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.

Machines

These nights spent is semi vigilance attending to machines droning seem lifetimes. The deep solitude of darkness is meant for only rest attending to dreams subconscious earnings suppressed in waking hours. Steadily attending to fuel, watching gauges, and the tightness of a spool of pipe vibrating along with a thousand horses changes the mental processes of the individual in attendance. In this eternal blackness the ambient phantoms of progress float on the mental landscape sculpting half truth cannons; highways paved with omissions. Modernity was an inevitability, industrialization was and is messianic in proportion...oh these half spun garments laced with illusion. But supposing this world has lost it's center would these concepts therefor hold the presence of the imago dei in the presence of such absurdity. For when lies become too tangled to unravel truth is but a knot undistinguishable. But would it be lending to much credit that these phantoms perform such immaculate conceptions in the thoughts of these men.

When touching a machine that has been operating constantly for nearly a week does it not leech into the physical being of humanity? It's resonance vibrating and altering our own? If thoughts have the power to alter the tangible tactual universe would not those objects have a similar effect on our own? These machines do as commanded operating without thought only with that tenuous precision of mechanization and while it may take a measure of thoughtfulness to command such precision it certainly does not take mindfulness. Drone for drone like begets like. Machines posses no compassion. While eating dinner someone mentioned the most recent earthquake in japan instead of a somber thought considering the pain and fear being experienced at that very present moment the general consensus with only one solitary disinter was "fuck 'em". It would seem that sympathy was not part of the gears, not intrinsic to it's own operation therefor unknown. Thoughts may as yet be unquantifiable in mass and density or measured in proportion to cause and effect but some measure of correlation does exist. These long hours lacking in quiet simplicity dealing exclusively with mechanical processes and toxic chemical compounds must hammer these monotone

notes into neuropathways molding thoughts and patterns of thought.

During those few precious months spent on the commune with little interaction outside the naturally evolved one could feel a depth and complexity transcending instrumental rational thought. As mentioned before in various conversations spending hours with fingers cultivating soil and bodies melding with snow melt infuses a natural rhythm into the our otherwise irrational movements.

It is little wonder some men become as mechanical as the machines they operate.

extraction

We don our flame retardant coveralls, hard hats, safety glasses, and steal toes. These are our uniforms, protective gear meant to stave off the heat and pressure the falling iron and the renegade forces we toil to contain, to harness. We are the foot soldiers in the war to subdue and manage the world...to bend the physical forces to human construction. Upon arrival on location the task at hand is to rig up to the well head. We hammer up pipe, make connections, raise equipment by crane hovering over the well head, that entry to the underworld. Once all the preparations, the cleaning of muskets and loading of ammunition, we are ready to make the final connection open up hell and do battle with the unseen.

There is a vast difference in the mindsets of extraction and cultivation. One feels much like nurture, partnership, communion...the other feels much like rape. While that may seem a harsh statement the similarities go much further than simple feelings. In extraction the companies use massive equipment to clear the fecund land to bare and level ground...removing all particularity from a space. At this point rigs are brought in to penetrate that which should remain unscathed to depths of astounding distance. Forcefully penetrating the crust to remove and inject with no calculation other than monetary gain and further material expansion leads to a reality which acts on those principles. The parents produce the offspring and that which is fed to the young is what the young become.

How can we expect a world of peace and compassion of mutual respect and dignity when we base our entire realities on the consumption of a "resource" produced in such a manner. Theodore Herzl said of the Jews..." we have become what the Ghettos have made us...". It is not an overstatement to say we have become what consumption has made us.

This post is stained and forced...writing is taking on a laborious nature due to the obvious time and mental constraints currently under. But if organic creation is to be done it must be done in the midst of toil and bondage. If we allow it to these constraints allow for refinement of thought and gritty truth that must accompany pure thought.

I will end this post with another quote from Mr. Herzl, for even truth can be spoken from the mouth of a monster..."No one is wealthy or powerful enough to make civilization take one retrograde step.." and he is correct it is only in the collective where the power resides.

Thoughts while in a monastery...

