Fragments ~~ Musings ~~ Peregrinations ~~Wanderlust, Solitude and Strife
“The something I succeed at is to not prepare.” Keith Jarrett
Past Kettleman City, I realize that for the past few years the western edge of the Sierras has not been visible from Route 41. There is too much haze, dust, and pollution from the massive farms of the San Joaquin Valley. The several year drought adds to the amount of soil on the wind and visibility has been diminished greatly. Will it ever be clear enough to see the snowcapped peaks from here again in my lifetime? I’m not at all optimistic. More heat, less water, more arid wind, less snowfall; it’s not a promising scenario. The air becomes clearer as I get closer to Oakhurst.
Yosemite in winter, there’s very little traffic. A coyote stares at me from across a field of frosty grass. I get a long look and then she lopes off down the river and into some underbrush. Sleek and graceful. I too move on down the river. I stop at a turnoff and watch two Water Ouzels hop from rock to rock. One totally immerses itself in the frigid water and pops up a few meters up stream. This goes on for twenty minutes until the birds round a bend and go out of my sight. These wild and elusive birds are barometers of how clean and fresh a river is. They are extremely sensitive to pollution. It’s always a good sign to spot them dipping their heads in flowing water to pick insects off the submerged slick rocks. Their other, and more boring, name is the American Dipper.
When we travel, even on short journeys, we come back changed. Our inner journeys are as important as our outer journeys.
Back in Big Sur reading The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Campbell taught up here at Esalen which is just a few miles from where I’m eating lunch on the grand deck at Nepenthe. The fog is slowly getting closer to where I sit with an impressive view of the cliffs and ocean. I sip a French rose and feel luckier than I deserve to be. Some of my friends are in tough straits.
I assign my myself a reading, or a rereading, project; Campbell’s four volume The Masks of God. I bet it takes me two years because it would be too much to absorb in one large dose. I will need breaks that will allow me to digest the grandest concept, namely, that we are all part of one long story and we are connected by our understanding that we share similar paths and guideposts which help us navigate our personal trajectories in this one life we are lucky enough to experience.
“And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.” Patrick Kavanaugh
“The force that unites the elements to become all things is Love, also called Aphrodite; Love brings together dissimilar elements into a unity, to become a composite thing. Love is the same force that human beings find at work in themselves whenever they feel joy, love and peace. Strife, on the other hand, is the force responsible for the dissolution of the one back into its many, the four elements of which it was composed.” Empedocles
TIME
I am absolutely baffled by time and how it passes and how it sometimes seems like it doesn’t. Listening to Love and Theft tonight and realizing it came out in 2001. Twenty-one years ago. Every song still seems fresh as if I just heard them for the first time yesterday.
I put on a tee shirt that I haven’t worn in years. It’s festive, purple, and Garcia’s face is on the front. I am thrown off a bit when I read the date on the back. 1994. Could this be true? It has to be, I guess. I try to remember where I saw Garcia that year. Vegas for sure. San Diego perhaps? Probably Ventura. I’m sure I bought it in one of those parking lots. Maybe even during that quick trip to Phoenix. Anyway, I prolly haven’t worn it more that once a year, so it’s in pretty good shape. Proudly I go to the market. I get several comments and it cheers me to know Deadheads still are wandering around town. It does my heart good.
This morning in the early desert heat I spotted a vermillion flycatcher. A bird so bright red and joyful looking it could have been designed by my friend Juliette, she’s nine years old and I think she may become an artist. In the afternoon I sat by the pool alternately swimming and reading Abbey’s poetry.
In another book he writes,
“Alone, we are close to nothing. In prolonged solitude, as I’ve discovered, we come very close to nothingness. Too close for comfort. Through the art of language, most inevitable of the arts—for what is more basic to our humanity than language?— we communicate to others what would be intolerable to bear alone.”
“The deepest task is to rescue aloneness.” So writes Patti Smith.
