Ogling Penny, Broken Rainbows & Love with Arthur Lee...

At ten minutes past four in the morning, an image of Penny Scout stands just to the left of the center of his monitor screen and directly in front of a strangely compact and quite new looking teepee. She’s wearing a simple form-fitting white cotton wife-beater and tiny little tan shorts and what might be moon boots and an oversized leather belt and she leans in a hip-cocked manner which suggests that - however her whole rewilding work is going - she still understands herself to be a desirable young woman. For the Farmer who is seated before the glow of the display – earthy reputation as forager and hillbilly and half-hearted Luddite notwithstanding – any real interest in the writing she's attached to her photo stops at those hips and those tanned legs and those other parts which are so hard to ignore. While he’d like to claim that he’s evolved beyond basic animal desires and that – being a bon vivant thoroughly schooled in all of culture’s graces – he’s moved beyond the low-brow habits of common oglers, he can’t make such a claim with a clear conscience. And he excuses and rationalizes all of this by telling himself that – if Ms. Scout really wants the world to dial itself back toward a more primitive time – she’d be okay with being ogled and would understand that man’s most primitive drive generally suffocates all of his cultural affectations and high-minded pretensions any time that he finds himself confronted by the frank and - to his way of thinking - suggestive image of a healthy female recently arrived at the peak ripeness of womanhood.

In the ruddy sky of just before dawn, Pablo coasts to a stop at a pair of lowered railroad crossing barriers and talks about the float tube which he purchased at a neighborhood garage sale but which he’s never gotten around to using. He’s just finished explaining his concerns with wearing flippers into a wilderness lake when I interrupt him to point out the broken rainbow stumps which curve up into the clouds to the north and to the south of the level intersection like spectral towers sewn from iridescent fabric. Watching the guard arms lift and the red lights flash beneath the black-and-white crossbuck and hearing the warning bell clanging and feeling the economy car which they’re riding in accelerate away, the Farmer imagines them in a celestial chariot drawn through some dimensional gate by smoke-breathing tungsten stallions. And then – as the man on the radio mentions something about the dissolution of the Nepalese monarchy – just as quickly and unexpectedly as the luminous arch footings materialized, they dissipate in a stiff breeze and the onrush of heavy grey raindrops.

He stands in the midst of the garden in the late afternoon with a green water hose in his left hand and a glass of Austrian Furmint in his right. Placing his thumb over the tarnished brass mouth of the rubber serpent, he sends a scattered fan of water droplets far out over the wide ranging beds and bushes and fruit trees which dot the back lot. Everywhere the plants are thirsty and struggling: clove currants, goji berries, autumn olives, yuzu ichandrin, even the hardy sea-buckthorns want for water. A starling squeezes through the attic vent on the north side of the house and launches into the air as a confident high-diver into deep blue water. In the tall grass of the yard next door, the neighbor's tomcat stalks their toddling puppy only to pounce upon his soft yelping form as it would upon a common rat. But – out of all the creations to which his gaze drifts – it is the needle-blossomed head of the globe artichoke which demands his steady attention, its sharp spindles as vivid in the angled light as the electric purple yarn work of some hard-tripping, peyote-chomping, artistically-gifted Huichol shaman.

He comes back inside late at night – after the tinder-dry beams and old-growth trusses of Mas des Rigolos cease their ping-and-creak shedding of the heat they’ve accumulated during another hot summer day – and settles down to a bowl of leftover cassoulet, a stale heel of pumpernickel, and a carafe of iced water. Khiva the Boxer sits at his feet and waits to clean whatever is left in his master’s bowl. Finished with another long stretch of hard work and home work, the Farmer de Ville lays back in his parlor and puts on a vinyl album by his favorite 1960’s band Love and finds himself mesmerized – to an even greater degree than usual – by the velveteen vocal style of frontman Arthur Lee, by the brassy punctuation of the trumpets and slide trombones, by the fluidity a song entitled You Set The Scene, by the feelings that are brought into clarity through the medium of that old LP record.

