American Fecundity 2016

These are uncertain times.
Heat hangs heavy, unnatural,
skies cyclone-oppressive.
Hate thickens, alien-green.
The valley is still; not a blade
bends.   There is a highway out—
love actually—
but all stand stoic, lulled
by the static dreadful
blossoming impossible.

 © Steve Brown 2016

True, Hard Fact: Repentance Requires Revision and Editing

Recently I’ve become acutely aware of what it means to be “born again.”  It’s not the free-ticket to redemption one might suppose.  We are promised by our Heavenly Father that if we repent, He will "remember [our] sins no more" (D & C 58:42).  I have no doubt that is true, for I have felt the joy that results from becoming worthy.  I have had the spirit testify that I have been forgiven, and I don’t carry around the baggage of my past decisions.  If my Heavenly Father has forgiven me, there is no reason why I shouldn’t forgive myself.  The redemption of Christ is about moving forward and not backwards.  He tells the woman caught in adultery that she is forgiven and “to go and sin no more”  (John 8:11). 

At first this sounds great, which it is--oh so much better than actually having to atone for ones actions alone without Christ to take on most of that burden.  Yet, truly being “born again” is not as easy as it sounds.  It requires extreme sacrifice.  It requires going through a veil, of giving up the old self, and allowing faith to create something new.   After all, if my Heavenly Father is to remember my sins no more, I must do the same.  That is hard stuff because that is my life wrapped up with my sins.   No matter how much pain and sorrow my old life brought me, no matter how heavy the void that hung around my neck, it was still my life, and there were good times mixed in with the misery.

I teach English at a residential treatment center for boys, and I saw one of my students struggle with this.  In his former life he was a street graffiti artist and small time dope dealer.  While at our school, he converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and had slowly rebuilt his life based on gospel principles.  He was at a relatively safe place when he wrote a descriptive essay for me about his former life as a graffiti artist.  It was an amazing piece, describing the city in the early dawn and the peace and solitude he felt tagging right before the city awakened.  As writing, it was good stuff.  Had he been a shop owner washing down the sidewalk before opening shop it would simply be a pleasant memory.  But this moment of connection for him, because the life choices he had made, was attached instead to an illegal act and a former lifestyle that brought more pain than peace.  Yet, as the memory was pleasant, I could see it pulling him back to a life he needed to let go.

When he turned in the essay, I had two thoughts: 1) this is solid writing and 2) if I don’t help him, this boy is in danger of returning to a life of misery.  Because of my past, I knew I had to be honest.  Warnings about “Don’t go there” would only make him resentful.  After all, it was his life, not mine. What right did I have to tell him that the peace he felt that day was a lie?  I didn’t have that right at all.  And I knew that peace myself.  For me, it was city lights reflected at the bottom of the concrete channel of the Rio Grande from the Santa Fe Bridge between Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas after a heavy night of drinking.  My life was miserable because of my choices but that stopping point on a bridge between two countries was none-the-less moving.  I still see that glassy, slightly rippled water, hard and slick as wet obsidian through the diagonal grid of the chain-link fence.

So, instead of lecturing him, I talked about giving up good things for better things.  He had lots of support from staff and has since married in the temple.  He chose to move forward not backwards.  But, I know that choice wasn’t easy. 

Here is the warning I give my children and future grandchildren:  Live your life so that you never have to “go and sin no more.”  Christ does provide us with fresh starts, but every time we have to be “born again” to move forward in happiness, we have to leave part of us behind.  Life is messy and good times get mixed in with our poor choices.  To truly start over, we have to leave the past behind.   In leaving the past behind, we leave a chunk of ourselves with it.

Live so that all your greatest memories can apply to the life you want to end with.  How grand it must be to be eighty years old, look back at your life and remember that your first night of intimacy was with your wife who is pushing your wheel chair when you are eighty.  Does that mean you can’t have a meaningful marriage if you had premarital sex with another woman or went through a divorce?  Of course not, a loving Heavenly Father does allow us to start over.  But not even the grace of God can unify a narrative that happened chaotically, without a plan.

True, one learns from mistakes.  One learns wisdom and empathy.  But learning is part of life.  You’ll gain wisdom regardless of your path.  Yet only one path leads to a life where all memories can remain in the narrative that ends with a resolution of joy not disjointed by sin.  It’s good to be able to say, “I was lost, now I’m found”; it is profound to be able to look back on your life and not need to edit anything out to move forward.

