Enola-->alonE

I grew up next to this small and kind of rough-around-the-edges town called Enola where my parents owned rental properties and where I would thereby be a frequent and unwilling visitor in the back seat of a car, staring dazedly out the window in thought while they performed tedious managerial tasks in summertime, weekend days, or evening hours. It was some time making these trips before I realized (or was told) that "Enola" spelled backwards is "Alone". But I remember, and still strikingly feel, the change in my entire impression of Enola, knowing it had this secret meaning or ironic parallelism. The association drained the joy straight from the town. In the back seat of automobiles my imagination created this swirling story about the founder and nam-er of this town "Enola"- his life, his history, and his obvious staggering alonE-ness.

I distinctly remember the first time I felt the incapacitatingly empty feeling of being alone...not just alone like "no one was there" but the kind of alone where you are acutely aware that even if someone could be there, you have no one to call upon. I had just cracked my noggin on a shelf at work and was gushing blood everywhere. Now, head wounds bleed a lot so it sounds worse than it probably really was. But nonetheless my supervisor immediately phoned the New York City ambulance to come and sweep and whisk me and my bleeding skull straight to the emergency room. It was the first and hopefully only time I will see the back of an ambulance.

Because my wound was minimal I sat upright in the back rather than laying on the cot, talking to the EMT as we sped past NYC traffic in my "emergency". It was winter. It was afternoon. It was already dark outside. I was crying faintly...more because of the empty feeling that fell upon me as I rode by myself holding gobs of quickly-crimsoning gauze to my head than from the injury itself.

Upon arrival the EMT delivered me to through the sliding doors in wheelchair & blanket and smiled as he turned and walked away. As I continued to be shuffled from waiting space to waiting space, tv room to tv room, I grew progressively more weakened by "alone". Others sat with their families or generous and patient friends awaiting their turn for treatment. I sat alone. I went into the exam room alone. I got anesthetized, sterilized, and stitched together alone. These were all okay because I had someone there to distract the hollow alone-pit from growing ever deeper; kids in the lobby, fellow wounded, the kind and funny doctor.

But then I was sewn, wrapped and patted on the back and it was time to go. Almost robotically I stepped out onto the New York street and headed toward the subway stop in my usual New York stride...as if it were just any other day traipsing around the city. And that's when the growing pit of alone became a bottomless hole. Here I was injured and bleeding, whisked, shuffled, assessed, stitched and released and no one even knew about it. No one ever would either, if I chose not to mention it. That felt awful.
I cried hard, wet.

(art about 'alonE'.)

Since that day I've been more inclined to moments where this feeling seeps back in...the most recent of these being last night. Because I can see the Alone train approaching from a greater distance now, I'm more cautious and more aware...but defenseless nonetheless. I sense the 'gutted out feeling of dropping a pebble into the empty well of my self' growing ever more frequent and more intense. I can hear the plink and the resonating echo. The bottomless hole somehow gets deeper.

In my pursuit to find the road to travel on in this life and someone to share the journey, I've begun to face the sad and melancholic music; its a windy one, steep and narrow maybe , not laid out flat and smooth before me like mid-western savannah lands...I have no idea what lie ahead or if anyone else is even out there feeling their way through the dark like I, because I can't even see the view on the horizon.

In limited-language-summary format I suppose alone is seeking the comfort of someone to hold your hand, to give a hug or to say 'hey, its going to be okay' or 'I understand, I'm making the trip too'. Alone is simply craving someone who will just be there to call and come when you split your head, mend your heart, lose your way, or otherwise get lost on the trippy road; and the paralyzing fear that despite all concerted efforts you'll end up in a metaphorical crummy town you've named after your own solitary sorrow.

Hardly/Strictly 2008

The sun penetrates the other hillside, snaking through the crowd and over to the other knoll where we lie...we look up at the gnarled tree torsos contemplating their annual count, presuming their historical tales...

...and in the park tucked between tall and wise evergreen trees I'm glimpsing Sam Beam, his beard, his guitar- taking in the acoustic side angle and falling down the spiral toward Wonderland, absorbing archetypal stories amidst my descent. I turn each one around in my brain and derive my own meaning, while still fixing my eye on the words that lie there on the stage (page). They're there. And they may be literal. But all around has fallen away. I slip into my day-dreaming.

Behind the tree today, my own versions of each word become incapacitating, inspiring, frustrating, limitless. I want to exist omnipresent-ly that I may simultaneously feel and experience all the moments that I conjure with all the people I am wishing were 'neath the tree with me. Recalling each reference, eviscerating each relived or newly-created moment. And (as usual) I'm thinking.........

