Fire Lookout Ravings

Book List -- off the shelf of a fire lookout

2010-05-10T22:30:00.000-07:00

[this appears to be a book list of all the books I had on the shelf up there, including stuff I'd read before and brought up to think with. I can definitely pick out a large section of the list as being books I read for the first time up in the tower]

Psychology/Cognitive Science, etc:

Bly, Robert; Iron John
A Little Book on the Human Shadow

Pearson, Carol; The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By

Maslow, Abraham; Religions, Values & Peak Experiences
Toward a Psychology of Being

Jung, Carl G.; Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Septem Sermones Ad Mortuos

Sinetar, Marsha; Ordinary People as Monks & Mystics

Fritz, Robert; The Path of Least Resistance

Dennet, Daniel C.; The Mind's I: Reflections and Fantasies on Self and Soul

Buscalia, Leo; Personhood

Mindell, Arnold; Riding the Horse Backwards, working with the dreaming body
Working on Yourself Alone

Harner, Michael; The Way of the Shaman

Highwater, Jamake; Primal Mind

Physics:

Zukaf, Gary; The Dancing Wu Li Masters

Capra, Fritjof; The Tao of Physics

Poetry:

Erdrich, Louise; Jacklight

Cummings, E.E.; 96 Poems

Budkowski, Charles; The Last of the Great Earth Poems

Barnard, Mary (trans.); Sappho

Mitchell, Stephen (trans.); The Selected Poetry of Ranier Maria Rilke

Bly, Robert (trans. editor); The Kabir Book
News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness
Leaping Poetry

Rexroth, Kenneth (trans.); One Hundred Poems from the Chinese
Love and the Turning Year; One Hundred More Poems from the Chinese

Snyder, Gary; The Backcountry
Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems
Turtle Mountain
Myths & Texts

Rothemberg, Jerome (editor); Technicians of the Sacred -- Shaking the Pumpkin

Jeffers, Robinson; Selected Poems

Lorca, Federico Garcia; Selected Poems of Federico Garcia Lorca

Elliot, T.S.; The Wasteland and Other Poems

Ginsberg, Allen; Howl

Cardenal, Ernesto; Homage to the American Indian

Rich, Adrienne; Dream of a Common Language

Gibran, Kahil; The Prophet
The Forerunner

Literature, prose & essays:

McCarthy, Cormac; Suttree
Blood Meridian
The Orchard Keeper

Kingston, Maxine Hong; Woman Warrior; Memoirs of a Childhood Among Ghosts

Hemingway, Ernest; In Our Time

Eisley, Loren; The Immense Journey

Abbey, Edward; Desert Solitaire

Lopez, Barry Houston; Desert Notes
River Notes
Winter Count
Crossing Open Ground

Stafford, Kim; Having Everything Right

Hammill, Sam; A Poet's Work

Bowles, Paul; A Distant Episode

Calvino, Italo; Under a Jaguar Sun
Cosmicomix

Leopold, Aldo; A Sand County Almanac

Dillard, Annie; Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Holy the Firm

Pound, Ezra; The ABC of Reading

Silko, Leslie Marmon; Ceremony

Hill, Ruth Bebe; Hanta Yo

Welch, James; Fool's Crow

Mombaday, N. Scott; House Made of Dawn

Erdrich, Loyise; Tracks

Schneebaum, Tobias; Keep the River on your Right

Barry, Wendell; What are People For?

Paz, Octavio; On Poets and Others

Goldberg, Natalie; Writing Down the Bones
Wild Mind, Living the Writer's Life

Hesse, Herman; Siddhartha
Narziss & Goldmund

Potok, Chaim; My Name is Asher Lev

Chatwin, Bruce; The Songlines

Cocteau, Jean; Les Infants Terrible

Burroughs, William S.; Nova Express
Interzone

Miller, Harry; Sexus

Borges, Jose Louise; Labyrinthes

Mythology/Comparative Religion:

Radin, Paul; The Trickster

Han, Thict Nat; Being Peace

Campbell, Joseph; The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Myths to Live By

Tedlock, Dennis (trans.); The Popul Vuh

Arguelles, Jose; The Mayan Factor
Earth Ascending; and illustrated treatise on the governing of whole systems

Native American Interest (what wasn't scattered in other categories):

Neihart; Black Elk Speaks

Erdoes, Richard; Lame Deer; Seeker of Visions

Castaneda, Carlos; The Teachings of Don Juan; A Yaqui Way of Knowledge
Journey to Ixtlan

Storm, Hyemeyohsts; Seven Arrows
Way of the Heyokah

Mails, Thomas; Fool's Crow; Wisdom & Power

Foster, Steven &
Little, Meredith; The Book of the Vision Quest
The Roaring of the Sacred River

Sun Bear; The Path of Power
Earth Astrology

Boyd, Doug; Rolling Thunder

Metaphysics:

Twitchell, Paul; Tiger's Fang

Bailey, Alice H.; Initiations, Human & Solar
Consciousness of the Atom
Ponder on This

Two Disciples; The Rainbow Bridge II, link with the soul

Keyes, Ken; Starseed; The third Millineum
Return of the Bird Tribes

Alli, Antero; Angel Tech: A Modern Shaman's guide to Reality Selection

Hyatt, Christopher; A Modern Shaman's Guide to a pregnant universe

Millman, Dan; Way of the Peaceful Warrior
The Sacred Path of the Peaceful Warrior

Purse, Jill; The Mystic Spiral

July 25, Dream -- Bear fat

2010-05-03T22:27:00.000-07:00

Something about sitting around with a couple of men in a big room with a bunch of young kids, having ordered pizza.

We were sitting around talking about "what did you do with your bear fat?" "I froze it. " "Might as well eat vasoline."

Nadir

2010-04-30T22:25:00.000-07:00

1:34, Had Nadir experience -- or inverted plateau.

You.

Dark, Low, Wide, receptive.

Dark cave poolswim.

Cold mud boot walking.

Wet rain walk.

Drink mist shadow night.

Wonderful.

Random fire lookout historical data

2010-04-21T22:17:00.000-07:00

First lookout site in Oregon: 1906

After a bit of sickness

2010-04-17T22:10:00.000-07:00

[This post happens after a whole lot of writing exercises, and some mention of not being able to keep food down. Also, mention of nearly zero visibility in the tower -- basically completely fogged in with clouds.]

I feel better, and still haven't eaten or drank. I took a fucking *walk*, that's all.

This whole month, inside the mind (tower) not having anything to see, no visibility (only because I was "above it all") is too easy an analogy. Like when K. [an older poet friend from the bay area, somewhat of a mentor] called out, derringer in hand, "give me a sign, that's all i ask, a sign to know you exist." God sends? A man, out of nowhere, carrying a sign, "Jesus loves you." The sufi's say" It's closer than your Jugular." And I believe them.

(I must find this woman Cynthia, the one whose eyes are blue, jaw square, and has lived the life of the mendicant)

I'm going to write a letter to my sister. Bye for now. Much love.

