Ridin' home, The Matrix, Chandlers, and walking the fields.

Strange how smells, tastes, sights, and sounds can trigger memories, or take you back to a time in your past.  Not necessarily a memory but a feeling from a time period in your life. 

I was driving home from work; turned on the radio; fumbled through the usual pop stuff, a little classical, blah, blah, blah.  Well then I hit KKZX just as Journey's "Don't Stop Believin" started.  You guys remember in the Matrix when you get sucked down that phone for the first time?  That sound and that holy fuck feeling?  Well, I did anyway; that is the best way to describe what happened to my brain; something deep in there.  Suddenly, I had that feeling I had from that time in my life.  I was there, and didn't want to leave.  I could feel all those dreams; the stupid ones that we know are going to come true but end up leaving us for someone, or something else.  Those dreams that take off to fool someone else.  My profile picture up there on Facebook; that is from that time.

I love that picture.  Although I wonder WTF happened to me!  Too much of a bad habit probably, and  I believe that there is a design flaw in the way we are made.  Hair should not leave it's rightful spot on the head and move to the ears, nose, and wherever else you might find it.  Where are those clothes now?  And look that is a rotary dial phone with a cord.  Amazing!  I miss the Chandler farm and the fun around that table where Mr. Chandler is sitting.  The table where Mrs. Chandler would sit laugh and make us all laugh just because of her happiness.  Lil' Chan and Joe look like they stepped right out of Back to the Future.  Holly, cute as hell, who we all had a crush on whether we would admit it, or not; most often not because then there would be much harassment.

These days I wonder what the hell I am doing pretty much everyday.  I expected to not be wondering about that by now.  I look at the pictures from when my dad was the age I am now.  What was he thinking?  What were his struggles?  His secret thoughts?  What was he going through?  I search his face and wonder.  What was going on behind that smile.  Everyone loved my dad; thought highly of him.  What did he think of himself? What, if anything, would he have done differently?

I call this blog Stubble Fields.  I call it that because I used to sit on the tree line and wait for something to walk out of the forest on the other side.  I realized it was like sitting between two worlds.  It is where as I sat I couldn't help but notice the little worlds right underneath my butt.  All the creepy crawlies that I so love that no one ever pays attention to.  I especially like to do this at dusk.  Once, as I walked on the edge of a field on Floyd Norris' land just as the last light of the day was fading; something shadowed me in the woods.  It would growl every time I would stop and look; the forest was too dark to see what it was.  I am pretty sure it was a coyote.  I like to do this, too, on cold fall mornings and listen to the ravens talk to each other across the valley. 

Well, that is enough for now.  Thank you for indulging me.

These days

So going a little looney these days.  I have not been smoking and have had to deal with a bit of stress over the past few months; so it has been a struggle. 

I saved my dog.

I am losing myself.  Whoever, that is.

Been studying Zen

Trying,

And failing.

Pissing off people at work,

And at home...always at home.

My kids save my existence everyday.

I would just be a puff of smoke on the wind

If they didn't remind me everyday

Saying, "Daddy, you're the best."

I’ve changed my ways a little; I cannot now
Run with you in the evenings along the shore,
Except in a kind of dream; and you, if you dream a moment,
You see me there.

So leave awhile the paw-marks on the front door
Where I used to scratch to go out or in,
And you’d soon open; leave on the kitchen floor
The marks of my drinking-pan.

I cannot lie by your fire as I used to do
On the warm stone,
Nor at the foot of your bed; no, all the night through
I lie alone.

But your kind thought has laid me less than six feet
Outside your window where firelight so often plays,
And where you sit to read—and I fear often grieving for me—
Every night your lamplight lies on my place.

You, man and woman, live so long, it is hard
To think of you ever dying
A little dog would get tired, living so long.
I hope than when you are lying

Under the ground like me your lives will appear
As good and joyful as mine.
No, dear, that’s too much hope: you are not so well cared for
As I have been.

And never have known the passionate undivided
Fidelities that I knew.
Your minds are perhaps too active, too many-sided… .
But to me you were true.

You were never masters, but friends. I was your friend.
I loved you well, and was loved. Deep love endures
To the end and far past the end. If this is my end,
I am not lonely. I am not afraid. I am still yours.


Robinson Jeffers, 1941

From Childhood's Hour

“From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.”

—	Edgar Allan Poe

Friends

I need friends. I have friends; but i need friends that actually want to hang out with me. I need some people in my life that really don’t give a damn about my situation. I am going to start doing things that I want to do and if the people in my life want to participate then you are welcome to. Otherwise I will meet new friends. Am I wrong?

Me.