Early December finds me in Colorado Springs frequently visiting a Benedictine Monastery, which would be called a Convent if it were not for negative associations or an Abby if it were more theologically aligned with Rome, nestled in a grove of spindly pines on the outskirts of this sprawling city. Here the young and old devotees seek out what Plotinus once called "the flight of the alone to the Alone." The sisters here are quiet, seeking the ultimate unity collectively and deeply personally, each striving in her own way. Some stay strictly to the worn path Catholic mysticism others draw from numerous traditions. They stand in solidarity with simplicity and a modern interpretation of renunciation and self abnegation. There is a peace about this place which strikes me in the same way evening vespers stuck me in Mt. Angel on numerous occasions. I wonder if some here ever doubt there vows or at the very least the value of their vows. Or if and when they are assaulted by doubt do they find solace in the new physics...in the unified field theory or in the non duality which persists in the subatomic levels of the cosmos. If it were myself who had taken vows I would fall into a war of definitions not wanting to attribute spiritual attributes to a purely, and no less mysterious, physical reality. But in no way can anyone fault these women or their male counterparts or even their fellow contemplatives in other traditions for their vows. It is my belief they resonate with the cosmos more truly than most. Not even to mention the selflessness which comes from living in community for a lifetime.

These past several days I have been able to sit in on conversations between MIT Ph.D's, Zen Masters, Vietnam veterans, and nuns discussing the dissolution of the ego. It would seem that a constant conversation of ego reduction only serves to swell and empower what T.M. would call the false sense of self. Although I no longer claim Christianity it would seem that if one truly desired the dissolution of the ego it would be most productive to act upon the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount....a selfless less life seems better than a selfless orthodoxy.

another

Autumn has arrived south of the Mason-Dixon. The grey chill in the air reminds me of the North West. Jamaica has come and gone as has New Orleans, Morgan City, and the cotton farm. Travelers accumulate experiences like bank notes and restlessness like a genetic disorder compounding with time. Our boots were stitched from songs about highways...but highways are wearing my soles and waiting is wearing the more intimate fabric of my soul.

How does one mark the passage of a year spent in waiting? That continued birth and death of expectation...living for 365 days oscillating between promises of two weeks and the undetermined has left no other recourse but to plot onward into an increasingly hazy and obscured future. Since this time last year the country has been crossed four separate occasions for truly no other purpose other than movement, as if one could replace the movement towards goals and transatlantic life with the passage of domestic miles. Alaska is no longer that large state to the North but a place known at least on the surface and Canada has worn my boots down as well. As I contemplate those miles, encounters, and hours spent on the open road I can not find in it the vitality travel once brought. No longer can I confuse one for the other.

This years has been fraught with loss. Most recently my dearest friend has gone away to die in seclusion from cancer. All that stands in his memory left available is a rock wall built together, a zippo lighter, and at night while in bed the quiet wheeze of my lungs which was audible in his throughout the day.

...Now my departure from OR is looming once more...but the destination is yet unclear and not without it's consequences...and still I wait for the job in Tanzania to show itself real...

to hell with all of it.

the price...

nothing left...empty

another bus bound elsewhere

...back on the east coast..lost.

Leaving OR tomorrow morning. Perhaps this is wrong...

far too much...i'm holding on but i'm not sure how much longer...if November 3 comes and goes like all the other "departure dates"...i just don't know...my fingers are most definitely slipping

No longer can I wait stationary, unmoving. I spoke with the boss today and he is waiting for the word from the U.A.E as to when this month they would like him back in Dar es Salaam to complete whatever it is multi nationals need to complete. When I pressed for anything concrete he was unwilling to give a general time frame.

One of my dear friends is on a ranch in Montana and I asked if they need another hand...if they don't I leave OR and go to Seattle and then on to BC for at least a week if not more depending on funds. but it is no longer an option for me to sit and wait by the computer for an email that won't come for at least two more weeks.

life

is

lived

in

the

movement

Tonight while smoking the last of the days cigarettes George and I stood out in the yard contemplating the rotation of the universe, the solar system, and our humble planet. The conversation moved to the constant expansion of the universe...old stars dieing, new stars coming into existence...entropy seeming to exist only in the short term constantly birthing beginnings...i said "...so we breathe in the eternal...if only temporarily..." and we both sighed for the briefest of moments losing our anthropocentric egotism, our geocentric heresy caught in the sublime movements of the eternal...

at the moment when I felt i could be lifted from the perception of the finite here and now the sprinklers lifted from the ground plunging me back to the tension between my numbered days and the infinite...