Letter to Orphée

Thinking of a lyre of wood and wire and earth,
an earth lyre, I think of an elemental music,
a music made of earth, metals and woods
and stones of earth, played by wind howling
outside the house this dim, blustery day. The clouds
last evening, and pale light this morning, look like snow coming,
not rain. Rushes of sound, wind blowing across
the housetop, reverberate down the chimney.
Orpheus picks up a strangely curved branch of fallen
wood off the forest floor, strings it with copper wires, and plays.
His lyre summons spirits of the air, voices hiding behind
wind and mist, his singing voice, his poetry, becomes the telling
of seasons, days turning the planet under stars.
An elemental voice describing a concerto of ever-changing forces
and spirals in the sky. Spiral wood beams struck by lightning
embrace a pale white stone from anywhere but here.
Perhaps an ancient sea. You cannot be unaware, Orpheus,
that time and change take us all, that these stones eroding
to dust and leaves in this interstellar wind were once
a shallow sea, or that the peak of our tallest mountain
is made of shells of sea creatures that died millions of years gone
to fall to deep ooze and be pressed into rock
by the pressures of what came after. My home
is a temple of standing stones. Red and gold sandstones
form a shelter around whose curves the wind howls. We work
these metal flakes, gold bright and soft copper green, into veins
of the lyre of Orpheus, seams in the wood, ore seams in the earth.
Its copper strings gleam with forged memory. Its curve
is a memory of birds nesting in the crook of an ancient bole,
a tree much older than any bird, once fallen forgotten
by the descendants of sparrows and robins who once it sheltered.
Birds nest in the hair, the ear, of Orpheus, and dictate their songs
to his receptive tongue, his voice which forgets nothing,
not even the oldest groan of the planet giving spontaneous birth to life.
It's tempting to believe that those who refuse to hear these spirits
singing have themselves no souls, but we must not judge, we must
leave room for revelation. Everything connects. Webs and orbs
and lyre-spiders who weave them. Atoms of everything, whirling
in apparent silence within these fossiled stones, glint and spark
in light cast by the voice of the son of dreaming. His torn limbs
cast upon waters and forest floor. Orphée retrieves his own bones
and sinew as he picks up another fallen treelimb to weave
a newer lyre. Look, will you not: gold leaves glow
in the last rays of afternoon, below this hillside meadow,
and behind that is the whirling sparkle of molecules dancing,
and behind that the velocity of a shining planet, an orb
hurling itself into silence. We are the cliffs we jump from.
Our naked flesh breaks the laketop shimmer as we fall,
we disappear forever into that water mirror, then placidity returns.
Low hum of oceans singing in the blood, wind in the copper wires
of a sacred city, a lyre strung above dark streets the moon guards.
A forest of shadows grows within oil slicks reflecting streetlights
and trash bins. But in time, deep time, this forest made of bricks
will be overeaten and digested by new forests, returned and ink-vined
along borders of papyrus leaves woven into sheets of sand
by the lyre's unending song. The lowest string on a harp
of air and ice, the lowest tone that, struck,
can shatter crystal mountains. Wind strokes
the highest strings into humming.
Orpheus takes breath, opens his mouth to sing again.
What comes forth
shapes wind-blown broken sandflakes
back into mirrors full of starlight.

Gathered Leaves

Recent journal entries of varying profundity, somewhat at random:

•

One of the most important, yet unnumbered, rules of wizardry:

You are required to leave the world a finer place than it was when you found it. Always work to make the world a finer place.

Your constant adversary is entropy. That long slide into the dark.

As one wizard once said, Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. (Dylan Thomas)

•

Someone, perhaps someone who doesn't even know you, gets it into their head that you're an asshole.
So they start treating you as if you were an asshole.
They act like an asshole towards you.
In self-defense you start responding to them like an asshole, because they're acting like an asshole.
Then they point their finder at you and shout, "Look! I said you were an asshole, and you are!"
Because now they have pushed you into acting just the way they expected you to act.

The name for this process is:

Self-fulfilling prophecy.

And that, dear friends, is the danger of having expectations in the absence of experience or data.

•

At some point I suppose people will figure out that merely stating the obvious does not constitute an actual revelation.

That doesn't mean it's not a personal epiphany to the person who just had it. And when said person takes their epiphany to their spiritual master, who then laughs, "well, duh," then a certain amount of humility is in order.

Because what's really toxic amongst seekers after personal growth and/or enlightenment is spiritual ambition and spiritual hubris. And most of the time we don't even know we're doing it.

As the Zen masters have said, Ambition in seeking enlightenment will prevent you from achieving enlightenment. Just sit there!

•

In India, there is a Hindu tradition that comes out of the belief that the Divine exists in all of us, in everything, in everyone, all the time.

A person who needs to talk to the Divine, who just needs to be heard, for whatever is bothering them, will go up to a stranger, and ask "Will you be God for me?"

Which means, that the one asked will sit and listen, standing in for that person's God, as the person pours out their soul and heart to their Divine. (Its not always out of desperation or something bad, by the way.) This is always meant to be a temporary job, not a permanent one. The person is asking to talk to their God through a channel of another person, since the Divine Immanence is in everything and everyone.

We all sometimes need a Face of God that we can personally connect with. Most people connect better to an image of the Divine (what Joseph Campbell called the Masks of God) that they can relate to, that they feel they can talk to directly, and be heard. Westerners who discover this tradition in Hindu India are often amazed; but if you think about it, this isn't radically different than praying at the foot of a statue of Jesus or the Virgin Mary. The main difference is that in the Abrahamic religions God is thought to be transcendent, while in India God is thought it be immanent and transcendent.

As the stand-in for God, you don't have to do anything but listen, and listen with your heart. The gods behind all of reality, behind us, will hear. When the person who asked you to be God for them are done, you bless them, as God. If they ask God for advice, all you have to do is get yourself out of the way and let the Divine speak through you. Speak from your heart, and it will be true.

Anyway, this tradition always seems to work, and the person gets what they need. After the speaking to God is done, both people get up, feeling blessed, and depart, probably never to see each other again.

•

Any attempts to ascribe simplistic explanations of cause and effect to events in dreamtime are doomed to equivocacy.

First, because in dreamtime, time itself is neither linear nor narrative. Second, because in dreamtime, spacerime is malleable and non-relativistic. Third, because simplistic explanations of anything are usually just wrong, anyway.

Dream States

Very, very vivid dreams last night. Full of people in various scenarios. Busy trying to do things and get somewhere, the sort of dream where I need to meet someone, or get somewhere on time, or meet a plane, only things always get in the way, the airport gate keeps getting farther away, delays and misdirections, things crop up you have to get done before you can get to the main thing, I can't find the room in the crowded busy place where the seminar is supposed to happen. And so on. I usually call these frustration dreams.

But in last night's dreams, of which I can retain three or four important scenarios upon waking, there was a difference: for once with this kind of dream I was not feeling frustration or anxiety. These kinds of dreams usually make me feel, while in the dream, frustrated, anxious, annoyed, all of that spectrum of emotion around frustration and being unable to cope. But in these dreams, for once, I didn't feel that way. I felt strong, and forceful, and able to cope, if only by getting stubborn and angry enough to push through despite everything going sideways. So the tone of these dreams was different, even though the scenarios were not. My reactions were different.

Maybe it's because I have enough of that frustration and anxiety in waking life. Gods know I've been more or less continuously triggered since last week, with lots of anxiety, worry and PTSD to fight through during waking hours. So I'll take my attitude in these dreams as a good thing.