I love books. 
I love to talk about books.
I think a little too deeply for my own good sometimes.
My brain goes so fast and so far beyond what I am able to control sometimes.
I like old logs, stumps,  rotten old abandoned houses, old concrete walls covered in moss and lichen.
I love cats....and dogs but I am more of a cat kind of person.  I am good with other peoples dogs.
I think about old bones, half exposed in the brush somewhere.  It doesn't matter whether it is human or animal.  I like finding these and trying to tell their story.
I like classical music.
I like alternative and heavy metal music.
Beethoven is my favorite.
I like electronic, ambient, and dub step, too.
I like old woodpiles, and being alone somewhere far away at dusk.
I am meloncholy; sometimes to the extreme.
I love movies and love to talk about a really good one that makes me think.
I love the smell of fresh turned dirt in the spring, the sound of frogs, and the smell and sounds of a good swamp.
And oh do I love insects, bugs, and yeah even spiders.
I grew up with fish and water everywhere so it is in my blood and I love it.
I like to sit somewhere and see what happens; anywhere. 
I think my favorite places to sit are in a natural setting.  I like to just be quiet and see what lives there.
Although, I also like to find little ecosystems in the middle of cities and see what lives there.
I love the little things that make up our world.
The ocean is my place to re-set to zero.  I want to live there.  Not some sunny beach but the Pacific Northwest Coast.
I love the night sky but loathe it too.  It hurts my brain trying to figure out what is out there.  I want to know.
I practice Zen Buddhism and fail everyday.
I know that if I did not have my children I would end it all.  I love them more than anything that exists.
I am lonely but not very social and am awkward.  I try to be a nice guy.  I treat people the way I want to be treated but I don't always want to. 
Sometimes I don't want to talk and there is no reason
I love motorcyles...everything about them.  Tattoos as well.
I just put flowers on my parents grave and cried for an hour.  I haven't done that in a long time.
People like me for some reason that I don't understand.  I don't get it.
I know all these things but do not know myself.  Go figure.

The Return: Forever out there.

Out where I grew up it is very dark at night. Sometimes if you are lucky the moon shines through the tree branches enough to light the way. It is a strange place at times; it has its own life and energy. I have never understood it, not even today. This place has a secret. A secret not meant to be discovered, or at least not by me. I walk the forest trails and see things move out of the way, but I can never see them directly. These things slither, crawl, and jump through the brush.

When I do happen to see these creatures, they look at me with more knowledge in their eyes than I would expect. It is startling, not only because a doe may have just jumped out of nowhere in front of me, but that she has a vigilant look in her eyes. It is an earthy look, full of grit and survival. The desperation of knowing that a year from now her life will be different, or over.

Everything here moves with purpose; no energy is wasted. I can get caught up in it. If I let go and listen to the night, and if I let those primal urges of want and desire flow into me, my eyes grow large with fear and flight. My heart pounds as I place myself in the wildness that surrounds me. I can feel the desperate pull to be savage, ruthless, cunning, and unclean. I long for scratches and torn skin, to feel blood flow. I want to show this place that I can take it. I want to scratch bark and piss on the borders of my claimed land and fight all that dare cross it. I want to show that I will be fat by winter and will emerge alive and victorious in the spring…

I pull into the start of the driveway where I used to wait for the bus year-round. The bus would pull up, the doors would fly open and there would sit old Eldon Baker. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone look so old for so long. He never seemed to age but just looked old all the time. He is gone now; dead like so many people that I have known.

I continue on over the double cattle guards; they were supposed to keep the reservation cows off the property, but the cows always found another way in. I am the only one that has business out here now. I am here to tend to my bees. They used to be mine and Dad’s bees, but he is gone too. Mom comes out with me now and then but always wants to be dropped off at the Indian Casino a mile farther down the road.

There have been some changes since the last time I was here. I look and find the old landmarks of childhood here and there; trees and fence posts that have some significance to me. Clumps of weeds that have lived in colonies for decades, ever renewing themselves and spreading their likeness for miles around. I pass by a small clearing to my left where I found transplanted marijuana plants hidden in the very high forests of sweet clover that grew there every summer.

Farther down from the clearing I turn onto the rabbit-barn road, a place of pure terror when I was a kid. The Johns family next door kept rabbits inside the little red barn and also in cages outside. At night, the rabbits in the outside cages fell victim to all kinds of night horrors. Many times I would be the first to find the shredded remains of a rabbit that had been pulled through a crack in the cage by some heavily-toothed beast, perhaps coyotes or stray dogs. But the combination of seeing that and the dark woods around the barn area created an aura of evil that my little mind could not comprehend. I had nightmares and avoided that place at almost all cost. Bob Johns used to sit up there in the dark with a 12-guage, waiting to see what would come to get his rabbits. Safe in my bed I would wait for the shot in the night, wondering what beast Bob would encounter; would they find him torn to shreds in the wet morning grass?

The little red barn is now a wretched structure. The red paint is peeling in long strands that, from a distance, look like rivulets of blood running down its sides. After years of failed attempts at rabbit farming the Johns quit; they butchered the remaining rabbits but left everything else. Cages were left with the doors hanging open and the rabbit droppings and bedding was left to rot with the structure. I still didn’t play there because even though the rabbits were gone, I knew their scent was not. It was easy to envision being caught by a feral predator, and not finding a rabbit, would satisfy itself with me.

Now as I drive out here I am with different people. My Mom is dead now. I miss her. Everyone that was a part of this place and knew it's beauty is gone now; now I bring my kids out here and they love it; which it makes me smile.

I have been to many places. I have visited Germany, lived in Texas, Georgia, and walked the swamps of Louisiana and Mississippi, but I have never found a place to match my old home. It is so familiar it hurts my heart. The same smells, most of the same sights and sounds but the important people are gone; the people that understood. The people that live there now have changed things. Their houses look like shit; yards and all. They have no respect for it here. The wonder that lives around them; they have no eyes for it. They do not know how to get deep down into the ground; the soiled, primal heart of it.

I have never left here. Somewhere in the middle of it all my heart remains trapped in the mud, brush and trees. My soul swims the creeks, and ponds. I often dream of this place. In the dreams I see my Mom and Dad, the colors are vivid and sharp, beautiful. In the dream everything looks different but I always know it is out where I grew up.