GRUMPY OLD BASTARD ROAD RUNNER

 

jack's nose

Calm, quiet day after a night of big thunder and rain. I went out with a couple of five gallon buckets to shovel up some donkey droppings to spread under the rhododendron around the house. They are huge, ready for some nourishment. I don't know how well it works, but I spread it on the ground out around the outside edge of the branches where the root tips crawl through the ground. I've been told donkey is high potency manure that burns the plants. I'm assuming leaving it on top of the ground and letting the nutrients soak in a little at a time during rains will be more gentle. I'm not tilling it into the ground. The pink rhododendron that get full sun are blooming now while the ones in the shade are just now popping the buds. In my early years in the mountains the pink rhododendron, the ones the people in the old way called purple, bloomed in late June every year. The  blooming has crept forward in time until they're blooming mid May now. I've watched their blooming season advance closer to the end of winter. These rhododendron have almost rounded tips on their leaves. They love sunlight. The other rhododendron has pointed leaves and white flowers the old people called pink. They also called rhododendron laurel and called mountain laurel ivy. It was a language overlap in changing times the old folks couldn't adjust to. Laurel was laurel and ivy was ivy. Somebody comes along saying that's not laurel and that's not ivy, the old folks would let it go by, somebody else trying to make something common into something high sounding. One of the many insights picked up in these mountains was seeing that the people of the old way before electricity and oil were not less intelligent than us because they didn't finish high school and their grammar was different. We from outside the mountains tend to look at the old hillbillies as none to brite, people who were poor because they were uneducated. I see it so the other way around now, I have to watch judging people who take mountain culture for a lesser version of their own, because I did it for too long a time to admit without embarrassment.

 

jack's topknot

 

When it comes to intelligence, they had it all over us. Their educational system taught them how to figure things out. Ours has us memorizing details. Ever tried to read a high school history text book? Detail after detail to be memorized. So boring you never want to read another book the rest of your life. Bring back the Bible, just because it's good reading. I'm not going to say anything about the twitter generation, because I know nothing at all about them. I see a few in the coffee shop and they act like they're not even there. That's the extent of my experience. Recalling a time recently I went into a local restaurant with friend Bill Nixon from Atlanta. I came face to face with the guy who was to seat us, looked to be about 18. I drew a blank. I don't know how to talk to an eighteen year old. So many generation gaps have gone between us I lost track of the young long ago. I'm looking at the guy and he's looking at me and I don't know what to say. Every experience I've had in recent years speaking to somebody that age, they say, What? I didn't want to go through any of it. I put two fingers up. Bill stepped up. He and the guy talked like peers. The kid talked to him like Bill could hear, and Bill was older than me. Bill has taught art in university much of his life. His students are people of that age and he knows how to talk to them. Knows so well, the guy lit up talking with Bill. The difference, Bill saw him person to person, I saw him the other side of a communication barrier. It was all in my attitude. Bill looks like old Walt Whitman and I look like a retired cop. Now, when I have occasion to address the young, I tell myself to receive them for who they are, like everybody else, and talk like the other can hear. In many ways, it's like being in a foreign country among the young in this time of the life. The ones I know, I connect with them easily. It's the ones I don't know that put me in a state of bewilderment. Perhaps I put too much emphasis on not understanding their culture. I admired that moment in Bill. A bit of urban sophistication was in the mix too, none of which I have.

 

jenny's whiskers

 

My friend Meredith I've known since she was a baby. Wasn't around her much, a time or two a year, but feel like I know her. First time I saw her after her PhD, I felt like she was closer and at once farther away. Farther away in that she has impressive knowledge in her head. A time I saw her when she was in high school, she had read on her own for fun, the Iliad and the Odyssey. She was then reading a two inch thick commentary on them. I daresay I was impressed. I might have wiggled my way through maybe one of them, but never the commentary at that age. She now has a baby as cute as she was. Her parents never hit her and she will never hit her baby. My friend Pat, who lives in NY state close to Massachusetts, raised two girls without hitting them. Oldest is now a surgeon. The other works with her in her landscaping business. They are brilliant, beautiful women, inside and out, contributions to the world around them. I'm comfortable in my age, comfortable in my culture, comfortable in my world of friends and neighbors. People come in from outside these parameters and I'm lost for what to say or do. I don't understand people outside my world anymore. I've given so much focus of energy to understanding the culture I live in, the people I know and the mountain of memories that go with advancing age, I don't pay attention to anything outside these fields, or meadows. Nobody tells me anymore I need to pay more attention to the world out there (television). Everyone in my world knows I never will. I've not paid attention to tv since 1961. Only have one now for watching films. Films are art forms. Tv is too, but about as much an art form as a child's coloring book. The art in television is mind manipulation. A century and a half of the study of psychology and what is the result? Mind control by way of television, addictive mind control that creates imaginary reality as directed by.... When you don't watch television and live in a world of people that do, just the frame of mind, ways of thinking make me an outsider. I hear Patti Smith again, Outside of society! That's where I wanna be! Followed by Lenny Kaye's guitar strings. Hail Yeah! Rebel yell.  

