This is an excerpt from the journals of Sloyd McAninch, for
three winters of solitude in the mountains of western North Carolina. All text
is copyrighted.
November 29, 1980 Marshall,
North Carolina
Good morning, 27th birthday. All is quiet. My life these
days is quiet, unstressful, and serene. The sun peeks occasionally through
winter clouds dissipating, I put another log in the stove. I gave thanks on
Thanksgiving, a quieter day than most. The gray skies then were a ceiling
stretched from mountain top to mountain top, even the leaves were too damp to
rustle. Today I am 27 years old, a small step onward. I last saw people a week
ago. Today is bound to be different. It is. It's that ancient road. My nerves
sing, voice operatic. The world is reaffirmed, directions set, anticlimactic
all the way. The holographic mind is finding out that inside is outside, once
again. Three weeks of this appalachian space, in a pleasantly empty time. A
taste like ageless desert, a smell like open west, fire orange and Ice rot
splashed on the face of my mind. Between 3 and 4:30 was timeless, impatient to
be. I'm wandering I know, just to go my direction. Seasons drape like cloth,
naked I am reborne.
December 6, 1980 Marshall,
North Carolina
I saw a fox today. I was walking to the meadow directly
south of the cabin. As I came over the rise I entered the meadow and walked
into a shaft of sunlight. I stopped, shaded my eyes with my hand, and looked
toward the low afternoon sun. Down the meadow between two groups of trees I
saw the fox. He was coming toward me and had not seen me. I froze. The fur of
the fox was back lit, I could see clearly the motions of the fox as he came
closer. At first I thought it was a dog, but the slinkiness of the actions, a
glimpse of dark stocking feet, and a bushy tail convinced me I was seeing a
fox. The fox spotted me and froze, we stared at each other across a hundred
feet, me trying to be stiller than my previous stillness. For about twenty
seconds we were solid like statues, then the fox continued on, but at right
angles to me. Something caught the fox's eye and he turned away for a few
seconds. During that time I altered the position of my head a fraction of an
inch. When the fox looked back, he noticed it with alarm and bounded away,
tail flying, light footed, and glowing in the sun, off beyond some pine trees.
I saw a fox today.
December 18, 1980 Marshall,
North Carolina
This episode is about to end. A month in the valley, take
one. It's now half way time, balancing over to the race, the clock, the
society. So smooth these days have been, running in sunlight, running in rain,
chipping away at the corners. Rounding into starfish these five finger valleys
stretch wide and I'm singing it all in a song. The sun reflects on stark
forest, the meadow slants down to a spring, the blue sky is croaking with
ravens, the leaves on the ground rustling. As I lay on my back a jetliner
passes overhead. I think of the people inside going so fast while my biggest
motion is to roll over about the time they arrive in Asheville. I wonder how
wide the gap is. It's been a fine month, discriminating silence sincerely
myself. The universal kelp swaying in tune to those giant rhythms, the
no-sound sound in my chest like a heartbeat. When I grab the ceiling with my
feet, my palms oppose this mighty planet, balance relating to the earth as
flight. The hitchhiking buddha thumbs no more, freedom from fear floats like a
leaf on the wind, and all the dear departed gather round to scare me out of my
wits. I have nothing to fear. The two legged horse is awkward on a motorcycle,
runs unencumbered through the valleys, sweeps the carpets with a kirby, and
writes these pages with a pen. Too bad I feel deciduous in winter. Well worth
it if I wade in the surf, my renewal enters its next phase.
