I Why? Why I?—Night Thoughts, Part I: Intellectually We Are Free to Believe (Science, Philosophy, Theism, Mormonism)

It’s 5:30 in the morning; I’ve been awake since 3:00.  It’s not often when my restless mind wakes me up in the middle of the night, but it’s useless to try to go back to sleep.  Night thoughts are too vivid, too alive, for me to sleep. 

In the past, when I haven’t listened well to who I am at the core, I have awoken at night from a terrifying dream to remind me of who I am.  Once, many years ago, I argued with God in my sleep for three nights in a row about creation.  I was sure we got here by chance; he was sure we didn’t.  I asked him big questions—ones I knew would stump him, for they surely stumped me.  For instance, how can evolution and a personal god—the only type of God I’ve ever been interested in (one of love, kindness and intimate involvement in my life)—coexist?  For if we evolved from single cell organisms over the eons, at what point was human consciousness born?  Could the same type of soul enter our primitive ancestors?  Was there a magic point where we were human enough to receive human souls?  And evolution, I insisted, has to exist, because our scientific knowledge of the genetic process allows us to clone sheep.  Evolution, at least at its most basic level, can’t be denied.  I was sure I had God there.

He made a counter-observation though, one I had never considered, at least not consciously.  It was a reprimand in the form of a rhetorical question.  He simply asked, “Who do you think you are, to believe you can understand a system you are part of better than I, the one who created it?”   But it was a reprimand from a god who knew me intimately because he understood I was at an intellectual impasse, that I couldn’t grow because I couldn’t deny science and I couldn’t make it work with my religion.

That night thought, which came in the form of a recurring dream, changed my life, for it allowed me to unify my analytical and mythical mind.  And it came to me at just the right moment, the moment I could not go on living without God even though in my mind he simply couldn’t exist.

It provided a metaphor.  The fish in the aquarium can learn his aquarium well, but he can’t know that there is a power plant somewhere generating electricity to be transferred over hundreds of miles by wires that lead into the house, travel through the walls, and come out at an electrical socket where the air pump that keeps him alive is plugged into.  And even if he were to develop an instrument that could trace that charge from the pump all the way back to the power plant, he still would not know what keeps him alive, because he wouldn’t know about the railroad that feeds the coal to the power plant, or the coal mine itself, or the plants that died millions of years ago to create that coal, because the fish in the fish tank can never know things outside his system.   We are no different.  All human thought leads to an impasse.  I’ll demonstrate that from both the creationism and evolution end.  Both paths are terrifying short.

Creationism.

Belief:  I am because God created me.

Challenge:  Who created God?

General Theist Belief:  God is eternal

Mormon Belief:  God has parents; procreation and souls are eternal.

Buddhist and Hindu Belief:  Souls are eternal and recycled.

However, none of these answers explain what started the chain reaction, what exactly is existence.  And no human thought ever will.  It is impossible to completely comprehend a system when you are part of it.

Evolution:

Belief:  I am because I evolved through a complex chemical chain reaction that began with the big bang.

Challenge:  What created the instability that led to creation?  Or in other words, who or what declared, Let there be light?

Belief:  It was inherent in the system.

Challenge:  Why?   There can be no change without a stimulus.  Inert remains inert unless acted upon. 

Therefore, perhaps the ultimate gift of life is that I am free intellectually to believe as I wish—at least as far as the big questions go.  No one has anything up on me.  While it is true that I cannot prove the existence of God, at least not intellectually, it’s equally true that you can’t prove he doesn’t exist.  Our current academic world would have me believe otherwise.   Belief is written off as ignorance—the act of a lazy mind, a childish mind, one that can’t face the grown-up thought that we are all alone in the universe.

I can switch that around quickly and say that unbelief is the act of a lazy mind, a childish one that can’t face the grown-up fact that analytical thought, though useful, is finite, while existence is infinite.  Therefore, to even begin to understand I why?; Why I? (as my old professor, Dr. Emory Estes phrased it), I must look for tools beyond scientific thought.

Mormonism is based on the promise that there is in fact such a tool: revelation.  Like all religions, we recognize there is a veil that keeps us from fully comprehending I why; why I intellectually.  But we also believe that the veil can be punctured, if we sincerely ask God for help with what we need most to survive. 

Mormonism is the answer one boy received to that question, I why?; why I?.  Young Joseph Smith was searching for his identity.  Particularly, he wanted to know which church he should join.  It’s best stated in his own words:

While I was laboring under the extreme difficulties caused by the contests of these parties of religionists, I was one day reading the Epistle of James, first chapter and fifth verse, which reads: If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upraideth not; and it shall be given him.

Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine.  It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart.  I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did: how to act I did not know, and unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I I would never know…” (Joseph Smith History 1:11-12)

 

Millions, including myself, have received that same answer.  But this is what I know for sure.  Not only can I not prove to you that Mormonism is true, I shouldn’t even want to—at least not intellectually.  Life’s greatest gift is to truly be able to believe as you wish about existence.  I am is the ultimate mystery, the ultimate gift—to live, to breath, to interact with the world around us.  If thought could take us to the origin, the Genesis, the active ingredient that moved an infinitely compressed universe to the infinitely large one that exists that ultimate freedom would be taken away from us, and with it, all thought.  Every great thought, one way or the other, has at its core—I why?; why I?  We think because we seek our beginning.

