I hope you have managed to keep up with this maculate inception so far, surely we have reached the innermost of the interesting nestings and may embark on putting Humpty back together again, a Russian doll of this guy’s disguised atrocities who seems hellbent on shedding even more layers as his sweat equity compounds the midday funshine. God I hope I can find all those puzzle pieced plaids I left lying all over the place.
It’s rather nice to be out of the passenger seat and back to steering the pen, I like to let the ink flow freely but those other guys love to color outside the lines, the blank page a canvas of infinite potential and somehow this is all they could come up with.
So then what is the value of getting lost among all these prepositions? Catalogs of the material claim this paperweight worth its mass in trees traded for a few flecks of the golden ratio, but could I believe that any of my fictional fans put stock into such a narrow view of my unabridged volume?
Would it not be a more accurate representation to tax my readers based on the ink splashed to a pulp? A scientifically measured approach that finds slim substance as compared to the compartmentalized chapters of too many pages, not nearly enough gravity to tip the scales but both equally important if I am to define this idea as novel, though I do feel I have done a fine job proving that ink and paper alone do not define an author.
Certainly the cacophony of vocabulary one comes up with should factor in somewhere as Pulitzers are printed out of thin air. But could the terms compose the only crucial component as technological egos bypass tradition and lose touch of their inner voice?
So is it then the holy trinity that makes for great literature? A pageful of blots posing as language hidden in the letters of words forming runaway paragraphs that intricately
sentence their insanity to compile this composite condition. It certainly doesn’t seem like these words alone would do it for you.
An inkwell of cosmic creative juice left unintelligible by design, only through the fountain is it able to pour through the filter of our individual stories, every word ever written wound into one magnificent yarn but with each thin line of thread a masterpiece in its own right. We’re all writing from the same source material, our blank pages all bound by the same format, perhaps a premodern monotony although the real beauty is in what each character chooses to do with their role as they make it their own.
The pen produces a steady flow measured one dew drop at a time with each minuscule dot a brief moment of potential materialized. The autobiographer may think they have an idea what the book’s about but no shortcut can skim past the next literation of spelling errors. Pages fill slowly as eventually you flip back through a life manifest in meaning and discover a handcrafted cursive the conduit of converting moments into time.
The empty fabric of space far from void of purpose. The most vital element of existence creates dimension for flavors of perspective to collide, vast galaxies of nanoscopic detail to coalesce across the open seascape, awkward silence between notes found essential as the breath of life caresses the nuance of good storytelling. And sometimes a blank stare says it all.
The proper utensil instrumental in harnessing the flow of orchestral narration. A lifelong dream developed from one’s elementary understanding up to the big box with a sharpened point and everything. Subtle shades to blend on the palette as a more refined taste guides the menu. The pencil’s hesitation gives way to committed confidence as the puzzle is completed in pen.
Words learned along the way give deeper expression to a mortal voice of vocalized chords. An eternal light pronounced by a limited vocabulary equipped only with a single spark of inspiration and a divine drive of free willpower. But if you’re
not living a book you’d want to read then why would anyone else? The background a stage for prisms to shine. Symphonic collusion broods about behind the scene. The quality of this physical construct and the upkeep of all that God gave you critical to navigating the terms of your publishing contract, especially when all you want to do is give it away for free.
It all sounds so simple when you spell it out as clearly as I have, but even knowing the pitfalls of debut authors doesn’t save you from getting caught up among them. A mid-notebook crisis might break down the pulp while pages begin to fall out prematurely, or the flow of smooth sailing gets clogged as an underused pen dries up, leaving the purely mechanical side of the pencil to jumble together words that may technically make sense but have lost their untranslatable deeper meaning. An abstract obstruction of writer’s block as a player puts the pen to notation instead of simply looking up toward the observant conductor who’s been reading this thing all along.
So then where would you like to go? Or when? You’re free to flip on ahead through this wormhole of false starts and fluid tensity, choose your own adventure and randomly generate a chronology far more coherent than I have, even skip to the last line to get this thing over with only to find the ‘ Aha’ moment fallen flat on its face. Maybe it really is the contextual tension that provides the contrast for profound epiphany.
Don’t look at me, I don’t know how this thing ends yet.
Why I’m just another of the willfully ignorant lost in my own creation so as to fully explore it from the inside to the out, a necessary disconnection in order for me to understand this world from all those other shoes, even if half of them didn’t wear any. Only through a cohesive collage of infinite footsteps could I ever hope to know what it’s like to walk beside myself.
But what I’m really looking forward to is seeing who they pick to portray me as I weave through the other perspectives of this parallel experience. Intertwined melodies continuously bringing the band back together throughout the current lineup, until you zoom out from the balcony and recognize the same players picking their parts across the complete
discography, multi-instrumentalists of the raw potential funneled into their unique roles for every improvised performance of a lifetime.
