Always carry a backup phone when traveling!

 I look down at my shirt pocket, AND MY CELL PHONE IS GONE1 A moment of absolute panic. Here i am in the huge airport of Brasilia, Brazil. I can’t believe it. I run down the stairs to the last place i had it, a booth of the airlines. No one in line has seen it. I run back up, trip on the escalator and dump food all over the place. A the information booth the woman speaks little English. She calls for another, who does. I find out Find My Phone won’t work here. She can’t call a number out of country. I moan and beat my head. Then a call comes. A security guard has found a phone. I wait in a state of suspended animation. Yes, it is my phone. He found it hanging from a luggage cart.

How dumb. The chain tangled itself in the cart. It’s usually  around my neck, but I’d been taking pictures. So much for this nightmare. I ate ice cream and drank a cappuccino to calm down. I have a backup phone and didn’t  bring it. Okay, there’s the experienced traveler totally losing his cool. Here in Mexico City I’ll search for an older phone. I know where the iPhone store is. At the same time I’m totally exhausted from the 20 hour flight. I dragged my bags all over on a six hour break. Not only that after the telephone fiasco i tripped on my bags,  raisins all over the carpet. Later i find I’ve  sprained my left wrist more than I thought.

Okay, i did sleep almost sixteen hours before sitting down to write this. There’s something not so good about having my mind befuddled. I’ve paid for two weeks at the Selina Hostel to get me through the holidays, waiting to see if i brought back Covid with me. I doubt i have. No symptoms. And i just checked with my hometown. Nine more people died, so far I’m better off and I’ve had some very unusual experiences. Better than  lying in a bed in familiar surroundings , the grim reaper haunting my dreams. Of course i used to think, “Make good memories and you can die happy.> ah, that illusion has been dispelled forever..

I flew off to Brazil on invitation from a young woman I’d barely met in mexico last winter. I hesitated. My friend Lucas said,” you might as well have an adventure in Brazil in the warm air instead of a sitting here waiting for winter.”  his words took hold. And a wild time it turned out to be, though nothing I anticipated. We cycled through lovers, mates and friends in one week, the fastest complete relationship I could imagine. We left it at friends i hope. What’s odd is we had more in common than two people have a right to be. Born in Brazil, she moved to Germany at 19 . Studied dance and theater in Holland. We knew all the same names and places. At thirty two she gave up dance, to become a therapist astrologer  traveling around Brazil, learnng kite surfing and giving ‘readings. It just proves having a lot in common doesn’t mean being soul mates. 

A cat separated too soon from its mother

 Well, now i am embarrassed. I had an astrology reading from a woman, Kay Taylor, and afterwards i felt very unsatisfied and told her so. Partly this was due to my phone not recording the session. I couldn’t listen to the session again, and that’s when i learn the most. She had recorded it. And when I listened again, it made more sense.

What bothered me was it was so gloomy. Betrayal. Distrust. Fear. In fact she said my chart dominated by the last. She said my recent past life came from a death just before WWII. My birthday May 5, 1940.  I’d always felt I’d been Jewish. She said I’d been betrayed by the community and had troubles with trust.

So be it. I’m prey to pain attacks which I never had when younger. In fact i had a bad one early yesterday morning. It took the whole day to shake it off. And now I’m very conscious of how fearful i can be. I hope i can say with Georgia O’Keefe, “I’ve always been afraid and I’ve never let it stop me from doing anything.” 

This morning it occurred to me i act like the black cat i shared an apartment with briefly after leaving the lookout. The landlady said it had been separated from its mother too early. It kept kneading pillows for example. I just looked up the characteristics of such a cat:

From a mental or developmental standpoint, kittens who have been separated too soon may not be as easily socialized, whether that is with their people or other animals. They don't know what they are. They don't know what normal cat behavior is.