Reminder to self -- between July 23rd and July 25th

2010-04-17T09:12:00.000-07:00

Write on the snake in the pit full of rusted cans sometime.

Surprise find on a hike, continued

2008-05-05T15:11:00.000-07:00

Later, on another walk, I smiled and picked up the egg again. I began to polish it carefully on the skin of my palm, and it shone blue and porcelain-y.

Then it broke. Stunned, I looked into my palm to see the sunflower-orange yolk speckled with bits of white & blue shell, like broken China. A brief volley of relief to see no defenseless blue-eyed fetal embryo -- not even a red dot of intention on the yolk. I let the clear and yellow egg drip off my onto the ground. I wrung my fingers like a baker with her hands covered in dough. Using the dewdrops off a fern bough, I washed the last sticky remnants off my hands & let the water drip, again, onto the same spot of ground.

I walked down the road, the smell of raw egg strong in my mind, and on my hands. I crouched at a red-silt pothole in the road, I scrubbed my hands with wet gravel & mud, then rinsed them. Almost afraid, I smelled them. Cold, muddy earth -- clean. I trust them back into the pockets of my thick green wool trousers and walked down the road. Seasons change, cycles turn, life ensues.

Surprise find on a hike

2008-03-31T22:33:00.000-07:00

[This entry appears to have been worked a bit before it hit the journal. By the language (suddenly florid, then normal -- jerky) I think I may have been trying to bring it up to a "real" writing piece but hadn't finished]

July 23:

Walking down a rocky forest service road, mostly stream, anomaly caught the side of my eye. Down in the red cushion of fir needles and small ferns. Not believing the image, I walked back to the spot and confirmed -- a perfect sky-blue egg; fallen from some wind-thrashed limb above. It sat, cold, amongst the flat ground you find under conifers.

We stood around it, like the crowd at the manger, full of awe and indecision. We cruched, hugging our knees.

Too perfect this thing. A beautiful, unreal blue -- a little elliptical globe sitting like a king in the leaves, or a planet.

Not believing what I did, I watched as my hand reached across my gaze and picked it up -- as though it were made of blown gauze, and my pulse would be strong enough to crush it.

Heavy, like a stone. And so blue. A white & green smear of birdshit confirmed its terrestrial origin, relieving both of us, I'm sure. Like turquoise, it sat in my crisscrossed palm. It picked up my heat, cooling the center of my hand.

Its appearance had thrown us into Dream. It was too powerful -- our brains couldn't avoid mythology and hologram. We stood, transparent as thought, held by its powerful gravity.

Briefly, I thought I should take it back with me, pierce it -- blow it out & send it off to my grandfather, who has a penchant for these things. He would look it over carefully, through glasses & over pipestem -- wander to a shelf, pulling carefully a book. After he identified the species, making sure in his head it was correct for my bioregion & elevation and season, he would place it on a shelf, above his stereo, next to the tintypes of my great grandmothers, and and old-yellowed lamp globe. It would sit, dusty & pristine, amongst fossils and rocks, in my grandfather's house.

The weight in my hand, the smell of the trees, and the density of the wet earth under my bootsoles returned; and I decided to put it down.

My companion and I continued our cold, grey walk -- returing to find it, solid, on top of the gravel pile where I had hoped it would be easy to spot.

We returned it to its cold nest of wet needles, with a roof of fern boughs.

Later on, we returned and took pictures of it where it lay, and in each other's hand -- even that felt tenuously incorrect.

We laid it carefully back, wishing it to a roving skunk's teeth, or bobcat.

----- [to be continuted]

Conceiving of a play part two

2008-03-13T00:16:00.000-07:00

July 22nd, continued:

A man, shaggy-haired & in white buckskin -- a bear-claw necklace around his neck -- bright lights, a stage (maybe a podium -- but to the side). he's talking, a voice calls rudely from the audience, interrupting him, "First you called it 'ethos' then you called it 'mystique' and then you called it 'charisma,' but what I want to know is, what are you going to call it next!"

The audience hushes.

The man paces slowly back & forth on the stage, pulling patiently at his beard, looking down. "look, son. If that's the way you heard it I'm not oging to dispute about it. But really, it's like a joke. If you haven't got the point by this time, you never will." Laughter.

-----

Maybe I'd have him doing a "new" lecture, but have it a collage of all the transcripts I could get a hold of. I'd want biographical explanation,

"They wanted me to introduce myself, so I will. I was born in the San Joaquin valley..."

Maybe we coudl pull a handpress on stage -- light it during a certain part of the performance -- have him pace around it.

We'd need an older man -- someone who really looked like him. I'd want as much of Prodigious Thrust as i could get my hands on.

I'd want to quote him directly as much as possible -- and when not, just splicing whatever writing I could get. After I had a good amount of stuff togther, I'd want to --

I could attend the University of new Mexico and write the play, while attending college there. I'm willing to do that.

I can easily see myself doing this. I'd want first to contact Lee Bartlett. and see what kind of reaction I get out of him. I'll go from there.

Conceiving of a play part 1, (and starting this blog up again )

2008-03-08T08:37:00.000-08:00

July 22nd:

Wouldn't it be great to do a play, one man, of William Everson.Some of those lines he had against his detractors would be perfect! ("Listen son, it's like a joke -- if you don't get it -- you never will) paraphrase.

His bear-claw necklace - etc.

You could use people in the audience, actors, to heckle & ask questions. Break up the audience/stage barrier.

I'd need to work with Lee Bartlett. He's at UC Davis I think, where I'm applying anyways... interesting.

----

Lee Bartlett is now at University of New Mexico -- pursue B. pursue!

----

Notes, collaborators: Studio Z collective -- Lane Savadove & EgoPo. The Daring Young Theater Ensemble -- the arts space too, they've invited me to join up again if I return to San Fran.

Also, John White in Austin Texas, the Shakespeare guy -- such a great director and actor, him too.

[to be continued]

Wind velocity readings, lookout style

2007-08-13T14:02:00.000-07:00

When the wind is out of the West, and I pee off the catwalk to the East, I notice that you can track windspeed via landmarks. Wind 0 - 5 mph -- hit the grass. Wind 8-12 mph -- hits rhododendron. Wind 15 - 20 mph -- hits edge or over the edge of the butte.

Journaling a streaking incident after too many days cooped up, continued.

2007-08-06T06:43:00.000-07:00

As I wrote that, the wind picked up -- it might be 20 Mph. It's teasing though, it dropped off again as I stopped writing, picking up again as I start writing now.

As, as I walked back, I wanted more & more to take off my clothes; the more it rained the more I wanted my shirt off. I saw the lookout tower in the distance -- always reminding me of Thai architecture with its winged-hat look.

I got to the top of the stairs of the tower, the wind stronger up here, and rain; and I stripped in the doorway. The soaked backpack & timer by the propane heater.

HA! I got out there on a good gust in between sentences --

Ok -- soaked backpack in front of the propane & wool pantlegs too. I debated whether I should head down naked, or carrying shorts. Just in case a truck headed up the road when I was downstairs. I'd decided to go down & grab a full water container in either case. Eventually, I wrapped up a pair of shorts & stuck them in my mouth like a Pika carrying grass. I dove out the door into the howling wind and rain.

