No, nobody died, at least not in the way you think, but the current focus of the chronicles are over with this installment. What a ride.

Most of the posts in this series are extremely emotional, somewhat overblown, and very dark. They’re also at least five times too long: if I could edit it down to 20% of what’s there now, we’d all be better off. But the literary flaws mirror the stress of these last few weeks quite clearly, reminding me of the whirlpool that sucked me under and still grabs me in the heart. (Biology is compelling, even in a lie.) There haven’t been many comments, though, probably most people have an intuitive appreciation of sorts, and whether from embarrassment or respect, one feels reluctant to speak up. That’s fine. What would I have to say to a friend who’d just lost an arm in a car crash, for example? The difference, however, is that the Helen Chronicles are revelatory for me, not crippling . The disability comes before, not after.

Without more exposition, one might make the mistake of thinking that the recent period represents a sudden personality change, the kind so many face when aging parents disintegrate before their eyes. There’s that, all right (the decline into an unsustainable state), but this wasn’t really sudden. Helen was always fragile, irrational, and deadly mean when hurting. In between, when growing up, I thought I had a mother and that everyone’s was like her: love ‘em when they’re good and leave ‘em when they’re bad. Affection that had to be earned, in other words. Think about that. What would be left of the emotion by the time it turned up as a temporary ration? Love reduced to doggie biscuits. And if that’s what you have, as lacking as they are, you still learn what to do to get the next one, because you’re always hungry.

So it was in the beginning and then got worse. Progressively, over time, a way of “dealing with it” grew alongside the rising emotional violence. This could be described as learning to expect the worst on any given visit, for example — only, why then go at all? Consciously, because that’s what good sons do, look after their dear old mothers, unconsciously, because I had to be good to get my biscuit, get that mother-love stamped in little Johnny’s passport. You can’t say that I was in control at all, really, continually revisiting the scene of the crime. We’re biologically hard-wired to love our mothers anyway: whatever the dance was, it seemed to fit the bill.

And then there was the money, I realize. Ultimately, always, the money, the great big bag of doggie biscuits in the sky. If she mentioned it once, she brought it up a thousand times: what would happen when she died, who would get what, who wouldn’t. On every single visit, every phone call. If I wouldn’t discuss it and pledge allegiance to the creed, there’d be an ugly, crazy-making breakdown in the next ten minutes. On every single visit for over 30 years, at least, though it wasn’t always due to my heartless reluctance to wallow in the “family” muck of greed and fear and counting pennies. A minor therapeutic sarcasm could grow in Helen’s mind into a slight, a slur, a vicious ingratitude for all she’d ever done. Soon I’d be “just like your father” and there’d be nowhere to escape: she’d follow me or my wife from room to room, spewing toxins. You had to take part in the combat or become a mortal enemy. It was for her or against her, or else you ran away and stayed away until the guilt built up enough to make you go back and renew your membership.

Madness upon madness, cranking, grinding, tearing, mindless pain and horror, always though within the “family,” because we were one, sort of, and this was just what “families” did, except they didn’t. Not all of them. And you wouldn’t believe how long it took me to accept this larger, non-approved, alternative truth. (Just ask my wife.) I know now that a mother’s unconditional love reflects a child’s soul back to him or her, and that is how we know we have one. Absent that, it takes whatever passes for divine intervention. Grace, luck, mystery… I don’t know how my siblings and I are still alive, considering.

But the nightmare I found in Tucson finally blew the doors off: that buggy is dead in the middle of the road. I know this, but I still can’t adequately put my reaction into words. This is monumental. Everything I’ve ever done, or dreamed, or tried to do, was corrupted by the greatest lie that ever was. Fundamentally, I never really had a mother. I never got my ticket punched, not for over 60 years! My God, chilluns. My God, my God.

This realization is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m still substantially in shock, but I also feel a kind of liberation, like I’ve been rescued after having been raised by aliens on another planet. So I’m a human being, after all — who knew?! — and I can do what humans do and follow my heart. I CAN DO WHAT I WANT! How can this be? Because I DO have a mother, and I finally know I have a soul.

