SEEING CAROLE

angel over whitehead

landmark church

Pleasant day today, good day to get out and go for a drive through the mountains on backroads and highway, curves in the roads this way and that, curves that turn into a nuisance overdriven, hit the brakes, swerve across the yellow lines, back, give it some gas, turn the steering wheel, hit the brakes, give it some gas. Find the speed for a smooth flow up and down, back and forth, the car flows like a boat on ocean waves, land waves, and the curves become a joy to drive. When I find the groove and somebody comes up behind me, they're on their own. I'm not going to speed up, crank the steering wheel, hit the brakes, give it gas, hit the brakes over some guy in a pickup and a ballcap wanting to struggle his way over the mountain, likes the physical activity of it, likes the tension, wants to ride my rear end like he wants to push me. As happened today on a long stretch of curves, a guy came up behind me in a black pickup and I stepped on the gas to get away from him. I can drive the curves faster than is sensible, but don't like to. Sometimes I will for practice. Today was practice. Sometimes I drive with right side tires on the white line for practice. I like an automatic awareness of where my tires are, a cautious driver, who's been told I'm hyper-vigilant, it's ok with me whatever it's called. I've not had any wrecks. Driving is the most dangerous thing I ever do. I don't need a law to wear a seatbelt. Driving is hyper-dangerous. I need to know what is going on in the rearview mirror as well as the windshield. Somebody riding grabs my steering wheel once, never does it again. I'm not violent or threatening, but I'm clear. I can talk and listen while driving, but attention is on the road.

carole

The occasion to get out and ride some backroads was inspired by the morning's phone conversation with my friend, Carole, whose car was in the shop for an unknown number of days, she was down to two cigarettes and out of Coffee Mate. Familiar with fear of running out of an inebriate, I said I'd go to town and get her some. No. Don't do that. I can make it. I said, No point in making it when I can easily find some Coffee Mate and the cigarettes and bring them to you. Oh no, too much trouble, I have two cigarettes left, I can make them last the day, maybe have one a day. What are friends for if not to make a cigarette run? I said it is so much easier for me to drive to town and bring you some cigarettes than it is for you to sit there and stare out the window wishing you had a cigarette for the next three days. It's not like I don't want to see you. When we finished our conversation, I headed Catfish up the road, a good day to ride the land waves. Overcast some and cloudy some, on the verge of rain some. Three times I needed to run the wipers one beat. That's not even trying to rain. It's barely trying to sprinkle. The roads were still wet from the night rain. Almost no traffic on the paved roads, none on the gravel roads. The landscape of fresh leaves recently opened, the early green of spring everywhere in the trees, in the meadows, rhododendron and mountain azalea in bloom, deep blue sky, big cotton puffs of clouds with gray undersides drift on slow-moving air, a fish's view of boats in a fishing tournament. 

carole

Drove out 221 to Stratford, a road with the name of being crookeder'n the back of a runnin snake. Then up at least a half mile of crooked driveway with holes and ruts, straight down on one side for awhile. From the road, it goes straight uphill for a long ways like that first hill on a rollercoaster. At the top it curves around to the right and to the left and to the right and left and down the hill and up the hill, to the left to the right, up the hill, to the left, up the hill and land on the pad at the top. The house, built into the side of the mountain, has almost disappeared in the growth around it. From the parking space to the entrance/exit door the ground is covered with moss. Inside, a modest, modern house. Out the sliding glass door of a living room wall, a mountain vista. A small porch close to the ground. A young groundhog took up under the porch last year. This year, she or he has a mate. It won't be long til baby groundhogs will be wiggling around the postage stamp lawn where deer sometimes graze, rabbits nibble, turkeys peck, a coyote passes through, a blacksnake. She never goes out there, the only human activity and scent would be the guy who mows and weedeats a few times a summer. Occasionally, a squirrel, a groundhog, and a few others have come up to the glass and looked at her like she was in a zoo. And she's watching them like in a wall-sized terrarium. We sat and talked, had a couple cups of tea, smoked some cigarettes, her uncertainty settled. We talk every day on the phone, so it's not like we have problems talking. We can talk as long as we feel like it. We flow well together like a mountain road and a car at moderate speed rolling with the waves. We have no limits to where we go conversationally, wide open and free. 