 

jack's nostril

 

Outside of society is where I'm comfortable. A thought of being comfortable in society gives me the shivers. There was a time in the life when I never imagined it possible to get out from under the constant assault of other people's expectations, like it would be impossible. The day I turned off caring, it became possible. I came to realize nobody has a right to expect of someone else. I quit allowing other people to expect of me. I quit caring before the move to the mountains. I'm in a place, have been here awhile, where I don't perform other people's expectations unless I agree to it or offer to. I found in these hills that the people outside society are the very most interesting people around. I'm remembering what friend Jr Maxwell told me his daddy, who was born months after the end of the War of Yankee Aggression, told him, Stay away from important people. I was inclined in that direction when he said it, but it was nice to have it so succinctly put. When somebody says, I didn't expect that of you, I think without saying it, that's your problem, not mine. I know I've pist an awful lot of people off with indifference to their expectations. It keeps them away. I don't want around me people who expect of others, especially the unspoken expectations, my favorite kind to trample. I have a maxim of my own on the subject, expect me to walk on your eggshells, they will be broken. It's been my attitude a very long time, so long I don't think about it anymore. It's become my nature. If I wanted to be a social butterfly, I would not choose here to do it. I came to Waterfall Road to perform that corny cliché, find myself. Oh, what a difference it made. A particular church here I liked, felt the spirit good there, went a few times, then the expectations start, "We expected to see you last week, brother." I'm gone. Once expectation raises its head and starts talking, I make tracks, high-speed tracks that barely touch the ground.

 

jenny's eye

 

 

*

DONKEY JENNY'S LOVE LIGHT GLOWS

jack curls his upper lip

This morning I went early with carrots while the donkeys were grazing out in the meadow. I took the camera today, thought I'd get some new pictures of them. I opened the gate and walked into the meadow without them paying me much mind. Taking pictures of them, I don't even think about composition much anymore. I just snap and get what I can. This one happened while I was holding the camera and talking to Jack. His lip curled up. I didn't have time to do anything but click the button pointing the camera more or less in the right direction. Had no idea if I even got him in the picture. He curls his lip like this when I talk to him. Some visitors today, we were standing this side of the gate giving them carrots. I was telling them something about Jack, talking about him, and he curled his lip like he does when I talk to him. It's like an involuntary spasm takes him over. It's the same with a bray. It's like once it starts, the bray has a life of its own. He just opens the passage through his neck from lungs to throat. Sometimes, if he cuts the bray off before it's over, he will be awhile sounding like he's whimpering almost to tears, like a child choking back tears. It's not a painful thing for him. The association is entirely my own. For him it's just braying. He brays when he's excited. He seems to be braying less since he's taken on the Alpha role. I clicked picture after picture. Several of noses up close or top of head up close. They move unexpectedly between the time my mind says push the button and finger pushes. I'll think I'm getting a good full face portrait and suddenly I get a close-up of a nostril. I laugh at myself that I'm able to tell whose nostril it is when I'm looking at the pictures in the computer. Jack was especially spirited with me this morning and Jenny quiet, allowing Jack the attention he was getting. I don't give him a good petting very often since Jenny's jealousy came into the meadow. Since she passed Alpha to Jack, she isn't jealous anymore, nor is she aggressive. She was standing back, watching me rub Jack's neck, his back, and Jack likes me to rub his rump and down his back legs. He likes his legs rubbed. Jenny has never liked her back touched. While rubbing Jack's back, I felt Jenny nudge me in the back with her nose, "Pet me."

