New Friends

Barking dog, red hued horizon, the moon up over venus, boots muddied past the ankles, nose running, fingers stinging from standing in the frozen mud on the rim of the gorge talking to new friends, Sioux Matt and Greek Jessica, as the sun dropped below the canyon walls. They fed me artichoke dip on fancy melba toast, and we caught on fast. A jug of merlot was passed, but I told them of my cleanse and Jessica said she was a nurse, and somehow the conversation turned to colonics. In just a few minutes we covered our work (Matt is an artist with a gallery in pretty little Dixon 20 miles south), my burgeoning brewery (that sparked a flurry of conversation), Jessica's two marriages, the improbable length of the intestines, Matt's Sioux/Irish mix ("I'm the token Indian." "Really, in a place with thousands of Indians, you're the token?" "Well, for now, in this crowd." "Gotcha."), Jessica's nursing, foot cleanses, beer brewing, evil lawyers, music, Colorado, mutual friends (my friend, Anderson Khee, a Navajo artist, knows Matt well), the super bowl (consensus: Arizona), our instant likability, our astrology (me Aries, Matt Sag, Jessica Leo - a ring of fire!), our ages (we all look younger than our chrono numbers), the hope of Obama, the hard life of artists, costume psychedelic music shows, and how it would be nice to hang again sometime. How cool is that? Standing against immensity and shimmering color, the sound of a rushing, jade river 700 feet below us, the moon overhead, the hills showing their outlines, the noses, lips, foreheads and bellies, shadow raptors slow-winged and swooping over the mouth of the canyon, hovering, and the sweep of the Sangre de Cristos, with the rose petal blood of Christ lighting the snowfields under the vibrating pixie grape of the sky. New people, a circle formed without lines, a heart dropping into a cradle, faces becoming more beautiful each second we melt from the outside, as if we are being lit by the candle of the world, it's light emanating from below the horizon surrounding us. Top of the world, where the grinding of the gears tickles your feet. Sharing food, and smiles, and leading me to understand again this eden. Moments before I'd been standing on a lichens covered boulder on the north facing canyon trail, a last look at the widening river, it's blond grasses matted on the south facing side where the snow had melted off. I asked for guidance, radiated gratitude, felt for a rounded abundance, and a flow of health through my atoms. Asked for the ability to stand my ground in firm kindness and yielding peace, and to ask for what I need. And then I trudged through the ice, and then the plocking mud, mucking to my car sitting on top of the bluff, next to Matt and Jessica. Breathe deep the gathering peace, see light rise in every crease, do not fear the moody blues, for new friends can come in twos.

Couldn't resist that last part.

Afternoon Radio

a longing on the radio
the still young voice
of an aging singer
who broke us in the 70s

a piano and strings
I can't catch the words
but the sun by the couch
asks me to sit and stop

a dog from down the road
smiles at the open door
waiting for my touch
looking, wagging

he comes in on a nod
delight and wonder
and I can't resist
being a dog, too

so I grunt and wrestle
flip him over
playing on the floor
upending the coffee table

and the radio plays Seal
then the new Springsteen
as the dog sniffs around
my kitchen garbage

the songs are all sweet
and lonesome, but still
filled with old love
that never disappears

Sleepwalking in Snow

Venus blows a french horn to the rust-edged moon hanging upside down,
and the moon returns a wavering, old fiddle stroke, holding out a hand.
They are close tonight, in earshot, low to the west, riding the river,
and I find myself leaving the warm space of lights, no hat or gloves, out the door and over the wall onto the petrified snow that holds my weight even as I hop. It is like a frozen beach, textured sands blown through the centuries, down from the mountains and up the wide sage valley to the buttes and crags of Colorado. A sea of satin white waves shows as ink spilled by the stars, and the shadows of blood willows purple the pueblo slopes leading to the hidden gardens and lakes where the piping leads my heart. But I can't really hear it tonight. I look back to the moon and venus behind me, still together, lowering early, early, soon to be lost to the other side of the planet. The mountains call tonight, the dark ones that will take me in, and I keep walking, no jacket, no hat, no gloves, but walking past the place where the dogs go, no coyotes, a tiny wind on my numbing ears, and I know it is cold, but it doesn't mean anything. Past the strewn houses, into a place in between things, a non-place, there is a circle of open snow where the sage doesn't grow. I don't know where this is, and I've forgotten my house. The moon is dipping a tip below the curve, it is a Japanese red and venus is blinking back tears, she is sinking, bathed in crimson, so unlikely. And I lie down with my head to the west looking straight up to the Big Dipper and other spills and swirls of light, feeling the mountain between my legs. My head pushes into the hardened old snow and I arch back to catch one more look at that cherry ristra moon, but she's already gone. So soon. Venus, now small and wobbly, a pinprick of blue light without her playmate, crosses my eyes. I get up and dust off the ice grains and trudge a snaky line among the sage, colder than I remember, but closer to the fiddler in green.

Protecting the Kill

This will be short. I'm feisty, not in that moon spell, waters rippling from a raindrop outward to evermore. Nahhhh, I'm home, no TV, nobody around which for 5 minutes I think is good, then the next 5 I feel like a hermit freak wasting my time. I did get out of my asylum for a jaunt, late afternoon, and busted up Divisadero. It turned slap-face cold today and my fingers stung inside my crap gloves. No mud, all frozen dirt lips and glass shard snow. It's 8:19 and I'm wide eyed, too much energy to tame. I have gourmet fries in the oven, 425, the olive oil and basil baking in, hitting their point of crisp perfection. I'm hungry, so much so that I ripped into a ham shank with my bare hands (after the knife and fork failed me) and started gnawing on it like a desert wolf, the lobo. And I caught myself baring my teeth when I looked at it on the plate, trying to figure out the thickest part. Here I am in front of my computer, 7 o'clock at night, craving meat after a day of eating apples, snap peas and jalapeno jack, and I have a lamb shank, already half eaten, but cleanly so, shaved with a knife for use in a morning scramble, and I'm moving my head up and down, side to side, eying that shredded shank like I'd killed it myself. And I notice my elbows are out to the sides and my back is hunched, the muscles alert. Fuck, I was protecting my kill. Who knows what other animal, some Facebook foe or IMing hyena, would pop out of the big screen and snatch my flesh? No fucking way. So I found myself with the shank in my mouth, scraping with my front teeth and incisors, chomping, but having a hard time finding the thick payoff. It felt lousy, sloppy, crummy and my right cheek was smeared with a white streak of chilled fat. I put it down, disgusted, although the aftertaste was sweet and I thought of cubed ham, or a much larger ham I could slice into with an electric knife like lamb on a skewer for souvlaki. And then I looked around my big, minimalist-style house, and remembered I was alone, and I laughed a little, and thought as I walked the long plank to the kitchen that I'd never have man-handled a ham shank like that if I'd been with a woman, and that maybe that was the problem...you know, not being yourself. If you're a ham shank devourer, a face in the gristle motherfucker, then be it, man! And I had it resolved right there in the kitchen that I'd be that guy in my next relationship. Yes, that would make it work and lead to fat streaked sex all over the house, and especially the kitchen. But, then I realized that that was the first ham shank I'd ever eaten, indeed maybe ever seen. I'd bought it on a lark, when I was hungry, looking for something to kill and there it was at Cid's, in the refrigerated meat section with the specialty products. And I lifted it and it had heft. I looked at the price - $7.59. Hmmm, steep but it had bulk and it felt meaty. But there you go, it was my first, and I was mistaken, it was mostly bone, maybe better for hambone soup. I really have no idea. So, now I'm sated, and feeling sheepish about my ham shank, and that revelation in the kitchen is long gone, and I hardly ever eat pink meat, maybe a Denver omelet here and there. It was a one-time thing, and it's not that I'm so neat and clean and civilized with my eating, indeed I've felt the filling mouth crumbs on goatee sloppiness a lot these past years, but ham ain't my bag, really. That said, I am a wolf and I do need more kills, so I think I'll head to Cid's tomorrow, probably after my hike, and stalk the meat section, but this time with an eye toward something sliced or pounded and wrapped up tight.

