An excellent day!

After submitting my column for this month’s Horse Fly, the head honcho and publisher emailed me in his usual terse manner and said, “Your piece isn’t good, it’s damn good. Thanks.” Someone else reported the boss also said, “it’s Taos!” and I kinda thought it was.

There are many different kinds of writing. This was driven by the need to transmute a sack of pythons into art, but I also had to pay attention to the craft. For a couple of weeks, at least, I’ve been needing to express something important that has to do with other people’s psychic landscapes. I think I nailed it in the 743-word column entitled “Compulsion,” which I’ll post here when the paper comes out next week.

What makes it work is less holding back. It’s risky, but the time is now. The all-too-common foibles of a few unidentified people (as well as my own) get gracefully skewered, and they’re going to have feelings. But as my wife said, “You have a right to be a writer.” Now that’s an interesting way to put it, but I thought of something I could do: whenever I caused offense that mattered, I’d give the injured party a rose.

Ignoring the obvious flaw in this approach, my wife said it was sweet. But what about pre-emptive flowers?

“Look, Farr sent us a rose. OH NO!”

I am 62.5 years old. I haven’t had a physical in over 10 years. We have no health insurance. But aside from a little flabbiness around the belly and other atrophic inconveniences, I’m in excellent health until they start looking, right? Well, my hearing sucks — genetics and too much rock & roll — but everything else works fine. You would kill for my blood pressure, for example.

The way I was raised caused me to postpone or avoid many of life’s potential accomplishments, yet I have a heart and a soul that seems to be quite strong. I’ve used them and Jungian analysis to go deeper into my own guts than I ever imagined was even possible, all this in the effort to understand and heal. I may be old and ugly, but I’ve never felt better inside. You do it your way, I’ll do it mine. This is the only path I’m aware of, so it must be the right one.

Writing is both an expression of my art and an illumination. Especially when blogging, something that happens almost instantaneously and often rashly, I quickly see my own complexes and neuroses writ large and clear. Afterwards, that is! This would scare a sane person away from the endeavor, but it dovetails nicely with the rest of my personal quest to open myself to love and giving. I’m learning more every single day about how reality works (the effect of thought and projection on the quantum field), and it’s about time. I have no idea what other people do with their lives, and living without producing a family of my own has left me often so self-absorbed that I end up hurting thousands of innocents along the way. Something else to be aware of and write about, no doubt. We all do this, of course, to one degree or another.

Finally paying attention to my wife’s needs (it’s only been almost 30 years!) is an entirely new area of life that’s opened up to me. My own “needs” are almost laughable by comparison. After all this time, all this suffering and joy, I feel a little lighter most of the time, like discovering some kind of glorious gift I didn’t know was there. I’m beginning to feel that absolutely everything is in my hands, and I never felt that way before in my life.

Maybe you have. If so, give yourself a pat on the back. Some of us take longer to bake!

All right, enough of this. It’s Sunday morning, I’m sitting here by myself, and this has been an unguarded moment of reflection. I trust it finds you hale and hearty, and now onward with the day.

The main reason I’ve always gone to political blogs is simply for the news.

However, a more personal reason for hanging around them for so long is undoubtedly the sense of community engendered by exchanging views and comments with like-minded people. This is a fine thing, and I’m a knave for ever dissing it. I know what it feels like to be marginalized, and now most of the nation is. (Imagine that, the Marginalized Majority.) So people are concerned and scared. They need a place to go and schmooze, at least. Flirt, crack jokes, whatever, maybe even raise the general level of awareness. Those of you who don’t spend a lot of time online might not know what this is all about, but don’t feel bad: you’re probably doing just fine talking to real people instead of cutesy usernames.

But I’m an Internet dude who would like to get out more. There have to be other places to visit online where there’s news and views of a different sort. I’ve found a couple of them and put them in the sidebar, but they aren’t enough. Where do people hang out who want to talk about life, art, and consciousness? Where do people go to read stories with a punch in the stomach? Where do crazy musicians, artists, nature mystics, and eco-freaks congregate online? Where do people go who care about cosmology AND punk rock? — heh, a little voice in my head just said “Austin.” Yeah, well. On the Internet, I mean.

I need a new bar. The comments only allow two URLs per, but send me what you have.

Once again, the moment. Seemingly out of nowhere, and in a situation where one would least expect to be overcome by an emotion, I found myself spontaneously sobbing out of pure transcendent joy. It occurs to me I should say something about this since no one hardly ever does, which is a goddamned shame.

For one thing, it’s happened before, though now with greater intensity. I seem to spend a lot of time on the edge of breaking through to being “okay,” you might say, or tapping into something bigger, and every once in a very great while, I fall through the veil and get a jolt. It’s very strong stuff. Sometimes being creative brings me close. There’s an intuitive state where I’m not interfering, where I become transparent to the flow. Another word for this is possibly guidance.

