Your Newness

On Memory

I have just woken from a dream in which I ran into my dear friend, S., after many years. In the heat of the afternoon, at the same moment, we each turned a dusty corner on a quiet street of our old town, which I happened to be visiting. To my pleasure and surprise, there was S., thin and loping, and wishing me a good day. I embraced him of a sudden, and he took several confused steps backward. He did not remember me. I could hardly believe it. We had not seen each other for some years, but we had shared so much. We once walked and laughed together, many miles, in the blistering desert. We had browsed the cramped markets together in the Valley of the Brave. We used to spend hours in silent meditation, sitting alongside each other and breathing. I tried to remind him of his love for huitlacoche and for the chocolate sapote, and for the wings of men. He shook his head in silence. I recalled how we once appeared to each other in the hills, summoning one another with our thoughts. Bewildered, S. remembered nothing. I recounted in detail how we laughed at the wind when it dislodged and flung poorly attached shingles from the roof of the little mountain house we once lived in. I told him of how he comforted me after I had to leave a woman I loved, who had been his friend. He stared into the distance. I told him of one of his own lovers laughing and throwing her head back and tossing firecrackers from windows of moving cars. I told him of how he taught me to be patient, very patient, when sautéing mushrooms, and to use more butter than I thought appropriate. None of it came back to his mind. He could not even recall my face. I began to wonder if I had invented him. He certainly looked like the S. I thought I knew, but since he neither remembered me, nor our experiences together, was it not feasible that I had created him, that I had made his likeness a character for my own use? Was it possible that I had never been to The Brave Valley, had never savored the huitlacoche, and, indeed, had only dreamed myself into such scenes, using the template of S.'s face as a companion in my imagining? Perhaps I was a mirrored reflection of the forgetfulness of S. Perhaps my memories, which I had cherished so hotly, were pure invention, immaterial as wishes. I tore at my chest with my hands, and trudged from the street where we met. I looked back only once and saw him, perplexed, holding my black wings in his arms. They had fallen into the dust when I turned away. That was the last moment in which I could recall him.

On Art, Part III

(This is Part III of a four part mini-think piece on art. Every section qualifies and contradicts every other section. Okay?)

God, to me, is only the vast expanse of neural fire and silence that gives rise to the imagination. Hence, in a metaphysical sense, there is no death. But we use the word as a stand-in for an infinite depth of unknowing. And I suspect there is a way to touch that sea of storms and quiet in this lifetime...and I suspect it is through the heart door...because sometimes when I'm making art the world of distraction slips away and it's as if I'm barely there, my words are uttering themselves, and all I really need to do is get out of their way.

Thus, regarding art and everything else, there are two modes: pressing forward, or giving up. The former allows for an upsurge of inspiration, of questions, emotions and thoughts in the artist and the audience. The latter is a dusty secluded room where people go to be bored by an assembly line life...moving around as mere meat, shrouding the burnt-out remnants of consciousness. And if we decide to embrace the former, which we should do, definitely, then life becomes this risky and deafening cascade of glorious and terrible interactions. Even when we're by ourselves, alone in a room with our thoughts...and especially then, because to feel the weight of those thoughts as things we make and then let go of forever is to feel the weight of time and oblivion, which we all must face. Now and at the hour of the body's demise. 

Art is the process and the practice of knowing that every moment matters. This doesn't have to be a fearful knowing...but it makes some people desperate with denial if all they've been doing is pushing their meat-suits around, grumbling about how much highway tolls cost. But seriously, that is the silliest thing...you have someplace to go, the road you're on takes you there...just go. Enjoy the scenery and the music and the sound of the engine and the wind in your face. And when you come to the toll booth, pay the price, say "thanks" and make sure you touch the toll collector's hand (at least acknowledge the minimum of human contact). And then go forward. I'm not talking about tolls, of course. I'm talking about obstacles...every one of which is both a pitfall and a chance. But the idea is to pay the toll and use courage and momentum to look forward into the wind. Keep one hand on the wheel and one hand on your lover's thigh, and turn in the direction of brightness, strangeness, and adventure. Then art is not just something beautiful that you make to leave for the world so that it remembers you (it either will or it won't). Art is also a tool and a talisman that you use to see ahead of you into the night. It's something you use to look into that vast neural fire and emptiness. Because you have to look and you have to go forward into it, despite all fears, to avoid the insipid meat-suit shuffle. 

The rooms with those selves of ours that are just acting life out, rather than living it...those rooms are always looming and lurking right behind us. And jutting our necks out into the uncertainty and strangeness is what causes us to embrace the death game, saying, "Yes, death, I know you're here...but look, I'm here too, and I made something that even you have to contend with, before you pull the sheet over me." And though we may shake, art is the love that propels us forward into the glimmering dark...and it's also the message we bring back to this humming world.