Pregnant Woman

Lonely pyramids greet me
as I walk the clay road
a striding gait
into a winter wind
gray upon gray moving
over the pregnant woman
on the other side
of the black cut
where the river runs
at the bottom
feeding the trees
that knead her belly
remembering hawks
who saw the men
in skin paints
on warmer days
etch circles
in the granite
and look up
knowing
keeping
telling
spinning
fading
out

Top of Divisadero

I'm Lichen It!

Gone Muddy

We've entered a land of low country and water, oceanliners sitting in the mist the ropes cut, about to drift off the pier as people with hats on, wiping tears wave before turning their backs to travel out to the country. Dirt roads gone overnight from searching white tongues rising up blue slopes, to bubbly mires of coffee mud leading to spring. Jordy said the Rabbit Man told him spring'd be here early, but that the low drift of amphibian clouds would leave us splashing in the muck for months, and even the snow flakes that'll still come will get swallowed up in the brown. It makes no sense, Jordy said, not to have a train running through this sloppy desert, as the sage gives off its wet, cool tang, and the pines over town throw a stingy raisin bucket into the mix. No sense at all as the guitars in darkening dens start to slide, lamenting the melting earth, threatening to remind everybody of their lost babies wrapped in black scarves on city blocks, smiling in a different light while these players kneel before fires, tin cans catching leaden snow droplets through the roofs. Whispered lullabies to the rusty glow giving the western horizon hope, a break above the crown of clouds clinging to the volcanoes, a place for sound to reach the galactic friends who left years ago. They play on giving you a gunny sack on the shoulder, head lowered into the black canyon where the green river is rising. She walks down there, and smells the new earth, while you keep expecting that long whistle whine you heard sometime in the past, in the high grass of some summer, when it was already over, when she'd already left. But the train isn't there, hasn't been since 1902, and clouds walk the hills and spill over the desert, silver-edged and burning, asking for more than guitars. Jordy says, Didn't you know a fiddler once? And I think of her, Kelly Joe Phelps accompanying me, green velvet hips splatted with mud drops, her fiddle up high, eyelashes licking cheekbones, too close to touch, bow pointing to a dogs lemon smile, her tongue studded with Venus, her voice hushed and talking to all of us in our dusky rooms, calling us forth to dance, without boots, in the mud. But I want to meet her alone, and I tell Jordy so. And he says, You ought to be able to, she was your girl. But I don't know this, and I never did.

Sound and No Sound

What a sunrise I witnessed! Long, subtle, at turns dramatic and quiet. It took me by surprise as I was making my bed to the sing song litany of the news on NPR through KRZA in Alamosa, CO. Today, it seems, the nation with Obama at the helm, is walking in rhythm. And it may be announced later that the plans are set to close Guantanamo Bay prison within a year. The stock market hadn't opened yet, but the futures were bright. For me, a third straight night of good sleep has left me feeling almost right, good energy but still one or two physical oddities that I'm going to have to check out.

But I digress. A glance over my right shoulder revealed wavy layers of blueberry and strawberry jam clouds over the bluebeard foothills to my east. Ms. Moon plucked a sad note at her apex, above the colorful fray, pale, shivering in the old navy of night, frail to the bone, not enough left to hang on to. She stayed up there, visible, even as the powdery aqua mists drifted up the Rio Grande Valley and tried to hide her. And all of this, the moon's acquiescent curtsy and the rumble of curlicue clouds below starting to form a circle of light above the sage still prisoner to the crusted snow, each plant a being stuck in an endless advance to the north buried up to the chest and stymied, moving only along the tips in circular salutes, all of this happening without sound. I went outside and jumped up on the adobe wall, scanning like a periscope risen out of the deep, and what I noticed more than the building light and the Close Encounters kineticism of the sky, was the embracing calm, the courtesy of the cold to remain unstirred, the quiet from a billion years ago settled into this vast valley, not even the emanating hum from the core of things that you sometimes hear out on this desert. All action blended into nothing. And again, similar to that sense, that memory in the deep, dry ice blue snow of the foothills that me, my molecules, atoms, the parts that reflect as me, can be let go, can be dropped into the snow, collapsed, quieted with the quiet, melded, meshed, infused, suffused, disappeared into a sleep that lasts billions of years. That is solace. That is love.

I compare it to yesterday, when I hiked Divisadero in the morning, still icy, the cold sounding in my mouth and ears like a high pitched piano note. But the sun was climbing quickly and the frozen mud and snow crunched under my boots like eggs and bacon frying on an iron skillet. Each bend brought the sun onto my face and I stretched out my neck, pushing my head, eyes closed as close to the source as I could, just like the trees surrounding me. I had no water, but I knew that the sun, with the snow around me, could divine what I needed. And when I got to my sacred spot and relieved myself in the triangular hole that is still there, no longer 3 feet deep, more like a foot, I stopped and looked at Taos Mountain. In my prayers for guidance, gratitude, health and abundance, I could not help but hear my body vibrating with the ramble and machine buzz coming from town. It filled up my bowels, insinuating itself in such a way that it can't be ejected. I stood and listened, let it fill me, squinted my eyes when I was startled by the gurgly groan of an 18-wheeler moving down Highway 68. It hit me in the solar plexus, in the ass, in the places where an amped up bass hits you. But this thing sounded like a pig in a poke, sniffling, grunting, snarfling through the muck. And then the supersonic sound of a jet, splitting the air, a doppler-atic push of baritone, in and out, coming and going, the sound circling around my head. This sound used to bring smiles to my face growing up because it reminded me of being at baseball games at Shea Stadium in Queens, New York, where the planes from LaGuardia Airport flew over every few minutes. But not now. Now it made me feel like a lost, useless part of the big machine, rooting through the valves and chambers to find my purpose. Too many things moving and making unnatural sounds. It made me feel as if man did not trust the movement that already existed, the sounds of the world, and he had to create his own, movement, and sound. And that, in itself is ok, that can be art, that can be part of the planet jiggle, but there came a point of recklessness where convenience and luxury (whatever that means) replaced the art that requires the spell that requires the sound, and no sound, of the core of the earth, and the walking of the mountains, and the doip and thunder of water. And even writing this I feel like a useless, discarded part of a machine and I don't trust that machine and within it I do not trust myself. That's what I heard, saw and felt yesterday on the mountain.