I love my life, sin and all, and if I had to do it all over again, without any changes, I’d be fine with that because I know I’d end up here, at a place of faith and the resulting joy that comes from being worthy of receiving the Holy Ghost.  Yet, I have to live with the knowledge that I could have lived another narrative, one where I never stopped speaking to my Heavenly Father.  No matter what I accomplish in this life, no matter how much joy I feel, no matter how close I draw to my Heavenly Father, I know that other narrative is better.  It is a fact I have to live with.  If I could teach my children the ultimate lesson, it would be this:

Live the life God intends for you NOW so that you never have to edit out chunks of living to move forward.  Every hard, right decision becomes a permanent detail to move the narrative forward.  Every wavering is an error that will eventually have to be erased through the revision and editing process of the atonement before the narrative is right.  Those scraps, those dribbles of less-than-perfect text, at some point must be set aside to move forward.  Imagine what it must be like to be Christ—for every word, every deed to be worthy of including in your life story.  You can’t accomplish that, but get as close as you can, and you will be happy for the majority of the narrative, even in moments of sorrow and pain because the Holy Ghost provides a joy deeper, better rooted, and stronger than circumstance.

To Be or Not to Be

Today a student asked me,
“What’s a bard?”  I said, “a slice of bacon
placed on meat or game before
roasting.”

It’s true & if

you’ve explained you’re a poet

at a family reunion  
you know exactly
what I mean. 
 

©Steve Brown 2016

Defining Spaces in Your Garden through Outdoor Rooms (Love Your Garden)

Hanging-bucket garden before the grape vine took off.

There is nothing I like better than a vast, open, undisturbed prairie.  The back of our home at Dry Creek opens onto a large, open space that was once an alfalfa field, which I would like to turn into a prairie.  However, although prairies can actually benefit from temporary, seasonal stampeding, constant foot traffic and wild grasslands do not mix.    There was also the issue of shade.

What slowly evolved in my mind is a series of outdoor rooms, that would be very structured and geometrical next to the house and then would loosen up away from the house, slowly blending into the field beyond.  These rooms would not only provide shade, but they would also enclose areas enough to discourage deer, who we love, but who also provide challenges to gardening March through May and again in September through November.

The first structure I built was my hanging-bucket garden (pictured above and below).  I built it as a wall to block the hot, late afternoon sun from the eating area.  It also provided a place I could plant flowers in the early spring when there are still too many deer to plant flowers on the ground.  The patio table on the east discouraged deer from that side.  To discourage deer from the west, I made a little room with a wrought iron fence (pictured above).  Although deer can easily jump fences over six feet tall, they are leery of tight spaces, so although not full-proof, it is a deterrent.

To blend in with the rustic surroundings, I used old juniper poles and some old window frames my brother-in-law gave me.  To increase shade, I planted a grapevine, which now covers most of the log rail structure and planted tall flowers, such as giant sunflowers inside the small garden created by the white wrought iron fence.

Close-up of repurposed windows in the hanging-bucket garden

Next, I set about creating our vegetable garden.  At first I was just going to create a fenced in garden of four beds created by railroad ties, but in the process, I decided leave out the fourth bed and instead include a Pergola (pictured below) as a birthday present for Marci.  To visually tie the beds together, I created a circular path through the garden using gathered stones.

Vegetable garden and pergola under construction

 

To provide shade for the pergola, I ran wire fencing across the top, wove in some bamboo stalks, and covered it willow.  I also planted a grapevine that will eventually cover it.  The shaded space creates a cool outdoor room that looks out on the vegetable garden (pictured below).

 

Interior of the pergola and wrap-around vegetable garden

Next, I built a structure for my grill (pictured below) to keep it out of the weather and provide shade while I'm grilling.  It also created shade in the late afternoon for a second dining area. 

Newly completed grill pad



 

Next came the job of tying the areas together, which I'm still in the process of doing.  One such "hallway" is pictured below.
 

"Hallway" to the west dining area

The final trick is to have the spaces slowly loosen as you move away from the house.  So, you start inside the house, move out to outdoor rooms, move out to semi-formal gardens (more organic shapes, but still very defined spaces), which then slowly dissolve into nature.  I'm still in the process of this.  I used thuja junipers in pots to provide structure along the main garden path.  Native rabbit brush fit well with the Tuscan feel of the garden. 

Potted thuja junipers soften garden structures

 

Starting to get that Tuscan garden feel

 

Although I haven't directly drawn ideas from the show, I absorb much of my inspiration from watching Love Your Garden.  Alan Titchmarsh and his gang have a real sense of gardens as composed spaces.  Below is a short clip of one such garden.  Enjoy.



 

Stones: the Weight of Liberation (Neil Diamond's "I Am I Said," Bono's "Yahweh," and Bill Flanagan's Stupidity)

Somehow not even Bono can make it artistically kosher to love Neil Diamond.  I'm not sure how that happened. Diamond was once a respected songwriter whose music was covered by the Monkeys, Deep Purple, Elvis and UB40.  True, he did write one incredibly stupid hit about that little alien who wants to phone home.  But, come-on, he's not the only one whose sentimental heart lit up when that insipid green munchkin rode a bike across the silver screen.  Besides, we've forgiven Elton John for "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" and Paul McCartney for "Ebony and Ivory."  Why doesn't the artistic atonement apply to Neil Diamond?  Why, despite all of his good works, is he cut off from grace because of one or two lousy mistakes?

