Long Road Home

Looks like I got all the mess about the election out in my lost post, that is not to say I won't refer often to my resolve in the coming eternity.

Went to the Wendell Berry reading at Seattle First Baptist a couple of days ago. Berry is a 70 year old wonder, a man who graduated from the Ivy League but rejected academia for his old hometown farm in rural Kentucky. Fighting for conscious living, he has written against industrial farming and for personal responsibility. Essays, novels, poetry, and speaking engagements all over. He is as considered as anybody I have heard. I loves me some good riproaring passion but I like a man who can pause and put weight into his words without rushing them. He is the wise old elder.

Some of the things he said:

"How I've furthered issues is presenting them in their complexity, not oversimplifying them, not giving in to stereotypes."

"We need enough thinkers to have a cultural tendency. You're going to have to have a big breakfast."

"Blake said, "We mustn't hate the sinners but the sin." I don't think we have much to gain by saying awful things. When you read the newspaper awful things occur to you."

"People with courage will think and learn to speak about these things (the issues) and raise the political dialogue."

I lone-wolfed it as I like to do and sat in the balcony like a hawk in a tall tree. Seems like I walked half of Seattle with my symbolic purple hat, breath steaming, ambling down concrete streets that bent with hills, various grays entering my eyes as I considered what America can justify.

Coming from rich land suburbia part of me has always felt like a failure for rejecting the path of respectable breadwinning economic security. For some reason I can't justify too many dollars of taxes issuing forth from me into bombs. Besides, I don't want a lover to be drawn to me for superficial reasons. Security is overrated in my book, the abyss is always present. Death is a hard-fixed rule but so is the eternal soul. Abstract as that may seem to other people, experience makes certain matters real to the beneficient mind. We hold life in our hands. The abyss is not something to get lost in but something to step into in times of crisis so we can find our higher selves. Chaos to find a better mixture of a different order with disorder. When in the maze find your own steps of courage, I say. Some people's eyes seem like prisons, and some people condemn you with their voice. We are weighed and tested and judged and yet the ultimate circumstance is the one we decide upon for ourselves.

Returning to art can be an arduous project. I let myself decide on unfavorable realities during my time with Rachael. My big dream of love could've dragged me much further down than I went. No matter how pronounced my loneliness, I mitigate expectations. Pleasant surprises abound when you don't preset parameters. Seeing a pattern doesn't mean the pattern is bound to continue.

I return often to the peasant wisdom of folk ballads. While dreaming of better realities they told of emotions in parable-story songs, pratfalls of greed or selfishness, worthiness of love and the need of risk, the sad beauty of achieving something unforeseeable only to see death in any number of circumstances claim that relationship and how something untranslatable survives that illusion of loss. Lovers against odds claimed by the sea or a baron. So much is illusion, Rachael widowed me but the memory of special moments endures albeit in a hazy afterthought now, even if the occasional nightmare throws me into a couple day funk.

Touching the chaos of giving up when free will has so many routes to overcoming challenges I am happy to say that the outcome of this election is a blip while yet another strong call to awakening. Much hard work has to be done. Perhaps our culture has tried to settle on easy comfort but anyone can look back on their greatest accomplishments and realize that those moments are the culmination of many hard won experiences. The contrast and the lessons provide a platform for our greatest leaps. Behind this, hard work is soooooooooo underrated. Fuck cold comfort, this so-called leisure. Zen-calm if you like, but a determined seizing of the higher mind is needed for us to be sharp enough to handle the forbidding factors pummeling our potential down into a neater praxis where our defenses are weak enough to soak in the propaganda. We are lined with the gold of alchemical chariots. We don't need the poisoned parts of the ground to fly.

So easy to toss garbage into the landfill. So easy to dismiss a loved one as this or that. So easy to return to outworn habits. How many crutches do we need? How many dry tits do we need to suckle? Climbing a mountain is worth the revelation of a widespread view. Sometimes, a late night run to the grocery store when the limbs are tired is worth the prize of ice cream. A walk in the rain, confronted with the weather that our ancestors lived in can trigger instincts dormant for far too long. Exercise is often worth improved heartrate, for moments when the body and mind need to be attuned--- a special someone calls us to our best attentions. Obstacles and challenges threaten us with our measure always being taken. So what!? We NEED to expose ourselves for the possible gain. The naturals often just look as if they are naturals, hard work made their abilities blossom. It's not all down to genes, it's the genes we awaken in our personal codes.

We aren't just what we are, we are what we become.

Been buying lots of books and music in a mad digestion. What a fine madness! Finished Bob Dylan's Chronicles. A labyrinth of fear and much hard work, that's what Bobby went through. Before the fear took hold he was among the bravest. Inspired me to go out and buy the 2nd Mermaid Avenue disc of Billy Bragg and Wilco putting Woody Guthrie lyrics, archived by the Smithsonian, to music. "Lay my head on my mountain bed/ Where I smell your hair again. ... My loneliness healed,/ My emptiness spilled,/ I walk above all pain/ Back to my woman and child/ To spread my seeds again."

I try not to dream of Rebecca too much. Girls are chasing after me a bit. Also, attached guys I know get nervous when their girls like me too much (in their eyes). The whole runaround is hilarious. I honestly don't have much of a hankering for the subtle politics and am generally generous to everyone without ulterior motive. I get enough attention without asking for attention, to even think of pushing matters. If no one is speaking to the better parts of me, I don't need the bullshit.

Well, I think I'll go read Gary Snyder's new book, take a break to chew some blackjack gum and swear good-naturedly at the news with a wry grin, laughing at myself. Hydrate and prepare for a long forest walk tomorrow, let the liquid flow like a waterfall down my throat. Play with drying flower petals in my fingers enjoying their remnants of moisture. Wash the dishes from my previous meals today. Cut some banana into my rice-milked cereal. Breathe and breathe. Try to shake off this nervous energy from wanting to get something done. Forget often that in the doing the done manifests.

Who knows tho? Something entirely else might come up.