Kittens who have been separated too soon can have physical as well as mental problems. In terms of physical problems, they may not have good coordination or understand how to stalk prey and how to translate this behavior into appropriate play with their human. They may be aloof, wary or fearful of touch.

The more i read, the more sense it makes. My first grade report card:  He doesn’t play well with others. And my mother saying “You played alone so much I never thought you’d have any friends.” My sister born just a year after me. I was dethroned! I became a real pest after that. I did everything i could to upstage my baby sister. Poor girl. She too had a rough start.

The astrologer gave me one piece of good advice: pursue pleasure and happiness. I’ve never been good at that. 

The horrors of travel

 

Yes, yes, i could have stayed home, stared at the wall with everything in town closed and continued to be suicidal. Instead i decided to fly to Mexico City where people wearing masks and NOBODY SOCIAL DISTANCING. So it may be a form of suicide yet! Mexicans do not have the luxury of Americans. They can’t stay home. They have to work. Everything open - except a few of my favorite museums - the streets and subway often crowded. I’m taking chances i would never take at home. If this is goodbye, have a sweet time with the rest of your lives.

I am discovering again why i like to travel. I walk all day, then in the evening I go to bed early and do nothing, like read, watch YouTube videos about people traveling in other places like turkey and Serbia, and daydream a lot. At home i have to always be doing something. Just lying around not my style. Only in Greece years ago could i lay for hours on the beach, soaking up the sun. Travel puts me in a different space, brings out the idle human being. Jung once said, “Don’t underestimate human laziness”. Ah, what a pleasure it can be!

With no paintings to look at, I’m wandering the streets and discovering new places. One is a market area near where I’m staying. I sat in a little square with a semi-circle of smiling and laughing metal heads on pedestals. Memoirs of poets, singers, goofy politicians? I never did figure it out. One fellow in the spiffy dress and big mustache of another century plopped himself down next to me. As i said, social distancing doesn’t exist, except by me. I moved to another bench. 

I have never seen so many chopped up chickens, wings being bagged up, breasts piled, feet discarded. This definitely a foodies paradise. One huge market held traditional foods from all over mexico. Mouth-watering, to say the least. I bought prunes at a specialty store, a hundred spices in jars. Yes, I’m having trouble with my plumbing, the opposite of what you’re supposed to expect in mexico. I am afraid of eating street food, exactly what every guidebook on mexico raves about. This city considered a heaven for gourmands. I need to search out some of the vegetarian restaurants. I know they exist.

Here comes the sun after four grey days. It makes a hellava difference. The city rather grim without the blue sky. Yes, it’s true. I’m just biding my time until leaving for Brazil next week. I’ll be joining a friend for three weeks travel in the northeast of the country. According to the web, that area has few cases of Covid. At least I’ll have someone to get me to a hospital, if i need it. I loaded up on travel health insurance before leaving. Alas, i have to get where i can use it first. Wish me good luck. As my brother said, “If you’re afraid, you will never travel anywhere.”

U

How can i escape my age?

 i grew up being told, "You have to watch the news. You must know what's going on." alas, i learned the news bad for my health, physical and mental. the reason: it really has nothing to do with facts and everything to do with SPECULATION. what i'm given on the boob tube is never what is happening but what may happen, and it's always scary as hell. like everyone, i like to drive slowly past a car wreck, looking for blood and bodies. and yet, to have it in my living room every night makes me bolt the door and crawl under the covers.

once i get there, i know what to do. read a novel, about life in another time, took at art works, listen to classical music, in other words, desert the information age for the age of stories, of episodes in history having meaning, perhaps simply by being purified. i need to experience love stories, happy ending or not, epics of bravery, even if the hero killed. i ride on the wings of song like a magician on a magic carpet. underneath the blankets the world becomes bearable. even tragedy lifts me up. i can face the violence and stupidity of our age by visiting that in another and knowing civilization survived.

as for my own age, of course, death is the only solution. sooner or later my decrepritude will subsume me. and in the mean time, all i can do is escape into exercise, fiction, conversations, travel, hoping when the time comes i will still be able to master my own fate. alas, the general population doesn't want to pay taxes for the arts. everybody enjoys them. in this period of being house-bound, what sustains them but music, movies, books, adventures in fictional time?

