Huh?

I've been outed, of sorts.

Surprised to find a mention of these here scribblings in this week's North Coast Journal's Best of Humboldt 2009. Flattered, of course, while recognizing that being Humboldt's Best Blogging Park Ranger is akin to bein' your Mama's favorite only child. Thanks anyways for the shout out, Heidi, but there are so many more erudite and interesting bloggers in our community who deserve notice more than I.

A bit curious too about the potential fallout from such a designation. As a deep closeted introvert, at least in private, not many know I occasionally spill a few words about in here. Good thing I kept the organizational politics and personalities mostly out of my rants and wanderings. For folks in the know, there's enough clues to pin the correct name plate to my rapidly graying chest. I can only hope that coworkers and friends don't read the Journal as closely as I do.

Does this mean I have to end my long summer hiatus and pick up the ol' pencil and keyboard again?

Cathedral Hush

Perhaps I spent too many years under the spacious skies of the southwest, but I am more often drawn to the wide panorama of the sea or the grassy vistas of high prairies than the secluded depths of the forest. When I dare to enter its lush green underworld, the redwood forest overwhelms me with silence and timelessness. A recent wander along Lost Man Creek roused a vision, yet left me searching for words. Just as an amateur photographer can never capture the majesty of the redwoods, an aspiring scribbler such as I, is hopelessly, shamelessly lost in painting with pen the verdant blanket enveloping the lone traveler. In my wordless stead, I substitute the words of the more accomplished Mr Steinbeck:

"No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time."

"There's a cathedral hush here. Perhaps the thick soft bark absorbs sound and creates a silence. The trees rise straight up to zenith; there is no horizon. The dawn comes early and remains dawn until the sun is high. Then the green fernlike foliage so far up strains the sunlight to a green gold and distributes it in shafts or rather in stripes of light and shade. After the sun passes zenith it is afternoon and very quickly evening with a whispering dusk as long as was the morning.

"Birds move in the dim light or flash like sparks through the stripes of sun, but they make little sound. Underfoot is a mattress of needles deposited for over two thousand years. No sound of footsteps can be heard on this thick blanket. To me there's a remote and cloistered feeling here. One holds back speech for fear of disturbing something - what? From my earliest childhood I've felt that something was going on in the groves, something of which I was not a part."

"And only these few are left - a stunning memory of what the world was like once long ago. Can it be that we do not love to be reminded that we are very young and callow in a world that was old when we came into it? And could there be a strong resistance to the certainty that a living world will continue its stately way when we no longer inhabit it?"

The Secret of the River

But he learned more from the river than Vasudeva could teach him. He learned from it continually. Above all, he learned from it how to listen, to listen with a still heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinions. ...

He once asked him, "Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?"

A bright smile spread over Vasudeva's face.

"Yes, Siddhartha," he said. "Is that what you mean? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future?" ...

And once again when the river swelled during the rainy season and roared loudly, Siddhartha said: "Is it not true, my friend, that the river has very many voices? Has it not the voice of a king, of a warrior, of a bull, of a night bird, of a pregnant woman, and a sighing man, and a thousand other voices?"

"It is so," nodded Vasudeva, "the voices of all living creatures are in its voice."

from Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse

Interlude: Atlantis

It's been so long since I've done much of anything in here. It seems that inspirations for writing only come anymore when I'm far away from the computer, and when I sit down with time to write there's nothing there.

So, at the risk of becoming one of those mindless video re-posters, I stumbled across this clip from a '69 Smothers Brothers episode (courtesy of BoingBoing) of Scottish folk legend Donovan performing his ballad, Atlantis, backed up by the Brothers Smothers and Peter, Paul and Mary.



This was one of my favorite songs growing up, still being played in 1971 when at age 9 I got my first radio. In some strange way, I think Donovan may have helped kickstart my curiosity for history, archeology, and folklore. It was Plato's 4th century musings on this mythical kingdom that spurred, in part, Iberian explorations of the furthest reaches of the Atlantic and the Americas. And it was a fascination with the Spanish colonial period that fueled the eventual pursuit of my history degree 16 centuries later.

My teenage daughter has discovered the joys of this ballad recently and added it to her iPod too. That Donovan shares an almost scary resemblance to a kid from her 8th grade class helps.

Enjoy the holidays, y'all. Hail Atlantis!

Back to the fold

I’m a bad blogger. ‘Twas not quite a year ago, I strolled into this endeavour, wrote an occasional egoistic monologue on nothin’ of utmost criticality, ginnin’ up a mob of two or three fawning fans with a couple of self-described clever turns of phrase, then I disappear for weeks, nay months, at a time. (Nothin’ in July! Absolutely nothin’.)

I’m sure others have said it through the course of history, but I remember reading Stephen King in his book “On Writing” sayin’ something to the effect, “If’n you want to be a writer, you have to write. Every day.” So, if anyone asks why I'm back, it's Mr King's fault.

I can’t promise every day, but I’m on the road to reforming myself, getting myself back on the right side of life and mind and body. Perhaps we’ll need another “Mind the Gap” posting now and again, but I’m stepping back into the pool, whether anyone reads the drivel presented here or not. Summer’s almost over. The crowds are beginning to dwindle. Vacation’s done come and gone. No excuses but those I invent.

Besides, gotta be in good literary standing to get an invite to the picnic, eh?

That was the kind of house it was.

Every so often, you run across a passage in a book that sticks with ya. I found one of those last night, marveling at the ability of a great writer to paint a picture. Suppose that's why they're considered great writers, and I'm not.

Here, from All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (p32 in my copy):

It looked like those farmhouses you ride by in the country in the middle of the afternoon, with the chickens under the trees and the dog asleep, and you know the only person in the house is the woman who has finished washing up the dishes and has swept the kitchen and has gone upstairs to lie down for half an hour and has pulled off her dress and kicked off her shoes and is lying there on her back on the bed in the shadowy room with her eyes closed and a strand of her hair still matted down on her forehead with the perspiration. She listens to the flies cruising around the room, then she listens to your motor getting big out on the road, then it shrinks off into the distance and she listens to the flies. That was the kind of house it was.