Each contributor has input as to where they fit into the grand schemer’s dream. The first few jam sessions it makes sense to stick to what you’re good at, but you can only noodle around in your comfort zone for so long before you strive for a higher score. A deep yearning for experimentation discovers unfamiliar territory, an intimidating position to be in as one must relearn the basic mechanics of playing in tune, though once it all clicks into place they are reminded that the entirety of musical theory has been within their blood the entire time.
Every new release comes with tensions to resolve, obstacles to overcome that may sound forced or dissonant when played by themselves, but amid the greater mosaic make perfect sense.
The cosmic composer only qualified for the job once they have mastered each step to the podium, which means they will have sat in every single chair along the way, including yours, otherwise how could they ever have written such a brilliant billion-part harmony? Makes it easier not to laugh at another struggling to keep up, far more self-symbiotic to offer a hand to every stranger encountered and ridiculous to consider that nobody knows how it feels. Bad times can only feel bad in the moment because you’ve done such an incredible job playing along with the band, pretending to be lost amid the chaos of syncopated madness as we approach the ultimate crescendo of destiny revealed.
Now let us just hope that your version of me can piece together an ending at least half as impressive as the one word that could have said it all.
*******
Tacos. Indian tacos. God it’s good to be back on the rez.
The winter abroad was cool and all, but there ain’t no place like home. Spiritual home anyway. Recenter of the universe and calibration station to the stars, galactic charging port of interdimensional exploration for psychoactive cosmonauts off
the deep end, and a bunch of other big words to say what can never be written, welcome to the story of my life.
And we get hella blazed. It should be illegal to have this much fun, though I guess it was until 1978. The fire keeps me connected to this sacred ground as I spread my wings into the world, a way of life intent on being wherever the creator needs me, an invisible invincibility that guarantees my return flight just in the nick of time. It was a turbulent one this trip, but we made it in one piece, right as the ambulance was pulling in.
Harmony, Harvey’s beloved wife, sick enough for some old fashioned western medicine but she’ll survive it anyway, arrived just in time to usher her out and take the next shift of housekeeping, tidied up the lodge and got everything back in order after the cold seasons of unseasoned firekeeps, rounded up the tools and got to wrangling sweatwood.
We’re not opposed to chainsaws and trucks out here, I’ll use both if that’s what the day has provided, but we’re gonna sweat either way and it is up to me to make it happen. I am more than content to scour the landscape with a bow saw, my favorite landscape to scour as my work is not a prerequisite for vacation but rather the perk of my spiritual recreation. Each stroke of the blade digging deeper through uncharted territory as its glimmering smile conveys my true intention to every slice of sacred fire. It’s a lot easier to pass prayer energy through the cathartic handiwork of a convivial tool than over the rumble of modern man’s sheenery. When you’re not in a rush to wind down the clock you find a lot more time that doesn’t pass you by.
Daniel in the sun as I chop through the corded history, these trees have soaked in more prayers than I could possibly dream up as my own Miyagi coaxes out a kindred spirit long suppressed by colonial reformation. Pine cones plucked from the barefoot hillside, lodge pole pines stripped of bark by each mindful swipe at at time, a field full of sage harvested with a song, buffalo hide stretched and scraped as a sacred keystone transforms an instrument of prayer, outhouses of yore broken down and rusty nails bent back into shape.
Harmony’s captors require a ramp up before they will release her on house arrest, I manage a pieced together facade somewhere between cardboard cutout and something custom fit for a throne, from the right perspective even the cats scan the skeleton and sign off on mama’s medical leave. Need a few more nails before I can scratch this one off my list, should be easy enough as I shovel through the remains of an overcooked kitchen, a past life regressed to shambles but not that long ago we circled the stove digging through the ashes.
*******
“A can not get this thing to start for shit, where’s that fire guy when you need him?” Wolf manifested as I walked in the door to prime my morning’s pre-percolated edges.
“It’s my day off,” I tried to convince the boys without near enough conviction to earn myself a few months of free time, October already and we still had a solid crew hanging around for me to entice into helping tuck in the last few rows out at the thunderdome, plus a daily sweat lodge to stir up at 4:21 on the dot.
“C’mon Captain Pants, you know you do it the best, why don’t you just mumble your magic whisper thing and make everything take off for us.”
“I’m gonna take off is what I’m gonna do, go warm up the organic way while you snuggle buddies finish canoodling or whatever it is you’re doing in here, just let me chug some cigs and coffee real quick to get my pilot light going and I’m trying to roll out. Who’s in?”
