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 Mailing address: bo@bo-hemian.com |
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2 July 1998 -- Adjusting my expectations
The sun is back out and bright again today. After finding enough to eat from my non-perishable supplies, I step across the living room carpet and past the fireplace that has gone into its season of dormancy. There should be a fair amount of creosote up that chimney, I remind myself; I need to attend to its sweeping soon, while the weather is good.
I pull open the wood-plank front door and feel the breeze enter through the top section of the screen door. That seems to be the predominant air current pattern through the Cabin; front to back. Since it is now warm outside for the day, I realize I can open the front windows as well. This is a feeling all to itself; being in the opened-up living room like this, on the sofa reading or stretched on my back over on the end of the bunk, looking up at the wooden beam framework of the rafters. There is always a sense of activity to the outdoors to be heard through those portals, be it from the river, the breeze, the rain, or the insects. It just goes on, leaving me where I am, making no great demands for attention, concern, or productivity.
I have a powerful residual inclination from that full-tilt city life; to get up and be at something, to "make a difference". But what is there in this present set of affairs for me to do? I spend time just being here and tending to the needs of my own survival, which are not that great at the Cabin site. I try, today, to get to that sense of tangibly holding the present moment in the "hands" of my mind. The here and now. The ones who live that way in the city are always my role models and inspiration. Their duties extend in unbroken sequence, yet they do only the one they have at the moment, and do it well. They make their difference in many small acts of unsung heroism. Who knows? Maybe I do, too, but it just doesn't feel that way.
The present moment, the here and now. They are with me always, and my only source of real external interface. All the rest is just wasteful thought; worry and regret. But, I reason, there has to be some component of that internal mind-activity that is not wasteful. This is when realistic plans are being made for the long term; plans that can and will be achieved. The literal here-and-now inhabitant would be hopelessly adrift, since the past is a source of lessons and the future a place to implement them. In my own case, the difficulty in thinking with such objective reality must arise from a low success ratio; a bad track record.
What does it take to achieve confidence? It can come from nothing other than success. I see that I have to have success of some kind, any kind, even on the most mundane of tasks, before the impossibly-high standards I carry about have any chance doing more than giving me pain when I fail at them. "Lower your standards?" the success-mongers would cry out, "never do that, for that is admitting defeat!" Well, if endless contentment, perfect health, and the mood that never is sad are always set before me by my internal task-master (who wields a mighty stick that is often used), I will also be defeated. I sit back and realize that if it is my time to know sorrow and carry a heavy heart, then so be it. Running from such truths of real life only makes it worse when they finally catch up.
RB
6 July 1998 -- Assuming the sole rank
Since the temperatures have cooled slightly, it has been a better day for doing things outdoors. I'm out in the wide openness of the clearing. It is just past local noon, which Daylight Savings Time can move 90 minutes or more from 12:00 in some places. It is still a strange matter, to work without such a direct connection to clocks and the schedules of others.
I have located a certain granite boulder, out near the trees, with a worn depression that makes something of a good seat. I need to bring something to put behind my back and for sitting upon, if I stay there long. The deposition pattern of these boulders, which look as if cast by a mighty hand in some divining act, is always interesting to note. Many look as though they might be readily toppled, and some actually rock when I stand on them. The stone chair, however, has a wide base and probably extends some distance beneath the gravelly earth surface. I use the footholds that almost seem to be placed there just for me and hoist myself onto this perch, unrolling my inflatable pad behind me.
Since the clearing rises somewhat from the river, I have the sense of taking an amphitheatre seat, with the Cabin in the distance as the stage. But there is no gathering throng, waiting to be entertained and/or edified in the "stands" about me. Perhaps there is vague similarity to those celebrated Hellenistic theatre ruins we saw in slide shows, given by high school teachers waiting for us to make our attempts at a Grand Tour. But I look awhile longer, and the impression vanishes, like the figure one might momentarily see in one of the clouds above.
I spend some time now, cradled in the rock, trying to lose that state of ever-apprehension that is with me in city living. The outdoors here do not judge me according to my mind-centered acts of erudition. They do not tally sales or case disposals, and they cannot promote me or give me a bonus. No one is in my way, and conversely, I am not in anyone else's.
