Two Dot: perspective

Richard is haying every night until midnight. I was up last night at midnight too, but I was settling down from an evening of food and drink and conversation with the artists. The neighbor was swathing by 5 this morning, the swather’s headlights leading the way across the field back and forth, back and forth. Five hours later, after I had gone for a walk, eaten breakfast and talked some more, I began my workday. The neighbor was still swathing. The crops are early and thin due to the drought. I was sad to see the golden-white stalks, however small, go so soon. I went to the top of the hill and took photos of the serpentine pattern of windrows and the topiary like definition to the irrigation ditch. It is all visual for me, but for the ranchers it is feed and ultimately dollars. Food or art?

Two Dot: water

Water had gushed from around the fire hydrant for 3 days and was filling the yard. Two of my neighbors had stopped by to let me know that once the phone and power companies signed off, they would have to dig to the problem. Two Dot has a community well and we are all part of the water user group. It is all of our responsibility to take care of problems.

An excavator was rented and I met 3 of my neighbors in the yard at 8 this morning. I took a shovel to lean on and they had their laugh. If John and been here I would have stayed in the studio, but he is in Seattle and I felt it was important to at least witness their hard volunteer work. Banter ran as free as the water from the leak…. mostly self-deprecating, but occasionally they tossed friendly jabs at each other and a few times at me. The excavator brought out bucket after bucket of soupy clay dirt until the hole was more than 6 feet deep.

One of the guy’s grandsons was there to help. He wore the wrong shoes, but willingly did what was asked of him. His grandfather patiently but insistently taught him how to tie a figure 8 slipknot to secure the hydrant while they continued to dig. When an older son of one of the other neighbors stopped by while on break from haying, his father explained in detail how the hydrant had sunk and stressed the T connection breaking the line. There seems to be a respect for these young men and an understanding that knowledge must be pass to the next generation. That was also manifest in the running joke of the day…” make this a 21 year fix because after 20 years we will all be too old to go down in the hole with a shovel.” I risked my own joke when the oldest of us was in the hole and working too hard. “ If you are going to have a heart attack in that hole, better make it stick because I don’t think we can pull you out.” He laughed. We finished around 3 and even though I was of little help I felt a little more apart of the community. 

Two Dot: work hard & talk true

Two young artists are here to work. He is stories and energy. She is materials and magic. He uses power tools I don’t know the names of. She wants to smash together a blade of grass and a cloud.  We’ve talked into the late hours telling stories one on top of the other, revealing our differences and similarities. She was raised in Senegal by missionary parents from Ohio. He was raised just outside of Dallas, his parents Texan evangelicals. Each of them has veered away, making only short trips back to the courses they were set on. She returned to Senegal in orange lipstick and was offered prayers for her soul. He returned to Texas with his girlfriend and was told they would make beautiful blue-eyed babies. Each of these artists refuses to have children, as if it were a code. They will not heed the charge to be “fruitful and multiply.” But of course, they are artists and can’t help creating with their hands.

The artists are working hard: one with florescent lights and wood, the other with berries and cloth. They’ve gone on no adventures and gotten to know little about this place, but they keep working. We have also talked endlessly: religion, art, family, food, and politics. It has been a week of eating, talking, working, eating, working, talking, drinking, eating, talking, sleeping and again. 

Two Dot: here=there there=here

In evening light we flew above the Montana clouds. On our way to the airport we had watched an ephemera of light filtering through and around clouds allowing spotlights on sections of pasture made intensely clear by contrast to the surrounding shadows. It was hard not to hear Joni Mitchel. Every picture has its shadows and it has some source of light. As we flew from Two Dot to Seattle, in our seemingly bifurcated life, it was even more difficult to ignore the indivisibility she sang about. Threatened by all things, God of cruelty, Drawn to all things, God of delight. It only appears to be black and white.

After a week away, Two Dot is my here again. Cows are bawling near Big Elk Creek where someone is moving them with a 4-wheeler. The irrigation ditch across the fence, now in use again, brings the cranes close to the schoolhouse. An inch of rain has caused the grass to grow and I need to mow. There is a leak at the water line at the fireplug on our property. Repairs will involve a backhoe and lots of volunteer hours. Water or the lack of it always brings Two Dot together. 

Two Dot: god and country

We went to the “wilderness” yesterday. Granted there were cows grazing, but the stream is allowed to choose its own course and the cottonwoods grow and fall of their own accord. There are fences but nothing else of domestication in sight. Is this a spiritual resource, as Wallace Stegner suggested? It is for me. It is not a complete wilderness, but it carries many of those qualities. When Stegner wrote of the necessity of such places, was he making an assumption that everyone wants spirituality or finds it in wildness? I want to believe he is right, that the need for wilderness is innate. I can’t imagine that it is not true, but there is much in human nature that I cannot imagine. 

