First World Existential Angst As Seen Through a Windshield

 Back in September I set out for Northwest Arkansas in what would be a frenzy of mechanical motion, too many grand vistas, geologic and human history given a nod of recognition but left unsounded. Nearly six thousand miles in the going and returning. Smoke choked the air through the Cascades well into Utah, the Escalante dawned apocopliptic, then came the Grand Canyon with all it's unfathomable treachorous magnitude. On and on I drove stopping each day to walk some place, any place. Somewhere on the western slopes of the Rockies the finitude of life felt tangiable and that ledger of moments well lived, oppurtinties siezed, and the remainder of what's to come diminishing with each revolution of the tires. Not to say I let all moments pass: I rise before dawn, usually find myself in the forest at the blue hour, helped rescue an injured woman five miles down into the canyon. Her mistake? Carrying the weight of her late husbands dreams. Perhaps a mistake more of us should make. One night speeding down the western slopes thinking back to that old lady, dehydrated, ankle grotesquly aranged, recalling dinner with my nephew, and walking above the Buffalo River with a man who's become a father to me felt like a revalation of the value of a thing discovered long after it's been lost to time. The next day I crawled into an ancient graniery left by the Anastazi not daring to discard prematurely what would one day be marked as "squandered" under the heading of oppurtinities. That frenzy of motion didn't cease; I returned from that trip five days premature. Learning nothing, perhaps.

Inertial Force

Three years ago to the month I stood at the pass looking down on these impossibly blue bodies of water nestled neatly some five hundred feet down below. Sat for a moment on a lichen encrusted out cropping then turned and left to make it the ten miles back to the road swearing I'd return to spend the night. Life, as we know, has it's own inertia, choices kick off rock slides we feel powerless to extract ourselves from once the decent is begun. So on the sharp edge of gains and losses I drug myself up the mountain, half out of my head with grief, to make good on that oath; escaping the inertia created when this place was covered in snow. 

Early spring the salmon berries send out their precocious blossoms at the first hint of warming weather and longer periods of sun; trillium, if not for their triune symmetry of petals and bracts would be gaudy, too starkly luminous against the deep greens of the forest floor, signal not the beginning but a time become. Walking this weekend through the low land forest and sub alpine ridges the feeling is one of unraveling, grand last stands. All things seemed to be anticipating the cold, clinging to the vestiges of the waning sun: a transient time. 

My feet are bloodied, tan wool soaked through with the color sub alpine blue berries leave on fingers. My hips are raw from the ill fitting pack and my arms are creased with gouges from from the rocks as I moved too quickly down the scree in fog dense enough to make me question the wisdom of my path. A transient time, a time to overcome inertia with a force greater. 

 

Autumn Haint

Plans change. Infrastructure is at the mercy of ambivalent forces: roads are swept away, bridges collapse, things, being subject to entropy, fall apart. So after several such collapses I woke at three to catch the early ferry. There's a ridge line on an island where one can stand facing south by south east and if such a person is lucky dawn will provide answers to questions we ask without the symbolic intermediary of language.  It's this ridge line I sought this morning and one particular Gary Oak, which seems to have survived the last glacial scouring, to sit beneath. 

These northern latitudes provide ample time to cross through the channels and then ramble through the lodge pole pines, maples, and occasional fir still in the dark hours before first light. This morning I could feel the clouds before I saw them, dense, compressing the air between them and what lay beneath. The darkness was tangible, a thing that perhaps photons would be unable to penetrate, unable to push into the valleys. An evolutionary memory rises on such mornings, irrational as it is, you feel your softness, vulnerable, your sight is poor. You are more exposed in that moment than the first time you lay beneath another. As I walked my headlamp shown back at me with a singular pair of eyes, then two, then three: deer. I stopped, switching off the light, hoping to let my eyes adjust or at the very least let my ears learn the task of sight in darkness but all was still, compressed. Neither the bipedal or quadrapeds stirred. We, two and four legs alike, are prey in the darkness, similarly vulnerable. Disconcerted with this feeling of kinship I found my oak in the dark and sat underneath it's gothic branches. 

An owl called from dark to dark unanswered by my unstudied accounting. It was a diminutive dawn. Darkness changed to grey, the sun choosing modesty, so I continued on to the north. As I've said before we never go alone into the forest and today was no different. I wanted to stay on the southeast side of the island tonight underneath the madrones and next to the salal but what I brought with me today couldn't be held. We are entering the months of introspection, too many hours of darkness, the light seldom more than variations of shadows, the sun a haint inhabiting a memory. A memory already haunted. There, out in the forest, a person is a haunted house he himself can not abide within. 

