There is something dangerous about tapping into memory and writing about the past. It's like trying to make use of good spring water. Anything you do to improve the flow, no matter how careful you are, changes both the spring and stream forever. Basically, you can only tap a deep memory once and receive pure writing from it. After that, it's muddied by the mind's desire for theme and structure.
It is what it is. One of my first memories is walking up a spiral staircase to my brother's bedroom. I remember the carpet was gray, tight weaved, like industrial carpet, and there was dust along the edges that my mother's fierce vacuuming never reached. Up above, a room opened up with yellow light, and glorious music spilled down the stairway, swirling around me.
Let It Be. I was only four. I've checked the accuracy of the memory with my brother, and the spiral staircase was three or four steps at the very most, and didn't twist at all. But, I know the moment happened despite the mythic elements of memory and time. That is probably the moment I became both a hippie and a Christian, which I have remained at heart, at some level or another, throughout my life. It's so simple, but it says it all: And when the broken-hearted people Living in the world agree There will be an answer, let it be For though they may be parted There is still a chance that they will see There will be an answer, let it be
A compassion for the less fortunate, a desire for a universal brotherhood, and a faith in a higher power has always been my center. Outwardly, I have not lived a large life; but inwardly, I have. When I was younger, that bothered me. I thought I had things that needed to be said, things that should be heard. I dreamed of stardom so I could have a large podium from which to speak. As I've aged, I've realized that is true of everyone. Each person has much the world should hear, but with 108 billion souls calling earth home at some point, there simply hasn't been enough air time. We tend to want that--to have impact, to think our life has given others meaning. Sometimes that is true, sometimes not. But, what I think now is that we are ultimately here for one reason only--to soften, to open, to let more sorrow in, and by doing so, more light also.
"Let It Be," my first musical memory, is probably my purest, despite the distortions of my young mythic mind. That only makes sense. We come into this world open and learn to become guarded with time until we learn to let go and open again--if we learn that at all.
The American left generally has high regards these guys: Maya Angelou,
Bono,
Jimmy Carter,
Pema
Chodron,
Thich
Nhat Hanh,
Dalai Lama,
Gandhi,
Reverend
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Bishop Desmond Tutu
Oprah Winfrey
but denies any force that cannot be measured by science,
even though these guys are all driven by spiritual belief.
The American right generally has high regard for this guy--
Christ--
but generally does not like these guys--Maya Angelou, Bono, Jimmy Carter, Pema
Chodron, Thich
Nhat Hanh, Dali Lama, Gandhi, Reverend
Martin Luther King, Jr., Bishop Desmond Tutu, and Oprah Winfrey--
who, regardless of their religious affiliations, work to implement His message into daily life.
It is a gloriously wet day after a good rain. The lawn mower hums; Lloyd, my brother, has come down to mow the lawn at the trailer without me asking, which is great as I'm not able to do it myself.
Pain is a hard burden to bear. Idleness isn't easy either. Earlier, I tried to get out in my garden, right out the sliding glass door, but after placing three flowers in the ground, it became apparent that I needed to return to my recliner or bed.
At first, I chose the latter. I put on U2, hoping to slide into sleep. But, instead I found despair. It had been lurking in the big, showy irises by the pond, along irrigation ditches bubbling through the oaks in the front yard, under the suds in the sink full of dishes, under the pile of clothes on the bathroom floor--all the things, I'd like to do today, but can't.
Illness is a hard thing to write honestly about. It's not uplifting. I guess with humor it could be entertaining, but there's something dishonest about that--like putting makeup on a corpse and placing it in a suit. I know we do that at funerals, but I've never been too fond of it. When my dad died, I preferred taking a drive up the Oregon coast, stopping at the Devil's Churn, enjoying the things he enjoyed showing me.
It wasn't easy. I sobbed deeper than I ever thought humanly possible. But it was beautiful, and it was honest. I'm not suggesting funerals aren't. Each must deal with loss in his or her own way. But personally, nature is my way of working through life's difficulties. About a year before Dad passed away, I'd written a poem while imagining my own death:
Hope! My granddaughter refuses to look in my casket at my pale, plastic flesh, after my soul has sucked out. She sits in the corner on the floor to the dismay of her mother, headphones on, tuned out from the horseshit they dream up to make me their vision. She is totally tuned in to a song like camphor, sees a steep hill where wind blows ferns between tall trees that seem to climb out of the sea churning below, green. Somehow, there must be a way to write about illness like that--tuned out from the horseshit, neither wallowing in the pain nor ignoring it.