It was just like cold-water swimming. Once you were in, you were fine. I jogged downstairs,m ridiculous with my shorts in my mouth. I walked around in the dewy grass for a minute, the wind not so strong down there, and then put one of the 5-gallon water container on my head. I ran back 7up the stiars, my shorts in my mouth, and my water balanced on my head w/one hand like a Haitian.

What a great time.

Getting out in the rain after too many days cooped up, no date

2007-07-18T07:51:00.000-07:00

Think I'm gonna dress up & take a walk. I've huddled in this propane-warm cabin too long -- I'm going outside for a walk. Got 2 hours before the next check-in. I'll take my radio just in case. I wanna get wet and cold, come in & watch the steam rising from my drying wool pants, and enjoy myself.

And this time I remembered to close windows to keep out brave, fat chipmunks.

****

Man -- I feel GREAT! just took a walk down about a mile or so to see what I could see. I feel so much better now.

On the path/road not 1/2 mile from here I found carnivore shit. Looked too big for coyote. Maybe Cat? I pray -- it's not far if it is.

Further down, after doing a second radio check to make sure I was still in contact w/ Mt. Hood Dispatch, I walked down the 400 Rd. I made about 1/2 mile -- no grouse by the way -- and it started to drizzle. I headed back, joyous as ever. I was just dripping with joy. When I turned around, the road looked completely different. Now uphill, now curving to the *right* -- so I didn't put my slingshot away -- who could tell if there were any grouse on *this* road or not?

On the way down -- I'd found some lichen that was in the road, blown off a tree. It was so seaworthy -- shaped just like some sea lettuce I've seen. My mind raced -- sea -- up here -- evolution.

I walked back, and it started to rain seriously, and I smiled at the change. I forgot all about the electronics in my backpack -- didn't worry about them at least.

I came to a boulder overhanging a ledge, headed Southwest -- into the wind. I walked out & stood, arms to the side -- huge smile. I felt *so* good, it felt so good to have the wind strong against me, reminded me of the times when I've felt the sentience of the wind -- when I related to it as a spirit. I walked back -- happy.

[to be continued]

Prose poem description of the cabin etc. (no date)

2007-07-11T21:51:00.000-07:00

Here I sit, quivering with Poems. Rexroth's "Signature of all Things."

I put down the book, some of Snyder's
poems have quieted me.
I look slowly around the sky cabin,
not expecting.
Olive-yellow trunk box (full of wire & cable, I know),
A couple of old wood chairs on either side of the
glass-paneled door --
Socks on one, towel on the other,
drying.
The spotting scope -- black, matte black.
The podium holding Osborne Firefinder atop,
A photo of cattails in a pond,
A painting of a medicine man,
A face of a hawk -- both images cards
Received from male relatives
In the post this summer.

A 5-gallon, square, opaquish water jug,
1/5th full,
Kettle (aluminum) and flowered enameled pot,
Bean stains varnishing the outside where it boiled over.

An aching back or a turned-in butt on 2 pillows.

Dripping rain and wind outside,
Catwalk dark with wet.

Wind sounds like a tundral howl,
"Howa, Howa -- Whoooooo ---" whistles off.

An eagle feather,
Speckled white fading into brown --
A little but of white down,
Hanging from an eye-screw placed
Perfectly
In the middle of the ceiling.
Olive-yellow tongue-in-groove ceiling.

2 light bulbs I can't afford the electricity to use,
A 2-way radio on the desk,
And this penned hand,
Writing.

Torrid Zone

2007-07-11T21:48:00.000-07:00

Torrid zone -- between Tropic of Cancer 23 degrees 27 minutes North of equator and Capricorn 23 degrees 27 minutes South of equator.

Torrid, A. [L. torridus, from torrere, to roast.] 1. Dried by or subjected to intense heat, especially of the sun; scorched; parched; arid. 2. So hot as to be parching or opressive; scorching. 3. Highly passionate, adent, zealous, etc.

Torrid zone; are of the earth between the tropic of Cancer & the Tropic of Capricorn & divided by the equator.

Websters new unabridged.

Adrienne Rich quote

2007-07-10T09:00:00.000-07:00

"...Clara, I feel so full
of work, the life I see ahead, and love
for you, who of all people
however badly I say this
will hear all I say and cannot say."

ending of "Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff"
in Adrienne Rich's Dream of a Common Language, p. 44

Tired of writing, and a favorite line, unknown date

2007-07-07T09:25:00.000-07:00

She [Natalie Goldberg, have been doing writing practices out of Wild Mind book] wants me to write about my home now. I don't want to, I've written enough tonight. The only line I like is;

The sunlight was all dusty, and the air smelled like a cold, rusted muffler.

so there.

Writing Practice, different subject every sentence. Unknown date.

2007-07-07T08:53:00.001-07:00

White tigers have always astounded me, but look so plain in zoos. I prefer the orange ones.

Birds are cool, but blue I like better.

Alligators -- bah these are all animals, I have to stop this cycle.

Space ships are large and have blinking lights.

Dew on the grass in the morning lights up like little frosted crystal globes.

The wind here sounds like it's pushing up against a shelter made of plywood & corrugated tin, and makes me think that I'm in a poor Mexican town, hoping for my life that I won't freeze tonight.

A black spider with a yellow zig-zag on its belly hanging on a web, thick & frosty white.

Topics, topics -- they don't have to be nouns, you know -- they don't have to be verbs, or adjectives -- they can be feelings -- under images; and the longer you pull the sentence out the longer you have before the next one.

I see a bridge, with sunlight dappling the surface of the shallow greenish water below. There are steelhead under there, or coho salmon, and it's the mouth of Eagle Creek on the Clackamas.

Mermaid mistresses give juicy, dangerous love.

An arsenic lobster (stolen from Lorca) falls on my head, and I'm black (stolen from Jimenez or Machado) with a diamond inside.

Mowing the lawns of cemeteries -- the hills covered with mist & trees & the mausoleums are on top of the hill to the left.

Spirit folk went through my dreams, always clad as Indians dancing, carrying their loved ones' images, up on stilts with feathers & dead, in their hearts as they travel.

I love: the earth, frogs, women, butts, women with frog butts -- that's K. actually -- and thinking, and being ungrounded, and accepting, and love.

God is: God is a leaf in a stream -- one more try.

God is an autumn leaf under a thin sheet of near-freezing water, washing down a clear Northeastern stream.

God is Heroin, to some I'm sure.

I don't know how much time I've got left so I'll write until 21:00 hrs. -- that's 3 minutes left. My hand hurts, and I feel like I'm writing a bunch of crap, but the school of disembodied poetics keeps coming up, and that's exciting me, because I think maybe it's a sign from the Universe that I should go to School, and I can just see it now, my old bus & T. & maybe fly fishing in the summers, and my arm is burning up, and I don't want to slow down or stop writing or stop breathing, because I've only got a little of it left but my arm is burning off, and I keep holding my breath, and this is all a bunch of crap anyhow. And I sure wanted to end on that last line but a minute lasts a long time when you're in pain.