“Ooh, pick me,” purred CG from his slumber party in the pantry.
“Roll one, you said?” said Crayon with more intentional misinterpretations than the only other bestseller he’d cracked in the last two millenniums, “I can get down with that.”
“C’mon boss, ain’t you got the time for a good chief no more?”
“We don’t even have to report it to management,” offered a plea, “But I guess that’s you anyway, innit? Well, might as well light a fire under our ass and get this party started.”
“You’re pretty much twisted up in our implication by now, should just save yourself the headache and get it screwed on tight.”
“Plus I’ll fry some taters while we hash out the details,”
persuaded CG as he topped off my beat-up cup of super juice, his custom blend of thick brew with an extra shot of instant electrocution, my feigned hesitation fading with every jolt of liquid encouragement.
“Now what are you slackers up to?” Stickman intruded from beyond the plywood walls of our cookshack sanctuary.
“Did I miss the pregame or what do I smell burning in there?”
“Taters are toasted.”
*******
Fond recollections feed the soul as our follow-up season promotes an even more self-reflective style of my eternalized banter. Half the time I’m out here talking to myself with the rest of my redirect aimed at you-know-who, especially during the commonplace pesterment of the paranormal prankster. He may get the occasional last laugh but it’s only with his help that we’ve been able to accomplish all we have, and it’s no embellishment that it took dozens of mere humans to make up for him not being here in person.
I wonder what it’s like from over there, the great cosmic channel surfer flipping around and searching for something of any substance between an endless stream of infomercials and paid-to-play westerns. I feel him here with me, maybe because I talk to him whether he answers or not, maybe because it’s the path most closely aligned with our combined greatest good, maybe it’s just the least dramatic and most interesting thing he could find on.
Reminds me of a stray speculation that what if when you die you get to choose any life you have interacted with to live next? You’d certainly pick an intriguing one, full of whimsical
adventure or great accomplishment, or great love, any number of aspects of spectacle could spark a desire to know a person from the inside out, perhaps the lifelong manager of a carpet store even has a shagbag of secrets worth sharing.
It would be impossible to imagine any inconsequential contribution to the infinite wall of sound, even a humdrum worklife finds fodder for comedic value, a subtle sincerity and choice dialog beats out the box office of action flicks and war stories, but only within the context of a life’s work could any evolution of character translate through the screen.
A sliced splice of a single episode might seem hit or miss given the particulars of daily routine, one could only hope to happen upon the juicy bits but far more often lands on the monotone cadence of documentary, a shell of undevelopment indistinguishable from the next and last.
Past prequels imbed a belief of why we are here, future considerations of reunion convince the viewer to hang in there a bit longer, but neither are now and there’s no guarantee that anyone ever makes it through the day. Our leads might as well make it mean something, act as though it’s their last big break, today’s the only one that ever counts and what better day than this one to go all out. And the big day is simply a bunch of big moments, or insignificant ones I guess, but the more meaning packed into each frame means more depth experienced for everyone involved, and I would imagine a more likely chance that the universal remote invests more time out of their day into yours.
Plenty of hours to contemplate life goals out here, most of this second preseason I’ve spent alone with enough space to figure out a few of the finer details, every calculated handcut fries my desire to stick with the plan, looks good enough to me, nail it. It’s so much cooler in the earthhouse than the outside world, makes it hard to climb out of my lofty comfort into the blistering scorch of callused solitude. The best shape of my life the perk of my morning workout routine, but can’t I just press another cup and workout a few more clues before I dig my brain into the day’s tanning solution, though I do have that diamondback to deal with.
Perched atop the sunny sparkles of a sandpile, six rattles shook the alarm clock, I always lean toward letting go but now understand the chaperone’s desire to avoid a field trip to the hospital. Forever opened to an evolving door through my own beliefs, prepared to shed preconceived notions as a lifetime in motion compiles a greater mystery, though I do have one foot firmly etched in stone, if I kill it then I’m going to eat it.
No time for brunch after my delayed takeoff, so I took off its boots and belt and threw him on ice til dinner, banged out a big batch of mud pies, fled the scene to sweat with the oldies, anticipated midnight delight for a full moon feast of toasted rattlesnacks, perfectly aged twelve hours but that slippery son of a gun was still wriggling around with no head or tail or skin or guts or nothing, badass.
I slathered him up with Sweet Baby Ray’s and just threw the entire thing onto the grill as I slammed the lid shut, half expecting to reopen the case to find his charbroiled backstrap still getting down, instead thoroughly subdued by the smoke out and I should probably eat this thing before he sobers up. A supercharged crimson hung the chandelier and set the mood, quiet contentment interrupted only by the occasional outburst of how awesome this life is as I corn-on-the-cobbed that whole saucy serpent. What better day than today?
