3 September 1999 -- Going over my plans
It is another cooler day, and late enough in the season that it could
very well be the start towards the truly cold weather that typically arrives
by October. It isn't really all that much cooler, when I think
about it, but a series of small temperature increments in the same direction
will most certainly have me building fires and cozying up under the down
covers before too long.
I've come today as I have many times, without much of a plan as to what
I'll be doing. Part of me says to get out on the trails while I can,
while another part says that to impose such urgency on myself would too
much resemble city living. I do not think that much of what I could
call "boredom" in my life comes from not having enough to do. No,
the frustration is from having too many things to do, but not enough
initiative to start out on any single one. I have often envied the
lives of the "normal", who do not see inactivity just another "thing to
do".
I think of the many times when I have completely shed my burdens and
indeed found protracted and satisfying rest. This means, of course,
that the train of my thoughts has to have somewhere to run, for there's
no stopping such a process. Indeed, I should compare such a mechanism
to the old steam locomotives like the one in Breakheart Pass, where
Charles Bronson needs to keep up the head of steam even when it has come
to a stop. As I walk around the living room today, looking first
into one corner and then another, I begin to wonder about the advisability
of running such a high duty cycle on my internal conversation, be it a
monologue, dialogue, or whatever. They let me pass on the street
so long as I don't say the words out loud. I am glad that minds have
not yet been proven to be readable.
I walk back to the kitchen wing and look over the provisions on the
pantry shelves. Then I'm on the other side, by the stove and the
wash basin. I seem to be pacing. I'd imagine I'm ready to go
do something, but nothing comes to mind. I certainly would
like to have that fundamental joy in living that I see in some of the others.
This is where life itself is such a cause for celebration that they can
just sit and be washed over in euphoria by bringing the thought to mind.
That's what I'm always after--the sense of well-being that comes without
extraordinary effort and intermediary pain. The moralists have told
me that's all a waste of time; that eternal joy is only a passing illusion.
I tend to believe them, too, because of the poor reputations of most purveyors
of instant gratification.
I suspect endeavors undertaken with a full knowledge of all risks are
more carefully considered than the solutions whose full disclosure is lacking.
But all that leads to is the hesitant overcaution that leaves me out of
it, to come up here and hide in the woods. The answer now seems to
be that I cannot live on sure things alone. I'm going to have to
put up some risk capital, since the safe rate of return is not enough to
live on these days.
I'm still wondering, though, what I should be doing on this visit.
The well-intentioned keep telling me I need optimism, and that I should
place my trust in unproven, failure-prone schemes. I can only hope
that as I find myself taking those plunges, enough of them turn up winners
to give me a positive long-term trend, the kind that is measured in years,
not days. I suppose I should put together my daypack and head
out on the trails for a hike. Of course, I'll still be out here in
these sheltered woods, and getting hurt on the rocks is far less likely
than getting hurt in a human relationship. That will be for another
day.
"Bo"
7 September 1999 -- Sorrow that has no place
The agitation of high-density life in Northern Virginia is now stuffed
safely into its holding cell, to be released another day. I have
been able to back down from activity levels I know are not realistic for
someone like myself in the long term. I suspect that I disappear
completely from the screens of those who know me, once I've gone, on account
of the low profile I try to maintain. I'd almost wish I could lose
sight of myself like that once in awhile, not caring so much about each
and every small instance of emotional pain that accompanies the canonical
"better" life. I quickly realize the problem with that, however--if
I were not really there in the sufferings, I doubt they'd count in the
ongoing score of the good fight.
It is a day of lingering summer up here in the hazy dampness of the
hollow. I'm sitting, barefoot, on the front porch, noting in repeated
mental tracings the approximate border of the dooryard. Out on the
far side, next to the well-trampled path to the fire ring, is the path
nearly as trampled that disappears into the brush and up the hillside.
Listening to the crickets and cicadas in this patch of the forest reminds
me that there are a good many wood ticks out in that grass as well, and
I'm glad to have the time up here in the evenings to look for them on my
person. The typical real life outing from the city ends with my needing
to go back to work the next day, giving such parasites a wondrous opportunity
for their own enrichment.
