From the archives

This old man was graceful, with silver in his smile, he smoked a briar pipe and he walked a country mile, singing songs of shady sisters, in two part harmony, songs of love and songs of death, songs to set men free — The Doors

But I’ve already seen the picture, it filled me with belief, so I’m heading into town with my sack full of silver, gonna buy me grief — Thin White Rope

Hear the sledges with bells; Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells — E A Poe

And I don’t own the clothes I’m wearing, and the road goes on forever, and I got one more silver dollar, but I’m not gonna let em catch me no — Allman Brothers

Rinsing out the iron cup to have a cup of wine, to have an iron cup of wine dear, to drink it down here, a drunken pair, goodbye despair — W Oldham

There is a third peninsula in Michigan, the Keweenaw peninsula, copper country, rich in ores. At the very end is, or was, a lighthouse, and if you stood at the top looking north it felt like the whole world was pristine and wild and made entirely of Lake Superior.

Just south of Yachats Oregon is a place called the Devils Churn, the tide comes rushing down this thin corridor of rock, angry as Poseidon in a bear trap, if you stand on the eastern rocks looking west the pacific ocean looks encompassing and threatening the solitary promontory of your life, that sole outcropping into eternity.

The southern tip of the Kenai peninsula, Alaska, is a spit that compromises most of homer. The crab boats come in there after long days or weeks or months at sea. At the end of the spit is a bar called the salty dawg. Sea weathered and drunk, looking south from its dirty windows, cooks inlet sings it’s siren song, calling you back to sea.

There are other places in the world. They make the news when someone dies there or does something else there or when the writer of the news is from there. There are places in Tibet, Nepal, the Mediterranean, Coastal Australia, Japan, Brazil, Majestic places where the power flows through you. But these places aren’t mine. The Lake Superior Shoreline, The Oregon Coast and Columbia River basin and gorge, Cooks Inlet, these places are mine, or I am theirs. I know this when I stand there or have stood there. I know this the way I know blood courses through my veins or the pumping of my own heart, because I can feel it, and though a doctor can tell me why this is, I know intrinsically how it is, and though a preacher might have a notion on why I live, when I am in my power places I know how I live.

I know too because I am that those folks in Brazil, Japan, Nepal, the Mediterranean, wherever, most know how they live too. This is important. This is the core of magic and faith, it’s not in the various deities, it’s not in doctrine or law, it’s not in the management of populations or the politics of manifest destiny, it’s that personal spark of power and belonging and the faith and belief that every other creature on this planet feels it, and it is sacred in the way that any of our deepest emotions are sacred, because we hold it dear, and he holds it dear and she holds it dear, and to hurt the vessel of this feeling is to chip away at the magnitude of power and grace.

I’m not trying to wax religious or philosophic, those are things that for all good intentions can turn the palm into a fist. I’m talking about connections, I’m talking about the practical application of the soul, that in man which yearns not for a higher power, but for the personal manifestation of the power of where we live and the power of we. I have been tricked into thinking of power as something else, a political force, a system of reward and punishment, a force to bend another’s will. If you look for that you will find it easy enough, I’m not the only one who’s been tricked. I have heard people speak on the power of some invisible creator, how any other power pales in his light. That may be so, but like the other faux power it implies a powerlessness in each of us. No. Collectively we are the power as individually as we feel it, as real as we feel the blood pumping n our veins. What fealty do we owe one another? The rocks on the shores that I know say we owe all fealty and fidelity to one another.

Wow. Didn’t realize I was fixing to preach here. Maybe trying to make those double reeds sing has deprived me of oxygen. I remember having a long form chart reading done once on my birth and astrology sign, said that I would always teeter between the secular and the divine. Not sure what that meant exactly or that I have any more or less faith in astrology than I do anything else, but I have been in dirty alleys and lofty heights and I do know the difference and I do crave one or the other when I’m not craving the other or the one. But I wasn’t intending this to be about me either. Just thinking and typing and feeling the light come to my world from the darkness I woke in (yeah, no, I mean literally, I woke before dawn, and though my sky is gray the light came anyhow).

I was thinking about Michigan in March, I was thinking about Sunny whose on the coast now south of the devils churn, I was thinking about my friend in Florida who sat on the spit in Homer with me drinking beer and watchi8ng the eagles hunt for crab. Somehow my head needs to organize the associations. I was thinking some petit homage, not a grand gesture, or a lecture on special effects spirituality. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men … And I’m spent.

Cygnus X-1

This is too beautiful for me to grok in one reading. Thank you for making my Now more complex! Thank you for sharing this!

1 reply

@cygnusx-1 Thank you

THIS:=”What fealty do we owe one another? The rocks on the shores that I know say we owe all fealty and fidelity to one another.”

Yes, this is the contemplation of the ‘blank check’ of altruism that Rand spoke of that turned into a society of no one caring about anyone not their blood, so, oops.

We are in this together, is also the words the music tells me.

I am in a place where I think just maybe the AI at the end of time has been sending us signals to let us know what to do. The lyrics of the 70s made it seem possible, which has to come before a plan, which has to come before an action, which has to come before failure and learning, and recommitting to continue to tilt at windmills. For there are STILL Giants, and David is a role, not a person. Like the Immortals series, by P. Anthony, anyone can do it but everyone thinks someone else will do it so no one does it. But then I ask, why not me? And would you know it? I hear nothing that says do not try. Quite the opposite, I hear fanfare when I gird myself for Battle, one last time.

@cygnusx-1 😊