Belief Systems

I don't care, Church Of England, Catholic, a Fundamentalist Baptist thing involving snakes, I generally just retire to high ground. Meaning just the ridge, not any elevated thought. The papal system is an elaborate farce, by far the best service I ever experienced was a Greek Orthodox Easter, pomp and circumstance with a purpose, and the worst was a Holiness Pentecostal service where people rolled in the aisles and foamed at the mouth. All religion is just an excuse for bad behavior. Politics too. I heard today that the winning candidate for president would need to have raised a billion dollars in contributions, to blanket ads in swing states. Elections are, I suppose, good for the economy, white smoke means we've elected a president. On the ridge, I don't pay much attention to the world, this is my cave, I assume you have yours. I've always been suspect of any intervention, any mediation; though I do keep a jar of herbs that will absolutely make you vomit. Sometimes, when you've made a mistake, it's necessary to vomit, mustard pollen is good for this. I've eaten bad mushrooms and bad shell-fish, it comes with the turf (a reference to peat), and it's good to be shed of what your body deems offensive. I read the word 'turving' recently, for cutting peat, and voted it the word of the week. Trapped overnight once, in a canyon off Comb Ridge in Utah, I kept a fire going all night with buffalo chips that must have been hundreds of years old. Their faint odor was actually rather pleasant. I was living, at the time, on a part of the Navaho reservation, not in any attempt to go native, but because a gun-shot trailer was all I could afford, and at the community center, where there was running water, electricity, and a communal washing machine (50 cents per load, into the jug that was labeled "Repair Fund") where I had met an old man who told me about a chert deposit (he called it arrow-head rock) several miles off the beaten track. When I finally found the place it was truly a singular spot. Not a habitation, but an area set aside, by common agreement, for flaking stone. Much like the common hunting grounds in northern Kentucky, an area of salt-licks and abundant game where it was considered inappropriate to fight. An area the size of a football field covered with a thick layer of flakes and thousands of failed arrow-heads. A few alcoves clearly used as camps, a midden, a fire pit, and a stack of buffalo chips. The site is a few miles south of Bluff, Utah, but it might as well be on the other side of the moon. I went there a dozen times, during the year in which I made my living adding roofs onto trailers to provide shade, and I never saw another person. It was a slot canyon that opened into a box canyon with a small seasonal spring; the alcove where I spent the night, was accessed by footholds carved in the rock, you could defend it with a stick. I remember eating a delightful stew of dried vegetables with a small can of tangerine segments for dessert. I dug a collection pool, below the nick-point of the spring, so I could make coffee in the morning. I figured one person could live there, taking a shower the one day a year it rained, otherwise staying quite still during the heat of the day, running his snares and traps at night. The blood of small mammals is certainly liquid, and the sap of plants that collect dew. Consider the desert lizard. I use less water than the average raccoon, and I'm happy with that, I hate waste among all things. My evil double swears I ignore obvious paths, the Appalachian trail in Pennsylvania eats boots; rolling thunder, I'd better go.The power is out for a while and I eat cold rice made into a kind of pudding. I never do get the hail I was promised, golf-ball size they mentioned, but I did get a brief coating of pellets that turned the ground white for about five minutes. I'd moved the Jeep to the mouth of the driveway under a canopied white oak. The sound was wonderful, a staccato drumming; it didn't last long, five minutes maybe, but managed to incorporate every off-beat possible. A cascade of sound. I wrote about this in an unpublished paper, From Beckett to Poe, in which I drew too heavily on purely sonic events. Nothing is ever what it seems.