The time I can steal from the rigors of work and social obligations
(as opposed to the kind of society I actually seek, which is rather rare),
is certainly made all the more dear on account of its scarcity. It
is fitting that it should be directly bordered on both sides by duty, or
I'd soon take it for granted, as I do so much else about my life that comes
without intense effort. I focus my gaze outward as I have so often,
feeling the vertical contour of the ridge above and in front of me with
my eyes from left to right. I am saddened some by the futility of
a life that I have not the wherewithal to appreciate. I almost find
myself calling down curses upon my life, just so that they might eventually
be lifted and I'd return to where I am now, except for being grateful,
not complacent.
I wonder, really, how a person becomes glad when it is not yet in his
or her heart. For some it might simply be a lost cause. I should
almost wish that I had lived a life of uniform despair, rather than being
shown so many of the treasures of the Kingdom; even being allowed to hold
them in my hands and try them on, only to be told to give them back for
safekeeping. Indeed, the blessings to be found in typical middle-class
industrialized life should be immediately apparent, at least to those who
have them in the proper composition in their portfolio of good works and
intentions. But they are different than me, I complain
to myself. I must be a special case, way out on a distribution
tail as empty as these woods. If I met others such as myself, they
would be as repulsed by my society as I am of so many other goings-on to
which I am extended a nominal invitation at best.
I have to get over this toxic attitude, and soon, I realize, as I get
up from the porch and take a little more sun upon myself. I will
not have an easier time by expressing false sorrow over trumped-up wrongs.
Nothing is really all that wrong, and that's the problem, if there
is a problem. I must look awfully strange, carelessly carrying my
allotment of charisms at arm's length, as though they were so much refuse
on a hot summer day. I hear a call to blind faith in all of this,
and I see more of the same old lifeless service and mind-numbing participation
ahead. Many is the time, though, when freedom finally arrives and
I can enter the counting room to see who I am. At such a time, it
all makes sense. I get up from the porch and go around back.
It's time to haul up some more water from the river, since the dirty laundry
is piled pretty high inside by the dresser.
"Bo"
11 September 1999 -- The many factors that govern
The feeling of impending autumn is decidedly in the air today, though
it's still warm enough to be outside in my shorts and a cotton shirt, especially
when I've found work that needs doing. Perhaps it is the subtle set
of cues given by the sun, which is approaching its maximum rate of retreat
as the equinox draws near. I do not like to think that I am so conditioned
by something as simple as solar position that my whole sense of my surroundings
can be dictated by the time of year. I thought that with my own powers
of internal will as weak as they are, something external like that should
not have a chance.
There is the feeling, though, that something is "slipping away" through
my fingers, as I go for another meandering walk through the growth in the
clearing. My life will never have the set of qualities again that
it does today, and since I figure the top of my "hill" was at about 28
years of age, the objective trend towards loss has been going on for nearly
10 years now. Whenever I say such things among people significantly
older than myself in the city, I am told I haven't seen anything yet, and
that "I'm still just a kid". All right, then, if "I'm not getting
older / I'm getting better", then it's high time to start seeing some improvements.
It certainly does no good to look at the condition of my mortal body,
which is an increasing drain in terms of affliction and maintenance.
Am I to look at "relationships" to others? Granted, certain of those
are not as strained as they were in recent history. But what good
does that do for me? I stop on the word "me" to rebuke myself
for identifying with the "baby boomer" generation, whose self-centered
love of whatever it happens to love at the moment ends up being the root
of all evil in the commentary of the punditry. Being so close to
the "cusp" that would put me outside that collective progeny of the WWII
victors, I should be able to defer such an incorporation by default.
Membership in a "generation" is about as arbitrary an external condition
as you could want, even more so than the season. Up here at the Cabin,
in a district having a sample size of one, the standard procedures of statistical
grouping are at a loss, anyway.
Still, I feel the residual bits of stiffness in my legs and those heels
that have taken the pounding of miles of walking on pavement and tile in
street shoes. I cannot deny my current set of such attributes.