Oddly, this is all I care about when I’m what I’d call sane. Whatever the hell the subject is didn’t even register with me when I was a fine young man. Now that I’m sliding into gravity-ravaged ruin, I finally discover the reason for living. What a crock! — or is it crack? Swing that hammer one more time, I almost felt sorry for myself again.

There you have it, grown man goes nuts at 7,000 feet.

(Thank God!)

Well, that was a short fall, I told myself.

Fourteen degrees all of sudden was quite a shock, and I’d been burning wood all day. Most of the trees still had their leaves, but not for long. Fourteen degrees, my God. I’d never even checked the radiator fluid in the Ford, though I did cut off water to the outside spigot. All the potted patio plants were presumably dead. Oddly, we weren’t sweating it at the moment. There was just too much going on, and staying loose was more important.

I’d awakened that morning to sun on frozen ground and Cheney’s snarling face online: more squealing from the war pigs, Iran was going to kill us all. Iran?? No, he was going to kill us all. The smirking faces of the goons put me in a staggering funk, and soon I was hitting half a dozen blogs in search of more abuse. The more links I followed, the worse it got: I felt myself go numb but couldn’t stop cycling through the sites, looking now for smoking guns, silver bullets, lightning bolts, crucifixes and garlic. My favorite blog didn’t update for a whole hour and I actually got mad. How could they, dammit, didn’t they know the country was going down and I wanted to know how fast?

I couldn’t concentrate on my work. The truth is, I couldn’t start on my work, but kept jumping back onto the Internet, looking for word that Gandhi, John the Baptist, and the Continental Army had arrested the administration and shipped everyone off to The Hague. (Guess what, it wasn’t there.) Then I started focusing on things I didn’t want, not good! Bombs. Death. Police state. No gas for the car. Millions dead. Currency worthless. No food. Cold. Dark.

All for naught, why struggle, I thought. Surrendering, I sat in a comfortable chair and let myself be. Not happy, mind you, just not fighting. If the bastards were going to kill us anyway, so be it then, invoke the asteroid! Flip the poles! Pimp the pandemics! Get it over with and cleanse the planet, only — only I was still here, and why did I have to pay the price when I’d voted for peace? It was all too insane to bear and made me drowsy. I slept a little and dreamed a lot, hovering in the twilight zone. Nothing stirred. The sun went down, the walls turned gray, and I was still there in the chair. For over an hour, I sat and never moved. When I did stand up, I felt better, not so numb, remembering goose bumps and joy and that lump in the throat you get when the good guys finally show up. The feeling has to come from somewhere, right?

A few days later I decided I needed a break and took off for the Rio Chiquito in a 20-year-old truck. I’d never gone all the way over the mountain from Talpa to Valle Escondido, and Tuesday morning was the time. It certainly was an adventure. I was so excited, I did at least six really stupid things in the first two miles, like backing up into a ditch to take a picture and driving off with gear on the roof.

The road was better than I expected at first, and the Ford rumbled on through curves, rocks, and dust up into the canyon. About eight miles in, I found a big open meadow and stopped. When I got out of the truck and looked around, I couldn’t believe how blue the sky was. The trees were much taller than I’d seen in ages. Their tops were flexible and dancing in the wind like aquatic plants waving in the current, tall pines moving in an ocean of air. Farther along, there was a breathtakingly primitive stretch that looked like it had been cleared by a team of wooly mammoths dragging a semi. That led to a hairpin curve in the fold of an actual cliff, several hideous dips, a mud hole the size of a hippo wallow on the other side of the summit, and a cold, clear breeze at 10,000 feet. Everywhere I stopped, I heard wind or water and paid attention.

It doesn’t get more real, and this is why I came here. Nature will take its course. We will either own up, become aware, and change — by accident or grace — or be waterboarded in blood until we confess.

I pledge allegiance to the Earth. All those others can go to hell.

If you don’t know this fellow, give him a chance: “‘2012′ and the Poet’s Dilemma” is Daniel’s latest offering at Reality Sandwich (see sidebar for primary link). The topic is very close to my own daily deliberations, and there are some great comments appended. Here’s a sample of where Daniel is coming from:

I am very concerned, right now, with the seeming incapacity of most people in our culture to awaken to the dire urgency of our present situation, and to move from passive contemplation to active engagement. I feel that not just individual works but the entire construct of the contemporary art and literary worlds are functioning as another pacifying and distracting mechanism - someone may read a novel about war and cry, but that doesn’t translate into organizing to stop the wars we are now waging. It sometimes seems to me that forces have conspired to depolitize culture and make it socially irrelevant.

Dios es mi motor

Sometimes things just fall apart, a little or a lot.