The most vivid of last night's dreams took place in a crowded outdoor area, lots of people, something like a hillside concert amphitheater. The crowded event has come under some kind of biologic attack, like a scene in a movie when the aliens invade the movie theater or big city park. I am on the fringe, in and out of the rough scrub along the verge. People are running towards the dark park. We are being urged to escape, although its not clear exactly why. The fighting or turbulence is off in the distance across the landscape. There is something about a biological situation, or experiment, that has gone out of control.

Intercut are flashes of the crowd seen in the bushes at the edge of the park with the open field beyond, seen from the knees down, walking, running, dodging, moving. A pair of legs belonging to a man, seen in glimpse after glimpse between other things. His left foot is changing, becoming monstrous, slowing his walk.

Finally I get to the park exit, near the car park, with one of my friends. I can see my car in the lot just across the highway. People around me and my friends are screaming and running. There is a man who is in the process of becoming a monster, whose body has been changing as he moves. The right side of his body is normal, but the left side of his body has changed into a reptilian humanoid form, scales, red eye, horny claws on elbows and knees, foot like a claw for ripping and tearing. People are running away from him.

I go towards him. I'm feeling adrenaline, but I go near him and ask him if I can help him. It takes awhile for him to realize I am neither attacking nor fleeing. He has some aggression showing in that reptilian eye, but he is not at the moment violent. There is danger there, but it's restrained. I have to say, as calmly as I can, "Can I help you?" several times. But then he stops his march towards the road that leads downtown and slows and looks at me. In difficult speech he tells me he wants to get downtown to confront the bio-scientist who was giving a lecture to the crowd before all hell broke loose. He believes the doctor may be able to fix his changing form, as he may have caused it to begin with. I listen and continue to offer to help. I am thinking of getting him away from the crowd that he is scaring, so I offer to give him a ride. Communications are slow, but eventually that gets through, and he will wait right there with my friend and his friend while I run get my car and pick them up.

•

This kind of dream, where reptile consciousness enters and starts to manifest, and change people, is often a rising up of the reptile part of the lower brain, the primal unconscious. At least it usually is when I have a dream like this. Throughout the dream I might be afraid but I remain focused and do not panic, while all around me is chaos and other people panicking. I meet the reptile self, and we do connect, and communicate, and agree to work together.

Very ancient beasts, the vast beasts within us, sometimes rise up like this. I have had many vivid and powerful dreams where I've met the vats beasts within. They are the Wild Things, those ancient animal parts of the self. They are an archetype, and need to recognized as such, and acknowledge, and honored, when they appear in your dreams like this.

thick dreams of travel

thick dreams of travel
wake you late
might as well get up

you hear words and music
scribing themselves somewhere
in the tan papyrus

of the back of the mind
where dreams scroll
and vast beasts lurk

lines and curlicues of
thrust and melody
get it down before

the tornado of everyday
morning visits robs
you of what you can recall

•


Capitol Reef National Park, UT
digital painting, 2013

Songwriting: Scraps

This morning, a few days back from camping, peacefulness, and silence Up North, and I find myself still un-eager to leap back into the fray of everyday mundane life. Fortunately, it's the weekend, and things slow down anyway.

This morning, almost the first thing in my mind, is a scrap of a song lyric, emerging more or less fully-formed, as I strive to get out of bed and begin the day. Slowly, no rush.

•

Can you sleep away your life?
Of course. Most people do.
Most people think this busy-busy fair
is real, when nothing is less true.

Do you wake up in the morning?
Or has the sunrise passed you by?
When birds are calling
and ships are falling on the lake,

That's when the sunrise
calls you home.

•

When I'm out camping, the sun hitting the tent is what usually wakes me up. It depends where I'm camping, then, whether I wake at dawn, or an hour or two later. Without the artificial support of powered illumination—you know, lightbulbs, television, computer screens—I tend not to stay up as late, either. Even with a good bonfire to drum and play flute at, it's rare for me to want to stay up as late as one does back in Snivellization.

I'm a musician. I've mostly kept musicians hours throughout my life. Nightlife hours. I've never been a morning person.

But now I seem to have become one, mostly against my will. Over the past few years, my required nightly sleep has changed from nine hours to seven. I'm usually done after seven hours of sleep, anymore. Since the surgery, I tend to wake up earlier in the morning than I ever used to. Partly because since the surgery I can't sleep the way I used to, and I often wake several times in the night, do the needful, then go back to sleep.

I've also learned that, despite the usual unpredictability of the creative urge, to which I am long accustomed, lately I seem to write in the morning, in the first half of the day. Not exactly as part of the morning routine, but nothing is certain anymore. Lots of things have changed since the surgery.

•

The last vivid dreams before waking are often the first things I write down. I've kept a regular, albeit not daily, dream journal, for a few decades. I tend to have vivid, lucid dreams regardless, always in color, and it has always been that way. I have memories of dreams going back to childhood, and my journal is full of other dreams written down as notes and narratives and images and symbols. Once or twice in my life, I've woken up with the memory of dream-music, which I then wrote down; once or twice, these have become musical compositions. The same thing has happened with poems.

•

Scraps of lyrics appear these days with some regularity. I've taken to always carrying my little lyric-writing notebook in my pocket, the same way I always have a camera with me. (People ask me how I get such unusual and beautiful photographs; the secret is simple: Always have a camera with you, and always be willing and ready to stop and make a photograph. The same is true of poems: the readiness is all.) I like little unlined Moleskin notebooks for writing lyrics; a perfect size for carrying your pocket, along with a pen and your penknife.

And your pocket rocks. There's this beach in northern California, at the southern tip of Redwoods National & State Parks. I first camped there in 1993. In the morning, I found a round smooth black sea-polished basalt stone that sparkled in the sun and fit perfectly into my hand. I've carried a rock from that beach in my pants pocket every day since then.

Over the past few months, and on the recent roadtrip out West, and while camping Up North, I wrote almost no poems. Instead I've written a lot of sketches for song lyrics. Bits and pieces, as this morning, which will eventually shape themselves into songs. While I was camping, I did a couple of paintings on the iPad, using the ArtRage app, which I highly recommend. Best virtual paint tool I've used in years. While camping, I also wrote the music notation for the melody and chords of a couple of songs I'd finished the lyrics for over the past month. Now I will sit down and do a formal lead sheet, get that all spruced up and see about recording demos.

•

Singer-songwriter Beck is doing something old and new: he's releasing his next album as a book of songs, for the listener to perform. As with a century ago, during the height of Tin Pan Alley songwriting, during the time when every home had a parlor piano, Beck, a contemporary singer-songwriter, releases his music as written notation for you to take home and play for yourself. Sign me up for purchasing this when it comes out in December 2012; I think it's brilliant. It inspires me to think about doing an eventual album of my own new songs, and include notation. In this day of digital downloads and perfected studio recordings, to engage one's audience by making them play the songs themselves: an old idea made brand new. Context matters.

I wrote in "Dulcimer Song," one of the songs from my commissioned piece Heartlands, something about this. I find it interesting how all of this converges, and what was old becomes new again. Here's the relevant excerpt from the lyrics for "Dulcimer Song":

The parlor piano
around which we sang
the wheezing old organ
that led us in hymns

Daddy played the dulcimer
while Mama sang loud

And these were our Sundays
in our little farm town. . . .

