I HEAR THE WIND CHIMES TINGING

Another week has flown along, day by day, night by night, then it's Friday the 13th followed by Valentine's Day. I never was spooked by Friday the 13th. It made no sense to the kid, one day bad things are to be expected. Someplace? Everywhere? Where? I and other kids at school experienced it as just another day, though many of them were superstitious about it, a folk belief with nothing behind it. My experience with Friday the 13th has been good days. Facebook is full of warnings and pictures of the ugly guy in the movies. My last of those kinds of movies was the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I swore off scary movies. I liked one from time to time before. Texas Chainsaw took hold of me and did not let go until it spit me out at the end. I said I'll never subject myself to any such thing again. Over. Done. Several years later and maybe ten years ago, I had a crazy experience around the movie. A woman from Pennsylvania took a shine to me and I thought she was weird. She asked me to dinner one evening. We were friendly. She was in the kitchen looking over the stove and I looked at her video collection. It was all silly comedies and children's movies. I wasn't surprised, but thought how can somebody watch all those terrible movies. I couldn't find one I believed I could sit all the way though. Then, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, right in the middle. I freaked out. I saw myself in the trailer of a psycho. I didn't want to eat. Already there, I decided to be nice and not run out the door. The meal was the worst ever. Everything tasted like cardboard. I suspected she'd put cardboard flavored poison in all my food. It was a spooky moment. At one point I asked how she got a copy of Texas Chainsaw Massacre in her video collection. She likes the movie. I exclaimed, Really? She said it's not so bad and was curious why I didn't like it. The first moment I could get out the door and into my truck became a precious goal, get there as fast as I could go. I said I didn't want to eat and run but had to go, fled, in imagination running for my life, possibly already poisoned. 

There was a time in my early years I believed other people's energies had no affect on me, until learning I'm perhaps a little too receptive of other people's energies and need to take caution. I've learned there are different kinds of energies, some aggressive, some not. I know this one old boy, a few years older than me, who radiates energy like nobody I've ever known. It's anger in him. He's angry all the way to the core, or more accurately, from the core outward. But I don't feel threatened in any way by his angry vibes. He thinks I'm a twirp, but likes me a little bit, dumb as I am. Compared to him, I could only call myself dumb. He has a brilliant mind, has skills, experience and knowledge I'm wide-eyed impressed by. I respect him. Anger is his aura. It's an aura you feel instead of see. Intense life. Not someone I would say has peace of mind. He thinks I don't respect him, thinks I judge him. Somebody so different from me it makes me glad to see I'm able to have a friendly association with somebody so radically different from myself, the other end of the spectrum, or so I assess it. I like knowing people different from myself. I live a passive life, largely not engaged with the world around me. I stay at home and wrestle with my own ignorance day by day. I feel the spirit of God all around me on the mountain. The donkeys, Caterpillar, the birds, the crows, the squirrels, possums, coons, the trees, all are in the Garden. But me. They let me live in the Garden with them as long as I don't hurt anybody. The world before the forebrain. A world of peace. I'm grateful to have a home in the Garden. I feel like it makes me whole. My connections with other humans are of the mind, mental, largely, heart too. Connection with the mountain is my whole being. The mountain is my battery charger. Off the mountain, I'm running on battery. On the mountain, I'm plugged in. 

Yes, this is my comfort zone and I like it. It feels like snow outside, like snow is not far behind. Heavy overcast, mid twenties, just enough wind to make the wind chimes ting a time or two. If the temperature rises above freezing, which it may, we'll have cold rain. Or nothing. Weather forecasts have become so dramatic, I seldom pay attention. I saw a weather-related article yesterday saying North Carolina will get ten inches of snow this coming week. All of NC? Part of NC? By the end of the paragraph it was down to maybe one or two inches or none, and no indication of where. It was presented in high drama like the Bush-Cheney color-coded levels of anxiety we're expected to conform to or die. Snow has been a winter phenomenon all my life; now I'm expected to hype myself into a state of high anxiety over a forecast warning two inches of snow. It has become annoying to hear such exaggerated weather forecasts. Brings to mind a friend who tells the temperature five to ten degrees colder than it is in winter, and warmer than it is in summer. Two inches of snow equals at least eight. Called on the exaggeration, he'll say, "In some places." We live with our heads in media mind, ready to do what we're told: be afraid. The song, Leader of the Pack, comes to mind; Lookout! Lookout! Lookout! Lookout! I felt so helpless, what could I do? followed by another great pop nonsense line, after all the things we been through. Allowing the weather to be what it is, I feel no anxiety about the forecast. Receiving it as it happens is relaxing. Earlier, the sky suggested snow ahead, and now, a few hours later, the sun is out, temperature above freezing. The donkeys stand with one side full to the sun, feels so good after a cold night. It comes under one-day-at-a-time thinking. The day, itself, when it  rains or snows, is beautiful in itself. Dreading rain tomorrow ruins today.