PISD - Post Insomnia Stress Disorder

I am impressed by insomniacs. After another night of doing a groaning, flatulent, fire-breathing battle with the agents of change inside of me, I am stumbling and bumbling around my house, with purple eye pouches, wearing too tight hoop sneakers (has my foot grown? are my toes swollen? how did I ever play ball in these?), dreading the climb of the sun up into my windows. A fucking horrible night, and yet, and yet, I'm actually mad on the rise, more energy than I've had since last Tuesday (still stumbly, bumbly and pebble-eyed, but grooving with it). It feels like I've been lying down too much, been too prone. My body doesn't like it. Things get trapped, gasses, liquids, thoughts. I could not find comfort last night. The heat was in me, and, worse, the ball of tension in the solar plexus, magma hot at the center and strangely cold on the edges, like Mars. My heart beat too fast, too long. It's supposed to go quiet at night, but this was heart work for running away, chasing, heroic effort, the fear of the Fall, the frustration of the failure of my body system. And I was mind writing through all of this, the turning over, the coughing, the hot sandpaper feeling of breathing the desert air which has become so dry over the past couple of weeks that my mouth and the top of my throat feel like they are being singed during the nights. Talking to myself, talking: "Chill. Relax. Breathe slowly. It's ok. It's ok. Fall back into yourself. Fall in. Cmon. Cmon. CMON! FUCK! Geeze. This fucking blows. What the fuck. What the fucking fuck!" Miserable. There were only two stints, maybe 30 minutes, maybe an hour, when I fell away and dreamt. An old town, water towers, factories on a river. A group of people, friends, one guy in particular, tall with a white undershirt loose over jeans. He is wary of me, looking at me like once we were buddies but now he doesn't trust me. It's uncomfortable. I walk up a paved hill on a narrow street between buildings. It looks like Italy. Later, I'm in my Oyster Bay, with friends in a cab going to a bar. People mill in the street. We're happy to be there, just milling around, a lot of shadows from the street lights, a green sky. But I come back to my body and I'm still breathing fire and that goddamn ball of friction is still there. No change. I can't fall back in. It's 4:30 and I think of writing. I have it in me, but I just add that threat to the battle going on and turn on the radio instead to the BBC Report. They're talking about the King of Thailand punishing people, foreigners, sometimes being lenient, like with a Swiss man who was caught tagging his portrait, and somehow pleaded for mercy. Maybe because he's swiss and neutral? He was sentenced to 10 years, but the king reduced it to 6 months. Some other guy, a Turk, got 10 years for something I can't remember (spitting on someone?)and he's still in prison (maybe a makeup call for the infamous Turkish prisons immortalized in Midnight Express?). Fucking Vanity. And up next: the Taliban blowing up schools in Afghan towns where girls are attending and terrorizing the girls. Fucking reverse evolution! How is this species going to survive? Oh, and then they go into the worldwide economic meltdown, bank bailouts, etc., etc., followed by the fact that the US Army has had an amazing 15 months of recruiting due to the lack of jobs available. They've surpassed all quotas. Great, great, soldiers that's who we need more of so that we can go to places with weapons and kill people to make sure everything's alright because that's how the world works, and we live in a dangerous world, and there's a terrorist next door, and Osama bin Laden is still out there, and we have to spread democracy all over the world because it will allow people to get rich like us by being part of the vast network of smoothly operating capital markets? And why else? Liberty? Oh, and because of the war on drugs. So I had to shut off the radio and the waning moon was up there smearing the stars, and even that pissed me off because the Big Dipper is always right there in the first big window, my own personal dipper. But the moon's light fucked it up. And I'm rolling around talking to myself about the absurdity. Repeating things over and over, being absurd myself, wondering what it will take for fundamental change to occur. Breathing fire and repeating things in my bed at 5:06am, but underneath all of that thinking that with Obama coming in

- oh, and I forgot to mention earlier, another part of the BBC Report was how much money people are making selling products with the image of Obama...it is quite a phenomenon, get yours NOW! before they sell out! -

there is an opportunity for RADICAL change. I'm talking really getting/going green, no more torture, leading the world in kindnesses, waking up to putting our energy into community as opposed to consumption...you know, all the stuff, healing ourselves, the earth, universal health care, good, wild education, experimentation, supporting artists, tribalism. And I get excited, for a second. But at the same time I can feel a gremlin inside of me ready to pounce on Obama for not being the change he's been waiting for. Hey, but I hardly slept, remember, so the world has some sinister edges, you know. Ahhh, but not really. The truth is, I am inspired whether O is the man or not or somewhere in the blah, blah middle. In fact, I felt in my grains a while back that government as we know it is anachronistic, and at this point, stunts the evolution of man. Maybe Obama feels the same? I'm not advocating overthrow, having pizza with anarchy parties at my house, I'm just saying that we all need to grow from the inside out, reach to each other from the inside out, mingle and create with the people around us, including the earth, stop the fucking vanity about we are this and we are that (the days of johnny jingo are over!), and we deserve this and we deserve that, and we're the fucking best man...if I hear another person start to talk with the sentence, "America is the greatest country in the world" I'm going to throw a fucking dart at the radio. What does that mean? And who determines this? Is it based on Ms. World? I don't think we've won that in a while. Is it based on education? Sorry. Is it based on manufacturing? Woops. Is it based on principles? Hmmm, tough one if you read a book or two. Why isn't Sweden the best country in the world? Or Morocco? It's all ridiculous. There was a time when it was important for the development of the world to have nation states and war was a part of that system. We're beyond the usefulness of this system. Man, you can get mired in this stuff, huh? I'm in a wormhole with it. But, again, I'm optimistic and hoping to be part of the fun of rallying with everybody to do things like share, and prop each other up, and dance, and grow food, drive cars that spit water, and even more radical stuff like forgive people and, if we have to be a unit of example at all, let's be for sharing all the wealth (with ourselves and the entire world) and not worrying what anachronistic political label that is associated with. Alright, I may just be awake enough to wring out the last drops of sarcasm laced with the gooey aortic blood of the eternal optimist.