Wallace Stegner’s Wilderness Letter written in 1960 promotes the “Wilderness Idea,”…which he considered a resource in itself. Being an intangible and spiritual resource…” He mourned the losses of wilderness that, as he saw it, have led to “a lost chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical, and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the material world and competent to belong to it…” He feared we would find ourselves without chance for even momentary reflection and rest, claiming that we need to preserve wilderness “because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health, even if we never once in ten years set foot in it.”

Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.  (Genesis 1:28) Wallace Stegner names this the call to be a weed species. We have become a weed species and we have unleashed other weed species. In Stegner’s 1990 essay It All Began with Conservation, he also quoted Chief Luther Standing Bear of the Oglala Sioux. Only to the white man was nature a wilderness and only to him was the land infested with wild animals and savage people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery. But of course now the “weed species” are established and we have to think creatively. We have to continue to question our ethics. We have to invent without making Frankensteins. 

Willow Creek: Aunt Dofe's Hall of Recent Memory

We found our way to Willow Creek and Aunt Dofe’s Hall of Recent Memory. Weeds grow from the sidewalk and the windows could use a wash, but it is a fine building. Peering through the smudged windows into the world of Dave Kirk, founder of Aunt Dofe’s was overwhelming. From the outside it seemed to be a stilled place; industry arrested. The neighbor, Chris had a key, and in the short walk from his house to the door of Aunt Dofe’s there was no question of how much Dave Kirk was loved and how much he is missed.

I am not sure I remember which door Chris unlocked or any particulars of the transition from being on the outside of Aunt Dofe’s Hall of Recent Memory peering in to being inside of Dave Kirk’s world. It may not have happened immediately on crossing the threshold, but at some point I was aware of Dave Kirk himself. I don’t really know what I think of ghosts or communion with the dead and what I think doesn’t really matter. Aunt Dofe’s Hall of Recent Memory is not dead. It became less still the longer I was there. What at first seemed a mausoleum… a memorial to someone much loved… gradually became a living place ready to continue. 

Two Dot: summer turns

My fingers are rough and dry, like the lawn. We set sprinklers and I wring my hands with lotion. Despite the sunscreen, my face has turned brown. No need for make-up to add color to my usual winter pallor. The neighbor’s field is turning color too, a yellow haze over green. It is nearly July. Better get busy with all of summer before the field ripens to golden brown and I must get in my car to leave for another wet winter. 

The days are already getting shorter, though it is not yet noticeable. My eyes are awash with summer green and in the distance a few black cows are grazing on that richness. Birds call from every direction and the sprinkler in the yard repeats summer…summer…summer. I know everything changes, but just now I am entrenched in the season. It is a time for the meeting of industry and relaxation. 

My dreams have me elsewhere. They are misty dreams with no discernable location or plot, but I am always surprised when I wake up to be here. The sun still rises in the far north window, though June is ending and our hemisphere begins to turn away from the light. But there are still weeks of this summer paradise. 

Two Dot: another initiation

She appeared in the left hand lane. She was young and beautiful like so many deer we have passed safely. I didn’t try to swerve; there really is nowhere to swerve to on these narrow roads. I did have time to slow down, but not enough time. She cleared the left bumper, but then there was the thud. I felt the impact. It was not enough to stop us, so I drove to the next  turnout, glancing once in the rearview mirror. I saw a little cloud of dust rise from the ditch where I am sure she fell. I can only hope she died quickly.

In 1971, John and I drove a visiting meditation master from Olympia to Seattle. We weren’t very good meditators, but we had a car and were making the trip anyway to deliver a mattress to… I don’t remember where.  The car was a 1947 Dodge sedan with suicide doors and a hippie paint job. The mattress was strapped to the roof. He was waiting for us to pick him up at the side of the road. His robes were dark red, he was small, his English complete but heavily accented. He took his place in the vehicle without mentioning its uniqueness. John drove and I chattered. Somewhere between Tumwater and Fort Lewis, I asked him about deer. Why are deer the only creatures that are ok to eat? He patiently tried to explain the nature of deer and how ingesting that nature could not hurt you. I don’t remember the whole doctrine nor did I really understand it at the time. It was something about deer being gentle and good. What I do remember is him being quick to add that no matter the uniqueness of deer and their inability to hurt us by eating them, of course we would never do it. And now, in 2016, forty-five years later, I have killed a deer and not bothered to eat it. 

Two Dot: two songs

In Wallace Stegner’s essay, Why I Like the West, he professes his love of meadowlarks with their “purest sweetest birdsong.” Meadowlarks are singing as I write these words. I can’t see them just now, but their songs permeate the area.  Stegner declared “ anywhere meadowlarks sing… that will be a satisfactory place for this evangelist.” He claimed to be a self appointed evangelist to rescue “…unfortunate eastern heathens from climate, topography, theology, prejudice, literature, railroads, traditions, narrowness, and geographical ignorance…”, but I am sure he did it modestly. 