jenny's topknot

I gave her a good rubbing on the underside of her neck, where she rubs herself on the dogwood trunks, and rubbed her neck and top of her head. She let me know she wanted me to rub her back like I rubbed Jack's back. She's never wanted me touching her back before. Her legs are off limits. I'm thinking I'll give Jack's legs a good rubbing with Jenny watching and see if she asks me to rub her legs. If she does, and I suspect she will, at least before end of summer, that will be a major breakthrough with Jenny. I think we're about bonded by now. Jenny is showing that she loves me. She is quiet now, not even playfully aggressive. She's practically glowing with love energy since she fell in love with Jack a few weeks ago. She fell in love with me too. She fell in love with the people who come to visit her. The gate is where I give them carrots and talk to them aware that they understand what I'm saying. She has made herself a daybed just inside the gate, her happy place where the love energy is flowing in a circle between us and carrot munching. It's her happy place. That's the best I can make of why she chose that spot. It's her resting place every day now during siesta time. She lies there with her head up most of the time looking like a Greek marble of a horse's head. She will sprawl out on the ground like she's dead. Horses tend not to stretch out like that, though I've heard donkeys do. Perhaps she is at ease with Jack keeping watch and can allow herself a moment of unguarded relaxation. In the mornings after carrots Jenny wants me to stay with her and talk some more and rub her cheeks. She has learned my hands have never hurt her or Jack. She sees me drape my arms around Jack's neck just in front of the shoulder, not controlling him, just being close. I don't ever take hold of either one to control. Except a few times when Jenny swung her rear end around on me and I put my hand on her rump to push her aside and distract her attention. Mainly to distract. It only happens when Jack is on the other side of me and swings his rump around, then Jenny swings her rump around and they're on either side of me, bumping into me close. I know neither one will kick me, but I also know they get excited when they start kicking and I don't want to be in the middle of an outta control donkey boxing match.

 

jenny

 

I like this picture of Jenny, it shows her stillness. This is the face of Jenny in her humility. She's come out of six months of aggressive Alpha behavior that stressed her. She's relaxed considerably with Jack taking care of Alpha duties, and she's overwhelmed by love vibration all the time now. I see her love face in this picture. It's her all's-right-with-the-world face. She's a happy donkey. And Jack is a happy donkey because Jenny is. Jack takes to Alpha like it's natural as grazing. He's not aggressive. Jack and I bonded before Jenny arrived. It's been awhile bonding with Jenny given her grief and dealing with an obsessive rapist every day. Everywhere I see her in the meadow now she looks like she is in peace at home. The word docile comes to mind, but it doesn't quite fit Jenny. I know she's not a docile donkey. She retains her self. She is her own woman. I admire that in her. And I'm glad Jack has a woman with a strong personality, a woman he can only dominate with her permission. It took Jack awhile to learn to conquer her. When he learned how to take her down, she fell in love. He's not a man if he can't kick her ass. I feel impulse to throw my arms around Jenny's neck like I do Jack, but hesitate to alarm her when we're so relaxed with each other. I was taking some pictures of Jack and she was grazing close to my shoe. I let her go to see what she'd do. She wanted to smell it, felt the texture with her lip. I let her feel the texture of my shirts with her lips and teeth. She doesn't intend to bite, only to feel the texture. She was moving her lips over the shoe, then she opened her mouth wide and took my whole foot sideways with her teeth and started clamping down, knowing what she was doing, playing, wanting to see me jump. I let out a tiny yelp, not a scold, but like it could be in pain, and she let go immediately, jerked her head back. I let her know I was not hurt or mad. My heavy outdoor shirt has flaps on the pockets that, of course, are never buttoned. Sometimes she will take hold of the flap with her lips, then take it with her teeth and tug on it in fun. I make the merest yelp and she lets go right away. I think donkeys feel with their lips and teeth like we feel with fingertips.