July 21st Writing Practice: Fishing Reverie, friend rememberance continued.

2007-07-05T14:31:00.000-07:00

When I visited Robert this last spring (of my 22nd year) -- we of course went fishing. The water was bigger, and so were the fish. But it was still cheap, and we were still the best fishermen out there. In one month I'll be standing next to him as he gets married. Long hair, some bags under my eyes that weren't there before, and Robert standing next to me. it makes me cry -- just Life -- going. Changes & passages -- like all the poems about autumn you hear old people writing. I can feel a little autumn in my heart right now. It's real, like a flannel shirt -- and I'm getting older. I love you Robert. You've always been a brother to me. Good luck in your new life -- it's not much different. Do things cheap, and well. Have fun, learn, and pay attention. Like figuring out how to catch fish -- chance plays it's part, too.

****

I'm crying, I don't know why. I think it's because those times as a kid were so lonely. Robert was, in a way, all I had in the whole world then.

When we were fishing, I could forget about all my hurts. I could be scientist, an observer, a mountain-man -- the knowledgeable one. It was a way to touch the cycle of things, to enter into the biology of things. We stepped in clean & pure -- naieve of any blemishes to our soul. We *were* fishing -- no separation. Zen buddhists know what I'm talking about. No separation.

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

2007-06-30T10:59:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-27T10:08:00.001-07:00

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

2007-06-25T13:39:00.000-07:00

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

****

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

2007-06-25T13:36:00.000-07:00

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--

2007-06-14T07:07:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-09T01:32:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-09T01:04:00.000-07:00

[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

2007-06-06T03:14:00.000-07:00

"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

2007-06-02T18:41:00.000-07:00

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.

****

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"

2007-06-02T01:18:00.000-07:00

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]

****

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

2007-06-02T01:06:00.000-07:00

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.

****

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.

****

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).

****

July 20th, Zen Rake

2007-06-01T08:56:00.001-07:00

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.

July 20th -- eyes of cows

2007-05-29T11:46:00.000-07:00

I'd recently written in a letter to my mother that I was pretty sure I was smart. I'm not too sure "smart" is accurate now. Thinking about it, "enthusiastic" & "passionate" came up. Something bred out of the majority of society.

You can see its lack in the eyes of cows.

Not that I'm not a cow, I may just be one of the ones that wanders off a bit to stare at the trees outside the barbed wire -- or one of those rangy-horned, sagebrush cows that scamper indelicately off when you're hiking in the Puebelo Mountains. Ones who've gone to seed a bit, whose meat is used for jerky & their hide for boot leather -- still dim, but Remembering, nonetheless.

The eyes of a deer, or an elk -- that's an entirely different story; one I hesitate to even start in on. The depth of a deer's gaze, the sex in the elk's (of course I'm thinking here of a full-antlered stag in the rut -- pounding the ground with his powerful, impatient steps, ripping up bushes for practice and release). I'm not ever going to go into it, I don't have the time to write such a volume -- or the maturity. My feet are still unhaired, and my hands soft. I'll wait until the bottoms of my feet are shod in thick leather, and my hands tawny & strong & brown like a rancher's tanned grip.

July 20th -- Federico Garcia Lorca poem

2007-05-26T11:22:00.000-07:00

Fuck Yeah! (Lorca trans. Bly)

New York

(office and attack)
to Fernando Vela

Beneath all the statistics
there is a drop of duck's blood.
Beneath all the columns
there is a drop of sailor's blood.
Beneath all the totals, a river of warm blood;
a river that goes singing
past the bedrooms of the suburbs,
and the river is silver, cement, or wind
in the lying daybreak of New York.
The mountains exist, I know that.
And the lenses ground for wisdom,
I know that. But I have not come to see the sky.
I have come to see the stormy blood,
the blood that sweeps the machines to the waterfalls,
and the spirit on to the cobra's tongue.
Every day they kill in New York
ducks, four million,
pigs, five million,
cows, one million,
lambs, one million,
roosters, two million,
who turn the sky to small splinters.
You may as well sob filing a razor blade
or assassinate dogs in the hallucinated foxhunts,
as try to stop in the sawnlight
the endless trains carrying milk,
the endless trains carrying blood,
and the trains carrying roses in chains for those in the field of perfume.
The ducks and the pigeons
and the hogs and the lambs
lay their drops of blood down,
underneath all the statistics;
and the terrible bawling of the packed-in cattle
fills the valley with suffering
were the Hudson is getting drunk on its oil.
I attack all those persons who know nothing of the other half,
the half who cannot be saved,
who raise their cement mountains
in which the hearts of hte small
animals no one thinks of are beating,
and from which we will all fall
during the final holiday of the drills.
I spit in your face.
The other half hears me,
as they go on eating, urinating, flying in their purity
like the children of the janitors
who carry delicate sticks
to the holes where the antennas
of the insects are rusting.
This is not hell, it is a street.
This is not death, it is a fruit-stand.
There is a whole world of crushed rivers and unachievable
distances
in the paw of a cat crushed by a car,
and I hear the song of the worm
in the heart of so many girls.
Rust, rotting, trembling earth.
And you are earth, swimming through the figures of the office.
What shall I do, set my landscape in order?
Set in place the lovers who will afterwards be photographs,
who will be bits of wood and mouthfuls of blood?
No, I won't; I attack,
I attack the conspiring
of these empty offices
that will not broadcast the sufferings,
that rub out the plans of the forest,
and I offer myself to be eaten by the packed-up cattle
when their mooing fills the valley
where the Hudson is getting drunk on its oil.

--Federico Garcia Lorca
trans. Bly
News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness pps. 110-112

May my invective poetry/writing be as fantastic, may it be so.

July 20, Notes over Breakfast -- poetry musings

2007-05-26T09:31:00.000-07:00

Notes over breakfast -- Gerard De Nerval, "ancient energies" poet. Late 1800's.

[all from News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness Bly]

German tradition of "animal thinkers" Boehme & alchemists, Goethe and Novalis, Rilke.

Spanish: Jimenez, Machado, Lorca.

North America: Jeffers, Wallace Stevens.

Wow -- Wallace Stevens "Anecdote of Men by the Thousand."
"Whales weep Not" D.H. Lawrence

               Oceans

    I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths, 
against a great thing. 
                    And nothing
happens!  Nothing... Silence... Waves... 

--Nothing happens?  Or has everything happened, 
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?

                     Juan Ramon Jimenez

God! I love those spaniards: Reminder: look for good translations, Jimenez, Lorca, Machado, Vallejo.

July 18th, Garden of Forking Paths, Quantum Physics, notes on Book ideas

2007-05-23T13:03:00.000-07:00

I'm reading The Garden of Forking Paths -- and realized that it was published 5 years after the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics -- 1957 -- published '62 -- It's Borges's musings on this, I'm sure of it.