I remember another bit of trivia from my high school studies...the B.F. Skinner "air crib", of whose merits we learned in psychology class while reading "Walden Two". The Cabin and the clearing have a similar sense of restraint-removal, although I am admittedly fully-clothed, in my garments of function. Being an engineering-type, I was spared the requirement of learning much more than the names of Behaviorism, Collective Subconscious, and Hierarchy of Needs. Perhaps this has left me terribly naïve as a philosopher-hobbyist. The well-read might laugh at me, as they gather to drink wine at their splendid and poetic evening events. But on my own, I need not compete for class-conscious supremacy, in which I would "bond" with others by fighting my way to the highest possible rank amid their numbers.
I recall now the further high school matter of Valedictorian and Salutatorian, positions earned by slavishly doing whatever it takes to make every grade an "A". No, although I had respectable grades, I was still in the crowd, for some teachers and some subjects were obviously there for those others, the ones who would form the Orwellian "Inner Party" elite. I sit for awhile more in my rock-chair, realizing that out here, I am someone to myself. I enter no line-ups to be compared to the rest and assigned a relative status.
RB
10 July 1998 -- Walking about in the terrain
I've come again to spend time up the river by the falls, where I can cool myself off on a day as hot as today. It is easy to wash the sweat and dust from myself at such a place, although the water is too cold to imagine total immersion. This is in contrast to the limited use I get from heated water in the galvanized tub or the outdoor gravity-shower by the back door. The tree cover is also quite full, as one would expect near a source of water. This is something I recall from real life, while flying over the "American Outback" west of the Mississippi. The river-cuts might be, in some places, the only land that supports sizable numbers of trees.
I look upstream, as I stand barefooted in my nylon shorts, at the terrain rising in every direction, getting the full sense of why these topographic features are called a "hollow". When I've suitably soaked myself, I head back down the rough trail in my hiking sandals. It is such a different feeling to be up into the woods themselves. Since I do not have a view of the ultimate ridge-top, I cannot as readily grasp the finite size of the river basin. I cannot see just how far out and up those trees really go.
I finally reach the Cabin vicinity and scramble up the ravine, wherever the underbrush most readily lets me pass. I squint my eyes as I enter the clearing, bright and spacious. As I get far enough into the open to see the undulations of the rising slopes all about, I realize how far away the rocks of the ridge-top truly are. I think about how much forest one could visit, underneath the green canopy. It is no concise, easily-described geometric object, this hollow. It has character; it is a locale; it is made of many small, unique hillsides and hilltops, as the river and its tributaries have come to define them.
I feel the sun upon my body now, evaporating the river water. The breeze accelerates this effect. I walk with no particular haste among the grass and rocks of the clearing. I recognize now that this anomalous patch is itself enclosed and isolated by an even larger stretch of forest below me, all the way to the road and the town. I stop to watch another jetliner pass overhead, thinking of the window-seat passenger who could be peering down through all the haze to witness, briefly, the totality of the ridge-crescent, and perhaps the clearing if he takes careful note. A scant 30 seconds of flight might occur, from the highway, up the dirt road, and over to the next valley, at that speed. Hardly the time to recognize how vast such a tract can seem to one man who has been alone within it for nearly a year.
I think of how it is, by analogy that I can trivialize the highly-varied and unique features that characterize the lives of others, as I speed past towards some point in the landscape of my own pursuits. This is no way to be, yet life carries me along and there are too many others to stop for long and appreciate any given one. Those are whole lives, which I discount in an inadequate summary and with a single pronouncement! It is a lamentable situation I face, when fast living encourages me to revel in my own particular experience, yet I marginalize the depth and richness of the lives of others whose paths I so rapidly cross.
RB
14 July 1998 -- At home, sitting outside
The sun is back again today, as the fullness of summer arrives up here, at altitude. As I anticipated during the colder months, the entire outdoors around the Cabin is a fully-inhabitable environment. It is only separated by the screen doors from the smaller space inside, which resembles vacation rentals I have seen in years past, but without running water or electricity and a wood-fired stove. These outdoors create such an inviting place to spend long hours, as when I have read books in the backcountry on camping trips. I think of how it is in my city neighborhood, where even sitting on my own front stoop feels like loitering if I do it too long. But here at the Cabin, there are no eyes to scrutinize me as people pass on their way to their business, wondering why I am not doing the same.
