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Road Journal I — XX
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BEING THE ADVENTURES OF A SEMI-NOMADIC POLYMATH ARTIST, MUSICIAN & WRITER
Essays, poems, and collected ruminations are being collated and compiled in a parallel journal at Dragoncave. I never know what I'm going to write about next, so if you desire to keep up with what I'm writing and thinking about, you really need to read both journals. Some overlap may occur without prior warning; sorry about that.
685. 2 October 2007, Beloit WI I have been back here for several days, but it’s been a push to get anything done. I’m feeling overwhelmed again, while at the same time getting little things knocked off the list, one by one. I am battling some kind of lethargy or depression, and it’s hard to get any momentum, or interest in doing things. • Ahead of all storms Gusts stir restlessly in trees, blowing leaves over lawns, silhouetted birds fly across a low cloud shaped like a fish skeleton, that gradually morphs into a starship, gun-metal grey on a light slate background, and swims or flies off east. Minutes later, sudden calm. The sky, now blue-grey, changes color to an ominous peach-pink, glowing from inner light. And then the front arrives, and it’s a dash for shelter. Clouds hunker down, glower at the greening. Thunder comes too soon after the strobe. skies bruised with torrents push the flood hard uphill, past sheltering wasps The storm, in the mythology of bees, is the wet disrupter, long waster of flight time, obliterator of scent trails. To the birds, it’s falling sky shaking the perch, knocking heads and berries down. To groundhogs, who give up munching grass to scurry for burrows, it's the bland interrupter; it cannot reach into home, warm damp dark home, crossroads of earthworms. The deer speak nothing, as usual. the first squall passes, steadying down to grey sheets— nearby, unseen songs • I was sorting through photos on the computer tonight, deleting ones I don’t need in the project folders for the next DVDs I intend to work on, the fall colors and winter scenes films. I went through a lot of photos with Dad and Mom in them, and I got choked up. The photos of our trip to Michigan last May, when he was feeling good; the photos of his last birthday, in the hospital; the photos from home, of his body, after he had passed over. I’m glad I took all those photos, but they’re hard to look at right now. Maybe someday I can look at them, but not now. Now that Dad is gone, and some time has passed after all the things that had to be done; now that I’m living alone in this house; now that some household repair crises have been passed through—I have time now to let some of the feelings come back again. Not that I had been repressing them, but I had been too busy, and needed a clear head, or as much of one as I could manage, to deal with everything. So, some feelings got set aside for later, simply because I didn’t have time for them back then; and later is now. I am feeling a lot of emotions around Mom, now that Dad is gone. I had not had the capacity to deal with both of them; and since Mom was being well cared for in the Alzheimer’s home, I didn’t worry about her, or even think about her that much; I was completely focused on taking care of Dad, and I’ll be honest: I only had the strength to deal with one parent’s set of problems at a time. Now, though, I am feeling grief from Mom, too. Her body is still here, but my mother is gone: her personality, the person she was, is fading away, is already mostly gone. So, really, I’m grieving at this time for both of my parents, not just one of them. Between that and coping with managing a big, empty house, and clearing it out and sorting through all my parents’ belongings, and also trying to do my own work, it’s become a heavy burden. I feel overwhelmed a lot of the time; and I have to back off and only deal with a few things a day. I’m also dealing with grief, anger, and depression, on top of everything else. This is probably normal; but it’s a lot to deal with. Some days I don’t feel like I do very well, or get very far. 684. 25 September 2007, Beloit, WI In the morning, as I break camp, it seems like a dozen people walk by, exercising their dogs on leashes. People who live in RVs and travel a lot take their pets with them, I guess. The tent is still wet from the rain last evening, even though it was clear the rest of the night. I take my time breaking camp, contemplating what route to take home. It’s going to be a long drive today, no matter which way I go. I dry out the tent and the tarps in the morning sunlight, and wander over to the beachline to take some photos. There are some maple trees that are radiant in their red and gold splendor. Eventually I fold the tent into the back of the truck, spreading it out to let it finish drying. I go use the bathroom, then pack up and go. I am reluctant to leave; I had a good night here, and I like it here I the morning, too. I decide to avoid the major highways, for now, and the big cities in northeastern Wisconsin. I decide to cut west into the back roads from Menominee. I fill up with gas then drive over to the region where I started this trip almost a week ago, Langlade County. I drove through Nicolet National Forest, stopping in a county park in a little town in the midst of the forest, and took lots of good photos in the wilder parts of the egion. The sky is clear blue, and the fall leaves are bright against it. I pass through Antigo, heading towards Wausau, and the last long drive home. But then I see a road sign for Dells of the Eau Claire State Natural Area, and pull in. I end up spending a lot of time there in the afternoon, as the trees are glorious, and the Eau Claire River trips over huge boulders in little rivulets, creating a beautiful pocket-park in the middle of the fields. I wander back into the pine area, which looks and feels just like Devil’s Lake State Park, or Interstate Park: the same kind of land features, the same plants and terrain, the same lighting, the same quiet under the woods. On the way back to the parking area, I pick up several bright red maple leaves from where they’ve fallen on the path. I take them home, intending to put them on the scanner and make art with them. This has been a very satisfying day. I’m glad to be back home. Even though I spent a lot more time taking photos up in northern Wisconsin than I had planned, it was well worth it. I got some great images, and the Dells of the Eau Claire park was a truly genuine, wonderful find. As beautiful in its own miniature way as any of my favorite parks in Wisconsin and Michigan. 683. 24 September 2007, J. W. Wells State Park, near Cedar River, MI A cold, windy, somewhat rainy day. The early morning bleak and grey and chill and damp. I get a fairly early start, driving up to Tahquamenon Falls State Park. At the park, the leaves just beginning to turn, not yet at peak. The park mostly empty, especially compared to when I was here in July. I shoot video as well as stills, of the water plummeting over the Upper Falls, tea-colored at the lip of the falls, foaming like root beer below. Both effects of the tannin in the water, from decaying vegetable matter upstream in the flowage. This water is often pure enough to drink, because the high tannic acid levels sterilize it. I realize today that I am sick of people. I need solitude, solitary time. I got very overstimulated at the Ren Fest, and it’s continued since then, with the people I’ve been meeting these past few days. I was trying to do too much. I’ve been more tired than I realized, and pushing myself too hard. I could conceivably drive all the way home to Beloit today, but I don’t want to push myself that hard; I think I will try to find a place to camp tonight. I decide to drive along Lake Michigan’s shoreline, on Hwy. 2. There are several places here to stop and take photos. I stop to get gas at Manistique, and discover a lakeside park with a beautiful overlook of the dramatic clouds over the water. Gulls and crows loft in the high, cold winds. There is rain across the water, and a veil of mist surrounds the lighthouse tower at the end of the harbor pier. I was told there were no places to stop and camp between Escanaba and Menominee, but that was wrong: there are several parks and commercial campgrounds all along here. I drive along, feeling ready to stop, and look at a couple of county and state parks. I have food in the cooler, but it’s been a long wet day and I don’t want to build a cookfire. I don’t want to have to work had camping tonight, I just want to rest quietly. I’m tired of hiking, and driving, and I’m mostly tired of people. I discover a wonderful state park, J.W. Wells State Park, right along Hwy. 35. There are over a hundred campsites here, but the park is mostly empty, this late in the season. There are about a dozen RVs parked in the lot, mostly evenly spaced. I pick a large campsite right over the water. I set up the tent, then walk over to take a shower. It begins to rain as I am in the shower, taking a long hot soak to soothe my back and nerves. When I come out, the ground is wet, and so is the tent. I throw another tarp over it. Then I climb into the back of the truck, and sit under the canopy, having a delightful picnic of sausage, cheese, bread, and sparkling apple juice. A cold meal and a small one, but I enjoy it to the fullest. I feel celebratory, clean, and happy to be alive. I have decided to take tonight off. No more traveling. No more writing. Nothing. I bought a book or two in Minneapolis before driving up to Duluth, and I get it out and read for hours tonight. I go sit in the shower rooms, which have locking doors; then I move over to the bathroom, and read more. I read for hours, before crawling in the tent and going to bed. I feel warm and content as I pull the blankets over me. In the night, it is warm in my blankets. The moonlight striking the tent wakes me. The moon is almost full, and stands high between the pines surrounding my campsite. I can hear the waves lapping at the shore nearby, and the calls of migrating geese. 682. 23 September 2007, near Brevort, MI The morning spent at Presque Isle and Porcupine Mountain State Parks. Then a long, hard drive across state to stay here for the night. It’s a house on the shore of Lake Michigan, and the rain has come, cooling the air, and chilling me all night long, as I sleep in blankets on the floor. The day dawned hot and sunny. It was even hotter today than yesterday, in the 90s and windy in the afternoon. Truly, no one up here knows how to handle this heat; they’re more used to the cold. In the hotel, at breakfast, I chatted with a Canadian couple taking a long road trip; they are driving around Superior, then will head down into the States, and out West, to eventually loop through Arizona before driving up to Vancouver, and back to Manitoba, where they live. A pleasant morning chat, discussing various places we’ve visited, or would like to visit. The drive up to Presque Isle (up Hwy. 518 from Wakefield), where there are a string of waterfalls I want to see, takes a long time, because I keep stopping on this tree-shaded two-lane road to take photos. Marvelous stands of trees, already turning bright colors. One or two times I stop, get out of the truck, then stand listening to the silence of these empty places. This time of year, this time of day, not much wildlife, not even many insects. When I get to Presque Isle, I drive into the park, then hike down to the falls, It’s very hot this morning, and even though it’s late September, plenty of people are wearing minimal clothing as they hike these trails. I get to the falls, and the island. The water level is very low, as there has been a drought up here this year, but the gorge is pine-laced and beautiful nonetheless. I cross the wooden suspension bridge, which bounces up and down with each step, and go into the cathedral pines on the island itself. I am drawn to the shores of Lake Superior, itself, and take my shirt off to make land art sculptures, and gather rocks. I find one dreamstone here, and one rock with an unfinished hole in it. The black flies are very bad near the water, and constantly biting; the wind keeps them off, but I must keep moving to avoid the worst of them. While I am beachcombing, another man comes out to the shore, takes his shirt off and walks up the beach to the promontory to the east. I start to go back to the falls, but then I realize I’ve dropped my shirt back there, and have to backtrack to pick it up. I am covered with sweat, but the sunlight feels good on my naked skin. I walk along the trails that follow the river, up to the lower two sets of falls. It’s quiet and peaceful in the shaded woods right by the river. The water is very low; you can see the usually channel is much higher than the water level today. These trails are on wooden boardwalks, raised above the forest floor. There are a hundred or so steps up and down from the parking area to the river level. I take my time, because it’s so hot. B the time I get back to the truck, I am thirsty and hungry, and take time for a quick meal, and a lot of cold water. It’s later in the day than I had planned, but it’s been worth it. This is a beautiful, magical place. Then I drive over to Lake of the Clouds, high in the Porcupine Mountains. I drive through the park, stopping for a few photos, then when I reach the high lake, which is suspended in a high mountain valley, between ridges parallel to the Lake Superior shoreline, the trees are all golden, and the wind is high on the cliff-top overview. The forest below is speckled many colors, a quilt of green, red, orange, yellow, and brown. The lake surface far bellow is choppy with waves, and the winds up here are fierce, but I linger a long time, enjoying the view. The peak of Copper Mountain is visible to the far west, through the haze. The clouds constantly change the lighting on the land, spotlights here and there opening up then closing as the clouds gap and congeal. After that, I drive a long time across the UP to get here, for the night. I’m tired, and not very sociable, and as I bed down, I am swept with a sudden wave of emotion. I really miss my Dad, and wish he had been with me to see all this. It’s a restless night. I get here after dark, but just at sunset, I find a little rest stop along Hwy. 2, about twenty miles west of here. There’s a walkway that goes down to the water, which is just behind a stand of trees. The stars are out for a moment, and the wind is high and strong. I’m all alone for a moment, so I take all my clothes off—I’m sweaty from all the hiking in the hot air today—and bathe in the fresh wind off Lake Michigan. It is a moment of pure peace, a personal silent ritual of thanks for a good day. 681. 