A gust of wind passed through, making a brief song with the wind chimes. The chimes bring Japanese composer, Toru Takemitsu, or Takemitsu Toru, into my mind. I discovered him as composer in the soundtrack of a video I was given at least twenty years ago, Japanese gardens. Faulty memory recollects it a National Geographic film. Takemitsu composes with Japanese gardens in the way Leonard Bernstein incorporated American pop into his compositions, and Bartok wove Hungarian and Romanian folk music through his. I've inspired myself to put on one of my favorite of Takemitsu's compositions, I Hear The Water Dreaming. Flute, viola, harp, guitar, with BBC Symphony Orchestra. His music flows through my mind like wind chimes in varying wind. Somehow, it does not distract. The flute and the strings flow into my ears so in tune with my inner space in this moment, outer becomes inner and inner, outer. The wind chimes interject a ting, adding an abstract note now and then, like the drone string on a banjo. I don't like to listen to music while writing or reading. Whatever  it is, it pulls me into it. Takemitsu's music flows with my mind continually searching for how to complete each sentence, word by word, waiting for and finding the next sentence, seeing where it goes, word by word, playing with words fluid as air. I think of words being fluid, easy to change, move around, hear the rhythms. Wind chimes don't distract, perhaps having to do with their seeming random notes. Takemitsu's notes happen with the random quality of wind chimes, though held into a seeming order making music. He has listened closely to wind chimes. They are the only music I want in the course of writing. Takemitsu's music enters my mind as flow patterns the mental meanderings ride as freely as with wind chimes.

photos by tj worthington

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HONEYMOONERS IN THE DONKEY MEADOW

 

jenny and jack

This was the first picture I got this morning when I spotted the donkeys wrestling one another donkey style. I picked up the camera and slipped out the door soundlessly as possible, crept behind a big white pine trunk, adjusted the zoom to where I wanted it, in a hurry because action like this doesn't last very long. Found them, zoomed in, held camera steady with the tree. Focusing on them ready to click, they jumped up in their neck wrestling game. They were not thinking it a game. They weren't even thinking. They were on automatic pilot, navigated by instinct as specific to donkey as making a paper nest is to a wasp. This is the Garden, mind before awareness of duality. Seconds before this scene, while I was fumbling with the camera, Jack jumped onto Jenny's back and she slipped out from under him and planted two hoofs in his chest with an audible slap. Jack can take it like Mike Tyson, like a tree. Jack is so firm on his feet, and his torso so ready when Jenny connects with a power kick to the chest, he doesn't show he felt a thing or even noticed. He just turns his head aside to avoid a kick in the jaw. I saw her nail him once on the chin. He saw stars for half a second. Jenny kicked him a good one, he waited til she was done kicking and tried to hop on her back. She ran and he tore out after her. I clicked the camera not composing anything, just trying to keep them in the viewfinder. Click. Click. Click. I had no idea what they'd do the next split second, it could be anything. I got what they did. Mostly Jack took hold of Jenny's neck and walked her in a circle. I marvel at the strength in Jack's jaws to hold a donkey powerful as Jenny is, and bigger than him, hold her by the back of her neck and control her. She must have callouses there by now. Often I see the wet places on her neck where Jack's teeth clamped down.