To do so is to impose conditions of impulsive forcing upon variables that
cannot follow such inputs without failure. There is no good life
to be designed around parameters that no longer apply to me or that never
will apply. With the success I see among the bulk of others in the
urban collective, I tend to be attracted by the notion that their results
are entirely typical, and it is my own that are not. I cannot assume,
however, that I am automatically absorbed by the prevalent group simply
because I superficially resemble one of them. There are enough examples
of exclusion, many more extreme than myself, to negate such a proposition.
I seem to recall certain things I've picked up on the long road of my
learning when it comes to individuality and collective prediction by probability
and statistics. It could very well be that I am "normal", but just
not as much so as others who are closer to the mean of the distribution.
Overall properties like that are not absolutely binding upon me as an individual
but I am still biased by my particular membership status in the set of
possible human outcomes.
This line of thought doesn't take me to a very useful destination, though.
All I want is peace of mind and inspiration towards productive activity
that occurs without excessive and disciplinary internal action on my part.
I realize that there are more things to do at the Cabin, so I turn to head
back. Maybe the force I unknowingly apply to myself is away from
that desirable place of inclusion, and the only effective way of disabling
such self-abduction is to find something else to be carrying and moving--like
firewood and water up here--or case files and official communications back
down there in real life.
"Bo"
15 September 1999 -- Continuing with basic duties
On a day during which the summer's heat is just a little further behind
me in this year's recollection, the arrival of rain has created an environment
all the more different than just a month ago. This is heavy-duty
rain, the kind that settles in and seems unending, rather than those rapidly
moving squall fronts that gave summer its feeling of invincible freedom.
Across the dooryard by the outhouse, where the 4.1-mile dirt road reaches
its upper end, the locally-lower points began to fill earlier this morning,
only to form at last an unending cascade. It is like one of the many
temporary, seasonal stream beds that I have encountered on the trails.
Perhaps erosion into the river below has been slowed by all the footsteps
and tire tracks, or maybe it has been enhanced by the relative absence
of ground cover. In any event, it does not appear to be in immediate
danger of washing out into a major gully or even a noticeable dip.
Today I keep my outdoor activities to a predictable minimum, since being
both cold and wet at the same time has less available remedy than
either by itself. Having seen the woodpile by the hearth get a bit
low, I don my poncho and step out onto the front porch, listening to the
new background noise of the rain. Even with my rain gear, this is
a time when I simply will get wet. I have found that the sooner
I accept a certain discomfort as unavoidable, the sooner I am able to look
for other things that bother me.
I tromp out onto the wet grass, avoiding the deepening mud until I reach
the banks of the "streambed", then wade gingerly across, first to visit
the outhouse and then the woodshed. Since this is, after all, the
Cabin, I am comforted in these conditions by knowing I'll have plenty of
time inside to dry off and attend to more basic considerations. In
the city, I'd come in like that and face the usual daunting load of obligations
that pay no heed to the weather. My misery there is the nagging sense
that I'm not getting to what needs doing, since there is always something
undone--that is a fact of life.
As I carry back my usual arms' capacity of wood through the unchanging
rain, I find solace in the notion that I could truly be in the right, yet
have outstanding debts of duty to others and myself. Blame and culpability
are not automatic, should I be proven to be doing all that I can do.
What good would it do to worry about what cannot be done in a day, anyway?
I begin to wonder what it was that let me talk myself into such a sense
of shame over perceived insufficiency. It is ineffective psychobabble,
of course, to seek out historical causes, for there is no changing the
past.
Realizing that my feet are a mess, I walk the minimum path from the
front door to the woodpile and stack in the new load. Closing the
door so as to build back the heat from the existing fire, I realize just
how wet I am as I shuck my poncho and boots. But there is no great
emergency; I have the whole evening, after all, to settle in. Life
is really a lot more fair than I tend to admit, for the moments of absolute
terror are quite sparse in comparison to the lower-grade call to consistent,
manageable duty. I am just one person. All the others want
me to do down there in real life is take the next step--anything more is
unrealistic. It is unexcusable vanity to think I have been found
deserving of any greater burden than that.
