the wild hunt

brave

golden state

going on with my californialovesonggroove:

san francisco

love this partridge family vibe...

escape

A Message from the Wanderer

Today outside your prison I stand

and rattle my walking stick: Prisoners, listen;

you have relatives outside. And there are

thousands of ways to escape.

Years ago I bent my skill to keep my

cell locked, had chains smuggled to me in pies,

and shouted my plans to jailers;

but always new plans occured to me,

or the new heavy locks bent hinges off,

or some stupid jailer would forget

and leave the keys.

Inside, I dreamed of constellations—

those feeding creatures outlined by stars,

their skeletons a darkness between jewels,

heroes that exist only where they are not.

Thus freedom always came nibbling my thought,

just as—often, in light, on the open hills—

you can pass an antelope and not know

and look back, and then—even before you see—

there is something wrong about the grass.

And then you see.

That’s the way everything in the world is waiting.

Now—these few more words, and then I’m

gone: Tell everyone just to remember

their names, and remind others, later, when we

find each other. Tell the little ones

to cry and then go to sleep, curled up

where they can. And if any of us get lost,

if any of us cannot come all the way—

remember: there will come a time when

all we have said and all we have hoped

will be all right.

There will be that form in the grass.

-William E. Stafford

collection

hunt

Out today hunting some magic in all this monochrome:

packing for the trip

He had never traveled before. He had with him a tin trunk with his clothes for the mountain wastelands, the illustrated novels that he bought in pamphlet form every month and that he himself sewed into cardboard covers, and the books of love poetry that he recited from memory and that were about to crumble into dust with so much readings.  He had left behind his violin, for he identified it too closely with his misfortune, but his mother had obliged him to take his petate, a very popular and practical bedroll, with its pillow, sheet, small pewter chamber pot, and mosquito netting, all of this wrapped in straw matting tied with two hemp ropes for hanging a hammock in an emergency.  Florentino Ariza had not wanted to take it, for he thought it would be useless in a cabin that provided bed and bedclothes, but from the very first night he had reason once again to be grateful for his mother's good sense.

--from Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

rear view

you ain't going nowhere

waiting for the trade winds

... will the weather ever let us go?

crow moon coming on

march

There is a strange space in the wee hours when I wake restless and fumbling in low light for glasses of water, glimpses of stars, scraps of paper, books, anything to set my soul at ease.  When luck is on my side I find it -- a revelation that actually make sense, maybe even sends me right back to sleep.  Sometimes it doesn't quite work out -- so I carry the unrest -- like strange keys, these souvenirs from my hazy waking dreams -- looking for the lock into which they fit.  

From last nights divining -- I can't explain how it fit into these clouds from this Ohio morning that was brilliant but never warm, but somehow it did:

Kyoto:  March

A few light flakes of snow
Fall in the feeble sun;
Birds sing in the cold,
A warbler by the wall. The plum
Buds tight and chill soon bloom.
The moon begins first
Fourth, a faint slice west
At nightfall. Jupiter half-way
High at the end of night-
Meditation. The dove cry
Twangs like a bow.
At dawn Mt. Hiei dusted white
On top; in the clear air
Folds of all the gullied green
Hills around the town are sharp,
Breath stings. Beneath the roofs
Of frosty houses
Lovers part, from tangle warm
Of gentle bodies under quilt
And crack the icy water to the face
And wake and feed the children
And grandchildren that they love.

— Gary Snyder

soft as water

States of Being

Stability is greatly
    overrated.
Why would I ever want to sit
    still and smug as a rock,
    confident, because of my great
    weight, that I will not
    be moved?
Better to be soft as water,
    easily troubled, with
    at least three modes
    of being, able to shape-
    shift, to mirror, to cleanse,
    to drift downstream,
To roar when I encounter
    the rock.

--Luci Shaw

no matter where you go

legs to walk and thoughts to fly

Thanks, Jerah.

field notes

There are several themes that seem to confront me in most of my wandering:

Water; its movement, shape, sound, color and the creative and transformative way it reflects light and clouds and trees.

Trees -- and their endless variation, their shadows, their slow dance to a rhythm we can't feel, the size and shape and color of their leaves in all seasons.  I am forever fascinated by their "personalities" which, I know, makes no sense.  Trees aren't people, but I am convinced of their sentience. Just because we don't understand the language doesn't mean something isn't being communicated.  I could (maybe I do) spend a lot of time wondering what it is that trees are expressing, which reminds me of a quote I read earlier this week from former Guardian columnist A.C. Grayling, "If you really want a mind-altering experience, look at a tree."  It stays with me.