Driving alone is the best place for solitude. As I drove into town today, an old Drive-by-Truckers tune came on the radio. I sang along, sliding into the nearly discordant harmony. I found the note and held it with them, feeling the buzz of its complexity. Stories are layered all around me just now: a new baby, a friend in prison, a wedding, a troubled relationship, a sickness, an eminent death, a new job, a lost job. One thing will always be on the edge of another thing, pleasure and pain a hairbreadth apart. Is it possible to feel each part of the cord and hear the entire cord at the same time? 

Two Dot: match made in the heavens

Just now at this moment the sun is aligned at its most northern point making our longest day of the year. I keep the sun to my back, protecting myself from its direct gaze. I glance over my shoulder now and again, just for a second. There are wispy wing-like clouds below the sun as if to launch it on what seems to be its journey back south. But of course it is us who move. We are at our summer destination, the point closest to our own star. From this moment we begin our return trip, backing away from long days and dwindling nights. I need to take this moment in fully in order to hold it through the winter with its brief days and extended nights. I will remember the heat on the back of my neck reaching over my shoulders to fall on the backs of my hands as I write. And I will remember each seed head warmed to bursting and the clarity of all the green fields surrounding me, the river trees in the background and distant hills rolling to mountains; everything clear and present. So just for a moment, I turn fully toward the sun with my eyes closed and feel it hitting my nose first, then my eyelids, and down my cheeks to my chest, my bent knees warmer than my shins, my toes warmer than my heels. I will remember this. 

A full strawberry moon rose over the hill outside my backdoor around 9 o’clock last night. It hovered on the horizon luminous and poised like the bouncing ball we used to follow through a song in elementary school. I wasn’t aware of this phenomenon, full moon coinciding with summer solstice, when it last happened. It was 1967, the summer of love. I wasn’t aware of the summer of love either for that matter. But that summer and all of its radical love would affect who I was to become, even as the love began to fade. And now this phenomenon has come again, not be repeated in my lifetime. This strawberry moon will have to carry me. 

Two Dot: solitude

The wind blew all day with some quieter moments, but always picking up again. Just now it sounds like one continues ocean wave, like a steady waterfall, like dry water. 

Wind rattles glass in window frames and can open closed doors. Last night was not the biggest wind, but enough to inspire latching the windows and locking the doors. It blew all night, invading my sleep. There was nothing concrete in my dreams, but in the morning I felt both exhilarated and exhausted. Solitude does not always mean silence and stillness. Though bedding down with an active wind does not feel solitary. 

Two Dot: for birds

A meadowlark sang from the top of one of the poplars we planted in the yard. They usually restrict themselves to the height of power poles, but there he was until he flew down to the play equipment and strutted beak lunging forward under the six swings, the hanging ladder, and rings, and bar, and under the slide. I quietly called him a beauty… I didn’t want to disturb him, but had to say it out loud. He flew up to perch on the top bar and oh so quietly I asked for a song which he delivered to the back drop of woodpeckers, magpies, mourning doves, finches and nighthawks. 

A blackbird, I fear it may have been a starling, made regular trips to the tree with building material… back and forth, back and forth. I saw it carry a beak full of a huge clump of grass… big intentions. My studio is full of materials too… more big intentions. 

Two Dot: solitude

It has been an inside day with rain and wind and cold. I even turned on the furnace. I am alone now except for the company of the cat and the weather. It is a time of solitude. I read an article today about spending time on a remote island in Sweden in the spring when things are closed and no one is around. The author described solitude as an illusion, a fantasy… nice for a while but always leading us to acknowledge others and how they make us who we are. Perhaps….but I wonder if times of solitude when we have no one else to define us might have more impact on making us who we are?

looking at death

John and I drove to Bozeman this afternoon. As we pulled into town, I noticed all the flags were at half staff. We have chosen to separate form the news in Two Dot… to giver ourselves a reprieve from what is generally depressing. So, we didn’t know. I assumed someone of power had died, but of course it was more than that… another shooting slaughter by another mad man. And now, at least 50 people have met death without warning, without cause, without justification…just because they were in a gay bar. I am without words. But maybe this question - is there a way to find power in tragedy… the power to stand together for humanity?

Thinking about death in terms other than death is an occupation of aging. How much longer can I camp and sleep on the ground? Can I still maintain a house? Will I stay awake at a late night show? Is this or that ailment chronic? What will happen to all my possessions? Why am I still buying possessions? What happened to my face? I’ve heard it said that you begin dying when you are born. Certainly you get closer everyday. But it is when you are older that things begin to look irreversible. I suspect most young people look at death differently, if they look at all.  The young people slaughtered in Orlando never got the chance for the process.