DREAM WRITING

rock face

Trip to town for a periodic doctor visit, had blood pressure read, interesting talk about blood. I like to arrive a few minutes early and have to wait some. Today I took glasses and a book, thinking I was prepared to sit for fifteen or so minutes in a room of chairs lined around the walls. Right behind me came somebody who wanted to talk. We talked about donkeys. He had a donkey and a horse. We had a good visit like people who knew each other. He was called to his appointment. A woman walked in I slightly knew about ten years ago. We had a good visit talking until I was called to my appointment. In the next room I was weighed, aghast at what I saw and not caring at once, Answer a few questions. Went prepared to pay and wasn't asked to pay. Told by doctor to buy a blood pressure mechanism and keep track of it at home. Evidently, this is a new recommendation from AMA, that people read their blood pressure at home. He said in a doctor's office one's blood pressure is unnaturally high. I told him every time I return from a trip to Sparta, I collapse in bed and sleep for awhile. It is such a pattern that I plan for nap time after a trip to town. Maybe it runs my blood pressure up to drive there and back. Maybe it's the psychic energy of so many people in town. I like driving less and less. Next stop, drugstore. I was glad to see they had blood pressure devices with digital push-button reading. The kind with a dial to read on the needle's descent I'm no good at. I've never been able to figure it out. I've tried it so many times I don't ever want to try it again. Frustrating. The digital numbers are the key. The thing cost twice as much as the old style, but I was willing to pay three times as much or four. 

rock monster

I was so anxious to return home, I forgot to go to the grocery store for carrots and the hardware store for sweet grain. If I wake early in the morning, I may run to the grocery store before carrot time. I don't see myself doing that, but for the donkeys I would. After the nap, I took grain out to Jack and Jenny a bit later than usual. They saw me and Jack came running and braying. I stumbled on a stick and took a quick step to catch balance. The gesture, merely a change of rhythm in my walking. Jack turned quick as a polo pony and started to run away. It was like he drifted the turn. I said, "Donkey Jack," he drifted a turn again and ran to me for the grain. Jenny was walking behind. She saw me pour the grain for Jack and she started running. I poured it in her place. Jack came over to see. Jenny snorted, ears back, diving at him with her forehead. Jack's chin over the top of the fence, he followed me back to his pile of grain. I made a gesture like I was pouring the grain and he went to eating. Jack is a bit out of sorts recently. He's wanting to be frisky with Jenny, but she's pregnant and doesn't care to mess around. I saw her give him a good thrashing with her back knees earlier in the day. He stood firm and took it like a tree. I see him with his dinger hanging down fairly often recently. Jack is psyched, ready to go and Jenny is having none of it. He's been absent minded recently, explaining him leaving his grain to go after Jenny's. I always put hers down first, she's so demanding. I wondered if feeding Jack first fried his circuits, rattled a habit pattern. 

rock monster and raven head

Back in the house. Recalling a dream I woke from just before writing the post of two days ago, Patterns Of Chance. I'd been in town and had a nap upon return at six. Slept til twelve and had one of the most curious dreams of my life. I was writing. Wrote one sentence at a time from the first one onward, pausing between sentences like usual. I sat in this seat, fingers on keyboard, monitor showing the sentences and paragraphs. In the dream, I knew what I was writing and what I was thinking. From time to time, I'd read over something I'd written and think, this is it, this is pure surrealist writing. It went all over the place, from one sentence to the next, sometimes making sense subconsciously and sometimes no sense at all. I allowed it not to make sense. I said it has its own sense that I don't need to understand. Every sentence, I wrote a word at a time, concerned about it making sense and not. Having a good time. Though it didn't always make sense outside myself, it made clear sense in the writing. In the dream I was enchanted to be writing pure surrealism inside a dream, knowing while writing it was a dream. I knew the whole time I was writing in a dream, let it flow and watched to see where it would go. Two and a third paragraphs into it, I woke up. Coming out of the dream, I thought: Oh no! I haven't finished. I wanted to see where it goes. I wanted to run it through the printer. I knew I'd forget what was written if I woke. Too late. Wide awake, I remembered the theme and some of the sentences for a few seconds and it was gone. I regretted seeing it go away, wanting to see what I wrote in a dream. 