Life is the Grand Tetons, but it's also a wasp devouring a tarantula, as I found out while working in my garden last summer. I watched and filmed with horrid fascination.
Life is only fair in two ways--we all are born and we all die. Everything in between is a unique experience, an individual path, and only part of that experience is due to individual choice. The rest, whether by random act or by divine design, or perhaps a combination of both, is not in our hands. Bono is right, where you live should not determine whether you live or die, but it does. It decides your freedom, your liberty, your wealth. I don't care how good you are at pulling yourself up by the boot straps, you would not be living the life that is currently yours, if you lived in Myanmar (Burma) .
And yet place is just one small factor to the equation of "I." Parents, genetics, health, the spirit I came to earth with, also contribute, as do what seem to be random occurrences.
Atheism has always been easy for me to believe. Often, chaos does indeed seem to be king of the universe. Injustice is everywhere. You don't have go far to find it:
Oh that Rococo Life
Slowly breaking apart a cranberry muffin, sucking down the sweet morsels with over-creamed coffee.
Palm trees sway beyond
the marble-floored lobby and empty sunken bar through great Venetian windows, beyond a great red-tiled patio and heavy white balustrade.
I read Pictures of the Gone World by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Says here, poem 25 (quote) The world is a beautiful place To be born into If you don’t mind happiness Not always being So much fun.
What the hell, I’ll try it.
The kids are with Grandma. Marci is in class. the room is paid for with one week’s salary.
Nothing to do
but hang out at the pool and read Lawrence Ferlinghetti, look at beautiful lotion-glowing bodies from ages 5 to 70, weighing between 30 and 250 pounds.
Yes, this world is a beautiful place
to be born into.
Though yesterday
when we got lost in that neighborhood of duplexes and run-down apartment complexes that didn’t quit qualify for a slum but was part of the working poor world that I knew for so long,
and I went in that 7-11
to find some way out of the hell-mood I’d sank into and I saw myself behind the counter in a stupid dehumanizing uniform with a stupid name tag on it, smiling back at myself knowing I’d always be here, behind some convenience store counter working eight hours a day to get nowhere,
I got to tell you
I thought again the world is nothing but a great big turd ball with all of us swarming over it, pushing and shoving for a chance to bite right in.
Today there are palms outside the window,
rich girls in bikinis, rich daddy’s in loafers,
and it’s true—
The world is a beautiful place
To be born into If you don’t mind happiness Not always being So much fun.
We think of God as Just, and yet injustice seems to reign supreme all around us. Perhaps if we are born into or achieve wealth on our own we can pretend it's not so, but I don't think so. At least in the United States, street crime stays pretty local. Gated communities are generally a good distance from high crime neighborhoods, and yet they remain sealed off from the world. At a subconscious level, perhaps the walls are as much for the psychological safety of the inhabitants as for home security. Perhaps they are not needed because of a fear of robbery, but because of fear of sight. Outside those walls people have less--less goods, less services, less time, less life.
I don't blame the rich. It's all relative anyway. I live in a very nice 4-bedroom double-wide modular on 90 acres of forest and scrub land. I use to drive through neighborhoods on the south side of Juarez, Mexico that were literally built from crates and cardboard boxes. Compared to them, I'm wealthy. Some isolate themselves behind gates; I isolate myself on a gorgeous plot of land near a nice Mormon community that has almost no crime and only very small pockets of poverty. I might as well live in Mayberry.
But that's what makes Justice such an incredible concept. It doesn't seem natural to the universe and yet we believe in it so profoundly. All men are created equally--come on! I know enough about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bull Connor to know they are not equals. Martin Luther King spoke like a prophet and Bull Connor was just a dumb bigot who had fire hoses violently turned against children. Equals? Forget the hind sight of history, forget being right or wrong, in less than 12 seconds Bull Connor clearly demonstrates he is rhetorically, linguistically, and intellectually inferior to King. There is nothing equal about them.