22 September 2007, Ironwood, MI Minneapolis to Duluth. Toying with the idea of going up the North Shore, before turning towards Michigan. But the trees along Superior have barely begun to turn. So I drive east on Highway 2, going to the Upper Peninsula. I linger around Duluth a bit, and take a few photos. I make a wrong turn, and head down into the inland areas, then back onto Hwy. 2, heading east. I get to Ironwood around sunset. It’s a long slow evening. The air is still warm. I’m not too hungry, but I get a hotel room, and make a meal of meat and cheese and bread, and sparkling apple juice. When I register at the hotel, a man and his two suns are in the pool area, their bodies freshly wet from swimming in the pool; they play pool, and arcade games. One of the boys comes out for change to the hotel desk, and squirms impatiently while waiting for the desk clerk to get off the phone and give him change. Today was mostly driving, and not a lot of photography. 680. 21 September 2007, Minneapolis, MN I bought another dehumidifier for the basement, and I left that and the air conditioning running in the house while I’m away. It’s already better than it was. Also, some other repairs have been accomplished, or at least started on. It’s not that any of this is impossible to do, it’s that it gets so overwhelming at times, when it’s just me alone there, having to do it all. Things get overlooked. It brings out my latent perfectionism, which isn’t a good thing, because I beat myself up for not doing better, when the truth is, I’m doing the best I can, and I’m objectively doing better than many others can do. I keep discovering new layers of the grieving process, and some of it looks like overwhelm, and some of it looks like depression. I’m told this will take a long time, and that brings out my impatience, which is a vice I am aware of but can’t always resist. I slept well last night. It’s very dark and quiet at the cabin, at night, and very private. The thunder and rain woke me once, and I got went outside to pee, and the air was still warm and comfortable on my bare skin. Today when I awoke it was already hot and sticky, the humidity very high. The storm system on the way makes the air thick. There was also a lot of wind. I drove around taking more photos of the area, and up to Elcho and Summit Lake. I saw a lot of beautiful land. I have to say, the way the land in more inhabited parts is cleared out looks wrong after even a day or two in these thick woods, which are preserved and protected. The woods look right and true; the cleared land looks like a scar. I eventually got on Hwy. 29 at Wausau, and headed west. There were strong headwinds the whole way. I went through several patches of heavy but not long-lasting rain before Chippewa Falls, then the sky cleared, although the winds stayed strong. These heavy winds knock your gas mileage down, because you’re always straining upwind against them. I arrived in Minneapolis around sunset, which was golden in a clear sky, then we had Indian curry for dinner. I am going to be here for a night or two, then continue on up to Duluth, and over into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.  679. 20 September 2007, Indian Lake, Langlade County, WI I drove up to this remote cabin in the northwoods owned by Beloit friends today, in hot and cloudy weather. There’s a storm coming, the weather map says. The cabin is on a strip of land between Snag Lake and Indian Lake. It’s very quiet and private here; there are neighbors, but you don’t really see or hear them much. The leaves in this part of the state are already starting to turn. Many flaming red and yellow trees, vivid in the cloudy bright light. I stopped along two-lane highway County J several times to take photos of trees and walls of color. There’s a website that tracks the fall color changes, using spotters who report in; I’ve been checking it regularly while planning this photo trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I plan on driving for a few days, taking lots of photos of the fall colors coming into the leaves. The solitude and time away from the house will be a balm.  I may not write about this trip as much as I usually write about my road trips, because I’m finding myself in a non-verbal place, and becoming more of an open eye for seeing the world, and not feeling the need to talk about what I see. Here, just above the cabin’s porch, there are several maple trees that have four colors on them: green, yellow, pink, red. The colors gradually move inward from the ends of the branches. Sometimes you get one scarlet branch against a green background. This is early in the color sequence; peak times are when the whole forest has changed colors. But I like this time as much or more, because of the range of variegated colors, and the bright splash of a single branch starkly bright against a dark background. It’s vivid and lovely. I drove four hours today, and will drive four hours to get to the Twin Cities tomorrow, again stopping to take photos. Then on Saturday I plan to go to the Renaissance Festival with friends. On Sunday, then I will drive up to the Duluth area, and head over towards Ironwood, taking photos as I go. Eventually I want to get to Tahquamenon Falls again, before driving back home to Wisconsin. 678. 15 September 2007, Chicago, IL We got another piece done yesterday afternoon, then polished up, finished, and mastered both new pieces last night after dinner. I feel like this was a productive trip. It was also fun for me in that I did a lot of synth playing, and tracked things via keyboard into the mix. It’s a kind of playing I seem to be good at, maybe from all those piano lessons in my youth, but that I haven’t done very often, for years. I have been feeling derailed by circumstances (caregiving, post-funeral details, house drama) away from the things I most love to do, and which I don’t get enough time to spend doing—namely, making music on all kinds of instruments; making art; etc.—and the past couple of days here, devoted more or less exclusively to creativity, have been a tonic. I’m lingering here in the sunlit morning again, reluctant to start the day and go back to Wisconsin; maybe I’ll stop along the way, again, and do a little sightseeing or shopping. No reason to hurry back, after all; not like when Dad was needing me to get back right away, on previous trips, before dinner or whatever. No agenda today but to spend some time with myself, thinking about things, listening to music, writing, resting, enjoying the post-studio creative glow. Let it linger. Don’t be so hasty to rush back into things. • lessons in austerity from beetles making desert tracks— red Navajo rug  677. 14 September 2007, Chicago, IL I drove down here to the studio yesterday afternoon, an almost effortless drive with virtually no traffic snarls, under a sunny and warming sky. I’m in the studio for two nights, to take a break from household repairs that have cost me a week and more of time away from my creative projects, and endless frustration. Last night, we laid tracks down for a new piece, and pretty much finished it. It needs a little editing, to open up some holes and let some air in; right now, it’s almost done, but still a little dense. Today, we go back in to edit some piano improvisations I recorded here just over a year ago, and turn them into finished pieces, as well. I’m sitting in the morning sunlight, which is a balm on my skin and tired and achy bones. The wind makes the tree shadows dance across the floor and window slats. I’ll get up in a few minutes to take a photo or two. The fish in the aquarium tank hover against the current, watching the world outside their transparent walls. Somewhere in there is a metaphor for life: do you spend all your time watching the other fish inside the tank, or do you look outside at the larger world? It strikes me, lately, that far too many people just watch their fellow fish; the rhetorical vitriol spewed everywhere in political writing and literary criticism is one symptom of that mutual narcissism. It’s wise to limit what one exposes oneself to, some mornings, lest one allow the dyspepsia of others to dominate one’s own day. Today I’d rather focus on being creative, on making music and art, than on toxic vitriol and recycled, pointless hatreds.  676. 10 September 2007, Beloit, WI Within a couple of days after the garage sale, a mold problem has developed in the basement, in the studio/library, effectively preventing me from getting any work done and also making the last week of trying to deal with everything a living hell. This is a big house, and a big yard, and it’s more than I can deal with, by myself; I reached out for help, and nothing came back, at least in a timely manner. Every delay means this house becomes harder for me to live in. I’m here on my own, now, and it’s too much responsibility given to me, with not enough authority to actually do anything. That’s a recipe guaranteed to make me crazy. It’s been a bad week. This morning, since dawn, after a week or relative heat and warmth, it’s cold and rainy again. It’s rained almost an inch since early morning, and the house is cold. I’ve been making phone calls to get a mold specialist and a chimney sweep in here, with mixed responses. It’s been so damp, with all the heavy rains and flooding, that a mold problem developing in the house is just the last straw; maybe inevitable, but really taxing. I’ve just been really frustrated. This task of taking care of a big house and big yard is just overwhelming. It’s a huge job, on top of which I’m supposed to somehow keep sorting through things here, doing more organizing, and also get back to my own life. Well, when you have a mold problem, all that goes out the window. There’s nothing left, when just basic survival and physical health is the issue you’re facing on a daily basis. I’ve been coughing a lot, and feeling really not well; and that’s a clue right there. Needless to say, I’m just tired of all of this crap. I was already feeling burned out before Dad died, and everything since then has only made things worse. I’m more tired and mentally fried than ever. I just turned the heater on in the house, even if it spreads the mold. I’ve been airing it out, and the temperature in here now is quite chilly and damp. • Update, a few days later: A house inspector came, and the mold problem is caused by the massive rains and flooding in our region, so the air is really humid, couple with the fact that moving boxes around in the basement knocks spores and dust into the air. I’ve bought a new dehumidifier and am running it constantly, and the situation is already improved. The other repairs and maintenance to the house are also happening, if not all on the same timetables. Eventually, it will all get worked out. But I had to raise a ruckus to get everyone’s attention, which I regret, but not too much. The truth is that I do need lots of help to take care of what I’m supposed to do here, and it remains overwhelming a lot of the time. I will not apologize for being the squeaky wheel that needed to get greased; I might eventually apologize for creating drama, even unnecessary drama, but I really needed to get everyone’s attention. I was feeling very alone and abandoned. I could maybe have asked for help better; on the other hand, what happened is what happened, and I’m not going to dwell on it forever. 675. 4 September 2007, Beloit, WI My dreams last night were violent as well as vivid, and I woke up shaken. I still feel unsettled. I’ve been having some insomnia, because I’m a little afraid to go to sleep with these dreams continuing to be this powerful; so I stay up until I can’t anymore. Thus, I’ve been going to bed later, and getting up later. The worst dreams are before dawn; after that, I sleep peacefully. I’ve had a couple of days off, now, since the garage sale, to do nothing. I was physically wiped out by all of that hard work. I had thought about driving up to Devil’s Lake yesterday, but I realized I was too sore and tired for a long hike. Instead I went up to Janesville, and walked around the Rotary Gardens, then did a little shopping. I found another lava lamp at Goodwill, but it doesn’t seem to be working properly. I also picked up another music documentary, from a series I’ve enjoyed watching about the making of classic rock and pop albums, this one about U2’s The Joshua Tree. • A haiku I wrote yesterday, after spending time in the Rotary Gardens; hundreds of white butterflies were everywhere, but they were in constant motion so hard to photograph. summer snow covers the formal garden flowers: white butterfly swarm 674. 