rock monster and raven head again

The dream seems to fall in line with the dreams that interact with awake awareness by something missing from its place, or something in a place by surprise it would not be. Two weeks ago, I bought an impulse toy in the grocery store for Vada. It was some kind of stretch plastic, a line maybe ten inches long with a hand at either end. It stuck to things, it stretched, was pliable as a rubber band. It seemed like something Vada would like. I never saw it again after bringing groceries into the house. I have searched for it until I gave up looking. Sunday, on the way out the door to see the race, I paused a moment regretting I couldn't find the thing. One place I had not looked. Where I was standing, I put my hand down between the reading chair's cushion and armrest. There it was, quietly waiting to be found. Great relief, something to give Vada. I do like grandpas do, always bring something for babydoll. Having a child friend in this time of the life is ideal. She's so fresh and alert, so one with her feelings, so inventive and uninhibited, I see in her my ideal human being, a pre-school child. Her spirit has not yet been trampled by experience. She lives in a world of people who love her and want to help her learn to live in this world. I'd been at the house an hour or more watching the race. We had been stretching the toy. She'd wrap it around her fingers and wrist several times. She looked at me, her eyes had the same look she looks at her mother with, round, smiling big, and said, "Are you glad to see me?" I said, "Yes I am glad to see you." It tickled her. She cracked me up, made me laugh and she laughed. We went on pulling the toy as far as it would stretch.    

rocks talking

photos by tj worthington

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A DAY FOR PROJECTS

justin's deer stand

The phone rang while I was sanding some blocks of wood, six of them, three inches by three inches by half an inch. Found them at a building site in the mounds of leftover wood. They had been cut exactly the same length from perhaps six boards cutting the ends off them. I didn't have any reason to pick them up except I thought they were beautiful. They are yellow pine with wide grain and the ends had interesting grain patterns. I kept them for I can't guess how many years thinking of wanting to do something with them one day. As I sit here and write, it somehow evolved that I doodle by stacking smooth roundish rocks on a three inch square pedestal, another piece cut off the end of a 4x4. I couldn't have cut a better square by intent. Carpenters are good at what they do. Covered it with a coat of tung oil and it's beautiful. At first I stacked the rocks to see how many I could balance. Four came easy and five became a challenge. Then six. I felt like going after seven would require intent to develop the skill. I only want to do it for play, for doodling. I accept six as high as I can go. Now I arrange them by colors and shapes. I look for an arrangement not made before. It has become play. A pile of a dozen or so rocks are available to pick through for each new arrangement. It exercises my aesthetic sense in a pleasing way. A few weeks ago I found the six blocks of wood while looking for something else and brought them out to be a pedestal the same height as the other, though in six levels. I looked at them every day, arranged them in vertical stacks with one flat on the top to stack rocks on. Writing, I gaze at the rocks on my left like I gaze at the donkey meadow out the window to the right. The six blocks are now part of the collection. I'd look at them and think I wanted to sand them down to flawless and smooth as glass and put tung oil on them. It's done now. The tung oil is drying. As each coat dries several days I'll add another until they're right. I want the grain in them to stand out as the artwork on them like glaze drawings on pottery. I want them exactly as found with their inner beauty accented.

 

ronnie left, justin right

 

I'm looking at the rocks and blocks of wood now with an eye to make drawings of different rock arrangements and the wood block arrangements with the rocks. I reminded self during the three hours of using an electric palm sander with three grades of sandpaper, this is play, not work. I relaxed into it and lost sense of time passing for awhile. I've read that our left side is governed by right brain. This is a good toy to occupy right brain while left brain looks for sentences. For right hand doodling I have a matchbox toy copy of a nascar Monte Carlo with Caterpillar on it, CAT on the hood. Found it in a Roses store, cat's name is Caterpillar. I bought it. It's been on a shelf until I took it down one day to look at it up close. They are near perfect miniatures of the real deal. To my eye, the race cars are the most beautiful cars going. I'd like for Detroit or Tokyo to make new cars with the maker of all the parts in a car, big and bold and colorful names and logos. Along the side of the toy car: 96 Caterpillar. The paint on my car is so bad it would not hurt to take spray cans to it and paint CATFISH along both sides. Paint it like New York subways. It feels like a seed got planted. Hmmm. I could do that, and it's legal. Maybe I'd better check with a lawyer first. I'm a little too paranoid about highway patrol to want to draw that much attention to myself. May as well put a target on each door. They'd say, there goes that grumpy old bastard cynic that writes about us having quotas. I think I'll just leave it like it is. The way they look at it, anyway, is like they want to arrest me for driving something unfit to be on a NC state road. What only mechanics know, it has one of the best Detroit engines made. They didn't make them long. It's a v6 Buick that doesn't wear out. It's 21 years old and does not burn oil. Anything I want it to do, it is ready to go. It's my old man car, the kind I look just right getting out of with a cane. First time I passed somebody in it, the G-force of passing gear threw me back in the seat, jerked the steering wheel out of my hands. I had to recover right now like a soccer player knocked down full gallop. I got ahold of that wheel fast. Next time passing gear was needed I held on. A cardinal is whistling outside the open door.