The Captain

This

There is not this this unless we go without this, only we do this, and this doesn’t do it for us when we do it. Then they do it and we do it and the winding down of doing it winds us up and we do it, this thing, this doing, which makes us do it. This. Then they go through it and we go through it and that is what does it, even though instead of that we call it this, which never helps that. Unless…well… maybe it helps that, but not this. The only thing that helps this is this thing that we do when we stop doing that other thing, which is the thing we always do anyway. So there’s no stopping us from doing what it is we do when we’re doing it without trying to do it. It’s almost unavoidable, doing this thing, which is something we have to contend with, especially when it’s always on the table, this thing we almost always do. Then we do this other thing, to try and stop doing the thing we always do, but that just leads us to doing the thing we always do again and again, anyway. So then, whether we’re trying or not trying, we’re doing this and that, again and again, until we stop. But even when we stop, there’s no rest from doing the other thing.

On Art, Part II

(This is Part II of a four part mini-think piece on art. Every section qualifies and contradicts every other section. Okay?)

Works of art from all times live in us and change us. No matter when they were produced, or how long ago their makers may have passed on, the ability that we as an audience have to interact with pieces of art brings them to life. In the fields of both thought and emotion, works of art are reanimated, and take on new hues, new resonances, in every age. Because we can interact with a piece of art, even one that was made in the deep past, the contextual field which produced it comes to the forefront of our consciousness. The work also has the capacity to change our ways of thinking that were beyond where we could go had we not encountered this form from a bygone era. This brings the work to life in such a way as to surely fulfill the hopes and intentions of nearly any creator, any poet, any sculptor, alive or long dead. 

The hope and vision of many artists is that their art will stand the test of time and eventually change the course of history and culture. For this is the "life" of a work of art: to move through time and inspire people to think, to feel, to improve themselves, and to spur other artists to create. A piece of art can be said to be alive in that moment when either its creator or its audience is changed by it. Any time a person interacts, emotionally and thoughtfully, with a piece of art, it can be said to have "action," which, for a constructed thing, is vibrancy and life. Such moments happen with works of art from all eras, even when we do not understand much, intellectually, about works whose creation moments are so distant that they have become alien to us. Often their very strangeness is the primal force that spurs us to wonder with even greater fervor.

On Art, Part I

(This is Part I of a four part mini-think piece on art. Every section qualifies and contradicts every other section. Okay?)

Art, especially good art, only exists during the act of making. As soon as a piece has been "rendered," it is a corpse, despite any giant swell of thoughts or feelings its maker or its audience may have towards it. Art is only the relationship between the act of making and the action of what's being made. This relationship is an exceedingly fleeting thing. In the act of art-making, the artist must contend with not only all of his own thoughts, feelings, lived experience and technique, but also with the press of the world upon the moment. Whatever is built in such an instance cannot be carried past the moment of its issuance and thought of in the same way. In fact, unless it is being born to die in the instant it is made it cannot be called art. 

Our museums, our galleries, our libraries, are all graves and graveyards. Nothing more. We are, with all of our sincerity and all of our fascination, merely tomb fetishists. This is not to say that there is no merit in commemorating and adoring dead husks, the traces of what was once art. In fact it's a wonderful, inspirational thing to do. Inspirational and pathetic. I mean neither of these adjectives pejoratively. Pathos is worthy in that it can draw both passion and empathy out of the heart. One might say, "This line by Dickinson, this movement by Brahms...they have carried me, they have sustained me, they have moved me toward better versions of myself." This is all very fine. But such a person, moved though he may be, has only been contending with his own associations, prompted by contact with something that is already dead. Therefore let us call corpses and their graves by their true names. Let us also note that many figures who call themselves artists and art lovers are merely carrion birds. Eaters of dead flesh. A lot of worldly gains can be made eating and regurgitating rotten meat. But such practices are neither the true pleasure nor the worthy provenance of the artist. 

Even an exceedingly well-made thing is a dead thing. The person who recognizes the inherent futility in any attempt to resurrect the dead can begin to taste what it means to be an artist. Art, in all forms, only exists as such in the space between its birth and its death. No artist can be "finished" with any piece and think he continues to be an artist. An artist is only an artist in the moment of making; art is only art during the moment of being made.