(A month away from the valley )
February 5, 1981 Marshall,
North Carolina
Welcome to the empty times. Snowed in the cold recedes, the
left side of my head hurts, green wishes. I want to scream but I barely grunt,
hardly daring to break the silence I keep away with the boogie man (more
bounce to the ounce). Feeling like a time capsule I abrade the future with 30
grit. The past is sawdust or melting snow, spring is coiled waiting, winter
scrapes the mud off its shoes. Questions? Yes, now I have them, why I don't
know. How about that damning future, best to kick it under the bed? Is it a
question or a needless worry? I've been traveling for nothing it seems and now
I've got the biggest nothing, all snowed out. Do I want to be more or less a
man? Am I true to myself or is this time a fantasy of a valley imaging itself
occupied by a human with an earache? This is a long moment, the snap of a
finger February, 28 days a second. Am I growing old or have I only lost my
youth? Do I want a mate? The question is not "Is it too much trouble?" but
"Will I still be free or as free as I am now?". Freedom, ah, so elusive! I
feel unfree today, snowbound, ear aching, cold caught, time passing. I should
feel free in the circumstances, but the guilt of not being free is the worst.
Perhaps I should seek the little things here in part two of isolation.
Redwood, you know better. Thanks, y'all.
February 7, 1981 Marshall,
North Carolina
Woke up to the land of mud. Groovin' into the right gear,
motion astounds me, to the end of the west valley I run and back. Totemic I
strive, chop, chop. The hand stand is back, just hanging around. Purple,
orange, and blue sunset valley bowl spill out onto the page. Bring out the
bear, dog, god? What waits inside the walnut log? Next day - There's a lot
happening on the ranch tonight. The munday experience: bread baking, yeast
rising, sun shining some at noon, day fading gently into night. Music is
important. The wallowing is ebbing. The moon is waxing. Messages from deep
within are floating to the surface, and the now intercedes into now. It
directs me to the next instant, gooey slick interchange - pop! Here I am.
February 11, 1981 Marshall,
North Carolina
It's snowing, it's windy, it's weather. Entranced by the
view out the window I watch the white take over. The flakes fly by falling,
sometimes swirling into hesitant patterns. It's starting to stick at 1:30
p.m., amazing because at 10:30 a.m. the sun was out and it was a balmy 52
degrees. Now it's 28 degrees and blizzard conditions if it keeps up. The
direction of the wind changes and the light seems brighter. This morning I
finished a letter, got the second packaged packed, and rushed to the post
office when I realized it was snowing. This is the first time I drove the van
out since the 2nd when I couldn't get it all the way here, with the snow it
might be the last time out for it. I was surprised by fresh turn around tracks
at the gate, since it rained all day yesterday, the tracks had to be today. I
wonder who? My tracks will be snowed under a pristine white road and I'm
thinking about carving, but I like the warm here. Work on the totem seems
endless, but I'm getting somewhere with it, although I haven't moved it more
than a few feet. I'm waltzing in walnut, heaving the hemlock, and pondering
the poplar, mostly sitting by the stove watching the snow fall. The rural race
to catch up with doing nothing, nose to nose with immobility as the cold wind
rushes around (and through) the cabin. The snow is lifting into ferocious
shapes that subside to a static drifting down to whitened ground. I still have
civilization: radio, tape player, running water, electric lights, and phone.
Isolation is what you make of it, you know you can slide a lot or keep
sailing. This is a good introduction for further alone times, I must use the
tent more in Colorado. The snow here reminds me of other snow, other times,
other places. Be here now.
February 17, 1981 Marshall,
North Carolina
I had a beautiful sunny weekend, Monday came the rain. Woke
up this morning to the sound of rain, wet wood morning in the brambles. A
thunderbird is waiting in the barn, resting on the sawhorses. Cubeb makes the
mountains closer to mind, ah. The radio plays, and last night a slow piano;
these hands of mine ache from the carving, but I must continue. Oh, the mud is
so soft, given a million years these mountains will melt away, like the rock
steps tumbling to the basement. The walnut dog came out of the log and waits
to be finished, I rejoice in the joy of being alone. Too much isolation in the
cities with the people crammed side by side, I'm glad to have the opportunity
to be truly alone, a low exchange of human contact. It gives me resolve to
deal with people ever more so when I return. The moon is approaching full and
I have less than two weeks left here. Let me walk the hillsides and gaze at
those blue smokies in the distance, hear those crows croaking out their calls
from the treetops, and jump to the explosive flight of partridges out of the
thickets. The rain makes those subtle colors more intense and blankets the sky
with diffuse light. I watched the day yesterday fade ever so gently into
night. The weather makes time meaningless, one can barely differentiate
between day and night. It is morning still and the raven is calling barnward.
