The Past

I almost remember the 60's, purple haze, nothing is what it seems to be. On the Lower Road, in Brewster, Mass. I rented a room, traveled everywhere on a bicycle, printed books, gathered frost in my beard and stayed beneath the radar. Many times, walking Crow Pasture, I should have died of frost-bite, but an inner heat drove me. I still feel it, when I'm driven to extreme, a core that burns. Usually I call Glenn, to anchor myself, to laugh at the winds and arrows, find a center that doesn't waver. If it's too late or too early I read Emily or Wallace Stevens. The human condition. Poetry is a solace: this morning, 3 AM, I'm reading Skip Fox, "Delta Blues" and it unfolds like a mythic flower. Language is the denominator. Life is a word game. I think I thought what you meant is the course. We're never sure, when we touch someone else, what we mean, merely a gesture, implying the great unknown. I could die tomorrow and the only question is where to park the carcass. A couple more hours sleep, finally, then off to work early so I can shop for tomorrow's dinner. Rain and more rain, even my Low Gap Creek is running a torrent, and it's usually dry this time of year; Mackletree Creek is running spate and the napp at the spillway is liquid mud a foot deep. Another inch of rain between four and four-thirty, a deluge, big drops, straight down, a cascade. I can hardly see my driveway for the bowed saplings and bushes, leaning under the weight of water. A day of saturation, the scuppers on bank buildings are pouring into the streets, there's not enough pitch, down to the river, so everything backs up. A plumbing nightmare. Too much water in too short a time, when the drains are overloaded, they bubble up in standing waves. The alley is a nightmare. I've given up several close friends recently and I wonder what's that about, I don't make friends easily and lose them harder, so I hate when everyone commits to a course of action. I try to stay one step ahead and steady fall behind. The ladies all made it up the hill and it was a fine evening. I fed them well and retired early, exhausted from the effort and slightly drunk. A quick technical rehearsal proved D's equipage up to the task of premiering Lisa's movie, and the opening is already over-booked. The museum previously rented for a high school reunion tonight requires Pegi and a crew from the Cirque to strike one show and set up another, Summer Stock all over again. My plan is to take a clean pair of socks and spend all day tomorrow tying up loose ends, stay through the opening and dinner, mingle amidst the cleavage of formal attire, admiring ankles, and beat a path home. A clear case of life imitating theater. Nothing prepares you for the world better than starting as a janitor. A good omen is that I found a small diamond ring in the road. I hang it with the other jewelry I've found recently by looking down when walking past a bar: a large silver hoop earring and a silver necklace. I'll give them to my daughters, a testament to looking closely. The picture of an outhouse on the calendar they gave me at Christmas bothers me because the door hinges on the left and it really should hinge the other way, it looks wrong because it would require unnecessary structure. It isn't elegant, and I beg for elegance among all other attributes. Do one thing well and everything else follows, it doesn't matter what it is, raise watermelons, study ants; simply study something closely and the world is revealed. The last couple of years I've watched the Corvid family closely and now I speak a little crow; it happens, first thing you know you're eating snails. A curve ball. What I mean is that familiarity breeds intimate knowledge, what you see is what you get. What you get. I'm a humanist, actually, what did Thoreau say, something about accepting the scrub oak as his coat of arms. The way I feel, the natural world is the model; I want natural sound in a natural place; doesn't mean I'm against anything modern but almost. In the real world you smell the various grasses when you pee; squat, take a breath. All of them get it, realize I choose to live this way, authenic action justifies whatever preparation. Here I am.