screaming in pain -- having spent the majority of its life maladjusted by incorrect posture -- habitual defensiveness against the world.

He lay down slowly on the rocks, laying his hands to either side, slightly crooked, as though a bird were unconscious, prone, and on its back.

The image struck him, this posture, so birdlike. Birds filled his mind briefly, and a vulture fell from his interior's sky and became him. Then, supine as he was, wings cocked as his arms were, an unidentified hawk. Many raptors fell lightly into his body, becoming him. His chest began to rise with muscle -- loose and strong. A breastbone formed under the hump of his chest to support it. His breast was beautifully feathered with a dun-ivory plumage, specked with dark brown. His face became angular, his forehead low. Eyes large. A beak.

Flipping over on his side, and up onto his talons, he noticed how wings weren't used when siting up. He hopped to the edge of the butte and looked out over the conifer-covered ridgelines below. The beating of a helicopter percussed his insides, even at a great distance. He was warmer than he had ever been, and the wind didn't touch him -- only registering on his breast and neck feathers with a slight ruffling.

He flew. Only a short semi-circle out from the butte -- he felt huge in the sky, he felt how large he was and the butte getting away from him, and he pintailed in the sky and came back.

Stumbling on the gravel, he fell down and shook to -- on his back again. He resumed breathing and laid back down.

A cougar easily loped up over the side of the butte, liquid in the ease of his movements and preternaturally beautiful. It walked, transparent, over to the boy's face from the East, and licked it with a large rough tongue; ethereal, and walked on.

Breathing a hard breath, he rolled over on his side, and sat up slowly. He stood up. He looked around, walked in the Presence, on the benevolence of the Earth softly, picked up his portable radio in its ripstop yellow case, and walked back to the tower.

Night, same day

it's night, and my thoughts are a-shambles. Read a couple of essays of Emerson's on Printing, and his taste (or insistence) on perfection came round. Set me spinning. I've got some real issues there, man.

Failure, and lack of umph is the ticket here. We're always told this isn't a perfect world but I've seen perfection in art. It's not rigid, and this worlds "imperfectness" surrounds it, frames it.

The pieces had a seamlessness about them. Andrew Wyeth's Helga Series -- in person. There were some pieces in there that were seamless.

There was a dance performance. I, embarrassingly enough, can't remember the name. Judy Brown, maybe. There was a relatively simple piece in her show that was seamless.

Exposure to work of that magnitude stirs hurricane winds in me.

My life, ultimately, is my art piece. This is where some of my fear of failure lies. I am not "a writer." I am B.P.L. That actualization is my art, and nothing usurps that, that is my call. A channel/hollow bone, for the Divine. Beauty, raging and terrible if need be, but beauty manifest. My whole life.

I'm going to write Koenigshauffer.

[John Koenigshauffer is a poet and philanderer I met in Berkeley who is a phenominal writer, and hopefully has sold some screenplays by now so he doesn't have to work in construction anymore. I'm serious, this guy was hot shit as a poet.]

Morning Tai Chi practice finally wraps [3/3]

[continued from last 2 posts -- I know this journal is continuous so is always "continued" from last post, but this is in fact the same writing exercise, or writing bout, as the last two]

***
Now, you're napping after having quickly scanned the landscape for smokes because keeping up the relaxation, especially with the writing, with the impatience that kept coming up your gut like acrid tension wanting you to write faster and tense up and not breathe so well had tired you out good. You breathed through it, as you are now, and didn't put your hand to your forehead and hunch over the desk while you wrote like an inexperienced drummer at a trapset, instead you breathed deep and relaxed that place up behind your shoulder where it always hurt that tensed up when you were writing like it was afraid of something; you relaxed that spot and you could feel it into your last two fingers, invisible, and you figured it was your heart meridian.

You did all that, and exhaled as you wrote these last few lines, thinking of washing the sour taste of starches metabolizing with your saliva into sugars out of your mouth before you went to the nap. And you did -- gratefully stopping writing.


***

Morning Tai Chi practice gets back to the tower and has breakfast [2/3]

[continued from previous post]

I sat up slowly and luxuriously. My warmth filled me and felt relaxed and warm and wonderful. I enjoyed that sensation as I watched the scene turn slowly back from blue to it's normal hues. I realized that was a reaction to the red from sunlight through my eyelids, like in water polo when you'd been wearing red goggles all day, and when you took them off everything was blue. It was like that.

I felt like I'd just gotten out of a warm bath and had a thick white terrycloth robe on, and I moved slow as to not lose that feeling, and I picked up the portable radio, heavy in its yellow padded case, and I walked slowly and enjoyfully back to the lookout stairs. As I did, I allowed myself to feel relaxed and wander "off-course" and watch rocks and feel different textures under my feet, and it felt kind of like a dream, so much did I not recognize my felt body.

Eventually I wandered past the crisp image of my old red bus, and it looked higher on its tires than usual and real healthy.