Stones is an amazing album.  Perhaps one of the best.  Like the Beatles white album or Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, even the cover is art.  My copy, handed down from my mother who purchased it in 1971, has a subdued canvas colored background with a course linen fiber printed on it.  In the middle of it is a photograph of Neil Diamond sitting on a park bench in front of a massive stone Italian-styled garden wall.   An old and twisted tree stands in the right hand corner; a stone bust sits in a niche in the wall just left of center, just to right of Diamond, who sits stoically arms folded, his stone face looking out at the audience with no expression.  He is barefoot, which with his stoic look and the old-world setting, gives his form the feel of a statue, adding to the crumbling, classical feel of the mostly monotone photograph of gray and olive. The cover reminds me slightly of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" album with the crumbling wall and portrait of the old man.  There is the same heaviness about it.

The entire album is worth listening to, but I'll focus on side two.  I believe this one side of vinyl contains some of the greatest lyrics ever written, although Neil Diamond only wrote two of the songs.  I don't think that is a coincidence.  Like Elton John's Blue Moves, this album is, in part, a reflective evaluation of the cost of fame. Elton John dealt with that by returning to his classical, jazz and blues roots.  Perhaps, Diamond's decision to use other people's material is a reaching out to the void, hoping for an answer more significant than his own name.  "I Am, I Said," his own song, definitely demonstrates the desire to be grounded in significance.

First, we have the title track, "Stones," one of Diamond's own:

The song starts with a simple strum of the guitar, and then enters the line "Stones would play inside her head," a startling image of uncomfortable weight and solidity oddly placed within the mind.  He follows this up with the image of her bed being made of stones--no peace of mind and no rest for the body due to a solid mass that must be dealt with.

But, it's not a mass without meaning.  We are not shoved into the nihilism of Hemingway here.  This is not a world of nada y pues nada.  The stones may be uncomfortable; they may be there to be dealt with; but they also provide shelter and shade for new beginnings:

You and me, a time for planting
You and me, a harvest granting
The every prayer ever prayed
For just two wild flowers that grow

on stones.

There is beauty here, but it isn't an easy beauty.  It's more like the beauty the atonement brings, a grace that comes after the old has been broken down and something new takes root in the rubble.

This contrast of dark and light, of the jeweled flower among the rock, continues in the second song, "If You Go Away" written by Jacques Brel and Rod McKuen.

And then there's "Suzanne."  Ah "Suzanne," what to say?... Leonard Cohen's lyrical masterpiece, but Diamond brings a weight to song that Cohen just wasn't able to do.

The song starts in the sensual world of materialism:

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night forever
And you know that she's half-crazy but that's why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China

Cohen concludes the first third of the song with "For you've touched her perfect body with your mind."  Then, the song pivots from sensual world of light and aroma to the weighty divine:

And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him
He said all men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them
But he himself was broken, long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.

Next, comes Randy Newman's composition, "I Think It's Going to Rain Today," which also swings on a fulcrum.  The first half of the song describes interior bleakness:

Broken windows and empty hallways
A pale dead moon in the sky streaked with gray
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it's going to rain today.

Here, "Human kindness is overflowing" is sarcasm, as indicated by both the music accompaniment and the lines that follow:

Lonely, lonely
Tin can at my feet
Think I'll kick it down the street
That's the way to treat a friend

Human kindness is not overflowing.

Then comes the pivot.  The music changes, becomes upbeat, and similar words take on new meaning:

Bright before me the signs implore me
To help the needy and show them the way
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it's going to rain today.

Here, it's not the weather that will rain, but the human kindness that is overflowing, love filling the cup up to the brim and raining down on humanity.

Notice the repletion of imagery and themes here.  "Stones" starts with the hard imagery of rocks, but ends by noting that the stones provide shelter for "two wildflowers that grow."  "Suzanne" echoes the flower imagery:  "And she shows you where to look /Among the garbage and the flowers," here garbage providing shelter for the flowers.   "Suzanne" also repeats the imagery of stone in, "he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone".  Here, that weight is ambiguous, depending on how you read the lyrics.  The line could mean, his wisdom sank unnoticed by those that executed Him.  Or, as the "you" in the song seems to refer to the speaker, as we don't all know a "Suzanne," it can also mean his that His presence sank deep into the speaker's soul with great redeeming weight, which is how I read it.

Although Diamond is Jewish, I would argue that in purposefully selecting the songs he has chosen, Diamond is setting up Christ as a symbol for human redemption, which is carried to its climax in "I Am, I Said."