2 September 2007, Beloit, WI This is the third day in a row that I’ve been up with the sunrise, or shortly after. The first two were because of the garage sale, needing to get it going in the morning; and morning was when most of the sales happened. But my sleep schedule is really off, now, and I was so tired last night, after coming home after eating out, that I napped for two hours, then was up till my usual bedtime, and now I’ve woken with the sun. The day is another clear-sky day, just like the last three or four; you couldn’t ask for better garage sale weather. The garage sale went very well. I got rid of a lot of stuff, and earned a little spending money in the process; more actually than I expected. I enjoyed myself, too. I enjoyed chatting with people, and the occasional bargain. At the end of two days of being “on” all the time, though, I was ready last night for some silence and solitude. Today I need to do some after-sale organizing and clean-up, but I really am feeling like taking a day off, after being so focused on it for the last week and more. I could use a nature break. I’ve been thinking about going up to Devil’s Lake, and even camping for a night. It’s Labor Day weekend, though, so I might go camping tomorrow night, as I’m sure the park is full all weekend. • Later: I was able to get back to sleep, and slept deeply for several more hours. The day has gone slowly, and I got moving slowly, being so tired from working so hard. I cleaned up what was left of the sale items in the garage, put a lot of them in bags, and took them to Goodwill. Now that’s all gone from here, and it feels lighter here. Then I watched a movie and made a light dinner. I ate out three times yesterday, and I ate well, so I didn’t have much appetite today. I needed a mostly quiet, restful day. I’ve been doing some light creative work: some writing, a little audio file editing for the podcast. Nothing major, and nothing too involving. Just bits and pieces. I just feel like doing something. There was a major fireworks show over at the baseball stadium a mile and a half away: no doubt because of this being Labor Day weekend, and a minor-league baseball game. The booms echoed for a long time, off the trees, and hills, and surrounding lands. I could see sparks behind the wall of trees to the west of the house: just sparks of fireworks, and the glare of blasts lightening the sky above the trees. The Big Dipper was half-hidden by the upper branches. 673. 28 August 2007, Beloit, WI The rain ended yesterday at noon, and it’s been sunny and hot ever since. I turned the house AC on this afternoon, to get rid of humidity. The high today is in the 90s. The flood plain across the river has been un-drowned for a couple of days now, but today is the first day the river seems normal; it’s still brown and moving fast, but it’s within its banks now. I laid out on the deck for awhile this morning, naked, and baked myself in the heat; I’ve been coughing again lately, as though that lung congestion never really went away, but came back in the humidity and rain. It felt good to soak in the heat and light, and I do feel better physically today than I have in several days.  672. 27 August 2007, Beloit, WI I feel better today, and I slept deep and long, so I feel more rested than I have lately. I think writing that all out late last night was good for me. I took a couple of paragraphs out of it an re-edited into a prose-poem. My favorite “form” to write in lately. Some sort of catharsis came from writing it out, after letting it stew inside me for two days. This morning it’s very cold for summer, and raining hard. All night and all day hickory nuts and acorns are bouncing on the roof, and rolling off, falling from the trees overhead. It’s been like living under a constant, sporadic hailstorm. You keep jumping a little, even when you know what it is. There’s just enough of a gap between hits to surprise you over and over again. A storm blew through this morning, and it’s rained a little, but not like last week. I’m feeling restless and cooped up. Maybe I’ll go up to the Japanese garden again, and do some photography after the rain; with the stones all wet and darkened by rain, it will look beautiful, I’m sure. There was big flooding in the studio in Chicago; the basement storage area was under 5 inches of water for 24 hours. Data, instruments, computers, all wet. The website server’s been down for days, too. A lot there to retrieve, but Andy also says it’ll look great when it’s cleaned out and re-organized; he’s always able to be positive. 671. 26 August 2007, Beloit, WI I feel bruised: emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually, existentially. I am going through a crisis of meaninglessness and pointlessness. I mean, why bother. I am going through the dark night again, and I can’t get out, and I’m alone in it, as always. This is also habitual negative self-talk, I know. I am guilty of the sin of pride and arrogance, too. As well as the vice of impatience: I don’t want to go through this again, because I’ve already done so. I want it to be over already, having already passed through it. I don’t want to go through it again, because I have no patience for repeating lessons that I imagine I’ve already learned. Friday I tried to drive to Ann Arbor for my 30th high school reunion. I never made it, though. I got as far as Chicago, by driving down Hwy. 39 to Hwy. 80, to bypass the usual Chicago traffic. but once I got to Chicago, the traffic came to a total standstill. It took an hour to go 10 miles. Then I saw a sign saying there was construction ahead for the next 15 miles, which would take another three hours of standstill highway driving. So I got off as 394 and began an odyssey of driving around the rural areas south of Chicago, backtracking, and trying to get to Indiana. Me and all the trucks and other cars. Have you never been in a rush-hour traffic jam in the rural middle of nowhere? That’s what it was like. At one point I had backtracked to go further south to try again, and I got stuck at an intersection where two different cops from two different jurisdictions were directing traffic; they let every other direction go several times before they let us go through, a display of arbitrary pig power that earned them many honked horns and curses from many different drivers. They were arrogant in their power, no question of it. Eventually, somewhere in a small town, I gave up and started the drive home here to Beloit, giving up everything I had planned for the weekend in Michigan. I guess I wasn’t meant to go there; certainly I was blocked at every turn, for hours and hours of excruciating driving. I found out later, too, that many tornadoes and storms had continued in Michigan, right where I was thinking of camping, just outside Ann Arbor. Camping would have been a disaster. Well, the reunion is no loss; it was mostly an excuse to go back to Ann Arbor, tool around town, do some walking and shopping; I regret missing that more than anything else about the trip. I spent all day driving, a total of ten hours, and used up a full tank of gas, and I got absolutely nowhere. I was really upset. I cursed the Powers That Be, and God, and I meant it. I was so sick of it all; all these things I try to do, and it felt again that at every turn whenever I just tried to do something to relax and take the stress off myself, that I was denied. I was so furious, so venting on the phone to P., so into the victim and blaming and shaming and self-talk and anger. We spent two hours on the phone. By the end of it, I had come to realize that I have lost a lot of emotional ground in the past two or three years—which I already knew, really. I have lost a lot of ground, and now I need to work to gain it back. It will be hard work, difficult work, and I do not look forward to it. I feel bruised in my soul, ever since I got back, even now, two nights later. I have done almost nothing this weekend. I’ve watched a lot of TV, and felt sorry for myself, and eaten a little bit of food, none of which really pleased me. I’ve also lain out naked in the sunlight on the deck, to feel the sun’s heat soak into my deepest tissues and begin to heal me.  I did go to Rotary Gardens in Janesville yesterday for some quiet meditation time in the Japanese Garden; pleasingly enough, I had the garden all to myself for long stretches of time. It was sunny and warm in the late afternoon. I sat silently three or four times. I listened to the cicadas and the water flowing over the falls, and I took photos with the new camera (itself having survived a disaster earlier this week that meant I had to drive to Madison to get it repaired; it has been a not very good week). Some of the images I captured yesterday I feel might be the best I’ve ever done in such settings. I also made some ambient recordings. As I was leaving, I got into photographing a whole row of red flower plantings; I was remembering that red was Dad’s favorite color, and thinking of how to make a DVD movie that was a color-wheel in his memory, featuring all things red. I just might do that, later.  At the end of that dark day, near sunset, I pulled into a rest stop to stretch my legs. There was a group of monks and nuns in pale gray robes; an order I don’t know. And flying in ecstatic circles all around, on the lawn, on the concrete, a thousand gigantic dragonflies, each one at least four inches long and a half inch in diameter, feeding or mating, or being the manifestation of beauty at the end of a very dark day. When I first pulled in, the monks were all speaking French; and I felt the old language take life in me, as I contemplated chatting with them. When I came out of the bathroom, though, they were all speaking English. The dragonflies were still dancing around. I went and stood in their midst, and felt encircled and surrounded by flying bolts of light. I felt like there was a summoning going on. The monks and nuns, it was easy to believe, were not human, but symbolic, some sort of message or sign. They ignored me even as I stood with my hands out to touch the flying insects, feeling the power throbbing my palms, feeling the threshold between worlds to be very near, maybe just in the shadow of that dark tree near the edge of the woods. The sense of dark danger from a tent caterpillar nest in a tree overhanging the sidewalk. The monks and nuns got into two cars and drove away, leaving me with the wheeling dragonflies. It felt like a meeting of overlapping worlds; a brief encounter of strangers at the crossroads. One of that day’s lessons was that I need to get rid of this negative self-talk; even if my higher self knows what I mean, I have been using harsh words, which is all basic self can hear. Another lesson was that I need to find the humor, even in these sorts of situations; and I found I could laugh about the irony of driving all day to go absolutely nowhere. A good 375 miles of it. I have been being very hard on myself, and taking my pain way too seriously. It’s okay to find the irony, and laugh about it: that’s not dark humor, not abyssal black humor, but a genuine response to the existential crisis. A sacred thing, it is, not an evil one. I’m in a fey mood tonight, now that’s it late and I’m getting tired. My laptop has been acting badly since I got home, causing yet more angst and anger and fear; I rely on it so much, and I can’t afford to replace it. I’m still feeling bruised; but I’m also feeling determined to get past this, this new dark night, even if it’s the same dark night, nothing new or different. I came to an insight yesterday, too, about the nature of God: the whole theology of the Trinity is wrong. It’s actually a four-in-one, not a three-in-one; and four is a much more sacred number. It’s Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and Godhead, which can also be called Mystery: that deep silent Unknowing behind the imago dei; that still small voice that one can never put into image or word; that ineffable, always unknowable, Mystery. The day’s lessons were also about not knowing, not having answers, not having reasons for my suffering; but having to be in harmony with Mystery, with the Unknown. With the Void, and Abyss. I knew all this once, too, and lost it. Now I must re-learn it. It’s like starting over, all over again. Like all the maps are useless again, and the territory is again uncharted. Like every structure I’ve accrued in the past few years has been stripped away again, because it needed to be in order for the voice of Mystery to re-enter my life, and rebuild it, yet once again. I am so tired. Too tired to resist this process, to fight against it too hard. I feel like I’m dying all over again, and just want the powers that be to take me now, and get it over with. Of course, they never do exactly what you want them to. I am ready and willing to die, once again, to the old life, and make room for whatever new that is supposed to come in, now, into the void that I am. That emptiness that is what used to be myself and my shadow; that hole in the air that used to be shaped like a body. And then I need to start over again, all over again, again, and rebuild. Until the next time it is all torn down again. So mote it be. 670. 