 

jack's stripe

 

I've learned to let them examine me with their nostrils without apprehension. A few months ago when Jenny was becoming comfortable with me, in the time I was taking them hay every morning, she wanted to sniff me. She'd never been comfortable yet to get up next to me and give me a good sniffing. I hadn't been totally comfortable with her either. I stood still and let her go over me like a double-barrel vacuum cleaner, feet to head, front and back, even sniffing the top of my head and face. She very lightly went over my face with the outside of her upper lip and her whiskers. I stood still and trusted her. She was apprehensive, ready to spring, but I wanted to stay still and not alarm her, let her feel that I am comfortable. It was successful. She sniffed until she understood me better in the donkey way of knowing somebody. I was grateful she let me in to that intimate part of herself, needing to know her new human by scent. Every morning after the last chunk of carrot, I show her and jack my empty hands, put them close to the nostrils and let them smell my hands. At first, it was to give evidence the carrots were gone. It has become now something we just do. I offer them the palms of my hands to sniff, they sniff, one at a time, they're satisfied and it's done. Jenny's love light has lit Jack's love light too. I feel the love vibe coming from Jack today just like from Jenny. I loved it when Jenny nudged my back. It wasn't forceful, but it was firm, just right. It wasn't alarming though by surprise. First thing in my mind was not aggression, but wanting in on the petting that's going around. She disliked being touched so much, I learned not to press her and kept hands off mostly. Now she wants hands on. She will stand at the fence and let me rub her cheeks and neck, clean out her ears. She loves being touched now. Before, the nudge would have been aggressive wanting me to stop giving Jack so much attention, wanting all for herself. Today, it was just a nudge that said, "My turn?" I want to spend more time in the meadow with them now, feel their love energy. They are at peace and each is the focus of the others undivided attention. Even grazing far apart, each has an eye on the other. I never imagined I'd have opportunity to witness two donkeys fall in love. This is good as it gets.

jack and jenny

 

 

*

 

CATERPILLAR AND THE SIBS

 

caterpillar

All I've wanted to do today was sleep. And that's what I did. Get up, fuss about, talk on the phone, go back to bed, sleep several hours, wake up, back to sleep. Finally, up around 7 in the evening and put on a Japanese samurai film, When The Last Sword Is Drawn (2003), one of the better samurai films I've seen, including 7 Samurai. It's up there in that league. It's like a really good film that happens to be a samurai story. Told in an old-fashioned kind of way by the son of a man significant in the story, who is also married to the daughter of the story's hero, though I hesitate to use the word in his context. He was just a man until he became the hero. Beautiful story and photography. It was told beautifully all way around. It had many levels and dimensions. The story of a man of honor in the Japanese way of his time. It felt culturally Japanese as seen from the inside instead of from outside. The characters and story were so Japanese they could have been wearing business suits and Jimmy Carter masks, using guns instead of swords and the story would still be Japanese and no other. It was filmed and visually conceived by the Japanese eye. It made me google the director, Yojiro Takita, and look for other films by him. Found I have 2 in my netflix Q. I wondered if I was in the mood for a samurai slasher film today. Wasn't sure. Turned out I was. Caterpillar used me for a pillow half the time, then wanted out to see the night critters. She's becoming peculiar. No matter what cat food I put down for her when she tells me she wants some catfood, she sniffs it and walks away. Leaves it all day. In the night she eats it after she's given up on waiting for me to give her something different all day. I've asked her to give me a clue to what she wants when she comes to me and says Mao. It means, I want. It could be food, wants out, wants litterbox changed, wants fresh water, or wants me to hold her. I asked her to lead the way to what she wants. Mostly she wants me to hold her. So I do. She doesn't ask a lot. She likes to be held, talked to, petted on top of her head. She likes me to cup the palm of my hand over her face for her to snuggle into for a snug-fitting face glove. She will hold her face in my hand like she's meditating, and when she's done, that's it. Takes her a moment to come back to the world.  

 

caterpillar

 

