Nadir

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.

After a bit of sickness

[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

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

Surprise find on a hike, continued

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

[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]

Wind velocity readings, lookout style

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.

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

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)

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.

Tired of writing, and a favorite line, unknown date

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.

July 21st, wildlife at the butte

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

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

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

July 21st, Preterist definition and an Eagle sighting

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

****

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!

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

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

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

Staying there, all becomes art.

****

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

New "Want List"

New "Want List":

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

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

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

****

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

July 20th, more Zen musings

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

****

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

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

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 15, Storm moves out, napping contemplated, fasting

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 ? again, extirpating nasty image from head

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

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.