Sickie Quickie

There was a time when nothing was ever enough, everything a prelude to the ultimate moment. This is not to say small things went unnoticed or didn't matter, indeed, they did and I was obsessed by them, but, still, only prelude. A change has occurred, maybe a combination of getting older, shedding a skin, seeing more, talking less. I spoke to good friends tonight and I am full. 48 minutes, my throat gone dry and achy, my energy sapped, chills coming on (but in a good way, you know, when you give in to them and bundle up under the covers), and the call of the Ski Valley is faint. Again, I am full - the helix of friendship and understanding, cultures mixed in the distillery - it is dark, and I can ease to bed (after a few movies ;-)). What it means is that I've always been full, and what I always did was make my cup runneth over.

Sick on the Desert

Cherry red, mixed with rust and lemon on the horizon at the end of dusk. Hills of old volcanoes walking the desert like felines, backs raised, spinal spikes like pyramids ready to lift off again. It has to be known. It has to be felt. Dirt roads somehow still choked with snow despite the relentless sun, houses floating, Noah's ideas waiting for the next flood. Castles made of cans shimmering into the oceanic blue green surface of sky. Places to live that speak to and listen to the sun, self-sustained, simple, with space melting from internal to external. Little separation between being and it. Mountains to the east and north, dark greens leading to the inviting whiteness above treeline, my old home. People up there after a sunny ski day looking darker than Peruvian hill pipers, white teeth blaring while my friends play their Caribbean rhythms in the ocean liner of a bar stuck in a Swiss-German mountain village in New Mexico which used to be part of pueblo lands, part of Mexico. I am sick, head and chest filled and swollen, a rare occurrence and tearing me down day after day, but the end of dusk drew me to my writing room, Venus sparking to the east. I don't know what I think today, it is gone, wasted, recycled, swirling and slightly tense like a rope being pulled gently. Writers speck the starry distance, filling my shelves, and the worries of everything start to feel ridiculous. In the outside is organization, slow movement, the fear of physical and spiritual destruction, but the inside is wild, reflects what's really out there, freaking abundance. There has been a lot to write about the past few days, and my notes scatter across legal pads, envelopes, post-its, and last year's day planner pages. I'm too wavy to be specific, all I want is to feel. There was a too skinny woman I know who I saw in Smith's. Too skinny, pale, no ass, sunken cheeks. 30 years old. She said she's playing the cello and singing, really making it happen. She married a much older man. I've met him, he's a softened tough musician, haggardly easygoing now, gray mustache and two day ghost shadow. He's bought me a drink or two over the last years. And I think he has some kind of garage wisdom and kindness and has placed his poncho over her. And at the same time I think he is leading her to the valley of the shadow of death. He's 60 or more, double her. After talking about the cello and singing, she asks me if she has any blow on her nostril. She doesn't, but it's red-embered and pricked with capillaries. We used to do some together so she's comfortable asking me this. It's a code, a courtesy like offering a fellow smoker a cigarette. I tell her I've been sober for 4 months and she says she's happy for me, always liked me, wishes me well. All the time she's looking away and when I do catch her eyes, I realize the once gambling table green with coffee edges has dulled to the wrong paint mix, pink thrown in where it shouldn't be. She has three kids, all beautiful, smart, talented, but she lost custody a long time ago. Got it back once when she cleaned up for a year and her cherry tomato butt returned, her cheeks filled, her hair became golden-edged, and the eyes were a wonder of swimming mermaids. I walk away with my own sniffling and I think she hasn't seen the kids lately, not even for Christmas, and I don't know whether she is walking slowly in the rain toward her end under that poncho, or whether she is incubating in some church. I hope she really is playing that cello.

5 minutes, go...

Where did the time go today? I saw the sunrise, perkier in the west than yesterday, the moon setting again, this time in a buoyant cranberry zizzle. The east clear but for a magenta feather boa looping over the Weimer hills. Cold again, 1 degree, but it didn't penetrate. So much going on all of a sudden that I became the swirl of it all, and got sucked into the hourglass with the rest of the sand grains. But moments stand out, still. I saw writing friends at Cid's, both making their livings at it, and talked about the road to teaching at UNM Taos. More client work developed and good connections were made. My face felt vibrant in the afternoon after a coffee and a shave, and the brace of sun and cool air. I bought a real pair of shades, rose colored lenses, as my eyes were being pulverized by the UV rays. They felt great on my face, snug to the nose and just a smidge off the eyebrows so I can make my array of expressions without resistance or discomfort. I drove to the Divis trailhead, taking advantage of the 20+ minutes of sunlight we've gained since the Solstice. Saw my friend, Matteo, at the bottom. We talked, briefly, about the Boston Celtics, and then went our separate ways. I busted it up the front and began to notice webs of paper thin ice stretched over rocks. Amazing formations, watery, cracked, furrowed, scrolled, the rock sitting underneath, yellow brown, like a specimen in a lab in a petrie dish. Strange, but happening all over the mountain. The heat of the sun warming the rocks from under the snow, and that heat melting the snow around each rock until the last layer, but that last layer made it late enough into the day when the sun fades and the temperature quickly drops below freezing. And, voila, a spider-webby, how-could-that-possibly-have-happened stretch of frozen liquid over a rock, clearly visible beneath. Like looking through slightly beveled glass. The phenomenon will be gone tomorrow, the rocks will have finished the job so they can bask fully in the splendor of the New Mexico sun.

I tried to take a picture, but my phone ran out of juice as I pushed the OK button. Rats, but memory works, too. On the way down, I saw that somebody had made a Zia (4 points, four directions), the New Mexico state symbol, in the snow and had also created wafers of hard snow and created a mini Stonehenge next to it.

Ode to Summer Lovin

Alright, so I've been talking reverently about the snow and cold, the insane skies, the silenced landscape. Well, today I was cold. I'm not sure why, but it started in the toes during a cloudy sunrise at 0 degrees. I had the chill-inspired turettes, making loud, gutteral sounds to vibrate inside my chest, and then actually beating my breast with my open hands. It all helped a little but my toes remained icy. So, after posting the pictures of today's sunrise, one toward the fiery east, one toward the big moon still hanging in the sky to prehistorically somber west, I'm going to post another picture, taken on the summer solstice, of two of my friends, part of the family, getting married by a tall preacher under a towering, priapic cottonwood, in front a cool, lazy creek, at the bottom of a grassy hill after weeks of afternoon monsoons, and recite the little write that they (and Widespread Panic)inspired. It was written the next weekend at my kitchen table in my previous house on San Antonio St.