Caterpillar was born here Mother's Day, 1997. She has developed a habit from an affectation of wanting my attention every time she sees me give attention to the computer. It must get lonesome for her with my body present and my mind preoccupied. I don't think she understands a preoccupied mind. She's fully present. It must be odd for her to live with a human whose mind is off someplace else all the time. What she's doing when she says, Mao (I want), is asking me to let her in, like open the door. Hello in there. Is anybody home? A little touch on the head would go a long ways toward making me a happy cat. There are times, like now, after I've given her attention and given attention, she still wants more, I explain I'm in my head right now. Mao. So I just do the way cats do one another. I just stop paying attention and she walks away in a little bit. Walks to the food bowl, stops, turns, stares at me and continues to stare. Animals know that staring draws the attention of the one being stared at. Caterpillar is a good one at staring. I've been ignoring her stare. She said, Mao. I had to say, again, "Not now, Caterpillar." That's the same as saying, Now is a good time, Caterpillar. She's a Maine Coon, the first cat to cross the sea from the Old World to the New World. They were good cats to have on sailing ships to keep the rodent population minimal. Their fur is so thick it is water repellent. Cats sometimes went ashore wherever ships landed all up and down the East Coast. Caterpillar was born in the shed that is now the donkey shelter that was originally a chicken house. In between, it was a shed for keeping scrap wood out of the weather. A feral cat took up under the house in the winter with two inches of ice on the ground for two weeks. I took her some water and catfood daily. She would not let me see her for over a month. Eventually, she let me touch her and after quite awhile let me hold her. Celina was the name that came to me for her. I began to feel kittens inside her. Didn't want them under the house. Found a cardboard box, put hay in it, cut a hole in the side and put it in the shed. Let the opening flaps be the top of the box I could open to see inside without disturbing the newborns.

 

caterpillar

 

Celina went into a new freak-out in the shed. I left her alone for several days. She would hide in her hiding place. Kept food in the bowl. She settled down and became friendly, became friends with Aster the dog, rubbed Aster's legs, which drove dog out of her mind. Cat wouldn't run. Couldn't play chase. Peck, the cat living here at the time, hated Celina being here and beat her up every day she caught her outside the shed. I didn't know what to do. I don't understand cat mind. I let them do whatever cats do. Peck was being territorial, loyal and jealous. She hated me touching her with Celina's scent on my hands. Celina was using the box for her bed. One morning I went out to feed her, she stepped out of the box and was thin again. I thought I'd leave her the privacy of her babies and not open the top and fondle them. I wanted her to be able to do her mama cat business with the kittens feeling secure in her closed-in space. Second day I opened the top and looked at them, picked them up to see my new friends in their beginning. All three of them have lived here all their lives, Caterpillar the survivor. Two black ones and a Maine Coon. Eyes closed. I'd look at them and wonder why life forms are taken so lightly. I've known women who put little things like this in a bag with a rock and take them to the river. Babies have a way of making me feel life is precious. They make me unable to kill anything. You can't avoid killing something driving in these mountains, rabbits, squirrels, dogs, possums, cats. Sometimes they run under a wheel from the side and there's no avoiding them. I say a prayer for the soul of every animal dead in the road I pass. I feel the same about them as if they're children. It makes me sad to be in a society that doesn't respect the individual autonomy of the animal world. I visited the Mt Airy stockyard one day and had a hard time with what I saw. I wanted to take care of Celina's kittens, give them as good a life as I was able. There is so much killing going on, my part of living the way I want the world around me to be is to give kittens delivered to my doorstep on Mother's Day a good home.

tapo

Their eyes were closed the first two weeks. The morning their eyes opened, I went out to the shed. No Celina. She was not in the box with the kittens, not in the shed. I didn't know she could find a way out. I start to walk back to the house. I see Celina sitting by the edge of the road where I park. Next door neighbor's car came down the road. Aster took off running to meet the car if it were to stop. Celina saw Aster running toward her full tilt. Aster had never chased Celina. Cat darted across the road between the front and back tire, was knocked senseless by the differential housing under the car. Very sad moment burying her. It was the end result of a such a chain reaction, I could find no blame. It just happened. It was set up like the Divine hand was in it. I accepted my new role as mother to little ones given to me. Set up a place to keep them in the corner of the room, put them in a paper bag and took them to the vet to ask how to take care of them and buy some kitten formula. Vet told me they would die. I knew better, but didn't want to sound like I knew his business better than he did, so I didn't say what I knew: they would make it. These babies were going to live. Caterpillar was named first. She hobbled across the floor like a caterpillar, fur sticking out all over her, black and gray stripes. Next, I named Tadpole, who was wiggly and black. I saw from the beginning she did not like her name. One day after a few months, she got with me and told me she didn't like her name. I didn't want to change it too much, so I changed it to Tapo, close but a very different sound. She was good with Tapo. Then Tar Baby. Tar Baby never pushed himself ahead of the others. He stayed back, didn't need much attention. I already had an affection for all of them, but Tar Baby felt special to me. I called him Tar Baby because a tar baby sticks to you. Tar Baby was already stuck to me. Sade sang a beautiful song called Tar Baby. He's been gone five years now, and Tapo a few months later. Caterpillar is the one that outlived the others. She grieved their loss too. Cats don't show it quite as much as we do, but I saw and felt it in her. I feel like I have some understanding, now, of why women appear to value life more than men do. This was my only mother experience. I learned from it mothering is a powerful energy.
 