24 August 2007, Beloit, WI The new music theatre must contain video, and better yet, multi-window video. Not multi-stream with multiple screens, as in the origin of video art pieces in the 1970s, but movable frames within the main screen: insets, counterpoints, slides, frames, all of that. I think of what whenever I watch Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book, and when I watched for the first time the DVD of Three Tales: Hindenburg, Bikini, Dolly, by video artist Beryl Korot and composer Steve Reich. I listened to the CD first—the CD and DVD come packaged together for this work—while taking a long drive across Illinois. The music was driving and relentless. I thought by far the best section was Dolly; it is essentially a meditation on the questions of where technology begins and humanity ends, a critical discussion for our new millennium. It’s also the more inward of the three sections, asking question about who we are, rather than responding to the outward impact of technological change on society; then again, cloning, cybernetics, the man-machine interface, the logical-positivist (anti-spiritual) views of some biologists such as evolutionary biologist and fundamentalist atheist Richard Dawkins—these are all questions about defining who we are now. I would note that, in the end, the authors of this piece of music theatre are as critical of scientific zealotry, as presented by people like Dawkins, as some have become of Dawkins’ own recent published anti-religious screeds. Reich and Korot both point out, in the transcribed interview accompanying the work, that the “argument between religions” mentioned in the piece itself is in fact calling into question the attempt to turn science itself into a kind of unquestioned religious dogma. This is precisely what Dawkins and his ilk have been trying to do—quite blindly and unconsciously, one might add, since they seem to see no irony whatsoever in their actions.  669. 23 August 2007, Beloit, WI Another night of 3am storms, as every other night this week. The river this morning is at its peak floodstage, running even faster and higher. Today is supposedly the peak, although it’s supposed to rain two more nights. The floodplain across the way is even deeper underwater, and the river is moving by even faster. It has not strayed onto our lawn, though, or come over the near bank; I hope it never does. Yesterday I saw a total of four hummingbirds during the day, and not all the same one, because there were at least two different species. Just this moment, as I sit and write, another hummingbird just hovered for several moments in front of the window, as though summoned by my writing about it. I’ve never seen so many hummingbirds here before. For that matter, except for the absence of deer, who must be trapped across the river, in another part of the woods, I have seen much more wildlife than usual these past few days of the flood. The insects are very active, and the groundhogs and squirrels are everywhere. I saw the great blue heron flying upstream yesterday; I wonder where it’s been fishing, because all this water has been too deep and muddy and fast-moving for its usual method of slowly stalking and spearing fish in the shallow, clear waters. 668. 22 August 2007, Beloit, WI On the bee guilt front, I’ve determined that the offending hive is probably ground wasps, not bees. I generally like bees; wasps and hornets, on the other hand, are fair game. I was awoken at 3am again by another storm last night; another half inch of rain in the gauge this morning. I couldn’t sleep, so I moved my bedding upstairs and slept in the living room, till I was awoken by the sun, and by some utility work down the road. A hummingbird is working over each pink and purple blossom on the fuschia. I’ve seen hummingbirds four times today. Yesterday was a hard, difficult day, and I might need all day to recover from it. I dropped my new camera in the parking lot, and the protective filter shattered; the lens is also damaged, but still usable. It meant I had to drive up to Madison, fearing the worst, lost in serious drama about money, repairs, all that. But the camera store I went to there was very sweet about helping me out, and didn’t charge me for it. That was a good experience. I was shaking by day’s end. 667. 21 August 2007, Beloit, WI I discovered by observation yesterday that the reason I got stung by those bees is that there is a hive being built in the ground in that part of the garden. Bees fly in and out of it constantly. I happened to pull at the weeds that surround the nest, which is why they got aggressive and stung me. The stings still itch like mad at times, an there are big red patches on my skin, but the welling isn’t too bad. I’m reluctant to try to attack and remove this hive. I may have to wait till winter to rip it out. Are there insecticides for bees? I’m reluctant, also, because I generally like bees. Their lore, their history, their collaborations with humanity for the millennia that humans have called themselves civilized. P.L. Travers wrote one of my favorite long essays for Parabola some years ago, which also became the title of her book of collected essays on myth and meaning, What the Bee Knows. Travers was one of my favorite essayists; I sometimes hear echoes of her voice an manner of tying ideas together in my own better essays. Her method she called “thinking is linking,” which I find an accurate description of how I think in essays, too: making connections that may not seem obvious, but which are rooted together at deep levels. Moving quickly across associations, the same way I do in poetry, to show how more things are connected than we usually realize. The river outside is still humping by with fury and brown majesty. I see lots of driftwood, tree branches, and logs in the current today. The floodplains are still inundated. It hasn’t rained in a day now, but we ended up with close to five inches of rain in three days, a lot of it coming in very short bursts. There may be more rain later this week. Is the flood over, will it recede? Or will these waters continue to rise from the unconscious, demanding attention, drowning the usual fields of play? An orange and white river buoy floats by, torn loose from its mooring upstream. 666. 20 August 2007, Beloit, WI Woken several times during the night by itching: the bee sting on my wrist. It’s not that swollen this morning, but it does itch. We had another inch and a quarter of rain since last night, and it’s still coming down steadily this morning. The river is going by so fast that it’s scary. It’s brown and swollen, and has spread out onto the flood plain on the opposite bank; several of the overhanging tree branches are deep in the water. I’ve never seen our little river this wild and dangerous. Thousands of gallons per second. monsoon rain under black skies, swollen brown river— bees shelter under weeds • Later: It stopped raining in the early afternoon. I went and saw the movie Stardust, based on the Neil Gaiman story, and enjoyed it a lot. I had the whole theatre to myself, too. When I came out, there was no one around; a slow day, I guess. I went out to take photos and video of the swollen river. The floodplain across the way is completely covered with a couple feet of water, and the river is going by very fast. I was shooting video of the other bank when a couple of boys on bikes, looking sweaty and dirty, their shirts off as they rode their bikes along with their bulldog, came up and told me the swimming hole with the rope swing downstream was flooded out, and there are houses down on the floodplain down by White Ave. that were also flooded in. This is the highest and fastest I’ve ever seen the river; truly an awesome sight. Makes you remember that nature is more powerful than anything we dare build, and that taming it is not really possible. 665. 19 August 2007, Beloit, WI The first night alone in the house, after everyone has left, after everything that has happened, and there is a huge thunderstorm in the middle of the night, so loud that it woke me at 3:30 in the morning, even down in my basement room, which is usually insulated enough that storms don’t bother me. This morning the rain gauge says we had over two inches last night; the creek is brown and swollen and moving fast, looking like nothing so much as a South-east Asian river during the monsoon. It’s still raining, gently, though, and I can hear the drops on the roof. I had to turn the heat on yesterday, in August of all months, because it was only 66 inside the house; the temperature outside has been below 60 since early yesterday, as though this were a March or October storm, and not an August one. I had more vivid, intense, very involving dreams. One dream was about sound recording, and playing back an ambient recording of the northwoods that I had made, playing it back in a special room that evoked all the nostalgia of being there. I don’t know how long these kinds of dreams will go on; maybe forever. I know that since Dad died, I’ve been very close to the Veil, which makes these kinds of things happen. I still feel close to that. I am more rested, now, if not always more relaxed. It still doesn’t take much to push me over the emotional edge into some kind of emotional abyss. I still feel very vulnerable, and a little wary, because I don’t know that all situations are safe for me to be emotional in; so I can be wary till I know it’s okay. It’s not that I care what people think of me, I don’t think; it’s more that I don’t feel like explaining, and taking all that effort that it takes to explain. • Later: I went out into the garden at noon to pull some weeds, because the rain had stopped, even though the ground was still sodden. I grabbed some goldenrod to pull it, and got stung twice by bees. My own stupid fault. They must have been sheltering in the fronds against the rain. Of course I wasn’t wearing much at the time. I got stung on my left thigh, and the inside of my left wrist. I’m not allergic: not racing heartbeat, no difficulty breathing. But it hurt like a sonofabitch. I held my wrist under cold water, and dug the stinger out, but the sting there was much more painful than the other one. I put hydrocortisone on it, then sat own and did Reiki on it. I also did some transmutation on it, turning the venom into a golden healing chemical; the sort of things shaman do. I’ve read somewhere that bee venom has been used for folk remedies for arthritis and other conditions, in tribal cultures; I sought to tap into that, and turn the venom molecules into something beneficial and healing, for me. Six hours later you could barely tell that I’d been stung. Later tonight now it hurts again, but an ache not a fierce pain. Throughout the day I’ve had some phantom pains in old injury sites; I wonder if that’s the cure at work. We’ve had over four inches of rain now in 48 hours. The creek out back looks like the Mekong River during monsoon season, from those old National Geographic photos: brown and moving fast. Late at night, now, it’s still raining: calm spells, then sudden increases in volume of rain on the roof. At least the thunderstorms that work me last night haven’t recurred; the rain is okay, as long as the lightning isn’t lingering nearby. I drove up to Madison to attend a rehearsal of the Madison gay men’s chorus, Perfect Harmony Chorus. It was a good rehearsal, and I felt welcomed, although I only knew two men going in; I felt a little wariness, but not as much. This is a small group, compared to the SF chorus, so you can’t help but get noticed more, just by numerical factors alone. This would be my third chorus, so it’s not like it’s anything new. But the music was good, and I’m a good sight-reader for vocals, and already knew at least two of the pieces on the roster. Then I drove home through more torrential rain; but this time in traffic on the highway, after dark. A little stressful. I’m feeling a little insomniac tonight, so I’ve put some music on the stereo as I write. It helps me mood, but the rain is a constant backdrop to everything tonight. My mood is dark tonight, affected by the weather, but also by taking down-time. Just letting go of some of the things we’ve had to deal with lately, brings the emotions to the surface: rather, gives them the chance to get noticed, because there’s time for them now, after a week or so of being too busy to be able to deal with them. I scanned some photos earlier, and some of my haiga from the journal I kept at Kawashaway last week; I’ll post some of those, eventually. I realize I’m just not used to sleeping alone in this house. My senses go sharp, and keep me awake, listening for the faintest sounds; it does keep me awake. I’m going to try to go to sleep soon, though. And the rains continue.  664. 