Late April (stones from near Sea Camp, Point Reyes National Seashore)

I am contemplating loneliness. Although I spin in my own little world with strange scheduling and an odd smattering of passions and responsibilities, I feel completely connected to a few people. I keep thinking about Marx’s theory of “man’s metabolism with nature”……that we use nature to live, and to live we must use nature. Cyclical, self-perpetuating dependence. What about humanities metabolism with humanity? I am fueled by love and the more I live, the more deeply invested in love I become. Love only asks for more investment so that there can be more of it. If desire is suffering, love is sustenance.

Space

It was thus also (and above all) disquieting, evoking neither pleasure, not joy, nor calm - only intellectual interest and most likely anxiety. Anxiety in face of what? In face of the shattered figures of a world in pieces, in face of a disjointed space, and in face of a pitiless 'reality' that cannot be distinguished from its own abstraction, from its own analysis, because it is already an abstraction. (Henri LeFebvre, The Production of Space)

late november, autumn (stones from Limantour Spit, Point Reyes National Seashore)

HERE: To ride on a ferry through unknown waters in the pouring rain. The ebbing warmth of a cup of coffee in hand. From the comforting blank white world into the monotony of home. I wish that ferry ride had been longer, that the spasms of water across the window had continued. Invisibility beyond anonymity. Boundlessly expansive in my truncated senses. To sit still for one whole hour, and let everything beyond my skin and sight become absolutely equal in utter superfluousness. (me)
THERE: This is the most beautiful place on earth. There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary. For the time being, around my place at least, the air is untroubled, and I become aware for the first time today of the immense silence in which I am lost. Not a silence so much as a great stillness- slight noises break the sensation of absolute silence but at the same time exaggerate my sense of of the surrounding, overwhelming peace. A suspension of time, a continuous present. (Edward Abbey)

Hamlet, II 2, also the introduction to Borge's The Aleph

Oh God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a King of infinite space.....

One of the best poems ever written

I have loved this poem for more than a decade:
Eating Poetry
Mark Strand

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man,
I snarl at her and bark,
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

A poetic cheerleader in the cold

Lines For Winter, by Mark Strand
Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself --
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

Everything begins again (stones from South Great Beach, Point Reyes National Seashore)

In the spirit of Roland Barthes: I like cumulous nimbus clouds, cathedrals, crossword puzzles, topographic maps, color-coded-anything, fog horns, writing with nice pens, the sound of foot falls on earth or snow or mud or dried leaves, cooking meals for people that I love, thermoses that don't leak, chopping vegetables, orating my dreams, petting dogs, taking surveys, getting dressed up (but only once in a while), sleeping in a cold room under many blankets, cellos, autumn, olives, riding in a car full of people, trombones, rust, striped socks, setting the table before a dinner party, walking barefoot on warm sandstone, getting letters in the mail, electric guitars, adventurous conversation, bright clashing colors, driving on long lonely highways, first kisses, woolen socks, sore muscles, jumping in the air,most shades of green, mid-century modern design, old ladies who like to talk, pinot noir and sauvignon blanc, good burritos, honesty, landscapes where open spaces meet the mountains, hugging my mother and feeling her soft cheek against my own, laughing uncontrollably, being alone in vast wildernesses, similes, coffee and cigarettes in the morning, when people touch me on the knee or the shoulder when they are talking to me, the smell of pine trees, sage bushes, and eucalyptus, dusk, bald men, intentionality, flying on airplanes, falling asleep with my head on someone's shoulder, spinach, Kansas, dancing (especially with my sister), acknowledged friendships, bulldozers, Thanksgiving, photo albums, tulips, 1960's Jaguars, house slippers, gas stoves, eye contact, the smell of basil, theremins, waking up slowly, thinking about wind and waves and currents,

The New Year (stones from Agate Beach, Patrick's Point)

An Ode to Art God:
This is a solidified spirit behind a post Dadaist way of living/creating. It is a vulnerability to the creative, fearless, celebratory nature of life. It dances, confounds, inspires, is an insomniac, can be debaucherous or hyper focussed. It writes late night emails. It is very honest. It is very generous and dynamic and magnetic. It allows for criticism and questioning, but also can say fuck this shit. It picks its nose and farts. It can have smart, esoteric conversation. It writes in a journal. It eats snacks late at night, goes on long walks, smokes cigarettes. It is not afraid of love. It is not afraid of lonesomeness. It is ready to alienate itself for the purpose of meaningful authenticity. It values complexity as much as it values clarification. It explores. It does not self edit. It can be enthralled by nuance. It can be animalistic. It is never shameful. It is a master of observing and synthesizing. It has no mantra.
Art God is not a god you pray to, or a god to be described as benevolent or malevolent. It is a god you can channel. You can speak in tongues, be filled with the spirit, be an intermediary, be a saint.

late november (stones from Limantour Spit, Point Reyes National Seashore)

excerpts from a solo sabbatical : Oh, my heart hurts! It is the pursuit of the impossible. By the way, I am drinking Whiskey and Capri Sun. Might he help me navigate the desert soil? Could he understand the overwhelming nature of nature? Could he help raise goats and tomatoes and other peoples' kids? I wonder if I spent 8 years here, would this become MY landscape? Is there a place in my soul that is indelibly marked by the Southwest, so that Hamilton Mesa and South Park and Three Guns Trail are my only signifiers of simultaneous home and beauty? The desert lends itself so easily to fantasy and to action. I look at the blue meets blue horizon, and I do not know what to do. I want my life to be site specific and I want that life NOW! I want the weather to decide what I do with my day. I love nature so much more than I love mankind and its messiness.

I was vivaciously dead last night.

I led a parade through the streets last night. My face was painted as a skeleton. I kicked a can, danced with a broom, drank tecate by the light of farolitos and the glow of love. I heard death pronounced and celebrated by my two sisters, one of blood and one of spirit, once in english and once in spanish. And then, repeated, like a reverberation, many times in my heart.


Nothing But Death

There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,
growing in the damp air like tears of rain.

Sometimes I see alone
coffins under sail,
embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair,
with bakers who are as white as angels,
and pensive young girls married to notary publics,
caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead,
the river of dark purple,
moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death,
filled by the sound of death which is silence.

Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it,
with no finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue,
with no throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

I'm not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see,
but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets,
of violets that are at home in the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the look death gives is green,
with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf
and the somber color of embittered winter.

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,
death is inside the broom,
the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,
it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Death is inside the folding cots:
it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,
in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:
it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,
and the beds go sailing toward a port
where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.


Pablo Neruda