It takes only moments before he surrenders to himself, until he permits all his experiences –the inspirations and desperations of his day, the tightness and bone-deep weariness of his body, the hollowness arising in the stead of an intimate companion, the hopeful tenderness of the music – to coalesce into a single sensation, into a emulsified emotional ablution which runs over him like warm salt water, at once soothing to his aches and stinging to his wounds. He is tired, half asleep when he catches his own whisper to himself – “If I had a good woman with me right now, I’d run my arm around her shoulder, draw her in tight, ask her to sleep next to me out in the yard beneath the Big Dipper and the other sparkling stars, make her promise she’d never ever take our time together lightly, that she’d never ever forget that connections such as ours are indescribably rare and perfectly beautiful and hopelessly transitory and that soon enough – if we didn’t pay attention to each instant – we’d find ourselves frail and elderly, awaiting the darkness afraid to be loved and to risk loving, abandoned by the bright sight of our youth, blinded to the rich experience we knew when we held each other’s beauty in our embrace, fallen into numbness, desiccation and flaccidity, retreated irrevocably from all those treasures of the past which made passion manifest with our flesh, unable to recall the brief – and too often carelessly discarded – joy of two bodies and two minds and two hearts united.”

Abiqua Creek = My Little Ganga...

Sitting in the cab of the Westy in the dustbowl driveway of Mas des Rigolos – recently returned from an afternoon picking and casting up in the hills – I looked my ridiculously no-nonsense buddy Straw Hat square in the eye and repeated the same thing I felt like I’d said a dozen times since we pulled off the gravel and back onto Crooked Finger Road.

“What I’m trying to explain to you is that from its headwaters down to its confluence with the Pudding River, it's a sacred creek to me. And I feel particularly blessed and purified when I hike up into that amphitheater and see the cascading water of the Abiqua and the columnar basalt rearing up into the roots of those big oaks and catch the sunlight scattering on the surface of a wide splash pool the color of crushed green opal. Most times, when I step in there it seems like I’ve stepped onto the banks of the Jordan, like I’ve just reached the end of the trail at Gangotri. It is the most spiritually charged portion of my personal geography.”

And he looked right back at me and replied without a hint of emotion betrayed in his voice or in his expression.

“I just don’t understand why you all gotta make so much of a fuss outta everything. I mean there’s a rusty ol’ car down in one of them pools and there ain’t a trout in there longer’n six inches or so. And what was up with all them dead crawdads everywhere? It’s just a damn crick – we got dozens of ‘round here.”

Hours later – as Straw went to work lighting the hibachi with what looked to be a half-gallon of scented lamp oil – I couldn’t help but bring the conversation to César and Pradeep while they dragged watering cans around the back lot in an effort to save the browning blueberry plants. I suppose that I was hoping for a more receptive audience for what was – to me – a meaningful subject.

“You see, there is an energy all along the Abiqua - especially where it falls down in that big cirque of rock - and to the water as it swirls and runs into riffles and deep pools. Whenever I’m in that water it feels like everything negative has been washed away from me and when I’m standing at the edge of that bank it feels like the culmination of a pilgrimage and I guess I just believe that there is an experience that I have in that place and in the presence of that creek which nourishes me somehow.”

They both looked at me as though dumbfounded and unable to make sense of the ramblings of a suddenly strange and slightly unbalanced man who insists upon speaking to them in an obscure dialect of gibberish.

“Pradeep, you at least should understand the concept of sacred rivers. How many thousands of Hindus worship at the banks of the Ganges every year?”

At this, Pradeep’s expression changed from confusion to a semblance of shock.

“Boss, please be excusing me for my presumption, but you are talking of an ordinary little creek which travels just a few dozen kilometers and which no one is particularly worshipping. The Ganga is a mighty river which runs for more than two thousand kilometers. It is holding holy for millenia and makes life possible for so many millions of humanity. If you will forgive me for my frankness, there is no comparison to be making.”

Crouched low to soak the base of a Sea Buckthorn bush, César nodded his head in a kind of mute agreement. From the far side of the patio, Straw – who had been listening in as he massaged cracked pepper and herbs into the farm-raised buffalo steaks which he was about to place on the grill – hollered back to my young Tamil WWOOF’er.

“Hey kid, don’t ya go lettin’ ‘em fill your head with a buncha crap. Stick to your guns and you’ll be a helluva lot less confused for it.”

By this point, I found myself wishing that Straw would just keep out of it. After having my feelings dismissed by three different people, I was getting fairly irritated that no one seemed to appreciate what I was trying to say. And that led me to blurt out something which seemed to sum things up in my head, but which I will probably have to apologize for later.

“Let me put this to you in a different way, guys. I’m sure that there are a great number of western people who travel to Varanasi or to Haridwar or to Calcutta and come away thinking that the Ganges is nothing more than an open sewer filled with every nasty kind of organic and inorganic pollutant there is. Do you think that those people would view the Ganges as a ‘sacred river’ or as something which is imbued with ‘sacred energy’ of some kind? The answer is no. Those people would probably have a great deal of trouble with the reverence that so many seemingly blind Hindus pay to such a nasty crap and corpse clogged waterway. Would you agree?”