Birds. Birds and their access to the sky, the knowing messengers that call out the secrets of other worlds from treetops, the littles that chip from overgrown fence rows, and the raptors and scavengers that drift in the thermals and sweep the ground below with their ghostly shadows.

Escape and freedom -- tied to all of my modest adventures.  I like, can't get enough of, being away, down the road or the trail.  I don't mind, often prefer, to travel solo.  I'm addicted to the body in motion, the mind alone in a place to freely consider only things that have their own natural consequences. (Beware though, sometimes the body will go one way whilst the mind travels in another, and at some point, neither may have the slightest clue where they are.)

Given time and circumstance, some other thoughts that are of little consequence to my day to day and thus far superior to it:

What the French call "l'appel du vide" (19 more "awesome" words for things that don't translate in English here) which literally, and very poetically, translates into (and I love this) "the call of the void" but it specifically refers to the urge to jump from very high places.  I am not afraid of heights. I am, in fact enamoured of them (as long as I can feel my weight balanced evenly over my two feet that are planted firmly on the ground, amen).  It is wildly exhilarating to stand at the edge of cliffs and feel my breath catch in the back of my throat -- and while I have no desire to jump, the imagination is so powerful that I can almost feel that moment when ... (speaking of things that have only natural consequences)

Also:

1.  The way the morning sunlight, as it shines through the damp haze rising from the gorge below, causes the hemlocks to appear as if they were part of an overexposed photograph
2.  The inescapable sound of so much water in motion
3.  The way the word "watershed" captures my imagination and emotions and feels like it belongs somewhere in the middle of clouds, a spring river, and a sigh
4.  Micro climatology
5.  The aesthetics and engineering of state forest trails (never mind stupid gas pipeline trails)
6.  The also "wildly exhilarating" feeling of being lost (in a maze of stupid gas pipeline trails, map? huh?) ... that is only fully realized after one has found one's way
7.  The way the woods sometimes smells perversely like the stuff my step dad used to spray into the eaves of the milk house to eradicate the wasp metropolises
8.  An emerging treatise on the nature of all kinds of hunger

time travel

valentina lisitsa

NPR

glory

A day I can get behind.  Nothing but smiles for strangers.  Feeling light in spite of the thick pound of mud caked into the treads of my shoes.  The sweet smell of earth warmed by the RETURN of the sun.  Red-tailed hawk like a pinprick of a kite until it takes a missile-like dive into the field and I cannot see if it hits the mark because I am on the other side of the overgrown fence row.  I whoop at geese and laugh as they squawk and flap halfheartedly into the pond.  I shouldn't -- they, bathing on sun-blessed southern banks and I, having no idea really, still imagining that they think it's fun too...

blues

...a welcome sight.

skunk cabbage

And now as the iron rinds over
the ponds start dissolving,
you come, dreaming of ferns and flowers
and new leaves unfolding,
upon the brash
turnip-hearted skunk cabbage
slinging its bunches leaves up
through the chilling mud.
You kneel beside it. The smell
is lurid and flows out in the most
unabashed way, attracting
into itself a continual spattering
of protein. Appalling its rough
green caves, and the thought
of the thick root nested below, stubborn
and powerful as instinct!
But these are the woods you love,
where the secret name
of every death is life again – a miracle
wrought surely not of mere turning
but of dense and scalding reenactment. Not
tenderness, not longing, but daring and brawn
pull down the frozen waterfall, the past.
Ferns, leaves, flowers, the last subtle
refinements, elegant and easeful, wait
to rise and flourish.
What blazes the trail is not necessarily pretty.

-Mary Oliver

pond

unleashed

I have been wandering tensely for at least a few days, holding my breath as I study the fields and trees, all the while looking for signs and asking myself, is it greener today, are the buds just a little thicker, am I imagining?

Today I confirmed that what has felt like a low hum is indeed the release I've been looking for.  The faintest trickle ahead of the flood.  The March wind still blows cold as it carries the lingering winter chill from dark fields -- but the life force is unleashed.    

burning spear

the weight

up from below

field notes

Sunday morning ... breathe deeply.