12 August 2007, Kawashaway, MN Last evening I was ready to load my truck up and just disappear and never return. But I had made promises to travel back to the Cities with some others, so I stayed; just removing myself from social contact. I’m glad I stayed the night, now, after all. Getting out of the tent in the middle of the night, the winds were high and strong. I stood on the land in front of my tent, and dervished, spinning in circles, summoning more wind. The stars were fields of light between the gaps in the black trees. A few nights ago, I was standing in the kitchen, and a vision came over me: the dark outline of my own body, filled with a blue sky with puffy white clouds. I had the familiar feeling of being on the threshold, of being two places at once, about to step between worlds. I let it be. This morning it’s still windy and cool; I feel like dancing in the wind. I feel joy with the forces of nature around me, and far less often with humans (even though humans are of course part of nature). I feel, after a long hard week, connected with the land here at last. I have to pack up and walk my gear out to the truck this morning. I walked a lot of it out yesterday afternoon. (Using some of that seething rage as fuel.) All that’s left, really, is the bedding and the tent. Yet now I find myself in no hurry to leave. The land, at least (at last!), is speaking to me, as a friend, as a partner. Without any necessity of human interaction, the land speaks directly, and says, we love you. Just listen to us. We embrace you. I feel the land and sky’s embrace, this morning, and want only to return it. I will go down to the lake one last time, before leaving, to say hello and goodbye to all the spirits here. Then I will begin the long drive back to snivellization.  663. 11 August 2007, Kawashaway, MN Yesterday I went up to Grand Marais again for the day. I went with two Madison friends, and we stopped at Cascade Falls, visited a couple of galleries in town walked out on Artist’s Point to the lighthouse, bought some more fudge, then ended the day with dinner at the Angry Trout. Good company and good conversation. It was approaching sunset, and the light was warm on my body as I sat on the pier by the water to eat dinner, the geese circling below us, waiting for handouts.  Afterwards, we drove up the Gunflint Trail to visit the gardens of the sister of a friend of a friend. Very beautiful gardens, rich with color, laid out in unusual and beautiful shapes, a lovely setting with a cabin and sauna in the woods. Outdoor rooms of a flowering wonderland in a hidden pocket of the northwoods.  When we got back here, it was dark and people were gathered in the cookhouse for the annual fundraising auction. I did well: I got a quilt that had been made from old bluejeans, and a Mexican woven wool half-blanket. I was very pleased with both.  More dreams, of course. But not lingering on waking. • Drowsing on the lawn in the afternoon. Then taking things out to the truck; we’re leaving tomorrow to go back to the Cities, and there are things I can take out now, since I won’t need them this last night. Then sitting on the lawn in silence with others. Some have already left, and it has gotten quieter. This hot afternoon makes for quieter reflections, or naps. I have been reading, writing, sitting silently. The breeze cools the hot day, and keeps the flies off, mostly. Sitting in silent circle: companionable silences. • ripples in dry stream sand dancing • Catalogue of Birds II Three hawks, in sky, flying along river of air between trees above road, perched on high stump of leafless birch. Hummingbird flitting among daisies and coneflowers. Raven carcass in the road gravel: a spray of oily black feathers, bare outlines of talons, a clutch of beak opened in a last stilled cry. Raven flies up from road to treebranch in front of truck making dust-trails in the road. Great blue heron flies upstream along the Cross River at twilight. Robin pauses in a branch outside the tent, brief sentinel. Seagulls crying over the end of the lake. Waves make sunlit ripples on the stones of the bay, light tracks under clear water, black webs of Canada geese feet stirring new trails. •  Later: A sudden judgmental rage overtakes me, later in the day. I feel violently angry. I know the intensity of what I am feeling is out of proportion to the stimulus, but I can’t stop it; many things are rising to the surface, now, some of them old, some new. After a week of dodging situations I don’t want to feed into at Faerie Gathering, I have had enough. I’m tired of the lack of integrity, of people not walking their talk, of refusing to be accountable, as individuals or as a community. Where’s the loyalty, the fierceness? I don’t belong here anymore. Even though it’s sunny here and now, there’s rolling thunder in the distance.  I went down to the dock to watch an incoming storm roll in. I left and went in just as the rain began to fall.  The edges of the oncoming clouds, limned with white fire. Streams of light-rays coming off the edges. Dark underneath. Layers of clouds, moving fast. Bright white clouds in front of dark cedar silhouettes. • Later, writing at Hare Lake, dusk, in the failing light: The rain was hard but brief. A little rain, but not enough to relieve this drought. I sat trying to play shakuhachi for awhile, with some other musicians, but the energy in the cookhouse was too scattered, too diffuse. I couldn’t play anymore after awhile. I went back out to the dock to watch the sun go down. I was able to get grounded and centered, there, away from any other humans, and played shakuhachi beautifully for several minutes. This particular flute will only play for me when I am centered; it’s a good barometer. I guess that I’m not strong enough yet to be centered in the midst of the marketplace; my hara hasn’t become strong enough again. I tried to participate in dinner, but I just had to flee. It looked completely unappetizing, although I’m sure it was fine. I couldn’t stand being around those people. I was hungry, yes, but too upset to have an appetite. All this Faerie social stuff feels like so much lies. I drove out to the Trestle for a burger, but then I came here to Hare Lake instead. I needed to be alone, but didn’t want to drive too far in the gathering dusk. Watching the fading light over the water, here, I just burst into tears. The only entity that has never let me down is the Dragon. Nothing else can be believed in. It’s all lies. • Later, night: I drove back to the Trestle and got some dinner, after dark. I talked to my friend there for awhile, then other people came in, and I went off into a corner and just waited to calm down. Then I came back to camp, and eventually got some back massage, which felt good. I still have am in one of my patented Zero Tolerance for Bullshit moods, though. I got judgmental earlier, and I’m still working on why. Mostly it’s because people don’t walk their talk. I guess I need to forgive them more, if I can. I have been silent and taciturn and darkly moody all evening. (I’m sure some folks noticed.) There’s nothing to say, really that will fit into words. It’s my silence, the shaman’s silence, that often puts people off. They can sense the power rising, but the fact that I can’t say anything about why, frightens them. And so I take myself away from the village; the villagers irritate me in ways that the land and the creatures never do. If only they could see their own blindnesses. Some of my anger is parental, I suppose: why don’t you all stop hurting yourselves? Well, for tonight at least, go heal yourselves and don’t bother me anymore. 662. 10 August 2007, Kawashaway, MN Last night’s dreams were intense and vivid again, but not as disturbing. The thing is, these dreams are so vivid and involving, that waking up is disorienting: the abrupt transition, and not knowing where I am at first. I’m waking in the tent here in the northwoods, not at home. While I love camping, and being outdoors, it can be a further dislocation with regard to waking from these dreams. It’s a hot day already today. I need to go up to Grand Marais today, I’ll also stop again at Cascade Falls, most likely. • Yesterday, I drove north up Hwy. 7 to hwy. 172 and over to Isabella, the next town up. Isabella is a dot on the map, a way-station on the way to Ely, which in turn is the jumping-off point for canoe and camping trips into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Isabella’s a café, a bait shop, a few houses, and not much more. I found some spots along the many lakes up there to stop and take photos. Divide Lake, which is right along the Laurentian Divide, has some national forest campgrounds that intrigued me, for a future visit. Hogback Lake had water so still and clear in the late afternoon light that you could see three worlds in its reflections. Still calm waters on a windless afternoon after a day of rain. Endless waves of rain and sun. A loon family I startled, swimming away from the shore. 661. 9 August 2007, Kawashaway, MN Dreams of the Bardo. As intense and vivid as they’ve been, lately. One long seuqnce of some kind of living diorama of the history of oncology: rooms you walk between that are set up as historical settings, or to teach a lesson. It ends with a resource library, where they press inspirational and educational books upon you. Some other dreams, too; but that’s the one that had the tone of the Bardo. Dad’s passage, probably, not mine. Upset emotions this morning; unsettled by these dreams. It begins to rain, gently, after I’ve had a heavy breakfast of eggs an spam and tea, and gone back to the tent. I nap briefly. In the far distance, basso rolling thunder. Squirrels chitter, always anxious, complaining about something. I’m thinking of walking out to the truck and driving someplace I’ve never been. Rain or not, it’s not a day for socializing. Your fears are not my fault. • Oracles appear everywhere, if you pay attention. There is soil here, of course: accumulated detritus of fallen leaves, thin crusts of ground gravel and sand. Wind and glacial deposits. Lakes sitting surrounded by peat bogs, as they bogs gradually fill in the lakes. Clearings that used to be lakes, the soil still too acidic from the peat to grow much except grass. But very close to the surface, boulders strewn in heavy fields. Behind the tent, a sinkhole where a tree fell over, the rootball pulling right out, exposing the rocks formerly bound into its root system.  660. 8 August 2007, Kawashaway, MN My dreams last night full of violent emotion. I slept deeply but jerked awake with my heart racing. In the first sequence I am furious with Mom and Dad; our home has three levels with some modern unusual shapes; I go into part of the house and lock all the doors to the rest, so they can’t get in; later on, some sort of truce with friends, we meet on neutral turf; I am trying to get them accept and understand something about me (don’t be glib about interpreting that, either); I have books and photos and am trying to show them something they refuse to or cannot understand. In the second sequence, P. and I drive into mainland China to pick up some kind of shipment at an airport, but it’s not there; when we depart, we make a wrong turn to get back to our truck, and become increasingly lost in the winding, twisting, busy streets, with no easy intersections; we get further and further form where we’re supposed to be, and it becomes increasingly more dangerous. I had some difficult hours last night: feeling alone, naked, disregarded, snubbed; that old baggage. We did a little ceremony of blessing for a young gay couple, Some small celebrations, then things quieted down. It became a quiet evening at the fire circle, after that. I went out to the clearing later with the tripod and the new camera, and took long-exposure photos of the night sky: time exposures of the stars above the treeline. Some came out very well, despite a little blur from the tripod not being sufficiently weighted down and sturdy; it’s nice to know that this camera is capable of such time exposures, as it means I can get back into long-time-frame night photography. I’ve missed being able to do that, since I went digital. Later, the moon rose, and I went to bed. The blessing I gave at the ceremony, which I had been asked to do, was: Earth shelter you Fire be inside you Water cool you Air gentle you always. By starlight, sunlight, moonlight, candlelight and firelight, May you always walk in Beauty. • late night conversation green tea under starlight Perhaps I’ll give up poetic forms and return to lines. Yet it remains haiku, haibun, the classic Chinese four-line poem, tanka or waka, or some form I’ve made up or envisioned. The tone and subject stay consistent, even as they grow and evolve. Inspiration comes from those same things that renew me, refresh me, keep me alive and alert: mountains, oceans, forests, lakes, rivers, the creatures on and in them, my cousins by blood marriage, all emerged from One Ocean under One Sun, the stars churning over the eons to new patterns and positions over it all, just motes in a thick roiling fluid, lit by shafts of light from the galaxy’s core. Never so silent as when writing poems, or recording some lush birdsong in the trees: simply listening to what’s there, emerging from its own silence to merge with mine. Birds in the trees all around me (I record them); squirrel making racket as it passes by, little feet thudding the ground; distant voices from up by the cabin echoing through the woods. Subject-subject consciousness needs to include the non-human, the creatures, the bioregion, to be complete. If it stops short at just human interaction, and doesn’t include the rest of Creation, it’s incomplete and will become undone. • Catalogue of Birds I Two great blue herons, one at a still lily pond along the Baptism River, another flying up Cross River away from the road and the bridge. Hawk in a tree above the road; another floating along the canyon of unpaved road between thick trees in the Superior national Forest, miles from any human habitation. Ravens and turkey vultures together on the road and in the aspen branches at roadside, sharing space, and holding converse. • Later, night: In bed early because a burn ban in the National Forest prevents u from having a fire circle tonight, plus I’m tired from a long day’s walking and taking photos, mostly in the Temperance River area. A brief nap: a dream of a field of green and white flowers. I wake to chill air. It’s extra-dark outside, with no candles and no fires. I go for a cup of tea and a piece of fresh bread and have a long conversation with Madison friends, reconnecting. I have been wearing a compass as a necklace all week. The one day I didn’t, I felt lost and lonely. So, a symbol, a talisman, an image, a reminder, a signpost and guide, and more. Many layers to the image; perhaps I’ll list them all later, in a poem. 659. 