I often wish I were a better storyteller, that I could generate a sort of ephemera or ambiance or mood...a guttural feeling, a wave of emotion that sweeps over one, few, or many as I divulge experience, thought and action in such a way that they feel connected to it on some primal level: love, faith, loss. (In my visual narratives, stories fall short when they become too abstract). Too, I wish our (American?) culture had a sacred story or stories with nuances and familial excerpts that only ancestors knew, passed through generations 'round fires...and that words were only stored in verbal transitive forms at times when history required they were best preserved as so....like tee-pee hopping with your parent's parents in a loin cloth and headdress.

What is it about narrative song writing and a solitary guitar that is hardly personal yet speaks strictly to you? ...And on days when you seem to need only that exact conversation too...
Perhaps the human-ness of the vulnerable one-man-show invests us all in his authenticity. Without the glitz of the back up vocals, drums and bass acoustics, we are allowed to see that he is but one of us.

In my world artists/albums, like intentions, get stored in vertical files while I continue to repeat the same beloved but tired songs. By nature our species follows habit: we sit in the same chairs each time we enter a familiar space, we park our cars and bikes in the same spots because they are familiar, and we even vote for the same political party as our parents did or as we have been brought up to do without questioning the value of the others sitting on the shelf. They may have exquisite notions and refreshing tunes but we are deaf to hear them.

Until the sun gleams through the meadow and reaches the other hillside to allow for seeing clearly for just a moment...long enough to dig out a forgotten tale...


~So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten~ S. Beam/Iron & Wine

bad dream...

Early this morning I dreamed. This has been happening most mornings as of late, and in fact its been happening throughout most nights as well. I attribute it to secret stress. The only constant in these recent nights and mornings is the interrupted patterns of periodic rest that I anxiously add up to "enough" sleep around nine each morning so that I may rise and temporarily forgo dreaming any more.

...and instead begin my daily pursuit of a more tangible dream: the one every American is manufactured to strive for...

I haven't written yet on my experiences amidst my fellow community members of a temporary town called Black Rock City whose overarching purpose for coming together was to question, consider, escape from, and simultaneously become privy to "the American Dream". But I've had notions about the hype. And as I now find myself on the losing side of this wild goose chase for another go at the 'dream', I question every interaction, development and conviction to this end.

[In the most generic sense and for the sake of illustrating my point, I'll just say that the blazing headline "American Dream" is encapsulated by that gleaming vision of a wholesome family beside their conveniently "fuelish" automobile in the driveway of their suburban home with the white picket fence and Fido all decked out in his special outfit, the "portrait bandana"... and we know just by looking that dad worked from the bottom of his company right to the top...he has health care, vacation savings for the entire family to go on trips to Disneyland and other prefabricated recreation areas, and a strong 401k.]

Just before the close of summer thousands of vagrants, the products of these aforementioned dream-lands, come to a remote and isolated place to test the limits. Donning a weeks supply of "basic" necessities for survival, a mass exodus convenes on the solitary road to the desert. Only, a week's necessities somehow require the use of a rented camper complete with all the amenities...stove, indoor lavatory, bunk beds, firm sheltered structure....to 'rough it' with strangers, and in hopes of creating "community".
So I wonder, having rented a camper to hold all the "basics", do these participants reconsider their place in this bubble "American Dream"? Do they evaluate where their values align and misalign with those inside the bubble? Have they stepped outside of their comfort zone for this experiment at all? Do they wonder what they can do to adjust the dream of Americans to encompass more of us??

For, my dream is certainly different from the one I described above...I want love all around in all facets and manifestations, and to know that if I'm not well I will be taken care of. I want financial stability insomuch as the ability to pay back what I owe for an education I intend to use and enough left over to eat and travel. I want children worldwide to be given every opportunity they deserve and I want other people to give a damn to see that this is achieved. I want everyone to earn what they are worth when they put in hard work and reliable dedication that they may be able to afford a shelter for their families, and someday I would like to have a space of my own. I like to envision many sharing a more humanist dream like this as well.

But this morning in my little temporary bungalow ( a couch in a living room of a condo-built-for-one, me making "two") I dreamed of filling up with gas. I inserted the pump just so in the place where we all know it goes, and watched the numbers tick by like a slot machine...40....50....60...the gooey stinking liquid finally spilling out on my shoe at 62. I scratched my head and furrowed my brow, thinking that even this number was too high for just one tank. I consciously questioned the texture, color and smell of the fuel I had just unloaded into my automobile, turning to check the dial again... does something smell funny? did I put in the right kind? it wasn't diesel was it?? But, I was satisfied by my reinvestigation of the pump and hopped in my car turned the key and maneuvered out and on my way. The car stuttered with a quick and startling backfire as if a gunshot were just fired inside my ear sending my nervous system into a reactionary convulsion. It happened again, and as I went into panic mode I looked out the passenger window and my car was inundated with flames. Suddenly I could smell the searing metal, nylon and rubber. I knew it was about to blow. Magically I pulled a drop-and-roll move to the other side of the car and out onto the road just as it blew into a million smithereens, burning everything in its wake there on the street. I was mysteriously spared even the slightest contact burn.