*******
“But what about yesterday?” remembered CG, “Didn’t we agree to go feather pluckin today?”
“That’s all you champ,” cheered Crayon.
“What kind of feathers we talking?” asked Stickman.
“Eagle,” Critter confessed.
“Eeeyah!” cried Stickman, “You know that is illegal as shit. But hypothetically speaking, how the hell you gonna sneak up on an eagle?”
“Easy,” gloated the Gitter, “First we gotta kill a deer.”
“This one is fucking hilarious,” howled Wolf, “He’s telling Uncle about his surefire method of catching eagles yesterday, says all you gotta do is climb inside an empty deer carcass and
wait for like an hour, then when a big bird swoops in for lunch you just reach out and grab it by the ankles, easy peasy.”
“No way,” lights up a wide-eyed Stickman.
“But it gets better, so then Uncle is sitting there nodding his head, contemplating the scenario as he looks up and asks,
‘What do you wear for all of this?’ So CG thinks for a minute and just looks himself up and down with assumed insinuation being only his birthday suit. Uncle just shook his hidden grin in shame.”
“Harvey is funny as shit,” melted Crayon, “You don’t even know if he’s listening to whatever is going on until he all of a sudden says something so off the wall that you can’t tell if he’s serious or not, and he won’t give it away until somebody else does, and all while he’s shooting sideways glances at this guy, both of ‘em already in on the joke but determined not to break character while everyone else is left taking notes on some new sacred saying.”
“Spot on,” I concurred with another inside one, “But my favorite was the day he called me a rock stackologist. We were out there looking through our secret stash of sweat stones, he flips them all over a few times and aligns them with the stars or something super sacred like that, he picks one up and puts it right next to his ear, thumps it a good one and listens to the reverb, shakes his head and says ‘Not quite, should be ready next year.’ Super straight faced and cuts his eyes to check on me but I’m already losing it, not my first rodeo so then he says
‘Should be able to get a few of those hippies with that one.’”
“Shit,” shouted Critter, “Here I’ve been thumping them this whole time, no wonder everyone’s been acting like I’m a nutcase.”
“Don’t think that’s it Ace Ventura,” poked Stickman, “But that reminds me, Deeg I got that unborn deer hide halfway into a pipebag already.”
“What’s it?” Critter needed to know the situation.
“You didn’t see that one, huh?” I rhetorically confirmed the contents of his previous appearance before delving into yet another backstrap story.
*******
Often I spend my winter break among friends and family in Carolina, down home folks who knew me before I was an offgrid phenomenon so I know their loyalty isn’t just directed at my walletless lifestyle. Nice to check-in on the various levels of decolonization I’ve had a hand in nudging along, teach the kids another plant or two and share some stories too good to write down, catch up on shows and junkfood with grandma and “All you ever do is sit around doodling in that notebook, just a bunch of circles is all it is.”
It is true though, page after page of compound curves and bulletproof blueprints, a world of material list to round up and free help to corral, lifesize lassos sprawl their upscale mock-up across the yard and of course I must look like a crazy person.
Perhaps a similar absurdity as the natives felt when this new world of architects made plans to square off against nature.
Cornered by efficiency and packed into city blocks, even their own scientists understand the vibration dampening of a brick and mortar energy sector yet insist on scraping the sky of unlimited disconnection fees.
Rivers don’t have corners, they have curves. The organic flows of life run their fingers through the breeze as they find the path of least resistance, stumbling upon the blocks of grids designed to fight against the elements as a flooded stagnation erodes the foundation of towering Babylon. Domes and cones hold up due to their sacred geometry that allows natural cycles to caress their circumference, not simply slam against their wallpapered borders, feng shui flow of energetic intermingling that encourages a circle of tipis to stand strong throughout the fierce Dakota winter.
My flimsy little tent, however, did not weather the storm near as gracefully. I have gotten good at windproofing my nest out west, there is always a pile of collapsed tent poles from previous underestimations, so I hacksaw and duck together an erector set contraption that budges less than I do before my first cup. But this ain’t out there, it is only a little creekside campout for funsies, I don’t even think we need to stake the
thing down. Rumor spreads a tornado warning, we take cover with Grams, nothing ever hits so no worries, how much chaos could the whirlwind’s aftermath possibly blow downstream. It turns out, a lot.
The creek’s grown rageful with desire, hunger to swallow the few remaining materials I claim to possess, my whole tent is halfway down the cascade and dangling by just a thread, the roar threatens to devour my life in one bite, except mainly it’s just stuff. There might be a meticulously manicured collection of roadside attractions and my most mystical mechanisms, a custom curated toolkit of hitchhiking hodgepodge, a traveling apothecary of foraged feel goods, blankets, a knife, some cords, that fur coat Ziggy gave me out of his official Standing Rock memorabilia and oh fuck, my french press.