 

justin on ladder

 

Come down out of your head, it's saying. Thunder is rolling in the gloaming, overcast, rain will arrive about the time it's dark. Maybe. Maybe not. I'm wondering if the sun going down brings the temperature down in the clouds and makes it rain. It so often rains soon after dark, I tend to associate them. That's about as close to how it is as a John Wayne movie. Coming down out of my head, sitting on an upside down 5gallon bucket with an extension cord snaking out the door. Comfortable place. Birds in the trees above jeering at me to go back in the house so they can get back to feeding. I'd been sanding around an hour when the phone rang. It was Justin. He and his brother-in-law Ronnie were on their way to Air Bellows, accent on the first syllable (air) like the movie Goodfellas. They'd be putting up Justin's hunting stand. Asked me to come on up and see them. Good time to take a break from my right hand buzzing continually. Might have been good for circulation, too, but enough's enough. It wasn't all that bad, but still good to get in motion and be a little bit social. Hadn't seen Justin in a few weeks and Ronnie in several. They are good hunters. Conscientious hunters. They like the deer to drop straight down and not feel a thing. No adrenaline in the blood. They compete in archery tournaments on weekend mornings early. They're not looking to be champions. Winning gas money for the drive from county to county is plenty good. They use the tournaments to practice and they have targets in their back yards. They're both so good they can call robinhooding an arrow before they pull the string. They quit doing it, the arrows they shoot are too expensive to tear up. The arrows go so fast I can't see them. The string launches the arrow and I hear it pop when it hits the target soon after. I love to watch them practice the day before a tournament. They're honing their skill. Ronnie's brother, Gail, is with Justin's sister Sheena. Gail is side by side with Justin and Ronnie in their skill. Sheena is good in a tournament too. So is Ronnie's wife, Amanda. Justin's wife can't leave the kids or she would too. She's so busy with her work she doesn't need one more thing.      

 

gettin er done

 

Justin had constructed the foundation and floor at home. They were digging holes for each of the four legs when I arrived. It was a big square table with a plywood top. They placed the legs into the holes, measuring the depth and using a four-foot long level to finish fine levelling. He had constructed the frames for all four sides at home using screws, took it apart and loaded everything into the back of his big white pickup with beautifully rumbling pipes. He stood the first wall up, screwed it to the floor, put the second wall up, screwed it to first wall and floor. All the way around everything fit, holes lined up just right. Two cordless drills; one with a Philips screw bit and the other a drill bit. Justin did everything; it was in his head, he had the vision and knew step-by-step how to do it. He needed Ronnie to hold a wall upright while he drilled in the powerful screws about four inches long and coated blue, possibly rust resistant. Justin wants to be able to take it apart when he wants to move it and put it up in the next place in a day or two. He wants it to last a long time. Next step, he will cut plywood walls and make a plywood door. He has painted the inside of the framework black already. He will paint the inside of the plywood flat black and the outside a medium-light gray. He wants me to paint forest scenes on the walls all the way around it. A new summer project. Make a cube mural in the woods, no windows, the only opening a vertical rectangle to see down the channel to the bait pile. It came out of the blue when he said he wanted the walls painted like the woods around it. I said, Hail Yeah. Rebel Yell. Their style of hunting seems to us of another generation something like cheating. These are people who keep full-time jobs, kids in school and pre-school, wives with jobs. They don't have time to go stalking and creeping about. They can do that and they love it. Their lives now are structured by schedules. They go hunting before work and/or after work. They have big box freezers in the basement where they pack the butchered parts. Home eats well year round from daddy's hunting. Justin put $150 in this stand.

 

looking down the channel to the bait pile on right

 

 

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ROCK STACKS

My neighbor on Air Bellows Gap Road stacks rocks on a place between his house and the road with a white pine in the background as seen from the road. He used to keep a stack of rocks going at the hairpin turn coming off the Parkway. He walked up there and back every day, often adding a few rocks to the stack. But out in public like that they were always getting knocked down.

There was a time I put a rock on top of every fencepost along my road for quite a ways. It wasn't something I did in one day. From time to time I'd add some more until every post had a rock on it. Invariably somebody would come along and get freaked out and start knocking them off the posts. Once, somebody left a note written on folded paper under one of the rocks. It said, 'Are you a devil-worshiper? Answer this. I want to know.' I must have inadvertently advertised myself a recruiter. I've never been able to figure out that connection between stacked rocks and the devil. I don't imagine the people who think like that even know they do.