LAKE

It’s a large lake and veers around. The ducks do their thing; seem to always be cleaning off their feathers. Two types of seagulls wait there if you look closely, - the white ones, - and the ones that are a bit speckled, that have light brown flecks on their wings. Behind, when the feathers are sprawled out, - they can appear esoteric, different, like some kind of strange sub species of hawk. People are hypnotized by the hype, and thus are down on seagulls, always have been maybe, - but not me. I think of Jonathan Livingston Seagull for instance, - now there is a seagull, and I have always identified w/him. So there is one, like him,- that has left the others and comes across the sky whilst I am looking out at the line the edge of the lake makes, and the clouds, and the sun that interrupt and then penetrates the puff quite nicely as if to send a ray down from another realm. There he goes.

Other than that,- the long and wide boardwalk, the old homes from the 1970’s and even

before, some still there, next to the new ones,- monsterish, full of bragging, overdone, gauche- but what can you do?- that is the way it goes. It would take a calm, even, and rare man or woman or combination to have the money to build to the sky yet the maturity to keep it regular. I am not talking about being falsely humble, or being a pauper- but living well but somehow without the show. Like a woman, think of a woman- there are two women, - one is full of rouge, jewels, so on- and it’s all to catch the eye, hers and others. One is understated- she does not have to go like a hippie, like a new Eve- and even perhaps has some makeup. It’s the latter in her summer dress, or even pants, - that is prettier.

So the sky is up and the earth is down and the people, - the folks, - they are all around. I wonder what it’s like when it storms there. The flowers and shrubs, the trees and small areas of grasses, sometimes foil or juxtapose the water when seen from the right angle. There are fishermen, kayaks, more ducks, loons, the little birds also that fly overhead of it all and appear from the distance like specks, like mosquitoes with speed. It’s not a bad body of water, - and I look once before heading out, - and notice that the wind and/or small tide is bringing over the water to make ripples and that the ripples for the play of sun and rock and sand, of day and angle and sky and other, - appear golden. 

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BY THE TALL RAINBOW TREES (CHIRP SING FLUTTER AND FLY)

A long travelling stretch there and on both sides are tall trees that want to kind of arch over

and make a natural green rainbow if a rainbow could for an instant break the rules and be such a color plus made of leaves and branches. The clouds, seen far and far in the distance like leaven bread, risen, full, light and robust. A rabbit is startled and runs. He or she looks tall for a rabbit. Maybe it is the hind legs fully extended and throwing the body forth. It, like I said of something else before recently, - is more like a vision or dream than something real. There is nobody around that area. The forest is silent and then birds chirp, sing, flutter, and fly. On the sides of old logs some mushrooms grow and they are darkish, as if colored in by a nature’s marker. Red berries loom large, though they are small, the colors juxtaposed- red against green background. Beyond the green it is so shady that the feeling is of an interesting abyss, cavern, and passageway. Morning butterfly flits ‘round some unnamed wildflower. Old tractors and light green plants with yellow flowers stand proudly, adroitly, before them. A morning pontoon plane, distant, almost a speck. The bees have left, migrated, for now, - something. And then the circle with the sand pit and the dogs run, play, dance, jump, sniff, sprint, circle,- and their limbs and brains and spirits get the proper stretching and inspiration, exercise and air, exposure to the open air, grasses, gravel, grains, general goodness. Its early, so they are well and I am well,- and if the next hours turn to hot and humid, we have by arriving early, shown a certain discipline and even won a small victory today. And one day at a time is how it goes. A long walk out by the shaded thickets, chaparral, ridges, tops of valleys, and berries again. Then the stretch on both sides where the tall rainbow trees try and cover us.