Rags

Wearing rags
And wandering alone in the desert
I saw one tree on the horizon
I spent weeks or maybe months trying to walk to it
One night without knowing how I stumbled upon it
I curled and went to sleep under its branches
In the morning my dream had scorched it to the ground
Now there is no direction
Only rags remain

Fear Of Sleep

How does a thing come of anything? What want I try? I slip that template. What rabbit? All these yes to the busted yes. All these wish to get frowned on and records in my hair. These red phrases. These collected hues and tin pipes plunk me down at a family door. In the mirror I switch to my old face. I switch back. The story is only beginning, but I still fear sleep. Poor ruin for fate, for the charm of making, for trains. Canals and laugh tracks, jukebox betrothed, do the end sway.

Overseasoned

We are not supposed to salt our underwear.
Everyone knows this.
But still…

On My Burial Mound

Yes. To go down and not find relics is hardly a future. For me. For you. What is this refraction? What is this change? What heart in me spools outward now? How is it the you I write to is both you and me? I am trying not to build emotion, I am trying to hoist story to the level of poem and smash it through a sweet reflector. As for my hands, they find things to do with you. Buoyant, they feel strong when I grin and strong when I fall. This upward gust is not a thief of seclusion, but close. Imagine. Some nothing dashes through you and you fear no memory. Instead you sit. You sit in the memory of nothing and you bellow ever stronger. It’s the fate of every search, every forking light. You distant shimmer, you weed, you you. Something is home when you say it is. Words make things home, not this scattered mass of hoods and quiet. Nowhere has me; I stand atop my burial mound. I look down and in. I will take you to my ancestors, to my tectonic beginnings, to me before I knew codes.

A Visit From My Familiar

Tricks depend on trick thinking, on dash to sea, and cry of dogs at night. One is for writing, two is for filling wants. Light cracks through cracks in the curtains. My hand rises off this bed of its own accord, and floats above your face while you sleep. It sends warmth from my palm into your cheek. I hear sentences in my head and make movements towards you, my legs planted. I am the tree that waits for you to climb. There is thirst enough between us to dry a town. I see you at your desk, writing and wanting. Sometimes you cry in your longing and I send my ghost brain to your fingers and eyes, that they might be touched. Lamps above you flicker and curtains shift. You breathe hard as my face and arms appear. My hands move over you in slow and heavy sweeps. You feel them as you write, your desk an urgent shelf of stories. Your sentences well and burst. My beard on the back of your neck makes you shiver and smile.

Beyond Stuttered Imaginings

Me Seed

Me black seed. Me beget falcon. Me hawk. Me deeds estuary cemetery. Me death too, far floor. Me draw. Me blood sea paint. Me weeds. Me jelly arm bright lip. Me possible. Me miss. Me clock. Me go on, go on, go over. Me away. Me airplane. Oak leaves me boil tongue. Smoke list, me. Silver choke, hand me. Quite silent me. Me nail sleep back burn. Me sweat, legs head. Me try. Me empty, open, star mouth. Me snow. Me antecedent. Me Wednesday. Me even. Me rough press. Me room. Me kneel. Me ship tooth. Me tog. Me away. Away.

Hot Stone

Take me to dark. Take me to jade murk and high fever cliffs. Take me beyond turning bodies. I have a book of arms unfolding for you, each leaf a riot grip for your neck, your breasts. My sleep is now wraith tournament of strangling white fabric and parched black fingers. Early mornings are short relief from torment, from struggle against sunken carvings of our worn and distant faces. When day begins I drop on world, spiders on hot stone.

Tiny Moons

Zen and the Art of Walking: Ruminations of an Appalachian Thru Hiker

(This article was originally published in Volume 4, Issue 2 of Blue Adventure Magazine, now out-of-print, but you can find a cool original version of the article on pages 29-32 at this link.)

Long walks clear the head.

Each year, strange pilgrims from all over the world leave their homes, jobs, comforts and families in an attempt to hike huge stretches or participate in “thru-hikes” (end-to-end treks) of the longest trails on earth. One such footpath, the Appalachian National Scenic Trail (AT), extends a gargantuan 2,168 miles from Maine to Georgia. A thru-hike of the AT is one of the longest walks in the United States. People who stride over this or other long trails put up with six months of rain, blisters, bugbites (LOTS of bugbites) and plenty of muscle, joint and stomach troubles.

Like modern ascetics, some thru-hikers walk purely for the challenge or to combat rampant media addictions, choosing a life of quiet forest trekking over near-essentials like telephones, email and TV. Some are seasoned hikers, already used to the all-day weight of a pack on their shoulders, out to experience an extended connection to nature. Living out in the woods for several months creates an intimate bond with the most natural colors, sounds and scents of our living planet. Others take these long treks to figure something out about themselves. Or to try and stop figuring things out and simply walk. Either way, they are the seekers, the vision hunters, the believers in the notion that just walking, just being in nature, will get them somewhere further than point B.