This all happened in what seemed like milliseconds in my dream scape, and I awoke with a start, my whole body numb and tingly as if every inch had fallen asleep and was that pins-and-needles feeling that seems so agonizing in regular waking-life scenarios. I had that disoriented feeling that sometimes occurs after intense dreaming, as I struggled mentally to decide what was the real (and unfortunate) truth and what was only a visual film playing in my mind. While sometimes I'm disheartened to find that all the turmoil is an actuality, a tribulation of this earth, at least this time it was as they say "just a bad dream".

compartmentalize

My whole life fits in the back of my car.


There's a sense of satisfaction in this. I have been packing and repacking, then repacking again, and doing "one final pack...I swear! the last one!" for over a year now. With each relocation I perform this ritual of readying myself for departure both physically and mentally (with much greater emphasis on the latter) for the moving on and looking forward, the new spaces to mold myself to and new people to meld with. I've left so many things all over this land.

Schlepping all my goodies to the airport, and having already dumped a few in the hands of that glorious mail system our nation has, I glare at uniform ladies behind the luggage scale as they tell me I will owe them an extra fee.

"I move a lot. How is someone supposed to move from one side of the country to another on an airline without an extra fee??" I often mutter, wishing I had only an overnight pack and sleeping bag stuffed into carry-on and was going on some exciting excursion with someone I love.

But now, the satisfaction of having all of my material possessions crammed into the back of my jeep like a jigsaw puzzle assembled 'just-so' sets my mind at ease. Extra fees no more!! And while I haven't actually placed all of my things in the literal space, I envision it fitting. Like a glove. My capacity for spatial awareness is surprisingly good...I'll chalk it up to my visual learning style...


In recent past this dividing of things into separate containers has come in handy when organizing the levels of my life. As in, "sure. I could freak out that I don't know what's happening next (a week from now) but instead I'm going to put that in its storage container riiiiiight here! and focus on what I do know about today." I find administrators are successful at this game. Both in the workplace and in their own meticulous personal lives. Perhaps this is the essence of a 'multi-tasker'...being able to shut out this one-thing right-now in order to get these two other more urgent things done. And while I've boasted of my multi-tasking skills in cover letters past, I'm pretty sure I've managed to take them to a whole new level as of late....the administrator level!! ooooo....aaaaahhh....

And in the meantime I've noticed I probably used to be a forecasting-the-future emotional wreck.


While diving head first into yet another arduous job search and ridin' with style on the couches of others, I'm working like the devil to compartmentalize each day...put each development (or NON-development) into its little plastic container on the tall and accommodating shelf of my brain to make room for others more pressing, more key.

But today each little thing fell off of its shelf, climbed out of its neat little box and began traipsing around the interior spaces of my brain. In a haze I blundered about trying to accomplish my 'to-do's'....for naught. I was lost the hurricane of my thoughts. Directions. Desires. dare I say Goals.

I felt like my grown self lying on the floor with four children pulling at my limbs...
Immobilized. (does this make any sense?!)

But I digress. The feat of the week is that my whole life fits inside an automobile. I have my car to hold all my earthly things and get me "there". When its time I just load up, fit each thing into its place...its own compartment...and head out into the sunset.

The only question is where to go...

Lit Up (my arctic dénouement)

After three weeks of somewhat uncharacteristic but dismal weeks of hanging rain clouds and daily losses of six to seven minutes of daylight, the clouds parted to reveal the setting of the sun..."no big deal" many think- unless they've been to the interior of Alaska. As is to be expected here, this summer season I haven't shared the big dipper in the night sky with someone special far away, I haven't admired a sunset from atop a modest hill or "dome", I haven't had to curb my drinking/hiking/waking/thinking. The sun is always there. Until this night...when suddenly the sky was all lit up.
The glow caused by the setting sun triggered many thoughts, the first being the marvel of the Alaska sky. In summer when rains do fall they usually occur in contained and isolated areas, and do so swiftly and without much impact. ("Virga", I have learned). More often than not these patterns leave a spectacular rainbow to arch across the great blue. I have seen nearly a-rainbow-a-day some weeks. On other days the clouds appear like cartoon sketches or video-game symbols of what clouds "might" be, according to creative minds that render imaginary worlds.