carole

I have said that Jr Maxwell is the one man I have known I call wise without hesitation, besides another who lives in a monastery. Carole is the one woman I have known I call wise without hesitation, besides another who lived in comparable to a monastery. I feel divinely blessed in that I have had the opportunity to know well a man and a woman I take for wise as assuredly as I take Caterpillar for a cat. Younger, and actually all my life, I have sought and wondered if I'd ever find someone wise. I thought I'd have a better chance finding somebody with wisdom in the mountains more readily than in a city. Jr was already here. Carole came here around twenty years ago. It was like as soon as we met we needed to know each other, it had to be. She  lives where she lives, I live where I live, we're here for ourselves and at the same time here for each other. Like in AA having a friend to call and talk with to quell the need for a drink. She is on her path, I am on mine. Our paths run side by side through this time of our lives. We believe we were given each other to walk our paths with, friends who understand one another without emotional tensions. She is my feminine representative of the Master. Of course, I would drive to town to buy her some cigarettes, and deliver them, sit and visit for awhile, face to face. Suffering? Sacrifice? I don't think so. We often forget our friends like to do something to help us out when help is needed. It is a gift to give a friend a chance to lend a hand. I'm quick to jump to lend a friend a hand, forgetting, or just not thinking that my friends would like to jump with the same intent to lend me a hand when needed. Carole forgets that too. So we remind one another from time to time. 

carole

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THE DREAM OF THE KICKING HORSE AGAIN

cy twombly

On the phone this morning with my friend Carole, I brought up the dream of the kicking horse, the reading of it I'd done so far, concluding with self as irrefutable horse's ass. We laughed at the comedy of it, but she didn't think that was the conclusion, and I didn't either, because I'd continued to search after making the conclusion. I don't mean to deny self as horse's ass. I just don't feel like that's the end of it, that there is more, turn the page. She brought up the mailbox, which I'd left out. It's also the ground where I feed the crows. Crow energy there. The mailbox is an extension of self where communications arrive and depart. In a way, the mailbox is a door to the rest of the world. If friends are traveling in India, they can send a postcard and it turns up in my doorway to the rest of the world. I had not seen a mailbox in those words. Of course, we know that's what they do, but without thinking of it in words. Where crow energy is concerned, crow is my totem. I didn't go to a workshop for finding your totem, it finally came to me after noticing the degree of attention I pay to them when I see them. Out driving, a crow flies across the road somewhere out ahead of me, I often speak out loud, and always think, "Hey, friend." I throw seeds to them there every day. It is my way of getting acquainted with my crow neighbors that live in this area. They fly away the moment I open the door, but that's ok. I call to them when I throw the seeds out of the cup. I don't want to tame them or even try to stop them from flying away when I go out. I don't want to give them the error in judgment to think that if one human treats them well, the others will too. I don't work like that.

cy twombly

Looking at the exact spot of the horse kick in this light, it is a high energy spot for my own energy. Therefore, Carole suggested, the horse is a vision of my being, the whole being, who I am. We'd already talked over the chestnut horse back end and the black and white neck and head. We were not satisfied I'd gone far enough in the examination. She suggested it is self looking at self, a mirror image. We were talking about the balance of tame mind and wild hind quarters. I've been writing over the last few weeks about different kinds of knowledge, or knowing, like first hand information from experience and second hand information from somebody else's experience. Say the head and neck are the civilized man, tame, educated to whatever degree, while the rear end is the natural horse, what my old preacher friend Millard Pruitt used to call "the natural man." In his cosmology, the natural man is bound straight for hell without getting saved and going to church the rest of his life. In my cosmology, the natural man is the seat of common sense, intuition. He is not wicked or evil or even a "sinner." Natural man is the body, or the gross world, which I don't see the same way as preacher Pruitt, though I appreciate his understanding. I don't judge it bad. I see it requires self-control and guidance. Carole said she saw a balance. She noted that in my spiritual quest I have not denied inner natural man, but include him as valid and necessary for balance, that balance is foremost in my thinking for my own life.  She said it is important to me that I be a balance of my whole self, all parts working together for balance, denial and suppression unacceptable. We came to experiences of the last few days with my wild friends, not my only friends, just the wild ones. They are the back half of the horse that I am.