 

jack takes charge of jenny

 

 

It must not hurt much in the place Jack locks his vice grip jaws on the back of Jenny's neck. She never squeals or gets back at him for it. She only wants free of it. When she's free, she's gone. She doesn't run far. He catches up to her and they neck wrestle. I've come to see their neck wrestling a kind of martial arts sparring, trying to bite each other's neck and defending self from a bite. It looks like a martial arts sparring match and it looks like a spontaneous dance. First seeing them together I felt for Jenny the way Jack took charge of her, broke her down, when he'd had enough of getting donkey kicked all over his head and body. I wondered if he was doing like in the Xtreme fighting, letting the opponent wear himself out, then turning on the action. In passing weeks and months I've seen that Jenny is as complicit in the play as Jack. She is playing her part just like he is playing his. It's turning into a dance for me. How else can they dance but to make their own music? Their music may be the ritual of a kicking fest first part, possibly charging up the bull in Jack. Him taking hold of her neck and walking her in a circle may be the music too. Maybe I can look at the neck wrestling as the dance. The whole experience is the dance and the music. Like who can tell the dancer from the dance, the donkeys do who can tell the dancer from the music? Maybe it's donkey courtship behavior for Jenny to play hard to get, like it turns on the bull in Jack. If she's too easy he'll think she's a whore and then he won't respect her. Maybe it turns on the equine man to conquer his woman, and turns on the equine woman to be taken by her man. Something like the Italian lover in Streetcar Named Desire and his Southern girl. I hurt you because I love you, baby. O it hurts so good, honey, bite me again. It's getting more like a hyper-active John Waters movie.  

 

jack bites jenny

jenny plays hard to get but not too hard

 

They're not only a National Geographic documentary out the window of the African Wild Ass in real life, they're interactive television. I can step into the tv and feed them carrots and take pictures, take hay to them, go back inside and watch them on my flatscreen (window) that's always on the donkey meadow channel, daytime only. Sometimes I like to go to the Mt St Helens cam that updates the image every five minutes or so, to see the mountain in different sky and weather every time. I have a glass ball paperweight made with dust from Mt St Helens in the glass. It's beautiful. Odd for me to buy something like that and paid $35 for it on a whim. It was a strong whim. It felt like an historical moment frozen in a drop of glass. I like seeing it. I think of that old boy Harry Truman who decided to stay at home and let the mountain consume him. I liked his spirit. He was old. What's he going to do someplace else? Watch the auction channels on nursing home tv? The mountain is going to blow up he'd lived with all his life, go with the mountain. I have a live surveillance camera on the donkeys, the lowest tech of all, panes of glass. Friends tell me to get videos of them, but it's not that easy. Catching this dance today was by surprise. I knew they'd stop the second the first one saw me, and it would be over. Next I'll be taking pictures of their noses at the gate. I did my best to avoid being seen, but it didn't last. Jenny spotted me and started walking. Jack looked up to see what caught her attention. Ice cream man. Here they came, walking more or less side by side. I'm wondering how much this extended honeymoon they're engaged in has do to with Jenny having fallen in love with Jack. Her resistance is more symbolic now than it was before. Today I saw her kick him only once. They walked to the gate with happy demeanors, each one tuned to the other's presence like I'd never seen before. He can't pull away from her. She's a magnet that draws him to her.

 

jack left, jenny right

 

time out, it's the ice cream man

 

A show of equine behavior every day. I laugh today at how naïve I was a few months ago feeling like Jenny needed some women's liberation or something. She had to be Alpha donkey and dance her romantic role with Jack at once. Seems like cause for inner conflict. Of course, I'm projecting human mind onto donkey as if donkey has no mind of its own. Donkeys are not just acting out, they are being donkey. Imagining an interview between human and donkey.

 

H: What were y'all doing out there?

 

D: What? Where? 

 

H: The kicking and biting. 

 

D: What?

 

H: The kicking and biting and Jack walking Jenny around in a circle by the neck. What's up with that?

 

D: What? It's what we do. What of it?

 

H: Well is it a dance?

 

D: A what? A dance? A dance? No.

 

H: Doesn't it hurt Jenny when Jack clamps down on her neck and frustrate her when he restricts her movement?

 

D: Hurt? What are you talking about? We're playing. Got a carrot?

 

jack sez: carrot

 

 

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