Outside I love the midnight ramble. Crossed Mt. Richardson, a wet summit, cold front coming in following a heavy but brief wind and rain. Trees tossed, branch clusters waved like jellyfish, opening in and out, in and out, waving flutter, as they floated through water universe. Visited the Montana ranch fence, third rock, and promised the prayer circle stone. Winds tossing trees. I know this could kill me. This fact must be properly assessed. Large trees fall on houses around here, take out garages, impale and kill. Happens quote unquote all the time. Of course, of course, you swim at Cape Cod despite great whites. I mean . . .
And so what? Standing on the prayer stone within the circle. Instantaneously, snap of the fingers fast, an explosion of wind and water from the skies. But I refuse to run. Most of the time. Ran from the tornado in South Dakota three a.m. But it took me a while to figure it out. Four-thirty a.m. Of course we all could have been killed or just one of us and worse not me and I’d have to live with it and I would die. Of course on the prayer stone I knew this could kill me. Each year haul off large branches that, had they hit me on the head or neck I would have been killed. Hack up the old rotted very large branch and haul it into the deep forest. The Black Forest. But how can I live that way? These oaks protect me. That is the line. There the divine line. How it has to be. Dr. Oakman, protected by these whale-sized trees. You can’t cut down that tree, she said, It would be like killing a whale. Jesus. On the prayer stone.
Jesus on the Prayer Stone. I don’t know man, a rare person out there now in this. Rare and dumb; rare because of dumb. I’m sorry. Sorry I’m so dumb. Jesus on the Prayer Stone within the Circle. Storm reached for roaring. Ok, I hear you. Calm. Raised my hands into the rain gale. Then, nudged by a hand at my back, left the circle and tumbled down the bluff, crossed Mt. Richardson the other way absolutely soaked and high winds threatening to fling me from the summit no probs, laughter doing it. Spare me, I said. Over the summit, down the other side as long as it takes the most in shape one, and walked - had to - across the prairie to the house, up the steps to the portico. There stood blasted anyway. But those trees! Where are you going? Left to right swings thirty degrees. Bend don’t break. But then, off in the darkness a huge CRACK, then crackles reverb, and out, silence. That’s a tree on a house, or across the road, or lost in the woods. I’ll find something on the lawn tomorrow, in addition to a new hundred thousand leaves.
But a sound man, a prudent man, a wise man, would not stand under those trees in hurricane winds. But God asks me to, a request from God is a command. I pay attention to those commands and harness power in belief, in faith. I pray that the tree will not fall on me. I pray to see the moment, as brief as it is divinely. Pray to share what I see. To see the moment, feel rain on my face, hear the guttural roar of cold winds rushing under the warm, certainly a last shift to those cold nights, mid October, 34 on Wednesday at midnight.
Faith that God will not forsake me. Faith that God will not forsake us. Why would he lead us to death when he commands with such clarity? Ask me to cross the mountain in the storm and I shall. I crossed the mountain twice, stood within the circle, and allowed the storm to encourage me, not berate me. Encourage me to fly. Opened my wings and raced down the bluff to the valley below Mt. Richardson. Believed that inhaling moist earth wet leaves and mud, wet moss, wet earth, rays to my brain, inhaling, knowing that to see these elements of our lives always remain a divine our one-time.
And then with a bow, reluctant, entered the house on a deep intake and a glance at fewer leaves already, clouds reflecting jellyfish escaping storm.
()()()
Emerson’s “Prudence” continues. The Good Husband
“For, our existence, thus apparently attached in nature to the sun and to the returning moon and the periods which they mark” - our calendars, our days and nights, this gnat flying around me having grabbed my sweater in the storm, this music in my ear and existence, photosynthesis, children of the sun, heliocentric’s a good place to be, the third rock a wonder, why wouldn’t we know this and share our sun? - “So susceptible to climate and to country, so alive to social good and evil, so fond of splendor and so tender to hunger and cold and debt, - reads all its primary lessons out of these books.”
And we are where we at, and our people, our context, our fear, and our joy. Love is our way through. “Prudence does not go behind nature and ask whence it is? It takes the laws of the world whereby man’s being is conditioned . . .” We are conditioned by dirt water rain sun oak tree women children bodies.
The Great Idle, Ride the Idle, the Sacral Idle. A real thing. “Do what we can, summer will have its flies. If we walk in the woods we must feed mosquitoes. If we go a-fishing we must expect a wet coat. Then climate is a great impediment to idle persons.” Yes, we don’t want to talk about weather, we were told wrongly to avoid smalltalk, when smalltalk is all: “but still we regard the clouds and the rain.”