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A DIFFERENT PLACE THE SAME OR THE INDUSTRIAL CORRIDOR REVISITED

I used to call it the industrial corridor. As much as it changes, or though many years and even decades come and roll over it and about it,- there is some proverbial heart of the matter that remains the same. The long stretches of road, wide and slightly vexatious for the barrels, the oil, the often broken curbing. Tow trucks like vultures wait, or wide shipping bay doors. Old motors, their casings tattered, scarred, one proudly yellow, red, blue, - every other color. There are even fields, and of course cables, hydro and phone lines. These come through from far away, announce themselves like a forever spider’s web, and then continue further to the impossibly labyrinthine innards of the easterly city. The men, - from every country on earth imaginable- . Welders, machinists, drivers, motor repairmen, detailers, all the rest, all the various tasks, callings, vocations. Some of the windows are new whilst others grime covered. There was once a bakery there, and the bakery turned into a place that made truck parts, and the truck parts place has since turned into a transport company. It’s the same sky, - blue, at times overcast. In the middle winter the snow covers the wood, shingles, metal, gratings, streets, buses, old lost or discarded washers, nuts, bolts, pieces of wire, housings, casts, strangely shaped trucks, tires, and the broken bricks and pieces of glass. On the insides- lunchrooms, lockers, oil, shelves, drill presses, lathes, testing pits, chains, hoppers, copper, steel, gaskets, wrench, welding rod, glove, hose, pipe, ohms counter, hydraulics, galvanized plate, painting booth, tanks, chalk, drums, ties, lights, sand, grease, keys, boxes, boards, banter, memory, other other other other other...There is a creek, a small one in width but it runs the entire corridor much like the wires in the air. A lady used to live there, - an aged one with a cart, and the foreman used to bring her out water and tell her to stop drinking from the chemical creek because she would become ill. It’s not known when or how she one day stopped coming around. In my imagination I once thought of her as a benevolent witch of the corridor, - casting spells at the nightime, a sort of odd guardian or gatekeeper to those streets and the lands beyond. In the bright day, so many years later, the creek and its discarded pallets, the feral plants and flowers that grow through cracks in the cement and whose ancestors live somehow always, - are still there. It could be 1982 or 1993 or even 1975 or almost anything. Wire and sky, creek and brick, curb and window and other- all not bound really by time. As real as it all is, it also seems astral, ephemeral, dreamlike, vaguely mystical, and apart. I used to call it the industrial corridor. I suppose that is as good a name as any.

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THE GREAT SOLITUDE OF THE LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE INNER FOREST PATHWAYS

How fine to see the dogs run in the shaded wood, to circle up around the trees whose leaves wait along branches in the late afternoon quietude. I could see near the entry that there was a man again, homeless, in his car. He nearly always waits and waits. The Blue Door Shelters is up the way, not far off at all, and once being a front line worker there, I could have ideally informed him of their location and services. But how to broach a subject like that. In actuality, I can do it like no other, and there was no person that I could not talk to. However, I am more of the school of thought these days that it’s his own personal business, and not for me to meddle in. Besides, the chances that he does not know about the place are low, and he may have his own reasons for not going there. He might be happier on his own. He might be couch surfing with some trusted friends or contacts in the night. He may have been ejected from the shelter for any number of reasons, or else on a waiting list. Who is to know? So I let him go his own way. I am sure by now he has been questioned by certain people, - and informed of the place. My hope, if he is a good soul, which he probably is, - most are at heart, - and if he is indeed outdoors, - that he find the best possible way. In any event, - there is nobody else there. I proceed down the long asphalt way. They have redone it and it is sturdy and clean and new. The small bits like pyrite shine in the sun, - the heavy lurid heat is absent for a bit, as the oppressive high temperatures have dropped a few degrees. 

Parking, I leave the windows open and we begin to make out way. The old farmer’s tractor is in the distance. I can hear its engine hum. He is felling trees, he is clearing pathways, and he is working with gasoline, with saws, with his hands. The job he does is done well, and the paths, right in the verdant and otherwise labyrinthine innards of the forest, - are clear, curt, smart, welcoming. This cuts down a bit on the insects and such. He takes pride, and this is work done well. We eventually bump into one another as we sometimes are apt to do. There are light greetings, well wishes, and he goes on his way and I go on mine. There is not any heavy or burdensome talk on the one hand, - and no extra pleasantries, phoney or flowery, on the other. We are both solitary but great in our momentary aloneness. Why interrupt the other any more than need be? He is something that William Carlos Williams would like. WCW could re-write his famous lines, and say also something akin to- SO MUCH DEPENDS ON THE SOUND OF AN OLD FARMER’S TRACTOR IN THE DISTANCE…

Then there is an opening, and the large circular, no, oval fields. They are impossibly large, and the dogs can hardly run them in their entirety. There is a road far in the distance, and some electrical wires in the sky. Some hawks talk, warning of me, or yelling at me, and fly off, with what like some smaller ones in tow. A bird flies out from a hole in a sand pit. There are crickets, hidden garter snakes, and tall bushes and chaparral to the sides. It’s very quiet there, - and the wind, the light breezes that blow, - seem to stop for a time. We rest by some shade. I try to remember what the place looks like in the autumn, - all the reds, yellows, oranges. I then think of the winter,- an outdoor palace of sorts,- the ice making little parapets on this slope or that,- the extra joy that a dog may have who is made really for that season,- the firm spirit in his gait, the jumping that is reminiscent of a rabbit. Who would need literature, music, film, or even people at a time like that? The dog, in the February or late November snow,- not running, but sprinting,- racing across the way,- and he becomes for quick moments more like a phantom, a spectre, a dream or a benevolent and mysterious vision than a part of this reality…

We rise, - take some water, - look around. Our friend the wind has picked up again. How nice it would be to see a bit of rain I think then. Not too much, but a light showering. It’s not coming yet though. No worries. There is nothing rueful or heavy here,- only a certain light heartedness at being in the open, away from all the sins, from greed and gluttony, from envy and pride, from haughtiness and from ego,- that ego that lurks in people even when it seems it does not. So we are upright, we are, for the moment, as the so-called apocryphal gospel of St. Thomas, explained so well in The Mustard Seed discourses by Osho,- blessed,- because we are the ‘solitary and elect’. 