Several things happened successively after I left my question hanging for someone to answer. César whistled in a way which suggested that he thought I’d just dropped a stink-bomb. Straw Hat lifted the lid to the insulated cooler and asked if anyone would like to shotgun a beer with him. And for the first time since he’d been living at Mas des Rigolos, Pradeep looked genuinely pissed-off. He took half a minute to respond, but finally replied in a very curt tone.

“I suppose that is making some kind of sense.”

Part of me felt badly for being blunt, but I continued in the direction I’d intended to go.

“But you see, those people aren’t looking at things from the angle that a Hindu pilgrim does, they aren’t looking at the Ganges as a river which arises from a pristine source, as a river around which the mythic identity of an entire people have been wound, as a river which brings sustenance to each and every inhabitant of the entire Gangetic plain. And in failing to approach things from that angle, they miss the point. Am I right?”

Still curt, Pradeep acknowledged what I wanted him to acknowledge.

“Yes, I am thinking that would be right.”

As I reached into the sloshing ice to grab a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, I made my last stab at a point.

“So, all I am saying is that I look at the Abiqua from a different angle than you and César and Straw and pretty much anybody else might. When I stand on the banks or swim in the current, I think of the time when my Grandpa Floyd took me to its gurgling source at the base of Sweet Springs Butte, of the pure water which filters down and across the foundation of the canyon, of the native cutthroats and brick-shelled crayfish that thrive at every bend and pool, of the life and vigor which that beautiful little creek brings to the gentle corner of land upon which I was born and grew and have been blessed to exist. And when I look at it from that angle, taking into account my understanding of the Abiqua from start to finish, I experience it as something emotional and spiritual and every bit the inspirational equal of those sacred rivers with run through the lives of other peoples and other lands.

There was nothing more for me to say. I placed the tip and the short-trimmed nail of my index finger underneath the aluminum tab ring and pulled it up and in toward me. There was a wet hiss and a sharp crack and a delicate white ring of foam bubbling up from the open can. And I tilted my hand and my head and my beer back in unison and took a deep bitter swallow and I walked off alone toward the house.

The Promise of Thimbleberry Jam...

Sometime back in late January – at least it seems like it was around that time – I made the announcement to my friend K. that this summer would be one of jams and jellies, that I would invest an unprecedented amount of time into foraging the local hills for blue elderberries, red and black huckleberries, service berries, purple salal berries, thimbleberries and wild alpine strawberries, that I would cultivate new expertise in the world of hot water baths, mason jars, brass lids and sweet preserves. In the downtime between chanterelles and morels, it seemed like such a hobby would be a great way to fill my free time. And yet – so far – I’ve not managed to make any progress toward the realization of those optimistic plans. Between my unending flow of real life responsibilities as a reluctant traveling professional, a recent pitched three week battle with poison oak rash, the rise to the forefront of many fishing related activities, an extended state of melancholy which preceded and followed the anniversary of Cesca’s death, and – of course – the ever rising cost of feeding the tank of the gas glutton which is my rusty orange Westfalia Camper – my wicker foraging basket hasn’t been filled in months.

Months ago, it felt as though there would be a great deal of time for all of the projects which imagination could conjure. And yet the brisk pace of time’s passage is now an issue for me. While time is distinctly on the side of traditional preserves once they’ve been sealed and placed away, time is most definitely not on the side of the distracted forager who struggles to get out into the wild and harvest the ripe fruit from which those preserves are made. Summer in the hills and mountains is a finite window and within that finite window is a brief stretch of time when the sunshine and the soil and the springs and the morning dew conspire to bring a teetering balance of sugar and acidity into the swollen juicy flesh of those Cascade berries whose current state is complete mystery to me. While I know that there were button-sized blossoms on the road cut strawberry runners just a few weeks ago and that the bland little salmon berries were beginning to ripen shortly after that, I have no clue as to what is ready to pick in the woods this afternoon.

Perhaps what I am experiencing right now – the core problem which is keeping my basket empty – is a mild case of contamination by one of modern humanity’s many flawed expectations, by the egocentric belief that the natural world orbits my species, that it will produce what I desire when it is desired, that existence is ordered around my schedule and my commitments and my workday concerns. I’ve not been vigilant enough and have been entertaining these expectations – to however small a degree – and may be missing opportunities to stock my pantry with the delicious bounty of the western forests as a result. This afternoon – locked down by a heartbreak of mundane errands – I can’t be in the places where the wild berries of my imagination straddle their highwire of ideal ripeness and burst with the flavors of their native terroir and beg me to listen carefully to what their schedules and their commitments and their concerns demand. Sometime soon, I’ll compose myself and renew my commitment to walking the arboreal paths I need to walk, to participating in activities which keep me in tune with the backwoods, to carving out at least some small chunk of solitary foraging time, to setting safely aside – with regularity – as many of the hollow promises of modern life as I can in an effort to keep alive and vital and unsevered the invisible umbilical cord which connects my body to the fertile rhythms of the green womb of Cascadia.