I step out the front screen door, which creaks slightly then bangs shut (as any good screen door does), and realize I'm not directly on my way to the vehicle to be off somewhere. I walk out, past the beaten dooryard and into the hazy sunlit clearing, to locate a choice seat in the matted grass, up against one of the boulders near the fire ring. I'm looking back to the Cabin, the woodshed, the outhouse, and the truck, as though they were set up indoors; in one of those great convention center halls, perhaps, with intense metal vapor lighting overhead. Out here, I seem to have the sense of contentment and protection that I only know indoors in city living, since the outdoors there are far too "public". I seem to need that controllable, semi-permeable isolation barrier so often, which is saddening, like placing my light under a bushel and all.
I shift slightly to find a spot on the boulder that is kinder to my back. I pick up the paperback book next to me; James Michener's The Source. All about a city on a hill, whose inhabitants had good reason to erect a strong barrier. I recall what I learned in Bible class about the members of nomadic tribes, who rode in the open for days and had much time to think. The hollow up here, by contrast, is certainly a fixed settlement, but by design, it does not come under attack from "outsiders".
This, however, is only really possible in my imagination. This world is simply too populous to afford such solitude--given my resources. I think, then, of when I must go back to the entanglement of social obligation and contacts that is my real life. I consider it extraordinary that, with so little real resentment aimed in my direction, I can still feel so weary and downtrodden. I would think that if I really wanted to, I could begin pulling away for real. I don't quite understand what keeps me coming back to enter situations of so little reward and such full responsibility.
Why can't I lighten my load and live as solitary a life as I picture out here, beside the river? Have I been conditioned to react supportively towards others, even if I never glean support from them in return? Maybe I am more the Christian than I give myself credit for, if I can give of myself at all with so little expectation of personal gain from the transaction. It is very warm out here, and the vehicle traffic is gone. The crowds are gone, and the social contacts, too.
RB
19 July 1998 -- An end to trying, for today
Ordinary, genteel society continues in its strange yet accepted patterns, down there in the town and the city beyond, while I've come again to drop myself in a heap at the Cabin. I wonder if I'll ever have a full place in that world, and if it is worth being in at all. It is another hot day, and I choose to take shelter from the sun indoors. More time away from "proper" social influence; from "responsible" community membership, yet this seems the way I always end up running. "I'm just too tired for all of that," I complain.
I think to the attempts I have made in real life to know society, and unlike others who are fully incorporated into the system, I have to question each one of them. It is an unending spiral, from which I am continually thrown, on account of my tenuous grip. Achieve one capability and the world will say, "very good, now here's the next". Yes, I've grown so tired; all I can do is stretch out on my bunk and lay, motionless, realizing I have left the odd social circles in which it is clear that I am hearing Thoreau's "different drummer". Such absurdity it seems, yet the bulk of them move right along its path, in standardized fashion. It seems strange at times that I can even walk in their midst. It must be my admittedly human form and rudimentary personality, along with their recognition of my attempts at conformity, which are really just concessions in the interest of survival until another day that might give me greater hope.
It seems I am always being asked to pick from two paths--to go along with them or to follow what I feel to myself. These two options have a large amount of mutual exclusion. If I make the choice of "them", I will always be in a death-struggle I may never win at rising to a performance level they have without any conscious thought. Would "they" really want this of me? But if I choose "me", well, everyone knows where I end up then--in the wretched camp of the "selfish". I come out here all alone, to my Cabin and its natural splendor, and the reader would ask, "why does he not include others in this tale? He clearly thinks only of himself." The next moment, I am written off.
But why populate this last refuge with further cause for certain failure? That is easy enough to find in my many endeavors down there in real life, where I struggle to get by like those liberal arts students I used to see in beginning calculus class. Thus, I see before me a scenario of two losing choices. Try to participate...know anguish and heartbreak. Go off alone...grow stagnant and end up useless to anyone. But I know I haven't much chance of living "fully", as they do. I can do enough for them that they show appreciation and keep me alive, thinking I must enjoy all of that enough to be paid in full. Then, they go on, hearing that much more enchanting sound of the standard "drummer". Oh, how lilting, joyful, syncopated, and alive the sound of that drum must be! I see them dance in response; a dance that takes no thought but is from the heart.