Too late to sleep too early to leave. I've been telling myself sleep hasn't come because my hands are torn to ribbons from labor and while it is a delicious pain it isn't why sleep hasn't taken me. It's the voice I don't hear, the words to be read have ceased and even those were more far more than I deserved.

Recently I made my way back to the northwest. Although not back to Oregon but to Washington along the Puget Sound for reasons both professional and personal. When I got here from Texas I immediately went to Deception Pass to walk among the colossal trees down to the water worn pebbled beach where I had once sat listening to the loons call over the water. I have seen many beautiful places in my travels; some stark and some so fiercely fecund as to be overwhelming. The Puget Sound is the later. After getting discharged from the hospital and being left alone on July 15 to make my own plan I knew that if my time was coming due this is where I would want to see. Or at least a place I wanted to be that was within my means. In truth I would rather have gone back to Sumber, Mongolia and sat next to the ovo over looking the vast plains from the "holy" mountain sacred to both the Buddhist and Animist populating the region. Walking up the spine of the mountain the wind threatening to blow even the sturdiest from their perch was where the initial thought of a godless universe crept into my mind. But here is where I am. If the medical community can save me it's a good place to be and if they can't it's also a good place to be; if only for the meeting of land and sea.  Driving back the desire to take the original route was strong through Wyoming but I took the well worn route through Utah if only to say goodbye to the places I had fallen in love with over the years. I am as nostalgic as I am self abusing. Even now that I have answers to questions that plagued me and my actions for years I feel no solace in them. A reason is only good to bring clarity not relief and even if relief is found no redemption certainly. So I drove past Lake Powell and Cotton Wood Canyon, the road to the Paria River leading to Kitchen Canyon, had coffee in Cedar, and took the long way through the Kaibab. Drove past in silence, in reverence, a wordless confession. So now I am home and I doubt I will make it there again.

Long ago I used to pray. Those times a cousin's cock was thrust into my eight year old body. I still believed God was good as tissue was violated.

Long ago I used to pray. Those times my fathers fist rained down like a southern thunderstorm. I still believed God was there as bruises painted my skin.

Long ago I used to pray. Those times my mother calmly said I was the worse thing to ever happen to her. I still believed God had a plan as I felt her words, an eroding knowledge.

Long ago I used to pray. Those times my neck enclosed within my fathers grip. Coldly stating my life would amount to nothing. I still believed God was love  as I learned of powerlessness.

Long ago I used to pray. But my knees have not touched the ground. I know there is nothing beyond or within.

Stream of semi Consciousness

Late April, time for spring showers and delicate buds yet snow blows sideways from the west.  Biting wind is ripping through all my layers while the knee deep mud incases my legs leeching moisture into my boots, soaking socks,  finding my bones.

This area is rural poor in close proximity to two rough cities. That is to say ideal for the manufacturing of meth. A drug I have seen in use in other parts of the country....usually in the back of a dive bar. Drug manufacturing is never something that comes to mind when in new places. My mind doesn't go there much preferring historical context, local cultural heritage, and geographical particulars. But the other night an hour before my alarm was set to pull me from my dreamlessness a substantial explosion and the sound of flames broke through. The house across the street from my temporary living situation was a meth  lab now raging inferno probably from a lack of ventilation. This region is one of those sad rural distracts with a  profoundly visible income gap. Trash is heaped in the deep natural water dranages, signs swinging by one hinge; creaking in an eerie cinematic fashion. Once made acutely aware of the presence of meth my understanding of place was rounded out. A place of little social mobility, poor educational opportunities, and a lack of community cohesion.

Perhaps this is merely my own misanthropic perpective. I've seen and done  enough to not romanticize the William S. Burroughs addictions played out against the working poor. Have also seen enough not to venerate the Andrew Carnegie's or the pursuit of wealth.

I'll take the mud, the  hypothermic wind...at least i feel something. The more places I go, which is getting to be a chore keeping up with them, the more hollowed out I feel; a primative canoe set a drift...just like these words...a stream of thoughts unmoored.