Fort Bragg
Ellie and I take some long walks, three or four miles. We take a couple a day. The afternoons are windy and we look for whales and tell each other stories. Sometimes the stories are so good that we forget to look out at the heavy surf and we suspect that the whales swim by unnoticed. The first night here we saw Humpbacks at sunset. They were feeding pretty close to shore and we had great views of their massive tails. Everyone else joins us for our evening walks. We love the company as much as we love our earlier quiet strolls.
We climb down to the tide pools and search for hermit crabs and sea stars. Ellie scurries faster and with more confidence on the slippery kelp than I do. Oystercatchers call from the rocks. The fog rolls in and rolls out. A typical Fort Bragg summer.
An osprey flies over us, a fish clutched in its talons.
Back at camp we have a snack and then go for another walk in a different direction. We like a picnic table on an un-eroded patch of the Old Haul Road. From a distance it looks like a lonely place and we like the solitude of the spot. It has a wonderful view in every direction. The ocean is choppy and the waves strong and frothy. Behind us is the marsh with tall green reeds, a flock of redwing blackbirds call it home.
Our last short walk of the week is a little melancholy. We feel like we could walk another fifty miles. There’s always so much to talk about, so much to see, so much to learn.
We’ve had other good walks in some beautiful spots. One memorable saunter at Sea Ranch we saw a baby seal less than an hour old. It was so tiny snuggled up next to its mother who kept an alert eye out for predators. A group of vultures picked at the afterbirth and tried to get close but mom was too wary. We followed the path along the cliffs and then through a field with deer staring at us from the edge of the woods. We checked out some other properties that were for rent, peeking in windows and Ellie climbed on to the roof of a sod house. Then it started to pour rain and we got drenched. We didn’t even try to run home to the warm fire. We plodded through tall grass until we found the trail to the house. We still laugh about it. Obviously, the weather doesn’t deter our excursions.
In Yosemite we walk in summer and winter. A walk with everyone on a warm January day prompted Ellie and me to hurry back quickly so we could go to the Pine Tree Market and buy some ice cream for the night’s dessert after we spent the walk to Slippery Rock listening to Pak describing his plans for a magnificent dinner.
The coastal redwoods are more mysterious than I remember. Morning sunlight slants down past the needles and reflects the pollen and duff that drifts on the damp air. The trunks stand solid and their dark shadows lean into the road as I slow the jeep. The woods smell alive and no doubt the soil is rich and fecund.
She hasn’t been here in weeks. There is long brown hair in the peach tree
5/7/2020 ~~ Mide’s birthday - 57. Up early and all day listening to the SOMIDE playlist; Aerosmith, The BTO, Foghat, Mogg & Way, UFO, Rush, BOC, Zappa, et al. I hear from Paul & Mark & Kev Mahon.. Mom..
Walk around. It's hot. My normal dizziness. Full moon rises orange over the sea. Night birds and stars.
I couldn’t have lived the life I have without Mide’s permission. He insisted I move to California and not worry about him. Every few years he reassured me with a letter, the last few being particular poignant.
Getting out of Santa Barbara is mostly a relief these days. It’s nice to sit in a restaurant where nobody knows me and just read a book without interruptions. This simple act is practically impossible for me in SB. I honestly can’t go anywhere without having to talk to someone that I know. That’s the drawback from having been in the restaurant industry here for almost thirty years. Not that I’m really complaining about all my friends (I am) and acquaintances, it’s just overwhelming sometimes to know so many people. So now as I sit here, in a far-away town, I’m thoroughly enjoying my anonymity. Sometimes the company of waitresses and bartenders is enough for me.
I think back to five or six years ago. I was at a riverside restaurant a block or two away from where I am now. I ran into a friend coming in as I was leaving and we both floundered trying to explain what we were doing a hundred miles from home. I think he suspected me of being on a nefarious errand. Perhaps because he might have been, even though he seemed to be alone. As was I.
It’s like Emerson saying it’s easier to tell someone that you have to be moving along home because you have work, labor, to finish rather than telling the truth of the matter. That you wanted to get back to your study to immerse your mind by reading Plato’s wisdom. An activity that earns no monetary reward. Feeding your inner appetite is a hard sell to those who equate everything with money.