That and I’ll make thimbleberry jam…

Backyard Siestas & The Depths of Dream Life...

As I awoke into that captivating dream which was a life in itself, I found that I’d become a distinguished older man possessed of a large collection of colorful empty cookie and coffee tins which I used to store souvenirs from other dreams. Their illustrations were done in hues and tones as bright as dancing newspaper flames of jade green and cobalt blue and sanguine red and canary yellow. Each night in the dream – before drifting off into sleep – I would rattle the cans and listen to the sounds of the remnants and reminders of past fantasies clinking and clanking and making their own kind of music and after that music fell silent I would stack the cans neatly upon my parlor shelves and consider my experience of the dream which I did not yet know to be a dream.

But it was not just me and the tins passing time inside that dream. There was also a woman who was dear to me, an artist who looked like Frida Kahlo and who painted like Frida Kahlo and who was married to – but not in love with – a man who closely resembled Diego Rivera and who wore lovely flowing dresses and lumpy coral necklaces like Frida Kahlo might have and who was – despite all the superficial similarities – not Frida Kahlo. And without fail this woman would sit in the same shady spot out on my veranda during the long days of the summers of the dream and would sip a cup of mahogany tea with a terrier seated at her feet and she would hum a tune that would make me want to kiss the back of her neck and we would have wonderful garden parties in the evenings of the dream - languid and relaxed parties overflowing with intimate friends of all persuasions who would stand in small groups beneath a web of paper lanterns and share the stories of their own lives within dreams which they did not yet know to be dreams - and after the guests would leave or pass out or sneak off into the shadows, the me that was older and the she that was younger would retire upstairs to the mattress and we would move toward one another and our lovemaking would be slow and unhurried and considerate and emotional.

Each day of the long years preceding the sudden end of the dream, I would arise with the roosters of the yard and would bathe myself and would shave my chin and would part my hair with a comb and would dress in my double breasted suit with a folded handkerchief for the pocket and a flower from the peony bush pinned onto my lapel. I enjoyed the mornings of those years and as I awaited the sure arrival of the woman and her husband, I always filled a galvanized metal watering can and drenched the potted spider orchids which lined the front porch of the house which I called my home. And without fail that familiar couple would appear down the sidewalk at just before breakfast time – he with his cane and she with her cigar – and they would approach me – he with his knowing smile and she with hers – and shortly after they’d stepped through my doorway, I would steal away with the woman to the kitchen where she would rub my shoulders as I breaded and fried slices of fatback and - after a few minutes - her husband would join us and would peck her on the cheek and would wink quickly in my direction before strolling back home to take care of his own affairs.

Thus it went on for years until early this morning when I awoke and arose again within the dream and – ignorant of what was about to occur – passed one last time through it’s patterns, passed through one last day filled with the scent of white gardenias and the delicate songs of wrens and the soft sunshine of ceaseless summertime, passed through fantastic hours whose insubstantial memories disappeared – like those of so many others – into the cookie and coffee tins on my parlor shelves. Late morning found me laying within the embrace of the other man’s wife listening to stories of her childhood within a dream which she did not yet know to be a dream. During warmth of the early afternoon, I took a kind of siesta – just like always – and read my favorite periodical near the woman as she sipped her cup of mahogany tea with that same terrier seated at her feet and hummed the same sweet tune she’d always hummed. And then – unaccountably early – evening arrived just as I was dressing for our garden party and there came with it an unexpected knock at the door and I went to answer the door and I collapsed under a crushing weight and I could not find the breath beneath my ribs and I felt myself tumbling into the black and heard the pleas and sobs of the woman as through a heavy blanket and I fell through the darkness and emerged back into the light and into confusion.