Once again

This time it's in rural Pennsylvania. A few hours from Pittsburg and five hours south of where I once lived in New York. Once again part of the army of men extracting carbon fuels we go to war over and can not seem to ween ourselves from. On a well site chocked with iron; a labyrinth of high pressure, sand, and chemicals..the constant grind of gears on gears of fuel compressed into ignition and the small explosions of power overcoming upward force. If I ever knew a place I did not belong it would be here.

Most days I am alone for fifteen hours a day. Enough time to delve into those dark places of the mind one seldom goes without the aid of rye. Today my mind goes back to Europe: a mosaic of memories  not too distant. I think of a small town where I sat on the shore of the Adriatic contemplating Homer and why I was there. Then onto a town in central Austria rowing a small boat into the mountains...pure reflections on silent water.  There in these memories of beautiful places I find emptiness. An emptiness forged from half truths and if I'm honest a mental pathology I have yet to accept.

Once again in this industry. Probably chosen to inflict my own chastisement, create the instrument of my own penance. This is where I come for punishment. My father created the knowledge of my own profound corruption, an insurmountable fallen nature...but there is no god so I must create my own.

truth

Truth

Daily I am confronted with what I will call my sins. Especially in regards to relationships. One in particular is worth noting but all fall into this. To say I loved her the best I could at the time would be true. And that only goes to show the hopelessly inadequate nature of my fidelity, respect, compassion, and care. There has always been a double standard, one that allowed all manner of transgressions to be committed and yet held the other to a standard far beyond anyones ability to live up to. All sacrifice mono directional and when a "sacrifice" had to be made from myself it was a cross bore shamelessly demanding recognition disproportional to the actual act.

Over two years have passed since the last meeting. It was a cold December day after days of driving back and forth traversing the state of Arkansas  multiple times the previous several days. Getting as far as Fort Smith only to turn around several times in Little Rock or Bebe getting back to Jonesboro only to drive back to Bebe. As I wore down the rubber calls would be made pleas, arguments, apologizes, accusations, and stances made.   I was ruthless, unstable, manic, and bent on destruction be it of myself or whatever relationship was in front of me.  Yet, despite my actions there was forgiveness and the offer of home, family, children, and love...if only I could turn myself around.

For several years now these actions and those of my more recent past devastate me when i am alone with myself...Requiring more distraction, more alcohol, more and more miles.  Each body that has fallen beneath mine has become a ghost...the damage inflicted on others has come back to me.  The beautiful potential unrealized undermined by the baseness of each connection. I am a liar. These past several years I have attempted to strip away artifice and see who is under the projection. Many hours of counseling and thousands of dollars later showed me only that I was a hurting child who never learned to forgive and turned all the anger and devastation into a weapon of indiscriminate emotional violence.

Forgiveness. Undeserved as it is. but i am sending this out as a prayer, a thought, a hope. I have made my path and must walk it but I apologize to you. And not just you but to anyone that has tasted my selfishness.

Evening thoughts

Tonight the sky is clear. Altogether cloudless as far as vision will carry. Slivers of pale hues stream through the seemingly timeless Douglas Firs standing immeasurably tall still after these years traversing the west for a southern boy bound to the vision of Pine forests and Black Walnut. This perspective of the cosmos on this land changed over years of use and misuse provide an ephemeral glimpse of the ages long passed populated by individuals whose names and their pronunciations long forgotten but whose bodies perhaps still fertilize this ground. For that time is not altogether lost not eternally silenced by the march of our progressive colonization of the living. I still hear the coyotes merely yards away and the breeze through these trees who were mere saplings. We are not separated from the past, yet. When the rough calloused bark makes contact with skin it is not the individual tree which is known but a family of trees reaching back before myth, before gods, before polarity before all that which we manifested. It is eternity.

The moon rises ever upward to its nightly crescendo in silence but the wild dogs seem to herald its course through the increasing lonesomeness of sound. These nights are cherished. Nights where I can sit in the deepening darkness without concern for the dawn. The time of division and separation lapses if only for a moment. This is peace. This is the time where the self and the other find union. By day we have divided and subdivided and yet again divided our lives into an ever increasing segregation of roles and tasks which have little bearing on the real only the contrived. But by evening we can, if we are quiet, if we are humble, be sewn back into the fabric that is our breath. There are no closed systems despite our attempts to compartmentalize everything. As if the health of our bodies was independent from spiritual health or the health of the soil. That our sex could be separated from our words or from our thoughts. That our work could be cloistered away from our home. In the enveloping darkness we may find unity.