****

Ideas for Lookout Notes book:

Zeroxed -- linen paper outside -- stapled. Cover, a photo of Hickman zeroxed onto cover -- tape showing that held it on. Maybe a photo of me on back cover.

Intro: this book is created from excerpts of correspondence, journal entries, & "legitimate" writings put down while I stayed in a Fire Lookout Tower in the Mt. Hood National Forest. I've limited myself to very little editing after-the-fact, I.E. after I left the tower. Thus, the flavor of the pieces were maintained -- and the roughness. Enjoy.

Sign & number them.

Introduction --
Place --
Miasma --
(fantasia, catharsis, revelation)

Excerpts from radio messages -- definitions out of books (watch copyrights), incoming correspondence.

Send one to Snyder & Whalen.

"Dedicated to Gary Snyder -- whose work has never failed to give me hope -- both in the human race, and the artistic process.

And to my friend Ross Christian, without whose example I would not be writing today.

Blessing: May this book give permission to a flood of publications waiting to happen within the talent group of friends, so far unpublished, who are like a crowd at a banquet, plates at the ready -- waiting for someone to scoop the first serving."

Things to work on: format develop & allow for an intense amount of flexibility -- maybe prose - verse, adjunct prose; maybe chapter intros & maybe no explanation whatsoever -- maybe chronological order -- maybe titled chapters -- maybe not.

"The format developed organically, it isn't chronological -- or sequential -- it follows flows that occurred over the 4 months there. It's natural."

July 18th, insect teaching

2007-05-23T12:58:00.000-07:00

(after finishing a small writing)

"It's so simple you see" -- the fly hovers between transparent wing clouds, swings back and forth in front of the mountains,
"It's just life, that's all. It's not a hard thing to do at all."

He flies away, and leaves me at the desk to write this down.

July 18th, The Sun, A Butterfly, and Chinese Poetry

2007-05-21T07:46:00.000-07:00

Let it be said that the day was warm -- that the man laid nude on the catwalk and his flesh drank deep the nourishing rays of the Sun.

A shadow passed, and I looked up into a grey stormcloud, hinged bright penumbra halo.

I got dressed, and went back out to the walk, noting the flight of a Zebra Swallowtail below. So angular -- in my youth, the swallowtails in general were diamond & ruby to this butterfly collector -- but Zebra were nearly unheard of in the lowlands where I lived, and were especially prized. Never in all my childhood did I kill either species to impale them with a pin. Not that I wouldn't have at the time -- it just never happened.

Now, watching the jagged geometry of it's flight from above -- I wonder at the design it's tracing. A fractal perhaps, like the view from the top of the juvenile Doug Fir tree beside it -- perfect geometry. Or something more delicate, more subtle. "nonsense" to the uninitiated -- but a fluid, consistent 'chaos' to the new Scientists.

As a child, the erratic flight always seemed a programmed evasion technique; but I had a particular relation at that point. Now, I wonder if its sketching something more important to my understanding.

Maybe it will be one of those visions that lets gates fly open in your synaptic mass, like your first orgasm, or psychadelic experience.

I notice another butterfly off in the Rhododendron field, sketching its own, similar, chaotic pattern. I am reminded of a poem, "Visit to the Hermit Ts'Ui, by Chiien Ch'I -- written in the 8th century, in China (translated in the 1960's by Kenneth Rexroth).

Visit to the Hermit Ts'Ui

Moss covered paths between scarlet peonies,
Pale jade mountains fill your rustic windows.
I envy you, drunk with flowers,
Butterflies swirling in your dreams.

Ch'ien Ch'I
(Love and the Turning Year;
One Hundred More Poems from the Chinese
Kenneth Rexroth, P. 67)

I look out over the butte and realize I'm in a garden of pink Rhododendron flowers & small, precise conifers. I realize I'm alone, and will be for months. I realize I'm watching butterflies -- and have been for nearly an hour.

July 17th, Writing a good letter

2007-05-18T07:41:00.000-07:00

"You know you're writing a good letter when you jump up from your desk & pull down 1 or 2 books, and when you hunch over your notebook like a kid with a magnifying glass over an anthill."

-- Me

"God must not engage in Theology; the writer must not destroy by human reasonings the faith that art requires of us." -Jose Luis Borges

July 15, Writing to The Old Man -- Dizzying continuum

2007-05-18T07:19:00.000-07:00

So I might write to The Old Man. Everyone's got one. He's out there, and I'm writing down all the debris I pass as I walk backwards into my future. I'm saving the images of the debris, so he and I can laugh and joke about it when I get there. I sweep the debris away, and continue to walk.

The coordinate-system is all fucked, too. There's the up/down & side/side. That I follow. Then there's this arm that reaches up into the up/down and across the side/side. It's not sharp & black or grey & easily readable by false light, like the other two. Its that red-brown of a horse. And it's a strong, muscular, organic bend like a horse's neck turned - to.

When you're contentedly traveling your grey side/side, you'll hit this (with it's color, that can only be seen correctly in sunlight and still is a mystery/beautiful) and suddenly be stretched out flat -- your head in the future & feet in the past - or vice versa. Suddenly, dizzying continuum. I wrestle with this. -- gotta pee.

****

The wind sounded like a car coming up a wet driveway.

****

July 15, The Weather and I, Dancing

2007-05-15T07:47:00.000-07:00

(I wrote a cathartic, painful letter to an ex-lover -- and the weather cleared a bit & then closed in -- and now the storm is above me, and I'm fasting, and the rain increases as I want to write faster and faster, not knowing even what I'd say -- just trying to let this stuff come through me -- what this weather resonates, what it says within me -- that I can't tell the outside from the inside -- that as I looked out the window of the lookout, I expected windshield wipers to come on and clean my view -- that that's a perfect analogy to my consciousness, that I even took a walk around the catwalk, but came back in. That it's raining outside. That I'm alone, and it's raining outside. That the current of a poem I heard a few times before is coming into my mindpan. That I can't, don't want, to control it. That the rain and thunder and dripping is a percussive orchestra -- that there are rhythms there, that I'm relating them, that they enter me, that I am relating them, that there is a rhythm here, that I want to express it.)

****

I'm becoming ecstatic, I imagine myself listening again to that poem (I'll write down the name later -- I've got it on tape). I imagine it affecting my whole life's work; I imagine academics & professors discussing the influence, rationalizing it; that, when asked, I just scream out "Because it got it, it got me -- right in the gut. It got me right in the gut, and I stayed there, and that it gave me a hard-on, and it gave me a context when I was ecstatic."

And then I come to a realization -- there are forms of writing that I've read and only partially digested, that give the ecstatic experience context, aesthetic context. They give me a structure to let this feeling out into. They build structures that resonate and allow me to communicate when I'm ecstatic. That I need to read those that illuminate me most -- those that give me a stiffy.