 

And yet, the answer cannot fully be revealed, at least not intellectually, for if it was, mortal existence would become meaningless.  We would know exactly what we needed to do to fulfill our purpose.  Striving would cease, and with it, growth.

And yet we are promised in James, if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upraideth not; and it shall be given him. 

Mormonism has so much faith in that scripture that it is really all the missionaries ask you to do:  Ask of God, find out for yourself, is this true?  Because the one way we are a terrifyingly original religion is that we do believe God does speak directly with mankind, one on one.

If what I want to share with you is good, you’ll know it, through a feeling, a prompting.  Not because of my intellect, not because of my goodness, or my actions (though, of course, these attributes help if I have them), but because somewhere in your heart, you have already asked God for the answer. 

And if you don’t.  That is fine too.  We each have the ultimate pleasure of believing as we wish.   So much good has been added to this world by the simple quest to answer I why?; why I

I blog my religion, not to convert so much, but to keep that door open—to say, you will not write me off without even knowing who I am, you will not extinguish me because of my label, I will put my foot in the door, keep it cracked open, because I have good things to share.

Isn’t that why anyone writes, to bear witness, to say I am.  Perhaps the need to do that is infinitely more important than we can ever begin to comprehend—whether we be Jewish, Christian, Islam, Buddhist or Mormon.  Maybe the soul, whatever that is, is that spark that ignited the whole big bang—the great I Am rocketing out, stretching an infinitely compressed idea into a great dialogue that will never end--infinite choices, infinite actions and reactions, natural laws, natural consequences, world after world, creation after creation, molding us into something great beyond our wildest dreams.

Well, it’s enough to wake you up at night, to say the least.

The Affordable Care Act, the Government Shut-Down and Three Fundamentals of Representational Democracy

Sometimes passions bury the obvious.  Sometimes allegiance to a specific doctrine makes us lose sight of our overarching shared belief.  Sometimes we become so set on achieving a particular ends, we forget means matters—that a victory won unjustly is no victory at all, because it lowers the standard for all.  At such times, it is useful to strip things down to the bare-bones, look at things simply, objectively, while being honest about our own angle, our own intent.

Our country is currently at such a crisis.  Many conservatives truly believe the Affordable Healthcare Act, or Obama Care, as they call it, is fundamentally un-American.   Others, liberals, like me, believe that universal healthcare, in contemporary society, is essential for true liberty.  However, I’m not writing to argue either side of this debate.  Rather, I’m writing to remind others, what so many seem to have forgotten, some fundamentals of representational democracy. 

Fundamental #1:  Representational democracy requires two or more political parties to survive.  If you are liberal and want to eradicate conservatives, you are essentially un-American.  The same holds for conservatives.  I grew up in an era under Regan and Bush, Sr. when conservatives described me as the “L-word,” as if the “L-word,” like the “F-word” was so bad you shouldn’t say it.  (It may be worth mentioning here the F-word, creates life, and except how it’s used, isn’t ugly at all).  None-the-less, context is everything, and the attempt during the Regan era was clearly to marginalize and un-Americanize me.  Unfortunately, for too many years liberals accepted that label and ducked the very word that defines their ideals.  Although the “L-word” put-down has been dropped (primarily due to liberals finally standing up and saying, “Yes, and so what?”), conservatives continue to paint liberals as immoral and un-American.  I don’t get why—without me and other liberals, Democracy falls, and with it falls conservatism.  Only a one-party dictatorship will remain. 

You may not like that I’m for universal healthcare, but my belief does not make me un-American.  I am proud that in the heat of battle my party hasn’t sunk to calling conservatives the “C-word.”  We may not agree on healthcare, but we can still respect each other as humans, as Americans.

Fundamental #2:  In a representational democracy, elected representatives should vote according to the wishes of their constituents or according to their conscience.  I expect my legislators to vote one of two ways 1) primarily they should vote the wishes of those who put them in office; 2) However, as I want men and women of integrity to represent me, I’m okay with my representative occasionally voting against my wishes and in accordance with his/her own conscience.  If I don’t like how he or she votes on a particular issue, I can vote for someone else next time.

The Affordable Care Act was legislated when the Democrats had a majority in both houses as well as the office of President.  Voters at the time blamed Republicans for the recession and voted for Democrats.  Universal health care was part of the party’s platform.  It was not snuck in after the election.  I voted for Obama specifically because I support universal healthcare.  It would not make sense for a congress with a Democratic majority in both houses as well as a Democrat in the White House to push through anything but a liberal agenda.  It would be a betrayal of those who put them in office.

