I sit for a spell on the rocks at Donner Summit, CA, Tahoe National Forest, August 2002 Febuary 2003 Cabin Diary |
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3 February 2003 -- The truth of good and bad
It is a generally "bright" sort of day up here around the Cabin today, only that could well be the result of having so much snow left on the ground. In my trip outside to the outhouse, I note that temperatures must be well above freezing, this meaning that the cleared path from the front door has now become quite muddy and disagreeable to walk through. Maybe the season finally will break here, only this part of February is still much too much a part of winter to hope for that. For now, however, I'm to deal with the abundance of liquid phase water, the kind that leaves a man feeling as if he's about to become permanently soaked himself. The trees are still some time from their revival; it takes more than a couple days to "fool" them. Inside the outhouse itself, I find a small sanctuary of freedom from the mud and the still-brisk air of the clearing, though my outerwear has brought a significant quantity of moisture along with me. On the way back to the Cabin building, I do not hesitate long, for it is my ardent desire to be back on the sofa, lounging about where the notion of "dryness" is positively enforced. I guess I'm looking at another of those fundamental dualities; the complementary pair of "wet" and "dry", and I can also see that I have assigned ultimate, apparently-objective value to the second of the two.
Am I to see in my simpler life's choices a standard that I can apply to the weightier matters from the farther reaches that occasionally visit from on high? It is so easy to call an arbitrary item from one's immediate space of tangibility by the title "good" or "not-good". I can see here that I'm walking around the door that's typically barred shut from the last time I left; the one that goes to those considerations that men spend their lives without solving, which always looks like a waste in retrospect. "I don't 'need' any of that today," I remind myself, yet city living has placed its share of problems in my path that indeed call for value judgements that require some intuition into the higher order. What is man, if not the sole creature to be necessarily perplexed, as he is drawn off and away from more "practical" matters that other beings would find intolerable? It is something, how something that is discernibly "nothing" in real terms can filter through a human brain and wind up causing macroscopically significant, if not indeed disruptive, effects. I pull off my wet shoes and trousers, to don my lounging-about clothes. I'm so tired of how that vacuous nether-space that lies beyond the weakly-secured door is so often my unfortunate destination. If I could but see the truth, I'd know that such pursuit does not matter, but then I have to go there to know truth in the first place.
So we're on the old chase again, it does appear. Leaning back against the sofa, I note how bright things are through the front window. This small space is picking up "greenhouse" effects, of the kind that cause the opening of windows after March and April. My task is to find the new mode of observation that always results from an infusion of transcendent grace; the truth that makes me free--for the moment, at least. What is it in those renewals of the spirit, soul and mind that always looks good enough to call "true", anyway? I get up there and behold the font for as long as I dare, then turn to realize the way I had come is not the way back. So I get lost in an apparently-"correct" reverie, until I realize that basic support functions are going un-monitored. These were the ones that I saw as truly "important" to a corpuscle of creation, after all. Even in enlightenment, the mundane has its own glow of propriety; a humility that even becomes an end to emulate, when all it really wants is to be served. "Yes!", I yell to myself, "that's it!", as I run for the door by the straightest path that the delirium will allow, and for a time not to exceed an hour or two, I am actually inspired and occupied at the same time. The force is made to share its phase with the load, and work is finally done, this having its own undeniably-positive scalar value. Such is the proper life, as I had been leading it before, when I run off and get successfully (though temporarily) re-aligned by a visit to those hallowed upper sporting grounds.
The long-term state, however, is the irreverent, lackluster "drag" that comprises most of living with real problems. Where I might once celebrate that I have found something undeniably "real" at all to occupy myself, I am instead embarassed by my disengaged position, the one that needs inspiration and conviction to perform works in this all-too-burdensome flesh. For awhile, I tell myself that I can flog away at the load, moving it by brute force, and that the "mighty high" is a false friend who is simply too persuasive for my own good. "I'm not going up there today", I tell myself. I'll just have to take my beating like a man. So I continue in this rather immobilized posture in the living room, wondering if there is anything "safe" that I can do to obtain some jollies as afternoon approaches. There is always sleep, only that doesn't always come. If I had inspiration (e.g., "If I were a rich man"), I could go back out and do what I could to enjoy the milder day, placing the muddiness into abeyance as less significant. Might it be that I enjoy the rush of the forbidden exposure because it makes all things look good and worthwhile? It's all for the best; it is all good. Yes, these statements are provisionally true, awaiting the proper state of mind in the practitioner. Oh, that giddy operator, that will swallow both good and not good as a single capsule, to delight instead in their joint combination as a duality! Do you not know that what you have adds up to "nothing"?