 

and now i watch the election results with horror. RED means i will not pay for the society i live in, hospitals, schools, symphonies, traffic lights, asphalt to fill the potholes. I WILL NOT BE A PERSON OF MY TIME. what irony! what good has all that news done but make misers of the voters, they grasp their pennies as if they would save them from global warming. avoiding the public good, they put themselves in danger. how do they not know it? maybe human ignorance is bottomless. staring at the screen, i see a vast void behind it. 

at the same time i can go back to old stories, old pictures, and find hope. other ages have been far more disastrous than our own. peter the great leveled whole cities and massacred the population, attilla the hun didn't do much better, and the romans raked carthage into the ground. we survived the middle ages and recent terrible wars. not that we're in the clear. still, it helps to know history. that is news that stays news, as ezra pound said about poetry, the news people die from not knowing. i always speak for the arts. they really need no reason. yet i have to say something to keep from going mad.

How do i re-connect with my own mythology?

interviewing a lot of lookouts about their work, i discovered everyone dominated by a personal mythology, or a way of seeing things. one lookout always had a mirror out, looking at everything from two sides. another had a log fall on his father, right after his father had told him how not to have that happen. once he sat in his tower, and a tree fell close by, loggers at work without his knowledge. i had the feeling he was always waiting for the log to fall (maybe on him). 

the way i discovered this was recording the interviews and then listening to them for clues. certain words, certain images would come up over and over again. there's really nothing mysterious about this. yesterday, i read a lot of ancient greek and roman poets. any creative person reveals themselves, in fact they have to for their work to resonate. all of us somewhere reflect on the agonies of love, the inevitability of age and death. the ancients sound very like me!

and that's the consolation of the arts. they tell stories of what we've all gone through. i myself am a part of human history and not alone. i may be somewhat unique in experiencing LIFE AS THERAPY! this morning i listed all my therapeutic activities: 

                                  1. theater

                                  2. travel

                                   3. art

                                   4. writing

                                   5 . photography

                                   6. love affairs

   the list could go on and include actual therapists (3) and psychics (5), all of whom kept me going, even if they couldn't cure my anxieties. one said i'd been too impressed by death when young. i'm not sure if this came from newsreels of world war two or my preacher father's celebrations of funerals. i do remember running out of the room to escape the women in black and the friend underneath glass in his coffin, this the day after i'd been playing with him.

as for my own mythology, when i first started writing a lot at 17, i imagined myself as a clown falling through the universe. i think that my dominate image, though i also thought, interviewing myself, I WAS ALWAYS HIDING IN THE CENTER. i suppose that's like being invisible even as i exposed myself in photos and poems. this could be the reason i've never pursued a public career. one psychic, after reviewing my past lives, said, "You carried so much responsibility in past lives, including being a scientist who helped blow up Atlantis, you get to play in this lifetime."

yes, i do think this time as cavorting in a playground! unfortunately, even as i've enjoyed process more that product, i wish i had something to show for it, a legacy i could leave. maybe throwing out fifty boxes of notebooks and journals not such a good idea. still, as a friend said some years ago during our new year's day consultation, "nobody will want to deal with it all." i realized she was right. only the publically accomplished have their papers installed in institutions.

i haven't really answered my original question: how do i re-connect with my own mythology? theoretically, any of my old methods should work. i don't know what's stopping me from taking the first step. i suspect it's looking for results, rather than merely enjoying the process. there's always a chance drawing the first line could end up being a rembrandt! does it really matter. acclaim doesn't wake the dead, alas. on the other hand, merely taking a walk with observant eyes always brings something new. 