The sky is still clear...Big Bear is passing slowly overhead. The air smells faintly of decay, summers decomposition. The cloudlessness and the fragrance of slow earthly death speak to the frigidity of the morning which will greet me as i rise from the grass. It is in moments such as these when clarity comes when living is far greater than making a living. When the need for life blooms in my heart. If we as a culture could collectively silence ourselves in the presence of darkness perhaps we would find no need to divide ourselves and fill in the empty spaces left behind with cheap substitutions. There is no replacement for silence, there can be no bridge to connect a divided self.

The communal farming experiment (Introduction)

 Introduction: Where philosophy and agriculture collide

Nestled in the low lying region east of the Coastal Range and west of the Cascades lies a near forty acre spread of farm land also home to one of the intentional communities here in the southern valley.  Many of these communities have come into existence in this progressive New Age haven of the Pacific Northwest. The land on which I currently reside is the dream for sustainably minded agriculturist, dreamers, half baked ex Deadheads, and urbanites looking for a reprieve from city streets, urban sprawl, and noise.  But there is a danger in bringing individuals from such various backgrounds under the banner of a "farm community" where very little farming is done and what has been done the past six years has all the hallmarks of reckless endeavors after long sessions over the bong.  The actions have all the force of a great notion absent the passion and commitment to see the notion cultivated past the point of initial excitement.  Before leases were signed the issue of starting a C.S.A. was broached and permission granted.  But like most else verbal permission is undone by unspoken reservations and withholdings. 

This self styled "farming" community has a philosophical foundation coming from a German commune called Zegg. The point of emphasis for Zegg (and the owners of this land) is that of polyamory, love, and openness in relationships (read free love) none of which I was interested in, being more "conventional" in relationships.  Upon moving onto the property questions where asked about comfort level with other peoples sexuality which made little sense to me at the time being respectful of whatever types of relationships people chose to have given they are responsible and positive even if those types of relationships are not what I chose for myself. How this philosophical underpinning relates to farming will be developed in coming segments. But here I wish to draw a line.  One cannot have a community which is agrarian in nature if the predominant philosophy is one dealing with sexuality namely sexual "liberation"  which, in this context, looks more like unfettered hedonism.  Yes, there will be much plowing and seed sowing occurring but very little of that to the actual soil.  I am not saying that polyamory is not a valid form of relationship but I am saying that a hedonistic(pleasure above all) approach to sexuality cannot translate to a proper relationship with the land which involves discipline, single minded devotion, and a long term commitment to a single portion of the land.  There are no closed systems or as my dear teacher at the ranch always said: "If you want a disciplined horse, you have to be a disciplined rider. If you want to be a disciplined rider you have to be a disciplined person. If you want to be a disciplined person you have to have a disciplined life."  One cannot farm well (or allow the land to be farmed well) if the other portions of ones  life are not handled with discipline, care, devotion, and self abnegation.

Why I farm

Much of my life has been spent within the Judeo-Christian Military-Industrial mode of existence. I am not speaking as a mere consumer of products and advertisement or as one who adheres to that technotopian version of industrial superiority but as one who was it's missionary, evangelist, and apologist. The formative childhood years where spent in the shadow of the largest coal shipping facility on the east coast as well the largest Naval installation in the United States. Being raised in a conservative Christian home attending one of the most theologically conservative churches in the rural evangelical traditions the structure and order of the world fell into a strictly regimented orthodoxy. The mantras of this upbringing consisted of: “God and Country”, “Wealth is the sign of discipline and right relationship with God”, “the government is a God ordained authority which must be honored and respected”, “technological progress is synonymous with Americas greatness and blessing from God”, “nature is only a resource for humans as the crown of Gods creation”. These and other spoken and understood messages formed the rigid framework from which the entire world and all it's subtleties fell into an understandable form. Anything that contradicted these tenants was dismissed as evil and subversive...to be shunned and reviled. Pro-life rallies and Forth of July festivities, homosexual business boycotts and anti-evolutionist training sessions where the hallmarks of a childhood spent learning to propagate certain vital components of the dominant culture. Upon leaving home the only choices seen as viable where either Bible college or military enlistment. In a sense they were the same for service to the church or the flag where parallel paths further progressing the just and righteous causes of Christ and freedom. Feeling that I had been given a specific calling I joined the ranks of the Bible College students intent on making the non believing world followers of Christ, fulfilling the “Great Commission” hastening the eminent return of Christ thus ushering in the new heaven and new earth under the Utopian perfection of God's immediate presence. In the course of striving for the fulfillment of this vision that edifice and rigid cosmology began to dissolve leaving only questions and mysteries that formulated answers and faith were powerless to stop. Gradually I began to see the destruction of natural world, the fragility of the Christian narrative in historical and anthropological terms, the arrogance of American superiority, the danger in technological progress, and the nuances and difficulties in defining wealth and poverty (and the reasons for each) in terms of right action and right relationship with God. In short nearly the whole of my upbringing was examined and found to be patently false. Yet I walked away from that world with the knowledge that the people who trained me were not dense or evil but true believers utterly devoted to a certain view of history, religion, and it's ultimate fulfillment.