7 August 2007, Kawashaway, MN My tent on a level spot on a gradual slope in these rocky woods. There’s virtually no topsoil here, just tumbled rocks and a little sand. The trees take root down into it, nonetheless. Standing outside the tent this morning, I interrupt a red squirrel’s peregrinations. Apparently I’m standing right on his squirrel highway. He tries to go by, and complains. I decide I’m not awake enough yet to want to move, and flick my sarong at him. He jumps back and tries again. Then eventually he takes the high road, going up a tree trunk, leaping across the gap from branch to branch, and down another trunk past me. And on. We’re the interlopers here. The squirrels and other wildlife are the real residents on this land. We just visit for a time. —Children, one earthy Thing, truly experienced, even once, is enough for a lifetime. —Rilke, the Seventh Duino Elegy •  Cascade Falls, MN raven at fall’s edge looks over the vista trail— the wind-tossed cedars Stream over a cliff’s edge, and fall. Begin here. White water to churning brown to clear and resonant lens over deep rocky channel. Then to stumble in the shallows. A thousand kneeling altars. A shamble of murmurs and rapid complaints. Widening out here, a mouth changed from an astonished circle to a lipless smile. And then, at last, the broad-horizoned blue of an inland sea, in which to merge and disappear. Nothing left but the memory of ice or rain, a thousand years of parting. stone lip of the precipice remembers the water’s plummet the rocks at waterfalls’ foot remember hard endless rains •  half-moon bowl of water falls far between the cedars: Cascade River • The past remains hidden in clouds of memory. Still it returned us to memories from a thousand years before. Such a moment is the reason for a pilgrimage: infirmities forgotten, the ancients remembered, joyous tears trembled in my eyes. —Basho, Oku no hosomichi, at Tsubo-no-ishibumi As long as the road is, even if it ends in dust, the gods come with us, keeping a watchful eye. —Basho, at Myojin Shrine in Shiogama • floating high above the fire’s circle of light: river of heaven Sparks rise from the bonfire, rising vertically through the column of red light, the reddened cedars flickering and glowing. Cylinder of air. Ignited core of cylinder. Sparks rise up.  658. 6 August 2007, Kawashaway, MN, late night Drove to Grand Marais today, to spend the day by myself. Stopped at Cascade State Park, with the wonderful stepped waterfalls, in their lush settings reminiscent of a Japanese garden. I hiked up and down the trails, and took lots of photos, and some video, of the water rushing over the precipice. Then I drove up to Grand Marais, and found a cyber-café, the Neptune, which was really cool. It was great to be able to log on and check my email. Got a cup of tea and a cinnamon roll, and sat and did email in the café; just as I used to back in Taos, back when I first traveled west. It was a flashback of sorts, and put me in a good mood. My cellphone also works now in Grand Marais; in previous years I could never call out from the North Shore, now I can, in Grand Marais at least. I hiked out onto Artists’ Point and the lighthouse breakwater, and took lots of photos of the Lake and the exposed, weathered basalt of the shore. I mostly used my new camera, and also got some good candid photos of people making piles of stones, and hiking around the shore. At one point, I stopped and wandered off the main trail, down to where the slabs of rusted rock merge with the incoming waves, and make shelves and slabs. I made a landscape art piece: a circle with a single long thing rock in the center, like a compass needle. I even got out my compass and aligned the rock with magnetic north.  Direction: North The compass has been so very symbolic to me these past few weeks. A symbol of finding my path, keeping to the path, a talisman preventing getting lost; and so much more. Yes, it is an inner, alchemical compass, too; and an ethical compass.  My feet were getting sore from all the hiking, so I came back to Kawashaway. But I stopped first at the Trestle for a burger and a shower. Tonight there was some good drumming at the fire circle. For the first time during this gathering, I joined in, and even led a few pieces. I like it when people dance around the fire: in inspires the drumming, and everything synergizes.  657. 5 August 2007, Kawashaway, MN, late night Sat around the fire circle tonight, a quiet night overall. Lots of good conversation, joking, and laughter. I alternately watched the fire and the sky. I saw a shooting star streak across the skybowl, from east to west. Just after moonrise, the wind stirring the trees, I went down to the dock at the lake, and watched the sky over the lake, the half-moon rising over the island to the east, the constellations clear and silver. The wind stirred up the surface of the water, spreading a rippling river of light under the moonrise. The marshgrass at the shore whipped in and out of the light as the wind moved though its long fingers, its restless hair. Now, in the tent, writing by soft lamplight, I hear the trees sigh all around, moving in circles and spirals of soft hushing whispers. I am content. • I talked out a lot of my issues and concerns, with one or two people who I do feel I can trust, and I feel better have done so. Still, tomorrow I think I get out of here and go to the Lake Superior shore, and spend some time doing photography, and wandering alone. It will be a good day for it. I will lie here, listening to the wind, till sleep takes me. How do you re-learn how to trust? By continuing to trust those people and forces and things you already trust: the land; your closest friends, who have seen al the darknesses in you, as you have seen theirs, and still you are friends; the remembrance that this is a demanding yet still trustworthy universe, in its divine essence and manifestation. And you trust the processes: Of rebirth out of yourself, and renewal. Of art-making. Of sometimes painful to endure yet always-rewarding evolution. Of that which arises out of the Void, the Silence, the Mystery. For there is never just Nothing there, but that it gives birth to the All.  656. 5 August 2007, Hare Lake, MN The silent lake. Coming here to be by myself in sacred space. (There are two lazily trawling fishermen in a bass boat, out across the lake, slowly circling.) Meister Eckhart said God is novissimus: the youngest thing there is. Continually being created, and creating, and being renewed. I come here to this little rocky, tree-shrouded shore of the lake and remove my clothes and bathe in the deep cold waters, rinsing all my cares from my body and my self. Continual washing, continual cleansing, continual renewal. Then I dry myself with my sarong and sit on a log, wearing only the sarong, and let the wind and sun dry me and warm me. I’ve heard loons calling in the late night, both of the past two nights: spirits from other realms, passing through. I find forgiveness mostly by letting go. And by being renewed by the lake, the sun, the wind; the four elements and all of creation, returning me to vision and union. Then, all things return to their proper alignment and perspective (the needle of the inner compass steadies) and there is nothing to forgive, because nothing has been done, that needs forgiving. • I don’t feel called to participate in Heart Circle at the moment, or worship, or anything done in groups. I feel the need for renewal with the land; to commune in solitude or small groups. And speaking from the heart is something I want to practice all the time, not just in specific settings; which is the goal, I think. take it outside that frame and do it all the time.  655. 4 August 2007, Kawashaway, MN Writing in the tent every morning, my morning meditation practice here before I begin each day: I sleep in late, as late as I can. The night air was cool and damp. In the early predawn, awoken by birdsongs. Clouds covered the sun till midmorning, finally warming the tent and waking me. The woods quiet now except for bird and squirrel and insect sounds, and an occasional breeze in the trees. I want, at last, to do nothing today. I want to breeze the windward way, planless, light. I touch the earth to bear witness. It’s been three years since I was here, to the month. The earth and I barely know each other. Yesterday, driving again, by day’s end I was back in that same trance state, and making good time. I was a floating point of consciousness, aware of everything, aware of how hard I could push the road, one with my truck, the lightest touch on the wheel ultimately responsive. Detached and directive, not numb; dream-traveling, not escapism; knowing the road intuitively, not being superior to it. I may spend as much time alone today as possible. It’s time to take a day for me. To lose track of time. To just let it all go. • I read Basho’s Oku no hosomichi this morning, a few chapters, and what I get from it today is the ease with which Basho as a character in the book is able to express emotion. Even if it is a literary trope, emphasized on rewrite, it’s a model for behavior. That fluidity, that freedom to feel what you’re feeling in the moment, an to respond in the moment, that lightness of non-attachment to social proprieties. It is true. white aspen poles poke above green canopies— the lone osprey • he wears a compass on a chain around his throat— the direction home I am wearing a compass along with my other necklaces. It is becoming deeply symbolic to me, right now: marking a tie to direction, the direction north in particular, but also as a reminder that if I lose my way, I have but to consult the needle to get back on course. It is an inner compass, a moral compass as someone here has jokingly described it, and a spiritual compass. It symbolizes finding my way again, after having been lost in the woods for a long time. •  More vivid dreams: I’m told that’s normal, after the death of a loved one: you’re drawn much closer to that Veil which separates the living and the dead. I’m having a hard time here. last night I opened my heart up to someone who an hour or so later stuck a knife into it with harsh words. I immediately shut down and left. How can I return to be trusting and unwary again when this happens? How can I possibly feel safe here again? I don’t need to be in a Heart Circle to be able to speak from the heart. (Although I guess some do.) A Heart Circle is good training to both speak from the heart, and to listen and hold space; but it’s a skill you can take with you out into life, having practiced it in circle. I think I pretty much speak from the heart all the time. (Especially since the Sacred Heart manifested.) But there are obviously boundaries and limitations around when and how and with whom you can speak from the heart. It’s not always safe. I’m grateful to that person who lashed out at me, after we had earlier opened up to each other: I’m grateful for those moments of speaking from the heart, because I felt I was participating in an opening ritual. Now I’ll let the rest go, and not expect anything else from that person, ever again. But don’t poke me—or be prepare to face the Dragon for real. At which point be prepare to discover: you’re really quite out of your league.  654. 3 August 2007, Minneapolis, MN Sleeping on the floor, after going to bed late: vivid dreams all night, tossing on a strange bedroll— in alien lands •  Later, Kawashaway: After a long drive to get here. Radios in the cars keeping us linked for intentional stops for food, gas, bathroom breaks. Lunch at Perkins in Duluth, overlooking the Lake. When we get to the land, and set up tents, I go over to Artlip Lake for my traditional greeting to the local spirits of water and land. Thin wispy clouds are white streaks high up in the blue, reflected in the calm waters of the shallow lake. The ware level is even lower this year than I remember it before; this is a beaver-dam lake, after all, and there hasn’t been much rain up here, north of Lake Superior and about 15 or 20 miles inland. This is inside Superior National Forest, and the roads are dry and dusty. cloud wisps reflected in water— loon calling  653. 