It can happen in an instant, but usually builds up over several days. A little emotional awkwardness is the first sign, neurotic guilt symptoms the second, and then wham, a sharp drop down a well-worn slope. Some people take anti-depressants. I guess I understand. Without them, natural selection would have eliminated a lot more of us. But I’ve never done that. I can’t imagine it. If I have a broken leg, shouldn’t it hurt?

The situation is not enhanced when all I hear are drums for war. An occasional commenter here once said that while the administration is evil, they’re not insane, ergo I shouldn’t worry that they’d actually start an even bigger war on top of the two they’re already losing. And with Iran yet, a nation with a culture older than Jesus. They don’t know a thing about Iran except the numbers, as if that’s enough, and they’re also ranting about “saving Israel” when all this will do is blow it up. The accelerated “return” of an immaculately conceived descendent of Abraham to reward true believers for the mess they’ve made is part of this equation, and who does that remind you of? (”Heckuva job, Christians!”) The man thinks he’s acting in the name of the Almighty. The more impassioned the protest and cries for reason, the keener his revenge. How is any of this sane?

Simply taking it all in is dangerous. It can set off my own reactions, and then the things in the basement wake up. It’s outrageous how similar they are, my own learned flagellations and the planetary depression of war and apocalypse. Scared? Check. See no way out? Check. Feel no love? Check. No joy? Check. Everything a waste? Check. Why go on? Check.

Meanwhile the arguing and strategizing roll on. It’s like we’re all riding the same gigantic eel. But who wants to ride an eel? Better yet, WHO WANTS TO RIDE A STINKING SLIMY UGLY FISH DOWN TO THE BOTTOM AND DIE???

Want to know what really happens when the hammer drops? Everything disintegrates. I mean everything. I know what’s going on, but I can’t stop it. I fall all the way down through the blackness and get dumped into a cold stone dungeon dark as pitch. At this point, useless and dysfunctional, I might as well be dead. It’s over. My heart is cracked completely open. And then, spontaneously, I hear a quiet little voice. Over in the corner, there’s a light. Essentially, Little Johnny Angel-Boy in a propeller beanie says “Wait a minute, that’s not right,” and instantly there’s a total shift. It’s literally that fast. Without any warning, I’m saved by I don’t know what. I think it comes in through the crack. But I have to hit bottom hard enough to break things. One way or the other, I have to feel.

In the same way, I have this image of humanity needing its collective heart cracked open, so change can come. Maybe it’s just a matter of allowing. Otherwise, the eel snaps its tail. That’s the default method, though what I think what we have here is a chance to be different. I know there’s a chance because I’ve seen things change instantaneously. Sometimes it’s really crazy. It’s like there’s this big dumb secret only rocks don’t know, except they do, and we’re the ones left out in the cold by being stupid.

This afternoon I was still a wreck and took a walk up the mesa, more to take my vibes out where they wouldn’t stink up the house than anything else, and halfway up the hill it happened, just like I described above. Everything shifted, I was “back” and fine, but in a slightly different way. As I walked down from the top, I started writing this post in my head. Thirty seconds later, I looked down and saw a rock with a singular shape. I bent down to wipe the sand off and picked it up. It was heavy, about a foot across, in the shape of a heart that’s been cracked open.

I tucked it back under a piñon for later retrieval with my backpack. When I get it home, I’ll post a picture. It’s the damnedest thing I ever saw, at least this week, and you really won’t believe it.

It’s true, I’ve written some embarrassing things in my day. This may turn out to be one of them.

Hell, I’ve done some embarrassing things. I’ve also written a number of self-revealing pieces quite outspoken in their anger and pain about certain aspects of my upbringing and its relationship to everything from domestic politics to the fate of the world. I don’t do this for the money, I do it for art and education (my own). I have a talent for putting feelings into words, even if they’re nasty. in the end, I do it for love.

I catch a lot of flak for the anger and always have. Most people want to shut me up or call 911 — a perfectly natural reaction — but I don’t have a choice. Wherever I go, there’s swamp water up to my belly button. This, I am assured, is a birthday present or at least an I.O.U. There is no dike or levee. I’m talking about open access I can’t shut off, nor do I want to. In fact, I recommend doing whatever you have to do to get in the same condition. It’s something else. You can’t be more open (or exposed) than when you’re wading naked in the Okeefenokee, trolling with your pecker for alligators. On the other hand, you might meet a mermaid looking for a good time. This inherent capacity for growth has yet to be appreciated by the masses, who would rather blow up the swamp and kill all the nasty varmits. (Trouble is, they always miss and hit each other.) But that’s where I am, all the time, so I notice things. Like walking down the road, as innocent as you please, until you realize you’re carrying an empty suitcase.

Ouch.

Now, considering what you know about these things, what you’ve learned from years of observation, from literature, culture, and the panoply of insights and experience that constitute your breathing days on earth, there ought to be something in that suitcase besides the smell of someone else’s after-shave. There ought to be, but there’s not. You have to stop along the way and get the things you need, except you don’t exactly know what they are.

This is where it really gets interesting, I’ll bet. I’m 62 years old and never thought I’d ever say that.

Well, let’s see…

There’s a nifty “Canyon Climb” series running at FotoFeed, for one thing.

My current digital project is a new Web site for Seattle musician Stanley Greenthal. The one he has now is pretty enough, but doesn’t really get the job done. In any case, I’m building him a new one! That means I’m in a state of high creative frustration until something comes together.

Blog-wise, I’m in another cycle of wondering what the hell a writer needs a blog for. [Update: no, I'm not.] I can keep writing here for free, where who knows how many people might find it, or write things for paid publication elsewhere that hardly anyone will see, even if they are published. But basically, there are more ways to write without getting paid than ever before. It’s an amazing thing. Content-wise, I think I’m waiting for the next thing to show itself. For the moment, I don’t want to write about my past, tell stories, or spend the least little bit of energy telling other people what to do. They won’t do it anyway, and if they did, I’d be responsible. The war pigs are still trying to kill us all, but that ain’t new, and the last thing the world needs are more opinions. Intellect isn’t going to save the world, either (art might). There are things that want to be said, however, and maybe if I sit here long enough, one or two of them will walk through the door.

[Mumble, mumble]

Okay, back to work.

The animals always interrupt, thank God.

Outside the kitchen window hangs a cheap bird feeder on a string. I filled it for the first time this season just last week with sunflower seeds that cost double what they did last year. The scrub jays don’t appear to care, but then they’re probably dizzy: the feeder is too small for them, and when they land or fly away, it spins crazily like a wobbly merry-go-round. The chickadees hang on but look confused. At the other end of the house, afternoon sunlight reflecting off the rotating feeder flashes like a strobe on the plastered adobe wall above my desk.

On the dusty, bumpy half-mile-long ride from the end of the pavement to our home out here in Llano, we always pass a rambling, ramshackle homestead sort of place on the north side of the road. A couple of the corrals are to the road, so we often see animals. Yesterday’s sighting featured a couple of horses, about two dozen sheep, and several goats all in the big corral together. Quite the sight. Occasionally we encounter a fellow on a horse herding the sheep and goats up the mesa with the help of a couple of little dogs. Some of the animals wear bells, and you can hear the clinking and clonking as they go by. Just gazing on the critters makes me feel a little more complete, resonating as it does with thousands of years of humankind looking after the animals — no, of conscious relationship with animals, nature, and the entire cosmos. It’s good to see these things. There aren’t many places left in America where you have to wait while a herd of sheep goes by, either.

That much at least is real and relevant, like my garden would have been if not for all the ‘hoppers, but the rest of this man’s life here in el Norte seems as paralyzed as it would be anywhere else.

I haven’t been able to write for months, not really write, the kind of stuff that gives me goose bumps. This isn’t “writer’s block,” though. Maybe I caught the planetary disease, the imagination-eating darkness that passes for reality and educated thought. It’s like we’re all in here together, only someone dimmed the lights, and now we have to punch our way outside and wait for sunrise.

Things haven’t always been this way. In the turbulent years of my youth, there was revolution and opportunity. You felt it in the air. Materially speaking, life was easier, facilitating taking risks: when I was a graduate student in ‘67-‘68, I supported a wife and myself on $150 a month. Tuition was $50 a semester, and married student housing was $18 per month. A visit to the doctor cost $5. My biggest expense was the $36 monthly payment for the new Volkswagen. When I started teaching at a junior college, my salary was less than $600 per month. Travel was cheap, and Motel 6’s cost $6. You could buy a house, but why bother? We rented a wonderful one for $75 (expensive at the time), had anything we wanted, and money piled up in the checking account — we couldn’t spend it fast enough.

Post-Vietnam inflation killed all that like a slowly clenching fist. But while a symptom, living standards aren’t the point, a fearless sense of freedom is. We had it once, and now it’s gone. Or so it seems.

Meanwhile back in Llano Quemado, without a moon, the hillside where we live is far enough away from town that we can see the Milky Way galaxy stretch from horizon to horizon. The other night I stood outside and tried to take it in: impossible, of course — the awesomeness is just too great to comprehend and takes us in. Standing there, I located the dark area near the middle, actually an immense dark cloud of gases at the galaxy’s core obscuring the stars spiraling in toward the super-massive black hole at the precise center of it all.

On the winter solstice of December 21, 2012, the Earth and the sun will be in perfect alignment with the galactic center. Ancient Mayan teachings pinpoint the date and give it great significance as marking the end of our current cycle of history. End of the world or not, what gives me pause is that stone carvings even mention an astronomical event last known to have occurred some 26,000 years ago! One thing that does for sure, though, is nail us to the planet, right through the heart.

Thinking about this makes me giddy, and I feel love.