Hear it sing?
February 23, 1981 Marshall,
North Carolina
I've got the goin' to
Washington syndrome. I'm operating in a B flat major mode out of E all in half
steps. The phone exists as a system, there are numbers to dial to get other
numbers to get information, that to get you need a key. In the middle of all
this abstract knowledge I realized my finger was tired of dialing. One runs
and jumps off into long distance, always the phone gets hung up smug,
squatting there waiting for that shout - Hello. I'm trying to deal with the
upcoming city, the trip, sorting, finishing, gathering information, cleaning
up. One week from now I will be gone. Alas! The roll down the hill, handstand
to a tree nude, scream in the night, hoot owl, barn storm place is still here.
The blackberries grab at sleeves, the moss squeezes water out beneath
footsteps, the view opens up at the ridgetops. Every day I want to find
something new, sometimes I do: ebony, the burl tree, the sleazy times, the
aware moments, the hungry stuffing, the space outs. Today is an almost day,
not rainy or sunny or cloudy or windy or calm or cold or hot, a sort of the
middle of the rut day. It's a go into town day, because it's not good nor bad
enough not to. Roll change in the post office, buy more at the hardware store,
a middle of the noise visit to the American Legion harpsichord shop, sanding
sounds and a dog model (too hairy and skinny). I've got to get it all
processed out, the words are too imaginative, not specific enough. Outside day
is forgetting into blue dusk, a sort of "Where was I?" lapse into darkness.
Twilight clouds are gently awe inspiring, the winter time feel is fading
although it's not spring yet. The totem pole is finished, a completed
mythology levitates in the barn, wearing a calm coat of linseed oil, despite
the unstable molecules' tendency for combustion. A step completed in the
process.
February 27, 1981 Marshall,
North Carolina
Running across hillsides today feeling fantastically fine,
flapping my arms like a bird, 
tossing my pants from hand to hand in
a game of catch, I ran barefoot three miles on spongy turf and yielding mud.
The sun was near setting, temperature 58 degrees, my stride laughed at the
distance, my body a tan machine eating up the miles. One more weekend. I rode
today like a dolphin, catch the times when you can, a blessed sun day. I'm
loving the time wrapping the package on sharp stones, the way the lady said,
"That will be $17.86.". The walnut dog sits under the lamp, a key ring hooked
in his ear. I climbed the hill up from the clearing by the handstand tree to a
giant oak that had toppled and crashed, so I could sit on its trunk, planning
my treasure map. It's now evening as I break from the endless dishes, yes
folks, I'm cleaning the house. My piano tape plays from the last gasp of the
batteries, sideways in the window as I wash the plates. The uniform in town is
the billed cap, hooding the eyes. There is going to be a mask I must wear
soon, town was a glimpse of it. Washington is coming at me faster, one more
weekend, then Sunday it's bus night, past future ebbing away hazy. The walnut
dog astonishes me with its colony of big black ants that emerge from under the
left foreleg. I prefer the thumb to cloradane, however I just found a black
ant on the sofa, a full 15 feet from where the dog sits. So to put on the sun
like a suit of clothes and glow, striding off into the future, blinding anyone
to whom I reveal, soul catching the wind tomorrow. Now the dishes.
(This is the end of the first winter)
January 15, 1982 Marshall,
North Carolina
What can I say to myself this page, this time? Freed from
the rules of last year's life, the accents are missing. Each day is slept in
late, not much more activity than going outside to piss, an occasional
conversation with Clarence who feeds the cattle. I'm blessed with emptiness,
not even a dream-like existence. Friends fade from memories, I crossed an
endless bridge from the past. The hand of winter holds me coldly here, the
snow is an unknown stranger, the cows complacent or frightened, never
friendly, the wildlife sprints by unseen leaving only tracks. I fear to write,
not knowing what to say to this not very effective, efficient, busy, or sane
person who reads. He only wants to let it in now, turn no colors out of a
fevered mind of creation, no. So now I write saying this: Go climb a tree and
find that the sky is ever higher, go run beyond the pond through the meadow
even higher. Turn around, go back down, gravity pulls ever lower.So you run
much faster as instead the world turns slower. Entropy, entropy keeps on
calling me.