Now opinions do change, especially with big interests groups spending millions to influence public opinion, and just because voters thought they wanted universal health care doesn’t necessarily mean they should be stuck with it.  That change in opinion was reflected in the mid-term elections and the second-term presidential election of Obama, where Democrats lost control of the House as well as seats in the senate.

However, the reality is that so far Republicans have not been able to garnish enough support to repeal the Universal Health Care Act through the process established under the constitution.   As President Obama holds the veto, it is very unlikely they could do it under his administration.

So what?  There is always the next election cycle.  Does any political party, or group within a political party, have the right to hold the economy hostage if its demands aren’t met?  If so, every time the minority party controls the House, the federal government will come to a halt until the demands of the minority party are met as funding is used as an unconstitutional veto from the house.   If that happens, democracy, as established under the constitution, will cease to exist.  We will have rule by the minority rather than the majority.

Fundamental #3:  It is the job of the U.S. Supreme Court to determine the constitutionality of laws:  The constitution carefully established checks and balances between the three branches of government and delegated the Supreme Court as the body to determine the legality of laws passed by congress.

That does not mean I believe the Supreme Court always carries out its mission.  For instance, I don’t believe the “separate but equal” ruling for segregation under Plessey vs. Ferguson was constitutional.  But again, we have checks for that.  As justices die or retire, they are replaced with new ones, appointed by the president and confirmed by the congress.  Also, the constitution can be amended.

The Affordable Care Act was determined to be constitutional by the Supreme Court.  That may not always be the case.  There are reversals of decisions.  But for now, The Affordable Healthcare Act is the law of the land which has been upheld by the Supreme Court as constitutional.

I don’t write anyone off as unpatriotic for being against the Affordable Healthcare Act.  If you are against it, you should fight it.  But here are some heavy questions to ask:

1)       Do you want an America where the budget is held hostage to keep a law from being implemented that was passed by a party as part of its platform and therefore represents the majority of voters at that time?

2)      Do you want an America where a small minority is able to nullify law and the Supreme Court’s ruling simply to advance minority’s creed?

Be careful how you answer those questions.  The pendulum always swings.  The last will be first and the first will be last.

You see, whether you realize it or not, the Tea Party members, who participated in the scheme to defund the Affordable Healthcare Act are not only holding the budget hostage, they are holding the constitution hostage, and if Obama negotiates with them, he is setting up a precedent that not only will Republicans use again, but Democrats too.

You can be a conservative and a great American.

You can be against the Affordable Care Act and be a great American.

Whatever your views, I wouldn’t want an America without you, because I know Democracy demands a multiplicity of views passionately argued and fought for on the political playing field, both in Washington and around the dinner table.

But, if you think that by supporting the hijacking of the budget by the Tea Party you are somehow supporting a glorious revolution against a liberal tyranny, returning to the glorious roots of the constitution, you are seriously mistaken.  What you are actually supporting is the nullification of the representational democracy envisioned by the forefathers as symbolized by the constitution.

I don’t doubt the integrity of anyone, even the Tea Party Representatives in the House.  But, I do know this:  sometimes we can get so involved in winning a specific battle, we lose sight of the banner we are fighting for.  That banner for America is not the liberal agenda, not the conservative agenda, not the flag, but representational democracy itself, symbolized by the constitution, but not necessarily protected by it.  We must protect democracy ourselves by controlling our passions, listening to the opposition and being willing to admit when we were wrong.  Without that ability, there is no Democracy.

I sincerely hope the current Republican Party comes to its senses, because although I’m a stanch Democrat, I can’t envision an America where everything doesn’t swing on the vote, which implies the need for a second party.  And, if this defunding stunt succeeds, that is no longer the case.  Laws that are not supported by a minority will simply be defunded as long as the minority can take control of one of the houses.  Our vote in the general election will no longer count.

That is a far bigger issue than Obama Care or even the budget.  Some rebels are patriots.  Others are simply hoodlums not man enough to play by the rules of the game.  They, themselves, may not even realize they have sunk to delinquency.  None the less, I’m not walking on by as they lute and pillage my home without saying something. 

© Steve Brown 2013

 

Writing Cherry Creek Peak: A Hiking Narrative, Part I (Zen, Writing, Teaching, Hiking, Dooms-Day, America)

View from Cherry Creek Peak.  Photo by Rio Brown

1.        A Long-Winded Discussion—Blah, Blah, Blah—on Zen and the Art of Writing

Because everything connects to everything, it’s difficult to know where to begin a narrative.  This one was to start in an onion field one searing September afternoon.  Then it was to begin one saturated night after a week of dense rain.  Now it will begin in my kitchen as five teenagers sit around the table, view Edward Hopper’s Night Hawks on my computer screen, and frantically write noir narratives. 

The only difference: time.  By the time I got around to writing this hiking narrative, I was no longer in the same place mentally.  And that’s okay—it won’t be the same narrative, but it will still be fresh, vivid and real because I’m beginning where I’m at—now.   That, for me, is why outlines, except for certain tasks, don’t work.  They predetermine the outcome and the richness.  The excitement and power of discovering what you have to say happens outside the text.  The energy occurs while you’re planning, not writing, so the reader never gets to participate in the struggle,  the scuffle,  the dance—the work and play it takes to arrive at that one great moment of thought that makes the whole journey worthwhile. 