The industrial portion of my life has been a relatively recent education. Along with copious research I have worked in industrial agricultural in Arkansas, the oil fields in Texas and Louisiana, and in the fabrication and manufacturing of wood chippers in Oregon. All of which include the implementation of mammoth machinery, pervasive and toxic chemical use, and the commodification of the living and of the land for the sake of commercial enterprises and development for the sake of development. The most obvious detrimental effects of this type of land use is of course the effect on the land but less obvious and just as detrimental is the effect of industry on the person both individually and collectively. The machine determines the pace of life and like it's effect on the land strips and toxifies the flesh, the mind, our sense of being human, and being a fellow living being in community with other non human beings. And again what I am most impressed with is the utter devotion the individuals employed in these industries show in their work. And again they are not dense or evil people but a people devoted to a vision they have knowingly chosen or accepted as the defacto way to live.

What I have found to be generally true in those who profess to desire an alternative way of life is unchecked hedonism, an addiction to immediacy, activism through “green” consumption, an unwillingness to be uncomfortable and tired in their work, and most importantly an unwillingness to see that we occupy these ideas from a position of privilege and that such a precarious position allows for much thought, much talk, much comfort, and little work. These faults are general and are found in each individual to varying degrees at certain times.

Both the philosophy and theology of my upbringing coupled with practices of our western economy as well my experience with others who share these critiques has led me to attempt to find a different mode of existence and different set of principles to aspire too. Not exhaustive and without much explanation they are as follows:

• The Land is not a resource to be developed or used solely for human consumption but a network of living beings which thrive in balance with one another.
• Human action on the land should be guided by the above knowledge.
• Human beings are not exempt from natural law. Technological innovation will only temporally mitigate our indulgence and exacerbate the inevitable consequences.
• The needs of the machine and production are not paramount. To submit to or to allow others to oppress humans and non humans for the sake economic gain is to devalue all life and cheapen life to the point of making life unlivable.
• Happiness is found in a simple existence living softly and responsibly on the land.
• Technological efficiency is not to be valued over slow and mindful action.
• Those that seek a different form of existence must show just as much if not more devotion than those who currently propagate and progress the dominant culture.

On a derelict pier

Stretched out across a derelict pier suspended over a hand hewn  pond the words from "The Country of Marriage" resonated silently across my eyes: "What I am learning to give you is my death to set you free of me, and me from myself into the dark and new light. Like the water of a deep stream, love is always too much." For one who has scant understanding of deep water or death these words carry a palatable mysterious tone which try as i might can not bring understanding to the idea.  There stretched out in the silence recalling touches, funerals, and oceans the words were mere abstraction pointing towards and even more nebulous reality my memory is ill prepared to contemplate. Further on in a different poem I read: "...by pain we learn the extremity of love..." There, latent in the words, seemed to be the crux and while my mind could grasp the body could not hold that truth and if understanding is to be full there can be no schism between the two.  I put the pages to rest, letting  the tobacco fall hissing to the murky water recounting all the lessons both taught and learned over twenty eight years... cataloging the practical and theoretical, labor and occupational, social and academic.  As the sun began to set westward over the wetland the deficiency  in my learning  which manifested itself like a spring day absent the songs of birds was what could be called relational (and what should be the most vital learning of all) Welling up in my solitude the absent truth filled me...and that reality spoke of self preservation and self occupation rather than self abnegation and communal occupation.  It does indeed take a lifetime to live a lifetime and if I were a praying man i would petition that it not take a lifetime to learn to love...that at the end of my days love is not the stillborn child of a fruitless legacy.