"Bo"
18 September 1999 -- The anticipation of change
With the sun having returned, I am able to assess the extent to which
the trees have begun to turn, here at 3800 feet. This summer had
seemed such a permanently-installed presence that the arrival of autumn
is honestly taking me by surprise this year. There is a bit of that
encroaching chill even in the air of this mid-day, as I step out the front
door, zip up my jacket and stuff my hands into the pockets. I am aware
of how soon the time will be when green is no longer the predominant color
in the clearing or the woods above on the ridge slope.
Today is one of those frustrating days of lesser inspiration, when I
cannot readily sustain an internal fixation that leaves me satisfied.
This, I suspect, is the reason why sleep, work, online and television have
the places of honor they do in my real life, since they so often provide
a place to park that ever-restless longing for fulfillment via occupation.
I begin to regret having such a spoiled and temperamental creature as that
to humor all of the time. I begin to think I should start ignoring
"it", since I usually end up on dead-end chases trying to get what "it"
wants. I am in a continual search for the end-all to the demands
of this capricious beast, but all I end up with are expensive purchases
of time.
It occurs to me that enough of those intervals of time, linked together,
will eventually exceed even the most optimistic estimate of a lifespan,
and at my current rate of success, the needs will still not be met.
Maybe the ones who live at peace have stopped dealing with superficial
longing and have found solutions that circumvent the problem altogether
by rendering it moot. Looking back, I know I have certainly passed
through such revolutions before in my life, and found myself "taking some
time / for a number of things / that weren't important yesterday", as in
the Beatles' Fixing a Hole. The hard part is not knowing exactly
what the change will be.
I spend awhile walking around outside in the bright sun, which highlights
the yellow at the tops of the trees. It seems such a strange sight
now, but soon it will be cold and anything in the way of green leaves will
be out of place. Yes, that is the metaphor I'm after--the change
in external situations that makes old problems, well, old.
I suspect my view of things could change even by something as simple as
being 40 years old, which is not far away. Maybe that will
finally cause me to reconsider my current foolish notions about the endurance
of a body I should not neglect as much as I do.
If it is as simple as passing time, then I suppose I can find success
in just doing that for awhile, to let my position with respect to the rest
of the world move along to another stop. The question, of course,
is "will I be ready?" In the case of the analogy to winter, I should
know enough from having been here over the 1997/98 and 1998/99 seasons
to prepare for the months ahead. Maybe I should look to my "elders",
to see what they've done. I shouldn't laugh at what gives them true
cause for concern, since I'm right behind them in line.
I remain frustrated, though, by my inability to enjoy what I have of
youth on this day when it is still warm enough to be out and about.
I know the change is coming, and it will all be rendered moot, but that
is then and this is now. I begin to understand at a point such as
this why people closer to "normal" spend so much time involved in the lives
of others. By enriching the life of a person under different constraints,
it becomes possible, at least for a moment, to buffer the conditions to
which that person is consigned. They know the game better than me,
of course, for they are able to get their own share of relief from the
bargain. Well, maybe in that condition-soon-to-come, I'll have a
better chance. It just won't be today, that's all.
"Bo"
22 September 1999 -- Wondering what to do
With the latest round of overactivity in my real life behind me at last,
I have found another chance to try to make myself slow down. While
it should be fairly cold out tonight, there has been enough sun beating
down on the brown asphalt roof to build up quite a store of heat in the
Cabin. These are the days "in between", where it is hard to know
which of the air conditioning or the furnace should be used--or in the
alternative, opening the windows or building up a fire. I suppose
I should enjoy these days of "moderate" weather while I can, since the
extreme of cold is on its way.
I sometimes resent the notion of this "boom or bust" lifestyle, whether
it consists of the diversity of misery from the weather or the similar
mix of busy days and idle ones on my job.
I always seem to score the best in the game of work when I run with all
I have when the running is good, then sit and recover the rest of the time.