I cannot tell what is the greater illusion, therefore. The optimistic eye sees plenty of good, only it can be wrong. The pessimistic eye is only worth having because it invariably is wrong. Still, to put down all loads means the troubles are set aside as well, and one can only hope for wise discernment in picking the assorted implements back up for further use. The scene in here is decidedly quiet, as I find myself with a brief interval of unremarkable spirits. At least I'm not directly out there, making a fool of myself by displaying out-and-out depravity and malady as the euphorically-accepted components of some swallowed bundle that I had left for good reason in times like this. It always seems that the conviction of absolute good in one's carried accessory is shot down as a matter of course by those of stronger inspired intellect. One is shown up as charlatan and fool, the moment he declares that he "has something", but all persons, in their day-to-day mediocrity, perform as authentically as any mystic could approve. The good and the bad must therefore be expressed in combination, for it is only then that their union is guaranteed to have at least some good in it in absolute terms. This, after all, is why error among men is tolerated to the extent it is. The flesh is guaranteed its frustration, in its shortfall of ethereal motivation. But then the full-time denizens of the heavenly host can't ever come "down here", so that may be why they put up with listening to us--we on earth do not accept goodness and glory because of the hardness of our hearts. The angels, therefore, are reminded of the advantages of their estate.
No, I'm not sure what I really should do today. Not all that much looks good.
"Bo"
13 February 2003 -- A sustained time in enclosure
It has snowed some more in the last few days, and remained quite bitterly cold. Thus has occurred such phenomena as frost-patterns on the plate glass window panes and the blowing of surface snow to create a glittering "substance" to the air above the scrub of the clearing. The sun looks quite intense for some reason today, and indeed, nearly two months have passed since Solstice. With a suitable array of garments, to include polypropylene long johns and well-waxed full leather boots, I can get around in good style out there, though the drifting tendency of this latest cover makes it essentially futile to dig paths. Indeed, there are substantial drifts on the windward side of the Cabin, these tending to pour over onto the front porch, and if I were not coming and going so often through the front door, I might expect it to have a knee-high layer built up by now. Out in back, of course, in the lee, there are areas where the remains of last year's grass can be seen, especially near the location of the gravity-fed shower near the back porch. Still, it is all in all a snowfield up here in the hollow, and one that does not accommodate itself well to such mammalian transplants as myself. Were it not for the sun today, I suspect it would be quite cold inside, so I am glad to have a living room window with the exposure it does, early in the day. The fire is burning in its "maintenance" state, and is always there when the chill strikes me. Today, however, I am sufficiently content with just a lightweight cover on the sofa.
I am practicing the technique at this moment of letting my weight sink as it will, into the overstuffed upholstery, even though I suppose I'd be running about on any number of errands if I could be put into my concurrent urban context and observed. Today, in particular, I seem disposed to this "solution", perhaps as a result of accumulated stress artifacts. How good it feels, to put down the bat and shuck the helmet; I've been in the batting cage too long. Really, that life of mine has plenty of built-in time off, and I suppose I'm being "greedy" when it comes to seeking out relaxation. No one lives the true life of absolute ease, but then many would wonder why I, too, do not have the industry-standard 60-hour workweek. To the outside observer, I have gobs of opportunity for leisure, and in retrospective analysis I'm sure to see these days as ones I could have been using to much greater ends. It appears that someone is calling for me to present some sort of "plan" or "justification", as might a department head with his budget for the central controllers, comptrollers and other counters of precious corporate beans. Implicit in the receipt of the gift of life and the time for which is runs is an obligation, even if the initial salvation is nominally "free". The super-ordinate powers have their expectations of me, and I have had my share of upbraidings when I've not returned sufficiently on their whimsical investment in me.