But when dark has come, it comes on fast. That's when I know it is time to go. By season's end my skin crawls for something new, yet harboring saudades for the comforts of the closest thing to home I know. Conditionally, the anticipation of new adventure, new scenery, new people, new work exhilarates my soul; conditionally, because I know where I'll be going, who will be there when I arrive, and what I can hope to resurrect and dig in deep. But first:

While exchanging climates several times, I'll head out to the desert and partake in the notions of a temporary society with ideals that range from free trade and barter rules to free love and breaking rules and find my place just left of the middle. Like the stepping-out-of-one's-self that comes with oversea travel and the subsequent removal from one's own culture as he steps into this other realm, I hope not only to take in what transpires around, but to reassess a bit of the core as well. I'll leave early, but not for any sacrifice, subtracting my presence from the apex-the great ceremonial burn [reminiscent of my nature??].

Sometimes the best moments are the little rituals in life for which we build no hype but that keep us smiling into another day- sunsets and rainbows to name two. Though my preferred moment may be inconsequential to the masses, not unlike the man that burns in high expectation to highlight the cause for gathering, I too will be lit up.

(As the great choreographer David Dorfman once said in earshot, "perform little rituals every day".)

Do you?

Brontë

I like picking up morsels of information in unexpected locations, settings, scenarios and discussions. At the end of every day I wish to have accumulated one new bit of information (like, the Great Wall of China is 4,000 miles long...that one's from yesterday). Whether trite, useless factoid or priceless gem of wisdom, in my humble opinion, its advantageous to learn something every day. Even more, I like investigating the way people tick; what makes we humans so very different from one another in our desire for stimuli, our reaction to stimuli, and our internalization of stimuli?

Picking up an insight about human nature...well that's just priceless.


What struck me was a discussion I had about the literary genius of Emily Brontë, and her blaze of creative talent in the form of one and only published novel, Wuthering Heights. It is written by a contemporary gal of the literary scene (name escapes me now) in the foreword of one edition of Wuthering Heights that Emily never left the comforts of her own town, was not a pioneer of sorts, never experienced the extremes of emotion, never set out to discover "new life and new civilization". Rather, she was quite content to stay put, and even after leaving home to try her hand at the role of a governess, she wanted nothing more than to get back to the safe satisfaction of home turf. And fast.

And then she wrote a book...

I remarked, half bitten, doesn't creative expression thrive on literal and emotional experiences? Can it actually stem solely from the invention of the human mind? In the same place? Time notwithstanding?

Though I hardly call this art, here at earthseeandsky I muddle through ebbs and tides of land-tromping and try to glean something from each experience. I have my feelers out for new stimuli that I can suck up and mull over, and once habituated my "creativity" periodically wanes. Not that I need a new physical place, just to look in the nuances. It takes bits of new information or a fresh insight to rouse new writing (or painting).

On a personal level, I argue art has to come from something...art is 'creative expression'...which implies it has a reference point, and is a communication of some idea from this point. It may expand exponentially to the state of scarce traceability, but the point is still the nexus. Emily's genius, consequently, escapes me. But, I've yet to read Wuthering Heights.

The best part about this entry though, is that it slipped through the cracks...it was read before completion. And now its completion is different, thanks to human intervention, human reaction. And that is what I' m talking about.

In all my writing about nothing over the last year, what I realize just now is that the writing is only for the purposes of 1) increasing my desire for and attention to stimuli, 2) sharing my reaction to it and my interpretation of that reaction, and 3) for serving as a catalyst for you do the same. Its like a conversation face to face with a good old friend at our favorite neighborhood bar, on any given night, at the drop of a hat. We mill about over the what the how and the why of human nature until we've gone full circle and concluded nothing...and then I go and turn it into art.

What a Long Strange Trip It's Been....

...directing a camp that is.

At the beginning of all this, the work seemed disproportionate to the actual "fruits of labor"...three months of preparation, endless hours desk-side, task lists a-plenty, and a learning curve as steep as that first upward climb on a roller coaster ride, all for the split-second gravity-defeating descent, and blur of peripheral objects swiftly slipping past that trivializes what all the build-up was for...

Ah, why do we do things for personal growth and defy our obvious nature?

...So we can reflect on what we thought would happen and compare it to how we perceive what did happen...then see if they coincide. Duh.

So here it is, my post-project 'perception': It was a 'dog and pony' show. The view of the sidelines while descending the summit was blurry...but the coaster-ride down was not swift, nor nearly as rewarding as its upward climb would suggest. What's more, in the blur I fear I may have lost sight of many valued parts of myself (if only temporarily) I only now have noticed gone, having arrived at the discharged bottom: creating, imagining, writing, thinking for hours on end about the nature of human beings and their interactions, seeking personal intrinsic challenges rather than being engaged in extraneous tasks...all that good stuff. Luckily, I've emerged to an eagerly awaiting reality check and the enjoyable task of stepping back inside myself...its time to deplane and recollect my baggage.

What a long strange trip it's been...