Diamond begins by comparing his new home of L.A. with his roots in New York, saying that he feels "lost between two shores."  Although this is clearly biographical and must be taken literally, I will argue that he extends the literal image out into a metaphor for the human predicament.  We are all lost between two shores.  We are here in this temporal world, "among the garbage and flowers" as noted in "Suzanne," but we also have a divine, spiritual origin that deep down we can't forget, which leaves us feeling lost, ghostlike, unreal, like Christ, "almost human" and yet "almost divine," "lost between two shores."

And so we cry out--not to other men--but to the void, the divine, the spark that brought us into being because the "emptiness deep inside" calls us back to our true home, that distant memory before we were here.

In U2 at the End of the World, Bill Flanagan makes light of Bono's claim that Neil Diamond is a serious song writer. 

Bono looked down his nose at my sarcasm and asked, "Do you know what 'I Am, I Said' is all about?

Flanagan spews out the surface meaning with the depth of understanding of a Pharisee, giving the literal background which inspired Diamond to write the song with little awareness that poetry gains weight as it is written that moves it beyond the initial impulse in scope.

Bono, not flinching, asserts, "God is described as the great I am.  So, in that song Diamond is calling out to Jehovah.  'I am, I said," means, 'God, I said.'  To who?  To no one there!  And no one heard at all, not even chair!  Do you see?  It is a song of despair and lost faith by a man calling out to a God who isn't interested!"

I agree.  Well, mostly.  If you take only "I Am, I Said" by itself  that is true.  It is Christ calling out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" before being transformed.  But, taking in all of Stones it is the calling out to God in pain the moment before rebirth.

It matters not that Diamond is Jewish.  Poets borrow metaphors all the time.  Christian poets tapped into Greek mythology for centuries.  Besides Jews do believe in Christ--they just don't believe he has already been born and died; but the idea of rebirth out of hardship is nothing new to them. 

In "Yahweh," Bono puts it this way:

Take this shirt
Polyester white trash made in nowhere
Take this shirt
And make it clean, clean
Take this soul
Stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul
And make it sing, sing

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still, I'm waiting for the dawn

It is almost as if Bono said to himself, alright the critics won't take "I Am, I Said," seriously because they won't take Neil Diamond seriously, I'll show them.  I'll write my own "I Am, I Said," and they will take that seriously because "I Am Bono."

Of course I don't really think Bill Flanagan is an idiot.   I think his U2 at the End of the World is a fine book.  But, Flannigan is just one among many who for some bizarre reason are out to stone one of our finest song writers, Neil Diamond.  Perhaps some day he will see the errors of ways and tap into the beauty of Stones.  There is certainly sustenance there for those willing to listen.

 

 

Winter into Spring: A Photo Journal

Living at Dry Creek so far has not turned out like I planned.  My health is unpredictable.  Generally, I seem to be getting better, but the pain is still up and down, and doctors don't what causes it.  One obnoxiously arrogant ass even told me I was crazy.  Anyway, for about a year and half, I've been confined mostly to my yard.  Although the creek is just across the road that goes up to Mom's, I seldom see it as it hurts too much to go down the steep slope and back up again; the pain doesn't  necessarily come that day, but a day or two after.

So, my plans for a great expanse of gardens has been put on hold.  I hope only temporarily, but after a year and half, I may have to start being a little more realistic.

Yet, even from my recliner, I have an amazing view.  Seeing deer and wild turkey is a daily thing, and even though I can't get down to see the creek that often, I know it's there.  In April, during high water, it's easy to hear it from my front porch.  The stars at night are brilliant; there is often the smell of cottonwood and creek bottom.  I can, I guess, live with an empty field, if the gardens never get planted in full.

Snow is a profound thing--especially deep, heavy snow.  Luckily, my brother Lloyd has stepped in to keep the roads clear and I have been able to simply enjoy its beauty.

 

 

Central Utah is changing.  During winter inversions, pollution leaks down from the Wasatch Front and smogs up our once pristine skies.  As I commute to work each day, I'm not helping the problem.  It brings a deep sadness.  Environment matters.  Our spiritual selves are not separate from our surroundings.  I'm not sure why people don't get that.  It's not just about Will we obliterate ourselves or kill off the polar bears?--it's also about, "Can you see clearly?  Does walking outside make you feel alive inside?  Do you feel a profound connection with what's going on around you?"  Pollution veils our connection with creation.  It is anti-spiritual.   

 

 

Yet, I count myself lucky.  On a whim we can roast marshmallows over an open fire on cold, windy March night (or just about anytime).  And oh those night skies!  

 

 

I'd rather not commute, but if one has to commute, an empty highway is the way to do it.  I don't love big, agribusiness, like modern dairy farms, but rural America is where it's at.  Out here, where space is big, and noise subtle, there is room for the mind to sit down on an old tree stump next to you and have a conversation.  Neighbors may be lacking, but in the absence of heaping humanity, there is the self talking to the self, and in the process a coming to know what really matters.