The current situation is insane, the rush overwhelming as I try to traverse the rope bridge to my tumbling cocoon. I am tethered to a gang of nieces and nephews by a fifty foot noose intended primarily for corpse recovery, but at least I did not waste any time on my free will and testament. The paracord tent strap is about to burst, I unzip the door to toss overboard whatever I can, a bail out to the bank transfers most of it into savings, just one more special item, where is it, oh sweet, my most sacred relic from the end of Eden, minuscule to most but the world to me, no decent pocket and I’ll probably choke if I try to chew it, I’ll just tie it tight to a guy-wire and we should be able to reel this whole pufferfish back to shore after just a few more trips, and then just like that the cold water balloon broke free and windsurfed its way to next Tuesday.
Bummer. I did get most of it wrung out to dry by dark, a swabbed deck of cards might never play the same but I’ll probably win anyway, at least it was a grand adventure worthy of mention in someones future memoir featuring crazy Uncle Deeg. A week of sunny days spent diving for shipwreck and kayaking for fun, tiny toes stumble upon that big metal coffee thingy, and what’s that over there, no way, the tent’s bobbing a foot underwater a mile down, hung up on a sandbank and caught in a limb, and what’s that that’s got it snagged by the end of a single guy-wire? Well would you just look at that…
*******
Critter dangled on the line, prepared to be blown away by my first short story, a condensed can of worms uncluttered by circular reasoning. “But circles are the secret,” he whispered in curveside confirmation, “They keep the flies at bay in a way no paid advertisement ever could.”
“You shoulda seen it this morning Stix,” cried Wolf, “He’s been going all night jacked up on his special juice and turning this place into a sticky trap disguised as a deconstructed bowl of Cheerios.”
“Tasty-O’s,” Crayon edited, “The bottom shelf substitute barely capable of sustaining treaty obligations, already swept off the factory floor once before we walk in this morning and they’re all over the place.”
“Hung up from the rafters like a mobile foodbank of fly fishermen, honey-glued paper plates in concentric formation, the entire table a cereal bar somewhere between calculated madness and intelligent stupidity, how the fuck is more food lying around gonna chase the flies away?”
“Do you see any?” Critter challenged.
That part was true, no flies could be seen, and they had been plentiful not long ago. It was getting colder out so their time was coming either way, but the shack stayed toasty after me and Zig helped get the woodstove and insulation put in the year before, and I’m not one to doubt the power of an off-road radical, but I was all out of spare change to throw into his honey-nutcase defense fund.
“But then weren’t you trying to bring them back with the breath of life?” one of them asked.
“Holaaay,” burst Stickman, “How’d he do that.”
“Pulled a pile out of the sink, presumably drowned, then topped them off with a cigarette ash, said some voodoo words or something and starts slowly breathing on them and blowing our minds.”
“We were all on the edge of anticipation,” retraces Crayon,
“Nobody logically believes anything about this, just another
Critter Confucianism, but we’ve all seen miracles out here and we’re somehow pretty sure he’s gonna manage to pull off the repopulation. Maybe some kind of science about the ashes drying out waterlogged lungs and waking up a paralyzed flight crew, he’s huffing and puffing and whispering sweet nothings and then it happens.”
“Did they actually come back to life?” a shocked Stickman defibrillates.
“Fuck no, he tried to jiggle them to wiggling and spilled them all over the choreographed countertop of the no fly zone, but at least now he had to clean all that shit up.”
“I nearly had ‘em, I can try again if ya’ll want.”
Objection circulated the morning’s agenda and prompted me to resume the future recollections of my own attempted resurrection.
*******
Memories of collapsible keepsakes stir emotions of my current lesson of humility, the rez is good for that, especially the sticklers of tradition who put you in your place when you obviously ain’t from around here. The lodge humbles you and melts off the ego that tends to build up when you’re forced to survive the dystopia of the colonized man’s world. Even I get sucked into big talking when I want my voice heard over the engineering marvels of the mechanical maniacs.
Out here it’s not that same schematic that draws you in, you gotta bring it down a notch and listen closely if you want to catch the drifting pendrops of knowledge, Harvey’s quiet cadence commands your full attention as another beat passes by. It takes a few years of figuring it out to make the most of his indirection, he’s not one to demand action, except maybe from his most dependable fuckup, instead his advisement is delivered by a bundle of previous experience meant to spark your own interpretation of getting up off your ass and doing something.