Though dizzy and disoriented – after a second or two – that confusion passed and I managed to open my eyes and I saw the mature artichoke plants reaching toward the baby blue sky and I felt the hot July sun upon my bare chest and I heard the sound of an ambulance racing down the straight stretch of Pine Street and I realized that I was laying on a cotton quilt in the middle of the backyard of Mas des Rigolos. Suddenly my hand felt my beard and my eyesight lit upon the fine black hairs of my forearms and the unfinished tattoo on my left foot and I found my bearings and remembered where I was and where I’d returned from and that I was not yet old and that it was only a dream that had ended and nothing so substantial as myself and I recalled that barely a half-hour earlier – before the dream had come and gone – I’d agreed to take Pradeep fishing for bluegill at a pond outside of town. And just a moment later – as I turned to face the back door of the house – I noticed my young protégé standing behind me with his graphite rod and his spincasting reel and heard him state impatiently – “My dear friend, if your nap is nearly over, we certainly should be going about this fishing business…”

The Mas Des Rigolos Manifesto...

I followed a serpent through the garden this evening and watched with fascination as his shifting belly dance cut like flowing water through the tall golden oats. I take it as a positive sign – one of fertility and health – that this striped black Garter snake inhabits the vegetable beds and unkempt grassy tussocks which grow outback of my kitchen window. In an increasingly poisoned world where so many green gardens and deceptively fecund rural farmsteads bathe in a chemical soup which permits only the existence of the most limited and ordered and antiseptic forms of flora and fauna, I view the presence of the serpent as symbolic of the vigor and vibrancy of the small chunk of earth which it is my privilege to steward.

In a world which is increasingly bowed before toxic forms of sanitation and unnatural selection, I choose to celebrate the crawling things and the useless weeds and the forgotten fruit of my forebears. Tucked into a modest space between the larger fields of grass seed farmers and the manicured flower beds of average American families, the compact sprawl of my homestead is a barely cultivated riot of leaves and winding tendrils and lurid blossoms whose chaotic beauty is lost on many of the "normal" folk. Though I don't mind leaving the masses a bit confused, if I decide to give them the benefit of some clarification – as I've considered doing – I’ll have my friend artist friend Yogi gather his brushes and paint a wooden yard sign outlining the principal tenets of what I think of as the Mas des Rigolos Manifesto for all the sidewalkers to see.

And it would say something similar to:

Behind this fence there are blood-sucking mosquitoes and scurrying mice, looping sparrows and fragrant spearmint, finger-staining mulberries and rotting dinner scraps, starburst daisies and dried-up dogshit, untrained grapevines and twining chokeweed.

Behind this fence there are occasional gatherings of crazies who don’t believe in the gospel of chemistry, potlucks attended by godless pagans and natural Christian mystics, midnight bonfires where – unseen to your sleeping eyes – your neighbors dance naked and propitiate the spirit of Terra Madre and howl at the moon.

Behind this fence there are bushes and trees and vines which grow wildly through the imposition of gentle guidance without strict restraint, through a regimen of slow nourishment without the fast burn of pelletized fertilizer, through a deep and simple humility in the face of the right order of things.

Behind this fence there are no apologies for the disarray which arises from permitting nature to run its course, for letting the grass grow tall within sight of your lawn chairs, for the waves of white parachutes which float from our dandelion clocks into your all but barren rose gardens.

Behind this fence, your rules and right angles and preconceptions don’t apply…

The serpent stayed with me until I'd finished this thought and then – even as I watched his fluid progress – disappeared with a slither into the tall brush beside the battleship grey siding of the old shed. Though I parted the tangle with my hands, I could catch no second sight of his good presence. Perhaps he heard the appetizing heartbeat of a brown cricket drumming away in some hidden space beneath the blackberry leaves or caught some quick whiff of pooled water beneath the drip of the garden spigot. As a boy, I would’ve hunted that serpent until I captured him, would’ve dropped him into a blue Mason jar stuffed half-full of grass, would’ve held him captive behind glass until he danced no more. Now a full-grown man - granted a degree of compassion and insight by the intervening years – it is satisfaction enough to know he’s out there.

The Saturday Ramble...

The heat of the valley in the hour before noon along with an unusual absence of friends and companions conspired to send me rolling up in the general direction of the alpine headwaters of three familiar rivers with my telescoping fishing pole and my surplus rucksack and without a clear idea of my final destination. Sometimes – in acute states of indecision – my strategy is to simply clear my head and point the nose of my faithful Westfalia down an arbitrary bearing and begin driving toward an uncertain end. In the absence of any inspiration, this is how productive journeys often begin.