 

And occasionally I do get down to that creek that became my friend long ago when Dad purchased this property.  It still churns magically clear over stone and will still do so long after I'm gone.

 



 

There is the passing of the days, the constant change in light, the handing of day over to night.

 

 

 There is the change of the seasons--winter melting into spring.  The rise of the snow line and the return of green.

 

 

  

There is warm sunlight on an exposed wall--how it feels to stand there, sheltered from the last of the winter wind. 

 

There is the return of water, of light and sky pooled on the ground, or spun like angel's hair in narrow, rocky ravines.

 

 

And there is the pasture, open space, dreams. 

 

 

 



I Am at Heart Pontius Pilate: Knowing This May Save Me

I am at heart Pontius Pilate.  I not only know through pure intellectual reasoning that the message of Jesus, if accurately followed by the masses, would lead to world peace--which should be enough in and of itself to transform me into a disciple, whether he is the literal, only begotten son of the living God or not.

But, I have also received personal revelation that He is indeed what He claimed--the literal, only begotten son of the living God.

Of course, I am also aware some of the loudest Christians, many of which are right-wing politicians and their followers,  are not very Christian at all.  Their claims do not match their actions; their words do not match His words as recorded in the four gospels.

But that is but a distraction and has absolutely nothing to do with my Pontius-Pilate heart.  It's wanting to avoid the ridicule of the crowd that makes me a coward.  It is my desire to maintain the type of peace desired by the world, which is not true peace, but rather apathy--a call to silence and inaction--that makes me like Pontius Pilate.  It's my desire to be content with the status quo, to take the path of least resistance, to not be a martyr for any cause.  True discipleship requires personal change, which is hard work.  It requires taking unpopular stands.  It requires losing oneself, ones ego, and in a sense becoming transparent, so God can work good through you.  Sometimes, unfortunately, it requires sacrificing your own life.  Mahatma Gandhi may have been Hindu, but he was more Christian than most of us because he was willing to push the justice of Christ to that point that requires a choice.

Christ requires a choice.  A friend of mine recently lent me a wonderful book, Things of Redeeming Worth by H. Curtis Wright.  In it Wright describes Christ's description of the Pontius Pilates of this world: 

We should realize that those who espouse this philosophy are apparently naïve enough to think it will actually work.  They don't seem to realize that Christ condemned it severely as a way of thinking.  He told the neutral church at Laodicea, for example, "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot:  I would thou wert cold or hot.  So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth" (Rev. 3:15-16).  Jesus is saying that people like this make him sick.  They nauseate him.  That word "spue," you know, does not mean "spit"; it means "vomit," "regurgitate," "throw up!"  And those same people forget another saying which is recorded five different times in the scriptures where the Lord has said in substance, "He that is not for me is against me (see Matt 12:30; Mark 9:40; Luke 9:50, 11:23; 2 Ne. 10:16)." (Wright, 39-40)

This is because the message of Christ is justice and neutrality is the enemy of justice.  In a neutral world the message of Christ cannot be carried out.  Stability in a wicked world is, well, wickedness.  Gandhi had to upset the status quo to bring the justice of Christ to the untouchables.  He knew that the real enemy of India was not England, but the people of India themselves.  He understood that social change could not occur without spiritual change, that you can't win a revolution playing the enemy's game because the real enemy is not outside, but inside, in the heart where Pontius Pilate is willing to turn Christ over to the mobs in order to avoid ridicule or a loss of status.

And that is where I am.  And that is where I do not want to be, for I know Christ comes as a knife.  Evil is real.  Sooner or later we must choose ultimately who we will serve.

This is what I know:  God is real.  I have felt his presence.  Today, in church, a sixteen or seventeen year old boy gave a short talk as a "youth speaker."  In my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints, members of the congregation, not the clergy, usually give the spiritual messages in church, and each Sunday two of those speakers are youth.  Anyway, as this young man delivered a very spiritual message, I literally saw a glow around him, which I know was the Holy Ghost.  I don't know why I could see it, but I do know I did, and it is not the first time I've seen that glow.

I saw that same glow as a child once when a woman was giving a talk on baptism.  Later, in college, when I was no longer active in church, and learned color theory, I attributed that glow to the fact that speakers often are wearing a dark color, blue or black, and are standing in front of a white wall.  Sure enough, there is a natural glow around dark objects set against white.

But that is not the glow I witnessed today--there is no comparison in the intensity.  The two speakers that followed this young man also wore dark suits and there was no glow.  What I saw, without doubt, was the Holy Ghost guiding this boy's words.

I have felt that myself when I was speaking--when I could hardly speak what I needed to say because the spirit was so strong within me, and yet I knew what I had to say was not coming directly from my own mind, but that it was being guided for the benefit of someone in the audience.  I've also felt that a couple of times while writing.  However, I've never felt that at school, teaching, as much as I enjoy my job.