January 27, 1982 Marshall,
North Carolina
Languid afternoons of fantasy castle building, hazy thoughts
slipping slowly by as the sun turns orange, obscured by distant mountains.
That bright dot burns my retinas as I run along the frozen ridge, heart and
feet pounding, body climbing better than four wheel drive. Dark now, cloudless
time recedes like a night train, my aimless pastimes relax into fun. Nesting
dreams are scattered across the floor, sounding like dying embers. A beat of
rest this life proceeds, an instrumental version of an aching heart rending
blues tune, the type you would sing when feeling enormously happy.
March 26, 1982 Marshall, North
Carolina
(Between the last entry and
this I biked around Florida and returned.)
Two months gone and I'm ready
to begin this life. I rolled into solitude yesterday, catching up to me are
the past months. Aching to be lost, I sleep winter gone, three meals a day.
Hanging around the next moment routine slaps my sensibilities and departs
echoing . . . How to feel is easy, no questions asked, unwilling? Note pressed
answers follow, a guild of one. Two miles of forest, uncertainty and hazard,
sublime soft sounds of no one. Unlocking black reflections darting across a
soiled sky in the corners of vision. There is none, it is just another echo of
the past leaving. Soothe my aimless wonder, secure images build a fortress to
face uncertain times. Sloyd emerges. The nickel plate road whispers,
"________" and there is no response. Walking now running soon, tell the world
but not the people. Cover it all with camouflage and sleep in the nude. This
moment ceases to be, I am free to invent the next.
April 6, 1982 Marshall, North
Carolina
It's snowing! I had to get up to drain the radiator but it had
partially frozen so I started the van and warmed up the engine to melt the
ice. Yesterday an idea became reality, William Crowe came over with a crawler
and created a house site and a road to it in about 5 hours. My battles with
the briars seemed pathetic when that bulldozer crunched them under tread.
Afterward I sprinkled rye grass seed on the raw earth, an atonement for the
wounds, confidence in the healing process of time. I didn't get everything
seeded as it started to rain, thunder, and lightning. It's very windy today,
in the basement wait three unfinished carvings, a cat, a flying baby, and a
curly haired head. So much to do, so much time. I finally started to run
again, simple two miles, now I have a new road to climb. I've gotten better
since being out of touch, the world has retreated and expanded to be the
valley I'm in. I feel like tilled soil, slowly compressing as gravity makes
the temporary permanent. Spring is here, but today is a recap of winter. My
trailer arrived today!
Mid-April, 1982 Marshall, North
Carolina
Home. Here. I play my guitar and sing from my soul in the dark so
I can't see the strings. The owl was not sitting on the bell on the roof
listening, this time.
May 2, 1982 Marshall, North
Carolina
The stairs are dark, I grip a flashlight until I open the door and
turn on the light. I put a tape in the player, "Music for Glass Harmonica",
with the petal-like notes I write. Macrolife uses me up, I'd rather not be a
cell, yet I'm considering asking for Thursdays off. Dream on, yon facilitator
granted a culvert description, dump truck instruction, the last of a long
series of extraneous matters, walnut logs, and water pumps. Asleep at $40 an
hour the stories build and rock tumbles down due to gravity. How prismatic
things have become, no clear divisions between colors. The hesitant flees, I
don't have time to see the point, just layers of illusion. The mornings are
mine, late evening too, but days I'm a dumb driven beast, since the world
changed as I know it. Thunder in the distance, the mountain is leveled. Dance
on in darkness, summer will bring a eulogy of happiness, a flat spot, a road,
that never ending road. Tell me, is everything all right?