After growing slowly in my awareness all along, it’s here now in the nick of time. I’m talking about the Big Momma, chilluns, the all-enfolding love of all Creation. MOTHER NATURE, Mother Earth, the stuff my body’s made of, the thing we can’t define or do without, the ultimate redemption: Goddess loves me, this I know, for my tears, they tell me so. (Put it any way you want.) I have the rest of my life, be it long or short, to do things differently and start again. Stunning and disorienting. Life-altering. Absolutely, totally, completely, mind-numbingly huge.

I feel like I need to go climb a mountain, curl up under a ponderosa pine, cry for a week, then sleep for a thousand years…

I forgot to get this posted a couple of weeks ago — gee, I wonder why? — but here it is.

Regular readers of this blog will recognize elements of previous blog posts assembled into a new whole. Not quite like building Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, although related, and with much better results. This was just published in the August edition of Horse Fly. What’s more, the publisher thought it was so good, he paid me extra, a thing possibly unprecedented in the history of writing. At any rate, you can read it now without coming here to buy a paper:

JOHNNY & THE HORNED TOADS

Years ago in Texas (sorry), we called them “horny toads.”

I’d just turned 13 and didn’t know what “horny” meant, outside of the context of the critters — adolescent urges notwithstanding — but you could find the lizards everywhere, even in town. Back in junior high school in Abilene, in those glorious pre-air-conditioned days when just surviving until the final bell was an accomplishment, the reptiles were a God-given source of distraction from the heat of study hall.

We sat at actual wooden desks with inkwells and lids that opened up. Nobody used fountain pens or had any ink, so dipping pigtails wasn’t an option. But you could grab a “horny toad” at recess, lightly scratch its scaly belly to put it to sleep, and set it gently on its back inside the desk where Peggy Sue would sit. After everyone had taken their seats and study hall had settled into a sodden stupor broken only occasionally by yawns and sounds of shuffling papers, the animal would wake up and start skittering around. The victim usually opened her desk to see what was the matter, and you can guess the rest. This trick only worked with girls, of course, because they screamed so well. The perpetrator generally came to the rescue while his comrades smirked, scooping the lizard up and dropping it out the window. (Why this reminds me now of Homeland Security, I’m not sure, but see what you can do with it.)

Three years ago in Llano Quemado, I missed the photo of a lifetime. I’d taken a walk without my camera — guaranteeing at least a miracle — and sure enough there was one. About halfway up the dirt track on the mesa, something wriggled in the road 20 feet ahead and then sat still. As I approached, I saw it move again: a horned toad trying to get traction in the fine brown sand. But what was that on its right hind leg? Good Lord, a baby horned toad riding on its mother’s back! I honestly couldn’t believe it. The lizards froze when I squatted down beside them, and then I saw a second baby in the dust a couple of inches to the rear. The baby on its mothers back was spotted just like she was, while this one matched the color and texture of the ground it sat on. The mimicry was perfect. The late afternoon sun illuminated the camouflaged tableau with golden yellow light. My camera, if I’d had it, would have been 18 inches from the horned toad family, who held their position until I stood.

* * *

This summer, for whatever reasons, I see horned toad hatchlings all the time, and I’m amazed. There’s just a twitch, a thing that might be real or not, like a floater in your eye, and there they are, fully formed and no bigger than a thumbnail! Yesterday I took my camera on a hike and finally got a close-up shot: the piñon needles on the ground are longer than the tiny beast… They must be like Fritos for the magpies. How ever do they make it?

Try to find out anything about horned toads, and you’ll encounter contradictions. They’re disappearing, or they’re not, for one thing. The young receive no parental care, supposedly, although I saw differently here in Llano. New Mexico writer S. Omar Baker, who died at the age of 90 in 1953, once wrote,

“The horny toad, ill-graced but harmless
Is thought by some to be quite charmless
At least he helps eat garden ants up
And does not try to crawl your pants up.”