I hiked the Appalachian Trail to change my life. I began my walk at Mount Katahdin, Maine, in May and I completed it, six months later, at Springer Mountain, Georgia, in November. I left behind a string of unsatisfying jobs, a crumbling love relationship and a host of troubling family issues. I wanted to carve months of calm reflection and heavy soul-searching into the rocks and roots with my own bootsoles. I was walking to clear my head.

During my time in the woods, I met people who had been hiking long trails for decades and had tapped into some inner world that made their faces glow, bright as campfires, even after many seasons of mud and rain. I befriended newlyweds who had decided to take the toughest and most beautiful honeymoon they could think of. I met recent retirees who were finally realizing a lifelong dream and college students taking time off to figure out what their purpose in life was. I also ran into some long-bearded freaks, who I simply could not imagine living anywhere but the woods. And they were as vibrant and authentic as anyone else out there.

That authenticity is available to everyone who walks. Away from the roles that conventional life asks us to play, hiking the AT allows you to spend five or six months being exactly who you want. And hopefully you’ll take as much of that person back to the paved life as you can. You can be the silent brooder who speaks few words and walks 20 to 30 miles every day. You can be the kid who everyone is happy to see because you play a great campfire harmonica or always have a surplus bag of M&M’s you’re willing to share. You can be the guy who writes sonnets in all the shelter journals. You can even be the woman who yogis (scams food from weekend hikers) better than anyone. And when you start hiking, you can give yourself a “trail name,” a new name that embodies all the things you are or wish to be or one that simply pokes fun at yourself and the universe.

Trail names help individual forest dwellers feel more connected to each other. For some, a trail name is just a fun conversation starter, (“How did you get the name ‘Wombutt’?”). For others, trail names contribute to a feeling of transformation, a sense of having entered upon a new and different kind of life, a life shared only by other hikers. The act of choosing your own name, one that’s much different from the one you were given at birth, can help you to be more introspective and to remember that destiny is self-determined. Some of my pals, months after finishing their walks, still sign letters with their trail names.

As I recall the thru-hikers I trudged with, I associate favorite memories, traits and experiences with hosts of unusual trail names. I remember pounding through the cold of the Great Smoky Mountains with a Georgia hiker named “Chunker”; discussing Krishnamurti and meditation with a former US Army Ranger named “I Don’t Know”; sweating through the swamps of the middle states with “Lost Sheep,” a muscle-bound North Carolinian (named for his favorite Dukes of Hazzard character); eating tuna fish with Lost Sheep’s pal, “Tunatarian” (he’s Unitarian and loves Chicken of the Sea); and soaking my feet in a cold Maine stream with my college pal and hiking compañero, a stentorian-voiced, red-bearded poet, trail-named “Booch.”

My own trail name? I’ll come to that. First let me tell you about my hardest (and best) hiking day ever.

It was a frigid November day in the snow-covered hills of North Carolina. I hadn’t slept well (read: warm) in a week and a half, since my really good sleeping bag was waiting for me at the Hot Springs NC, post office. Hot Springs was 21 miles from where I had slept the night before so I had to pull a long day through the white stuff to get there. Booch was a day ahead of me, presumably already eating warm diner meals and strumming his backpacker guitar in the Hot Springs hiker hostel.

When I started out from the shelter at 8am, the temperature was hovering around 30?F and six to twelve inches of snow covered the trail. Following the familiar white blazes that mark the AT, the pine trees were bent over with the weight of the snow creating a sort of tunnel out of the trail. I very quickly got into “the zone,” that state of mind where time and fatigue are barely perceptible, one foot in front of the other becoming a physical mantra that deletes all thoughts. For the first few hours, I hardly felt affected by the ups and downs of the landscape. I had lost 30 pounds since I started the trail more than five months before, some of it spare tire weight, some of it upper body muscle. I was basically nothing but legs, pack and beard. I zoomed up steep and slippery inclines, gorgeous mountain vistas rolling out on every side.

At noon I tried to stop for lunch but realized that if I halted for more than 10 minutes, my body temperature would drop too low for me to sit and enjoy eating. So I stuffed my many pockets with PowerBars, Snickers, tortillas, brownies and Little Debbie snack cakes and kept walking. When I got hungry, I would slow my pace to a meandering shuffle and eat and drink while I walked. This technique was great for covering big miles in the cold and giving my body a bit of rest at the same time. By 2pm I had finished all my water, but I didn’t stop to filter more. When I got thirsty, I simply packed a tortilla full of snow and ate a chilly burrito.