tarnished string

One song is all my fingers have been able to play for weeks and weeks. That one song that has yet to fall into completion, the words and the music fall premature. If a song had a birth certificate it would read five pounds four ounces...It's that song that always had an argument as an epilogue..."Girl from Carolina fits better..." "no...sweet girl from Arkansas sounds more fitting" and on and on that line of assertion and rebuttal would continue. How many years has that song been sung half written in kitchens and stairwells? For the life of me that recollection is lost. Granted this glass is full of wine and wine at times makes the memory falter. But that song (and the wine) brings me back to relive each moment...be it violent or tender or seemingly unremarkable and beguine which no amount of wine can make me forget...There was a time back oh some five years ago coming back to the commonwealth from empire state where wine and music made up the ebb and flow of my days. That was before I knew, that was before the world broke open and spilled it's truth in the dead center of my life, before I could ever write songs of that magnitude for one must feel the love and loss of an equal depth in order to compose a song such as that one. Art still mirrors life.

It wasn't but five weeks ago I played guitar on the stairwell for the last time. After I tried and tried to create something from the chaos I took the guitar strings and ripped them apart, so nothing more would resonate from the hollow body....and then i wept in your kitchen for reasons known and unknown. For losses felt and losses soon to make themselves manifest. That guitar was still resting in the chair when I walked out the door for the last time. It's strings hanging spent and torn...and that song will never be completed. And perhaps I will never play again...that week it wasn't simply guitar strings which lay tattered and torn but emotions and hopes that were left in shambles. And tonight....tonight...how many glasses of wine has it taken to simply put these words down, thoughts, damn worthless thoughts but two paragraphs....there is nothing to get right if it can't be written. But nevertheless I have played that song for weeks and each time it has sprung forth from lips and fingers the words remain "sweet girl from Arkansas..." and so it will remain as late and unwelcome as the conclusion to any argument. It should have always played that way. And in this case I wish I could go back and make life mirror art.

I seen what I saw....

In spurting rain and that chilled September wind he wandered about the teeming streets in half trance taking the noise into his person as if to replace the clatter in his own mind with something more ambient something closer to abstraction than the thoughts that ran endlessly. The city was a place of loss, of useless striving the street people there of their own volition, addiction, or neglect conjured future incubes' of his own fear. That he, himself would be reduced to such poverty..living on the scraps of other peoples consumption. Crossing Third from the corner of Burnside seeing the porn house, bars, nude clubs, and the constant line at the 24 hour donut shop it all seemed false like a nightmarish dream scape born out of some devilish philosophy and the people, of which he was one, were caught by some unfounded cords whose origins were unknown, forgotten, and accepted. To what end did they breathe? That answer was as soon coming as the fabled second coming and the answers in each individuals mind as mythological as that old orthodoxy. There can be no greater falsehood than the image we construct of our own lives. On the streets it becomes clear the people are in the throws of labor attempting to birth reality into their construction. He sat at a table smoking and observing many of the faces of those he had seen before but in those other faces he could find no recognition.

An old women was barely shuffling across the cracked pavement pushing a cart with all her material possessions. Her one leg swollen, purplish dragging like an off rhythm drummer while the other foot was knarled, the large toe firmly under the adjacent two and in her hunch back deformity she struggled on in some unknown task calling forth guilt and revulsion on the passersby like some silent Elijah calling forth consuming fire from heaven. He struggled in his hopelessness to effect any long lasting change. And even if her health and material poverty could be elliviated what of the mental, dare it be said, her spiritual poverty. In truth he felt less sorrow for her than the affluent woman coming down the side walk in the opposing direction. At least the hunch back knew the truth, each day is a new suffering, there are no illusions for the dispossessed.

A heavy drone a heavy sway...

Upon first glance there seemed to be little out of place in the small Midwest city of Minot. Lights where on, vehicles on the road, restaurants where full. Save for the disproportionate number of help wanted signs it seemed to be a quintessential farming community before the harvest not ground zero for record flooding. Speculation was high as was the growing discontent after three days on a school bus. As we pulled into camp the faces of our fellow workers were gaunt and tallow like meth heads and abusers. The taunts and jeers of fresh meat, cat calls, and other absurdities left us all wondering what the hell was going on. It was a far cry from the situation described at orientation. The whole atmosphere was one of a prison bus full of the newly convicted pulling into the state penitentiary.

