DEER HUNTING SEASON IS ON

doe and buck

 

 Black Friday is all over facebook and radio news. I'm sure tv is drowning everybody in it. Marketing. Sales all over America. Cheap. I saw a video of two guys fighting in a mall. They were hard at it. I had a feeling it was something like they had vowed to kick each other's ass on sight, or at least one had a bead on the other. I'm recalling one guy I know was in Walmart with his wife when he spotted the guy who had knocked up his sister, though he aimed to kick his ass over something else this time. He took off walking fast up behind the other guy, wife heaving a sigh, knowing better than to try to stop him. He walked up close behind the guy, cussing him. The guy kept on walking. Friend said, "If he'd a turned around, I'd a drilled him right there in the store." This wasn't even Black Friday.

buck

I'm recalling another guy I know who was set on kicking a certain guy's ass first time he saw him, no matter where it was. A day came he had to get up in a suit and go to his little girl's kindergarten graduation. He spotted among the parents in folding chairs this guy whose ass he'd vowed to kick on sight. He had to sit there in his suit, in as uncomfortable a place as he could ever be, sit like in a straight-jacket unable to move, smoldering, watching himself in his mind's eye doing like he said he would when he got  ahold of him. He'd hold him down with left hand on his throat and warp the hell out of his head with his fist. I was hearing it kind of wide-eyed, thinking about the physical damage it would do to the guy he was hitting, something like compassion. And I realized it was what my friend intended. He would mean to put the guy in the hospital for a long time, leave him just short of dead. 

spike

 

He's a tough guy, too. He has a brother bigger than him. I imagine he grew up learning to beat his bigger brother in a fight. They're both tough. I heard from a source who was there, of a time his brother walked up to a guy that had raised a shotgun and threatened him with it. He pressed his chest to the barrels and said, eyeball to eyeball, "You better pull the trigger before I take that thing away from you and beat you to death with it." The guy put the gun down. These are my buds I spend time with watching them practice before a bow tournament, watching a race, hanging out on Fourthajuly watching the kids play, daddies batting a softball for the kids to catch, mamas keeping the babies out of the range of a flying ball. They fish as much as they can and hunt with intent to fill a freezer with meat for the year, new antlers for the collection, and the head of a monster buck with a pretty rack, a twelve-pointer, to have mounted for the living room, robin-hooded arrows resting among the antlers like medals. 

black bear

 

Yesterday, talking with friend who intimidated the guy in Walmart, he had his rifle and was on the way to his blind to see what he could find. He showed me the rifle, the kind you see in movies assassins use with wooden stock and a big powerful scope, single shot. The whole thing was such a precision instrument I dared not touch it. He showed me one of the bullets he uses. Just the bullet, itself, inert, harmless as a marshmallow outside the rifle, looked deadly. I didn't even want to touch it. I was interested to look at it, not handle it. I asked him how far it shoots with accuracy. He said he'd killed a coyote at 350 yards with one. I enjoy hearing his accounts of his kills. He takes hunting seriously. He takes only bucks over three years old. He won't take a shot unless he can be certain the buck will drop straight down and feel nothing, fall asleep standing. He doesn't like them to suffer and he doesn't like following a blood trail through the woods with a flashlight, nor does he like dragging one uphill to the nearest place he can get to with his truck. Hunting is a skill unto art form I appreciate in others, but cannot presume for myself the right to snatch the life away from an other. 

 

does

photos from trail camera the other side of the road

 

 

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DEALING WITH JUDGMENT

ernest trova

Very strange experience today. The day's film was Rust And Bone, a French film by Jacques Audiard, the story of three people. The film amounted to character development of the three and a fairly intense story that uncovered the character of all three. One of the characters was a woman who worked at the French version of Sea World as a trainer with Orcas. She was the target of an Orca attack that took both her legs. She's left to herself to deal with it. At the same time we meet a guy who doesn't pay much attention, has a boy about ten with him, in a French city moving in with the guy's sister and her husband. Things go round and round, he and the Orca trainer start a casual affair with complications. He is an underground mixed martial arts fighter. These are not the ones that fight on tv that play by the rules. A crowd of twenty or thirty men bet on the fighters who go by no rules, no referee. It was brutal in a super-testosterone brain-dead way. She falls in love with he, but he is unable to commit. It goes round and round from there. I don't recall many films where three characters share the lead role. Beautifully made French film using dynamic photography like I've not seen before. All the way through it, the editing and the workings of the camera were new. All three were dealing with real world issues, all of them living without affection and needing it. After much physical, emotional, mental pain, they came together to lean on each other and begin their healing.