So, pictures please:





And, now, summer (ah, my toes are warming up):




Imagine there are 100 people dressed to the nines, summer style, beginning 10 feet from that microphone stand.

At my house alone surrounded by smiling faces over bodies in motion to music blasting from strips of dark, undulating speakers 50 feet tall and 200 feet away. And more smiling faces in tall grass under giant, stout cottonwood trees surrounded by a deep set, slow creek snaking and slurking - people in suits and hot pink dresses, asses slightly bubbled in happiness, reverence and just enough cockiness at the beauty being reflected back. And a tall dark preacher towers under the tree that grew up without a branch for 60 years. And he sings a rumbling love-aby for the couple exchanging vows steps from the creek in front of a family of muscled humans who look at them in silence and, occasionally, in the intimate heat and insect hum, look at each other with shy smiles knowing each is together with the one they look at, blurring lines, riding the little pinprick waves, forgetting themselves in the preacher's low crackle and secretly waiting to lie naked in the creek.

Evidence of a Nap

Mountain Madness

Before and Now

Bird Tracks: Which Way to Go?

Kryptonite & Cookies

I sit here at my desk watching the silver dollar moon turn the desert tundra into a shadowy, dusty blue that presages the earthshaking steps of giants. It also looks like the snowfields are an expanding inland sea that will lap at my windows, turning my house with its huge windows into an aquarium. And that is how I feel inside my head, water sloshing and soaking, dousing, suffocating. La luna, I love her, and she is also my kryponite. Triple fire I am, and she the moon, closer to me than she's ever been, has slipped me a mickey, shaken me when I needed stirring, dropped a depth charge in my super food. It happens every time, month-to-month, more and more, and, although I can fight it with the determination of the Man of Steel or Captain Kirk, really I am reduced to the desire to crawl on a padded floor, to some corner filled with pillows where I can burrow my head and wiggle my shoulders before sinking into the floor of a deep slumber. My feet are vibrating inside my boots, my lips loose and slightly opened, my ears ringing in a high C, my heart beating in my armpits. I am not heavy, but disintegrating, changing states, solid to liquid. I want to run out of myself and flow without effort, give up to my mistress who excites me with her grand entrance, the light preceding her behind Taos Mountain as if she has an army spread across the San Luis Valley holding up flood flights and pointing them south toward the Taos Range. I imagine the people of this vast valley, in the hills, mountains, out on the mesa like me, running to their east windows like trained mice and making noises, ooohs and ahhhhs, and then moving across their houses to other windows as La Luna climbs higher and turns the knock knock world into the realm of the stainless steel knights, blowtorch blue, riding their hard-snorting black steeds, trailing serpents of vapor from wet nostrils; ghosts of the old ways, of all the races that have spilled on this dirt. And we know this world, we know it, and some of us are drawn outside by a red thread pulling from just below the navel, into the snow, the temperature down to 10 deg., just as in a dream, when you're not sure you want to go, but your astral body is hitched to what is out there, the red thread upon touching the moonlight revealed as a silver lariat comprised of three interwoven strands that undulate into the dancing charcoal dust floating above the snow. A thundering is felt just above and below where you strain to hear, and in it are all of the things, the people, the hopes and strivings and, above all, the knowings, the wisdom, and the Great Need to bow to and embrace what is "out there" so that you can go back inside, the red thread returned, enter the bed and learn again to swim.

And I am going to do just that.

But before I crawl away, I want to say that a little girl, dark haired with gigantic round chestnut eyes, and a pearl button nose, maybe 4, maybe 5, came to my table at the Mondo Kultur Cafe. Her mom was just getting off of work, and the little girl and her redheaded, freckled friend were going to eat cookies. The place was packed, all tables filled, but many, like mine, with single people spreading out over a table for 2 or 4. This little one, without hesitation, pulled out the chair next to me, looked me in the eyes with the presence of a tree, and told me without words everything I needed to know. She sat on the chair (on her knees) and patted the seat of the chair next to her for her friend to come sit. I was madly in love with this little person treating me like a fellow tree exhaling oxygen into the world. Me and her, just trees hanging in the same forest. And then her mother called her, not angry, but with firmness and fear, looking at me with apology. And I said, "No, no, it's okay. They can sit here with me, I'm just reading." "No, no," she said, "we're going to go." The little tree got off of her chair and pushed it back in then looked at me and said in a froggy voice, "Thank you, we're going to eat the cookies in the car." And she smiled a little tree smile that made me happier than I've been in a long, long time.

The Show Goes On...

This is for my friend, X, a man of the Jicarilla Apache Nation, whose dad just passed away. It is meant to float up like smoke and disappear into the sky, as it is not something to talk directly about. This man, 6'4" of lankiness, fought 6 different bouts with cancer, and, back in the day, was a lawyer with his wife during the power days of the AIM, and saw some amazing and horrible things come to pass.

Bpae TuaaH
(deer meat)

There is no doubt
That we all belong to each other.
There is no doubt
That one day we will face off with ourselves.
Point cold, heartless handguns to the face.
As we both pull the tiny triggers, ever so slowly; I am you.
You can be me.
No doubt.

Like an old time, romantic, black and white movie playing
Across the screen;
The end credits are rolling on the plaintive theme,
"We are over;"
Progressing into curious, unknown,
Shadowy fragments of a decaying body,
Lying on sepia-toned melting snow,
A quaint picture show,
Walking together to the dead end.

We are older; stretched;
Strung like a new bow,
However with the same gut string;
Pulling, pulling; until the evil,
Heart-breaking crack.

In the distance a bald eagle is soaring,
Airborne above an outlying thicket of juniper trees,
Circling to see the remnants
Of a curious deathblow;
Dry blood, wet with the thawing snow.
I have no doubt.
Soar like the eagle.
Have no fear.
Die vivaciously.
Give way to the tumbling departure,
The degeneration.
Back to the most wet, moist, merciful earth.
I have no doubt. We will all end up there:
Uneventfully.

Our movie is one of pathetic, prophetic love.

- Reyes Kristina Wind


I climbed the foothill today, the snow on the south side melting into the slope, into the rocks and tenacious bushes, cholla plants, and willows. It was warmer than it has been in a while, the sun disappearing behind velvet gray and purple clouds. Slushy in the bottomlands, hard-skinned higher up with softness underneath. Hardness broken, something collapsing all around, tired, ready to give in. There was nobody on the trail today. The only humans I saw were at the bottom, a woman, Shira, with a silver nose ring, had backed her white Subaru into the deep snow of the parking lot at the trailhead. I pushed the back of her car while a craggy, dark-skinned man with the tell-tale Taoseno lilt hit reverse in his big, white pickup, and chained to the Subaru, pulled it out. She offered me a heaping salad in a plastic dish, pepperoncinis piled on top, but I said my fridge was full and maybe the truck guy needed it more. She thrust it out to him and he snatched it quickly, a brief smile passing his lips. She thanked us and he nodded holding out the salad like it was a prize and I rubbed her jacketed shoulder. "No problem."