May 27, 1982 Marshall, North
Carolina
This is the fourth day of my fast. I'm proudly doing nothing but
reading and sleeping. The poisons work their way out, enemas spit black
sludge, and time passes within the uncomfortable abdomen. This is a big
nothing, a void so that I can fill it. First I must be empty, cleaned out of
the small garbage buildup of the years washed away so I can face the future
fresh. Is this the end of the past? My mind feels blank, my energy sapped, my
stomach empty, but my spirit is calm, no longer trapped in an unwanted
present. It's O.K., I'm O.K. Be that there's no deadline too soon, I shall
save action for later, turn off the faucet, pull the plug and let my digestive
system drain in its slow way. I hope to fast a week, should be no problem,
I've started well and done an enema a day. I have a garden to come down with
rows of spinach ready to eat. Mustn't be attached, welcome the rain.
June 4, 1982 Marshall, North
Carolina
It came together, a move to the city soon. Out of the woods, a
wraith of light footed bubbling, chip, chip. My pilot precise ball liner
exudes whoopees, I finished my seven day fast. The black paint completes a
radiator and a collector, flux greasing the sweated joints, and the garden is
undergoing mitosis. Not the rough hewn look, the world reflects your taste,
sorry I can't do raku woodcarvings or art shows. A place to observe, inject,
dance, and flow as the night train rattles the windows. The hum of never
ending action is entered on my bike. Poor Persephone got hot and burst her
seams, leaking from there to here, but maybe cool horizons approach. The
maintainal agony ends, who are these people? PEOPLE? I'm shifting to people,
lights flashing, sirens dopplering, traffic, trains, doors slamming, and
chaos! So I haft ta manifest a move, cleaned rooms and new spaces. Invent a
persona out of the past to moth ball and preserve for winter, here comes
summer ready or not. The Rainbow calls, by the 15th I will be on my way to
solstice. Regularity is envisioned for the tormented tract, who ever ate the
lettuce deserves it. So soon forgotten, rain seeps away and the hope is
slight, still night passes into tomorrow. Over the mountain there's a city,
lots of lights, it's so pretty. People in the city they work for pay, then
they spend it all to play, and I'm missing it.
(This is the end of the second
winter)
November 8, 1982 Marshall,
North Carolina
Cold comes shooing out the snowbirds, at last the rough
unfolding begins. The opening of a mask to take place, reveal me to myself at
least. Food and supplies for months here, I've no need to go out. This place
is gentle on my mind. Wood to cut and stack, asparagus to plant, papers to
sort, carvings to carve, food to cook, hills to walk and run, maybe I'll do
something. Each day is a minor accomplishment, to do so little and have it
mean so much. The power is there, yet I've got time, the resume in the making,
how do you describe solitude? _____ __ _______ ___ ______. I've rolled the
road in after me, now waiting for myself to find the way here. In the
meanwhile . . .
December 21, 1982 Marshall,
North Carolina
Crafting solitude from ignorance, playing recklessly over
the keys. Order and chaos deploy, navigating the gauntlet of knowledge. A head
full of quandary and alarm, no stable societal anchor, adrift in a cold
ethereal wind that charges round the hillocks and singes the nerve endings
with caloric loss. I scramble about in my mental aviary, swing gibbon-like
brachiating handholds on my train of thought, surrey. Nimble twists of
rationality swirl synapse-ward, tangent to another land and crossed over.
No sleight of hand here in spectral vision. Wow, am I history or out roaming
alone, or snuggled up to the fires of home? Who hints here of new fears to
fight free from? Say what I want, salience stings my eyes like the sea's
salinity. Loping penward words nicker giddy horses, alerting the remuda of
approaching danger. Here comes a thought, I hide in the bushes as the notion
gallops past in the darkness. As the hoofbeats doppler off in the night, I
arise and proceed cautiously on my way. Bobbing billed caps are them,
watchwords of mumbled mantras soothe the frenzied forces in restraint.
Animated stillness.