Still, for all the evidence I can infer about this upper organization, it is surprisingly stealthy in its operations and low-profile in its stature. There is a clear border I can draw between demands I place on myself and those that come from elsewhere, or so I tell myself. There is the entity that I call "myself" proper, this being the fearful creature that is at sensation's core and cognition's focus, and then there is the secondary shell that is my mediator; a "doorman" or "butler", as it were, that transmits all of the bad news that the simpler self must hearken to. This structure of encasement appears to have its necessity in terms of defense, for I hardly do well in the full light of day--I'll leave that to the battle scarred and increasingly-friable buffer zone. In becoming hardened, I guess maybe I've just become hard. The better way, as all the contemplatives would tell me, is to operate my authentic self more...authentically, diverting resources from the cast-off hull of belligerence to the task of maintaining a smaller, more flexible inner perimeter. I am hardly of the naivete that would dismiss all external influence as an illusion, in favor of some sort of grand and benevolent monistic unity. No, one of the inescapabilities of my instantiation is the need for the barrier to exist somewhere. It is strange, that existence has no explicit rule that establishes this parcelling-out; a being is not required to conduct the process of being. But then all of this discussion has been tossed about since antiquity. I, as a lowly and poorly-configured weakling inside of an enormous shell of hide, horn and scar, have nothing, really, to add, and since I see things so darkly, I have little to gain, either, from the communal record.
But darn it, I still think I have a better life than this "coming to me", and one where I don't have to risk broadside exposure in the interest of good-natured efficiency. Is it really true that what I have is merely like the effect of solar load on the Cabin this bright day, where I'd need more extensive measures if this ambient goodness were no longer in place? I'm simply afraid of integration to the larger body, I think, when every indication is that it's generally cold and lifeless, to continue with the analogy to the great outdoors. I suppose I should be up in a few minutes here to find some chow, though that requirement has its own share of inherent labor-intensiveness. The curtain sure seems to be lowered today on my motivation and initiative. It is not that long a throw, from quiescence to desolation. If I'm really supporting a large and inflexible organization for defense, I don't think I have as much to worry about internally as what's currently occupying my internals. I (meaning, the external "I") am pretty well drilled and do a lot of what must be done by rote. This is what drilling is all about, after all. Am I being at all "authentic" in this mode, though, as if I were celebrating the need for discrete entities by embellishing the original container, as might a child making a sculpture of papier mache? I doubt I'm in any position to contribute much of anything; the ship of my state must, for awhile, lie at a minimal position, for better conditions to come about. It is the classic case of being holed up, only for the duration of unfavorability as opposed to the literal "winter" I see outside the window.
"Bo"
23 February 2003 -- The questioning of a cause
The day is grey this afternoon, with plenty of snow maintained by plenty of sub-freezing cold. True, there have been days that might get as warm as 40 degrees F, only the water that reaches liquid form on those occasions is mostly recaptured as ice and left in my way. The branches are fully barren, absent the kind of close inspection that might indeed show the precursor structures of buds on the deciduous plants. Winter has become such an "institution" and "way of life" that I have not been thinking a lot recently about what in fact will be the end of the hard chill. This, I do suppose, is how a man maintains "authenticity" in his thoughts; by only considering the present day. Moving along right where I am, the seasons are but a garnish, to the underlying substance of prosecuting a life. Yes, yes, this is some of the last guaranteed time of sustained freezing up here in the hollow, and last time I was down at the village, I could see that the river had risen some from the square miles of lower lands in its watershed. We are talking about some "empty" days here, since it is too much the struggle to impose the larger framework and context of the seasons upon another solitary retreat from a full and active time beating off the concerns in city dealings. Grey and white, along with the darkened, ice-adorned brown of the trees, are my eyeful.
My internal process of "quality control", of course, is immediately before me, making the case that I'm wasting untold and increasingly more-valuable endowments of time on this earth. Oh, but to do what the system requires and appreciates; indeed, there is my best use, and since such games of good are positive sum, I should not fall short in reaping a good crop the year 'round. The typical aspirant must just find a better deal than I do, when it comes to vocation and its enrichment. They don't need me spouting off tired old aphorisms that I am deluded into believing are my own--no, they need the work of the professional; the one with pointed training and craftful formation by ages of superiors that have known well what they, too, are doing for the common good. It can't be some sort of "illusion", either; this "common good". Absolute value, despite Michaelson-Morley and Special Relativity, is still "there", for a person needs ask no questions when he finally encounters an example of it. There is no point to naming the principle when one can find its results. "Just leave it", I tell myself before the fire, "for that is not a good path". It is funny how I know what a waste of time is, but without also knowing the course of action that would be otherwise. When I waste time, it is all I know how to do. Those noble practices are out of the question, for I am too weak to be pumping a lot of vitality and mettle into something accepted on faith.