With the lower light and thinking about X, I curved around the west side of the mountain and saw the sun setting in the clear slit on the horizon. It spread a peach and green light on a shelf of snow leaning up off the trail. This spot is well below where I do my prayers to the mountain, but I was feeling logy, and the snow looked too good to pass up, so I lay down, breaking the hard surface and forming the snow around my ass, legs, back, shoulders and head. I had to do it. No wind. No birds (birds don't stir at sunset here, they watch in reverence, too). My head looking straight up to the curve-tipped clouds sliding west to east. Mmmmmm, I felt in my chest, good breaths, deep ins and slow outs, pauses in between. Other than a creeping, cool wetness through my jeans into my butt cheeks, I felt disappeared. I closed my eyes thinking that I could easily spend the night right here and be woken with new snow on my nose and an elk bending over to lick my forehead. The icy granular snow woke me when I made a natural turnover move, flipping from my back to my right side, my right cheek looking to nuzzle the pillow and finding ice instead. It was still dusk, but barely. I didn't have my backpack with the headlamp, so I had to shake it off and boogie on down the trail. It wasn't hard as it was still warm, the clouds keeping the temperature from dropping, and I cut off large swaths of the trail by bushwacking through the switchbacks.

There's a knot in my center as I write. I'm drifting. I see green water and white caps spilling over the tops of waves. I listened to NPR on the way home when I should have listened to Radiohead, or nothing. Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, a terrible fire in Karachi, Pakistan. People killing, dying. It reminded me of being a little child and listening to the daily body counts from Vietnam on my Sony transistor radio and then on my mom's faux wood-paneled radio in the kitchen while eating my cereal and english muffin. Even then I couldn't understand why. Even then I wondered what was the use. One of my camp counselors left after the summer of '71 and did not come back the next summer. The flag was at half mast for the 3 or 4 years I went to this camp. It was normal, and it wasn't. Body counts on the radio. Not so different now.

Where am I my going with this? It's 8:58 and I'm sad. It was a good day, things are happening, being accomplished, being given and received. I have loving friends coming over tomorrow to hike down to the river and dip in the hot springs along the edge. Great projects are moving forward. My head is clear and I'm living in circadian rhythm. Yes, and I woke thinking of my friend, X, and his distant voice last night. This is not something to talk about. This is not something to dwell on.

For My Brothers and Sisters of the Ram

The first "super-moon" of 2009 takes place Saturday (Jan. 10) and strikes the match, lights the candle and illuminates a path of self-discipline, sacrifice and ultimate achievement for the Ram. Somewhat challenging but long overdue and actually welcome, this fortuitous opportunity comes from within and blossoms as a time of great potential progress and personal productivity. Embrace the change.

AMEN!

MONEY

Today was a good day. I got up early; not as early as I intended, but that's something I'm working on. I can shave an hour off of when I get up and that hour is crucial to getting off to a dedicated start. What I didn't do today was hike, and that hurts. I was outside a bit, looked at the sky, marveled at the dawn, licked the feathery top layer of the snow glitter-balled by the first rays of the sun as it wobbled over the pueblo. For a few minutes, under the immensity of that cranberry aquamarine, standing in the snowmush driveway, I was visited first by three rabbits, inquisitive sniffers who, one by one, nosed the same sage plant tips sticking out of the snow like the tentative tentacles of an amphibian, and drunkenly lunge-hopped through the drifts, and then three dogs, the amigos, the ones that now know me (and know I have no pork chops - yet), who, one-at-a-time brushed their coats against my legs, and smiled up at me, waited 3 or 4 minutes, tails wagging, and then buttswung themselves back out to the road and trotted north toward the large quonset houses. That was my moment: cold but still, the sky drum much softer than in the dusk, a lower hue, watery, sounds traveling from miles away, tinks and tonks and sageward yelps, swooping hawks stirring the air, the curious rabbits and incredulous doggies, all moving on their way, greetings, departings, living and let living going on in all directions.

And I won the lottery...he almost hits the exclamation but stops. Yes, I won, $15, got the powerball number and the power play was 5x. Hey, I come from a gambler and have fought that dragon, trained and caressed her to be my friend cum companion, but I've been feeling lucky (the "cky" in the back of the throat, breathy at the end), and I've been seeing numbers, baby. This is my second "win" in two weeks, so I'm up $14. I'm rubbing my hands together and they feel like moneh...that's right M-O-N-E-H, Moneh. Seriously, though, I have that feeling. The moon is getting bigger, venus is winking at me, red ole mars, ruler my ruler, is sliding back over the mountains, and big bopper jupiter, too - say it ain't so red sisters! There's your exclamation. Big, big, big, that's what's happening. No biggie smalls, no smally balls, this is play time.

Speaking of dragons, all kinds of good things were going on today. My timing was slamming. Work situations, flirtations, Moneh, unasked for favors, good books to read on the can, a fridge full-to-burstin with goodness at home, what, what, what more can you want? Well, I'll tellya, first, 5pm hit and I was still talking to this lawyer woman who owns a building of offices (one of which I'm renting tomorrow). When I left, dusk already sprouting without me at my perch on the mountain, I knew that deal was done. So, with a crease in time, my mind, well, more my solar plexus, the dragon's lair, sent up a thought, well, more an urge, that had the clacking of phenolic resin balls in it, and the slide of smooth wood across the slot of skin between my left thumb and index finger. Pool, at the Alley, was in my solar plexus. I had some time, it was happy hour, I didn't need to drink but could hang around with the peeps in the back room and shoot some stick, you know? I got in the car with that intention, my trained dragon straining against its yoke, but a funny thing happened. I slid around the parking lot skating rink and rolled up to the muddy lip leading out to Paseo and instead of banging a louie, I leaned right and by the time I straightened her out passing the Taos Diner, I knew I was on my way home....but was I? Not quite. At the blinking light intersection - straight takes you to Questa and then the kingdoms of Colorado, right takes you up to Arroyo Seco and then up up and away to the Ski Valley, and left takes you toward the gorge where I live (and, if you go further, to the remote mad max outpost of Tres Piedras) - I compromised. Since I was wrestling my suddenly tongue-wagging dragon, Dixie, I decided to take her out for some pizza. So, we went right, toward the ski valley, but pulled off a couple hundred yards down the road at Pizanos, owned by some good friends. Me and Dixie got ourselves a personal pizza with mushrooms, green chile, onions, and black olives - upstate NY style - made some good time with the girls behind the counter while we waited, a lot of smiling and "where you been, honeys," and then busted out to gorgeville. And that we did. I gave Dixie a slice on the way to chill her the freak out, and when I got home, I plowed that thing down to one slice. Man, it was like I hadn't eaten in days. They use good ingredients and all, but still, this is pizza, heavy wheat, meat, tongue tickling spices, thick cheese, and garlicky tomato sauce (see fingers to the mouth in a kiss). So I ate Dixie and the pizza, too, and that was that. I've been a bobblehead Gman since. But, BUT, I'm good, you know? I ate 3 tangerines after the pizza and I am sated like a mofo. It's 9:27 and I'm ready for Mirabal in my bed (the book, ok).