Every Sun Dance season comes complete with its own set of trials and tribulations, even the trip to get here can be an
obstacle course, the trick is not to make the same wrong turn twice and to remember that the destination is but a dead end, the struggle is why we’re even here. Those at home wonder how our vacation went, the festival of daylight and jitterbug perfume, kinda like when grandma asked if I had fun on my Standing Rock campout, ummm, yeah I did as a matter of fact.
This whole earthhouse thing has given as both the space for me to hang around ceremony even longer, I get to keep my dried-up comedy act over at Harvey’s and I have this fallback shelter to remind me of how much fun all this hard work can be, so much so that I’ve lost track of the timeline that brought us together in the first place.
Oh yeah, JD had just dropped me on the west coast with a social justice league of superfriends, the outside roommates hesitant of my undefinite rentless agreement, but once I have unpacked my baggage and entered the garden I tend to carry more than my weight in manure. Prayer vibes contagious as the first dance of quarantine approaches, should be time to circle back soon as I gift a hunk of field-tested organite and gain a LifeWater filter, fairy farms call for heady lettuce and a sick relative on the rez secures my ill-timed departure.
One of my closest water buddies with his lesser known ladyfriend, seems his Uncle Robert is not doing so hot but our overheated engine stalls a spread of outbroken motormouths, a man by the title of owner stops to make sure we ain’t Antifa, otherwise we’re welcome to cool off where the cattle cross up shit creek. Not the last roadblock as a vulnerable tribe looks after their own, a long history of government desistance and intentional epidemic, but they have had five hundred years of getting poisoned to practice socialized medicine, good thing I had a real-life native to afford free passage across the border.
I always feel late to the homecoming even if I’m sure to be first to arrive, so much to do in preparation of getting ready, so it’s nice when a carful of coincidence reminds me that I’m already where I’m headed, does seem to happen pretty much every time. That preseason’s intersection was crosswired in Wyoming, I’d never been but it was a beautiful rearview as we made a quick detour to visit her mom, who seemed somewhat
familiar though through my busted perspectacles everybody looks about the same, until we both realized that two books ago we’d traveled an entire chapter together from the parking lot steak-out to a concert in the hills, just wait until Unci finds out.
Which leaves me reminiscing that same season spent with Ziggy and the forming of a cardboard portfolio containing my most sacred sense of belonging. “You take care of these and they’ll take care of you,” Stickman had assured my wingtipped insecurity, but it’s hard enough to keep up with myself out in the concrete jungle, what kind of fly-by-night shaman would entrust me with the keys of an uncaged paradise? But he was right, I am blessed to live a looked-after way of life, a yellow prayer tie further protects my East-facing doorway, my camp untouched by malfeasance even after I alluded to the ranger that he might not want to ruffle the paperwork involved in my pillowcase.
This year’s migration was turbulent though, must have shaken loose my Eastern medicine as you-know-who guided the way, an offering well worth the two years of relocations I’d wrapped into it. So no gatekeeper to stand guard, and off I go to the mud hut with my drum and stick, but for some reason opt to leave the rest of my prayer instruments at base camp. I sing up a storm for the safety deposits of our agate warehouse, electrostatic particles flood the sage-filled airways as tangled plotlines of straw solidify the foundation of a second backstory, but my return to center brings me only bad news, I’ve been burgled.
A fresh pack of Spirit and my spiritual toolkit have flown the coup, a tough stew to chew on but a grounded flight lands it all upon my shoulders, I could have finished installing the security system, or could have packed everything of the most important, or I could have not grown so complacent in my spiritual gluttony and passed the smudge bowl around more frequently. Either way it was a lesson hard learned, especially considering the priceless artifacts of a felonious monk.
*******
“So do you wanna shed some layers and pluck a few strings?” offered Critter.
“No thanks bud, I will earn my stripes the old fashioned way,” I resisted the visual best I could, “Besides, our trusty narrator should be pulling in any minute for his first future flashback of recapping whatever it is this chapter has been about.”
“Should be done with the last row of bags by week’s end, innit?” overestimated an underachiever.
“Well, if we are this close to the edge of my wise words then I just have one last request.”
“What’s that Critter?”
“Would you tell us about this damn deer baby already?”
“Oh yeah, huh?” I retracked my fine-point pensmithing for posterity’s sake, “So, I’m still back East in the colony and eager for a roadkill surprise to rebuild my sense of normalcy when I have a dream of a fallen doe. Then the next day I get a call-in order of curbside venison but I’m too late on the scene to save her from the big broiler in the sky, but she kinda seems a little too bloated to be true. An ocular patdown provides all the improbable cause for a complete autopsy, a post-mortem C-section to be more exact, I could feel little Bambi just a day underdone and rushed her into emergency surgery just in case.