Luckily three of us new comers where snatched up by a few guys who where less desperate and people I would gravitate towards anyway. The next evening we were all on job sites ready to do the work we had planned on doing without much knowledge as to what we were really there for. The revelation fell heavy that we were there only for the cheap unquestioning labor we provided,we were there for the desperation...desperation feeding desperation. Feeling a sense of misguided nobility when asked about working a double I said sure. This merely translated into 24 hours of labor. During those hours the reason i boarded a bus to Minot became clear namely to work off my transgressions, to toil in a hell for redemption never to be found after death in some eternal dream.

There is no redemption to be had. Not even in a flooded out town festering with disease and decay. Why even seek redemption in the obvious fulfillment of life? Ruin.

A journey to sleep...

I, am tired. Stress the space between the syllables, the pause before enunciation, feel the weight of articulation. There is a weariness which transcends sleep...and it is intimate, abiding in the soul like the spirit of some heathen apparition.

The man in front of me works with well measured movements. Each step calculated to maximize productivity. The check in desk at the airport opens in four hours, four hours to wax the floor, four hours to disassemble and reassemble the poles and ropes all the while dodging pedestrians who heedlessly walk in the way. Each individual has a role to fill in the operation of the leviathan. The smoothness of the operation dependent on the calculus of uniformity. Betrayed autonomy wears on man, having ones actions mandated by the needs of a personless abstraction undefinable erodes strength.

Waking in those predawn hours, choking back autonomy, being sure to be ready for the day or days to follow for it was anyones guess when we would again see home all for the profit of a few men. The operations board dictated destination it was our life, subject to change at the whim of the salesman, company, or unforeseen circumstance. Daily we would clock in and look to the board sacrificing our hours, relationships as if they were doves and the board the alter. Looking to the workers in any industry I see the same sacrifice, the same cost benefit analysis. Life then becomes a conflict, a conflict between the non physicals needs of the human and the need to provide home and food. Some navigate this chasm effortlessly. Others balk and refuse to give to pressure. Those who refuse conformity can become heroes but more often then not become tragic images littering numerous and nameless sidewalks.

It has been numerous weeks since leaving the patch and now my eyes have seen I can never forget the how of industrial civilization. What remains a phantom is the why? Why we have expanded and constructed such a wasteland, why we give ourselves to consumption, and why we see the increase in mental pathologies but refuse to draw the connecting line between pathology and root cause. In bible college we were taught that context is king but in our daily analysis we refuse to contextualize.

In the past few days my nights have been spent in Portland and in the woods overlooking the Pacific. When night falls in the basement of the city I hear the bustle, the sirens, the drinkers stumbling in, and that wonderful blend of languages from Arabic, Farsi, and English. But that myth of progress that is the city can only tantalize for so long. Contrasting the nights in the city to the nights in the open brings the whole mess of civilization into focus. Hiking up to the dense forest on the coast leaving the drone of vehicle engines below the tree line I began to breathe. Despite my years of tobacco consumption I felt strong, alive, aware, unwinded. As the sun sank into the sea and darkness feel on the forest floor I made camp quickly, started a fire with ease in the dampness, smoked my pipe in the stillness, and laid out my wool blanket on the ground. Despite tree roots, cold evening air, and damp ground I slept and snored. Sleeping in the dirt brings us into communion with our beginning. If some deity did form us from the dust or if we evolved it does not matter in those moments. We are living beings, growing, decaying, going through the life cycle of all beings. Sleeping in the city, living in the city separates us from our origins.

As I nodded off to sleep on the ground I thought of that operations board...I breathed easily knowing my sacrificial doves have been returned. The next morning I woke with a rested soul.

Concerning touch....