The easy familiarity with something few see or take notice of today disturbs me, even as I smile. A couple of weeks ago, I was driving down a twisty, rocky lane. The air was sharply cool and damp from the previous night’s rain, the warm sunlight welcome by comparison. Halfway down the hill I stopped, incredulous: sitting in the road looking up at me below the open driver’s window was a HUGE GREEN BULLFROG the size of a cantaloupe! We stared at each other for a long moment, and then I drove off, checking in my rearview mirror that I hadn’t seen a mirage.

Sometimes I feel I’ve won the lotto on another planet, and then I wake up, remembering I’ve always been right here. What happens in the in-between, though, and where did everybody go?

In a very real sense, absolutely!

Today is my “actual” birthday (from AstroDienst), with the sun lining up precisely with where it was when I was born in 1945 (!) at 9:25 p.m. tonight, rather than tomorrow, my calendar birthday. This has to do with the imprecision of the numbers, things slipping, the impossibility of our wretched artificial calendar ever truly reflecting the orbits of the stars and planets or the alignment of the galaxies. Not that precision really matters in this instance though. For my birthday, it’s more of a general field of energy with the needle pegging in the night:

Today is your astrological birthday, even though it may be different from your calendar birthday. As would seem appropriate with this transit, today is a day of new beginnings, and the influences you feel today will affect the entire year to come. However, this does not mean that the whole year will be disappointing if today doesn’t work out exactly as planned. You are receiving a new impulse from the energy center within you, as symbolized by the Sun. Therefore any new venture that you start at this time will ride the crest of this new energy and will very likely come to an acceptable conclusion. Whatever you do or begin today will bear the stamp of your individuality more than anything else. This is the day to assert yourself anew.

Detonated over beautiful Nagasaki on the day I was born

So I may do anything today, and that covers a LOT of ground. Actually, I’ve already thought of a couple of “new ventures” to launch. No, they don’t involve climbing Mt. Wheeler (13,151 feet). That was my intended birthday ritual, but what happened was that a couple of friends wanted to have a dinner party for me tomorrow, and I realized it was stupid to turn down such a friendly and generous offer. The mountain isn’t going anywhere, and I can try that next week if I don’t have to go to Tucson to find a nursing home for my mother or pick up her ashes from the funeral home. Life is strange, is it not?

One thing I’ve thought of involves writing more openly and matter-of-factly about intangibles. This could be tricky, because of all the ridicule it provokes and because I already have a deplorable tendency to manipulate and preach. Wow: just from writing that, I can already feel the self-censorship wanting to kick in — the thing that always holds me back — but what’s more important than personal truth? That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do in my life, to be as clean, clear, and true as possible, without conflicts, to go through life like a dophin without leaving a wake… And believe me, I’m all too well acquainted with the opposite.

Probably my favorite milagro

It strikes me that this is all about heart. Listening to and following my heart. Not about politics, economics, the environment, making a living, finding a home, what my old friends think of me, or what that lump is on the back of my neck. There have been times during the past couple of years when I’ve felt inexpressible joy and unity with all creation. Occasionally to the point of tears, like I was consumed by cosmic love and acceptance. NO SHIT! Hell, that happened once last week.

So Happy Birthday to you all, and we shall see what we shall see.

Probably only Leos broadcast their birthdays in advance. No, not to get presents or put on airs — Leos don’t have to — but because they feel free to do so. It’s natural. The last thing my wife would do, or would have done even many years ago, is talk up her birthday, except privately to intimates. Not me! On the other hand…

Nagasaki

Today is Hiroshima Day, and I was born on August 9th, the day we dropped the second a-bomb on Nagasaki. The actual day, not the anniversary. That’s always felt significant to me, although there had to have been many thousands of other people born that day all over the world. (I wonder how we’re doing?)

I take my birthdays very seriously. They’re like portals, you know. Because of that, while I sometimes like to get raucous, I generally try to think of something personally important to do on those days, as opposed to merely seeking entertainment. Not that I have anything against a blow-out party, nosirree, it’s just that some of the best things happen in the all-alone. That may make me one weird Leo [see above], but that’s the way it goes.

