undercurrent

i have a friend whose son was born with a hole in the top of his head. it was a home birth and the little guy came out before the skull had finished growing closed. the mother was in rough condition following the troublesome labor and the father, under the urgent circumstances was faced with a frantic drive to a distant hospital with his newborn son. as Scotty tells me this story, we are sitting under a sea of indigo, the dreamtime stars are spilt and spread overhead, giving hints of the existence of a forever that we simply can’t wrap our heads around.

Scotty told me that on that drive to the hospital with little Orion in his car, he spoke to the universe entire. he called on the stars and all the mysterious machinations and told them he was on board with it all. Orion is maybe around 10 years old these days. he more than made it. he’s a spitting image of his dad and is also one of my good friends. the stars knew what they were doing, they still do. we don’t run things here.

three days ago i was out in the desert on the dry lake bed. i imagined back a million years before that. the world takes her time and her changes are always in style. i wondered if i would be in deep water, under the lake, if i could time jump and be here when things were then. such sweet mystery. such simple thoughts. while i thought about this stuff i was looking up into the blue, flat on my back. a line of buzzards, turkey vultures to be exact, were flying overhead. they were flying in layers, some only a couple thousand feet up and others almost in the jet stream. the sun had set, but the flapping rooks were still in the full light of the sun as it bent around the world from it’s 90-some-million-mile perch. not a mile distant, on the edge of the old lake is a spine of granite that jumps up a few hundred feet off the floor, as the buzzards reached it’s mass they began to swing into circles, some clockwise, some otherwise. tipping their 8 foot spans with nary a flap, they climbed the swirl of hot air and in doing so they allowed me to see the invisible thermal, alive with hundreds if not thousands of their kind. i’ve read that turkey buzzards have incredibly sensitive noses, able to smell a carcass over the panels of the wind from miles away. as i stared up at them, i wondered if they could smell amazement. i hoped so. the sun was sinking lower, the birds were climbing higher, their wings blinking a beautiful red as they turned their bellies at the light. the line of buzzards started from the top of the swirl and they continued on some secret journey that might be whispered about in the rookeries where the dark trees limbs bow from the weight Cathartian bodies as they shift and blink and wait for dawn.

i heard some guy talking about a thief that had been pointed out among a crew of workers. he was making excuses for the fella whose character was in question. he said something about how we just needed to keep our eye on him and he used the analogy that “vultures fly over us all the time, we should just let them pass.” i was disgusted with his comparison of some dude who steals wallets and money and tools to such an amazing bird as the turkey vulture whose name, Cathartes, means purifier. seems like we’ll use any means necessary to drag the animals into our nasty habits. anyway, i walked away thinking that i didn’t trust either one of those dudes, and also feeling righteously akin to the vultures myself.

notice: we humans are on this world, it’s our spaceship. it is not limitless. with or without us, it has an expiration date and the quality of our stay here is our own responsibility. the milky way galaxy is our home as well. the cosmos is spread out like a blanket for us to play on, night after night. our fortune is enormous but we are lacking in gratitude. we gain so little from our blinking pads and our fancy pants, while an entire universe waits for us to use our senses to see into everything that already is. beauty fades, strength wanes, relationships crumble, families grow up, jobs get mundane, eyes will fail, but life is a gift till the last breath. count your lucky stars that you were ever here….

(i wrote this while thinking of my little buddy, Orion, who made it aboard. and last night, under a late night sky, i saw the Hunter up in the sky, Orion with his bow, and i thought of the wonder of it all. i hope for very little because hope is difficult for me to really believe in, but i must hope for the children, that somehow a wonder and respect for the world can be restored. so that they can swim in oceans that are not caustic and walk through the woods that are not broken and drink from springs that bubble up in the moss where the bull elk still bugle and the grizzlies still rub their shaggy backs against the trees.)

shining quiet

at 3:53 a.m.  hafiz glows on from the pages of the poetry book on the table. at 3:53 a.m. orion is in full stride and the sky is cold and perfect for hunting. there is such quiet in the air that i think i might hear the stars, i really might. and the 7 sisters are bunched in the hump of taurus’ back and taurus has the sly-eyed knowledge that orion will not get him this night, nor any other. i think maybe eternity takes a little break in these moments and allows the mortals to look into her eyes to see things that are almost within reach; like a mom showing a child the fit of a single piece of puzzle. within that maze overhead are things beyond things and small sparks of light from other darknesses and things that are moving with the forces of an incomprehensible past into my view and then carrying on, dead-set on forever. and as the tiny lights that move in the skies share a glimmering moment with me and then disappear, they then exist in two places at once; they go on as they were into the cosmos but also, they continue to move in the recreated night of my memory. and no one can say if something i’ve seen and re-imagined is not but just another branch of the real deal.