That's all I have. I wish I had more because one of the servers at Pizanos said to me, "I grew up down the street from 'Make Believe World.'" One of Walt Disney's buds built a house on 300 acres and then turned the place into a phantasmagorical town. And she lived a few houses down. There's something there. Right? No matter, buenos noches al mundo.

I'm too spent to write...

Venus is just sparkling, dancing, pearling, bejeweling the western sky tonight. Before I go, and I will not go very far this evening, I must say that I am fully spent in body, mind and spirit. A good and friendly ghostly spent, but if I were a ghost I don't think I'd feel the heat-burn in my quads and big toes born of an early rise, the sudden emergence (in some cases re-emergence) of 6 or 7 projects, more snow shoveling, and another wondrous hike up into the bonzai forest. It is 9:34 and I laugh as I think "already." Was a time when 9:34 was, as my friend Sal and I used to say, "Early days, early days." And I'm sure it will be again, but in this winter of creamy snows and early darks (w/no lights to deceive), the social jones quenched in an avalanche of meditation, reading, pacing, writing, talking to myself, dancing in my shadow, building and massaging fires, cooking meals spread out across massive counters, hunching and slowly unfurling under two layers of covers while watching movies (tonight: Whale Dreamers), converting toxins into magic endorphins, and dreaming, both lucidly and in sleep, about people and animals who then show up on cue, I am "being my spentness." So, I will not write tonight about the coyote who followed me along the rim of the Rio Grande Gorge last evening, fumble-legged in the deep snow, as the slushy half moon rose over the spider silk weavings of blueberry clouds against a cracked turquoise turned indigo sky. Nope. And how I ran along the now packed down old stagecoach road up and down the swales, my nose hairs freezing and my mustache hardening, my ankle, 4 months after the ligament damage, finally holding my bouncing body and feeling stretchy, ready, maybe, for hoops. And that I looked back and the coyote still followed, now sidestepping and keeping its head down. Nope, not going to write about that trickster following 20 steps behind, huffing in the thin air, letting out an occasional muted trumpet of despair, or pleasure, like a woman I recently slumbered with who sent warm chills through my body every hour on the hour when she turned over and coo-sighed. No, I'm too tired to write about the vastness and stillness of the dusk out here, how it feels like being part of the skin of a drum, and carries a taut effortless weight to the center and zephyrs from the points of the hips to the heart in a revolving triangle, oh man, oh man. It's too much, too much. The surface of the snow unbroken and sparkly, undulating, the stuff of dreams, the filling of every cookie that ever existed, and the mattress of all gods. I can't do it. It's everything I've ever craved. I mean, look at me:



I love it so much I have to take my clothes off and "feel" it. :-)

That's me and the bonzai trees with the sacred mountain behind me over the pueblo (the sun is already down).

Off to bed and the other world.

Turning Over an Old Leaf

A cottonwood leaf fell out of the writing tablet I am reassembling for a friend. It was on the ground on 14 October when I wrote in the park, sitting on the cold, dying grass looking up at the last clinging leaves spinning on their stems. I had just hung up with another friend, weariness from all the shoveling and pushing, and seeping, cold wetness from the thigh deep snow slowing my thoughts. It is still gold, and smells raisin sweet like it did that day 3 months ago. Preserved in the book instead of decomposing under the weight of the snow. It sits on my words, frayed edges throwing a short shadow on "detritus" "fucking" "clay" "cold" "fused" "New Zealand." The curving stem, firm and lifted swims over "green" "elevations" "quivering." What strikes me, while I can still articulate, is that the shape is a tree in itself, and the veins in the leaf another tree, branches curved up, receptive, like a menorah, the tree of life. The leaf reflects the tree and is the memory of the tree back to itself. Closer still, the veins are interconnected through a network of tiny red capillaries, like the flushed cheek of an aging man, and these capillaries, when you move tighter, are also in the shape of trees. It never ends.

Snowbound (sort of)

I am stuck. For the first time since I can remember, my car, all wheel drive and all, cannot find the purchase it needs to move from the middle of the driveway where I left it last night at the height of the storm. I have been digging and attempting for two hours; moving a prodigious amount of snow in the process. Still not enough. I'm in a rut. The right wheels are on a slight decline and those tires are now dug into the old, hard snow creating smooth icy arcs with hollows for the tires to spin in. I tried trusty old cardboard sections. No go. They just flew into the air. I tried digging more around the tires but that's just making it worse. Now I'm eating yogurt and breathing (and typing). I feel like a nap. There's a creeping sense of defeat, but I have a few more tricks up my sleeve, like wedging towels under the tires, think that might work. I'm way out on the Mesa. Nobody around. More than two feet of snow on the ground and it just started snowing again. Oy. It's not the end of the world. Indeed, I love it. My house is warm and I can do a bunch of work right here. People who can help me will be home later. 2 minutes, or less, of pushing and I'd be out. Zippity quick. Ok, think I'll do the towel thing before I throw it in. If that doesn't work, consider it nap time.

Cherry Pie

Eating cherry pie
what I remember
is her right index finger
curled around mine

It's child warmth
and tenacity
clinging to me
over her shoulder
her face turned away
in the red pillow

Drinking green tea
I try to reassemble
how we came to be
naked in my bed
and that moan and wonder
of moles and nipples
mirrored

But I can't
her finger has me

Scattered in the Snow

An early darkness
turns the house to memory
of people not there

I think of water
of a tide filling a mouth
old buildings in mist

Friends on a river
bearing cold rain in low water
a lifetime away

As a snowstorm drives waves of slanted flakes into the sage sea, I think of my frequent visits over the past year to Kit Carson Park in the center of Taos. It is where I watched and felt the seasons change, in the grass and trees, the sky and air, and the people. I'm going back through a tablet I've recently completed. Now, in full winter, is a good time to look back at what was present then, and what was anticipated (this).