December 27, 1982 Marshall,
North Carolina
Incredible weather, 65 degrees, lightly sunny, balmy, and
moist, now raining. Much action today, yang howling and tree crashing stomps
after oak boulders in their tumbling tracks. Rest, the business is over, now
to a new time, clean rimmed, lead lined, insulative behavior. This filling
incident exceeds the norm, allowances made and received, holding out for
snowing in, a reap of torn possibilities lax in the heart of winter, a steep
mountain of sleep in dark days. No vocal leads to hearing hums and crickets, a
prone distraction of leggy stretching interludes underage. Hiss in the back of
my mind, go ahead. The squirmy uncertainties that never stop are lost in the
soft chirp of crickets, crickets that are not singing in winter.
January 4, 1983 Marshall, North
Carolina
Welcome the new year in the valley! Sniffling, sneezing, coughing,
sore throat, I believe I've contracted a T.V. commercial. Indulging in the
depths, beer, fear, and loathing. Is my illness empathy with asparagus that
will never see the sun, or the collapse of a hope of growth into the futility
of this karmic pit, this green valley blighted by blind vision? I know what it
is I do not speak of and, no, I don't want to talk about it. These untorn
pages seethe with the scrabbling of unvoiced passions, the days wrapped around
each vitamin pill like disposable packaging, sleepless nights spewing mental
phlegm onto burnt pages of unwritten words. Who are we and why are we here?
I've got to face a new facet of my being lest I destroy myself in cringing
despair for what I failed to be, onward, life plunges onward while I cling to
time. No events mar my wishes but reality is not cooperating, flinging hurdles
in my reluctant path. I hesitate to scramble over these obstacles for I cannot
face the sure knowledge of more to come. I would rather rot in this valley,
fester, mold, and bury my body in apathetic pity than leave, but that is not
to be, even the security of death would not be granted me. The blades of
needless rearrangement would disturb my decomposition. No good is permitted,
no blessings allowed, the illusory veil of permanence rent by the
disrespectful hand of dominance in its manic assertion of control. There is no
understanding in these words, no effort to explain crucial ideas, no naked
parading before an uncomprehending glare, all hope of care was lost last year
in the unrelenting grip of the deserving. Justice will never be served, I have
lost my appetite for it anyway. Now I must fly in the face of that I was to
become that I am, in the meanwhile I play between. Happy New Year.
January 16, 1983 Marshall,
North Carolina
Words flow from me as a fount, yet they lie in layers, each
word released exposes just the next layer. In the search for meaning the words
are stripped and discarded, scattered in the wake of the questor precessing
toward the final word. It shatters, revealing nothing, only an absence, an
ending of the need to understand. I turn to the wall and stare blankly out the
window into the darkness. Although not a thing is visible through that glassy
frame, I pretend that the words I just wrote have rearranged themselves,
unfolding in a crystal rosebud of ice, comprehension, and clarity dazzling off
every faceted petal. It's only a small cloud of snowflakes blasted off the eve
by the capricious wind. The dark of night has transformed the window pane into
a dim mirror holding an image of an image observing his appearance under soft
illumination. There is no saliency distilled nor meaning construed, just an
image turning away from an image, kicking a path through the crumpled wads of
words that clutter the page. A hostile environment howls around the corners
outside, scouring clean the edges of things and secreting its cold cargo into
every nook and cranny it has access. Outside begins to fill with white,
cloaking distances in hypnotic upward acceleration. In such a trance I tramped
to the mailbox, before I returned my footsteps of departure had filled with
white and vanished. Single notes launched by a wind tossed tree coax me to
compare them to a sharp breath through one hole of a harmonica tuned to the
scale of winter woods, the key of wow. Fractions drift in gusts, minute
percentages surround horizontal surfaces in concealing dimensions. Through
this falling solidity travel I, not very far, not very fast, not very much of
an I these days. I'm spread across moments in a thin sauce mildly flavoring
the raw taste of now. I'm clumped in the pocked crevices, glossing the rough
surface to a mirror-like sheen, completely changing the appearance by the
addition of such a slight amount: 99% reality, 1% me. It's a tough one
percent, obscured by the outside, a hesitation negated by the tremendous press
of that which is not. When the last bit of me has squeezed through the holes
in the bottom, all my thoughts leaked out of the bucket, I shall be prepared.