Heartlands: Notes Before a Premiere

As we approach the premiere(s) of "Heartlands," now less than a month away, I find myself struggling with tension, anxiety and worry. The premiere of a major piece of music which I wrote is bringing out anxiety caused by inherited latent perfectionism (thanks, Mom) and worry about my future. I want this to be the beginning of a new musical, not the end of one. So, pre-concert jitters, nerves, and worries.

Just to be clear, not all this tension and stress is negative. I'm also excited, breathless with anticipation, and hope. It's all mixed together. There is joy and gratitude in the mix as well.

Thus I must remind myself to let go, relax, breathe. This has been a very stressful period of life—not just because the mixed tension/anticipation regarding these concert premieres, but because of everything else going in life, as well. It's worth remembering that I wrote "Heartlands" in and around an episode of a chronic illness reaching its climax, followed by major surgery, then recovery, and gradual, slow return to something like normative health. It's worth remembering that all of this happened at the same time, all intertwined, and that none of these journeys are ended. Gratitude and fear are part of that mix as well.

My anxiety is partly because of the upcoming concert premieres—it's excitement and anticipation as much as it is worry or anxiety, as I said—and partly because I still am making no progress on moving forward with my medical journey. That's been stuck and causing me suffering for many months now, with no end to it in sight. I have been ignoring it recently, to some extent, focusing instead on the music and the arts-related career, doing marketing and website building and other tasks related to building this future. A lot of the time, as a result, emotionally I've been living in the future or the past, not the present moment. I've been coping with all this by making art, making things, making photographs, video, writing music, and more. It's a way to stay in my body most days, and not be lost to worry and anxiety. Sometimes temporary distraction is the correct response to an unsolvable problem.

I've been having many nightmares lately, and remembering them when I wake—anxiety dreams, really, stress dreams which I wake from already feeling tense and anxious. Starting off your day already tense is not wise.

•

Last night, though, in the last dream before waking, I encountered a Native American elder at a musical instrument store, who blessed me with tobacco smoke from his pipe. This musical instrument store, which I wandered into as it was adjacent to another store where I was friends with the owner, had several vintage Chapman Sticks for sale, and I was enjoying talking to owner as a player with inside knowledge about the history of the instrument. Then I asked to use the bathroom, and when I emerged I met a talkative Native man who seemed aware of that normally-hidden side of my self that is bound up with shamanism and spirituality; he took me over to another part of the store, or a place connected by the same space, where a quiet Native American elder was seated with his wife under a canopy, a square of tanned leather held aloft at the corners by wooden poles, decorated with feathers and beads. This elder took his medicine pipe and blew smoke over my body and aura, blessing me. This morning I woke from that dream, still aware of the anxiety I have been feeling lately, but aware too of feeling "talked to" by the spirits. Shut up and accept the blessings you've been given; shut up and be smoked; have faith that despite all your trials that you are indeed on the right path, the sacred way, the proper road for your life's purpose. When dreams are this lucid, this clear in their message, you'd best pay attention.

•

Part of me would love to run away, right now, spend time by the ocean, in the Florida Keys, in California, or spend time alone in the deserts and mountains of Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona. Time in the desert, time by the water, are good for clearing out the mind, for ridding oneself of mental clutter, for recharging those inner batteries, storing up serenity inside oneself that can last for awhile. I need a nature break. I could use a short camping trip, maybe nearby, since I'm too busy before the concerts to spare much time or energy. I have to remind myself to seek out peaceful places, near to home as well as far away, to find rest and solace of spirit. I have to remind myself to take time away from Everything to just be. Be still. Meditate. Rest. Recharge.

I find partial escape by looking at and preparing for printing those photographs that I have made in the Southwest, and by the Pacific. The images can take me back in memory, at least somewhat, and I can hear a little of that desert silence that I find so healing and refreshing, whenever I travel there. Some of the most healing moments, out in the desert, miles from anywhere, have been when I pull over, turn off the engine, get out of the truck, and just stand and listen to the silence for awhile. More than once, I've found that stillness, that silence, to be so refreshing, so penetrating into my mental clutter, so relieving of the stresses of the day, that ten minutes of desert silence are worth about a month of talk therapy. The outdoors is my refuge.

"In wildness is the preservation of the world," said Thoreau. Also the preservation of my psychological well-being.

•

Yesterday towards late afternoon I went and spent an hour in the Japanese garden a few miles from home. It was a windy day, full of fitful clouds and changing light. The beach at the manmade lake nearby was full of people, all ages cooling off from the high afternoon heat of the day, screaming kids, a volleyball game or two, and elders sitting peacefully in the shade offered by the thick trees. I went along the water's edge till I reached the Japanese part of the gardens, and spent the rest of my time there. People came through occasionally, but I had it mostly to myself for long stretches of time. Just the sounds of wind in the trees, and the water splashing in the waterfall and creek next to the open-sided meditation hall. Rustic, designed like an tea-room, with a latticed round window to the east, two walls open, two walls with benches for sitting.

I spent a long time at the meditation hall, just letting tension fall away. As I always do when in the japanese garden, I made some photographs—but photography for me is a form of meditation as much as it is art-making. And this time I shot several video elements which I will later assemble into a garden meditation video. I already have an idea for the music track: a shakuhachi solo with meditation bells, that I recorded a few months ago for a meditation CD, Darshan. Or maybe something newly recorded, but in that style. Music that is almost motionless, in contrast to the high winds recorded in my video shots.

•

I will go to the meditation hall in the garden again soon, if I need a break in the late afternoon. I don't have time to take a long roadtrip right now, not with my musical commitments reaching a peak level. But I can take short nature breaks, meditate out in the woods and gardens. I have to remind myself to do this, to cope, to maintain a level of serenity that enhances everything I do. Just keep breathing. Just keep swimming. Just be.

long waves pull us across

Another dream of water rising last night, interrupted by waking. Whenever I have one of these dreams in which water rises out of the earth, and moves with a life of its own, usually it means that soon a creative surge will wash over me. They are waters of the spirit, rising from that black underground river that is the source of and power behind everything that I do. This wave rising last night felt like the end of a period of dry tribulation, a closure on the aches of recent days. I wake to wind and cool skies, the flowers in the garden shockingly bright in the morning sun.

•

water clear transparent foamless
only a little floatsam in its crystal polygons
surges up in tall waves that we ride
across the concrete dock

we came here on a mission
urgent laconic well-informed
gathered in this concrete shelter
as storm floods rose high outside

now waves rise and pull us smooth
across the long floor's scatter of tools
I receive a call from the home office
I am summoned there directly

to solve some unnamed problem
so our group splits up for now
waves of water rising clear not cold
carry me past docks to open sky land

•

In recent days I find myself wanting to record significant dreams, when there are any, in the form of poems. Poems, rather than prose, because I can use in a poem dream-logic language, compressed and telegraphic, full of archetypal images that you can just present without feeling like you need to explain them. Poems are closer to dream-language anyway. Much closer than most prose, except of course prose-poems. There is a tradition of dream-poems, of course, from ancient times to modern. Maybe I'll end up with a set of dream-poems, a small body of work, before I move on to the next thing. I don't plan poems ahead like that, though. I just wait to see what happens.

That source of creative power, that underground river, when it surges, you do best to ride on its waves in the middle of the current. You cannot force something so much greater than yourself into a narrow channel of your own ambitions; it will explode outwards and break through the banks. Don't try to get too close to shore, just stay on your raft. The surge will eventually level out, although it's likely to return again later on, and meanwhile the water level is higher than before. A bard surfs these waves rather than being so unwise as to try to paddle against them. Going with the flow, indeed.