I've also had a gut feeling that Martin Luther King's, "I Have a Dream" speech came from such a place.  As articulate as he was, I do not believe that speech is the rhetoric of a gifted man.  It is scripture.

Ultimately, I believe in scripture.  I believe God speaks to man.  I have seen Him speak to others by actually witnessing the Holy Ghost guide their words, and I have felt Him guide my own words.  I believe in the four gospels; I know, regardless of how much later they were written, or who they were written by, that they are the words of Christ, and that if each of us, in our own life, will do better tomorrow than we did today at following those words, the world will not only be a better place, but will eventually will be a perfect place.  The words of Christ, if followed completely, can only lead to perfection.

I know that will not directly happen.  Satan knows too well that most all of us are much more like Pontius Pilate than we care to be.  Pontius Pilate was way more like Pontius Pilate than he cared to be, which is why Christ demonstrated empathy and understanding when he said, "he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin," to console Pilate's tortured soul.

If we choose to be like Pontius Pilate, it will not be Christ who ultimately condemns us but our own conscience.  As I know too well where my heart is as a natural man, I record this testimony here, publically, to make it harder for me to retract into the shadows when someone is literally or metaphorically executed for standing for truth.  Because honestly, I'm not sure that without some practice, that I'm strong enough to hide my Jewish neighbor when the Nazi's are at my door.  I'm not sure I'm even strong enough to lovingly challenge my other neighbor, especially if he's basically a good guy, when he embraces Nazi rhetoric.  And as this election is showing, that world where I may have to make a stand for the justice Christ demands may not be too far off.

Knowing I am Pontius Pilate at heart may be my only salvation.  It is difficult to avoid what we do not know about ourselves.

Worm Hole

I try to convince myself

this is the good time--

the music has stopped;
there is the rattle
of ice, the dangle of
                                 conversation.

There is you--

in that soft pink sweater
and dimpled smile,
eyes all a glitter,

but it's only sparks of light
dancing the surface,
everything below
is stone blue ice
that looms towards
my Titanic heart.

I'm jealous--of everything:
of your density,
that everyone here
knows you as well as I.
You, my wife,
the stunning white weight
of my life.

I'm jealous
of these painters,
these poets,
these writers
who flock around
your jeweled presence
to take refuge from the blue
abyss that is
our lives.

I hate how my words never
come together
with enough force
to implode
the lies.

Yet, I know
there is an unseen wonder--
a small but significant canyon
just beyond the endless suburban
sprawl and nylon skies
where a hawk
still does fly.

And there is a narrow wash--a slot
canyon carved through time.
A great myth is buried there
under the coral sands--the song
of a great flood, of a great
sacrifice, of a great love.

If the right poet
were to find it--the right
rhythms, the right breaths--
capture the terrible currents,
the great horror,
the tremendous sacrifice, especially
the Christ-like love displayed
in the aftermath--

well maybe, somehow
these empty evenings
of articulate conversation
would mean something.

Therefore, I
like the others
hang on & grasp
for the right line
to end the endless arctic
of our lives.

© Steve Brown 2016

Recently, for whatever reason, I've begun to dream alternative lives.  This poem came from a dream I had last night.  It evolved as I wrote it, so it isn't the dream, but it's not too far off.  The dreams are always centered around an imperfect world with lots of pain and heartache, but I always wake up feeling that everything is alright, it's just life. 

The Myth of the Dot ("Little Wonders" by Rob Thomas).

Photo by Rio Brown

 

Spring fever and heavy cold is not a great combination.  To make things worse, my brother asked me to go on a long drive deep into nowhere, but I have deadlines and commitments.  Not quite ready to face them, I went looking for a poem about unquenchable desire, what I used to call the forever search, captured magnificently in Bob Seger's "Fire Inside."

I found some old poems that focused on that theme to be sure.  My life was once driven by the need for escape, a constant hunger for something else.

But somehow I've stepped through that door and into another reality.  Sure, I still sometimes want to hit the open road.  I still long for quiet, dark corners of an empty bar, even though I don't venture into such places anymore.  Coffee always has a hand on my shoulder while it whispers in my ear, Go ahead have just one sip, which I don't do because I honor my religion.

But the void no longer calls me to fill it.  There simply isn't that much left to fill.  God has taken residence and I am satisfied.  So instead, I was drawn to a poem I'd completely forgotten about:

The Myth of the Dot

It's a dark and rainy day.
A line of twenty or more ATVs
roars up Canyon Road,
headlights dancing
off the splashing rain.

Everyone wears matching
green and yellow
fluorescent plastic.

Everest and I go outside
to watch the tourists
ruin our way of life.

When they are gone,
he shows me his bug bite.

"You got bit by a mosquito."

"No, it's just a dot."

"How did you get it?"

"It just floated down from the sky
and got stuck.