It is possible I subconsciously avoided that fine restaurant today for fear of running into someone I knew? Even though the odds were heavily in my favor? I’ve made other swerves in the past to protect my solitude. I am a reverse stalker.
I still like an icy beer, a subtle red with dinner, a jolt of añejo with a muddle of peach from my tree and a jar of single malt. But not every day. Or even, for that matter, every month. There is something to be said for clearheadedness. As I told a young minx the other night as she tried to encourage a bit of overindulgence, “My love, don’t worry about me. I’ve had more than my fair share.” She smiled knowingly. So tonight, having dinner at the Narrow Gauge Inn, I pass on a martini. I need to focus for a few days. Gin won’t help.
Driving. Sometimes I pull over to the dirt shoulder to write a few notes lest my mind allows my thoughts to fade away to vague notions of what might be important for nurturing my minor satoris.
I’m driving a new, to me, backroad, Route 25 north from King City toward Santa Nella. It’s a slow winding road and there’s no traffic on this late November afternoon. The vineyards I pass are rusty orange and glow enchantingly as the sun shines dully giving off its opaque light of autumn. I feel like I’m surrounded by an ocean of gold. Sporadicly I see stands of cottonwoods huddled along dry riverbeds, clumps of bright yellow shining in the distance, evidence of water beneath the slate stones and dusty arroyos. So much of California is nothing like what people think it is. On this lonely rural road that is potholed and in need of some repair, houses, farms and vineyards are spaced far apart.
I stop at the turnoff for Pinnacles National Park and not knowing how far it is to the entrance and having no phone service and not having a map I decide to keep going. It’s getting dark anyway but I’m slightly thrilled to be off the grid. A rarity for me these days. It used to be much more common but the times of being out of touch for days and days are, sadly, long gone. I think of Ellie, Marcus, and Juliette never knowing what it is like to go for a week without having a phone in your hand and barrages of texts and constant alerts. I have to believe that the nonstop connections must sap their ability to concentrate on who they really are and make it harder to know themselves. Although they are seemingly as well adjusted, even more so, than I was at their ages.
I stop to watch a heard of Tule Elk, massive antlered, graze in the brown grass near the San Luis Reservoir. They are mostly silhouettes in the fading daylight as they move silently and slowly away from the road and toward the water.
After checking in to my hotel and pouring a substantial refreshment I see that I was only a few miles from Pinnacles. Next time I will get an earlier start when I head in this direction.
The night gets cold, it’s going to drop into the thirties. I have dinner in the bar and am back in my room early. I turn on the TV, another rarity for me and I’m amazed at the crass advertising and then land on a channel with an evangelist spewing the most amazing bullshit I think I’ve ever heard. It instantly makes me both weary and depressed to see his congregation appearing to understand his rambling discourse with most of his sentences having no discernible connection to each other. It’s astounding to me that someone with such an obvious lack of intelligence has even one person stupider than him in his audience, never mind hundreds. It’s one more sign that perhaps this country has passed beyond some invisible tipping point from which we will be unable to recover. It has happened elsewhere in the world, the evidence plain to see in the many theocracies scattered across the Mideast. Once secular and proponents of reason and enlightenment they are now led by adherents of Stone Age religious beliefs. I’ve no doubt that with the tightening of just a few screws already in place that it could happen here. However, the recent protests in Iran offer some fraction of a glimmer of hope. The struggle endures.
Another disheartening news story, a pastor named Arron Thompson said from his pulpit that “it was a good thing” that five people at Club Q, an LGBTQ bar, were shot dead because he “hates them.” You never have to look very far to find a religious asshole preaching hate. If there is a Hell, which there isn’t, surely the barbaric Pastor Thompson would end up there roasting in agony for eternity. Dream on Ferdyn.