I just want, therefore, to get some completion where it counts; in those activities that pay out later, and even in the currency of lackluster inspiration. There is a base-level commerce that all specimens of the flesh will do well to encourage, for this is the place for the practical. Oh, yes, it may well be "worldly" and "of this earth", but that is where I've been granted the privilege of persisting for now, and all high-mindedness still makes an exception for demonstrable produce in goods and services. I have been called to produce, for this underlies one's later luxuries in those studies of the great by-and-by. I am the blessed man, by having this ongoing need, though it is well established that the vacuum of indebtedness is sold in the marketplace at a discount. I suppose I dream as most men do of "liquidity", as though this were the final form of blessed liberty under the model of Jefferson, Madison and Franklin. But to be free and clear and paid in full? What kind of life is that, anyway? The moralizers show us their frequent pictures of anointed, selfless ones, but do the actual protagonists share as fully in this appreciation? I would submit that "work" is distasteful by its very character, for after that it wouldn't be work. This is the way that things get done; when people are coerced by expediency to act against their wishes. No one sits long in the great easy chair, for we are talking about lowly and worldly material sufficiency. Among the many principles I cannot name must be one that condemns the temporal while still making blessed the one who produces.
I am kept from the better dream and the more excellent way on this rather bleak day of cold, but I cannot yet discern just where on the implicit quality spectrum I am standing. If I resent what I am doing yet can demonstrate economic gain, I am not in the wrong. This should leave me free to fuss and to fume in my finest curmudgeonly practice, for I am "golden", at least in the sense of 197 Au, that legendary coin of every realm. They may subscribe to the kind of god that loves a "cheerful giver", but I see little premium really being applied during their cynical day-to-day accountings. Since the assurance of quality is missing from so much of my output, I must instead value it solely in its quantity. Whenever I begin those aesthetic goofings-off, I begin to produce a stream of what the world views as "waste". There are few that can spew forth as tailings what other processes readily gather as their source feed. Yes, it is an appealing thought, this occupation in high-minded sanctity, only it pays few bills and creates bills of its own. For this freedom, the one to be idle and contemplative, have the many wars of liberation been so forthrightly fought. I may not care for the dross that comes from your mouth, but it is still my nominal duty to defend your right to indulge in it. Personal, then, is the altruistic urge, but when it is no longer the source of pride, well, then the brow has sweat again and backs are properly broken in the almighty holiness of sacrifice.
None of this smug self-assurance is worth more than a trivial fraction, even, of a cursed moment's notice. No, it is the hard heart that is the most selfless, for it gives by its very definition. Why should I expect any kind of payoff, when the patriotic liberators were all ulterior in their final rendering? I am not among the gifted elite who can have fun without being looked at as frivolous. There is, of course, the class out there that gets away with it, but it is hardly in the interest of the commonwealth to have many of these golden members. I suppose I can have some fun in the crass manipulation of wealth, when worshipped as an entity of its own inherent glory, much as this might be called the wide and open road to death itself. Without death, life itself is not possible, for then all would be alive and pay no notion. There is little that is remarkable about this day, and I must remember that as my central premise. When I start to dream, I lose my conscious hold on what is real. The dream, as enabling a spirit as it may be in orthogonal combination with the firm and the fast, is of another constituency, and does not last long without underlying works. Yes, I know, that's James, who nearly got kicked from the canon by reformers more interested in Paul. Even Saul of Tarsus had his reason for self-adulation, though. Who really cares to be surrounded by "hypercritical" folks, anyway? Better be ready to punch the old clock for another circuit 'round.
"Bo"
28 February 2003 -- Waiting out my passage
Well, the ordinary pathways to the transcendant highlands have been closed this evening, as if in some form of grand and unified judgment, so I must submit myself at my base, and hope something or some one will pick me up. I am sprawled on the wood-plank floor of the Cabin, with enough fire in place to avoid needing too much in the way of cover-up. It is a bleak and unremarkable scene outside, with a partially-melted yet respectably deep layer of snow; the outdoors are essentially a big barrier, drawing my focus to just me and what I have to pass through. I sigh deeply, in the vain hope that deep breathing might induce some unforseen opening in the invisible fabric that nevertheless restricts me at these times. It is like a curtain, or a tent-flap made fast. This is what I've been "assigned" for now, only I know from experience that there are multiple portals, though they must be patiently awaited, rather than tried. Everything is shut out, in that final desperation that says, "OK, Lord, you win". The process of thought must continue, of course, but it carries none of the pretense of functional free will. No, I am not the "actor" any more, but instead, the "acted upon". Agency is certainly a fine property to express, but it always requires that cryptic inspiration, so that the next act of its authority may be properly sanctioned.