This might be the year I climb a mountain, or go up as far as I can get. I might even spend the night out there. My wife actually suggested that, which shows how much she’d like a little peace and quiet. I have minimal Wal-Mart dilettante outdoor equipment, which is to say cheap shoes, ordinary clothes, a decent backpack, a couple of water bottles, and not much sense. I’m also not in shape, but then how many of my contemporaries are even standing? Besides, it’s part of the transcendental experience, what with sweating off 10 pounds and over-stressing every joint. And the long hot bath after I come home is to die for, irony intended.

How cold could it be this time of year at 11,000 feet, anyway?

Okay, here you go, growing just outside the door, practically. I make a mean apricot pie, or better yet, turnovers. Apricots growing right out of the ground! Don’t say I never gave you nuthin.

No, these aren’t ripe yet, but we’re gonna have a ton of ‘em

Aerial image © 2008 by Eva-Marie Brekkestø

Oh, those hoaxers are busy, all right. It’s hard work, too. Just you try getting a bunch of people out to a grain field in the middle of the night and creating something like this in a few minutes, then getting away without leaving any tracks or tire marks. This image is from Westwoods, near Lockeridge, Wiltshire, reported July 17, 2008.

Retreat, a strike, or practice?

For the last few days I’ve felt I wouldn’t mind if the Internet completely disappeared, if I never sent or received another email, never visited another Web site. I have no idea where this comes from, but it’s been very satisfying to let it flow to the ends of my extremities and fill me completely. I still don’t want to update anything. I may not even publish this post.

I have the strongest intuition that none of this has done us any good. We speak of how the world is more connected now, but I have my doubts: seems to me it’s all on the surface, a flood of digital spittle. For all the so-called organizing and communication, the world still tumbles toward an inevitable reckoning with with the Nature we refuse to be a part of — as if we could! Humans are, basically, eating the world, and the Internet is just another utensil. A huge one, too.

That’s the view from this morning, anyway. I spent yesterday (and will spend most of today) reading an actual book for a change, Hampton Sides’ Blood and Thunder, which anyone seriously interested in this part of the world should read. The author mentions how families in the East had to wait a year or two to learn the fate of loved ones who fell along the trail out West, sometimes even longer. Today, of course, you might know in minutes, but is this really progress? What does it matter that “facts” are transmitted at the speed of light, when all the while we’ve lost the ability to sense and feel, to look out for ourselves?

This isn’t intended to be a reasoned argument, so relax. I’m just reporting from the other side, as it were, where for the moment it feels fine.

There’s already been a sampling of it in a previous post, but this is even better stuff at 750 pixels. Three pictures are already up, starting here, and I’ll be posting more for the rest of the week, wide shots as well as close-ups with the telephoto lens.

Untitled

My wife and I took our usual over-the-mountain drive and ended up at the Rio Pueblo at 8,411 feet, just as the evening sun lit up the green plants growing on the bottom. I’ve never seen anything like it. While I wouldn’t necessarily drink it straight, just look at that beautiful clear water flowing on down to the Rio Grande. With living plants! This is a trout stream, too.

The Rio Pueblo and Carson National Forest, folks, hardly nobody around. All week at FotoFeed.

Well, crank up the worry machine. (Or not! read on…)

What I find most interesting about using the Internet for finding news is how much of what the rest of the world sees never makes it into American media consciousness. For example, all but a rear guard of 800 Australian troops just came home from Iraq to a joyous welcome in Brisbane, and I’ve only found mention of this at UK sites. (Folks are happy the troops are coming home? No news here, move along.) On the financial front, at least three European banks have issued dire warnings about the U.S. economy over the last few weeks, and that’s also been ignored — one authority flatly predicts a complete collapse of our financial system over the next few days or weeks, and I’ll bet you haven’t read that anywhere in these United States. In fact, the level of “serious” discourse on just about any heavy topic you’d care to name is so craven and bereft of elementary reasoning, you’d have to be some sort of chemically-reinforced Pollyanna to believe we’ve actually evolved at all over the last few hundred years. (And watch out what you put in your garden!)