Lopez comes first to mind. Erdrich poetry. Sometimes Rilke. I can't see the ecstatic crunching down into form and words as easily in Rilke sometimes. Who else -- who else do i walk away from with a hard on. Lopez -- man -- he gets me like few others. Lopez -- and someone else, there is someone else, who I can't think of -- who makes me pace & rant after reading them. I did that after Chaim Potok -- but that was mood, & company, & timing. Lopez always does that for me. Rilke used to. Erdrich can. I'm going to nap -- to dream.

w/love, Bp

July 15, Storm moves out, napping contemplated, fasting

2007-05-13T12:06:00.000-07:00

It's just beautiful outside. A storm has broken, the thick cloud bank & 15 mph winds, hail, & thunder rush in about the butte & then retreat again, quickly, into silence. The clouds have lifted, and there's a dark cloud above -- the ridges & peaks are offset by brilliant white mist, thick & curly, that travels down the drainages like baby dragons. Then the wind stops, and they sit -- curled & banked, like Tibetan fire in frieze -- blazing white against the dark blue-green ridges. One of my "chow-dog" ant friends just crawled around on my left hand as I wrote, tapping staccato with its bent, drumstick antennae.

As the clouds move back in, I have a strong desire to nap, to let this all sock directly into my subconscious. Why pretend -- just because my eyes are open doesn't mean I'm awake. Maybe I'll experience more if I'm asleep and unconscious. Maybe then my antennae will flow about in the wind like feathery tendrils of sea polyps, pulling perception in, like barnacles grabbing zooplankton out of the surf.

It is fogging in again. I'm writing while pacing slowly. It's raining. I may still take a nap. The fast today is burning out my back & arms & gut, slowly -- it feels like ashes re-lit & slowly blown on. Especially in my hands.

July 14th, William S. Burroughs

2007-05-13T00:57:00.000-07:00

Finished Nova Express by Burroughs. I like the ideas, the subliminal stuff, etc. Didn't enjoy the cut-up sketches -- made my head hurt.

July 10, writing exercise -- laces into atoms

2007-05-11T17:34:00.000-07:00

The Good Reverend is on his way up to the tower, yeah!!!!!

[The Good Reverend is a nickname for a good friend of mine. We met in Berkley the year before I was working at the lookout and became fast friends. I think the name came from the fact that he was studying comparative religion and biblical Mediterranean languages when I met him. He's smart and contemplative and quiet, with a wicked wit and generous heart. One of my only visitors up in the tower that summer. Visitors had to be OK'd through the Forest Service office and driven up to the tower by the forest patrol. It was all very uptight, since the lookout is within the Bull Run Watershed, which supplies water for the greater Portland area and many counties near it.]

[What follows is another writing exercise with a bizarre prompt... no idea where the prompt came from.]

Don't you hate it when you reach down from your bed to tie your shoes, and the laces fall apart into atoms.

****

Last time that happened to me I was sitting in a hospital bed, stinking of 3 weeks of sponge-baths and catheters, and cruelly bitter sweat. The thin mattress with its cheap egg-crate foam was bothering me so I swung my now skinny legs, covered with dark purple constellations, over the edge of the bed, and pulled on my socks. I hadn't realized until then how dammed bright it was -- and how flimsy. Everything in the room was flimsy polyester cloth (easy to wash I guess) and thin-walled aluminum pipe. I hated the rattle of the rings against the pipe as they pulled my curtains closed.

I could see outside the window today, and the huge trees out there (horse chestnut I think) just glowed in the sun. The sunlight seemed to set them off, like a candle does a lover's skin. I sat for a long while with one sock only half pulled on, staring out into the breeze and foliage outside. I could make out a lawn and curb -- and barely, some cars. One car pulled away, and the movement shook me from my reverie. I looked around, a little embarrassed that I'd been sitting immobile so long. I reached down, slowly, to pull up the other sock. I hated the look of my skinny, wrinkled arms sticking out of the over sized, one-size-fits-all smock they gave me to wear. I looked like a dried-up old desert crone, or a dark-skinned concentration-camp internee.

I lifted one shoe off the floor with my toes -- it was one of a pair my daughter had sent me -- brand new running shoes, with extra-soft soles & they didn't weigh a thing. I pulled it over my thin, wooden foot. Not bothering with the laces, I reached down with both feet to grab the other shoe.

At this point a nurse walked by in the hallway outside, it's walls a stupid mustard yellow. Luckily, she didn't see me sitting up, or she'd be here in a minute, her strong hands pushing me back into that thin-mattressed bed I hate so. I pulled the shoe up to my hands slowly, and felt incredible, dull pain throbbing along my vertebrae, like a diseased snake had replaced my spine. I could see it now, all dull & yellow, pocked, with scales missing.

I slid this shoe on. Something changed and my stomach registered it with a twitch. I crinkled my forehead & squinted my eyes to see. The shoe, halfway on my foot, was vaguely transparent. It was letting off a fine shower of particles, too small to see -- but sparkling. I "humphed" and pulled the shoe on as forcefully as I could, as though that would set reality straight. I reached quickly for the laces, but they slipped through my hands, disintegrating into a transparent whitish cloud, then reformed & flopped again to the sides of the shoe. I sat there a long time, hunched over -- staring at my right shoe.

A nurse's footsteps passed the door again, but this time they stopped. You could almost hear the incredulous stare that must have crossed face when she saw me there, sitting up. She rushed into the room, and I felt the strange tightness come over me as her cloud, her essence, crossed mine. I could smell her perfume as she reached down and grabbed my thin calves, pulled the shoes off me.

She was muttering to herself like a disturbed chicken. I was smiling, and would have been chuckling had I the energy. She took my legs, and pulled them carefully onto the bed. She was very, very careful -- and as strong as a Russian masseuse. She laid me back down, and I was still so amused I didn't even think to protest. She was muttering something, I can't quite remember what, something about "ungrateful old men," and "people who won't let themselves be taken care of."

She was quite peeved -- not only because I wasn't dead yet, but because since I did this on her shift she had to handle a cadaver that still breathed. Somehow that breathing made her look at things she didn't want to look at in her life -- like that useless marriage she carries around like a cross on her back, or a bundle of luggage too large to carry. Yeah, she was peeved. I almost bust out laughing, but I was sure the pain would make that a bad idea -- coming in like a thousand spears into my gut. No matter -- it had been a successful day anyway.

"Special Significance" -- writing exercise. Hanbleceya ceremony

2007-05-09T17:29:00.000-07:00

[I was knocking around rough drafts for essay answers to college entrance forms, and this one asked about an event of "special significance" in my life. Don't recall if this ever made it onto an application or not -- it was probably going to Evergreen or Prescott college.]

"Special Significance"

In the spring of 1991, a friend and I walked into the newly-thawed hills of Eastern Oregon to fast. We had been planning this for over 6 months (if "planning" is an appropriate word to use here). After finding our individual spots together, we camped 1 night at base camp, made some sage tea, and had a couple hours of sleep. We headed, individually, to sit in a circle of stones fasting for 3 days and nights.

Our newly-met Cherokee teacher told us it was a fast, not a vision quest. "You hear "Vision Quest" and you expect something -- you two go out there and fast, sacrifice for the people."