Dream music the world heart's melody

Dream music the world heart's melody


I am being paged on the intercom.
This office space has tall windows and lots of plants.
They keep calling my name. The formidable presence
Of my high school music mentor plows the furrows
Between gray work carrels. Minions track in her wake.
I am in the corridor by the side windows when they find me.

There are men in subdued coveralls, carrying four or five
Large musical instruments from Southeast Asia.
They present them to me, make me sign for them.
My old mentor is as fierce as ever. There's a smile
Mixed in. Two of the large drums are decorative,
Not really playable, crusted with glitter and gold paint.

But there are red-painted drums that sound deep in the flesh,
Warm and alive as distant monasteries.
I am being asked to shepherd this music forward
To the world's third ear, make a home for it in drumming hearts.
It's connected to that night another mentor passed his gift
Of melody to me, in a dream days after he had died.

What melody from this jade xylophone, its keys translucent
Purple green? What sorrow have these red drums seen,
Trembling somewhere behind hibiscus veils?
The key to the world is handed to me in the body
Of a glass slide in a plastic slipcase, hints of temples in its view.
My ears are warm. This corridor is filled with brightening light.

Aubade of the Dream of Peaches

suffering through a time-change
waking in the middle of the night
moon-silver streaming in gaps
between window-shade and sill

I dream in that last hour before waking
of trudging on winter sidewalks
to an intersection in my hometown
next to an empty snow-covered field

to the east, we all stop, stare, comment,
thin cold clouds pale-centered, dappled
in sunrise, edged in light, I hear
my own voice say, "Now that's true pink"

as if it were the first color of the first
dawn at the morning of the world,
then I am turning the corner
as the traffic light changes

into a stand of stalls, open market
of fruit-sellers and farm provender
an annual peach festival
I make my way along wooden walls

painted fresh white and palest fruit-tone
colors of the living fruit vibrant and true
firm in the hand, brightly lit this early morn
by light-strung tree-boughs and dawn

there are sellers of jams and preserves
and small peach-shaped bottles of wine
intriguing because wine made from fruit
other than grapes is always tongue-catching

my toes are caught by a wooden sill
I stumble through a display window rather
than a door into a fruit stand overwhelmed
with color, scent, a whirl of sound and memory

and open eyes cocooned in warm blankets
arms wrapped around a pillow, knees bent
it's still wan winter morning, no snow left, and
you're not here, you're not here, you're not here

Laughter Medicine

There's an old saying that "Laughter is the best medicine," and maybe it's true. I've been having nightmares all week long—memorably, an impassable field of rattlesnakes, being chased by Men In Black—till last night.

Last night I watched part of a DVD I had found at the thrift store (of all places) that afternoon: PDQ Bach in Houston: We Have a problem! I've been a fan of Peter Schickele and PDQ Bach, his research "discovery" in those dark corners of music history probably best left unplumbed, for decades. My Mom the concert pianist and piano teacher, and my Dad, the amateur musician and opera buff, and my sister and I started laughing to PDQ Bach's musical jokes in the early 70s, and have never stopped. It does help to know a lot of classical music to get the full depths of the jokes and the satire, but it's not necessary. There is a certain kind of Spinal Tap humor to PDQ Bach: that is, just as in Spinal Tap, most of us professional musicians have met people just like that, or been in that band, those of us who have been involved in classical music as performers or audience have all seen people just like that, too. Watching this on-stage live performance caught on film made me laugh out loud, just as with every PDQ Bach concert I've been too (at least 5 or 6 over the years).

My last dream before waking last night was funny, made me wake up laughing, and still makes me smile. I was with my artist friend Alex at a seaside place, an art school or resort town or small college or some combination of those, where we were rooming with college-aged artists and other creative types; the atmosphere was funky and friendly; I was the oldest one there, of course, but not the oldest at heart; one young women artist was making her living as a hair stylist, and I decided to let her dye my hair something wild, and she got creative and did a two-tone thing with red and a darker shade, with subtle purple streaks; people were astonished when they saw me later, shocked but positive; in the dream, I really enjoyed it; and in the dream I felt like I was giving her a gift of support and nurturing confidence. I woke up laughing. I've never dyed my hair in this waking life. But who knows. Artistic funkiness is no bad thing. It's good to shake things up. Maybe some henna some day.

I had been watching too much political commentary TV, or movies, the past few nights. Hmn. Be careful what you watch before bedtime. Something that makes you laugh is much better than yet another stupid violent movie. Why don't people make that connection? It's an environmental issue: The place you live, the things you eat, the information you take in, the "entertainment" you absorb: all of these affect your internal environment as well as your external. Maybe it really is just that simple.

New Songs for an Afterlife

Interrupted sleep is still sleep. At least nine hours,
broken into stems, this long weekend. Each night
recovering a lost sense of self. Restless, unnerved,
woken from intense dreams about gathering crystals
from a business going out. Crystals of color, electronics,
a microphone stand with bizarre gear attached,
stack of high-end video cameras might still work.
Afterlife of quartz and silicon.

Last night, poet, a small god's song lyric.
Not a shock, once immersed in songwriting,
the obvious poem come out as lyrics. Words dreamt.
Three new lyrics this past month, poet, steady
trickle if not flood. Only half-rhymed, structurally
loose, looking for a new word to say what's familiar,
feeling forward into the unknown. Three new songs
sit by the hearth of dreaming. The more you dream,
the more you write. Gradually gathers into new sets,
a new book. A scattering of words. Some connection
to leaves fallen across grass and flesh alike.

Chain links between paint and film, conflagrations
of carpet fiber, ash, gravel, lost keychains.
Charms for an afterlife of trash and dead symbols.
An angry dying painter makes collage, painting words
into the swirling vibrancy of his last large paintings.
Paintings about dying, paradoxically full of life.
Serenity and rage beside each other, holding hands.
Two saints of agony and ecstasy, roped barbed-wire
cattle dragged to the dullest seaside ledges.
Journals of paint and alchemical magic. Dancers
waltzing the skulls of their gone lovers
in the apocalyptic sundown. Make me a ribbon to wear
from the sinew of your broken thighs.
Write poem lyrics with withered skeletal hands.
An afterlife for songs, long past the singer's
expiring exhalation.

The Alarm Dispels a Dream

The alarm dispels a dream of going to a piano recital. The pianist is going to be Emil Gilels, a great concert pianist of my youth. The venue is a modern concert hall in a wooden setting. But we are in a downstairs room, paneled in light wood, which is below the main concert hall. It's not clear to me if there will be a video screen and amplifiers for us in this lower room. I traveled hard to get here, and I don't want to miss anything. The moment of the concert approaches as the alarm goes off.

It's not common for me to remember my dreams anymore. That has changed since the surgery. Some of that is a function of not being able to sleep well since then, partially due to the bag demanding my attention all the time, even at night. I sometimes don't get to sleep for more than three hours at a stretch. I often get enough physical rest from sleep, now, but not always dreams. Or they're too fleeting to remember upon awakening. Mostly they're of this semi-random type of dream, not obviously lucid or communicative.

I like this dream because it involves music. It makes me remember the time my father and I went to see Gilels at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor. He performed a first half of Impressionistic and modern pieces, Debussy, Scriabin, some others. The entire second half of the concert was devoted to Mussourgsky's original solo piano version of Pictures at an Exhibition. Gilels played it dramatically, powerfully, beautifully. The music was a revelation in itself, and his performance was one of the most memorable concerts of my young life.