I suppose, really, I should be glad for having those quiescent moments
at all, since some jobs are high-paced all of the time. To
have the time, even, to think of this life at the Cabin is a luxury some
would cherish. I hear now the stern pronouncements of the ones back
there who would dismiss me as being "spoiled" and a "whiner". Yes,
yes, anything you say, folks--it's all my fault. I'm actually enough of
a fool to "let myself" be this way.
Maybe it is the ingrained sense of guilt and shame from these many voices,
which have now established a full-time post inside my head, that keep me
from taking care of myself on my time away from the office. Ideally,
I would spread my level of activity out a little more evenly, and not have
these extremes to live with so much of the time. Granted, this is
a bit of a revolutionary thought for a man who agreed as a 17-year-old
with Devo; that "When a problem comes along / you must whip it".
Well, I've whipped at enough things for today.
I know I need to get out of the rapid current that makes a week these
days feel like a day once did when I worked for minimum wage as an adolescent.
That flow of activity is a bit of a bad habit sometimes, since all I have
to do is jump in and contend with the rocks and the rapids as indeed I
must. Sitting out here, at the top of the dirt track, I no longer
have those dire emergencies staring me in the face. At such a point,
I am left to my own discretion, which has had a famous history of leading
me where I'd rather not be led.
I am a little short on things to do tonight, I come to realize, and
I'll be driving back down to town out of frustration if nothing soon comes
to mind. I think that I frequently sabotage my time off by practicing
such an agony of frustration over what to do. My free time can't
be left looking too good, or else I'd never have the strength to
continue with work. Thus it is, that I live a life motivated by fear
and revulsion.
My conversations with the others in real life have dispelled any lingering
belief I could rationally have in a life of continuous and unconditional
joy. The best practitioners I've seen are the "joy in the midst of
sorrow" types, often of Christian conviction, who do not set much store
by what the world can send their way. Such faith, indeed, is an enviable
possession. I have to wonder how I could ever reach such a point,
however, when I cannot appreciate the overwhelming evidence that my life
has no warrant of condemnation upon it. I am free to get up and go,
whenever I want, or so say the ones with the sturdy bootstraps.
Still, there could be a point to all of this that will have hindsight
justification, when all is said and done--or not done. In 20 years,
this might appear to be my finest hour. I decide, finally, to stop
imposing upon myself and just live out the experience of the woods.
I'll be back down there soon enough.
"Bo"
26 September 1999 -- Questioning my isolation
I've spent another afternoon up here "putzing around" the Cabin and
the clearing, knowing full well that each of the forest walls that I can
see at the edge of the low scrub is the beginning of several miles of generally
trackless and unpopulated highland. My one tenuous connection, the
dirt two-track road along the river, is only partially visible from the
air during the winter months and is completely hidden now, since the trees
have only started to turn color. The thought of installing rudimentary
electrical circuitry and a telecommunications station has of course crossed
my mind, since I still experience the well-conditioned craving for the
media that I do in my real city life. I doubt I could impose proper
discipline on the use of such gear, however, and I accept dis-connectivity
as one of the fundamental underlying conditions of this dwelling.
Yes, being cut off from all that content appears as essential as sterile
equipment in a surgical procedure. As I sit on the front porch looking
at the advancing yellow and orange of the hardwoods on the ridge slope,
I begin to wonder why it is that I must seek such drastic measures to remedy
the problems of that other life. It is not enough just to come home
from the office, since there's another computer there, and also the television.
Going to visit friends? No, that's just more exposure to social tension
and my perceived failures in that arena, which I feel enough of at the
office. It seems that the only real solution is removal to an aseptic
environment such as this.
It is as if I were conducting a controlled experiment in which the presence
or absence of the artifacts of human co-existence was the single independent
variable. Such data hardly has much value, I come to realize, because
this setting is impossible to occupy as a reality. Even if I did
learn that complete peace of mind and the ever-elusive stable sense of
well-being were causatively correlated to the removal of the "wires", life
such as this is not something I can have. Thus, I might as
well be back in the world of envy and greed, gawking at the ones of prosperity
as though they were my superiors in all regards.