All was going smoothly, and I anticipated arriving in Hot Springs at about 5pm, just in time to catch a shower and meet up with Booch for a big fried chicken dinner. But at around 4pm, as I was beginning the longest and last ascent of the day, my thoughts went into hyperneurotic overdrive. This is an experience well known to many hikers. I think it arises due to the meditative depth that a hiker reaches on really long days. Your mind seems to become so aware of itself as a thinking mechanism that it starts kicking out wild worries and doubt-riddled thoughts about the future, creating a state of how-can-I-go-on-ness. You suddenly become supremely aware of the lactic acid burn in your legs and back and every step becomes a supreme effort of the will.

I was slogging up a cold hill, my body suddenly hurting, my mind hollering at me about jobs, money, relationships and family crises. I couldn’t believe how quickly I had gone from mountain man to mental mouse. My preoccupations had hunted me down and I was aching to be anywhere but in my own head.

This went on for 30 excruciating minutes. I cannot really say what kept me going, other than force of habit. But when I got to the final few steps of the incline, I saw a huge stand of trees stretching out over the ridge I was following. All their branches were covered with layers of ice that made them look like gemstone figurines, planted in some fantastic, through-the-looking-glass landscape. What’s more, they were pierced all throughout with the bright orange light of the setting sun which bounced off the entire snowy forest floor. I stopped, frozen by the beauty all around me. And then I lost it…

I started chuckling to myself about all the ridiculous psychodramas I had been playing out over the last half-hour. Then I started laughing out loud. Then I began bellowing at the top of my lungs. I actually fell down into the snow in peals of laughter. I heard myself sing out, “The job, the girl, the future, it’s all gonna be all right. You don’t have to worry about a thing. Just be.”

Had I gone crazy? No way. I was sane for the first time in a long while. I had hiked the future and the past right out of me. I was sitting stock still in the middle of the present. After five months of walking, I had been hit with the diamond bullet of pure, energy-filled peace. My head was changed for the way better. My whole thru-hike was worth that one moment.

The remaining miles glided by effortlessly. When I got to the friendly town of Hot Springs, I greeted all the villagers with a mysterious grin. After a great shower I pulled out my journal and penned this haiku-like poem:

High on the last hill, the wind blew everything away,
even my real name—
now I walk unburdened.

I found something that afternoon. It took almost half a year of hiking to tap into, but nothing’s been the same since. My trail name, by the way, is Change.

Problem Of Translation

From my thoughts grow a thousand thoughts. As if each idea has a dozen unruly children sproinging from its face & armpits. I could make a list for you of kinds of thought I’ve witnessed just this week. An utterly inadequate list, each one swinging doors wide on so many new shadows: dog ribs; the ticklish sting of big snowflakes falling on my cheek; dogs smiling as they run; tiny children’s pre-language thoughts; the quietest place in Spain; the erections of Vladimir Putin & the Dalai Lama; umbrellas torn by strong wind; what Janis Joplin sounded like when she came; plaid; whether or not the Golden Fleece was real; the smell of anise seeds; the weight of love...the actual weight of it, when I feel it & feel heavy, in those moments, if I had the right scale, could I measure that fluctuation in mass or weight?; the iron heat at the core of the earth & its fluid movement; the loneliness of the last stop on a train to deep Siberia; the moment you were born & your first breath & scream & the haze of faces & lights you saw when you opened your eyes; how I walk around with your name tattooed on my throat, & how strange it is not to see it there when I shuck my clothes; a camera following me from space, observing my most random movements, recording everything; the color & shape of your nipples & the taste of your spit; the flexible bones of a snake, all spine; the baby teeth of cave children; the liquid qualities of glass; the idea that my blood is using me to get to you.

Rise Up And Be Lonely

Temple Temple, Walls And Doors

I am dank angel, ready wine, the anti-cure. An instance of guitar dropped on the desert. I am a rare crease in time. These hands, my fleeting fists, this continent. I have walked to the edge. This rusting freedom. Near the black door I hang my head, my father’s gun against the wall. These nails, this pre-grace, this balkanized love. I feel only wind, and my rag chestbone. My gaze and my jar brim with eyes and fingers. My apples, my boy fears, my sliding face and mouth, my quiet. I have no patience, no measure. I cannot open a tiny window. Witch of wet stories, you are my June muse. This island, my torn and dripping jaw. You are the western sun and the hot mouth of dreams. Neither can I hear you, nor slow. You are rough water, silent and plunging. I would watch you run, and hold you. When you stretch into an ancient, haunted creature, with crooked eyes and stringy hair, I will still press my ear to your mouth. I want to love you forty thousand years, 'til you are only beetle shells and sand.