Well, I shall indeed spend awhile alone at the Cabin now, even if I must listen only to the sparse, precisely-metered, monotonous drum that keeps me moving. I cannot hope to hear as they do. It almost like the line that automated machinery cannot cross to emulate a real human mind (e.g., why there will never be a "HAL", as in 2001: A Space Odyssey). Time, indeed, to start reviewing and shedding some of the more frivolous of my social endeavors and keep down the load. It could be just essential life support for awhile, maintaining only unescapable activities such as previously-standing commitments.
RB
22 July 1998 -- Recognizing true importances
Once again, it has become so hot in the sun that I need to be inside or risk real trouble from overheating and dehydration. I'm in the living room, waiting for evening's cool on the sofa, in my nylon shorts. But as stressful as all of this is on the body, it does not compare to the mile-a-second action down there in my real city life, with thoughts jumping in rapid time series from one concern to another to another. There is just this one interior, with its knotty-pine walls and its ceiling timbers, the ones I lived with all winter when I had even less choice but to be inside.
I let my thoughts slowly begin to lose speed, as I prop myself over the sofa back, looking out at that other single scene that is the clearing. Time to pull those many plugs of distressing information and glide on down, yes, for nothing is really all that wrong with my circumstance. I'm looking into the bright scene in front of the porch; the tall grass, studded with boulders, and the irregular line of trees at its edge. They do not suddenly open up into bottomless hierarchies of further consideration, as does a cable TV receiver or a Web terminal. I have before me no office workstation, with immediate access to the data resources of a large organization. A tree is a tree; a boulder is a boulder, and it stops right there.
This is how I become a bit closer to what I might authentically be, when I stop pondering the far-reaching implications of everything around me. Most of them are irrelevant, anyway. There is the day, the sun, the heat of July, the continuing sound of the river. These are known to me, and my tired nerves start to carry less traffic, as the residual flow from the city slowly damps out on account of its internal friction. I have let myself become captivated by too many of those inputs of untold depth and overly concerned at their imagined importance.
Surely, the designers of this modern world, if there were any, did not intend anything like this to happen in the late 1990's. Nothing that would so injuriously swamp a person could have been allowed to prosper long. Those others I see must therefore have highly attenuated sensory response. Things roll off their backs. I realize that this is a skill I need, too, since I cannot always come to this place where the inputs are forced to the "off" position. I can only hide so long.
I try, as I settle into my Cabin-quiet, to picture the threats and rewards of those various real-world concerns in more realistic ways, and not with the usual, panicked, do-or-die intensity. The experience of that world down there is such a subjective one; it is a world of trumped-up appearances where I must instead walk by faith. I slowly feel my tension begin to drain through the few outlets there are, and I realize that there are not many concerns that really demand immediate attention or action in my life. Just as the rocks stand where they do in the clearing, those entities from which I fabricate large and ominous importance are, for the most part, operating on missions that do not have my irritation or occupation as their central goal. Yes, if I knew how rarely it is that others really think about me, I wouldn't care so much what they think. I sink into the sofa and start assuming more of my true proportion in the scheme of things.
RB
26 July 1998 -- Staying under the sun-shelter
The sun rose this morning, at its slightly-increased azimuth over the ridge, to shine upon a dew-laden hollow, where the grass, once again, served to soak one's feet in an instant. Although it has remained hazy and humid outside, the direct rays avoid the front porch now, since it is approaching local noon. Thus, I have taken my seat of contemplation on that porch, now that it is livable. I have brought my 2-quart Army-style canteen, filled from the cistern, and with the jacket soaked for cooling effect.
Although today is a basically sultry kind of day, there is enough breeze to keep away that feeling of suffocation that arises sometimes. On those days, I'd be up at the waterfall, or perhaps tending to some chore back in the kitchen--anything to avoid being outside in the open air. I listen to the rising strains of insect-choruses, out across the clearing, amazed at how coordinated they seem to be. Back in the city, under such conditions, we'd be wondering where the rain is, as we watch our lawns go brown and valiantly water our landscape plants. The "landscape" here, in contrast, is the one that has come to prevail after many such summers.
I'm just hoping it doesn't get so dry that the Cabin winds up in the midst of a lightning-strike wildfire, in which case the building would become a loss and my place of rest would have to relocate. But, just like extreme illness and medical trauma, I can write around such inconvenience, since this is just fantasy. Indeed, I can casually neglect the host of chronic ill health effects that I know down there in reality, positing a world where I may escape a life with two or three visits to "practitioners" in some weeks.