Where have all my heroes gone?

 actually, they haven't disappeared, i simply forget to consult them. for example, FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA. as i sat in the san francisco poetry room of city lights books, looking at all the tomes on the shelves, pulling out this one and that one, searching for inspiration from poets past and present, only when i pulled down lorca's collected poems did i feel the rush of delight from the past. it is very odd, in a way, since he was obsessed with death from the beginning, and it's always present. early on he treats it in a child-like way, the landscape, the moon, stars, wind, the girl in the apple tree, always surviving the death of the rider passing by. there is a certain permanence in the song.

let's see, another hero might be CG Jung, the analyst and magician of the collective unconscious. one summer on stateline lookout at lake tahoe, i read 44 books by and about him. i'm not sure how he consoled me. mostly his concept of the Anima, the image of the perfect woman in each man, seemed to apply to myself. he describes her as very demanding, never satisfied with any human woman you may choose, also competitive with her and extremely critical. my own moods seem dominated by such an inner witch. not surprising, since my mother harsh with all my girlfriends. she, too, couldn't stand any competition. 

jung's concept of the archetypes explained a lot to me, especially the trends of history, how one would dominate a certain time i lived in. ah, i've forgotten how he did it all! the vision would certainly apply to the time we know and hate. Could it be the archetype of the Lie? what i admired most, i supposed was the life he created, how he kept himself sane, working with his hands and having a brilliant mistress. he knew how to stabilize himself and actually created a psychological mythology and method which could be of use to many people, especially artists. and he could pursue a thought down to the depths of a rabbit hole. also with mandalas, he created a way to use art as a stabilizing force.

what other heroes came and went? i'm trying to think of my early days in sports. i was never very good at any of them, though i played tennis, baseball, football, basketball, and bowling. not being a team player, i could never pass the ball and served out my days on the third string bench. i do remember admiring willy mays and i quote him often: "i go with my strengths and forget about my weaknesses." that still seems to me very good advice. alas, i have spent way too much time being lost in efforts to be rational and calm. even years of therapy never brought that about. 

the only politician on my list JOHN F KENNEDY, a bit tarnished by time, all his messing about with prostitutes secretly brought into the white house by the back door, his suspicious shadow over the death of marilyn monroe, his getting us involved in vietnam. a hero may only remain one by my knowing too little more than too much. they're really actors on the stage, magnified by their simplicity. the character strutting the boards before me not human beings but mythologies. that's what heroes do, they create myths of themselves. and i absorb the energy they give off in the process.

alas, all heroes prove to be human-all-too-human. as real people they die. that's a fact i can never quite get beyond. true, their stories live on, i can participate in them vicariously, and be inspired by certain events, certain works. i have become too cynical, too worldly, and yet when i remember to go back to the source, THE HEROES JOURNEY,  and do what i can to remember my own, i'm revitalized. it's a lesson i have to learn over and over again. 

How do you recover your balance?

i have to admit i feel off-balance 75% of the time. for example, i arrived at the lookout after four days off. it was dark. the wind blew hard. unwisely, i carried my first load up the road and lookout steps, overburdened. i'd driven most of the day, a total of seven hours. no wonder i lurched badly sideways ascending the steps. as usual, i forged ahead without thinking what i was doing. i reached the landing, thank god, then had trouble inserting the key in the lock. once i did, the siren went off. 

the relief lookout had set the alarm. boy, it damn near broke my ear drums. hastily, i rushed to the basement and punched the buttons. thankfully, the sound stopped. by now i was at least alert. this is just one example of rushing through the world and almost losing it. at times i seem to forget how to walk. making it conscious, i have trouble putting one foot in front of another. it's mostly mental. when my confidence returns and my self-consciousness subsides, i move through the world like nothing ever happened.