I followed a black ribbon of shimmering asphalt up the green canyon of the rugged North Santiam, continued along the narrowly twisting gorge of the Breitenbush, detoured up a jarring washboard track to the gentle banks of Olallie Lake, and I headed back home by a highway which followed the dizzy cliff-flanked waters of the rushing Clackamas. While I covered a great deal of ground and would’ve welcomed any flashes of enlightenment, I can’t say that I experienced any completely new insights during my eight hours on the road, don’t feel that I engaged in any life-altering internal dialogues, won’t claim that I made any unexpected discoveries of illuminating importance - it wasn’t really that kind of thing. When all is said and done, today’s was a journey of simple appreciation and quiet enjoyment, a gentle auto-trek in which I found myself reconsidering many of the simplicities which I love best about this pan-flash human life and the improbably beautiful vessel in which it is lived.

And how wonderful it felt to be reminded of some of life’s simple causes for exaltation…

At the crest of a high ridge, I was startled by the majesty of the old-growth trees soaring skyward toward a heaven which felt full of the energy of all those departed souls whom I’ve been blessed to know. Near the edge of a roadside swimming hole came a sudden memory of a sweltering night when a younger version of the man that I am floated naked with friends beneath an infinity of midsummer stars, a memory which made me briefly consider leaping out – completely clothed – into the crushed diamond sparkle of it all. Hiking down to shore amongst the kitschy quaintness of the 1950’s era cabins at the Olallie resort brought to mind images of my elderly grandparents and the warm nights they spent within those cabin walls during those brief perfect years when their minds were young and strong and filled with love and unable to imagine the end. Staring into the white reflection of Mt. Jefferson dancing upon the glittering mirror of the lake reminded me somehow of the crazy-wonderful father I knew as a little boy, an incredible man who would climb those heights and – after he’d returned home in one piece – set me on his lap to share the tales.

Though it seems – perhaps – silly to say, this leisurely Saturday’s journey was the perfect antidote to the thoughts and memories of those hopeless and bitter passages which have weighed upon me over the past week. For the first time in quite a length of days, my heart feels its full measure of strength and enjoys anew the potency of the life which courses from its sweet convulsions. In a moment – when I’ve finished typing out these melodramatic thoughts – I think I’ll put the brown leather leash on Khiva the Boxer’s collar and walk with her through the fragrant creekside air filling the space between the ground beneath our bare feet and the sparkling swath of the Milky Way.

Lake Ann Reflections...

Yesterday, at just past two in the afternoon, I walked the winding half-mile trail back down a forested ridge toward the brushy edge of Lake Ann, found a cool spot beneath the conifer canopy, and leaned back with the curve of my spine resting comfortably against a fallen tree. All of the others in my group of friends – Buck, Jenny, Pradeep, Pavel, and Jefé – stayed behind and continued fishing from their respective embankment perches and shoreline logs. As they were busy casting fluttering spoons and trout spinners out into the lucite clear waters where the motionless sprawl of Marion Lake draws tight and begins its quickening transformation into a rushing stream, I didn’t figure they miss me.

Though I’d landed three decent fish already – two ten-inch Brookies and one foot-long Rainbow ­– my heart wasn’t in it and I was hungry for a degree of solitude. Having found my suitable space, I struggled to settle my mind and decided to distract myself by reading through the last few pages of the ninth chapter of a fascinating short novel entitled My Nightlife which I’d packed into my rucksack as an afterthought. Almost immediately after opening my torn and coffee-stained copy of the somewhat obscure – though widely acclaimed – masterwork of a mid-twentieth century Tunisian writer named Habib Abidine, I stumbled upon a passage wherein Abidine’s main character decides to pen a confessional letter to an imaginary lover whom he encounters – every night without fail – at the edge of sleep. As has been the case with many segments of the previous chapters of this book, I found the following section so intensely resonant that I couldn’t help but read it again and again.

“You inhabit the borders of my dreams and each night you lay down beside me on the far sides of those vague frontiers and you peel back my robes measure by measure and you place your finger upon my lips so that I cannot speak and you strip to innocence and nakedness and you straddle me with shifting legs the color of sand and you bear down in shameless ecstasy and you share into exhaustion all that you have and all that you are with me and you look upon my very fundament with ever-virgin eyes the color of lapis and your rocking weight and your tender caress and your shallow drawn breath and your instinctive movements are familiar to me and I feel within your clutch and grasp my perfect oasis and each night the climax of our intimacy is interrupted and disappears behind the horizon of sleep as the fragile light of a warm bright candle might surrender instantly to the darkness of a sandstorm and you leave me before I am ready and when I awake in the morning it is as if you have never been…”

Some time later – after what seemed like forty-five minutes of poring over the Tunisian’s words – I came to realize how closely they matched my own experiences with the few women I’ve truly loved. Viewing things through the lens of hindsight, I could see that every time I’ve moved past giddy infatuation, past the collagen collision of a promising first kiss, past entrusting my hope and vulnerability into the risky embrace of an untested lover, past the sparkle of emotional rhinestones, past all of lust’s cheap glitter and into a real connection, I’ve felt as though I’ve stumbled over a soaring precipice into the depths of an bottomless dream, stepped into a fuzzy geography where the orderly waking world cedes its cautious limitations and permits them to be replaced by the impossibly ambitious vistas of love’s imaginations and fantasies. Despite the marvel of these, in my experience – as well as that of Abidine’s letter writer – those damnably perfect landscapes always fade to darkness beneath an early dusk, always shear away just below their zenith, always fail of their promise and leave the hopeful heart to wake up – weeks, months, or years later – alone.