No one really wants to be told what to think anyway.  But they may not mind being invited into your brain—an act of voyeurism really—as you struggle for some semblance of coherence.  That is the magic of the Kerouac, of the Beats.  It’s not that they wrote better than previous generations; it’s that they were the first, besides William Carlos Williams, to fully invite us to come along. 

Here, as an experiment, I want to follow my three versions of this narrative just a ways.  Not fully, that would take too long, but far enough to see the path bend around an aspen grove and disappear into the mysterious light and shadow.  Then, to stand there, stop a minute, and imagine the final destination.

Version A:

No shade, that’s for sure.  Little slivers of onions poke through chalk-white alkali in rows that stretch across a monopoly board field.  Tumbleweed piled against barbed wire fence attest that the air did once move.  But the solid wall of stand-still air fortified beneath the blazing sun makes breeze seem as remote as rivers on Mars.  Sure the evidence is there.   Things were different in the past, but when weather is as vacant as the conscience of a corporate CEO, who cares what might have been witnessed in some great past?   The air is a standing wall and you’re under it gagging.

So I sit on my butt under a machine-gun sun and cut weeds away from onions with an exacto-blade while Rod explains the art of tagging, of bombing, of making ones mark. I don’t tell him that no matter how beautiful his outlaw murals are, if they’re painted without permission, they’re not more than a dog’s urine claiming territory.  I hold back because Rod is new, and the new ones are always a little unpredictable, even dangerous.  You don’t get sent to a boy’s home for thinking things through. You get there by doing really stupid stuff.

I think if I followed this version, the focus would be on heat and cool, dry and moist, stagnant and dynamic, lost and found.  I would no doubt reflect on my day job of working with youth who are struggling to find more viable versions of themselves, and how we all are, in a sense, doing the same.

Version B:

Oregon Coast.  That’s how it smells, how it feels—the night air soggy and moldy with life, toads rioting joy after a long, dry summer, little green blades jerking up through the mud under a muted moon, everything slightly misty as the steamy air settles down to dew overnight.  Cool, rich, clean—everything.

Only the dry yellow stubs of wild rye and cheat grass bony blue under the moonlight let me know this is not Oregon—well that and the scrub oak and juniper, oh and rabbit brush and snake weed.  But the rain is enough to make one dream of thick green farm fields, cheese and forest—forest and more forest.

I think in this version I would simply focus on the fecundity of life, the richness of being.  I think I would have very little philosophy to share and would just stick to what is there before me, write the moment to the best of my ability, invite the reader to experience a certain place on a certain day.   

 Version C:

This is how it always is.  You can always feel the energy.  There is nothing like it.  It works every time.  Fourth graders, teenagers, adults—it doesn’t matter.  When people are tricked into entering that moment of being there and listening to that other voice, that inner guide, direct them through a narrative that is magically opening before their eyes, writing for the moment becomes a drug, especially for those who disliked it previously. And even though I make it clear beforehand that they are to stop when I say stop, the hands keep going and some begging starts—can we finish the paragraph, can I do this again, I think I have a better way now, it just occurred to me…

Perhaps I should let it go on.  I know, for a while anyway, they will have a hard time recreating the situation for themselves, even though all it takes is a) giving the mind something unexpected to think about (so it doesn’t follow the same old pathways), b) setting up a sense of urgency (so there’s no time for self-censorship) and c) allowing crud to happen (so there’s no worry about what others will think).

In this case, I’ve projected Edward Hoppers Night Hawks onto the computer screen and given the following rules:  1) Keep your hand moving, 2) no erasing, 3) don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, etc., and 4) remember, you’re allowed to write the worst crap in America.  Because these are teenagers, who moments ago were chasing each other around the kitchen, laughing wildly and spewing soda all over the floor, I’ve added a fifth rule, no talking.  That’s it.  That’s all it takes to turn non-writers into writers.  But, except for Natalie Goldberg (who I’ve adapted my rules from), no one seems to know this. 

That is why I know this hiking narrative that I’ve assigned myself will go somewhere.  It has too.  It doesn’t matter which of the three ways I enter.  If I start in a solid moment, describe it well, and say to myself, now I’m going to stumble through the woods until I find point B, which in this case is the other side of Cherry Creek Peak in northern Utah, I will get there.  And I don’t have to worry if it is the best way to get there because there is no best.  No two journeys are alike.  There is only picking up your crap, putting it on your back and hitting the trail.  Some routs might be longer, might be steeper, might about kill you, might get you lost, wandering aimlessly for hours, wondering if you can ever get out of the tangle of thoughts you’ve created for yourself—which is exactly what’s happening here—but if you follow through, the outcome, especially the journey, is always worthwhile.  And since I’m not actually following the other two pathways, I’ll never know if I chose the right one.  And I don’t need to.  This journey will sustain me well enough to be the one.

