July 21st Writing Practice: What I did the summer before my 9th grade year -- kissing girls and a fishing reverie

I kissed a freckled, brown-eyed, brown-haired Hawaiian/Mexican girl named Kathy. I kissed her every day, before she went off to do her paper route.

I discovered Tewinkle Park. It was a mound pushed up by bulldozers, with a never-running set of water slides, a path, and 3 golf-pond like "lakes." Robert Z, a full-blood Czech kid who looked like an all-American California boy and I fished there every day. I mean that -- barring some severe edict from the Parental Units, we were there every single day. We used jigs called Sassy Shad, which looked like little grey rubber fish with a paddle for a tail. When pulled through the water, it really looked like it was swimming.

Our favorite was night fishing. We'd sneak around the shallows, with unweighted plastic worms on our ultralight outfits (spinning gear that was almost as small as it could get, so even a small Bluegill would feel like a Marlin) and cast onto the shore, or a boulder next to where the behemoth bass (usually 12" or so) were sitting in the shallows, starting at the surface of the water. We'd pull the worm off whatever we cast onto, so it would make a natural, meaty Thunk! in the water -- bass would drool all across the lake. We'd stare at our line -- plenty of slack, so that when they picked it up, they'd have no un-natural resistance.

Two twitches, and the line would slowly head for deep water. Our hearts would beat out of control, and in a forced hushed whisper, we'd call to the other -- they'd reel in and run over -- stepping quietly so we wouldn't shake the water & scare the fish. The line would still be moving. We'd both be visualizing a huge bass swimming, green & dank, with a potbelly & enormous mouth, swimming with OUR worm in it's mouth. It was always OUR stuff -- we bought all of it together. I kept my stuff at his house because it was closer ot the park & my mom hated the idea of fishing.

We'd set the hook, and the jiggling rod would be all marlin again, and the bass would be strong and live at the end of the line, maybe (beyond all hoping) it would jump & splash the light from the baseball fields all over the little lake.

We'd pull in an exhausted little fish, and let it rest in the shallow water as we watched its gill plates breathe, and were amazed that we'd connected with this little wild thing.

Carefully, we'd lift it out of the water & get the hook out with a minimum of contact, so we wouldn't mess up the mucous layer on the fish that we both knew was protection against fungus & parasites. It was beyond shame to see a fish you "recognized" ("that's the one that lived under the pillars by the gazebo") floating and dead due to messy release or bad hook timing -- letting it swallow the hook.

We switched to fly-fishing, and kept fishing there well into high-school, even though it was a "kid" thing to do. All that started by seeing kids fishing with handlines & velveeta cheese between the slats of the little pier as we drove by.

[to be continued]

July 21st, wildlife at the butte

The chipmunks I've baited up to my railing have today decided to start exploring the interior of my quarters. I was writing a letter to Eric O. when I heard a scratching at my East window. It had it's head turned sideways -- halfway through the window. It got in, and I stopped writing to watch.

Just now, I returned from a short walk to find the fatter of the two scampering, big eyed & fluffy, under my bed. I checked my pantries & apparently they hadn't been discovered yet. I had even put a note on the door to remind myself to close everything up when I left, but forgot one of the windows.

During my walk around the butte, I spotted my second snake. The first was a good-sized garder snack (black-yellow) up by the "X" on the helipad. The next, a brown checked snake (possibly even bigger) slid into a pile of rusted cans that I was inspecting, newly found. I think it was bigger -- it took a long time to drag itself over the tin into it's den. Impressive, patient animals.

July 21st, Preterist definition and an Eagle sighting

Preterist, n. .... 2. in theology, one who believes that the prophecies of the apocalypse have already been fulfilled.

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15:20 hrs. Just spotted my first Golden Eagle today. Thought it was a Raven, until I got the glasses on it. It was flecked w/white -- probably newly fledged [I now know that a young Golden is an important omen in the Lakotah way, known as a Spotted Eagle]. Seemed nearly full size. Blessed Be!

Blog notice, some photos incoming

Howdy all, back online and meeting tonight with a good friend who visited me while I was staying up at Hickman Butte the first summer. He is an accomplished photographer and dug up negatives and prints for me to work with, so soon there will be a few more photos included in this blog.

More posts to come,

Bp

--Back on the 24th, see you soon--

Headed to the desert, enjoy the start of your summer I'll be back soon.

Love,

Bp

July 20th, Ditty about reading and writing so much

Drunk with literature, I go staggering down the street, bumping into posts and leaning into saloons -- looking for my style.

July 20th, 10 minute writing practice continued

[more of the writing practice on "the sweetheart" assignment]

You -- what? What do I look like? (an image of a woman, a cross between Natalie Goldberg & Louise Erdrich comes to mind)

That doesn't matter. Oh you think it does? And *my* life?

If you insist. I'm a writer, and have been for many years. I live somewhere in the mid-or-South-West,. I'm in my early-mid thirties, I teach writing workshops, and have published books.

I enjoy poetry, but write mostly prose. Yes, I'm your anima; a little healthier than the little, scared girl who wants/doesn't want to have sex ha?

