miller's crossing

If I hide out at Cold Mountain

Living off mountain plants and berries--

All my lifetime, why worry?

One follows his karma through.

Days and months slip by like water,

Time is like sparks knocked off flint.

Go ahead and let the world change--

I'm happy to sit among these cliffs.

--Gary Snyder, Cold Mountain

Today is a prime number birthday for me. The last time I celebrated a prime was in 2001. (Can you figure out how old I am?) Last time, I was picking tics off my body in northern Wisconsin and bouncing around in my friend's school bus as we scouted the back country for the perfect DJ party setting. The best part was breakfast at a cafe in Eagle River. Greasy birthday eggs and hashbrowns -- YUM!

The labyrinth in the the cathedral of Notre-Dame at Chartres was constructed in about 1200.

I walked a labyrinth modeled on the one in Chartres this weekend. I found it quite provocative as a metaphor for moving through life. My friend Anne-Marie commented to me, "When you think you're close to the end, you're actually quite far; when you think you're far, you're almost there."

I was fascinated about how it wound around, bending here and there. I wasn't too interested in where I ended up, but liked how the view and perspective varied as I moved through it. My imagination was also engaged by how I was moving in relation to other people walking the labyrinth. More on this later.

 

I like March snow. I think March is a month of genesis. Our perceptions of March, however, have everything to do with attitude. More than any other month, I think March is misunderstood, maligned and rejected. I am an advocate for the month of March.

The fridged patch of weather we've had over the past few days is ending. I'm tough, but zero degrees is tougher. Regardless of frozen pipes and frosty breath, the weekend was full and the snow is lovely.

I got in good walking last night. Clear, clear sky and bright stars over the frozen lake. Sunday night quiet streets. Intimate walk with boots crunching snow. Peaceful.

In the end, I was an artful, bar-time Olympian of the Wisconsin winter night. Presented with the yellow, low-slung half-moon rising with diamond Jupiter adorning her crown. I did my best to gracefully accept the honor of such a vision. But I know there's still more training to do.

I'm coming unglued, unhitched, unhinged. I've got that feeling that the ground beneath my feet may not fully be there as I expect it should. Space has more space in it. And there are extra figures and faces lurking at corners, popping up in unusual places.

I'm still feeling solid, though.

There have been tasks to accomplish. While it's felt more difficult than normal, piecing together what needs to take place, things are happening easily. And I've noticed that imaged scenarios -- daydreams and such -- are tedious and lackluster when compared to experiential life. That's really a nice perk, I think.

Is it always the poets who defend their art? Is it only the poets who are saying, "We need poetry"? I have a vision of poets queueing up to take their turn to stand on a soapbox in the middle of the Saturday market in Madison and proclaim to whomever will listen, "You need us." Beseeching among ripe melons and bright flowers, "Listen: We have something for your ears, to soothe you. Something for your mind, to spark you. Something for your heart, to heal you." They will gently intone to the shoppers caressing waxy purple eggsplants, "Listen to us. You may not believe this, but you will be better to pause a moment and consider our words. And then maybe you will join us."

I have no greater literary love than Wittman Ah Sing, the poet/playwright protagonist of Maxine Hong Kingston's novel Tripmaster Monkey: his fake book. He also appears in her Fifth Book of Peace. In my mind, I have dedicated this site to him.

In Tripmaster Monkey, while Wittman is working in the Toy Deparment, he thinks, "So it has come to this." Kingston inserts, "(Lew Welch, the Red Monk, says: now and again, stop and think, 'So it has come to this.')"

Sticking with my New Year's resolution to read more poetry and fiction, I picked up Gary Snyder's Earth House Hold. The first part is called "Lookout's Journal." It's a collection of journal entries from 1952 when he was apparently a lookout in Mt. Baker National Forest. He's in the back country and it's mostly simple observations of nature and of other humans -- voices over the 2-way radio, in diners, etc.

I can't help but wonder whether someone could even experience the same kind of remoteness and the world falling away like Snyder writes about in today's America. How much of the wilderness has been wired and photographed. What's left for a poet to discover?