Although I don’t necessarily endorse this approach to life, for writing, it is the way:  Just grab your crap and go.  

2.        The Types of Thoughts You Can Have While Ambling Through the Woods

The trail begins at the end of a rutted road in damp leafs scattered before a dry creek bed, which I guess, is usually running.  Jeff and Glen talk of heat, weeks of ninety-plus, even here in the Cache Valley, which is normally mild, even in July or August.  Or use to be.  Heat has become the new language of the west, drought and fire it’s most common literary forms.  Things just aren’t the same.  Everyone knows it, yet it is here that global warming is denied most—a propaganda scheme by liberals to undermine God-given liberties.  I don’t get it; it’s like living with cancer eating you and denying the decay.

It makes me sad to live among such grand people, knowing their lifestyles are being eroded by a diseased climate while they deny it.  Not these two, necessarily, although I don’t ask.  Out here, I’m a lone deer among wolves as far as politics go.  I keep my deer-self hidden and howl now and then like a wolf.  Besides, I have a gas-guzzling super van—Crystal Blue Persuasion—so who am I to preach?  It’s like a cannibal preaching vegetarianism.  My excuse is that change, realistically speaking, must be legislated.  My one-in-billions carbon footprint won’t prevent global warming.  Again, another dangerous thought here, as this is the land of libertarianism.  And here, in the open spaces of the west, that feels right: just let everyone do their own thing.  That works well for a few thousand, not so well for billions.

Anyway, today is moist and cool.  Why think about dead, dying, sick forests going up in hurricane flames if you don’t have to?  Stick to the trail, the here and now, the dense oak, maple and box elder forests crammed in a short, narrow canyon with Hindu Kush slopes on three sides.  Okay, I exaggerate some, but even from here, I can tell we will soon be headed up, and up, and up!

Photo by Rio Brown

But for now, I can amble up the spongy, black dirt trail and divide my time up between reading who- loves-who carved into aspen trunks, enjoying the little blue wild flowers and bright green mosses, or I can think about the book that will end my welcome here in the greatest state in the nation—Christ was a Democrat.  It won’t get me any gold stars with my Arizona in-laws either.  But, analyzing the text, it’s true.  And since no one else seems to be pointing out the obvious—Christ wasn’t a racist, didn’t despise the poor, and wasn’t always looking out for the interests of those already in power—perhaps I should point that out, and while I’m at it, remind my fellow Mormons that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, based on their practices, probably wouldn’t have been big supporters of Rush Limbaugh.

Oh no—I’ve done it now, wiggled my way out of my wolf-suit and shown I’m really a deer.  No, believe me—that’s not true.   Watch me howl!    Ky-yi-yippi-yi, you long-haired Obama supporters ’er gonna die!

Now why would I want to write a book that would rip out my welcome mat to paradise?  Better just focus here on this trail.   Does it really matter if my nearest neighbors glisten when they listen to Rush, when they’d do just about anything to help me, or anyone else they came in contact with, for that matter?  But would they, if they knew I was a Democrat?  That, I guess is the heart of things.  Identity will find a way.  The seed will break open, the sprout will climb up, poke his tender head up through the soil.  For a season, while young, he may even look like all the other young sprouts carpeting the forest floor, but sooner or later, each will announce individual intent—whether he be grass, penstemon, columbine or thistle.   The flute will flower gently.  The guitar will grind grandly.  I’m sick of being who I’m not.  I’m sick of conservatives claiming Christ as their own, chaining morality, beating it into submissiveness like a dog.  To be moral you must be fat, have a receding hairline, a shiny forehead, shop at Wal-Mart and support the NRA.  No dreadlocks, no RASTA, no tofu, no Opera, no egg plant, no wilderness, no bike trail, no hip-hop, no rap, no soul.  But I’m equally tired of liberals writing off religion as ignorance, revelation as insanity and believing in their heart of hearts that every conservative is a Nazi deep down in his soul.

Everywhere I turn, the fabric of America is coming apart.  I want to soar like an eagle, but the higher I go, the better I see the rift spreading, the chasm opening, the void flowering like a galaxy spiraling out between us, a big bang of Nada zipping us away from each other as we become distant dots screaming hateful political propaganda across the eons, which due to the distance, fizzles out in the frozen night. 

A song comes to mind:  There’s always something cooking; nothing in the pot. A song comes to mind:  These are dangerous times.  To think is to dig your own grave.  Better walk gently through the forest, keep down low in the undergrowth, stay in the shadows, be ye deer or wolf. 

Whatever you do, don’t head for the peak, don’t lift your hands to God, don’t yodel from the gut, don’t stand on the pinnacle and scream I AM!  Riffles are loaded.  Triggers are cocked.  No matter who you are—they will shoot you down. 

3.        Rest

Okay.  Wo horsey.  Good golly miss molly.  Where did that come from?  No wonder I need a rest.  Better not put that in the narrative.  Flags, flags, flags for the NSA.  “Rio, get out the trail mix.”