of course, physical equilibrium is the least of my problems. all summer i've thought about suicide, i'm even reading a book about it SUICIDAL, WHY PEOPLE KILL THEMSELVES  by Jesse  Bering. this isn't really something new. at 17 i remember being afraid to sleep in a room with knives, afraid i'd do myself harm. maybe i'm always trying escape, as the author surmises. escape from what, you may ask? sometimes it seems hard to do anything i need to do, like pick a pencil up from off the floor. there's a resistance to any action. 

so far, i've been able to pick up that pencil. and i wonder why on earth it seems so difficult? other times i clean the dishes, wash the clothes, and proceed without any hesitation. i do think it has something to do with mental balance, that which comes and goes. often if i can perform the right action, i'm standing back on my own two feet. living alone in a room, everything stable around me, i dive off the deep end into a desire for non-existence. and this doesn't seem to happen, when i'm in motion, when i travel.

for example, last week i reached the end of my tether, worrying about the end of the season and leaving the lookout in a couple weeks. i'd planned a trip east and no one, even friends and family, wanted a visitor who might bring covid. my support system dropped right out from under me. okay, i decided to make a test run. i drove to san francisco and stayed in a youth hostel. they put one person into a room and i had four beds to myself. that was great luck. i had a chance to practice traveling in relative safety. 

for the next two days i visited museums: the De Young, SFMOMA, and the Asian Museum. i soaked up the art as i always do, a vision of perfect worlds. artists create places we can go when life becomes too much for us, this time when nothing seems ever finished - fires and viruses - a chaos without true order. security doesn't really exist except as a result of the imagination. 

to finish off the trip i walked up grant street through chinatown. certainly eerie, 90% of the stores and restaurants closed, and browsed in my old haunt of 60 years ago, CITY LIGHTS BOOKS. it brought back a certain peace. it had changed very little. i sat in a rocking chair upstairs in the poetry room and surveyed the shelves. true, i felt my own poetry could never compete with all this, yet i kept looking for a new poet, stumbling across the old ones. finally, only my own standby, FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA, brought me the solace in needed.

yes, i did stumble blindly on the steps, in the dark and high wind, and two days later the euphoria of travel has worn off a bit. this morning i woke up anxious, wondering if i'd caught the virus. i took a tylenol to calm down. still when i think about it, i enjoyed setting myself  up in the hostel room. even the homeless on the corners  with all their oddities give a kind of consolation. and sitting in the cafe at the de Young, bathing in the sunlight and observing the folks eating and chatting without masks, brings back a sense of normality, and enjoyable existence. i hope i've broken the spell, regained my balance, and am ready to travel again. 

Getting started: process or results?

 my biggest problem: i can never take my own advice. i know what to do. then i'm too lazy to actually do it! they say, "a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step." how true! yet that initial move inhibited by my fear of getting on the wrong path, of committing myself to an endeavor i will most certainly find dangerous or pointless, having wasted half a lifetime to reach an unsatisfying goal. (Carl Jung said, "we shouldn't underestimate the power of laziness.) 

how do i overcome my lethargy? i really have a bad memory for what works. i do know i have been inspired by copying, like an artist drawing old statues or famous paintings and making them her own. i have a friend who copies chinese ink paintings, the results beautiful. he doesn't really know what they are. Are they his own or merely false interpretations? ah, but what is important, every evening he retreats to his desk and becomes an ancient sage. 

if he were too concerned with results, he probably wouldn't do anything, yet the process is its own reward. a choreographer told me i liked process more than results, whereas she focused on the latter. of course, that's one reason i've never become famous. i have completed a lot of projects (fifty books of photos, letters, poems, plays, novels, on amazon). once done, i do find them satisfying. i enjoy, especially, reading my own poems. often they make me laugh. what could be better than that? 

unfortunately, i filled a five by ten foot storage space with at least fifty boxes of journals, notebooks, photographs, manuscripts, and asorted creations - and then i turned eighty. my god, what would i do with all this stuff! in the end, i've thrown out practically all of it, saving two boxes and sending them to my niece for family history. sure, i hope to be discovered. still, i feel now i'm a light-weight. not that i regret writing and filming so much. i have the bulk of results on external hard-drives. my choice of discards: what merely reflected process.