such a wild sky at 3:53 a.m.    such a blend of silence and light.    this shining quiet.

back when things were different, there were real hunters that walked across this continent. they weren’t hunting for 7 point racks or the biggest on record. there weren’t any tags given to hunt in some sought after, herd-rich stretch of land. there were tribes of people that migrated with the seasons and sat under these same stars. and before them, there were others that did the  same. they didn’t need a global positioning device because they traveled by foot, at the speed of life. they made fires and talked intelligently about what was prevalent; the curve of a well crafted bow, the rains that came early or late, the visions that came to the open-hearted. the love that happened in those days was made upon the ground and the heart of the world knew the heart of the people. when food was scarce, the sign showed on the face of those that had not tracked keenly enough, those whose arrow had missed it’s mark. surely there were years where the animals were less predictable or less available and the humans suffered in turn. black elk painted it all so clearly with one quote, “the gaunt belly truly sharpens the ear.”

and all around the world, each race of humans struggled in a similar fashion. everyone’s roots go back to a time when a fire was light and the earth was a bed. we have so much now. there is clutter in our yard and clutter in our soul. apple will surely make us think last years ipad is obsolete compared to this years. somewhere someone will trade their 100,000 dollar, year-old  car in for this year’s model because the headlights are cooler. i’ll burn gas going to some place that is remote and feel guilty for supporting a practice that’s raping the world. it’s a heavy trip, that’s for sure. this life is a heavy trip.

for the moment (and i can hear the seconds ticking on the analogue clock in the kitchen) i am in the shining quiet. it’s 4:41 a.m. now. i will think about what i can do to live in a way that allows my soul to hover closer to the older ways. maybe i need to go watch the frost roll in. maybe a few moments with the chickadees bouncing around the mint that’s gone to seed. maybe a little closed-mouth, time in the woods where the madrones stand all red and the mushrooms start to sneak around in the soft, loamy shade.

a list of admissions before dawn

this isn’t an attempt to sound like i’m disciplined; i’m not. i’m not the man my grand dad was and i ain’t the man my dad is and i’m not a harder worker than my kid brother (not even close). all these men have known the morning hours because work has beckoned them. my brother, joshua, builds stuff, like hospitals and medical buildings; my dad works for God, and God likes folks to be at it early; my gramps worked the oil-fields in the early 1900’s. i’m kinda like them all, besides bearing a striking resemblance to them in some ways, i like being up before the sun. sometimes way before the sun, like today. and today i made a list of things that happen before the sun comes around the corner of the world.

-an acorn fell and popped off like a gun shot on the roof of the shed.

-i flailed from a dream where i was with a pretty girl who was explaining that we had a baby together. the baby had little pointed ears and gold eyes and ebony skin and i was doubtful that it was my baby, i glanced at my reflection in a broken out car window (my dreams are often in a war torn setting) and i had pointed ears and gold eyes and ebony skin.

-i groped around in the dark, like every morning, for my headlamp that i last saw on my head when i was reading last night. i found, instead, my copper earring that has been missing for a few days. (and where was that thing, in my sleeping bag?)

-i crawled out into the cold to take a leak. puffs of breath.

-i found my pants in the dark.

-i turned on the shed light. my headlamp was on my pillow. i mumbled, “that figures…” to myself.

-i turned the light back off and stepped out under the freckled universe.

-orion was center-stage, chasing taurus…his never ending hunt. i thought of roger sparks and hunter dahlberg, both sons of that constellation. roger with his son, orion. hunter with the stars tattooed on his body in precise astronomic distribution just as they are on the hunter in the sky.

-the big ursa, that dancing circus bear always circling polaris.

-a screech owl, calling and calling and calling.

-an iron blue horizon, promising cold.

-frost coming on. the grass crackling under my sandals.

-the rooster, letting me know he’s a rooster.

-i make coffee in the camper, humming some 80’s song about the rains in africa.

-i browse the sun magazine while coffee’s brewing. a sad story about someone loving someone who wants to love everyone.

-i think of albert camus from out of nowhere…or maybe out of everywhere.

-i think about how i don’t have what i takes to be an existentialist. i do believe in right now, this moment, but i’m a romantic and love the mystery of maybe.

-i step out with my coffee and it seems darker. i scare a sheep that i thought was a bush and it scares me and i spill some coffee on my wool sweater that has a lot of coffee spills on it. “precious coffee,” i say out loud to myself, “what a waste.”

-i find the shed in the dark.

-i turn on the light and wrap a blanket around my nasty little hooves.

-i chuckle and say something about loving this shit.

-light is coming. orion has fled. my heart is clunking away. the future hangs like an exhibit down a long hallway in the museum, i can’t quite make it out, but it looks interesting. what’ya say we go stand in it and call it now?