 

rene magritte

 

I'm at the end of the film and Justin drove up to the barn to throw some hay bales on the back of his truck to bring to the place I feed the donkeys. I saw him go by, put the movie on hold and threw on jacket, outdoor shoes, hat and gloves, picked up a couple of carrots. I gave carrots to the donkeys and calf over the fence. We stacked the hay bales and covered them with the tarp. Justin came in for a few minutes to smoke a cigarette. I'd mentioned the film I was seeing about the underground fighter. He told me a little bit about the world of underground fighting like that. It's every place. He told me about a fight he had in his wild-thang time with a Mexican over money. The Mexican owed him money and wouldn't give it to him until Justin stuck the barrel of a 9 in his mouth. He told about a guy that had him down with a choke hold and Justin was stuck. He couldn't move and he was losing oxygen starting to fade. The guy put his hand over Justin's mouth and Justin bit a chunk out of the palm of the guy's hand. He let go. He told episode after episode, and I'm sitting here thinking: what's going on? I'm seeing this movie about guys fighting to near death, then Justin comes in telling me of his fights to near death, it's a new moon, and I'm wondering what the hell is happening. All of a sudden I was overwhelmed by stories of the very hardest kind of fighting. It made me ask myself what is going on inside me that needed to hear these stories today. I used to be really put off by such "masculine" behavior. For one thing, it misrepresents the masculine in the same way junkie whores in big cities misrepresent the feminine.  

 

marino marini

 

It caused me to look within. I saw that over my years living in mountain culture, I had to change a great deal of my thinking. Right away I had to get used to men who kill casually, talk about it with excitement the way teenagers talk about rock stars. I have spent my time among my mountain friends controlling my face when they tell me about some of their killing adventures, shooting squirrels and crows for target practice. My friend Jr Maxwell was good with a gun. I think he got a kick out of telling me stories about shooting an owl out of a tree or shooting flocks of crows with a shotgun, just to watch me control my face. Inside, I squirm up into a knot feeling for my friends living happy lives ending up as target practice. All these years later, it still tears me up to hear their kill stories. I've told myself many times it is the culture and if I want to accept the culture as it is, this is the chance to really practice acceptance. It's been a good practice. It has been responsible for much thought, not to justify, but to accept. If I object to these stories, then I inhibit my friends from talking freely around me and I don't want that. I learn to accept. By now I can watch mixed martial arts fighting on tv at Justin's house and enjoy it. First, I know the guys doing it love it. They like getting hurt and they like hurting somebody. It's just how they're wired. I figure they're on their own when they step into the ring, doing what they love doing. I'm not here to deprive them of what they love doing just because I'm squeamish. I can get some appreciation for the sport of what they're doing by acceptance that it's ok for them to do what they want to do, a whole lot better than I can by disapproval. Again, the only thing my disapproval could achieve would be to inhibit my friends from talking freely when I'm around.

 

robert ryman

 

I don't think like them and they know it. They know it better than I do. I accept and appreciate their way of thinking and they allow me mine. Even though they know I'm not a racist and don't kill anything, they feel free in my company. I don't judge them and don't attempt to make them think like I think. I don't want to give any kind of impression that I want them to think like I think. They all know in their hearts that in my heart is no feeling that I am better than any of them in any way. We have totally different experience. I come from another culture and continue to carry much of it with me. I don't object. I like much of both cultures and live with what I take for the best of both. I believe my mountain friends have a certain affection for me because I do not judge them. They don't know anybody that doesn't judge them. I'm remembering how refreshed I felt in the company of the first person I'd ever met I didn't feel was judging me. It was unforgettable. All we did was sit on a screen porch with cups of tea and talk for an hour. It was an unforgettable experience because I felt I could tell or say anything and it would be ok. I can still feel it. Kitty Davy was her name. She was 88 at the time. I knew her for a little over a year, maybe two. She became for me a model of how I wanted to be as a human being, to be a refreshing spirit who simply does not judge. I can't lay claim to that as who I am, but am able somewhat. I want the people in my company uninhibited by perceived judgment. It frees me as much as it frees the other. I'm thinking that today's learning has to do with seeing that I have not "steeled" myself against behavior in others I don't want for myself, but have accepted, allowed, adjusted to their culture such that I am doing all right where understanding is concerned. 

 

robert rauschenberg

 

I'm glad, grateful too, to see I have come into living by non-judgment. I'm thinking the film and Justin today at the same time were measures of how far I have come on my spiritual path. I never dreamed I'd come to a time when I wasn't judging others and self. It just crept up on me. I didn't know that's what was going on. I have become curious to have a glimpse of who it is I'm interacting with conversationally, coffee shop, mancave with friends, hardware store, drugstore, any place, anybody. I've learned to find other people really interesting. There came a time when I tuned in to my own inner spirit and now want to find the inner spirit in the other. I've found that non-judgment soon becomes apparent. Then the other drops judgment and we flow freely without apprehension of being taken for a nerd or thought stupid for having a valid feeling. I'm remembering in Women's Liberation times thinking liberation for women is equally liberation for men. I never understood why other men didn't get it. I was thinking women freeing themselves of stereotypes would free men of stereotypes too. Men of the newer generations are getting it. Please don't misunderstand and suspect I mean I am free of judgment. I am not. I can tell you a lot I'm judgmental about, but the judgment is weaker now. It has no conviction. I don't believe my own judgments. I suppose they drift away because I don't believe them. Friend Jr Maxwell said one evening at the table over drinks, "Don't believe what you think." This from a man I came to assess wise without hesitation. I have a lot of opinions, but don't believe them. I can talk about them, but can't argue about them because I don't believe them. I have zero conviction for any of my opinions. I tend to think of opinions as dots to draw lines between to make sense of the world I live in the best I know how. It's not even a sketchy understanding, but makes a kind of map to give self at least a little bit of an idea of context.

 

robert indiana

 

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