My wife and I have this conversation frequently. The bottom line is that while some people have definitely experienced a growing peace, maturity and spiritual expansion, life in general has become more difficult and anxiety-ridden in our lifetimes. When I first joined the workforce after graduating from the University of Texas, incomes and expenses were much more closely matched, so much so that one simply didn’t have to worry if one had a job. In 1968 my first wife and I rented a wonderful home for $75/mo. (that was considered expensive), my car payments were $36/mo., and a visit to the doctor cost $5. I took home less than $500/mo. in salary from my college teaching job, we bought everything we wanted, and the money just piled up in my checking account, month after month. There wasn’t any need to save, because it happened automatically.

Late afternoon sun illuminating aquatic plants in mountain stream

The way things are today just isn’t going to fly. It won’t be “fixed” either, none of it, not until we start all over at the bottom, treat everyone as brothers and sisters, look each other squarely in the eye, and say something like, “Okay, what CAN you give me for these eggs my hens just laid? How much for this house, this car, my services? What do you need from me, and how can we help each other? How can we help those people in the next town who have no food or water? Can you give this teacher (doctor, policeman, farmer) a place to live so he or she can stay in the community?”

That kind of trust and self-reliance may produce miracles, but first one has to have an honest sense of “self.” That’s where inner work comes in. When you know you’re part of everything and simultaneously whole, you don’t need a guide for acting properly. It just happens automatically, like when my paychecks piled up in the bank. It’s like the Golden Rule and “all you need is love,” all rolled into one.

I don’t know what they are, but there they are.

Meanwhile, would we really be worse off without high-definition TV, the Internet, computers, air-conditioned cars, and microwaves? Would it really hurt to talk to ancestors in our dreams and fly to distant lands by willing it so? Do you really believe the energy that fuels your thoughts just vanishes with your body? Is there some reason our bodies “have to” deteriorate? — why can’t we just live until we die? After all, SOME FOLKS ALREADY DO!

And on and on and on…

We’ve been sucking up the patriarchal bullshit and imbalance for the last few thousand years — doing the best we could, you understand — and now it looks like something’s gonna blow, only maybe not all at once. I hope not. Frankly, I think it must have started years ago, because I’ve felt this way since I was in my teens. I never wanted the brick house in the suburbs anyway, much less the station wagon in the drive. Not only was it silly (to me), it was also built on sand.

That’s one reason why I wanted to move to northern New Mexico, where things have always been “blown up.” Not that far to fall if things go bad, in other words. Fewer people, too, just 14 per square mile on the average in Taos County, which by the way is just a little smaller than Connecticut. But I mainly wanted to live the last half of my life in a place where Nature dominates man, and not the other way around. That’s why I go walking in the mountains when I get the chance: something happens to me in the high country that never even registers amidst the mini-marts and parking lots. I sense things one can’t put into words without diminishing the experience, although I give it my best shot because I want to share this stuff. I don’t know what’s happening, either, but a hit of what’s above 8,000 feet makes me want to go back for more, and I think this is related to the bigger question.

It could be that everything will be just fine, after all, only…um… different.

Ya know??

The previous post has a comment by someone I didn’t recognize. He lives in the Cascade foothills and writes at a blog you need to visit, The Farmer de Ville Chronicles. Outstanding writing, as usual a wake-up call to me to stick to what’s real and all around me. He must have a regular writing gig, and I’m ashamed that I don’t know about it.

His lifestyle reminds me of where I’m always heading in my own life, aside from lengthy detours through what most of you would call the “real world,” except of course that it isn’t — not the one God gave us, at any rate. I always arouse a kind of snarly, defensive sensibility when I make that point, that 90 percent of what we think is proper living is actually a kind of killing joke. Not surprisingly, most of us take umbrage at assertions that we live on top of a house of cards of printed lies and misconceptions. Well, too bad. It’s true, however. As true as true can be. This isn’t what you think it is and won’t turn out to be what you expect.

Spend some time reading what the Farmer has to say. Smell the herbs and feel the sweat dripping off the end of your nose.