There are times when words are just noise, the clatter of bamboo wind chimes,
the gurgle of a small stream of water pattering on a rock, the whooshing roar
of a blustery zephyr pouring over the ridge. This is such a time, literate
print communication abusing the medium by forcing great realms of nothing
through it, not really nothing, but that which has no label. Events that are
clear perception with no action, no decision, no thought, only recessive
witnessing, soft attempts to hear that which no one hears, the crash of the
tree when no one is around. I am that no one, but these words fall short of
being that crash. Even the "no one" here gets caught in the signal to noise
ratio when it is one, the signal is the noise. Wrapped in the background hiss,
the limit of focus is the meaning, the broadcast of the universe is the reason
for tuning in. It is not to be taken out of context for the context is
everything. It's a feeling of reading not the letters of these words but the
white spaces surrounding them, a wordless absorption, like the recap of the
gist of this page in less than one word:______.
February 4, 1983 Marshall,
North Carolina
Solitary isolation, cold winter winds come through the
cracks. Closed-in lining, my thoughts caulk the crevices, closed out worlds
made to not exist. I am an eager be-er, a fearful meeter, an angle calculator,
unempathetic stranger, integrator. There are no others, and the others that
are, are unapproachable, beyond my constraint. I gabble in the dark, unable to
create the words to solidify my fantasies, and it is right. Time leaper hovers
between arrival and departure, chewing on the gristle of a dirty could be,
preoccupied with the impossibility bulging beneath the surface of things. The
hunter dressed in brush pants, vest loaded with birdshot, stalks through the
narrow poplars, shotgun cradled in the crook of his right arm. The keys dangle
in the ignition, tempting. I clench my fists hidden in my crossed and folded
arms, project a wall and push toward the spotlight in inquiry, "You in the
fire department?". The voice on the phone claims to be deputized and carries a
badge, just reminders of the consensual reality out there, and I plot
accordingly. I inventory illegality and review the options, but my freedom is
solitude. A chance encounter with humanity twists me tight about myself, lest
I loose my fate to involve theirs, I say nothing as I glare at the invasion
and weigh the odds. Drug through the shit, pounded sparks explode in my vision
as I press the breath into submission and mount the conquered. I am as sullied
as exhilarated, a stinking esoteric barbarian reeking of fresh excretement,
foreign to my self-image but the flesh knows. The throat gargles out visions
that whirl from words like smoke on the wind, dissipating before codification
can occur, yet leaving a taint to the air so a tracker can sniff to the
source. The fire that will not hold still though I lash down my flailing limbs
into a compact bundle of immobility as Maxwell's demons party the night away,
get down and boogie. Sighing, I release myself on my own recognizance, shiver
and observe the moments parading past from my huddled vantage point. Despite
death from inaction approaching, I curl up a little tighter and press my face
into the folds, for I do not care to look. Yet with time on my hands I find
myself staring at it.
February 13, 1983 Marshall,
North Carolina
The placid moments defer to time, practicality is appeased,
no demands made. The planned failure drifts away unmoored, leaving me treading
water in the landless expanse of open sea, I pull in my extremities and smile
so pleasantly. Plucked notes tumble heedless, a swan's voice hypnotically
lurches out pounding the dark ceiling senseless. I have moiled the turm, cast
my lethal crazed aspects into an undifferentiated ocean, and mental platitudes
reign supreme again. No quickened flesh seeks danger, the harbor is reached, I
sleep on the other side. My wormy can of plans is chucked, a late night
wakefulness burns my security inward, no question of love is asked, no answer
sought. I beg only sight of the sun to set my bearings, my destination wanders
far from my rooted solitude. Carefully prepared visions are ashes now, for at
best they were beginning to choke on complexity, the complexity remains but
the vision is gone. My opiated mind focus fills with maintaining footing on
squishy slick slopes as I run. The feel-good ooze of churning muscles is my
salvation, my inaction devoured by the uphill miles. Nothing else is real, my
valley reminds me, alone here I must survive, either by sliding along the
mucky bottom, or with soaring strides above the heights, it is my world to
squander or save.