2 August 2007, Minneapolis, MN Drove here today, to go on to Kawashaway tomorrow. Spent the day driving as if in a trance. Listening to Caroline Myss’ Your Power to Create, which I got really into; as usual, she kicks my ass, and provides many insights. Time passed quickly. It was one of the easiest times I’ve ever made this drive; no sense of duration at all. Maybe I was a light trance; maybe it’s just that I’m used to much longer drives out West now, and it’s not nearly as bad a drive by comparison. I felt in my own universe, detached and invulnerable, even driving through some of the city’s less good neighborhoods. (Got off the highway at Cretin Ave. and cut over on Franklin. A day or two ago, a major disaster happened here: the 35W highway bridge over the Mississippi River collapsed, sending cars and people into the 64-foot chasm. Not all the bodies have been found as yet.) Nothing could touch me. At one point on Franklin, the beautiful late afternoon sunlight making everything dazzling and bejeweled, I tried to pass on the right around a car signaling to turn left; then he zoomed forward to cut me off, not turning after all; not one block later, he zoomed out to the right to pass the long line of cars waiting at the light, and collided at speed into the side of a big oncoming SUV that had been turning left. Obviously he didn’t see it, although I saw everything clearly from my vantage: I knew exactly what was going to happen. I was just shaking my head in disbelief, wondering if I should call the cops, or get out and see if they were al right, when a cop car pulled up right behind the accident, on my right; the cop had probably seen the whole thing, too; as I pulled forward with the rest of the traffic, I saw the cop get out of his cruiser, looking less than charmed by the guy who had caused the accident. The same guy who had cut me off after giving a wrong signal, then zooming out was clearly in the wrong; you could tell he knew it, too; he jumped out of his car and was as hyper as he’d been while driving; his body language was that familiar blend you see when someone terrified is trying to bluff out that everything’s okay. All this the day after the 35W bridge fell in downtown Minneapolis. (A structural failure, no doubt. A disaster, but not terrorism. Wait till the blaming starts, though, after the accident investigation concludes.) The mood of the town is somewhat subdued today, and rightly so. But I feel impervious to it all, detached, almost in trance. It’s been a long day, after a late night of packing for this trip, and without a lot of sleep, but I feel completely unaffected by any of it. As though it were all happening at a distance. • Later: Loading more gear into the truck here after dark. It’s a warm, calm night. For awhile overhead, a helicopter hovered, very high above, gradually moving along the river: probably doing an overview of the disaster scene for some government agency. It looked more like a military chopper than your typical small chopper most of the TV news stations use. 652. 30 July 2007, Beloit, WI I’m so vulnerable now, so fragile, that last night old patterns and damages came to the surface, and I can only say, it wasn’t pretty. I’m afraid of reverting to some of my old patterns, the more toxic and dark ones. I need rejuvenation, and recuperation, and I only hope I can get it in the north woods next. Because if I can’t, I feel real close to the edge, to the end of the rope. One more meltdown under the belt, regardless. One more piece of the process. 651. 29 July 2007, Beloit, WI We went to a play last night, The Foreigner, by Lewis Shue, and laughed a lot. It’s a witty play about otherness, about deceit and deviousness, and good people who don’t know how to communicate. One of the best lines from the play was when one of the characters meant to say ESP, but it came out “extra circular communication,” which is not a bad summation of the play, actually. We had a really good time, and the laughter was therapeutic. I have a list of things to do before going camping this year; it seems like a list of ever-increasingly length, so I’m actually getting some packing done now. I found that I already had a very good camera bag, never used, that I got at Goodwill a few years ago; so the new camera is safe and secure, complete with accessories, etc. 650. 27 July 2007, Beloit, WI Almost two inches of rain since last noon. The air is thick and steamy this early morning. I couldn’t sleep much last night. It’s almost foggy outside, the air is so drenched with dew and rain. I set out a porch-full of old cardboard to recycle last night; it got soaked in the rains, no doubt, but they picked it up anyway, for which I’m grateful. Not a speck of wind yet today; it might still storm some more. Even the birds are quieter this morning. But we needed the rain badly, the lawn was starting to brown. Lilies and roses make white and yellow and bright pink highlights against the dark surrounding greens of the lawn and garden. morning mists, in woods quiet after rain— heron flies upstream After awhile, it begins to gently shower again. I like living alone here in some respects. The chief of them is that I don’t have to put on clothes till I feel like it. I can get up in the morning, have breakfast, do some chores, take a shower, and only before I go out need I get dressed. I always sleep nude, so I can just stay nude till I have to get dressed and go out. It’s a luxury and freedom I haven’t felt since I last had my own apartment, some few years ago. In summer at least, this is a very comfortable place to be. Today I have several chores to do, and some shopping, before Pam and David fly back from Michigan, where they’ve been these past few weeks. This has in some ways been a very hard week: a day of emotional storms, followed by yesterday, which was one of those classic dental days wherein, after a long appointment with much oral surgery, I was so wiped out I was pretty out of it for the remainder of the day. But I can say it’s also been a productive one: I got a lot of chores done. A few notches into the infinite moebius belt of massive amounts of Things To Do. I can only work on household chores a few hours a day; then I need to do my work, my creative work, and relax. I am still so tired, after the last year, that I refuse to push myself any harder than absolutely necessary. • Later: More thoughts on poetry: I realize, in reading through a lot of poetry and talking about poetry lately, that I mostly an unmoved by it all. I realize, even further, that I see a huge amount of striving behind the poetry I see online, and in much printed matter. Striving to impress. Striving to excel. Striving to exceed, in some cases. A lot of people dedicate a lot of their energy to employing a medium of expression that ultimately never fit it all in, and betrays genuine experience by being too small to encapsulate it. They work really hard at being writers. They write a poem a day. They write in new forms they’ve discovered or invented. They spend huge amounts of energy defending what they do. And nobody pays attention, or cares. The grand futility of it all is both alarming and soothing. After all, if no one really cares, you can do what you want to do, and work to better yourself via poetry as a vehicle of self-expression, and if you never produce a great poem, it doesn’t matter. At the same time, the sheer volume of mediocre poetry being produced these days is staggering. There’s never been more available, in print and online, and most of it still sucks, relatively speaking. I find myself indifferent to most of it simply because the quantity vs. quality ratio is so very high. I’m not claiming to be a great poet; yet I do feel confident enough about the avenues I’ve been exploring in my own poetry, and I do think I’ve done some good things. It’s my corner of the world. I realize too how very seriously so many of these poets take what they’re doing, all without realizing that most of what they’re putting out there in unfinished work: etudes, sketches, studies, not final polished work. Sometimes that seems to dominate. Despite Paul Valery’s famous comment that a poem is never finished, only abandoned—a comment which does contain real insight—far too many poets seem to me to be lazy about pursuing quality and excellence, while at the same time far too zealous about pursuing technique and craft for its own sake, and also far too zealous about writing practice itself. The poetic world is tilted out of balance. It feels like all these poets are putting their energy into the wrong aspects of writing poetry, and neglecting the more essential, core aspects of the practice. Most poets over-produce, never realizing, again, that most of what they’re producing is not final polished work, but largely throwaway. I don’t claim to be innocent of this error, myself. But it seems like misplaced striving, rather than genuinely productive striving. My opinions on these matters certainly seem unpopular amongst the poetic mainstream. Sometimes you feel like a prophet, speaking truths no-one wants to hear, which is guaranteed to reduce one’s popularity in many quarters. No-one likes to be told they’re naked emperors. The bottom line is that there is so much effort being put into all this, that you’d expect the end results to be much better than they are, based on effort alone. Unfortunately, creative work never functions that way: there is no direct and predictable correlation between effort and quality. If there were, all polished and technically perfect poems would be great, and all poems achieved by riding the lightning of random inspiration would be crap; yet the truth is demonstrably the opposite. • Later: P. and D. are back here now. We had a quiet evening, ordered a couple of pizzas, and chilled out. An I spent time with my new photography toy. This afternoon, I bought a gift for myself, that was on my list of things to do for myself, eventually, if not now then later this year. I purchased a digital SLR camera, not the first I’ve used but the first I’ve owned. A Canon EOS Rebel XTI, 10.1 megapixels in resolution, interchangeable lenses, all the advantages of an SLR but digital. I guess I’ve become pretty loyal to Canon cameras, now, since that’s what I’ve mostly used since I went digital six years ago. I’m keeping the Canon PowerShot A630, of course, because it’s still a damn good camera. They complement each other; they have different strengths. I decided to get this before going camping this year, so I would have it with me up in the northwoods. Photo ops galore. Some landscape work, some waterfalls, some nudes in nature, and definitely some night photography. And firelight photography. So, better to get the new camera now, rather than later. The timing is good, and the cash was there at the moment. So, I’ve spent some time learning the camera tonight. Tomorrow, some flower photography in the yard and woods here. You have to give yourself gifts. You have to remember that there’s a point to living. You need to remember to gift yourself some things now, rather than postpone all good things indefinitely. Sure, sometimes it’s wise to space them out. But if you never indulge, you never get to enjoy, and then you’re dead, and you never did, and that seems like a waste. 649. 26 July 2007, Beloit, WI the guest is welcome if he comes, though no more expected than the sun A quiet morning with gentle rain. As I sit at my desk, a black-green hummingbird pauses in the shrubs and flowers outside the window for a few tastes of leaves and flowers, then streaks off. I can’t get last night’s heron encounter out of my mind: to be sitting on the deck, motionless, while the heron lands in a tree just across the yard and river from me and preens, settling in for the night. It was a sacred moment. 648. 25 July 2007, Beloit, WI Sitting on the deck at twilight: the fireflies rising from the grass, flying ever higher into the night, to become stars garlanding the trees; bats flitting across the open yard, silent, eating their way through the insect-filled air; across the river, the great blue heron lands on a high branch of the tree and preens itself before the settling down for the night; all around, cicadas make their high-summer noises, their croaks and whines, cricket rubbings of brass against flint and ivory. Through the trees, pale gold through black, the almost-full moon sails. Yesterday I lost completely to a total meltdown. Did nothing, except yell a lot, and cry. Cried myself to sleep at last, and finally felt at peace. Today I felt tired but better, having gotten that all out of my system. It’s a hot, loud night out there now, full of sounds and smells: a high summer night. I’m alone here tonight, but that’s not bad, this night. A chance to lounge around naked and content. bats circle as fireflies rise to the moon— eye of the heron 647. 24 July 2007, Beloit, WI My dreams continue to be intense, colorful, and vivid; turbulent emotions; high drama and action; enthralling and absorbing. I again feel today like I’m slow to wake up, the dreams are so all-encompassing, more vivid than waking life. At dinner with friends last night, I found myself saying things like, I know that I’ve changed a lot in the past few years, and especially in this last one, taking care of Dad, but I didn’t know how much, or exactly in what ways. I knew some of that, but more of it is becoming clear, now. For example, at the Renaissance Faire over the weekend, I found myself laughing at the witty performances, as before; and enjoying talking to the vendors, as before; but it was pure enjoyment. Sometimes there has been an edge of competitiveness to all that, an inner smirk of superiority; I felt none of that this time. I also had no interest in some of my usual shopping interests, such as sword-smithing; I didn’t even wear my own short-sword this time. I noticed that I felt competent to defend myself even without it; but I also felt no need to display it; at peace with myself, perhaps. So, I’ve changed, or matured, or moved on. It was fun as always, because I’ve done such events so often that I feel at home with them; most of the delighted surprise comes from the wittiness of the performers there, onstage and off. 646. 