tarbaby and portrait of

 

 

*

 

READING HENRY MILLER: TO LIVE AND BE AWARE

henry miller

 

Over the last several days I've found some remarkable insights by way of Diana Toma's prompt in the Daily Creative Practice, where the art impulse came from in self. It was quite a subtle place to go to. I danced around it, spiraling in on the core of it, finding much inspiration toward art and writing from Henry Miller. "Just happen to be" reading his Colossus of Maroussi, a little at a time, rereading by a whim. Picked it from the shelf thinking I'd like to revisit Greece with Miller and dip into his writing again. Pinned down to name a favorite American writer, it has to be Henry Miller. He speaks to me like no other writer has. I've read biographies, memories of him, a lot of what he's written. Haven't read any of his Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, Sexus, Nexus and Plexus. They're too long and I'm a slow reader. I've wanted to read them since they were new, but thick books turn me away on sight. I don't care who wrote them. I'd like to read From Here To Eternity, by James Jones, but it is about four times too long for me. I've been saying of myself in the years after high school I could not read with comprehension. I read Colossus of Maroussi age 22. I picked it up to read it again half a century later to see what I missed, to enjoy it again, to read Henry Miller again. This time around I have found I comprehended more than I thought. It even felt like I had almost memorized the book. I didn't remember a lot of details, but saw a way of thinking, of looking at the world, an attitude toward life I have gradually shaped into my own life. No other writer I've read has seemed like somebody I know, a friend of many years. I found at the end of four days of self-examination looking for the origin of the art impulse in self, it was Henry Miller's influence. I've retained so well what he had to say, I realize now I was reading much closer then than I thought. I see in retrospect I had adopted Miller's way of seeing, his attitude toward life. When I started writing the daily blog, I had reasoned for myself over several years that first person observation is closer to the reality of living in this world than third person, I instead of he. I is more direct, more experiential.

 

henry miller by kalman aron

 

I set out with the notion that this blog is a record of one person's point of view and experience in one place, in one time. I decided at the start not to make any attempts to promote it, just let it be a daily journal. I chose not to make it spiffy online journalism of short paragraphs dealing only in the obvious. Since I tend to long paragraphs naturally, I decided not to chop them up into USA Today speak. I said, I don't care. I'm not in it for money, nor am I in it for popularity and maximum number of viewers. Decided to go ahead and write long paragraphs as I felt like doing. Paragraphs are getting closer to one sentence every year, to one phrase: See Spot run. I decided not to honor that progression, or degression, whichever, and do what I feel like doing. I saw Miller wrote in long sentences and first person. The influence is obvious to me now, but it happened unconsciously. I would never set out to write like Henry Miller, nor would I set out to paint like van Gogh. If ten times as many people would read it if I wrote short paragraphs, I don't want ten times more. I don't care how many see it. First, it is a journal to self, made public because I'd never do it for more than 4 days otherwise. Online gives me a deadline, makes me do it. I don't know who's seeing it, except for some friends, and don't know what others make of it, except for a few friends. That's enough. Feedback is important in any art form. I need feedback, practical feedback, mainly to know if it is connecting with anyone and how it's connecting. I've learned from feedback that when I write with a certain intent, though not stating the intent, it comes through. I've wondered over that one for years, how to get intent across without stating it directly. Turns out, it simply amounts to: intend it. That's one I like to play with in writing, seeing how intent comes through without consciously willing it. I don't mean for you to think I take myself so seriously by calling myself a writer that I'd compare my writing to Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller. Not at all. It is only recently that I've allowed myself to refer to self as writer. I write every day, the original and only intent of the blog. It's been five years of writing five or six days a week. So I call myself a writer. It doesn't mean I'm writing for the New Yorker or the Nation. Just the act of writing makes me a writer. If I ran several hours every day, I'd call myself a runner. When I paint, I am a painter. The blog is my art form in this time. Learning by doing. When somebody asks if I'm an artist, I say, "Sometimes." Sometimes I'm just filling up blank space. Sometimes I may even touch art in a sentence or two.