And yet King's whole life and message are about justice and equality--a message rooted directly in Christianity, and indirectly in Judaism and Yahweh in world awareness, ultimately the god of law, justice and equality.
In our time, regardless of how hypocritical Jews or Christians may be at times, it is impossible to separate justice, equality, Judaism and Christianity from each other. They are all bound together in the notion that the universe is not relative, that there is an order, a balance, and fairness, equality, right and wrong are part of that plan, and when that balance is destroyed by evil men, justice must be employed to right the wrongs.
And yet even nature, to a believer the handy-work of God himself, seems clearly cruel and unjust, everything living off the suffering of others in an eat or be eaten world.
How does the believer reconcile this? Why even try? Why not just accept that life is unfair, get on with it, enjoy what you have at the moment, and don't worry about the fact your mother can no longer walk, or that your child's one friend seems to have a lot of unexplained bruises, or that the homeless man under the interstate bridge where you park might not be an actor with a get-rich scheme after all?
The fact that even some of us worry about these things to me suggests there must be a God. Why did Martin Luther King, Jr. go to the mountain top? Why did Moses? Why did Christ?
What makes some men and women care enough about justice to die for it--especially those who already have more than their peers? Martin Luther King, though black, certainly was not at the bottom of the social latter. He could have been content enjoy his privileged education and ministry. What about Moses? Egypt wasn't all that bad for him. And Christ--well, he was God, not that bad of a gig in the social order of things, and yet he was willing to sink below the most vile sinners that justice might be served while simultaneously, through grace, spiritual equality was maintained between small-minded men like Bull Conner and spiritual giants like Martin Luther King, Jr. Why?
Things are not so complicated when we think outside our mortal shells. Injustice and inequality are not so unbearable if life is a classroom and we are aware we signed up for certain lessons. Pain, though still unpleasant, gains meaning in this incredible riot of free-wills, from microscopic bacteria and viruses to the leaders of nations, when we feel in our fibers there is a plan. With an omnipotent eye, even the class bullies, like Bull Connor or Adolf Hitler can be forgiven if we know each person is on an individual journey. This is how men like Bull Conner and Martin Luther King, Jr. can truly be equals: they each have divine potential, each are fluid spiritually, learning as they go, both in this life and the next. The Hindu and Buddhist concepts of karma are not that different from that of the justice Judaism and Christianity--somehow all human cultures have a concept of justice and equality intrinsic to who they are, despite it apparently not being natural to either nature or civilization. For me, that is the greatest proof that there is an intelligence behind what to us often appears as chaos.
And it is that divine light that drives us, despite very real world knowledge of pain and suffering, to sing a new song against all odds.
Health be damned. Spring comes but once a year, and it is without doubt the most spectacular time at Dry Creek--the one season when water abounds. Despite the pain, I made the short trail from my mom's house down to the canyon bottom and the creek. Dry Creek also runs near our house, but the canyon here is deeper, the trail steeper.
On the way up to mom's, I stopped at the pond. The light wasn't anything special, but even so, the water was nice to see.
Dry Creek lower holding pond.
It is amazing how much the world changes from up here on the alluvial fan to down in the canyon. Literally, within 100 feet, the landscape changes from dry, juniper and sage scrub land to dense, wet oak, maple and cottonwood river bottoms. Grass grows long, tender and lush.
Trail between my mom's and the cabin.
Trail and leaf-littered canyon slope.
Grassy canyon bottom
Even though we've had a severe drought this year, there is still the annual runoff. It's nowhere near normal, but beautiful all the same. Hopefully, the week of rain we had over the past week will extend the season by a couple of weeks. I hope so; although Dry Creek is always beautiful, it's best when Dry Creek isn't quite dry.
It's a cold, wet day after a week of rain. There is nothing I'd like more than to walk down along the canyon bottom along the jeep trail, walking over wet, polished river stone, water bubbling along the sides of the road through deep green scouring rush, narrow-leaf cottonwood towering overhead, and the sound of Chalk Creek churning some ways off in the distance. But due to an illness I've had for almost a year, I will have to sit here in my recliner and dream of that experience which is not more than a block away. And yet, overall, I'm satisfied.
Walking has always been a significant part of my life. When I lived in El Paso, I'd walk for miles deep into Juarez, Mexico, camera in hand, searching, longing, looking for a deep connection to life. A little girl in a red dress waiting to use the family outhouse on a chalky, loose hillside above the Rio Grand.