I'm an artist who is used to mining his dream life for images, ideas, narratives, poems, music. I have a vivid imagination, and use both my experiences, including dreams, and my imagination in my art, etc. I've read of artists and scientists receiving solutions to puzzles in their dreams, or the last image or idea needed to make something complete and working. I think we undervalue our dreams when we dismiss them too quickly as just night-vapours. Dreams are relevant to all aspects of our lives. They're the royal road to the subconscious, as Freud put it in one of his more poetic moments. Dreams do much more than simply recycle the day's trashload of events, as some claim. In your dreams, the gods can speak to you directly; or those aspects of yourself deep in your unconscious mind, your shadow, your inner self, who normally isn't available during waking hours. The ancients used to call those inner voices the gods; nowadays, we have more psychological labels for such things. But even if it's just self talking to self, if you pay attention, you can learn a great deal. And you can find some deep wells, in dreams, into that river of creative force that is always flowing, deep underground.

I'm trying not to bothered by having a reduced dream life. I do think it makes a difference to my waking life, whether or not my dream life is active. People have sometimes asked me if my dreams are sometimes more vivid than others, if there's a continuum. But my dreams have always been vivid, been in color. Sometimes they're lucid dreams, sometimes they're so incredibly vivid and real that I am disoriented upon waking. Chuang Tzu's famous question often has relevance to me: Am I a man who dreamt last night that he was a butterfly, or am I a now butterfly dreaming he is a man? Honestly, sometimes it's hard to tell.

In the mornings, I'm often slow to get going. I spend at least some time every morning meditating, reading scared literature, thinking about creative work, doing Reiki on myself. (Lately, mostly on those parts of me still healing from the recent illness and surgery.) I don't listen to music that has words in it, as that pulls me too quickly into my left brain. I need to linger in my right brain for awhile upon waking, absorbing and writing down dreams if I can, otherwise just letting the imagination go wherever it wants. I contemplate the light on the trees. I listen to the wind. I actively, as the Zen expression says, do Nothing.

I take my time in the mornings, whenever possible. I take at least the time it takes to savor and sip a mug of tea. This morning process—it's not really a routine, and it's less than a formal ritual, but it's more than just a habit—makes for a much better day. When I'm on the road, sometimes the morning's departure preparations mean I have to put off this contemplative time till I've left; then, for awhile, setting out on the morning's drive, I do my morning contemplations.

It concerns me a little that my dream life has been affected by surgery, anaesthesia, recovery, not sleeping the way I used to. I value my dream life, for inspiration and more, and I don't want to lose it. Maybe when this process is all done, after all the surgeries to come, and I can sleep on my belly again, things will return to normal, or a new normal. A lot of my life is still in flux, in transition, not certain of outcomes. More questions than answers. I hope my dreams come back stronger, eventually. I hope for many things.

Advantages of Being Stuck at Home Post-Surgery

from the Surgery Diaries

Despite a little cabin fever, my mind is pretty clear. I'm on pain meds, but a very mild dose. The first night home was really bad, I couldn't figure out how to sleep without a lot of discomfort. Since then, though, I've been getting better sleep, and the occasional nap, in my big overstuffed recliner. It's not like I never slept there before, either. It's a good chair for it. Last night, in the cool night, I also slept for an hour on the porch recliner. I find myself waking a few times during the night, but move around a little then can get back to sleep. That first night home I had vivid nightmares; but I know from experience that general anaesthesia can do that to me, till it fades off.

So yesterday I sat down at the computer and a huge amount of file management that I've been putting off for awhile. My desktop is the most organized it's been in months.

That's one advantage of being back at home but mostly resting: lots of free time to do the little tasks one never seems to have time for otherwise.

Later today my sister and I are going to rearrange the kitchen pantry much more efficiently. A family friend has gifted me a Cuisinart food processor. How did I manage to survive this long without a food processor? One wonders. Last night we made scalloped potatoes, and they were fantastic.

My sister and brother-in-law are both foodies who love to cook, and are really good at it. I've learned a lot from them over the years, and become a pretty good cook myself. Last night we made scalloped potatoes from the Julia Child recipe, and used the new (used) Cuisinart to slice everything perfectly and practically instantaneously. This will be a big boon to me from now on: no wasted energy in the kitchen, especially now, when I need most of my daily strength for healing and recovery. I'm still not allowed to use the stairs to the basement, or to lift anything heavier than twenty pounds.

I walked around my garden last night, at dusk, with my sister. My lilies are amazing this year, now that they're all starting to open. They're huge and colorful. I took some fresh photos as I ambled, neither pushing myself too hard for walking, and not trying to bend over at all just yet. Unfortunately I don't know if the morning glories are going to make it. And it needs weeding, which I'm not able to do. So the front garden, the flower garden looks terrific, while the back porch garden could be better. Oh well. If I miss a season, it's for a good reason.

So the main advantage of being stuck at home post-surgery is that I'm getting some organizing done. Things that I wanted to get done earlier, but had neither the time nor the strength to do.

Yesterday the incision itched all day, but it was that kind of itching that means healing, not infection. Everything looks clean and fine. I spent time last night with no dressing on the incision, letting it air out, and this morning it looks really good. I'm going to keep covering it till after the staples come out, though, to avoid any irritation, or catching on clothing.

Yesterday morning I felt a little emotionally and mentally fragile. Today it's a clear, breezy summer day, and my mind feels clear. I'm going to make art today, one way or another. I'm finding myself having more energy than I expected, certainly this early in the recovery process.

I owe my surgeon an apology. When he first told me that some patients immediately feel more energized, after surgery, than they had in years, I found that impossible to believe. But that seems to be what's happening to me. I am surprised and pleased. So my apologies and my gratitude to him. I'll say as much to him next time we meet.

This morning I'm also aware of how much we take for granted in life. We are so fragile, and yet to resilient. Little things are what remind you of what in life really matters. The first real food I ate after surgery was like the first meal eaten in the Garden of Eden: revelatory, delicious, overwhelmingly tasty (even with some taste bud issues caused by the anaesthesia), and sublime. Each new post-surgery First Time has been feeling that way. Each day something new. I might have taken it for granted before, but I never will again. I appreciate every moment of every day like I never have before. What a glorious morning.

Bloomsday

June 16th is Bloomsday, the day (in 1904) in which the novel Ulysses by james Joyce takes place, all in one day, in Dublin. Ulysses, the iconic Modern novel (along with a few others, such as Virginia Woolf's The Waves) that changed modern literature for all time, by presenting the interior monologue stream-of-consciousness of its main character(s).

STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently-behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

-- Introibo ad altare Dei.

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely:

-- Come up, Kinch. Come up, you fearful jesuit.

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak. . . .

So much has been written about Ulysses, from scholarly analyses and "decryptions" to popular fandom praise, and so much modern novelistic literature has swarmed from this novel's artistic wake, that it seems pointless to add to the fray. The novel is quoted and referenced often, in modern art and literature, cited and parodied and paid homage to. All I really can add to the many voices already chiming in on Bloomsday is my own appreciation, my personal experience with reading Joyce, with reading Ulysses and the rest.



I first read Ulysses when I was 17 years old, starting it in the autumn, and finishing it after I had turned 18 that following winter. It did take me several months to read. The novel blew my socks off. I read it, modeled as it is on Homer's Odyssey, each section written in a completely different literary style, with deep pleasure, and with no real difficulty. It all makes sense within its own internal logic.

One of my favorite chapters is the "Sirens" chapter, constructed as a musical symphony in words. It begins with an overture that compresses the action into short poetic lines, followed by the full symphony, complete with musical themes and variations. The overture begins:

Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing Imperthnthn thnthnthn.

Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips.

Horrid! And gold flushed more.

A husky fifenote blew.

Blew. Blue bloom is on the.

Goldpinnacled hair.

A jumping rose on satiny breast of satin, rose of Castile.

Trilling, trilling: Idolores.

Peep! Who's in the... peepofgold?

Tink cried to bronze in pity.

And a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call.

Decoy. Soft word. But look: the bright stars fade. Notes chirruping
answer.

O rose! Castile. The morn is breaking.

Jingle jingle jaunted jingling.

Coin rang. Clock clacked. . . .

Our modern-day hero, Leopold Bloom, navigates a long day and night, past many dangers and through many trials, to arrive home at last, to be greeted by his Molly. The last section of the novel, told in Molly's voice, is a tour de force of stream-of-consciousness writing, in some ways setting the standard.

The novel ends with what I still feel is one of the great erotic monologues in all of literature:

. . . and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down Jo me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Reading Ulysses began my fascination with Joyce. At one point I had probably 30 books about Joyce in my library, as well as editions of all his writings. I gave up some of the scholarly works at one point, but have retained the editions of the novels and other writings, and some of the better books about Joyce.


James Joyce

I've read all of the rest of Joyce's published writings at least once. I still believe that the story "The Dead," from Dubliners, is one of the greatest short stories of all time. (The film made from it, director John Huston's final work, is faithful to the story and quite beautiful in its own right.)

I seem to be one of those rare people who has actually read Finnegan's Wake. I read it in my 20s, sometimes after reading Ulysses, and joyce's poems, plays, and other fictions. In fact, I've read the Wake somewhere between one and three times; I'll leave that assessment fractionally vague. I figured out for myself that one way to read the Wake that makes sense of it, is to read it out loud in a thick Irish accent. A lot of the word-plays and altered language that seem so strange at first suddenly begins to make sense, when you read it that way. It's not something you read in one sitting; each section that you get through needs time to sink in and integrate; it is a Dreamtime novel, after all, with dream logic and psychological reality blended in.

Ulysses is still a lot more popular, and better known, than the Wake, as most people find it easier going. Joyce's avant-garde literary experiments did get more complex with each major work. A lot of readers stop at Ulysses where they can still make sense of most things.

But Joyce's works have permeated the culture. Everyone has heard jokes or parodies, or puns on Joyce's titles. Entire musical works, on both small and large scales, have been written from Joyce's texts. (John Cage has used Joyce texts for songs and other kinds of performances, and has used the Wake several times as part of a "writing through" sequence.) The Joycean novels still inspire, they still reflect modern life and attitudes, and I would argue they are still vital and relevant to contemporary literature, and life. Ulysses and annual celebrations of Bloomsday remain popular, vibrant, and joyous. The world was changed by Joyce, the world's consciousness, not just its literary tropes and fashions. Thus, these annual remembrances of Bloomsday, these annual rites of celebration.

Happy Bloomsdday! May your wanderings always bring you, at last, home.

Process of Writing 3

There's a famous story in the history of science, of the chemist who was trying to work out the chemical structure of benzene (an organic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon [PAH] now used in a lot of modern technologies). Benzene had been discovered as a byproduct of oil refining, and they were trying to figure out its chemical form.

One night, this chemist went to bed, thinking about the problem. During the night, he had a dream of a snake chasing and eating its own tail. This is the classic Ouroborous symbol from alchemy, an image of a snake or dragon eating its own tail, constantly creating itself. It's a complex symbol, and is found in more than one mythology.

In the morning, when the chemist woke up, he realized that the central part of the benzene molecule was a carbon ring. This carbon ring, which is a hexagonal ring in which the carbon atoms form a circle with points for other atoms to attach at every other carbon atom, is the central molecular structure of all PAHs, and is why they're aromatic, work well as industrial enzymes in organic chemistry, and so forth. (Also why they're very toxic.)

So the chemist had a dream that solved his creative chemistry problem.

Last night, lying half-asleep sometime near dawn, after going back to bed after having gotten up to use the bathroom, I lay there and the first two pages of the final form of the new music commission became clear in my mind. Clear in every detail, all four chorus parts and the basic form of the piano entrance and accompaniment. I knew exactly how the piece was going to start out; and part of this I knew would recur as the opening of the final movement of the new music, harking back to the opening as an echo and return. (Another dragon or snake closing in one its tail, perhaps.)

So from a near-dream state, I have the piece's opening finished. I'm writing it down on score paper today, although it remains very clear in my mind.

This isn't the first time I've dreamt a poem, or piece of music, or visual image, and woken up with it vivid in my mind, waiting only to be transcribed and written down. I once had a dream of a powerful solo performance on cello; in the morning, I was able to get down the basic notes of the main melody, if nothing else. It left an impression that lingered a long time, though.

I'm sure I'll have more dreams that are completions of musical questions. Not the first, not the last.

•

Update, a day or so later:

I wrote down what I saw in the dream, and the sketches of piano accompaniment patterns and ideas. More ideas keep coming, now. Another moment of laying half-awake, half-asleep, gave me another module of music that could follow the initial opening of the piece. Other ideas keep coming.

At the same time, during the waking hours of the past few days, even while writing these ideas down on staff paper, I've been coping with some frustrating medical issues—a quest for clarity and certainty and answers where they may be none, or none that I like. I found myself in the waiting room at the doctor's office, music sketchbook in hand, writing music down. At least it's better than sitting there just stewing and brooding. It's funny how things get all tangled together. I feel like another poem might be coming on, soon, too. One surge of creativity in one arena often is echoed by another surge in another arena.

Waters Rising

Waterline I, San Gregorio, CA, 2005

I’ve been having dreams of waters rising, several times over the past weeks. Last night, the last image before waking of was looking over a deep wind-rippled pond or lake at dusk, lights reflected in the water; the surface of the pond was restless, but there were deep waters underneath, half-revealed, half-concealed by the lights reflecting on the water. A week ago, I dreamed of flood waters rising, making the land where I lived into mud, and threatening to flood the dwellings where we lived. Inn the past week, I've dreamed more than once of sleeping outdoors, under the stars, sometimes in group urban tent-camp settings (which you sometimes do during a weekend art fair in university towns); each of these dreams of sleeping outdoors, on the land, has ended with imagery of waters rising.


Willow River State Park, WI, circa 2001

I’ve learned to associate these dreams as harbingers of the rising of the waters of the deep mind, the unconscious. The deep waters of the unconscious are a source of mystery, wonder, power, and healing, for me. (This is actually a Jungian archetype of the collective unconscious, not only my personal symbol.) Sometimes the rising waters appear as flood waters; sometimes as deep wells in the earth, sometimes in a cave, full of cold, clear, sweet-tasting water. (The well of wisdom in a cave is also an ancient Celtic religious symbol, I've discovered.)

There was one dream that was so unique I've never forgotten it: In that instance, the waters appeared as lines inscribed into a red stone patio; the red stone was of the red sandstone type found in the Southwest, vivid red; the patio was hot underfoot in the sunlight; the water was moving through inscribed lines and patterns and channels in the flagstones of the patio, like a labyrinth made of water; and the water lines reflected the pure blue of the sky overhead. Blue lines of water flowing through hot red stone, going somewhere I couldn't see, perhaps to a pool nearby and out of sight; but it was clear the waters were not still nor stagnant, but constantly in motion, flowing through the stone.

When such images and/or symbols appear in your dreams, especially several times within a short period of time, it's wise to pay attention.

