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.