The fire has burned down somewhat, so I get a couple more pieces of split log from the indoor wood-bin. The flame is at my mercy, it is true, but it, too, has its "rules". Structure and order get imposed, and you can't always get what you want--though I think of the current predicament as something more properly embodying need. What man does not need to have a rightful sense of what is next for him? The lack of foresight can be tragic, for it is what makes the time pass. I have a hard time reconciling the apparent presentations of motivated times when they come, for when there is no question as to sequence, then the mind paradoxically wields the appearance of far-reaching and complete autonomy. Free will, it does seem, is still held to the more fundamental, lower brain protocol, the basic operations of which are a kind of "conveyance" for the cerebrum that rides upon it. Oh, yes, I do look for the tide that shall sweep me into such open waters that I might fashion myself to be a true and able mariner. The fire is back up to a nice level now, looking like a fire "should look". The process is still unfolding, and nothing is quite as maddening as needing to bump along on a bare and unescorted journey. It is hard to know just how to board the train, when it finally comes, for the higher process has a circuitous yet definite mechanism of causation upon which the whole mess is bootstrapped.
So which came first, anyway? The will or the way? If I should soon be lifted from this doldrum into some respectable neurological production, I am sure I will credit the lesser times like these as somehow validated, as precursors. I don't know--I'm alive, but not particularly inclined towards kicking. I should have extensive gratitude, that I ever get lifted at all. To be mired in a permanent way in indecision looks certainly possible, with the kinds of nuttiness the flesh can so often adopt. The big machine to take me out and away will, by necessity, have design characteristics that ensure its duration, at least for the duration. I'm not really sure if much more can be planned directly for. I know that inspirations do exist out there in the infrastructure, only their threshold input requirements are usually more in the way of cold cranking amps than the source will supply. "The machine is idling now," I tell myself, "and that will keep the lights on, at least." I should be so grateful in all of this, and utter a "hallelujah, anyhow" from the open canon of those who have made it over, into the true and wonderful light. But until that hour, I will lay here in a heap; a cast-off implement that I can only hope was stood down in a conservative way, last time I ran out of what it takes.
It is rather dark in here, because of the use only of kerosene lanterns and the fireplace itself. I sense that I've lowered myself into some sort of slot or niche, where the best-visible portals are to even lower conditions. How low, indeed, must I go? I close my eyes for a moment, listening to the intense crackle of the new oak fuel, and look into the darkness in ways only related by analogy to real vision. Yes, there is a fine population of worthwhile causes on board; I've generally made a point of that. The question is only one of what I have the means to approach, as one may have counted trading stamp books in the 1960's, while thumbing through the catalog of premiums that reward the faithful and loyal participant. The prudent exercise of higher will, when it finally gets turned on, should always be to furnish this portion of experience-space with options. The fire seems to hold good analogy to this, for its higher flames build its lower coals base, until the whole enterprise has an autonomous sponsorship. I suppose the "injustice" that I lament is that cause and effect are separated both by time and state. It becomes incumbent upon the psychic proprietorship to know all corners and keep the reinvested profits allocated as they'll actually be needed. Vision is curious, in its distortion and inaccuracy in plumbing what "really ends up happening".
The basics are coming to mind now; those ways that so enhance the total structure and strategy for extended survival. I am sure to be very near some very potent reservoirs, only I can see nothing more than their impermeable bases, down here in the basement. I feel myself lowering still further, to abject receptivity. No more fight for me; it's time to pull a Gandhi. "Look at this heap of quivering indecison," I implore, both to myself and to the mighty-yet-high kingdom of heaven, while I sort out just where I've wound up this time. Oh, but the good times do impair a man. There is none so enabled, as he who thinks he can, but woe be to the later recipient of his product. I guess I've just wound up out of phase, sync and integration. I'm not quite enough of a "being" at present to handle the higher road, yet I revel in seeing it, gold pavement, jasper walls and all. Oh, to walk the city, even as a barbarian outsider! Enough pearls in presentation at least give the swine something to satisfy their rooting instincts. I begin to think I'm trying to operate "too big" in my day to day straddlings of the beasts of conveyance that I've somehow coralled in the better times. The dabbler is seldom made whole, but mightily stirred nonetheless. I just wish it didn't seem like so much of a cruel joke, when everything leaves and I must tread these difficult trails alone.
There will be light again, and it is not my duty to call it forth. I hear a mighty call to basic humility, as I lay what I have into this heap.
"Bo"
Ahead to March 2003