Maybe I'm describing the common vision of heaven. But there, I'm supposed to enter into a great communal gathering; just as if a great horde of people were to pull all manner of 4-wheeling vehicle into the clearing and commence a spontaneous tailgate party for all eternity. There'd be none of this sitting by myself, as I do now, adjusting my position in the creaking old steel chair and taking a swig from the canteen. There must be a path to deadening somewhat my reaction to crowds and society, since they seem to be my ordained lot in life, in that world down the hill that seems to want me. I can't be doing a lot of good sitting here alone.
No, I have to be in their midst, taking my whooping and asking for another. As in Pink Floyd's The Wall, the "sentence" I hear is to be "exposed before your peers". Oh, the skewed vision of being out there, in the social open, that I've come to accept as my pseudo-truth! I step into their realm and feel instant, searing oppressiveness, arising from their mere presence, and I am ready to shrivel and collapse, as I would standing in that sun at high noon today. Perhaps, I think for a moment, that particular collapse was meant to be. Perhaps another, more amenable expression of myself will rise where this ill-chosen planting had been, once it has been given a chance. It may be time to stop defending what was never supposed to be the "real me".
I'm looking at the grass now, all yellow and withered at its ends. I know from experience that there is new growth in the underground root network that will once again bring green leaves to the light of day. It is not afraid to push outward when opportunity is proper. It has a good long-term plan for its own survival.
RB
29 July 1998 -- Nothing is plugged in
This evening, the chill of the mountains that is always a bit more than its equivalent down in the city has arrived, and I have lit both the living room and kitchen lanterns. For some reason, I wanted a bit more light in the Cabin tonight. Maybe I'm secretly missing that ability I have at any time in my real life home to ignite significant wattage across the many fixtures. I'm recalling the last time the power went out down there, after a massive storm front blew through, and what a different house it seemed to be with everything turned off. Nothing actually went anywhere...the same old street was there, and had I stepped onto the tiny front lawn, I'd still hear the traffic and the aircraft passing overhead on their final approaches to "Reagan" National's Runway 36.
Thus, it amazes me how different I can feel, with only the slightest of environmental modifications. Since I have strict control over clutter here at the Cabin (namely, I bring very few "things" in), it is possible to live in a state of simplicity that is only a dreamed-of ideal, back at that home with its 8 years of accumulation on everything. It piles up like dust, but is much harder to clear away.
I go over towards the kitchen and have a seat at one of the table-benches. The scene is lit by the lamp hanging on the knotty-pine wall from a wrought-iron bracket above the stove. It is well past sunset, at a time when I'd be long asleep in that real life, awaiting another day at the office. With both of the kitchen wing windows open, I listen to the immense grating of the collective cricket-mechanism that surrounds me. They all know just what to do. The sound enters, together with the night's chill, which usually requires me to close the two doors.
I look over into the rest of the main room, under its timber-beam vault, realizing that yes, I am indeed alone. This interior, along with the outhouse and woodshed, is the extent of it, for several miles. Such a different character this life has, without the information appliances such as the television. Time passes in an entirely separate way. I had generally scoffed through the years at the Enlightened I had met (most notably in college campus dwellings), who held their heads high because they had escaped that "wasteland" of the mass media. These same, however, invariably took great pride in their state-of-the-art stereo equipment, record collections, and allegiance to the local "alternative" FM station.
But no, not even audio here. The atmosphere goes back in time, to the turn of the century, maybe, or the time of the various Gold Rushes. I seem to recall stories of men in those days who lived to themselves, ostensibly to work hard at a meager claim or to trade in pelts. Perhaps they viewed the cities of their day with as much anticipation and distress as I do this evening. These individuals did not gather about the watering troughs of mass-distributed ideas, eagerly awaiting word of what the designated Voice over the wire, theatre stage, or newspaper had decided they should be thinking, doing, and believing. Their minds were uncluttered, and they stood face-to-face with what must have been a very hard reality. Programs and "events" are happening, down in that content-saturated world that I must soon rejoin. But for now, I can be in this place, with no reminders of "what's next" in the routine. The schedule is temporarily broken, although it's inescapable, and I will resume.
RB