I sit down on a boulder.  The others have been waiting here, maybe fifteen minutes, maybe hours.  I’m lagging, that’s for sure.  But who wouldn’t be?  After that.  Does everyone’s mind spiral out of control that way?  I look around.  Thinning trees, mostly just pines now, some aspen.  Alpine flowers.  It’s clear every way but back is up.  I love the sweet of the M & M’s against the salt of the peanuts.  I love the coolness of the water.  I love that a mind, lost on a runaway train, can sit down and rest, once it’s distracted.  How many family arguments would flutter away if even just one person in the house could just stare at a crumb on the floor or talk to angels long enough for the mind to forget it was right and had to prove it.

That is why, despite the fact it always nearly kills me, I love hiking.  You’re there talking with your own mind for so long, it eventually wears out, and finally, you’re just there in the landscape.

Resting.

A resting point before the long ascent.  Photo by Rio Brown

(The Journey will be continued)

 

 "Outside" by the Fixx, Live 1983

 

 



Cottonwood, An On-line Novel: Chapter 2 - Light and Shadow Play (fiction, regionalism, the west, writing process, cinematography, "Curtains" by Elton John)

Chapter 2:  Shadow and Light Play

Photo by Rio Brown

Shadows of vine move across four slanted squares of moonlight on a worn wood floor.  A bug crawls the last patch of moon-glow, heading towards a pair of slippers and a chrome walker by the foot of a bed.  Rick Carter lays on his back, part of the lump of shadow before a four-paned window and stares up at the ceiling where a softer, more forgiving play of light and shadow mirrors that stark shadow dance across the floor.  If one moved closely, one would see that even in this light his eyes are a soft-gray, the color of cottonwood reflected in shallow water—a story almost there, but not quite, pebbles of reality breaking through the narrative like a bony knuckle or elbow pressing against paper-thin skin.

But, if one were to view the movie projected by his mind’s eye onto the ceiling, one would see something quite different—vibrant tufts of green standing high above a creek bed, reflected in a deep warm golden water textured with river-rock showing through, intense sunlight sparking and dashing as two inner-tubes carried two bare-backed boys downstream towards a spiraling metal culvert.

“Hey, hey, here we go!” would cry the first.

“Be sure to duck low, low,” would cry the second.

Here the camera would be mounted on the front of the second tube.  There would be a dip, a bit of water would splash on the lens as the first tube disappeared into the shadows.  Then there would be brief blackness and tinny watery echoes as the boys yelled “Hello, Hello” and echoes bounces all around the spiraling metal tunnel.

Then the screen would snap to blinding white before slowly coming into soft focus.

There would be flowers along the banks.  Not wild, but garden flowers, irises, gladiolas, petunias and the viewer would slowly realize the boys were now floating through a back yard.

  

But this is perhaps the limits of cinematography.  It gets clunky when it comes to conveying inner thoughts.  Perhaps a close-up on young Rick’s face could convey the mixture of anxiety and excitement he felt, but probably not.  Maybe, if one cut to a new scene—

Low camera angle.  Two girls in their early teens jump on a trampoline.  One is slightly chubby with shoulder length black hair and wears the nondescript clothing—shorts perhaps, and a t-shirt.   The other has long, blond hair, big round sunglasses, glossy pink lips and wears bright yellow overalls.  As she jumps, you see her confidence, her style, in the way she arches her back and kicks her legs up behind her until her feet touch her butt.  In the final jump, the girls rise towards the sun isolated in a deep blue sky, stop in a freeze-frame, hair extended heavenward, as the intense sunlight bleaches out the edges of Kristi’s blond hair before the scene dissolves into white and refocuses on diamond reflection sparking off a ripple in the creek before Rick’s eyes.

Now, perhaps, the right expression on Rick’s face might convey the dread and joy Rick felt on this river journey through such sacred land.

Moonlight spreads across Rick’s wrinkled face, a thin, closed smile on his dry, papery lips.  That, he thinks, is the beauty of young love—totally unconditional.  As we get older, we expect more.  This is not bad.  If it were not so, even more of us would find ourselves in abusive relationships, but there is nothing grander to the heart then loving purely, unconditionally, expecting nothing in return beyond the pure unadulterated joy of worship.  We experience this once, only once, if we’re lucky, for it comes from a place of innocence and cannot be sustained by experience.

That is what I could never convey to you, Marie.  Oh, how you hated my telling that story to little Ethan and Conner. You’ll make them sexist, make them shallow, you’d say.  But I knew you were jealous.  You shouldn’t have been though.  What makes a once-upon-a-time sacred is just that.   It was once upon a time.   Why in the hell am I just figuring this out?  I never meant to hurt you, not even a little.  You just weren’t my once-upon-a-time.  How could you be?  We had bills, boys, hours and hours of work, dirty dishes, church.   Real love and once-upon-a-time love aren’t the same thing.  And they shouldn’t be.  That is the part I left out, the most vital part.  No wonder Ethan is so damn screwed up!  He’s chasing once-upon-a-time.