by that i mean diaries, sketches for plays, journals, etc., everything i felt reflected 'mere' preparation. this might have been of interest to a scholar, but every dying artist who hasn't made a name for himself needs an advocate, someone to preserve and promote the heritage. i have one friend doing this for her deceased artist-husband. it's taken her several years of concentrated work to catalogue the mountain of creations: drawings, watercolors, journals, writings. she's created a website. now comes finding an institution to house the rest.

recently, at a session devoted to how to keep your work alive once you are dead, an artist said, "recently four artists in town have died - and all their work is gone.'  this, of course, is a good reason to devote myself to creation for its own sake. gardening is the most popular hobby in the country and the best physical exercise! for good reason: you can eat the results. alas, avid gardeners usually produce too much, eager to give it away, if they can find takers. 

yes, ultimately, for most part, i have enjoyed the process. getting up at five in the morning for days on end, or struck by a certain call from the personal genie anytime whaling away on a collection of poems with a theme (i hardly ever wrote a solitary poem). the  book FLOW by  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi    tells the secret. once i get going, there's no stopping me: not worries about fame or results, nothing related to my image in the world. i expected to be a famous playwright someday and didn't have the right personality. to hell with it!

when i get depressed, i know i'm too inhibited and lazy to take the first step. just doing something will usually change my mood. these days, having thrown out so much, it's difficult to make a move. if i could just draw one line, it would lead to a work of art. if i could put down a few words, it would lead to a poem. i know the right answer to the question: how do i get started? its really easy if i take delight in the dictionary, as i did in the old days. i need to put on a french chanson and soon i'm sent spinning off from france in the fifties into my own heaven.

for Linda

How do you become a master of change?

The end of fire season staring me in the face, how do I avoid panic? I look through quotations on change. None of them seem to help.

Life is never a material, a substance to be molded. If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself, it is infinitely beyond your or my obtuse theories about it. Boris Pasternak

Everything flows. Nothing stays the same. Heraclitus 

As true as these things are, i still find it hard to roll with the punches, even with changing habitats at least two hundred times in my life.

My family moved 32 times by the time I had left high school. This included California (many times), Montana, Washington, Indiana, Utah, Wyoming, and finally Germany. So, i should be used to it. alas, moving with my family not the same as being on my own. now, the lookout job accounts for 114 moves, back and forth every year. and my determination never to buy a house has kept me searching every winter.

my passion for theater took me to new york city several times. with the help of friends i found places to stay and classes to take. memories of europe pulled me off the lookout for two years. i lived in greece, germany, and england, pursuing art and literature. (and girlfriends - yes, they led me a merry chase). for some reason i never questioned my ability to cope.

i started using chico, california as my base in 1981, making good friends and taking university classes, plus taking millions of photographs: dance, theater, the community. at certain times i did travel: bali, india, adventures with my friend berta: five months in europe, time in central america, sri lanka, thailand. her death really deprived me of a good friend and a great travel companion. i did make a trip to japan with my friend marilyn and one last gasp in europe: amsterdam and paris.

911 put away any desires i had to travel for 16 years. finally, several years ago, the urge, even necessity for change, took me twice to australia and twice to mexico. it took me awhile to get into the rhythm of it. my first days in australia i felt afraid and depressed, not finding solace in youth hostels and museums. eventually i did get going and after a month i felt more confident and full of vivid and creative culture. i spoke the language and had some great conversations.

there's  the key: people.  my mother said once i played so much alone she never thought i'd have any friends, plesantly surprised when i did. despite so many years on the lookout, i've rarely felt lonely, only in the first days when i felt horny, and then i couldn't wait for the season to end. unfortunately, the covid scare has changed things. i can't have visitors in the lookout. for 20 years i spent my days off house-sitting in chico while a friend spent the summer at her house in france. these days she doesn't want to get on an airplane.

many countries won't allow americans into them. i can go back to mexico city, and am looking forward to it once the museums open. i have missed friends a lot, and i think that accounts for the depression coming and going all summer. alas, i need people and conversations. though i'm frequently seen as a loner, especially by fellow forest service employees. now i want to take a swing east, visiting friends and family in nashville, atlanta, south carolina, maryland, washington, dc, new york, and finally for some warm weather, florida. please wish me well!