The rising up of dark waters into the light of day is associated, for me, with the rising up of power, of creativity, of intuition, of information. Waters rising from the depths and flooding out over the land, over me. Every time I’ve had dreams like this, something big has moved upwards inside me, or some block has been opened, or new insights are gained, or I’ve experienced a huge surge in creativity combined with insight and intuition. The waters of that black underground river which is the power under life, which sustains me, which is the river of creative force that feeds my ability to make art. The black river underground that rises up through the wells, that flows into the creative work I'm doing, no matter what medium I'm working in at the time.

I welcome these dreamtime events, when they happen. They are a gift of grace and power from the gods, and not to be ignored or dismissed lightly. As I said, they have often been harbingers of change in the waking world.


Water drop in pothole, Interstate Park, MN, circa 1998

Water is a constant theme in my visual art. I make many photographs of water in nature. I love reflections in water and glass, that give a sense of depth and movement to an otherwise static scene. I spend a lot of my time out in the world making nature photographs near bodies of water. Rivers, lakes, the ocean. Ponds, streams, sheets of water making tidal flats into mirrors. Many of my own favorite photographs have water in them, in one form or another. We live on a planet that is mostly covered with water; and our blood has the same mineral mix and acidity as seawater, from which we arose.



I was once invited to present an exhibition of my photographs in a community center in the Twin Cities. I chose water as my theme, and made the logo above to represent the show. I set the type in Illustrator, then turned it into an art object in Photoshop, chromed it, and built the water reflection underneath. The show was a critical success (albeit not a financial one).


Water Gateway, unused image from Spiral Dance

Waters rising. I wonder what they will bring forward, this time, out of the depths.

Mountain Dream Drawing

In my dreams last night, the vivid last dream before waking, I am preparing to take off for the mountains; it’ll be cold, and I’ll be camping; my truck is all packed, I'm just trying to get away; people delay me with chores and chat, and slow down my progress; I take a wrong turn at the exit ramp for the highway into the mountains; so I pull off where I can get turned around, get gas and get going; I have a good chat with a park ranger overseer at the station who’s an old woman, practical and down to earth; eventually I find a gas station and get back on the two-lane that goes up the grade to the high peaks, up over a curving bridge and onto the climbing road.



I say I'm going to the Tetons, in my dream, but the mountains I'm going to are parked much higher up, like in the Colorado Front Range, towards Rocky Mountain National Park, a patch of white-capped jagged peaks at the top of a spine of mountain ranges.



I've had recurring dreams of being in the mountains; of going up, and coming down; of camping, hiking, traveling, driving. A recurring dream of being in a small city in a valley at the base of some very high mountains, then going up through a long valley which gets steeper and steeper till I arrive at a cirque valley hanging above the world; you can stand at the mouth of the valley and see forever, the air very thin and cold and bracing. When I was studying geology in the Tetons, age 18, we climbed up to one of the high cirque valleys, at the top of which was an active glacier, and looking east across Jackson Hole, and on into the Gros Ventre range, you really did feel like you could see forever. Maybe these mountains are the high mountains of my dreams, that I’ve been to in more than one dream, over the years, very high up, very isolated, exquisitely beautiful.

Thanksgiving Day and Night

Intense, vivid dreams last night. Dreams with family, memories, in familiar places and also in places never seen before. A large house in summer time, my family there; cousins and aunts coming to visit, after some funerals before the dreamtime; did you meet that one relative before? yes, at my grandmother’s funeral some years ago; a house like a version of my old house in Ann Arbor, but larger, distorted, harder to get around in; yet my room was like my old room; talking with my Dad at the breakfast table, before everyone arrives, then going back up to my room to change from my casual non-dress into real clothes, as the family members pull up in front of the house, in a giant red convertible; my one favorite cousin has come to look much like her mother, but softer, more open, and she is driving the convertible. So, dreams of family and friends, dreams of gathering together for a social occasion, to eat a meal.


Dreamwhale surfacing, Pinole, CA, 2005

Today’s Thanksgiving Day. I had plans, but they’ve all fallen through, and I’ll probably be spending the holiday alone. I’ve been too sick, too poor, to do anything different. I’m not really up for a long drive or other travel plans, anyway. Just as well, probably, to stay home and rest, have a quiet day.

So. All my plans for Thanksgiving fell through, and whatever other plans might have developed, too, as no one called me back. I'm too sick to travel without exhausting myself, yet everyone seems to expect that I'm the one who always has to do that work of travel, in order for us to get together. So I've been alone all day. I have been having a mostly quiet day, listening to some music, and reading and writing, although once the sun goes down here, all too early, I plan to do some baking, and make myself a small exotic feast. Why not? I love cooking, and I love eating, and tant pis if none of my friends could be bothered about getting together this year.

Late last night, before going to bed, I got to watch it snow for the first time here this fall: wet heavy snow that whitened everything, but was gone by the time I arose again in the late morning. It’s windy, cold, and blustery out there today. I may stay in all day, or I may go out and do a little stonework in the garden. I’ll see how I feel in the next few hours.

•

I just got back in from working a little in the cold, wet garden. I did some stonework gardening, finally, that I've wanted to do for about a week. It felt good to get my hands into the dirt. Always very healing to connect to the earthmagic. Now I'm sipping Prince of Wales tea on the porch, and warming up my bones again.

Now the light is fading. It’s getting dark, and I’ll turn on the houselights soon.

I made a large double spiral at the northwest garden corner of the house, where I haven’t been able to get anything to grow yet. There are those wild bushes there, and groundcover, but that patch has been bare. Maybe I’ll try to plant some lavender there, in between the spiral arms, come spring.


Spiral in sand, San Gregorio Beach, CA, 2005

I also spontaneously did more stonework in the bedded garden on the east side of the house. The usual feeling of being called to make a land art sculpture, which happens at certain sacred places when I’m traveling. The spirit or energy of a place calls to me. After I made the large double spiral that I’d envisioned making since last week, I had more stones in my pail, so I followed my feelings, and went over to the east side of the house. I’ve been putting different kinds of groundcover in there, to merge between the bushes. It’s very bad soil, but certain kinds of groundcover, such as periwinkle, will thrive and spread there anyway. I also transplanted some chives in there this past spring, and they’ve done well. I made a little stone path from house to wall, near the water faucet, and two stand alone spirals. It felt good to work in the earth today.

If you can’t garden with plants, this late in the year, you can still garden with stones and earth.


Turtle Creek tributary upstream, WI, 2009

I was thinking about land art sculptures, the past few days. I need to go down to the river later, down to Turtle Creek, maybe tomorrow, in the afternoon. I can make art along the river banks there. I can gather some wood for carving later, fallen debris or whatever. I’ll dry it over the winter in the garage, as I am drying the wood from the tree branches that fell down in the windstorm a couple of months ago. I had been thinking that I couldn’t make any land art around here, and I realize now that I can. I just have to go down to the river path and do some exploring, walking, and making down in there.

•

As the sky darkened, I lit candles in several rooms, and turned on only a few of the electric lights, just the minimal.

I baked white chocolate scones while I was making a reduced glaze from the juice of two fresh-squeezed oranges. It takes about two hours to simmer the orange juice down to a thick, gooey glaze.



Then I pan-roasted long strips of breast-meat chicken in olive oil and lemon pepper and spices. When the chicken was cooked through I laid it on a bed of fresh baby spinach over rice. I glazed the chicken strips with the reduced orange sauce, and ate the meal with a couple of glasses of wine.