I see my thoughts heading around the corner to a well-known dead end
here: the one of concluding that all is folly, as in the book of
Ecclesiastes. I know I should try to work with what I have in the
here and now and be grateful for it. I cannot deny that my real life
can at least support sustained mediocrity, and has the promise for much
more. Being mindful of duty, I'll be back in there on Monday morning,
pounding the beat. Since that is a given, I try now to make better
use of this belabored construct; the Cabin.
The place started, way back at the time of the
dream, as a refuge; a hideaway. It had a remarkably settled
feeling to it, as though things had all come to rest, unlike real life
in these times of exponential growth. There was such a calm
then to the living space, which I do my best to re-create as I walk in
the front door and stand in the shaft of light that enters the rear window
by the dresser. This, at least, is something I don't need to budget
great quantities of emotional capacity to keep as is. I should think
this was the real intention of the 1997 project--to learn a mode of relaxation
in the imagined absence of urban irritations that can then be superimposed
upon the real thing. I know it will never be quite as quiet down
there as it is up here, but then that would be asking too much of something
that is, after all, life.
"Bo"
29 September 1999 -- More time by myself
I find things pretty much the way I left them as I arrive in the
truck and step down onto the damp earth near the dooryard. That
is the beauty of living to one's self and by one's self; nothing gets disturbed.
It is like the set of landing sites on the moon, which should have their
features intact at such time as historical archaeologists are able to go
back and visit them.
I sense that I take the benefits of built-in predictability too much
for granted, both in the life out here in the woods and back at my real
city life. I have spent so many years slowly repairing my procedure
from its unkempt and youthful excesses that it seems to have little real
room for improvement. As I stand poised to walk in the front door
on this rather mild autumn day, I rebuke myself for harboring the ridiculous
illusion of having come anywhere near perfection. Perhaps a more
accurate assessment is that all the easy pickings are now gone, and I must
work a good bit harder for the rest. It could be compared to the
time this area was settled and the land cleared for farming. Down
by the main highway and the river road, the land was flat and rich, and
crops grow there to this day. Up here at the top of the hollow, there
are mostly steep slopes and rocky soil. Maybe I have this place to
myself because it really isn't somewhere people would care to be.
I walk in and look to the two ends of the "L" of my interior pine-panelled
living space. The arrangement of periodicals on the living room table
and the dirty clothing piled up beside my bed have not gone anywhere.
I suspect I should not be placing much value upon the predictability of
such superficialities, since I am aware of the moral and economic duties
I have to the others in my real life. To live within the creative
(or destructive) output of another is a veritable vocation; a calling.
I sometimes think I was placed into city life for the express purpose of
learning to see what stands behind the apparent disregard and contempt
of the ones I must work or live with. There is some reward, somewhere,
for forgiveness. I certainly invoke blessings upon those who do not
walk out on me when my attitude has taken a turn for the worse.
I'm in this little room right now, with thousands of acres of nobody
to practice on except myself. But do I really forgive myself
for the kind of abuses I can overlook when I picture the larger motives
of others? Certainly, a sense of remorse and one's conscience have
their place; these stem many an excess of the kind I'd rather not remember
from my late teens and early 20's. I clearly have a mandate to police
my own ways before someone else has to, but I have to find some method
of curbing an overzealous desire to stamp everything out that is the least
offensive when I admit some specific guilt. Yes, I am one of the
most irritating people I know for getting along. There is some value
in this, actually, because I will have patience with others if I can put
up long with myself.
It is not good, I have found, to engage in too much of this self conversation,
since it, too, is very predictable. When I come to be alone up here
at the Cabin, I am ideally occupied with other things. As evening
approaches, I light the kerosene lamp on the stand near the sofa and start
into a 1943 Life magazine. People sure seemed to get along
back then. The enemy was portrayed in such unfavorable terms by the
propagandists that one's daily contacts, all of them good by definition
as fellow Allies, could do no wrong. The society of the 1990's has
nothing of the simplicity of those war years, or even the 1960's, when
those tracks were first left in the lunar dust. Now we're all second-guessing
one another. I find it enough of a tragedy that we need to guess
about their motives at all. They're human, and so am I.
"Bo"
Ahead to October 1999