Then someone glued it."

The poem was probably written the summer of 2004, and so Everest would have been four.  O how I loved our long job-free summers at Dry Creek.  Some of the magic was removed when we moved here, as it is now our standing place in life rather than a carefree retreat.  Still, the magic of small wonders remains.

Such Is the Life on the Edge of a Ghost Lake in the Middle of Nowhere: A Great Basin Journal Entry

Everest and I measured cold on our way back from his doctors appointment:  -4 out in the valley, and that was at 5:30 in the afternoon.  When it reached -1, I joked how it was warm enough to go to the beach.  And then, to his dismay, I realized we were on the beach--the 15,500-year-old beach of Ancient Lake Bonneville, which just happened to lap at the edges of where our little town now sits.  The boys get sick of it, but isn't it great, that while sitting on the edge of a cold, vast desert valley, our town is really a beach town? If the town had any imagination, we'd have a light house and oyster shops along a board walk.  But I seem to be the only one still living along the shores of a ghost lake, watching woolly mammoths graze. Everyone else is interested in growing alfalfa while weighing the pros and cons of occupying the BLM office or the national forest station.

By the time we got to town, it was zero.  As we approached Dry Creek, we stopped to say hello to Harold, Everest's "pet" eagle and his mate.  It was too dark to take pictures, but there they sat, regally looking out on the last of the sunset.

Harold - Photograph by Rio Brown

By the time we got to Dry Creek, it was 3 above.  I parked the van and went inside to get some warm water to thaw out the chickens' water dish.  Unfortunately, I found out their heat lamp was out.  I hoped the bulb had been knocked loose or that they'd somehow unhooked the lamp from the extension chord.  No luck.

I had to plow my way through 18 inches of snow to the trailer, where it's plugged in.  I found where the two extension chords meet, buried beneath the snow.  I unplugged it so that I could plug it into some Christmas light to check where the power failure was.  Again, no luck.  So I plowed through more snow to the outside of the trailer, where the plug had been knocked out.  "Easy enough," I thought, and plugged it back in. Wrong. No lights came on.  So, I decided to go inside the trailer and check the breaker.

Let's just say that it isn't easy to open a storm door out into 18 inches of snow.  The shovel, unfortunately was back at the house.

I returned with the shovel and did my best not to curse while shoveling the stairs and porch, and I did pretty dang good until I realized the trailer door was locked and that the keys were back at the house.

This time, I returned with the keys.  Luckily, the electricity was still on in the trailer, so nothing froze inside.  I checked the breakers, flicked a couple on and off, and checked outside.  Nothing.  Then I remembered that the test switch on the plug in the bathroom also controls the outside plug.  It had been tripped, and when I reset it, the Christmas light outside came back on.

I unplugged the Christmas lights and realized the connecting chord was buried in the snow.  More digging. The entire process took more than an hour.  All that work to get heat to chickens who no longer lay eggs because Rio's dog--let's just call him Satan--won't stop barking at them, and so they're in a frantic mess all of the time.

Such is the life on the edge of a ghost lake in the middle of nowhere.


  

Dreaming of Spring Daffodils and Fall Colors: Gardening During Seasons that Don't Require Supplemental Water

The greatest thing about winter other than the snow is the four idle months to think about spring. Even with work and a college class I'm taking, I still have more time on hand to dream than during summer days swallowed by watering.

Some health issues are causing me to rethink some of my garden plans for Dry Creek.  I just may not have it in me to drag hoses all over to water during the summer.

I always planned on water-wise gardening, and was going for Tuscan-style gardens, as they they require less water than say an English cottage garden, especially since some of our native species, such as rabbit brush, would look very natural in a Tuscan-style garden.

But as we receive almost all of our moisture during the fall, winter and spring, when it is too cold for most flowers, I'm beginning to rethink things a bit.

During the spring, we have more water than we know what to do with.  The snow comes and goes, as the temperature fluctuates, and March through early May, the fields look like Ireland, watered by the continual coming and going of the snow.

During the spring, the ground is moist, perfect for deer-resistant daffodils.
A patch in the old apricot orchard would be beautiful.

Also during that time, Dry Creek is anything but dry.  For a couple of months it froths and foams and a separated but underground-connected seasonal spring feeds our irrigation system though early July.

Marci by Dry Creek.   This is a drought year, so it's a bit lower than normal.

So, why not plan the major splash of splendor for the seasons when no supplemental water is needed?   I can't plant tulips because they are a favorite of the deer, but luckily deer have neither a taste for irises nor daffodils.

The other spectacular season here is fall.  We already have a canyon of oak and maple.  The soil is right, even up on top, and so strategically planted oaks and maple could create quite the fall show.  Oak here don't need supplemental water once established, and I'm pretty sure the irrigation from march to early July would be enough for the maples to get through the long, hot summer as that is what they must do down in the canyon.

