happy

November 8, 2004

I bade farewell to the little bum of Saint Teresa at the crossing, where we jumped off, and went to sleep that night in the sand in my blankets, far down the beach at the foot of a cliff where cops wouldn’t see me and drive me away. I cooked hotdogs on freshly cut and sharpened sticks over the coals of a big wood fire, and heated a can of beans and a can of cheese macaroni in the redhot hollows, and drank my newly bought wine, and exulted in one of the most pleasant nights of my life. I waded in the water and dunked a little and stood looking up at the splendorous night sky, Avalokitesvar’s ten-wondered universe of dark and diamonds. “Well, Ray,” sez I, glad, “only a few miles to go. You’ve done it again.” Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running–that’s the way to live. All alone and free in the soft sands of the beach by the sigh of the sea out there, with the Ma-Wink fallopian virgin warm stars reflecting on the outer channel fluid belly waters. And if your cans are redhot and you can’t hold them in your hands, just use good old railroad gloves, that’s all. I let the food cool a little to enjoy more wine and my thoughts. I sat crosslegged in the sand and contemplated my life.
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me fool fish

November 8, 2004

from Dances With Trout:

So maybe what you should do when you catch a great trout is go back to camp and make a pot of coffee because there will not be a bigger or better fish today. Sooner or later your partners will wander in and you can tell them all about it. That’s your reward: a potentially great story that you may be able to tell well.

i’ve never thought of myself as one to go through hell and go ‘heh heh, that’ll make a great story’ (i met a lot of those folks in creative writing classes at the U). if it’ll make a great story, it was probably an interesting piece of life. it’s either worth writing about or worth talking about, but probably not both. talk is cheap. there are the kinds of stories that i can not talk about with anybody. the things that happen to you that are too beautiful (a green hillside in the rockies) or too frightening (a bad car accident) to chat about. but they are well kept in the heart and they are part of life and if i’m given enough years those things should seep into the larger story and be worthwhile.

a fish, a day fishing, a big fish, a difficult fish, is the exception. fishing provides infinite fodder for story, verbal or written. fishing provides ample opportunity for reflection during the course of the action. the stories melt together and become part of the larger narrative. there are important observations about biology, weather, the wild, water, animals, fish behavior, human behavior, friendship, etc that can fuel a lifetime. there is humor (because after all, it is oafish man trying to trick a ghostly fish into biting onto that sharp hook.

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isn’t she lovely?

November 8, 2004

got the honeymoon photos back.

there will be lots more, but this is the only one that needs no words to go along with it.

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monday morning omen

November 8, 2004

the central american indians thought that the northern lights were evil spirits, walking around in the sky with glittering robes on. seeing them was extremely bad juju. cortez’s landing (and with it the fall of the aztec empire) was preceeded by an extremely rare account of the celestrial event over teotihuacan. (courtesy this guy)

He came dancing across the water
With his galleons and guns
Looking for the new world
And a palace in the sun.

On the shore lay Montezuma
With his coca leaves and pearls
In his halls he often wandered
With the secrets of the world.

And his subjects gathered ’round him
Like the leaves around a tree
In their clothes of many colors
For the angry gods to see.

And the women all were beautiful
And the men stood straight and strong
They offered life in sacrifice
So that others could go on.

Hate was just a legend
And war was never known
The people worked together
And they lifted many stones.

And they carried them to the flatlands
But they died along the way
And they built up with their bare hands
What we still can’t do today.

And I know she’s living there
And she loves me to this day
I still can’t remember when
Or how I lost my way.

He came dancing across the water
Cortez, Cortez
What a killer.

i’ve always thought of the northern lights as something good. kind of my feeling about all astral beauty: not necessary to life on this planet but beautiful. the moon and the stars: what purpose do they serve to human beings? something to ponder at night. something to remind us of how small our earth is. something to remind us of how close somebody is that we love. aurora borealis is like that, but less frequently seen.

nonetheless, and trying to avoid the much-mocked liberal hysterics of the last week, the freak appearance of the northern lights all over the upper midwest last night is an interesting coincidence as we look toward the next four years of dubya.

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i’m not a big kiss fan, but i have to say that sometimes…

November 5, 2004

i’m almost outta here for the weekend. no blogging on the weekend. be back on monday morning with:

  1. pictures from honeymoon which should prompt some stories from the trip
  2. thoughts from hike at afton state park
  3. reflections on whatever else strikes my fancy

ing revelation: i like the mid-70s.

i’ve never thought the 70s were my thing. it was about the post-60s, when people cared more about the drugs than the revolution, more about rocking out than rocking the world.

but then today i started thinking about the music i like. i was downloading some neil young bootlegs and a bob marley bootleg. the neil young was a show from 1976 in chicago, the bob marley was 1975 san francisco. and then there’s bob dylan’s blood on the tracks, a work of widely-accepted genius. the last waltz and the music and musicians on it is definitely about as good as music gets in my opinion. i love The Band as represented on that film. and hell, dazed and confused is a great movie.

so, i guess it’s just coming to terms with the fact that i like the music of the mid-70s as much as pretty much anything. but the lifestyle in dazed and confused is shaped by the music and i love it too. i’m not a big kiss fan, but i have to say that sometimes i do just want to rock and roll all night and party every day, or something like that.

i’ll have to mull this over this weekend, but all i can think at this point is that at least i haven’t discovered that i have a subconscious 80s fetish.

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immortal being

November 5, 2004

jack never wanted to be a counterculture phenomenon. at best, he wanted to be a cultural phenomenon. he was in tune with the reality of post-WWII america better than just about anybody and just because a lot of people denied their own existence, he has been derided, mocked, ignored.

Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken.

two weeks ago an event was held in san francisco to celebrate jack 35 years after he died. the many friends of jack that speak out in the article have some important things to say about his legacy and about america in the 20th century.

“He wanted to be a writer. And that’s ultimately where his reputation will rest. Jack will be remembered for the energy of his writing.” – Gary Snyder

thank god for gary snyder. somewhere in my love for jack kerouac is buried my admiration of the free-wheeling life of the mountains, the road, wine, friends, chinese food, blue collar america, autumn, railroads, and so forth. but i read jack today for his unmatched command of our native tongue. he writes sentences that give the reader a sense of telepathy, like his thoughts are inhabiting my mind.

“Jack was trying to bring back joy and freedom and flout the rules of a straight world,” said Nicosia. “He helped us understand America.”

In a telling passage in “On the Road,” Kerouac writes of meeting a “gorgeous country girl wearing a low-cut cotton blouse.”

“She was dull. She spoke of evenings in the country making popcorn on the porch. Once this would have gladdened my heart but because her heart was not glad when she said it I knew there was nothing in it but the idea of what one should do.”

today more than in kerouac’s time there is a plague of conformity upon america, and he nailed it better than i ever could be writing “there was nothing in it but the idea of what one should do”…

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