It's been 2 years now, and I fully expected to have a more recent example to use for this exercise; but in considering the events, i realized I couldn't have done any of them without this crucial first step.

Many things happened there. For one, I melted into a landscape more thoroughly than I had ever thought possible. I was joining the birds' morning salute songs by the second day. Secondly, & this was more subtely realized, I faced my own death, or mortality. I knew I would die. I *felt* that reality, and it changed me in ways I'm still discovering. One of the most marked being a switch from a fear-based mind, to one of trust & intuition. I am more free now than I've ever been.

Upon returning to Portland, Ross and I were already planning our 6 1/2 month trip through mexico & the Southwest, by thumb & freight car. That, too, was an incredible adventure. But as for significance -- it remains based in those 3 days. I would not be sitting here, as I am today, without them.

July ? again, extirpating nasty image from head

2007-05-08T10:21:00.000-07:00

I couldn't get the image out of my head, so I'll write it. I had been riding along in a green forest-service truck, and the driver was talking about all kinds of "waste-birds" -- crows, starlings, gulls.

The gulls were the worst, he said, they would cover the field all white when he turned it over -- digging around for bugs and whatnot. "Shit, we hated them dammed things. We'd sit on the back of the tractor with .22's and just picked em off, one by one. Then we'd plow them under."

Then, sensing my ecologically correct attitude, he said "they eat up all the eggs. They did a study, where they put poisoned eggs in dummy nests, and killed off a whole load of 'em, and you know what? The waterfowl population that year doubled. I hate them dam birds."

"I remember seein' em, dead, around the sewage-treatment plant. I guess they'd get into the used condoms. They'd pull 'em out of the treatment ponds, and then couldn't digest 'em"

The image seared into my brain, like a hot brand. Now to get it out...

A slick commotion of white & grey features, bright beak & eye lowered down to the surface of the roiling shit-stew, dredging a worm-looking thing, transparent neon orange, from the muck. Then swallowing it down as it flew away, it tasting not only like the sewage below, but with a texture meaty and satisfying. It felt good and substantial in the stomach. The seagull flying away, full and satisfied.

A couple days later, the same seagull stumbling around on the cement next to the piping & meters at the treatment pond. It's hot out, and the bird is delirious from all the toxins re-circulating in his bloodstream, the rubber lodged somewhere in its lower intestine, plugging him. His world sways & flashes & drops about him as the delirium gets worse.

Soon, an organ just pops, ruptures -- the pain increasing to a pitch unimaginable to our culture anatomies. The shock aiding it to pull free of the strong magnetic attraction of the body, of matter, and allowing it to fly away, towards the sun -- the big garbage dump in the sky.

July ?, 1:21 AM -- frozen corn, horror films, lack of someone to woo, Dreads and plaster

2007-05-07T16:48:00.000-07:00

Can't sleep. Got a bowl of frozen corn to munch on, and took a look at the moon through the windows. 5/8 full. My calendar is way the fuck off then, it shows 1/2 moon, waxing, on the 12th. The way its going, it'll be full in a day or two -- unless it was full a couple days ago.

Outside, it's got a pale, ghostly demeanor. The butte looks like a moor (again) -- once they'd have a poor, busy 1950's teen stumbling about in scared -- her ponytail all in a whirl. What a sadistic crowd we were (are). Wanna see kids chopped up for having sex. Every scene you see the soft-porn aspect of a teen slash-em-up movie -- you know the kids are doomed any second. The ultimate production of a crazed society formed on the protestant work ethic. "Fuck -- and you die, kids, -- gimme your money, thanks."

So I'm sittin here (on the Group W bench -- I mean I'm sittin here -- ), munching on frozen corn niblets, in the mood to write a corny love letter, but have no recipient in my life for such a letter.

Reminds me of the new, hippie chauvinistic I ran into a while back talking to some trail crew, or wildlife biologists -- "you aughta find yourself a kind little Betty to take up into that tower with you." "yeah, a Little Betty; you mean woman, right?" [lyrics] "where dehumanizing the victim makes things easier, it's like breathing with a respirator (Disposable Heroes of Hiphopracy)."

What was I saying? So, got no-one to write to. No one to woo.

I'll just read a chapter of Wild Mind & write instead.

****

Instead of that, I wrote G. Doten a letter, a writer who I met while working for an Irish stucco & plaster company in the bay area. He, a burgundy-haired, dreadlocked, Bostonian with a thick accent -- was their mudboy. Also their token drug-user. He writes shorts & scripts, etc. We should all be famous some day. He may be the first of my friends to rise up.

Federico Garcia Lorca Poem

2007-05-06T19:24:00.000-07:00

[after a night of many dreams involving the sea]

Gacela of the Flight

I have lost myself in the sea many times
with my ear full of freshly cut flowers,
with my tongue full of love and agony.
I have lost myself in the sea many times
as I lose myself in the heart of certain children.

There is no one who in giving a kiss
does not feel the smile of faceless people,
and no one who in touching a newborn child
forgets the motionless skulls of horses.

Because the roses search in the forehead
for a hard landscape of bone
and the hands of man have no other purpose
than to imitate the roots below the earth.

As I lose myself in the heart of certain children,
I have lost myself in the sea many times.
Ignorant of the water I go seeking
a death full of light to consume me.

Federico Garcia Lorca, Trans. Stephen Spender and J.L. Gili in The Selected Poems of Federico Garcia Lorca, P. 167

July 5th writing exercise: I don't remember

2007-05-05T08:58:00.000-07:00

I don't remember: I don't remember my Dad saying goodbye to me the many times he left as I was a child, before & after the divorce. I don't remember being born, being compressed in a space that I didn't fit for 26 some-odd hours -- I don't remember my first kiss, I don't think, unless it was that one girl I hated in first grade out under those 3 enormous trees that sat in the grass outside the 1st-graders rooms, the ones that were also on my block, and had paired winged seeds. They've cut them all down. She had foofy little skirts, and her underwear was constantly visible.

I don't remember: fish -- fishwives. My first fishwife. Anything of that sort.

I don't remember: orange fishes, orange oceanic fishes staring out at me from amongst kelp, and how I felt them, underwater exploring for the first time and underwater for so long I was finally arousing suspicions that I was part fish, or dolphin. Or how nothing under there, under the swells, under the greendark water, seemed to treat me any differently as they would a seal, or lumbering manatee. And how the eelgrass tickled my leg slimily and I got scared & realized how much I couldn't see with a mask on and how much this looked like 1,000 leagues under the sea, or batman and how there were always monsters, or bad guys in James-bond underwater viper machines out to kill you when you were down here -- and sharks -- I'd forgotten all about sharks, and suddenly my fascination with what was right on the bottom below me, amidst the eelgrass and red algae that clung to the rock and hid all sorts of interesting aquatic life, vanished, and now I was interested in keeping an eye on that vast sandy-grey-blue that you saw when you looked out towards the barren sea, and how a huge shark could lumber out of that grey like a bear out of a wood, or worse yet, streak out like a cheetah after an antelope, and how I was a big, soft, alien & stupid piece of pink meat floating like a chunk of bait amidst a plane of rocks, and alge too small to hide me, but too deep to push off of to get a good escape -- and my mind raced to swimming back to shore, my fins carefully not breaking water, not splashing too much, to not attract attention to myself and how I would crawl up on the grey pebbley beach and my parents would finally pay attention to me because I'd have a big, lacerated bite in my leg, and I would have swam in bravely anyway, and would be laying on the beach bleeding all manly-like, rationally, glad that the sting of the salt-water was cauterizing and disinfecting my wound for me, and I would wave off help and walk to my towel & lay down in the soft, warm sand with my leg hanging over the edge of the terrycloth, bleeding into the sand, and I would be getting better already, and I respected the shark and knew it wasn't evil really, just doing its thing, as per nature. And the more I thought about it, I would love the shark, for its primordial nature and how it touched me, and made me a man.