Our natural fall colors.  The red is a maple, the orange an oak.

Summer then would be the time for a few small specialty gardens as well as the vegetable garden, which would be planted close by the house, so I wouldn't have as much walking to do.

Flowers in a portion of the vegetable garden--
this smaller area would continued be watered all year. 

These seasonal, water-wise gardens also wouldn't require much care.  Daffodils and irises are perennials and their broad leaves and showy flowers easily stand out even if grasses and natives weeds surround them. Planted randomly in bunches, they have a wild, natural look, and so weeds really wouldn't be distracting.

Letting Go: This Is It, This Is All I Need

I had a simple, profound realization today:  I am Mormon.  I know technically, I’ve been that since I was baptized at age nine, and as I was born into the covenant, in a more general sense, all my life.

But I did not stay on the path.  I’ve attended church steadily for at least the past fifteen years, and have had a strong testimony for the last five.

But, until this weekend, I don’t think I fully comprehended at a gut level that I believe.  Action and belief can only be separated for so long.

I guess, on some level, I knew I would always come to this place.  Although I definitely like the music of Yusuf Islam better when he was just Cat Stevens, I always understood him choosing his path to God over art, even though I don't share those same beliefs. 

I haven’t had a poem published in over ten years, so I’m not comparing  myself to Cat Stevens.  I clearly don’t have as much to give up, but I felt comfortable with not continuing with my MFA Creative Writing Program even though I was nearly finished because I knew it was drawing me further from where I wanted to be spiritually instead of closer.

But, until this weekend, I was still holding out for my dream—to be a well known writer.

Over the weekend, because of work reasons, we took two different cars to Saint George in order to celebrate  New Year’s and my son’s birthday.

We went to a family game center New Year's Eve to bowl and play games.  I couldn’t do much because I was in pain, so I just found a soft bench to sit on, and as I sat there I had this deep realization, this is it, this is all I need.  Not Fiesta Fun Center.  I’d much rather be in the woods.  But, location doesn’t matter.  I was with family and I knew my son was having a good time, much better than he’s had in a while, due to his own health problems.

What I realized is that this is it, this is all I need had nothing to do with my situation.  It had everything to do with my testimony in the gospel.  Anything else is just extras.

That’s when I truly realized I believe.  I drove home New Year's Day on cloud nine.  The feeling hasn’t left me.  But, as I said earlier, action and belief can only remain separate for so long.

So, I’m pulling a Cat Stevens.  Others might negotiate the worlds between their religious belief and art just fine.  I don’t necessarily think one excludes the other.  I hope not.  I’m certainly glad Bono is both a Christian and a rock star because I love U2.  We need art informed by religion.  But, personally, I do better spiritually when I don’t have to negotiate the gray areas between being an artist and a Mormon.

So, as of today, I’m choosing to focus on what I knew I was here for long before I came to this earth:  to work earnestly on being better.

I’ve always been good at adhering to the judge not least ye be judged part of the gospel, even when I was a drunk wandering the calles of Juarez, Mexico, looking for God in all the wrong places.

But I haven’t always been so keen to adhere to the restrictions—diet, moral, media, etc. placed on members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but that too is part of the gospel, to live in the world, but not be of the world.

Society tries to write off anyone who strives to live by a higher standard as being judgmental, but that is not true.  Gandhi was not judgmental in refraining from violence;  Martin Luther King was not judgmental in refraining from hate; a vegetarian is not judgmental in refraining from meat.

I am not writing off the world of literature, but from this day forward, I am defining myself first by what I have always known—that I am a child of God, born to fulfill my part in the following scripture:

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect (Mathew 5:48)

I know I will not obtain that in this lifetime, for I am very far from it, but setting myself upon the right path is not an act of ego, as the world would have me believe; rather it is an act of humility (about the first in my life)—because it is subverting my personal desires for something higher.

And I believe in a higher ground.  My favorite hymn is If You Could Hei to Kolab, which ends as follows:

There is no end to virtue;

There is no end to might;
There is no end to wisdom;
There is no end to light.
There is no end to union;
There is no end to youth;
There is no end to priesthood;
There is no end to truth.
There is no end to glory;

There is no end to love;

There is no end to being;
There is no death above.
There is no end to glory;
There is no end to love;
There is no end to being;
There is no death above.

I know my path towards that elusive, future goal is living the gospel more fully today, which includes saying no to some things, including some works of literature, some trains of thought, and some ways of expressing myself.  That may include, skipping over a poem by a favorite poet, or choosing to not read a post of a friend.  If that is snobbish, so be it.

 

One simply cannot live morally in an immoral world with arms wide open.  Selectivity is a vital part of spiritual growth.

 

As I've always had an overly large ego, and I guess I still do, I'll continue in that vein by associating myself with John Lennon, even though in this case, I'm giving up a dream of a fame I never obtained: