Stream of Consciousness

Reflections in a Microwave Window

There's no sun to be had anywhere here today. Only rain, rivulets on the skylights, freckles of drops that bounce on the glass, boing and hope like jumping beans on the deck rail. And still, in the door of the aging microwave oven, a reflection from outside: the dark circle that is our holiday wreath, still holding its evergreen, its blue-purple juniper berries after two months on top of the wet and drooping Pace flag above the valley of blue that's the plastic tarp we stretch out over the wood pile to keep it from getting wet, well any wetter given the fact that one side has blown loose and that outer row is far from dry.

Glenn Gould is playing Bach's Italian concertos. The beeswax honey candle nears the end of its run. When the electric heat bursts on, I start up sneezing but for now, a moment that's stasis. Me here sitting, listening, watching, making note of how I'm witness to rain as it falls on the roof above me while I sit inside, idle and uncertain yet snug.

The Cycle of a Day

Dusk here. The light outside is looking about the same as it did when I crawled out from between the flannel sheets at 7 am this morning. Blue, gray, fade-to-black. I've been sick today. Gut woes that keep me tethered to house and bathroom. I've listened to Bach's Christmas Oratorio, most of twice. The first time was interrupted by a phone call from a friend and a great gabfest: politics, movies, the absurdity of modern life, art. The second time later in the day, the German sounding pretty and musical, softening the harshness that is often that language to my ear, all in time with the day's waning light. Ryman (our new cat) went outside and came back in, successfully, at least six or seven times on his own, a major breakthrough today. And Ping didn't instigate any fights. I plugged in both pitiful $6 Christmas trees as the afternoon started to fade. Mine's so small it only needed one string of lights and sits on a table. John's is ratty and naked on the side that he pushed up against the kitchen window. They do add cheer, a sense of something special. It's the madhouse, madness, shopping busyness I'm absolutely not into this year.

What else today? Reading Richard Ford's new novel, The Lay of the Land. There's much in it that makes me laugh out loud. It's got wisdom about the foolishness we all feel as we age, foolishness that is so much of modern-life America, modern-life that isn't so different from all the hopes and dreams and longings humans have for a day and forever likely felt. The stack of magazines in the oak basket from Arkansas sits across from me, beckoning and disheveled. I should want to read what's in it, I should go though, clean it up, toss out. But today I read and take the day as it slowly comes instead. Telephone chitchat, a few simple errands, a nap, reading on the couch, opening the door to let out and then back in a cat, no less no more. Sometimes, the body's limitations are a good excuse as well as reminder.

There is so much I do not know. Don't want to, either. So much that won't be mine, that I don't want to be mine, that is just as easily left out as brought into this, my back-and-forth journey to find a more meaningful life. Today, this all feels OK. Is it because I spoke and was heard? Because my body reminded me to remain in the present, to observe, to be grateful, to breathe?

Watering a Garden

In Portland, housesitting overnight for a friend who's gone away. Giving her perennials, her lone tomato plant, the anemone and roses and Russian sage a shot of water. It's all in the details and so often unexpected most days. The smell of rosemary rising the second the water hits its needles. The dangling blackberry cluster from the next-door-neighbor's canes. Bulging red rosehips on the four bushes along the back fence. I look up and the robin's nest is still there in the eve only know the babies are hatched and I catch the mother feeding two or three tiny mouths, I swear it's the classic worm!

This city street world is so quiet this time of morning. I suspect everyone's off earning requisite funds to pay the mortgages and the rent. Cloud cover which may burn off by afternoon which is lunch and matinee of the new Woody Allen movie with a friend. I am feeling so lucky to have this luxury of time, to fritter and focus, to stop by a gallery called Collage and check out an artist trading card show, maybe pop into Powell's to check out the editions of R.H. Blyth's haiku books that their web site said are on the Burnside shelves. Tonight back home. Then tomorrow, road trip adventure to way out in the northeastern corner of the state, the Wallowa Mountains, Joseph, the blues festival on Saturday. Really, I have to stop whining about my situation in this life. It doesn't get much better than all of this.

Six Things Noticed Today...

The pink bloom of the rhododendron in the ratty, near-death herb garden, the way it looks the sun shining behind it: singular, spectacular.

The pileated woodpecker, its red throat, and flying zoom, instead of the rat-a-tat noise it usually makes on the bark of the Douglas fir.

Cleaning the accumulated sheen of green out of the terra cotta bird bath—made by Roseville, yep one and the same, back in operation, I guess, somewhere in Ohio—dumping the slimy water and filling the basin with fresh.

The light—beauty almost to rival the sculptural tlie-roof gorgeousness of Dubrovnik, Croatia, really—as I drive out of here on the cat food run to Safeway: the yellow of the sheep barn field, the longer-day sun around me, early May evening, the sheep at Bald Hill Farm, green green green down Oak Creek Road.

A voice behind me, where? the only places I've been today Kinko's, the Indian restaurant, Shonnard's buying flowers and it's deep, rumbly with that hint of laughter and irony, somehow commingled, and I recognize it, smile, resurrected sound of happy, lovable G.

The Pace flag flying between the posts of the deck, sister/brother/comrade of all those Paces we saw on the back calles, hanging out windows in Venice.

No News, Good News

I keep the poison that is post-modern reality-bending news spinning out of my universe this morning. No talking heads to tell me the latest twist of benighted fate being wooed by the people wielding power in the money-crazed country. A few hours of quiet and words written in a fountain pen on page 26 in my National brand chemistry notebook do wonders for the overwrought soul. I begin to suspect that too much paying attention to the world is a major factor overturning the apple cart of my daily routine.

Woodstove fire out. Electric heat kicks on because it's cold out there, for this part of the world, the rain water on the lid of the Rubbermaid bin we set out for UPS and PO deliveries is covered in a skin of ice. Or maybe it's a skein, a kind of topsy turvy knitting. The word skein does mean a tangled or complicated arrangement. Good word. Can that be my singular accomplishment this morning? Acknowledging the loveliness of a single word?

I'm off to Salem, to meet a friend at an art gallery, look at an exhibit Shrines to the Environment , mixed media assemblages using found objects. Then lunch, then maybe a stroll around the neighborhood where the governor of Oregon also lives. They call his house a mansion. It's brick and big. The back seat of the car is full of books to sell. This the result of finally seizing the moment and re-arranging shelves yesterday afternoon, vertical piles turned into horizontal, empty spaces filled, who cares if I destroyed the pitiful attempt at grouping and alphabetizing the shelves had before. The stacks on top of shelves, along the landing to the upstairs, leaning against the legs of my cherry work desk, in piles on my study floor—nearly all are now gone. Of course, the poetry shelf is bursting and askew but that may have to wait until after my artist date this afternoon. All this and I try really hard not to buy books I don't need. Of course, they are the tools of my trade...

Losing Perspective

The temperature dips into arctic chill territory for this part of the world and I can feel it, this house with corners that leak like a seive. I change the desk blotter this morning—the old one ratty with cat footprints and watermarks—and re-read the card I keep handy (rarely look at), Kerouac's essentials for modern prose. Some fun, funky stuff. Keep track every day the date emblazoned in yr morning and Like Proust, be an old teahead of time. Then I re-read Ginsberg's Mind Writing Slogans the doug fir branches and wind chimes a chorus behind his words with the rousing wind. There is some comfort in knowing how many (most?) writers struggle.

To be reminded of these words from John Keats:

"What quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature?...Negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason."

That's what my week has been: an irritable reaching. Can I only recognize it now seeing Keats' words? Seems every day I came to my writing desk wanting objectivity and conclusions, resolutions and recognition, to know, once and for all, what is good, when the work is done, is good enough. In the pea soup of my solitude and my hormones, I not only lose sight of but downright give up on the mystery. Everything is mistake and aggravation. Nothing sets or settles right. I suppose these ups and downs are inevitable, come with the territory. But it sure does a body ill to sit here day in and out and feel worthless, useless, talentless, uninspired, soulless. With me it isn't so much negative capability as negative incapacitation. You think by now I'd recognize the signs and be able to better deal with this.

150-Year-Old Words to Live By

Words to buoy the soul on a sunny February day of snow slowly melting from the winter-green grass and the drip-drip accompaniment from rain gutter eaves:

Walt Whitman in the 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass—

"Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men—go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers or families—re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body."

Wind Dies Down

Absolutely fabulous (yes, I know I've stolen those words, homage, homage) day here today—sun, blue sky, more than the tops of snow-capped volcanoes visible 100 miles off in the Cascades. Dryness is...well, amazing...after months of excessive rain, sodden ground, mud that rises up to meet and greet you even when you do something as simple as take the garbage out, toss the bag into the flat bed of the pickup truck. All day, the noise of my outdoor music returned, reminder that weather was present, active, a presence, and likely changing. So far, it's still dry out there. Blessed event. The sun buoys my soul.

Yoga at noon, we look at, worry about, fret and fete our feet. After that, I buy French jelly jars for next-to-nothing at the thrift store, poetry at the library, photocopies of everything and anything orange at Kinko's: the True Colors collaborative journal project seeps into my pores. Now, it's a night of mostly nothing. Sorting through books, which ones to try and trade downtown, which ones to keep, shelve, hopefully stay alive long enough to read. Did read about Anatole Broyard in Henry Gates' Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man this eve. I seem to remember reading somewhere that Broyard—and his passing as white for nearly all of his professional, book reviewing life—was inspiration for the character Silk (sorry, first name forgotten) in Philip Roth's novel, The Human Stain. Fascinating, if a tad New York publishing world/literary universe gossipy. Oh but that's to be expected from those East Coast sycophants. They haven't had the benefit of the Pacific salt air, the New Age testimonials, trust funds and real estate killings that buy one and all liberation from having to vie for positions of prestige in the gliterati's version of the 9 to 5. Still, this one essay does make me curious about the rest of the book. I could start at the beginning with James Baldwin. Maybe this one isn't ready for the barter banter yet.

A Dream, Only a Dream

Monday night. Rain gone for a bit, well, the past two days. Which translates, predictably, to colder temperatures here. E-heat just kicked on in spite of the wood stove in front of which two blue-eyed, half-Siamese cats lounge on Presidential rockers. What if Neil is right, it's all a dream, only a dream, fading now, fading away? Then we'd all be better off migrating to Venice, the dreamy city according to all I read. Hell, there are only 60,000 residents, I'm sure they'd take on an English-speaking American with French glasses and some investments in TIAA-CREF.

Today was a dream: of sun, bright skies, clear air, walking and talking, vistas to snow-covered volcanoes 100 miles away in the Cascades. I drove to and from Salem on two-lane back roads, through small towns, farm fields, vineyards, hazelnut orchards, the fruit tree acreage under high water just over the Independence bridge and onto the Salem River Road. Water, water everywhere. Same cluster of men—Mexican I'm sure, pruning and tidying, maybe dealing with storm damage?—in the fields at the Blue Heron farm this morning when I headed over and, at suppertime, driving back. What was the story of their day?

My day was conversation punctuated with following a two-year old around. Pushes on a swing. Steps up a muddy, city park bank. Asparagus soup and salad with lemon chicken. Fizzy water and cheesy crackers. Talking and listening and attempts at explanation. The serendipity of meeting and talking with newcomers to Salem near the swings in the park. Truly a day in the life.

Tomorrow, I return to my worries. But, for now, Neil sings about dreaming and the moon, white and lustrous—really that word is apt—haunts the black night above this moment, my peregrinations, what can't be anything but the authentic version of this, a life, my life.

Impressions of Nashville and Memphis

We've been back two days from our trip to western Tennessee, Nashville then Memphis via the Natchez Trace. I'm finding it hard to construct a coherent narrative of everything we saw and did. Impressions and the occasional detail surface. Maybe that's all a travel tale ever really is, a patchwork of sights, tastes, and sounds?

The first night in Nashville, I was transformed by music. The concert was Pics and Paws at the acoustically wonderful Ryman Auditorium, former home of the Grand Ole Opry, downtown. Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Mindy Smith and Paula Cole took turns singing; it was like we were sitting with them in a jam session in a living room. Every few songs, Emmylou would make a pitch for the Nashville Humane Society -- the event was a fund-raiser for Rover, their mobile "sterilization" unit as J. christened it. She'd remind everyone in the audience that an adorable Jack Russell mix named Henry needed a home. Apparently, she'd been fostering him but it was getting to be too much what with her four other dogs and five cats. And then, they'd return to the wonderful music. Songs about lives that didn't work out, love that didn't develop, mysteries that didn't get solved, dogs that misbehaved. I'd forgotten how much I love live music. That night, in the Ryman, a former tabernacle, I was once again saved.

More impressions from the rest of the trip:

-- The isolation, the random placement in a way, of Meriwether Lewis' gravesite not far from the Natchez Trace and a "rude cabin" where he died, an apparent suicide. No family to claim him so they erected a marker in the middle of nowhere, off a lonely national park parkway. We found it only by accident. Glad we did.

-- Route 51 a.k.a. Elvis Presley Boulevard, the only thriving economic life that I could detect outside of Graceland, the rest a barely hanging on, abandoned, boarded-up, barely eking out an existence suburban wasteland.

-- The first glimpse of Graceland, and how it seemed punier and diminished from all the photos and the hype.

-- Later out in the Soulsville neighborhood, at the new Stax Museum of American Soul Music, where there's a replica of a gospel church and a screen filled with choir after choir, singing. Black and white photographs of people from the neighborhood who participated in Free River Press writing workshop, getting their life stories onto the page.

-- The first song Nicky the Tour Guide played at the Sun Studio tour, Rocket 88, the first real rock and roll song, 1951, sung by Jackie Brenston and the Delta Cats but it was really written and sung by Ike Turner, yep, that Ike Turner.

-- Walking from the last exhibit in the National Civil Rights Museum, up the ramp to view the actual motel rooms where Martin Luther King was staying the night he was shot. The hymn, Precious Lord, plays -- it was one King had requested to be such at the rally for the striking sanitation workers' later that night. And then to look out the window at the balcony. The square of cement that was stained with his blood has been lifted out and replaced. A wreath hangs from the balcony railing, has since that night in April 1968. After seeing that, I only wanted quiet. To take my time walking across the street and into the rooming house and the window from which the assassin bullet was allegedly fired.

-- Ernest Withers' black-and-white photograph of a line of men, the Memphis sanitation workers on strike. Every one in the front row holding a sign "I Am A Man." Because they were and are. And that, in and of itself, is the essence of a civil rights movements, a fight for human dignity.