I made it to the narrow, worn wood staircase of the tower. When I got to the top of the stairs, I heard the radio inside the tower with voices, but not my packset radio, and I remembered hearing that on the way back to the tower on that long walk over the red-packed mud-gravel drive, and I wondered if my packset radio was set to the wrong channel and I was missing something. Eventually I realized it was just that the borrowed radio inside the tower had decided to switch itself to scan mode like it had lately in the middle of the night, keeping me up with midnight noise until I got up and turned it off and turned on my packset in it's yellow case -- worrying that I'd use up all the batteries in it by leaving it on all night. [The "borrowed" desk radio was run off a big marine deep cell battery charged off a small solar panel, and was designed to easily run all night long on that power source, the packset was for short trips only.]

I did it anyway, remembering the boxes and boxes of D-cells left over from last year to which the ranger that was helping you move into the tower remarked "What -- was Russ hoarding these?" and chuckled.

I got inside and worked to remember the relaxation, to encourage it, even though it had not lost its grip yet. I turned the packset off in its yellow case and put it in its spot in between the desk and the steel refrigerator that somehow runs on propane and freezes everything you put in it.

*** [there is a mark here in the journal meaning I took a quick break from writing.]

You tried not to get exasperated at the radio as you readjusted it off scan and to channel 3 which is the Forest Service channel for this district.

You were hungry for plain oats, but you remembered the pot full of rice you had overmade yesterday and thought about eating that, but when you put it inside your stomach in your imagination your body didn't feel good, so you boiled water and ate mushy plain oatmeal and it tasted great.

Somewhere in there, you realized what an open state you were in and picked out Louise Erdrich's book of poetry called Jacklight because you knew it was powerful and true and that's what you wanted to affect you right now.

[to be continued]

Morning Tai Chi practice went well [1/3]

[So far, almost every post I've made over the past 3-4 days has made me cringe in some way and want to explain myself or it. Explain it in some way that distances me from the content. I think I'll stop doing that -- it is what it is and I'll just put it down for historical reference, or entertainment, or whatever it is folks want to see it as.]

I went outside and did my Tai Chi set. I had the radio in its little yellow carrier over to the side in the rocks, next to some lupine. Parts of the set felt better than I've ever felt doing Tai Chi.

Afterwards, I slowly picked up the radio and habitually headed back up towards the tower. Two or three steps into the motion, I stopped. I went back to the gravel-flat space where I do my Tai Chi [a helicopter landing pad] and Sat.

I allowed my eyes to rest on a configuration of leaves in a small shrub. I relaxed, my vision relaxed, my breathing relaxed. I remembered my breath, and began to breath up through my center from the earth and let it spill back down over me from the top of my head back into the ground. Soon that seemed imbalanced, however.

I remembered the breath I learned in the dry lake bed in South East Oregon, where I bring the energy down through my crown and up through my root at the same time on the inhale, and let them disperse from my chest (heart) -- creating the world -- on the exhale. I breathed that way for many minutes.

Sometime after I Sat -- I don't know when -- a wind spirit, in the form of a dustless dust devil, traveled behind me through the Beargrass and gravel. Smiling I composed myself and spoke aloud to it, setting boundaries I had learned years ago from a Cherokee teacher. Boundaries for when you are approached by a spirit in the wild -- basically calling out that if it was there to be helpful, it is welcome, if not it must go. [I won't use the exact phrasing, as it was taught to me in confidence, and I was never instructed to pass it on]. Good way to start the morning.

[To Be Continued]

[undated -- notes after having read Everson interview]

[When I first read this post I was so embarrassed, but hey, it's anthropology I'll just leave it in. I was taking on the voice of folks I'd been reading, taking them out for trial-runs. The voice here is... embarrassing. But Everson himself rocks.]

I've just finished reading "The Presence of the Poet," a lecture given by William Everson -- an "informal discourse" before the University of Oklahoma philosophy club, October 26, 1962. Printed in the collection Earth Poetry, Oyez press, edited by Lee Bartlett.

This interview will have a lasting effect on my way of being. I am an artist, that I find over and over again. An artist afraid, to be sure, but an artist nonetheless. That what I do would be prophetic makes sense to me. That the society is both intrigued and assailed by it has proven itself to me. A salve to my wounds.

I would go over the revelations brought to me by this interview, but the stuff is newly interred to my gut, and would come up acrid with bile. I'll give it time to digest. A salve it was and is. It's importance resonates distantly in my own future like a well-cast bell. I can hear it from here. It will guide me, consciously or unconsciously; it already has.

[no title in journal -- Annie Dillard entry]

I'm sitting up, I believe it's the next night after the last entry. I just finished Holy the Firm, by Annie Dillard.

These writers are crawling into my head and tugging it around like a child does a loved but dirty stuffed toy. Dragging it behind them by one arm as they walk around, investigating.

And I can't stop reading.

I trust them; with my life, my mind. I don't really know why. Maybe because I've tasted the tiniest bead of a writer's life and feel the necessary power that it would take to get far enough down that path to become good. Power like that could only come from Love -- or Truth (which isn't always Love).

The next night [19th PM]

[Note: this has since become one of my favorite books, I've read it 3 times now]

Just finished Blood Meridianby Cormac McCarthy. Possibly the most violent book I've ever read. I followed the ostensible storyline, but the end left me wondering. I'm not closed. I allowed this book to open gaping wounds and vents in my psyche, then it lost me.