I guess I'm grounded (you put those words into my mouth). I plant gardens, I can & pickle, and own dogs. I have a small symbolic fence around my yard, and there's mountains in the distance. I'm NOT Natalie Goldberg, good try.

Yea, I live somewhere in the Southwest, it's cool this time of year too. I am successful in that I don't have to worry about money; and I have the time, landscape, and solitude to write. I write well, and simply. I like art, and something about me reminds you of both Georgia O'Keefe & Ellen Butler [my high school photography teacher, pragmatic and smart]. Both true -- not as rangy or sharp as O'Keefe, though. I do love her stuff.

I enjoy photography (Arbus and Avedon) and am a member of both public radio & TV. It's all I'll watch, and that not too often.

I have both a bathroom and an outhouse. My house is small, and reminds you of the "flower house" on the corner of 25th & ... P or Q -- Quimby, -- what's the P street? I don't know.

Anyway, that's me. Nice to meet you. I'll be here the rest of your life. I enjoy your intention to be a voice, or conduit for the planet & for spirit. The idea seems kind of highfalutin, to me, I just try to be honest -- look up Frank Waters. Much Love.

July 20th, 10 min writing practice

"Giving Voice to the Sweetheart" writing practice

[Ok, there has been a lot in this journal that was embarrassing to post, but this has got to take the cake. Whatever, I said I'd stop complaining about that aspect of this blog, but man... I'll just continue to write it off as an anthropological exercise.]

You really are living a writer's life. You live alone, in a fire Tower, with mountains; you look up words in the dictionary, you read voraciously and choose your books carefully, you are cultivating your mind with both words, whimsy, and discipline. You meditate. You spend lots of undisciplined, useful time "musing." Lately, you've been writing spontaneously and this could be very good for publication, especially the "Go Tell it On the Mountain" book. You can take these spontaneous essay fragments and pull together a lucid, readable essay piece.

You are an imagist -- as Jacob L. Said. You are one of the people that Ross feels has the most promise as a writer. You write a lot -- face it. Look at how many pages you've cranked out since you've been up in the tower, *at least* 120 - 150 pages in in 2 months? That's great. Who cares if you sent most of it off, your pen is moving across paper -- good job!

[next embarrassing installment, what she looks like and where she lives]

July 20th, perfection in small things, life as art

It all looks like art if you do it right. Even the putting down of a book; it will angle jsut right in the light, casting a long, meaningful shadow. Everything becomes perfectly placed, as in a movie set -- perfectly chaotic, even.

"It revolves around staying with it." To some, a vibrating, warm energy that flows as an orange column & excites the nerves when aligned with; to others, a calm loving pheeling in the diaphragm. The flowing "rightness."

Staying there, all becomes art.

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Just as we've all heard eight trillion times, it involves forgetting. Actions consummate themselves, are final and satisfying *in and of themselves.* Life becomes sex, a pleasurable, active, forgetting and involvement.

New "Want List"

New "Want List":

Rexroth, Lopez, McCarthy, Eliade, Ovid, Shakespeare, Snyder, Huxley, Calvino, Blake, Novalis, Pound, Marquez, Paz, Hammil, Lorca, Everson, Faulkner, Jimenez, Machado, Vallejo, neruda, Blas de Otero, Boehme, Stevens (Wallace), Lawrence (DH); Walking on Alligators (on writing), Passion of the Western Mind Richard Tarnas;

Most, used copies. Rexroth, Snyder, Paz, Hammil, Lorca -- for essays first, as well as poetry (prose) etc.

New, positive: McCarthy. New, possible, Everson (Naked Poetry, new release)[couldn't find this book when I transcribed this post or I would link it for you]

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Switch to scene in a private library -- "only about 50% of those are read, don't bee too impressed." The man is quietly proud of their interest. The book that reminded him, was Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian -- gleaned from a "free box" in the basement of a housing co-op in Berkeley, CA in the 90's.

July 20th, more Zen musings

Reading about Zen has always slipped by me, consciously. I've avoided it somehow. Normally I would pour into it's volumes, comparing "true" Eastern scriptures with their modern, Western, proponents -- etc. but I only read quotes and note authors and titles out of bibliographies. It's always been this way.

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Maybe the calm, gentle voice knows that the Aryan aggressor academe in me, the dogma-lover, would claim victory over the precepts of Zen after having only read it, knowing nothing at all about it, really.

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I've read the *results* of Zen on a few western minds (I won't even try to resolve the contradictions and hypocrisies in that statement), Gary Snyder's poetry, prose, essays, interviews, for instance. But I haven't read The Three Pillars of Zen by Philip Kapleau Roshi. (notice that I know a title right off my head, however).

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July 20th, Zen Rake

Time to be gentle, time to listen to "all those inner voices," that turned out to be one voice -- and that one calm, patient, and understanding. Time to put on my socks before going outside, and to do the dishes. Time to breathe easily, and eat slowly. To *do*. To *be*. No becoming, except as that of a cold, closed poppy opening to the warmth of the sun -- naturally and without strain, unconsciously.