Any virus calls the body into question

i resist at the facts about my body. they're too astounding. i lose all sense of control. 

      my veins are a 60,000miles long

      my blood travels 60,000 miles a day

      my blood travels through it three times minute

       my stomach lining replaced every seven days

       my eyes focus 100,000 times a day

all this goes on while i'm trying to cook dinner or solve a math problem. i have absolutely no awareness of what's happening. my body is on automatic pilot.

for someone like me who likes to be in control, this is a disaster! i feel terribly vulnerable, not just to illness but to fate. every move i make could disrupt the system. what if i accidently poison my blood?

     platelets created in my blood: 200 billion a day

i can't even grasp that. or 

     15 million blood cells destroyed every second

     2.5 million created every second

hmm, how is that disproportion solved?

some are more fun, like those of sleep. supposedly i think more in my sleep and am smarter. my body paralyzed while i'm in deep sleep. and i am to have erections every hour and a half during the night, even though i don't know it. what a shame, since a prostate operation destroyed that ability. it would be nice to be aware of them. if i were intelligent,  i would have more dreams. and my body is 98% replaced every year, which gives me hope of improvement.

unfortunately it seems to be working the other way. my brain 80% water and getting milkier, even though it's the most powerful computer, 3000 Ghz, even if it stops growing at 18. and the body can function without a brain, very evident in politics. and it's claimed it can have more ideas than atoms in the universe. if that is the case, no wonder i'm driven crazy by thinking and get very confused by all the contradictory things it invents. paradox and ambiguity seem to be my natural mode. 

given all this, with my skin shedding 600,000 particles an hour and it replacing itself every 27 days, my stomach acid able to dissolve razor blades, and my heart beating 100,000 times a day, holding myself together in the midst of the ordinary, not to mention a crisis, is no small task. yes, mindfulness is not all it's cracked up to be. as the chinese saying goes, you are blessed if you have a bad memory. 

     

The fine art of making memories

i recently read an interesting article on time and the pandemic. many people feel time slipping away from them without a trace. the article  ventured the thought: without memories, our lives empty. we create time when we create memories. tough to do locked in your house with an uniterrupted flow of magazines, television, bickering with your kids. oddly, memories created by change, anxiety through contact with other people, failures in the world. nothing risked, nothing gained. 

and this set me to thinking: if i don't keep making memories, i get obsessed by old ones, and that can feel like death, ie. life over, everything passed. how do i escape this, sitting in my tower, waiting for lightning. (last night it didn't reach me, all the thunder in the distance to the east). if i didn't get a fire, at least i got a magnificent rainbow. is that enough? i have been watching movies by two film-makers who stir my thoughts and emotions: woody allen and ingmar bergmann. 

i started with woody, not just for the laughs, but for the career. it gave me lots to think about. (do thoughts create memories? can they do it on their own? i doubt it.) i found myself moving and talking like his main character. i put a new voice in my head to drown out the negative voices often obsessing me. replacement may be one way of dislodging old memories. i become someone else. not all his movies worked this way. the early ones too much slapstick and shtick. long ago i though Bananas funny. now it seemed labored. and one i thought awful in the past, stardust memories i now think his best. 