Moving into that space between bed sheets she whispered. She demanded my stillness, demanded that for once I allow myself the experience of pure sensation. As if sensation could be divorced from thought, that one existed independent of the other. In failing

I told her we had never touched, for all the sweat and weight we have never put flesh to flesh. Without words she protested, placing fingers to lips. Standing in obstinate fashion attempting to impart the reality of pure tactile emperasism. Yet resolute in my solitude despite bruising pressure I told her of atomic fields, opposing force, and the empty space composing the illusion of solidity. How I wished that our separate electrons would explode on impact, spinning out new galaxies in chaos, creation from pressure and heat. That I hoped the remenats of our subatomic construction could reside in the nebula of cascading particles somewhere out in the vastness of the expanding cosmos, then perhaps I may feel her, know her. But here now in the illusion of flesh and otherness I could never touch her, we would always be separate bodies attempting to fill in the space between electron and nucleus, forever solitary. Weepingly resigned to solitary existence I left her, left all hope of true contact. Break us down into our elementary components fling us around a supercollider and in that catastrophic collision we could possibly know love.

exposure

This town is wind swept bleached by hundreds of days of pure sun. The buildings stand precariously on the edge of collapse giving the area an atmosphere of neglect, isolation, devolution...as if the desert wishes to incorporate these structures in a purity of wildness. Each day these structures make a stand in their isolation, in the staunch disregard to encroaching sands, even as they are swallowed. In these years of travel and observance a peculiar truth has made itself manifest. Generally the state and appearance of structures reflect the state of the individuals who abide within, have constructed, or passed through their walls.

After five hours of rough sleep, the sleep of the exhausted is seldom as deep or restful as needed, I made my way across from the hotel to a diner to read and write as long as my mental faculties could with stand the fatigue. As I sought to enclose myself in a world of concepts, reflections, contemplations etched onto paper the presence of the people broke in continually. Never have I been in a place where I am allowed the solitude I see others afforded. But no more will contempt for these interruptions hold any power.

A middle aged woman of Mexican decent began the interrogation by simply approaching and breaking into that delicate silence I was attempting to construct. After the obligatory questions of origins, occupation, and how did you, an outsider, arrive in this place she launched into a discourse of her son who is serving in the military, her dead husband, and the satisfaction at the happiness of her only child. But she seemed lost attempting to make sense of something she had and still has not been able to conceive of properly. There was a sense of her grasping at something intangible something just outside her ability to know. So she rested in the arms of a comfort constructed by her sons happiness and success...she seemed caught in the tension between her child's youthful striving for meaning and the ultimate finality of death. She like the structures surrounding this place stands on the edge of entropy. She is lonely. And the quiet unknown which seemed to shadow her is the knowledge that soon she will follow her husband, her son will follow her, and her grandchildren will follow him into that space where all striving becomes nullified. She needed to be heard, to be seen, before that firm inevitability of eternal breathlessness breaks upon her frail bones.

But is that not our collective story? Each individual seeks to be seen, known....we reach out to our parents in youth and seldom are we seen, so we reach out to gods who are either deaf, mute, blind, or nonexistent. And as that cycle of exposure and misunderstanding rolls on and breaks ceaselessly we expose ourselves to strangers in hopes that they will see us, that someone will look past themselves and see the exposed as a person, as an entity not as an object before we find ourselves silenced buried in the deep, forever unknown.

West Texas

Standing in the west Texas desert under the sweltering heat attempting to reduce the relentless sounds of our equipment and that of the drilling rig three hundred yards east so that i may hear the silence. And by silence i mean those subtle sounds of wind through mesquite, dust pelting skin, and the calls of the desert birds in their seemingly careless watch for food. Transferring to west texas from east Texas was a decision made in the subconscious. Little did I know my own thoughts before penning them on paper as a request to my superiors. Sometimes intuitive logic far exceeds the capacity of linear reasonings. When asked to explain my reasons for requesting the transfer all I could very well say was "there is nothing there..." and the response would be the same "you're damn right...".

Well, we speak in language that can be comprehended. Words are merely the symbols used to point to objects, concepts, images, and feelings. The nothingness I spoke of was the absence of cities, teeming masses of people and they understood the nothingness that I was referencing. But in truth in the absence of masses of people, cities, never ending static noise there is something...many somethings. There is the land, the creatures, the wind, the silence. I spoke of nothingness as purity they spoke of it as a void which needed filled. And in truth it is filled with weapons of war. Drilling rigs are scattered over the desert plain....the lights from their towers punctuate the night like some unholy devastation. Surely the vibration of motors and pumps keep away the creatures of the desert. We fill this arid space with moisture, pits of drilling mud, waste water, chemical compounds. There is something here of our creation and this desert war zone is the first step in the creation of cities.

But I come here to see the vastness, to taste the dust, to weep for our collective soul...as I weep now. For the more we fill this nothingness with emptiness and manifest hollowness with our creation the sooner we become abstractions losing our particularities...mirages which fade upon approach.