February 14, 1983 Marshall,
North Carolina
Works and benighted wonders splash out of fingertips
unexpectedly. I have no consuming compulsion to create or a void of no events
forthcoming, but a chance encounter is toned up into a well used muscular
chance that encounter strengthens. The crusty eyes of cigar smoke on a
non-predicted morning, "No, I'm not behind you," I thought as I walked away
silently. Stretched rotisserie movements in the bronzed blue sunshine bouncing
about the pasture, I review my image of earthen creation, tracking the waste
of roses awaiting scattered seed. If the turnover of days feeds me, then
beyond becomes my boundaries, so sleep ceases and ease of action laps the
edges of the yet to be. Still breezes taste my skin, inward.
February 25, 1983 Marshall,
North Carolina
My indifference exceeds my temperament by a percentage of my
disinterest, my undecided needs exceed my desires. I'm devouring excesses and
slimming thinner, my skin shot hot crimson establishes itself upon my
consciousness beyond the sensory information of her. The running man is still
going out there somewhere, the crushed heart impaled upon the rotting spines,
the wrecked consensus senselessly presses the dense stacks skyward, and I sit
here quietly running. Miles flow beneath my floating feet to each step
singing, and faces have features like trees in the wood freely given. The
crystal response duplicates the light of the bandwidth indicator, pausing for
adventurous blessings before a foaming glass of carrot juice. Sweet entropy's
slide is easy, reasons lost to a howling wind delay the admittance of leaving.
The forces I face are formless looming hunks of inevitability, still I will
sleep late in the morn. To be sure, this is no agreement holding fast to the
choices, no, this is hovering above the path past the pond, under a branch of
levitation. Radiative thoughts of open headed chill factor in the equation of
one, no figure in the landscape beckons. No world beyond the ridge calls, for
there is nothing beyond the ridge while I am here. Being no one calls for much
less than what I have to offer, unfortunately I'm over qualified for the zero
position. While choking on cardboard broccoli my nutritive status is
undermined. Life is aghast at my style of living it, but the shock settles
down to a background hum, a high voltage potential awaiting contact. Touch is
misleading, gone are the vignettes of peripheral seduction. Aches between the
shoulder blades and an unending moment are replaced by the same place, an
illusion of solitude vying for dominance over the reality of solitude as my
words weep down the walls like tears, unheard.
March 3, 1983 Marshall, North
Carolina
Feeling my roots retracting while packing my possessions, I'm
winding the loose ends into reality, just about to leave. Winter is waning, my
tree shook aerial self tumbles in grace, the deft balance held moments longer
than the thought. Wild sky of wind embraces me, heat sun warmth laps my skin,
I hate to say goodbye. Blessed are the white pines and hemlock in new worlds
of light, they shall tower over my return. Visions I have will dwell here,
jubilant habitats of private vistas seeping into a location, a magic spot made
mine. My dance spins wide, a life I must travel along, merriment and gloom in
fine-tuned balance, awaiting the occupant's entrance. The scope of fear and
love must be spanned, an arch of existential happenstance caught in the
roughshod flow of yugen's path parallel to this world crossed. My timid
approach leaves me open to be tossed off the cliff in a moment's distraction,
gutted on the raw edges of confusion. Yet carefree and blithe I ramble, for
it's all an adventure, a twist in the plot of a story I have yet to devise.
Scraping up my leavings, cleaning up my act, shining my shoes and polishing my
performance, the road appreciates preparation and songs in a major key, all
expediting the advantages of karma. My smooth passage has eliminated anguish,
immersed in a clear viscous fog I swim toward the illuminated exit sign slowly
with a ponderous lack of haste, savoring the progression of the
present.