July 5th Writing Exercise: I remember

2007-05-04T07:35:00.000-07:00

[These writing exercises, I may have mentioned before, aren't supposed to be punctuated at all -- your pen is not supposed to leave the page at all in fact. I couldn't resist punctuating them in my journal, and for this blog I will cut them up into some paragraphs so it's not quite so hard to read]

I remember: I remember thick cotton stockings over my legs, and the nicks and scrapes on the black paint on the wooden floor of the Stage Right, the night of Tosca's opening, when I was a 10-year-old kid, and I had a goat in my arms like a nativity figure, and I was nervous and excited despite the fact that I didn't have to sing. And I knew that Barbara & John (lifelong neighbors as a child) with their salt-and-pepper hair were out there and my Mom -- I think, and maybe my Dad.

And I remember something about the director-lady or the director's assistant, and she was nice, and hustled us around backstage and helped us with our costumes - and we got dressed in a long room with white countertops in front of enormous mirrors with lights all over them just like you thought they'd be backstage at an opera-=house or theatre.

I remember the pudgy-faced black curly-haired little Italian kid who lived in our apartment complex and had gotten us the parts, and I remember how his arms and fingers were fat like a baby's and how he was so arrogant, and self-assured because he'd done this before, and his Mom doted over her young Opera star, gave him candy (covered with olive-oil for all I knew) and how I really didn't like him much but he was one of the few kids in the neighborhood who could speak English, it being mostly Cambodian and Vietnamese immigrants pretty fresh off the ship.

They lived across the street crammed 10-12 in a 2-bedroom apartment, and you could smell the fish, bitter cooking smells at all hours of the day and night, and it was kind-of off-limits -- I never went through that complex where the kids walked around the gravel-covered parking lot in thongs (flip flops) and torn shorts -- circling around on little bicycles, their grandmothers & great grandmothers nearby with nothing better to do than watch the children, where they were in a foreign land, and the cars drove by fast, and I'm sure the grandparents didn't speak the language at all and were thusly afraid of everything and pulled their culture they brought with them in the seams of their clothes, and the smells those clothes carried, they pulled that culture in like a flower-stand on a rainy day, the pulled it into that little apartment building, or more likely, into that little apartment itself, all thick with the smell of old people and pickled fish and sesame oil, and I'm sure they hit their kids if they spoke english at all, and sat in those cramped dark apartments and tried to recreate Vietnam, but couldn't because the Safeway up the street wouldn't allow it, nor the advertisements they put in full color in the nearby papers with coupons to draw out the poor-- reluctant ones -- I'm sure it wasn't allowed at all and that the system got in after all, and the kids started buying their own clothes, with bright colors and stripes and spent more time in the parks, now that their bikes had bigger wheels and ranged farther and farther, and they didn't have to depend on the timed efficiency of the schoolbus every day, and they got aloof as they grew tall & handsome, and drifted away.

July 5th, Vampire dream

2007-05-04T07:33:00.000-07:00

The dream was cinema-graphic, about 2 vampiresses. They were gorgeous, and lived at a stone mansion with a vineyard. One was a gilfriend of mine, and we all slept together in the same bed, but when I had first walked into the place my girlfriend vampire had sprinkled Holy Water & crossed me, so I would be protected from both her and her friend. Apparently there was a connection between the desire for blood, and sexual desire. The vampires were passionate people, passionate lovers.

July 4, Childhood recurring dream

2007-05-02T02:22:00.000-07:00

As a child, I had this recurring dream. It always started out with a vast blackness, and a low, resonant hum. The kind that moves your ribs & stomach around until you were hungry, and made your palms hot & itchy.

Then something would appear, a planet usually, and usually Jupiter -- your favorite planet as a kid, with its big red cyclone eye. It would appear in the distance, crystal clear & light strong & sharp amidst the clean blackness.

Slowly, after a long time, you'd notice that it was getting closer -- that it had been the whole time, but you hadn't noticed until now, when it took up almost all of your view.

You'd remember now that this was the dream where you crashed into things, and your heart would beat faster as you traveled through the roiling mists of methane & gas you would resist, twisting your head in your sleep this way and that, pushing against the sheets, sweating.

Then you would fall against the surface of the planet. It would fall right through your chest & different layers of the planet, they'd be getting bigger, too.

Little in your bed at home, you'd be calm again; eyes closed, but seeing something far off and truthful.

Soon there were large objects with space in between -- like planets themselves, but closer together and all a field of color -- then, as they got bigger, one would head towards you all alone with its buzzing, it would be transparent & loud with a sound like mad bees.

You'd break through its definitive, but transparent shell & inside were things that moved too fast to be seen, but you knew they were there, and your heart would beat faster and faster, but this time you didn't squirm, you were too far along, and the last stage was irresistable -- no way to stop it. And the buzzing would become a whine, and a light would grow and grow in front of you and the noise was unbearable, and you entered it. Its cold, but somehow like the Sun, and the noise would tear you apart if you stayed, and you'd wake up in your bed -- the walls and the window and the vine-covered fence outside and your sister in her bed, dark in the corner, all seemed very far away, and you very small amongst it all; very small and very light.

July 4th continues, some ranting then Sun worship

2007-04-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-28T00:11:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-25T19:17:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-25T00:16:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-24T10:35:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-21T09:10:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-20T13:25:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-19T19:20:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-18T14:52:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-17T09:44:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-16T14:27:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-15T10:46:00.000-07:00

[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

2007-04-14T10:41:00.000-07:00

[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

2007-04-13T10:04:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-12T22:46:00.000-07:00

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]

2007-04-11T18:51:00.000-07:00

[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]

2007-04-10T23:11:00.000-07:00

[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]

2007-04-10T02:03:00.000-07:00

[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]

2007-04-09T08:19:00.000-07:00

[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]

2007-04-08T10:11:00.000-07:00

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]

2007-04-07T22:41:00.000-07:00

[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

2007-04-06T22:49:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-06T22:25:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-06T07:30:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-05T07:11:00.000-07:00

["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

2007-04-04T15:45:00.000-07:00

[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

2007-04-04T07:01:00.001-07:00

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

2007-04-03T23:01:00.000-07:00

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.