But nobody would understand us. We only look then to a bird’s eye view or any view, - like a man and two dogs. And that is good enough, for we are that also. Slowly we go past the land around the large circle. There are about five places one can re-enter the forest. One of them does not loop back up with the main path, and it is not the furthest re-entry point either, but one that looks innocent enough. So we carefully pick. It will the second to the main one. 

There.

Going slow.

Berries, raspberries, and the wildflowers have peaked and are wilted, many of them are dispersed, disappeared, dissolved into the wind and earth and even somehow the little riverbed up the way. I muse. I received the spirit message hours before, in the late-late-late- night,- in the witching hours in fact,- of something called TETRAGON, if in fact that is the right word,- a pyramid it turns out, that has its different sides. This message has less to do with sacred geometry and more to do with saying that life is all at once multidimensional, even, against logic,- in this dimension. It’s a way of saying, in more prosaic terms, that,’ one has many balls in the air juggling’ So be it, - SPIRIT knows. And sometimes souls show up for soul rescue, - and they are sent on their way. There is no audio heard, only vision. That is the way of it. 

And eventually, among the birches and pines, the oaks and other, and among these peculiarly esoteric and mystical thoughts, this odd nomenclature, - we make our way out and out and out. We take more water at the vehicle, circle around, stop and listen for a moment. The sound of the tractor is there, echoing like a dream. We drive with the air conditioner blaring like a one note radio song. The man is there again, in the car, as he is for many hours and many days together. The sun glints of shards of this and that and I have to focus, to concentrate on the drive, to rejoin the stream of vehicles waiting on the larger one lane highway. 

I have to rejoin them, but do so only to the barest and necessary minimum, for they surely don’t know about the great solitude of the literal and figurative inner forest pathways.

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STILL THE SUN-KISSED FIELDS AND HAY (POSSIBLY ONTO THE NEXT, WHICH WOULD BE WATERCOLOR PAINTINGS AND/OR PASTEL DRAWINGS)

Camera/phone, - whatever it is all called, - broken or out of order. Can’t seem to get it all working. So, no pictures, and maybe it is just as well. Time for a new pursuit. Go with the wind, go with the Tao, go with Spirit, and go with Whatever. If I paint, it will be a bit slow, because watercolors take some time. Then what do you do with it? - Just have a bunch of watercolors around I guess. But that is the only next step I can think of. I don’t know anything about sculpture, and I can’t make music, so the only thing really might be painting. They will, if it comes to fruition, be watercolors, on small coverings, - probably of nature and the same but always new trees, sun, moon, constellations, yada yada yada…

 

But if this is the way it goes, I must recap, - and take stock, because if the photographs are over, - it was one helluva proverbial ‘good run.’ I think photos showed up in about ten to fifteen magazines, and there is an actual photo spread coming out in a magazine sometime in autumn. And it’s a print magazine. Also, - there were five to seven photos on the covers of magazines! And I really liked the magazines. One graced the cover of a magazine called The Tishman Review. Another was on the front (and was a complete cool ‘wrap around cover- front and back), of a publication named The Broad River Review. Black Napkin Press and also an issue of The Corvus Review both featured work of mine as cover art. I was also had work chosen for Rat’s Ass Review to go on the cover. This was all a great adventure in all ways! I found I loved working with the editors and magazines overall, because they ‘got it,’ and understood the work and what it was trying to say. I have a little corner of my book shelf that houses the issues that come in print.

But now- it’s a liminal time. What does the spirit, the muse, the calling, call for? It’s better to follow the prompting of the whole than one’s own idea. So, - I shall be curious to find out. Today I went to the fields, after it had rained and cooled some. How tall the grasses and tree vines have grown. How long and winding the pathways that I had half forgotten. And the sun, so powerful,- starting to heat up again just as it is going beginning its descent, like some prize fighter that is falling down but will not give up and is swinging, singing, shining. I only did a third of the walk though, and precisely because it began to become too hot again after a brief cooling off period. Ah,…but even though I have stock and archived photos, this will be the first posting in 125 or so posts, that will go without a landscape photo or photos of some sort.

It’s symbolic, this absence.

Of the transitional time, - where one is neither here nor there artistically, - and in limbo, in the liminal as I mentioned. But, - I shall see. As I saw the sun-kissed fields and hay, the wonderfully odd plants and wildflowers, the feral shrubs and even chaparral, I began to get some ideas for watercolors. All I would need to begin are some quite accessible paints and a few surfaces. I could also use some pastel drawing supplies- there is nothing wrong with that,- nothing terrible about a change of mediums,- and I might discover something new,- some secret or angel in the shades, the whites, or all the things in between...

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