Rick throws off his bedcovers, agitated, swings his feet down to the floor.  As he moves his feet along the scuffed hardwood surface, the viewer can’t help but notice his long, dirty, chipped toenails and veiny foot, such a contrast to the peaches and cream complexion of Kristi’s heart-shaped face in the trampoline scene.  Finally, one foot finds a slipper.  The camera zooms in and juxtaposes the plush padded fabric against the frail, thin skin.  The other foot finds the other slipper.  There is a shot of his hand reaching for his walker.  Vine shadows play the wall as the scene dissolves.

© Steve Brown, 2013

Working Days:  Journaling Cottonwood.

Perhaps we all experience life quite differently.  Some through dialogue, some through narrative, some through smell or touch.  I have always lived life through scenes, through vignettes, snippets of a larger, untold story, and most of these are pretty much silent.  As Marci can testify, I’m not much of a listener.  I had a creative writing teacher who encouraged us to go to diners like Denny’s and take out a notebook and record conversation.  I probably needed that.

But instead, I would notice the reflection of the waitress across the room on the coffee cream canister and think now that’s a story.  Just describe the light, her movements, the expression on her face.  Who cares what she has to say?  Her body language says it all.

I’m not necessarily good at getting that down.  But if I can pull this novel off, that is how it will have to be, in short vignettes with limited audio, for that is the only world I know.  I love sound, am a huge fan of music, but it’s the patterns, the light and shadow textures of words, not the meaning, that matters.   It would be amazing to pull off an entire story of random noises.  Dishes clanking, chunks of conversation here and there, a random thought, all distorted like the reflection in a cream canister or Lennon’s Revolution 9.  Probably not doable, of course, especially on the printed page—all the more reason to try.

Cottonwood, An On-line Novel: Chapter 1 - Porch Sitting and Year-Salvaging (climate change, fiction, regionalism, the west, writing process)

Chapter One: Porch Sitting and Year-Salvaging  

August 2043.  Late afternoon light slants through a window and ignites old telephone wires protruding from a turquoise clapboard wall.  The rectangle of sun continues down and bends at the black and white checkered linoleum floor.  Grains of dirt and particles of food appear unnaturally detailed. The front wheels of an aluminum walker move towards the back porch followed by black and red plaid slippers and veiny ankles.

Light on rusted screen.  Chipped paint.  Gray splintered wood.  A hand with knobbed knuckles turns the handle.   It creeks open.  The porch is big, screened, the woods beyond it blitzed by light and shadow.   Rick Carter wheels and shuffles towards the flamingo-pink rocking chair, slightly passes it, until his walker is a foot and half in front.  His spotted hands shake on the handles as he lowers himself gently down into the chair.  Light accents thin, gray wisps of hair and pale gray eyes.

Even though he sleeps much of the day now, the early morning and late afternoon is still his, as is his grandparent’s house.

Most everything else is gone now.  Marie.   The boys too, except on holidays when the house and property briefly fill with life—grandchildren rocketing through the woods on hovers, Danny and Courtney yelling at each other in the bedroom upstairs, his beautiful bright-eyed great granddaughter, Nevada, on his lap, looking up in amazement as he talks about the not-so-distant days of blue-ray, ATV’s  and the last sliver of glacier on Mount Lehi, or the more distant days of phonographs, 8-tracks and three feet of snow Christmas morning.

Rick stares out across the boulder-strewn, timber-tangled canyon towards the new paved walking trail beyond his fence line.  It’s been years since more than a few inches fell, he thinks, picturing deep black water puddled between snow-loaded stones, Boulder Creek sluggish after a heavy December snow.  No more.  However, winter rain, he had to admit, has its own charm.  It’s only the summer fires and floods that terrify him.  Luckily, Boulder Canyon has been spared from fire and only flooded badly three times.  The last two times though, the water receded just in time.

Visions of winter melt around the edges and bleed into summer.  His eyes focus on a woman and a child in the last direct sunlight of the day.  She is perhaps in her late twenties or early thirties, though it is so hard to tell now.  Everyone but the bed-ridden look so young, so vibrant.   Both she and her daughter, who must be around 5 or 7, squat by the creek.  The mom’s hair is pulled back in a ponytail and sunlight warms her left ear, cheek, neck and exposed shoulder.  She wears a lime-green sports bra and skin-tight bike shorts.  It’s odd, he thinks, how styles are like the seasons.  It could be the 80’s, he could be in Dallas watching Amber ride off into the woods near White Rock Lake for the last time.  And yet sunlight on her shoulder takes him to an even more distant time, to the time he stumbled upon Kristi undressing to go for a swim here, under the cottonwood, along the banks of the pond.

The pond is gone now, all but erased by the flood of eighty-three and totally buried by the floods of 2031 and five.  But she, he is sure, is in the same place Kristi slid off her shirt and jeans to reveal a bright yellow bikini before she and Connie went for a swim.  That was the last time he ever saw her.  She would have been sixteen, but he carried that image like a torch for years:  she reaches down, slender, delicate fingers grasping the bottom of a soft, blue and white football jersey, lifts it up over her head, releasing a stream of thick blond hair that glistens in the sunlight as her newly exposed shoulder is warmed by the late afternoon sunlight.  Fingers must undo jean buttons up front, but he doesn’t see that, only the cool blue shadows on her back and then her pants coming down, the amazing shock of bright yellow fabric and skin.