No-go on the revival effort but this tender little morsel had the most beautiful fur no one’s ever seen, speckled print that sparkled in its debut glance of sunshine, county morgue was already on its way for mama so I weighed the evidence and fled the scene, no way could I let this tiny guy’s sacred gestation go to waste.
A pinch of tobacco and a few songs later finds me back at grandma’s house for another clandestine disrobing, my time dogsitting Timpselah had provided a similar raccoon tale, an old pop box taped tight and labeled ‘DJ’s Stuff, Do Not Open.'
That’ll teach the kids to ever doubt me again when they face off with a promised bag of brains, but the weird part is who in their right mind would choose a homeless hitchhiker to watch their dog?
So none of this is news to anyone but my grandma, she would lose her shit if she knew what I was up to, luckily she’s oblivious to pretty much everything and couldn’t hear herself think even if she tried. So I’m tucked into the outbuilding, just hidden enough to stretch the hide for another sentence or two, while everyone else is all eyes and giggles at our little secret.
That’s crazy Uncle Deeg for you.”
“How precious.”
*******
Yum, deer burgers, plus alligator and wild pig, I mix ‘em all up together and call it the Alabama Swamp Monster, got a cooler full of fun games and I’m ready to get to work. Behind the wheel again as our threads of straw interlace, hopefully he has worn out another set of rags by now and I am currently engaged, if that helps chart this flow of impediment. I try to keep up with traffic without thinking too much about how I could know the story I’m about to tell, seems to work fine for him so how hard could it be, especially considering it hasn’t happened yet.
We’re now nearing the end of season one, my first foray into Earthmanship as the final bags fall into place, should be able to finish by week’s end. There is a whole crew of good fellas working out of the preheated cookshack at the Sundance grounds, DJ’s used to being the last man standing but no one else wants to be the first to leave, and now rumor has it there’s an extra seat headed to Asheville for ceremony and they could use a semi-legendary firekeeper to light the way. Too good not to consider, never feels like the right time to leave but could be the last flight before winter, I’ll imagine he ends up taking it.
Probably four of them packed into a stop and go rez car, scrubbing breaks and a bum fuel pump, luckily there is a couple of shady tree mechanics stowed away. Intermittent pitstops pave the way to a snowy zone of short-term parking, frigid phalanges crumble like little liquid nitrogen bananas, but they finally get that finicky clip clopped and no more stopping til Appalachia.
Until now, DJ had never broken into a sweat community in Asheville, but six hours late they roll up a midnight meeting and he hops on the pitchfork for a homecoming of sunrise fire detail. One lodge down and then across town for another, then another, the main event a solo on the hill but our boy cradled the flame and kept the lifeline lit. Assistant to the fire chief on this one, thought he knew his stuff but this other guy blew out all the candles, the temperatures of timbers and ceremonies accordingly, and the way he made the incinerator hum will forever change DJ’s finite understanding of what firekeeping’s all about.
A few days of no sleep and enough cigarettes to make up for it had him feeling some kind of way, or perhaps it was the triple shot of Folgers finest he superbrewed to keep his team’s consciousness aware, either way he was ready to crash out at a friend’s before he found himself at yet another sweat lodge, completely unconnected from the previous week’s fate-filled faith frenzy, we can even call it a totally random occurrence if you’d believe that.
He is particular about who he will sweat with, so new age facsimile of ancient wisdom will suffice, if you don’t Sundance then he don’t tango, so when he heard the rumor that the lead singer was Harvey’s relative he jumped at the chance to get a family friendly tune-up. Enough of a coincidence to consider himself on track, but then further realizations uncovered that the Lakota woman pouring lodge was the mother of a dearly deceased friend, a Water Protector he’d grown close to, even left camp to bury his auntie who he also called mom.
Yep, DJ was one of the four who dug her sister’s frozen grave, also good buddies with her son, who shared a name and kindred spirit with his newborn nephew, who seemed unable to take his wide eyes off that grody hat, and then her trusted helper happened to be a descendant of the very medicine man who he is committed to serve. Now that was a pretty good one.
*******
Yeah it was. Four lodges in a week at home when I hadn’t known any before, and that whole knotted web of interrelated correlations was enough to make even me count out my lucky charms. This magically deciduous backdrop sets the stage for a deeper exploration, a distant look through time and space reveals a galactic web of origin stories that literally resembles a microscopic view into our own cellular tissue. As above so below, it is almost as if we are the individual cells of a much larger entity, and of course we are all integral components of our Mother Earth’s operating system. I’ve run that one into the ground as I believe us to be her white blood cells frothing forth to keep the world turning, so might we be just a nested fragment of the role she’s assumed on a stage far grander than we could ever even know exists?