Or even in what I considered the soulless suburbs of North Dallas, I was always walking, searching. And at the time of the walk, life had meaning; I was connected. Heat-heavy trees, sound of cicadas, sound of lawn mowers, block after block of perfectly still, seemingly empty track housing, the occasional Rainbird sprinkler ticking--during the walk, it all had meaning.
But then there was all the numbness after returning home. Much of this, I'm sure, had to do with being shy, of not being able to connect with people other than my brother and a few close friends.
But, I'd also been shy as kid and was happy.
No, something changed, something happened.
I didn't know then what, but I do now. I'd lost the Holy Ghost.
That does not mean I'm constantly euphoric now. I get frustrated at not being able to do what I want. I'd love to get outside today and dig deeply in the dirt, plant the cherry tree and Japanese maple we bought last week. But, I can't.
But it's different--there are moments of dissatisfaction, disconnection, anger, questioning Why me? in a sea of overall mental tranquility and satisfaction. Rough times aren't so rough now.
Before I walked with a void trailing me around, a God-shaped hole, a blackness beating out the anthem articulated so well by Hemingway: nada y pues nada.
This is why so many people who read The Book of Mormon convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Our missionaries do not convert anyone. Not even the words in The Book of Mormon convert. Although the book, from a literary perspective, is much greater than the world gives it credit for, its eloquence is not its power. Its power is in closing the void between God and man, in punching holes through the veil, in allowing the Holy Ghost to whisper all is well.
Last Sunday, we went to my niece's blessing in a ward (local unit of the church) up in Salt Lake. I was hurting, in a bad mood, and very critical. One of the members of bishopric kept nodding off to sleep. It looked like the teenagers passing the sacrament had all stayed up too late and didn't want to be there--and this was after 1:00 in the afternoon!
I kept saying to myself, dang this ward needs help. But, I was dead wrong. It was fast and testimony meeting, which is like an open-mic meeting, for church. And not long after the first couple of testimonies, I looked up and saw the previously slumbering member of the bishopric's face contorted with emotion, trying to hold back the tears.
It's hard to explain that, unless you've felt it. It's not sadness. It's actually deep joy. But not how we experience joy in everyday life--because it's not connected to outside events. I has nothing to do with how well your day is going. It's a deep, intense whisper--life has meaning, your being here has a purpose, and there are truths so profound your mortal body could not begin to handle them and this moment is but a glimpse of the glory to come.
That is how The Book of Mormon converts. True, the missionaries do try to sell you the gospel, as well as members do, like I'm doing now. But that's not how it works.
It's a deep whisper that occurs while reading, or praying afterwards, or after attending church meetings on faith alone, that will eventually bring tears to your eyes--this is true.
It may come easy. It may be quite the struggle. It may come all at once. Or it may come in small little bursts. (It took me nearly a decade of earnest searching to regain the testimony I had as a child.) But, it is promised. All who will read and study the book with a sincere heart will come to know it's truth:
3 Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.
4 And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
I first came to poetry through music. When I was a teenager, I would listen to groups like the Cure, the Police, the Fixx, and the music would drive words--not just their words, but my words and their words mingled together, and I would write poems that, although mostly mine, would never have arrived without theirs--a sort of strange dialogue, where both are talking, but only I am listening. Here, I have gone back to my poetic roots, what I consider a righteous plagiarism--the spirit of one artist sustaining another. Perhaps, it is more for the young, but I enjoyed the Fixx moving me once again. After all, I am definitely old enough to qualify for a mid-life crisis, if not a little beyond that right.
Photo by Rio Brown
Life
Rose red sunsets
and maggots on the bone.
Golden fawn
in the dawn dew meadow
or dead on the road.
Flower blooming,
baby breaking
forth blood-slick
and God-glorious,
parents joy,
gentle rain,
terrible typhoon,
get your ass to your room!
Bitter bite of frost,
the limb-snap
thundering down,
happenstance
blossoming
the end
of one stopping
by woods to
enjoy
silence, ah silence, that moment of stillness....
before the storm,
kneeling,
pleading,
begging,
no, no, no more!
Sun pours
through verdant green canopy
Everything taken
is restored.