23 July 2007, Beloit, WI The past few days have been very busy and productive. Today I’m feeling a lot of emotions welling up, and doing my best to not let them become misdirected anger. Misdirected anger has become a real problem, something I have to watch out for. Any tiny little mishap sends me over the edge into shouting. My appetite’s all over the map; sometimes I feel like I’m overeating to stuff my feelings, and other times I have to force myself to eat anything at all. I know that this is all probably a normal cycle of grieving, and that I’m probably doing okay; at least I’m self-aware enough to be able to self-monitor, but even so I often feel like I don’t know what’s going on; until I remember what’s going on, later. So, I suppose, it’s all normal enough. But I hate that word “normal.” It’s another word that gets used as a bludgeon, knocking people over the head with expectations rather than gently coaxing them along their individual paths. It’s a Tribal word, and it can be used to enforce conformity, even as it is used to map it. Maybe my annoyance with normality is just another case of misdirected anger; or maybe it’s something I’ve always felt, and I just don’t have the strength anymore to pretend otherwise, or care what anyone thinks about my opinion. • Later: I worked on household stuff for awhile today, and that helps me feel better. Like I’m actually getting something done, not spinning my wheels. Even on a day off, like today, it’s good for me to do one thing, or two small things, just to continue to feel like I’m making some kind of progress. The opposite of progress is a stagnant quagmire of emotion that I can all too easily fall into. I read the last Harry Potter book today, speed-reading to get to the last few chapters, which I read at my normal pace; which is still, apparently, faster than most people read. But my pace is, for me, an unhurried one; I mean, my perception is that it’s unhurried. And it was moving and good and powerful, I thought. Well done. A fitting conclusion to the series. Very satisfying. I’m watching a DVD documentary about Elliott Carter and his music. The history of Carter’s life is in some ways the history of Modernist music, as he’s been active throughout the entire 20th Century. But unlike many other composers he retained a classically lyrical sense of music, possibly from his early years of study learning strict counterpoint. I never find his music emotionless, the way many other composers of his style and era can sound to me. There is always feeling there, no matter how abstract the materials themselves become. So, this is an interesting documentary, and I’m learning to appreciate him at a deeper level, too. As usual, a return to music, to art, to good books: a return to ground and center for me. 645. 18 July 2007, Beloit, WI I feel less and less like posting any of my poems anywhere, for critique or criticism. There are a bunch of reasons for that. One of them is that I feel more confident as a writer about the direction my creative writing is going in; I feel less need to explain it or justify it to anyone, and more to just practice it. I do get tired of having to explain myself artistically to anyone, all the damn time. This is not something I care about; it’s just something you run into, if you are an artist who posts your art in public, where any idiot can pipe up with their opinion or comment about it. (That’s why the Road Journal is a journal, not a weblog; it doesn’t particularly solicit opinions, or feedback, or comments. It just is.) Another reason I am not posting as much is that I’m not writing as much, and much of what I’m writing has no home in the critical poetry board sphere. I’m doing more and more haiku, haibun, and prose-poems, and those forms are still generally not understood by most American poets; neither in terms of history nor of practice. A third reason is that I’m focusing more on compiling essays, and haven’t felt a lot like focusing on poetry lately. I remain somewhat astounded by the ways peoples play at creativity, rather than viewing them as a way of life. Poetry comes and goes for me, I’ve said that often enough; this is a period where I mostly find words totally inadequate to express what I’m going through, especially in poetry. After Dad’s death, it might take me a long time to write about it in any way but factual; which is strong enough writing. And so I return to the issue of self-esteem and self-confidence in my writing, wherein I don’t feel the need to seek approval, or even feedback, lately. I know what I’m doing write now is good, important work: I’m exploring some things that are new to me, and I am immersed in those writings in ways that don’t require critical feedback. Which has its uses, but also has severe limitations. One of the worst of those being that you often don’t get readers who understand you, when you’re pursuing those new roads. Very few get it. Even fewer can follow it. Still fewer want to go along with you, down that new road; those are the ones you keep close at hand, but you don’t necessarily need them to offer you critiques on your writings, so much as you need them to hang around just to know you’re not alone. But writing about Dad’s death in some kind of false and artificial sentimental “poetic” fashion is anathema, sickening to contemplate, and not likely to ever emerge from my pen. I’d rather keep silent than commit that kind of writerly sin. If I never write about it—if I never write anything worth publishing again—at the moment, I don’t care. It’s not where I’m at, and it’s not what writing is all about. Too many poets focus on the public aspects of poetry, which amount to little more than popularity contests; far too few poets continue to quietly go about their work, even if no one notices, pursuing the roads they feel have opened before them, that they must travel down, privately rather than publicly. Maybe something will emerge later that the public will hear about; but that’s not why the journey is taken. It has nothing to do with applause, approval, or even conviviality. It has everything to do with following the personal vision, and following one’s bliss. If anyone catches up later, and likes what they see, that’s gravy; but it’s not why I do this, and never has been. It edges into that territory where other artforms than poetry—non-verbal, non-linguistic artforms—have the edge over poetry, which after all remains tied to the word. So I have been turning back to music, and to sound design. I spent a few hours today editing audio files on the studio computer. It becomes far more emotionally satisfying for me to work in art-forms that are non-verbal, at this time, because words can’t contain what I want to put out, and words lie and cheapen the depths of it all. They are inadequate containers. Maybe someday that will change, and I’ll write again, as I said; but I don’t mind waiting a long time for that day to come, and I don’t mind at this time if it never came. It always has before; it has always come back. But it goes in cycles, and right now the cycle moves me away from the inadequate vessel of the word, and towards the more expansive vessels of music and photography. 644. 17 July 2007, Beloit, WI After a long hard day, getting a lot of chores done, some hard moments, some hard times, some good ones, it’s a steamy night full of cicada sounds from all the trees. Standing on the lawn, looking up at the stars, fireflies make green streaks and temporary stars against the black of the trees, against the lights of the night sky, moving across the stars. The night sounds go on, in the steamy heat, the misty light. gazing up from the lawn fireflies make star-trails against velvet darkness • Attempting to impress, the young punk poet throws out ideas and opinions like swarms of bees. It’s like a clutch of growling puppies, tails all a-wag. Not knowing his audience is both better-read than him, and far more radical than he thinks they are. People think they’re so shocking, so brilliant, so burning-bright. But they’re lame. They’ve seen nothing. They’re like the walking eagle: too full of shit to fly. They think they soar, but all they do is dog-paddle. Do you people actually think you’re onto something no-one has ever thought of before? Do you actually believe your fresh take on life is so smooth, so crisp, so new, that you get a free pass from your elders and your betters? Those of us with nothing to live for, who have seen more than you can ever imagine, those of us with hollows in our eyes, who keep on going anyway, even if it’s pointless, just to keep on going—with those who marched before you, you try to show off your grace and guile, but they see you for the frightened child you are, inside. You don’t impress. You only remind us of what we’ve lost. And the stars rise up and rise and rise, and the fireflies move amongst them, rising into the sky above the trees, filling the air with streaks of light. And moving between mist-raveled trees, the stars rise up to meet the stars. • Later: I feel completely abandoned and alone tonight. No one responds when I call, or they tell me they’re not going to visit, or kiss off, or whatever. Or it’s too late to call them anyway, their phones are all turned off and they’re in be, asleep. Back to the usual late-night question of where the hell’s the support I need when I need it. No one around when I need them. It always happens this way: late at night, cut off from support, crying out for help and not even an echo comes back. Why the fuck do I even bother? What’s the point? This is all just self-pity, again and again, and I don’t even care myself, or want to hear it anymore. But what’s different is this: I’m exhausted; I’m an emotional wreck; my Dad died a few weeks ago, and I’m completely overwhelmed by everything; and I fucking need help, and not one of you is around. So, this time, it’s for real: it’s not just drama, it’s for fucking real, because I really do need help, these days, because it’s really hard right now. I’m not making it up, and it’s not just all in my mind. It’s real. And you fuckers as usual just can’t be bothered to be there, can you? Well, fine. That’s the end of that. That’s the end of asking. That’s the end of trying to depend on any of you for anything. Go play. Unfuck you. I’ve been through a lot of crazy bad shit lately. If you call, I probably won’t answer. I might call out, but I probably will ignore all incoming calls for a few days. I need the silence and solitude I haven’t been getting. I need to return to my own center, and I’m going to stop letting all your needs pull me off my center. And if you can’t through to me, and can’t depend on me to take care of you for awhile, the sun will still rise every morning, and life will go on. I miss my Dad more than I can say right now, and I don’t need your problems on top of my own. So take a powder. Take a breather. Take a break, and piss off. 643. 17 July 2007, Beloit, WI It’s hard getting to sleep, late at night, now that I’m alone in this big house. It’s hard to fall asleep, unless I really tire myself out, by staying up late, or having been physically active all day. I’ve done my best not to collapse into an illness, after everything, because that often happens; but yesterday I had an eye infection, which seems better today but is still present. P. got a major cold instead, and so did D.; at least I avoided that. In my reams earlier this week, I had vivid dreams of Dad dying in my arms; not the way it actually happened, but fantasy, alternative-world scenarios, one after another. I woke up not exactly upset, but wrung out. Such emotional force behind a dream leaves you feeling not upset, but not rested, either. That night I also had dreams about being part of a resistance against a repressive system; we could sneak in and out of the confined arcology that was the system, and we were building towards a revolution; in retrospect, a very Matrix-like dream. This morning I woke earlier than usual, but felt done with sleeping. I can always nap later. My infected eye feels better, but I have a dental appointment later today, and those almost always wipe me out for the rest of the day. Flowers continue to bloom in Dad’s garden, as I look over the yard this morning; the pink rose in the back yard leaps out in contrast against the greens of the lawn and garden. I hear birds in the trees, even with the windows closed. The air feels cool, but thick; perhaps it will rain or storm later today. It’s been a whirlwind, again. I drove through Michigan, drove hard to get back here, spent two nights in Chicago, which were good and productive, and then had some of my friends down from the Twin Cities over the weekend. I’ve packed a lot in to a short period of time, again. Now there’s time to sit quietly and integrate. I have things I need to do, but they’re not so urgent that I can’t take a day and just Do Nothing. It does feel strange to be all alone, after so long, though; or rather, all alone at home, rather than while driving. It’s not a burden, never that, it’s just a change that I’m not used to yet. I like my solitude. But it’s been so busy lately that I haven’t had much time to stop and sit and listen to my inner selves and what they have to say. Dreams have been turbulent, vivid, and not ve |