Black Cherry Pie & The Memory Lane...

Shortly after making my previous post, I became distracted by an old red photo album and never walked the half-mile to the midnight saloon with a random hook-up on my mind. As I lingered over my favorite photograph of Cesca – the one where she stands like Venus in the twilight of a lava tumble above the unseen waters of Marion Lake – my friend Buck and his kid sister Jenny – at least I’ll always think of her as his kid sister – appeared outside my screen door holding a still steaming black cherry pie and a small plastic tub of homemade hazelnut ice cream. As I ushered them into the front parlor, they set down their things and swaddled me in their arms, squeezing me hard in some sort of group bear hug of love and well-rehearsed compassion. And “well-rehearsed” is a fitting description in light of the fact that there is no one who knows the significance of this black anniversary better than the Swenson siblings.

Their arrival was at once surprising and expected. Over the nearly twenty years since Buck and I dropped out of high-school together – and promptly left for the ALCAN highway with sixteen year old Jenny in tow – our triangular friendship has been defined by extended periods of intense closeness and even longer stretches of equally intense distance. I’m hoping that their impromptu return the night before last signals the end of a two year example of the latter. Though they told me that they’ve not quit their jobs at a bush lodge several hours outside of Fairbanks, they’ve also assured me that they’re intent on bunking at Mas des Rigolos for at least the rest of the month.

As we leaned around the kitchen counter and worked at finishing off the last bits of Great-Granny Swenson’s signature pâte brisée crust, Jenny started on about the adventures which the four – now three – of us shared during that magical first spring when I was living in a leaky one room cabin set behind the peach orchard of their adopted cousin Wayne’s house, about the four months when Francesca – on her first visit to the United States – shared my twin bed, about our habit of driving off as a group of kindred spirits toward the mountains each weekend in Buck’s rusty bucket of a hot pink Jeepster Commando. I still recall those backcountry wanderings with the utmost nostalgia and fondness. It seemed that the wide green world was our open book back then, seemed that – laden down beneath our old-style external frame packs and rolled up flannel-lined sleeping bags – we must have stamped our boot prints on every switchback between Detroit and Camp Sherman’s general store.

It was good to tell our familiar shared stories once again, though I find that I can’t cry anymore when reflecting upon those best ol’ days of love and camaraderie, days when the mid-morning light of a more innocent life seemed to shower down warm and golden and diffuse in each and every direction. We talked and caught up deep into the night, reveled in comical moments we’d all nearly forgotten. Buck laughed until he nearly pissed himself when I reminded him of the time he trailed a yard of soiled toilet paper into the tent as we were all bedding down at the base of a ruddy Smith Rock wall. Jenny burst into sobs halfway through recounting a rain-drenched night just off the McKenzie Pass when – around a crackling sagebrush campfire – the soaking wet and flirtatiously inebriated Miss Cesca spent the better part of two hours teaching her the secret to the Rumba Gitana. For my part, I really just felt an impotent blankness overcome me when Buck – the big dumb sonofabitch – looked at me dead-on from across the butcher block and said – “You were a lucky man, my friend. Not everyone finds themselves a little woman as perfectly goddamned special as she was…”

Remembering Pamplona...

Reading of today’s death of a twenty-something Irish soldier reminds him of the skeleton bed which he shared with Francesca when they crashed together in an abandoned farmhouse while hitchhiking along the high edge of Andorra, reminds him of the shuddering heart-blow of her passing young which followed – five months later – at a time when neither of them believed in old age or mortality, reminds him that – back on that chill mountain night – her long hair was the color of horse-chestnut shell and fell away corduroy-thick as she unwound it, reminds him of how she took up two fistfuls of brown curls and drew them as a shy veil across her lip-bitten expression, reminds him of a moment when – as their bodies ground synchronously into stillness – she laughed and laughed and laughed until the exuberant joy behind her laughter coalesced into tears which – to the quick touch of his tongue – were as sweet and potent as Venice treacle. Fondling memories which are nothing more than the care-polished souvenirs of an irretrievable past, he imagines the cold body of Private Aidan Holly laying dead in the same Pamplona morgue where the paramedics placed Cesca after the bulls trampled her life away, cuts himself on that old pain which today’s events have honed to new sharpness, feels – even as he envisions the path they traced upon her cheek – his tongue thirsting for the taste of her tears, and standing beneath the yellow bug light burning on his front porch – drunk on cheap applejack and beer foam – he knows that he’d trade ten years of life to feel once more the easy passage of his index finger down the warm valley of bone and taut flesh which once separated the swell of his girl’s olive breasts and still further down and on and on.