And that was my feast for the day. I made it for myself, and ate it myself, and felt good about it all. I actually have a bit of that eaten-too-much overstuffed feeling you're supposed to get on Thanksgiving Day. So that feels good. I might have a pie of apple pie with vanilla ice cream before going to bed, later on. Meanwhile, I'm sitting wrapped in blankets with another cup of tea.

And that was my solitary feast. Shared here, now, and thus made less solitary, and more convivial.

The Essentially Pagan Nature of Environmentalism

Last dream before waking: I am carrying a load of wood, long stripped pine logs, with others, from a forest patch to a trucking site down the road; our work group is two Native girls, a friend, and myself; we take turns carrying and maneuvering the load of wood, trying to get where we’re going; we get to talking about our motivations for why we have all become environmentalists; I talk about my birth and life in Michigan, how I felt directly connected to the land, how I still feel connected to the land when I settle some place; the older of the two Native girls, the one who talks, finds this a good thing, and close in kind to the values and feelings she herself has, and was raised to believe.

People need to always remember, the Earth will endure, even if we destroy ourselves. We could destroy ourselves, still, and the habitats we rely on for survival. But “save the planet” needs to be rephrased as “save ourselves.” We are the ones in danger. The planet itself is enduring, and will still be here even after we, as a species, have either died out, or evolved on to some other state, possibly a space-borne one, either technologically or inherently, or something wildly beyond imagining.

The dream, and the thoughts it springs forward upon waking, that I’ve written here, remind me of the essentially pagan nature of the thoughts and feelings behind the environmental movement(s). Pagan, in the original Latin, meant the people of the countryside, the pagani, as opposed to those who dwelled in the center of culture in the Big City. Pagan also meant the country people's little religions, the thousand little gods, the statues of Priapus in the village greens, and other fertility symbols, the old Dionysian/Bacchan rites, the gods and festivals that were tied to and marked the agricultural annual cycle. Pagan, once Rome became Christian, the Holy Roman Empire, who consolidated their power in the One True Church, as some have called it, also came to mean all the little pre-Christian, non-Christian belief-systems and local religions that institutional Christianity strove to supplant throughout Europe. Thus do the conquering monoliths of organized faiths label those they have supplanted, murdered, and exterminated: heretics, heathens, witches (which meant, originally, wise ones), pagans. During the Inquisition, which some scholars insist has never ended, women and men alike were burned as witches because their local wisdom was based on the local herbs and beliefs, not the One True Church. The shift in meaning of the word pagan to mean non-Christian was part of a method of centralized political control, of the consolidation of temporal power as well as religious domination. In which case, being the fundamentally anti-authoritarian beast that I am, it pleases me to be labeled, pagan, witch, heretic, faggot. I own all those labels proudly, in defiance of Church authorities. And my dreams, ever archetypal and resonant, continue to remind me of my own essentially pagan nature: my feel for the land, for the forces of nature, weather, time, erosion, wabi-sabi, the agricultural annual cycle, and the non-human beings that travel alongside us on this turning globe. There’s a squirrel bounding across the snow in the yard out back: gather ye nuts and berries while ye may.

I am not anti-human in the slightest, although I don’t think we’re the center of the universe, the measure of all things, or the end product of evolution. Evolution continues, and will do so when we're gone. If the theory of evolution is correct, our species like many other species has a lifespan of probably a few million years, at most. After that, we would not even recognize ourselves, if we are still here; we'll either have evolved or become extinct. The globe will circle our Sun for much longer than that. The earth does care about us, her wayward children, of this I have no doubt. Meister Eckhart’s comment about how we feel separated from the Divine, be it God or Gaea, is relevant here: God is at home, it is we who have gone out for a walk. In all of this I agree with Robinson Jeffers, in his oft-misunderstood philosophy of Inhumanism, which is not misanthropic but rather reaffirms that all things human are rather small, and not the center of the universe. I am not anti-human, but I am opposed to the excesses of some of the humanist philosophy, which at times approaches narcissistic self-regard at the level of solipsism. What I am for is including everybody else in our self-regard, not forgetting that we are all One, and that a good guest in a home doesn’t mess up the furniture or leave dirty dishes in the sink.

But perhaps selfishness is the only motivation that many people will hitch their wagons to. If you point out that the real truth of the environmental movement is not “save the planet” but “save ourselves,” maybe people will actually begin to pay attention, and wake up to the truth that it’s not healthy to shit where you sleep. The planet will endure, whether or not we do. If an appeal to enlightened self-interest is what it takes us to clean up our acts, literally, then I’m all for it.

still waters, reflecting sky

a ribbon of creek, mirror surfaced, reflecting sky
glimpsed out of corner of eye, driving by at speed
reminding me of dreams

When you keep a dream journal for long enough, you being to notice patterns, and see symbols not only as signs but messages. I've recorded my dreams for over 25 years; not daily, but almost. There are periods when the dreams are just churning the daytime stuff. But I have recorded several significant dreams, over time. Enough to be able to recognize the imagery, when it recurs, in repetition or variation.

still waters, reflecting sky
a blue ribbon of water, reflecting blue sky
cut into red rock, red brick, a patio, a mountain plateau, a redrock mesa
sometimes a cloudless sky, sometimes small white puff clouds
that you see in summer over the great plains, or often in the southwest during monsoon
blue ribbon of water and light incised into red earth surface
clear light of day, cool silver of night

a still circular pool of water
deep in the heart of a dense forest black at midnight
the moon reflecting in the waters of the pool
even on moonless nights
sometimes a single rivulet of spring or stream
emptying cold clear water into the pool
whose surface ripples only slightly

calm clear light of mind
clear mind, clear light
a lightning stroke clapping through
to wake up the broken air

When dream-symbols recur, it's a message from your own depths (and is there a difference between your own depths and divine guidance? there seems not to be) to wake up and pay attention.

I've had the water-stone-sky dream several times in my life, with variations, every time a major upwelling of dark water is about to arise from the deep wells of the unconscious, and into the light of day. Energy and inspiration upwell from the unconscious, our richest source, like mineral-rich cold water rising from the bottom of the ocean to the surface, causing a plankton bloom that then attracts fish, and larger fish, and finally fishermen. We are fishers of our own deep selves. We need to navigate our surface waters to find those upwellings that will feed us, and our lives.

The moon-pool began as a meditation visualization, a symbol of a personal sacred space to go to when seeking tranquility, solace, calmness of mind. It has also appeared in dream, and in vision. An image arising out of the abyss, containing the abyss, and the miracle of a moon always reflecting in the water, even on moonless, starless, cola-black nights. When there is nothing in the heavens but dark cloud and dense shadow, when the woods become so thick and dense that they are impenetrable, still the moon's reflections glows calmly in the waters. Sometimes the waters are as mirror-still and black as obsidian glass; sometimes the image of the moon ripples slightly, as though the moon were reflecting in rippled water, even if the water itself is not moving.

Sometimes I make these dreams into artworks. I have said before how Photoshop allows me to show my visions and dreams to other people, so they can see them too. I've made dreams into poems, into artwork. Once or twice, very rarely, music has been in my dream, that I have been to recreate upon awakening. Once or twice, poems were recited in my dreams, that I could then transcribe into my journal.


Moon Vision, from Spiral Dance

These are the gifts of the deep waters in the sea-caves in the dark wells at the bottom of the mind. They are fish that are always good to catch; like the Salmon of Knowledge in Celtic lore, good to find, good to eat, and the gifts they bring are beyond price.