 

This was quite a revelation in self awareness finding how closely my early years were influenced by Henry Miller, to the point he has been a great influence on the way I live, the way I write. My artistic sensibilities were educated and inspired by Miller. My friend Jean used to tell me I am the perpetual college student, that I live like a college student. Part of what she meant was I live on the very least I can get by on. Like, again something applied from reading, Marcel Duchamp said, It's not what you make, it's what you spend. From reading Miller's writing and Duchamp's interviews, I learned the importance of living frugally. The less money I make, the less my contribution to the Pentagon, two-thirds of my tax dollars. I never felt right paying taxes to keep a war machine going, didn't like it, couldn't do anything about it, but I could arrange minimum contribution to the machine by living on the minimum. In retrospect, I learned that thinking from Henry Miller. Could possibly attribute same to Henry Thoreau. It was that kind of thinking I was drawn to, quiet civil disobedience. Miller had plenty of Thoreau influence. I think something in our society is nuts, I don't have to participate. The Sixties taught me the futility of political resistance. This time we're in now has taught me to stay out of politics altogether, don't even concern myself with pictures of politicians on facebook. Just keep on scrolling. I like the kind of civil disobedience that doesn't get me arrested and hit in the head with one of those cop sticks they get a cheap thrill out of bullying demonstrators with. I leave that to the players. I'm not a player. Lyndon Johnson and the corporate press made me a non-player the summer of 1968. Five years previously, he'd taken power by coup, the day the American dream of democracy died. I withdrew from all political activities. My only political act is voting, despite knowing voting is a joke on us. Pretend participation. Pretend having a voice. I divorce myself from concerns over American democracy. It is also from Henry Miller I developed and interest in American cultures, American history and awareness of politics. I've taken too much interest, just by paying attention. I see self withdrawing further from paying attention. I don't even care what Bill Maher or Jon Stewart are saying this week. They used to make me laugh. Now they make me think: stop making stupid people famous, the republicans they use for jokes.

 

Reading Colossus, I was in a time of wanting out of a screwed up marriage that didn't have a chance, two people didn't know each other turned out not to like each other. I was longing for the freedom to be on my own, no more being bitched at, gamed with, mother-in-law from hell. I saw too much of her in her daughter, realizing it would be a life of liking her less until it turned to living with miserable hate. I wasn't going to do like my parents and live in agony pretending we're all happy in Jesus. Her games got outta hand. I arrived at our address after six months in the Mediterranean. Some man I'd never seen was there with her. A friend from college days. It was a setup. She knew what time I'd be coming in. I walked in the door, saw him, knew her game and rejoiced inside like the young do now, pumping a fist in the air and hollering the Rebel yell, Hail Yeah! I had a lifetime training in keeping a straight face, not letting anything show but surprise. I went straight to him, shook his hand and said glad-to-meet-ya in the best cocktail party style I knew how. He was so nervous it made me feel mean, but I saw what was happening and it made me want to be mean. Didn't need to. This was the kickoff, I was on my way. No problem. Henry Miller saw me through that time. He showed me how to find my equilibrium alone without backup or being kept in line by a force outside myself. He was going it alone after a divorce, doing it well, revealing for me the interior life is the most important. Hooray for the freedom to have an interior life. Miller taught me to let go of concern over other people's judgment and expectations. Looking back to the time Henry Miller entered my awareness, I see now he became something of a lesser spiritual guide.  Since earliest childhood I knew I wanted to live alone all my life. That speed-bump was a mistake that needed settling. Miller was turned against religion, just like I was. He showed me how to live a life of self-awareness, self-education and fun. Enjoy your life. Live your life. Follow your own light. I did not know where that thinking started, and now it's spread out before me like a map on a table. I might want to read his book on Rimbaud again. I have to say, Thank you, Henry Miller, for my life. He's like a facebook friend; we never met, though we're awfully good friends. He didn't know it, but he ranks among the closest friends of my life. I didn't know it either. I have to say thanks to Diana Toma for the insight and to Ruth Schowalter for setting up this momentum called DCP that I have benefitted from in my interior existence and it's fun. Jerry Lee: a whole lotta fun goin on. Rock and roll all night.

 

 

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