If tonight – perhaps after the applejack bottle is emptied and spins to the tiles – he staggers downtown beneath the wobbling stars and makes his way into the crowded small town tavern which he rarely visits and picks up some attractive – yet vulnerable and broken – human being with alcohol-fueled sweet talk and close dancing and not-so-subtly-dropped hints of promised affection, he’ll do so because – however perfect and delicious his time with Francesca was – he wishes to find someone who’ll distract him from his memories, who’ll drown out the echoes of the past, who’ll make him forget – if only for a little while – the dream which he lost to the crush and trample of hard hooves on the stone streets of a crowded city in Spain. He’ll put on a convincing act, go through the practiced motions of caressing his stand-in’s neck gently with the palm of his hand, of sliding his knuckles firmly up the small of her back, of brushing her hair out of her eyes with his fingertips as he leans in to part her lips. She’ll think they were both satisfied and not perceive that behind this one evening’s acts of passion there were only half-simulated stimulations and the very barest pretense of pleasured moans and exhalations. He'll play his role and if– in the morning – they wake up together as the pink sunshine filters through the wood-slat blinds of his bedroom in the turret of Mas des Rigolos, he’ll be a gentleman and thank her for the wonderful night, make her peppered bacon and fried duck eggs and black coffee for breakfast, call her the next day and tell her that he’s thinking about her, he'll act interested in whatever she says and he'll tell her pleasant lies which he desperately wishes to believe.

A Quiet Homecoming...

In the present of Friday morning, he returns home after a week’s work in Colorado Springs to find the young hop vine curled to the top of the front porch post, to discover that all the pink currants were thieved by hungry birds in his absence, to pick a quick handful of candy-ripe mulberries from their tree and eat them one by one as he stands – eyes closed – recalling the muscular thunderheads which would boil up behind the lump of Pikes Peak every roasting afternoon. A moment later, upon stepping inside the mudroom, he senses an oppressive quiet interrupted only by the crackle of bursting ladyfingers and the whoosh-snap of bottle rockets, by the rustle of a muggy breeze fingering the dense foliage of the maple tree and the whistle of barn swallows on the edge of the window box. Finding a note which explains that Pradeep and César have gone off to the Hoh rain forest on a long weekend backpack, he feels a twinge of panic which is totally out of character, an unwelcome solitude, a bleak emptiness occupying the space where he’d hoped to be met with pats on the back and wine dappled conversation. He changes from rubber sandals to leather work boots lost in a desperation which begs for even the simplest of distractions.

A few anxious minutes pass before his eyes stumble upon the dented aluminum tube near the corner bay window – the metal sleeve which holds his Grandfather’s fly rod – and find their suitable diversion. Pouring two-thirds of his first can of Pabst into the kitchen sink, he decides that he’ll walk the shallow bank of the Butte Creek above the twin cascades and drop wooly worms in search of anything that might be biting. Picking up an old box of assorted flies, a pair of surgical pliers, his heirloom creel, and the keys to the Westfalia, he exits the same door he’d entered not fifteen minutes before.

The road winds through Scotts Mills and up past the Crooked Finger schoolhouse, across the cattle guard and onto gravel, along the ridge which points toward Sweet Springs and then down over the northeast side until it meets the mountain stream at a rusting metal girder bridge. As is usually the case, he loses himself in the motion of the roadside scene and is wandering in thought by the time the engine falls still and presents his destination to him. A moment later, he’s standing on a creekside boulder tying on his leader and smiling to himself that he has no company to watch him struggle with a simple overhead cast. Standing and pulling out line, he’s baptized and cleansed by the sound of wild splashing water. Tilting the old fiberglass rod back toward the forest fringe and quickly rolling it forward to lay his line out across a still little pool, he’s reawakened by the sharp resin-scent of countless giant evergreens. And as the very first young cutthroat surfaces in curiosity, he's unable to remember if there was ever a problem.