It sucks getting old, he thinks.  Every thought you think seems unnatural because a corpse shouldn’t desire.  Leave the yearning for the living.  How do you day dream when only death welcomes you?  Everyone else is just there to ease you into your coffin.  Someday, lady, that sweet child of yours will either put you in a home, or if you’re ornery enough to fight for your independence, drop in every two weeks to give you a shave, talk to you like a child, and then make hush-hush conversation in the other room with whatever relative is with her about their plans to bury you.

Maybe another flood wouldn’t be so bad, he thinks.  I could be pulled under a clog of cottonwood limbs, buried over with boulders and crud from upstream, my corpse resting in the cool moist earth until devoured by worms or speared by the young, vibrant root of a cottonwood yearning to stretch out his tender arms and embrace the universe by decomposing the last remnants of the dead.

Why do I ponder death as so final, he sighs and shakes his head, when I know otherwise?  And yet I do.  It is just too hard to visualize the hereafter.   Forgive me, Marie, forgive me.  I should be looking forward to meeting up with you, and instead I spend my days here, trying to dig my way back into the fallen trunk of my life like a carpenter ant drilling into a cottonwood.   For why?  I do not know.  Especially when my life really only started after meeting you.  Maybe it is recovery I want—I just don’t know—to salvage the years that could have just as easily been thrown away and make something meaningful out of them.  That is it!  To make Kristi and the cottonwood count when I know they don’t count for nothing at all.

That, my Dear, is art—the selfish act of restructuring reality into how it should have been while life continues to pass you by.  But after over thirty years of living with me, you know this better than I.

Working-Days—Journaling  Cottonwood

Mitchell and Grandpa cleaning around the cottonwood several years ago.

Writing is such a terrifying thing.  Even in fiction, each word opens up the inner world of the writer, making him or her vulnerable to others.  And there is something especially pompous about a novel, a claim that I’ve arrived that I know what I’m doing.  And what if one hasn’t arrived and the novel isn’t good at all?  No wonder every time I’ve started a novel I’ve quickly abandoned it.

But it shouldn’t be that way.  One should be allowed to learn to write good novels by writing mediocre or even bad ones first.  One should be able to follow an impulse, see if it will sustain itself or fizzle out.

This is one such impulse.  A week ago, I was traveling to St. George to pick up my boys who had spent the summer with their grandparents in Page and there was something about the light that made the cottonwoods stand out more than usual.

Flying by on the freeway, I looked out the passenger window and saw a chalky road, an old house and a cottonwood and I thought that right there is a novel.  I pictured the book jacket—a painted illustration in the regionalist style of the 1930’s-1940’s, something akin to the original jacket for the Grapes of Wrath and the tittle Cottonwood printed at the top in simple bold black letters.

I have no doubt Cottonwood as a book needs to exist.  I do, however, have doubts about my ability to pull it off.  I know I’m a strong poet and adequate essayists, but that’s as far as my confidence carries me.  But every time I decide to discount the idea of writing a novel I come to this:  do I really want to die without at least trying?

And the answer is no.  I think I have things to tell my children, my future grandchildren and great grandchildren—big things that won’t fit in a poem, won’t fit in a story, won’t fit in an autobiography—because there is some truth that can only be told by mythmaking--big narratives that combine God, soil, plant and people.  For me, specifically that means a truth which fuses the text of the cricket, the text of the dirt, the text of the coyote, the text of stone in cold creeks, the text of the cottonwood and the text of my people, small town Mormons living big lives outside the eye of the media.

Am I up to it?  Who knows, but why not try?

  

               

                  

   

Relocation Sunday (Rob Thomas, San Francisco, Poetry, Carpe Diem and the Golden Gate)

For whatever reason, I woke with this poem in my head.  Actually, it was more of a song and Rob Thomas sang it sort of like “Downfall”--the first two verses slow and soulful, the last unwound wildly, repeated over and over and then slowly drowned out by guitar.  It works okay as a poem, but it’d rather soar over the cliff as song.  Tyler Brown, someday, give it flight.  Maybe even throw in some chorus girls, if it feels right.

Relocation Sunday

Sunlit spray

Blowing off the waves

Below the Golden Gate

San Francisco

I’m here to stay.

I ain’t ever going back.

No subway.

No elevated.

I’ll sing for my supper.

Everywhere I go,

I’ll walk.

No subway.

No elevated.

I’ll sing for my supper.

Everywhere I go,

I’ll walk.

No subway.

No elevated.

I’ll sing for my supper.

Everywhere I go,

I’ll walk.

No subway.

No elevated.

I’ll sing for my supper.

Everywhere I go,

I’ll walk.

© Steve Brown, 2013