cy twombly

The front part of the horse that is self can be seen in my tame friends, in my lifetime of self-education, interest in art of all facets, interior quests. Seeing what I saw last night addressing the dream, the judgment assessed the front part of the horse pretend spiritual and the rest all ass. Seen through judgment, it's discouraging. Interpreted without judgment it became a vision of balance that I value in self. The back part, the natural part of the horse, is kicking, though not aggressively, flexing, alive, like my friends I call wild. The dream might be saying my natural man is alive and well. That's how I want him to be. Friends do the heedless active wildness for me, like I sublimate through them. They do it and tell me about it and my belly hurts from laughing. I really don't want to get in a gunfight with sheriff deputies, nor do I want to drive 140 on mountain highways at night racing, nor do I want to fight somebody who looks at me wrong. My friends who do these things, and much, much more, help me live the experience in their telling, something I really, deep down want to do, but fail to get my thrills from adrenaline rushes looking over the edge. My spotted head and neck don't like adrenaline rushes. I didn't want to die young this time around, wanted a complete lifetime to experience growing old and see what it's about. By now, I'm on the verge of satisfied. This evening I'll be watching the Superbowl with Justin and Melvin, Crystal and kids. We'll tell wild stories and laugh in the mancave through the second quarter and halftime. For somebody who loves at home the poetry of Louise Gluck and John Berryman, the films of Ingmar Bergman and Zhang Yimou, contemporary Chinese fiction, the Journals of Andre Gide, watching the Superbowl and talking shit in the mancave give balance. Might take a look at my horoscope chart. It is surely in there someplace, the need for balance.

 

cy twombly

 

This dream expression of natural man kicking up his heels brought Pinocchio to mind again in relation to identity with donkeys. I've meant to read the story again, the original Carlo Collodi in translation. Having a problem because it's a little too much a children's story. It's that morality is explained to boys every step of the way. Also, dealing in the obvious all the time gets a bit old in a hurry, like tv. Pinocchio goes through an adventure with seven realizations that take him, step by step, plane by plane, through his spiritual quest to become a "real boy," which I interpret for myself, a true human being. Pinocchio goes through the process from what I called earlier the natural man, the gross plane in another way of looking at it, where we start our quest for enlightenment, or what I call becoming a true human being. The part I'm most curious about is his last adventure when he turns into a donkey. This is what happens to self-willed, self-indulgent boys, they grow donkey ears first and then turn into donkeys. They can't talk anymore; they can only bray. They will live the rest of their lives as dumb beasts of burden, jackasses, and nobody will ever know they were once little boys. It makes me wonder if I'm in my jackass, my African Wild Ass, time of my lifetime quest to become a real boy, a true human being. I want to see how Collodi addresses that period of Pinocchio's inner growth, see what the jackass time is about. I'm curious to see what it is about jackass that brought Pinocchio through the final adventure before his realization. Calling it realization is high-sounding, but I don't mean it like that. Realization suggests too much going out in a ball of light. I prefer to think of realization as finally getting it, palm of hand hits forehead: Duh! What took you so long? The Cars are in my head: O Jackie, I thought you knew the way. I like looking at the dream as my inner African Wild Ass kicking its heels saying he's healthy and alive. I looked out the window just now and saw the black and white calf with Jack and Jenny. A whole new way to look at it.

cy twombly himself

 

 

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