The entirety of the universe too vast to conceptualize, the study of subatomics perpetually digging deeper, it seems to appear as though existence is but a spectrum, much like the sliver of sound waves we’re tuned to feel or the unrefined taste of a rainbow limited to Mr Biv’s eight pack. There is so much more out there, and up there, I fully believe that the Earth is sentient from her perspective of time and space, so why would I assume that her story is all that matters when it is obvious that she is but a cell of a galaxy who is but a cell of an even greater map of the stars?
When we turn the telescope inward we discover the same vastness of empty space as well as a similar complexity to the outermost reaches of our ability to conceive. An introspection of the bigger picture that suggests a story within a story within a story, perhaps a tiny universe at the core of our own being, but would you believe that all those tiny universes putting you together are somehow also the same massive universe that composes all of us into one?
The mental gymnast easily tangled by such a paradox, how could the entirety of creation be wrapped into the tip of a fingernail that turns out to only be a matrix dot of the same fractalized creation blown into proportion? There is only one logical conclusion if you can stop to not think about it, you are the universe, the universe is you, every single step down to
singularity is simply the universe personified through your unique perspective of what it’s all about.
A lot to wrap your head around as all those tiny dots connect this plane of existence to the projectionist of another, but we can even use the limited science of our monkeymen to better grasp that which is designed to be misunderstood. A living planet too much to fathom for many great thinkers, though intelligent life on Earth widely accepted at fact among even the least academic, every living organism made of the exact same minerals as the globe with every microscopic cell containing not only the entirety of the organism’s program, but the future of a species, of an ecosystem, a spiralbound blueprint blooming an acorn into a forest. The acorn is not likely to proclaim sentience even with such exquisite taste in headwear, so instead we believe ourselves to be the epitome of evolution, and understandably so if you consider our ability to dissect and categorize the material world down to the twisted threadwork that makes us so awesome.
Every cell encoded with all of our deepest secrets, but also with a specialized individuality, each separated cell vital to our organized anatomy, both capable of autonomous reproductive rights and universal healthcare, stem cells on standby as their great creator sends the signal and determines where they are needed for the good of the plenty. We are the ones in charge of all those little pieces of us, we are the ones who feel sick when something has gone haywire, the nervous tics of systematic mechanism relieve us of having to sweat the small stuff while trusting that we will survive the night without skipping a beat.
Still don’t think our planet has much personality? Okay, but it is getting hard to deny the concept of each little living component of a far greater being being somehow the entirety of that same greater entity. Not a drop in the ocean, but an ocean in a drop. Each species an organ from this expanded level of perception, summoned by the Earth herself to meet a need along her own orbital evolution. It’s miracle enough to conceive a bodily system of involuntary flexing, but the most enlightened of us manage to consciously meditate the growing pain away.
But all that is just a nutshell floating around in a bowl of cosmic soup, everything that ever was, all at once, inside every little bit of it, a container of limited capacity keeps us focused on our current task at hand while our higher self has the space to picture the big painting.
We’re each also that same artist with a zoomed-in eye for detail, we possess the same faculties of design and hold within ourselves the inherent ability to sculpt our own masterpiece as we see fit. The ceiling of our Earthly experience is up to us, we can look away from the fingerpaint of our all-knowing author as Adam becomes lost in the grand illusion, or we can choose to explore the brushstrokes behind the scenes of our creator’s most ultimate cowabunga. We are the sea of creative juice that shapes the world around us, maybe just a speck, but with such a spectacular field of electric connectivity, our mind manifests matter that enters the inventory of this made-up material.
Your thoughts construct your own reality, from placebos to hypochondriacs we know it to be true even from the archaic view of modern medicine. Whether you want to change your life or change the world, the very first step is to change your perspective of what it all means to you. And try not to get hung up on all the bad stuff, the energy expelled against an unwanted pipeline of illness only adds more fuel to the fire, the alchemical adventurer knows instead to direct their sails towards the opposite pole of their nemesis, don’t fight the power of a pushy past but design a destiny with a feel-good ending. The whole universe is cheering you on but only you can step into the hero’s journey.
A nearly infinite catalog of record-bending experience, each unique vibration carved into the black vinyl substrate of assumed nothingness, round and round spin the cycles of life through planetary alignments and darker sides of the moon, but every time the tough get going they find light around the corner and realize they’ve grown one groove deeper into the revolution, closer and closer to their inevitable collision with their own centralized source of gravity.
Just as the lightening storm spreads information updates through a mycelial network of our planet, these same synaptic
impulses flood our mind’s eye as our co-created manifestation swirls through an intricate web of synchronicity. The closer you pay attention to the intentions you set into motion, the more obvious it will become that you’re in exactly the right place to get there.