Watch your hour, observe your day. Look at your growing children. Look at your aging. Look down at your hands. Take a picture of the veins on the backs of your hands. “Time is always bringing the occasions that disclose their value.’ And “The good husband finds method as efficient in the packing of firewood in a shed or in the harvesting of fruits.” Eric told me and I believe him, so sayeth the sensei who knows, was born in, has lived in his entire life, and has mastered, who knows American suburbia more than any other living man or woman, Eric relayed to me his insight and understanding,
Americans don’t care - no longer care - that we don’t trust politicians. None of us are really talking like we actually ever believe politicians deserve our trust. That consideration does not enter our calculus. To see this as an outsider, dancer among furious forests along the margins of serious storms. Not able to change it now, at 50. He knows this. The man, the painter, the farmer, the professional driver, the teacher, the lover, the father, the carpenter, the spy, the reader, the online copywriter, the creative, the director, the critic, the thinker, the cook, the janitor, the good husband. Not able to change this now, the man at 50. I’m not saying I know you. Man or woman, gay or straight and all points between. I’m saying I know certain men at 50 and know what they’re going through and what they see. As an outsider, within and outside this community, and to say American politics is a circus and everybody, even those feeling great pain under Trump, loves this shit. America eats it up, on all forms of media, screens, lists, clubs, only and always talks about it and feels it good or bad. You are this, America. You are Trump and the GOP and the circus and the racism and the wind and rain. Get to know yourself, it’s awesome. And so because of this, and in site of it, “genius is always ascetic; and piety, and love.” Go, hermit, live alone with moss among the people.
Apparently Emerson orientalized and dreamed about opium. A great vision for the man of Concord, for the dreamer “he resembles the opium eaters whom travelers describe as frequenting the bazaars of Constantinople, who skulk about all day, the most pitiful drivelers, yellow, emaciated, ragged, sneaking; then at evening, when the bazaars are open, they slink to the opium-shop, swallow their morsel and become tranquil, glorious and great.” Wow, Ralph. Whoa. But good, but a dream, share your dream as Freud did, he who recognized the universal. Read those who have seen the Dream, and share the way the see it. The dream that is the dream. The thing that is the thing. The universal One All that unites us. Love us. Know God and the Sun. Know your beating heart and the Atom.
How come more men and women aren’t named Atom?
There are. There are millions.
Oh.
And so don’t suck: “And who has not seen the tragedy of imprudent genius struggling for years with paltry pecuniary difficulties, at last sinking, chilled, exhausted and fruitless, like a giant slaughtered by pins?” He couldn’t be thinking of Thoreau. Who was his local hermit poet hobo? America has created some great hobos. Let’s hear it for the hobo!
“The thrift of the agriculturalist, to stick a tree between whiles, because it will grow whilst he sleeps” and “husbanding little strokes of the tool, little portions of time, particles of stock and small gains.”
“In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.”
Damn, throw.
“The paltry force of one man”
This should become the first tweet, pasted on the website, as a part of your teaching madness, your lecture, place this up there, riff on Trump, or at least the new American man or he who fears fascism and the return of authoritarianism, the mind who fears the strongman and the warlord. Damn, dude, run! Let’s be surf bums on the last strip of land. But the first tweet, and the way to work the large screen and sound machine, audio and visual and vibe from students, “Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.” Um, ouch. Hello mad world, man world, this.
Many succumb to the worst voices in their heads. The lines that make them do bad things, or the lines that give them panic and anxiety, or the words that hyper-inject their fear, or lines the provide doubt and only doubt, phrases that take them away from the Life Task, the Way of Good, the Way of the Good Husband, take us away from our own greatness, because our visions and dreams for ourselves are of course great. Those voices that take us away from our task or our best selves may be considered those of the devil, however large or small an impact. And every small deviation can become an autobahn route away from yourself, a detour to darkness dim or black. We all know this. Beware your thoughts. And so “he who wishes to walk in the most peaceful parts of life with any serenity must screw himself up to resolution. Let him front the object of his worst apprehension, and his stoutness will commonly make his fears groundless.” Remember the seaweed, the incoming tide, the path to cliffs and the setting sun? On you and your children?
I remember clearly. I walked that path with them and you. All of us and you. “The eye is daunted and greatly exaggerates the perils of the hour.” Love your hour, live your hour, your only divine time. You know the Hour. Dream the moment and observe yourself live inside the circle. “Entire self-possession may make a battle very little more dangerous to life than a match at foils or at football. Examples are cited by soldiers, of men who have seen the cannon pointed and the fire given to it, and who have stepped aside from the path of the bal. The terrors of the storm are chiefly confined to the parlor and the cabin. The drover, the sailor, buffets it all day, and his health renews itself at as vigorous a pulse under the sleet as under the sun of June.” So says a poet happy by the hearth. But those limbs falling from one hundred feet and one-hundred-and-fifty-years-old can kill a man.
Eric the Knowing bowed to the wind, walked across the street, stepped over downed limbs, and sought the Man Fort of Gods. Overman lay on his cot curled in a tight fetal ball.
The fuh, bro?
Who is it?
It’s me, Eric. Come to check on you.
Are we dying?
Let me put it this way, manly man and neighbor, last man, the end of history, and so on your habitat not mine, “in the occurrence of unpleasant things among neighbors, fear comes readily to heart and magnifies the consequence of the other party; but it is a bad counsellor. Every man is actually weak and apparently strong.” And therein injects the Deity, the All Only, the Mono-Fun, the Strong and Tender, Wrathful and Loving, non-verbal fuck off Standing Breathing Totality, busting forth with woo.