I may read it over again, but I don't know that I would learn anything. I feel I may have been too fast in reading it. I finished it in one day; a long day, albeit; but one day. I skipped over his ramblings when I wasn't in the mood, writing them off as theatric. Maybe that was it.

Or maybe it wasn't meant to be understood directly. I want to consult with someone on this.

I'll let synchronicity take me to my next learning.

[Another note: I read it again over the next two days, and it sat much better with me on that reading. I had been pushing it too hard.]

18th, just after sundown

Just finished Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko. A powerful, powerful book. A complete circle, well crafted and unexpectable. There was beauty in there, but it's steel. Beautiful practicality. It works extremely well.

18th PM, 15:48

Spotted 2 smokes in addition to the intentional burn at Wildcat quarry. One like a brush pile in downtown Sandy -- not reported. The other a small column off towards Bridal Veil falls -- I couldn't pin it exactly, so couldn't give a legal past the azimuth and grid. My confidence is pressed. Important people with things to do are listening seriously to my words, and I'm not sure about the topography yet. I'm nervous, and my back hurts.

18th AM

I will let the mountain come to me,
no need to rush out,
A boy rushing into a field of poppies
in adulation
crushing them.

17th, PM journaling continued

["Russ" is a friend that I traveled for over 6 months with not long before this gig a the lookout. We lived on the street, jumped trains, and wrote together. He is the man who inspired me to start actually writing, helped me get over the initial intimidation. He was a walking anachronism, living in the wrong century. More on him later.]

Russ has replaced some father-figure -- authoritarian inside me. I'm reading nearly exactly what he'd suggest I read, what he reads. The psychology books aren't his kind of stuff, though and I do like the books he suggested.

I will be more aware of what I'm reading and why, and follow my personal path from now on.

The lantern driving the moths crazy, their flight pushing them against the glass of the window.

Writing Exercise, 17th Pm

[OK, here we go. The first post where I thought -- oh crap I can't post that folks will think I'm nuts. Just know, this is a freewriting exercise. It's not designed to make sense, and it really shouldn't even be punctuated. This one was wierd enough I just had to post it, once I got over the idea of folks thinking I was a lunatic.]

Stomach pain, "you don't know what you're doing." Blue Crocodilian eye. Aliens, paranoia, fear. "You can't know what you're getting into." Frogs reassuring -- from Cape Meyers trip with R. Frogs let me know everything was O.K.

More on aliens. They "know," and can go away. They could be either benevolent or malevolent, and you wouldn't really know. They are in the power position. They know, and can go away. They are luminescent and have large almond-shaped eyes and can be nice or not and you wouldn't know, but you've got a red and white flannel nightshirt on and a beard and a shotgun, and some fear-tuned aggression, and they'll die for all their power and knowing and you won't have to think about it and they're on your land anyways, and the blood's green and sparkles in the night?

Tuesday, 17th, 11:00

Temp. 68-degrees, breeze 4-6 SE Gusting, Humidity 73%

Been spending my day familiarizing myself with local landmarks. Getting to know local names for all the buttes and gullies. Have further familiarized myself with the Osborne Firefinder. Such a simple idea: a map with a viewer and 2 crosshairs (one for above the horizon, one for below), and a strap across it. The center of the map is Hickman butte. The map is faced due North. --just had a wind pick up.--

[Since this post was so scant, and I can't find a simple way to replicate the sketch I made, here is a link to show you what the thing looks like and does. Its a very cool, very simple tool. Works great, and hasn't changed since the 20's.]

Tuesday, 17th, Hickman Butte

I'm at a small plywood & varnish desk, facing nearly due south. A far-off mountain (Jefferson, I think) sits heavy and crisp white. Down in the valley to the Northeast, the fog hangs serpentine and craggy -- I can see where the Chinese get their dragons from. It's 6:02 am, and I've been up for a while now.

Directly north, flat-topped Helens. East and a little South, Hood -- very close. My big neighbor. West, the goodfellow lakes, and Ascott butte. Although it's obscured by fog, Portland. These are the stones for my circle. This is my vision-quest.

The tower's room is very ship-like. The fire-finder (Osborne fire-finder), and a Bosch * Lomb spotting scope are the center of attention. Hardwood floors and tongue-in-groove walls (only wall 2 1/2 ft. up -- the rest all windows). The fire-finder looks like some astronomical apparatus; a flat disk, the outside ring of brass. A sighting tower with degrees, and across from it, a windowless frame with 2 horsehair cross-hairs.

The shadows of swallows (white-throated, opalescent-backed) streak across my page, yet another reference to the vision-quest. My little angels have returned. They slice through the air with little knife wings, and sound like a stiff kite in wind. Even though their wings are so little, they glide often. They fly straight towards the tower, slowing. If I don't move, they land on the overheads for the windows. Plywood panels pulled up on all sides that covered the windows from weather all winter.

Temp. 54-degrees; breeze 4-8 Northerly, gusty. Humidity 70-percent.