My clean and warm room at the Best Western has Direct TV and I’m depressed to find that there are eight or ten more religious channels each one as baffling to me as the last. I stop at one where a sweaty preacher in a Kmart suit is ranting about what a good man Lot was to be saved by the Lord while the cities of Gomorrah and Sodom were leveled by a shit storm of brimstone and fire slaughtering, presumably, every man, woman, child, baby, dog, cow, goat and chicken. In the many stories from the Old Testament I’m always amazed that children and newborns are included in the murders brought on by God’s wrath. Mysterious ways indeed.
I am somewhat familiar with the story of Lot and his very unlucky wife who wasn’t even important enough to be given a proper name. Her enduring fame as a pillar of salt for disobeying an angel’s warning always seemed to me to be an overly harsh sentence for a very, very minor infraction. I feel like the punishment should have been spread more fairly between Lot and his two daughters.
To refresh my memory I look in the bedside drawer for a bible and there isn’t one. Odd, I think, perhaps the Gideons are slipping or maybe the Best Western people feel no serious need to provide their guests with the Good Book for entertainment when three hundred plus channels are just a click away. Not to mention Wi-Fi for internet connections. Who needs the nonsense of an old book of myths these days?
No matter. I remember from my reading of Genesis 18 or 19 that the two angels descended to Lot’s house and when the men of the city found out they came to Lot’s door and demanded that he give up the heavenly visitors so that they may know them carnally. Lot, decent man that he is, refuses to allow the mob to gang rape his guests. He instead offers his two virgin daughters but for some reason the crowd takes insult with this and they leave Lot’s property. A double deflowering narrowly averted.
The next night after leaving his unlucky and transformed wife whose only crime was acting on a human emotion, given to her by the creator of the universe, that of turning back in terror, Lot and his two daughters, still virgins, but not for long, flee to a cave on the outskirts of town. The clever girls now realize that perhaps all of humanity has been reduced to cinders and ash so they hatch a plan. They get their father drunk on wine that first night and the eldest seduces him. They repeat the scheme the next night and the younger sister then sleeps with her father the result being two sons birthed to whom Lot is both father and grandfather. If this were a Greek myth we would laugh at such a convoluted story. But millions of believers accept all this as history. Which Joseph Campbell called insanity. What the lessons are in all this bullshit I won’t wager a guess. Draw your own interpretations.
I also read the other day that a group is working on a new and modern translation of the Bible with the intent of leaving out, or softening, the many references to slavery including, I would imagine, the long list of rules for properly beating your slaves and the penalties for killing them. An old atheist once said that God easily could’ve forbidden slavery instead he decided on shellfish.
I turn off the TV and wonder how humanity managed to make it this far when access to an ocean of stupidity is so easy to obtain.
I open a book by the great poet Czeslaw Milosz and read: “To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.”
I’m sure I don’t think about the same kind of things that Saul Bellow thought about. But I surely agree with him that there is simply too much to think about. For example, today, I saw a tree with ten or twelve woodpeckers on the trunk. They were singing and calling and pecking at the bark. Round and round they went. It was like a party. I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than two at once. As Nietzsche would say, “How Now?”
Later, I walked back to see if they were still there but there wasn’t a trace of their raucous gathering. They had moved along. I wasn’t even sure which tree it was I saw them on. I walked the street twice, narrowing it down to three or four possibilities. All the palms, a block from the beach, were indistinguishable from each other.
It’s a few days later now and the woodpeckers are in my yard flitting in and out of the crown of the great palm tree. I tried to count them and my best guess is twelve. They were zipping all through the neighborhood. Two would flee out from the heavy fronds and disappear over the house and a moment later three or four would fly into the branches and rattle the leaves. Then they would jump out onto the telephone wire and call back and forth to each other. They were animated and cheery in their formal black and whites complimented with red crowns. They toyed with me for about an hour before continuing on with their travels. They scattered away in all directions.
"Melancholy people see a black star always riding through the light & colored clouds in the sky overhead: waves of light pass over & hide it a moment, but the black star keeps fast in the zenith.” RWE
Bibliography
Creative Mythology — Joseph Campbell
Collected Essays — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Road-side Dog — Czeslaw Milosz
Book of Genesis - Chapter 19
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