10/22/08 4:15pm
I'm in the park again, here because I'm impatient. My ass is on the cold grass, no longer all green, but a mix of straw and still green blades. Children set up for soccer practice dressed in multicolored sweatshirts and hats. A coach in jeans and a black fleece, green and white ski cap and sneakers, has his hands in his pockets as he kicks the ball. It's around 40 degrees and the sky is overcast. A wind ruffles the thinning leaves, some still gold, most verging on rust. Other adults cross arms across chests or thrust hands in jacket pockets. There is no sun to ease the chill of 7000' elevation. We're naked to the cold. It will be 15 degrees tonight. I'm here. I'm here.

4/18/08
What do you say green blowfish? It's sunny and I'm barefoot on the grass of the park. The world is inviting, soft and fragrant. The wind tickles my toes and children squeak and grunt kicking soccer balls and fielding grounders. Winter yesterday. Spring Today. People inhabit the grass. Humans are out, moving and happy. The doors are open, the windows down. Cars drive by with crooked arms resting comfortably on the window's edge. Meat cooks somewhere in the neighborhood on the other side of the trees. A lone drummer beats in the glade to my north. A young Pueblo couple sits in the deeper grass under the Christmas tree blue spruce, elbows touching, hair mingling. Dark and dark. She looks leonine from here. The humans look relaxed, connected, moving as an organism. It can be this way even if NPR says the economy is bad, even if this country is at war, even though we are near Los Alamos. It can be this way and deep down the humans know it.

5/30/08
A frail, nibbling rabbit just broke my heart like a warm infant in my arms. Birds squeak in the trees in back of Cafe Tazza, reopened last week by friends, the sweetness of the backyard the same as when I moved here 5 years ago today. 5 full years of tumult and hurtling of hermitage and torpor of prayer and dashing of love and mourning. Earlier I was lamenting the loss of the magic and wonder I had 5 years ago. Where did it go? It felt irretrievable, but it's right here as I'm broken again, a soft breeze about my neck, jiggling plants at the edges, birds and crickets singing easy, no clouds to mar the blue, friendly clicker bugs hopping across my pages and the aspen across the road shimmering gold. Whaddyagonnado? It's a world of blue and bookstores and curvy women and ancient rumblings you can feel and don't need to discuss, of battered purple mountains with swervy snowfields melting into the dark creases, of pinon scented air filled with volcanic dirt and river bottom clay. It's too much to grasp, so I let go, again, and the magic returns.

Winter Voices

The afterbirth,
a raft in tropical waters
leading away from the volcano,
approaching backward
the delta pliant with new growth
swaying, moist, mossy.

The snow covered lake in the trees
another life,
naked in the piled crystals
snow angels
left for the fish
the blessing shielding the soreness
of a long winter
now being shed,
in the doip
of the drip
from the wooden oars.

"She's gone," She's gone,"
rings in my ears
Another season past,
another reason composted,
a possibility to be recycled.

"You can't kiss it,"
I hear now,
as I lean
toward shore,
rocking the boat,
ready to fall in
before I reach land.

Run Amonk

The moon has climbed way over Venus in the past week, and is fleshing out into its quarter form. Waxing, waxing. At one point it was an open mouth or arced arms drawing Venus down to it. Now it is above and moving to the east, its ass, curved yet closed, snubbing low-riding Venus. I'm still attracted to the dance up there, but it's not as intimate or delicate as it was just after Christmas. And I'm in my house on a Friday night, looking out the big windows. Being on the mountain is lighter, my body disappears, I don't feel the ringing bell in my knees. But I'm here, I'm here. And I don't think I'm going anywhere. I'm weary, I think. I've made it through the Holidays and the darkest time of the year and it feels like I need a recharge. I haven't partied in months, but I've fought all sorts of maladies for 8 weeks, my body adjusting to life without alcohol. Today, at LOKA, an acquaintance asked me if I've been feeling good since I stopped drinking. I took a moment, and squinted with thought. "No, I haven't. In fact, I've been sick several times...but I think I'm at the threshold of that vitality, that organ hum that I knew eventually would assert itself. And I've paid the opportunity cost of 100+ days; paid the price an old girlfriend told me I'd pay one day if I stopped partying for long enough to let loose the toxins that the alcohol and drugs have forced into covert operations. The thought of that warning was always with me and often I used it as a rationalization for the partying - "It keeps me young, you know? Just enough of everything, right?" But now that I've gone through this gauntlet - if a doc had told me that I'd get stomach viruses, tooth infections, earaches, GI tract meltdowns, and energetic malaise, I'd likely have prolonged my procrastination - fuck if I'm going to miss out on feeling insanely, unstoppably, uncontrollably, ridiculously good. You know? But, still, it's a Friday night and I don't know what the fuck to do with myself. I got a text from Crystal who's rallying people for her 25th birthday. That'll get ugly. I got a text from little, crazy dancing Sarah that Unstrung Heroes are playing at El Monte. That ought to be a good stomp and grind, but that place is way too bright and perky and garish and I know the bartenders too well. It's not that I can't deflect the drinks they'll instinctively give me (yes, "give" me), but the bridge from sitting here at my desk in my warm house to rallying without alcohol or drugs, driving 12.5 miles into town, and peeling back the curtains to enter that stage...I don't think I have that mojo. But that worries me. I'm torn between the thought that "hey, I've put this guy through a lot the past couple of years, hell the past 20 years, and now I'm listening to my center and my center says hang out, write for a bit, drink water, stretch, and then get under the covers and watch a good movie, read yourself to sleep and dream, fly, heal as long as the system says so" and "hey, what's wrong with you, dude? You're low energy, hiding from the people...maybe you're depressed? Maybe there's a natural gas leak in the house? Maybe you have serious colon problems and they're leaving you all woozy because you're diseased?" The hypochondriac "don't want to miss out" guy versus the "give myself a break/I've done enough/ there will always be parties/listen to my intuition" guy. The latter is winning, no doubt, and the later it gets (now 7:39), the easier it is to give in and shut'er all down.

The battle of evermore. I have to set myself up for balance. My pendulum has swung toward hermitage. There will be a correction toward the middle, though I dream of being a monk. But monkdom, in this life, will be amonkst people. I know this. What that means is that I will write and publish (even if I have to do it myself), and act, and mcee, and drum, and bartend, and teach, heal, learn to play the fiddle, sing, take devastating pictures, take yoga classes, bullshit at cafes, tucker myself out with acts of creation and kindness ("Good Deed'n" as my old friend, Marc Batyr, would say - and do!), and, as often as I can, get my body up into the trees and above to the crags, where I disappear in what I know is my ancient homeland.

Ahhh, now I can eat some chocolate, take off my clothes, pop in a DVD, and chill the freak out.

The green door may be unlocked, but we'll leave entry for another day.