as for bergmann, i'm again obsessed with his carrer. once i watched almost everything he made. now i have to pick and choose, avoiding the silly comedies or the really grim ones like hour of the wolf and shame, searching for the positive in smiles of a summer night and wild strawberries. when  i was very little, four years old, a member of my father's congregation owned the local movie theater. i could walk in and watch them anytime i wanted, which i did. i remember sitting in the aisle and watching the prince and the pauper. essentially, they created my identity and watching films now, i put myself back in time. 

are these new memories or merely visits to old ones? can i look back the next day and still feel i've experienced time? maybe not. last winter i spent two and a half months in mexico. during travel i don't get depressed, so many new scenes and people, museums and art, crowded together, i'm full of change and the unexpected. i don't sit around wishing i were somewhere else, which can be the knife in the heart of solitude. 

travel a bit like high school where my memories dominated by the anxieties of changing hormones, trying to fit in, embarrassment at school dances, fights before class, constant change and the unmanageable. memories most created when life out of my control. true, i ache to have everything under control. like most people i crave security. alas, the security of the zoo and prison not very satisfying. i only experience an accumulation of being through change.  

 

Will the lockdown re-elect Trump?

i have several theories about this, none of which make me happy. Yes, the polls right now put him way behind. alas, when people poled, they're not really thinking about their own self-interest, not even about how they ultimately feel. people polled react more to the news than facts and figures. if someone isn't obviously popular at the moment, they go with the mass, lemmings over the cliff. when it comes right down to it in november they think about something like TAXES. yes, people hate them. 

and what drives them up: government programs, those meant help minorities and the poor. those meant to preserve baby seals and the arctic from oil pipelines. who proposes these? the democrats, of course. look at the percentage of voters who don't believe in global warming. it's enormous, even though the potential for a world catastrophe much greater than for a measly virus. and as for covid 19, trump has taken a positive attitude from the beginning. he's the voice of HOPE, saying essentially americans have dealt with much worse, the depression or world war two. he appeals to americans sense of invincibility.

and the most vocal of governors, newsome of california and cuomo of new requiring the most draconian (extreme) measures, both of them democrats, californians and new yorkers not beloved by the rest of the country. this plays into the feeling democrats always want more laws, more restrictions on people's behavior, more money for everything under the son. a large part of the population doesn't give a damn about the disadvantaged or minorities. they can be persuaded once in awhile to join demonstrations, or even do some community service. unfortunately closing down churches doesn't help anybody's cause.

most of all, is the lockdown doing any good? with everybody wearing masks the cases going up in california and new york. even closing the beaches doesn't seem to be helping. and what is the logic of keeping grocery stores open while putting bookstores and museums off limits? those places the easiest for social distancing. and talk about damaging the cultural heritage of the nation! the visitors to those places the most vocal in the country, and their numbers the smallest. thousands of museums may have to remain closed, laying off workers right and left. this may very well drive many people not well-disposed to vote for trump. 

and i have to say, when biden said he would make everyone in the country wear masks, he drove a nail into his own coffin. i feel that alone may lose him the election. so, there are my glum thoughts. here's hoping none of it proves to be true. i'd rather save a few reindeer and keep the public lands cared for and unpolluted. 

Log from May 12, 2020

twice i have been put on a pedestal by younger friends and been knocked off, both times receiving a powerful dose of disappointment and sarcasm. it's been surprising and painful. i enjoyed their admiration, especially criticising  myself so much! a bit of praise makes up for a lot. unfortunately, in disappointing them i fall from grace myself. 

this must be why i've always hesitated to be a counselor or teacher. or even a politician. i'm not great at being called to task. my older friends know my faults and hopefully are more forgiving. Especially, they know their own failings and can put themselves in my shoes. also, i tend to joke a lot. and that is not always understood. 

i have now written over five hundred blogs showing what a fool i am. it should be no surprise to anyone. however, when i set up expectations and don't fulfill them it's a shock to someone not in on the open secret. those who value me too highly know too few facts, no matter how much i  throw them out there. somehow i have to shout from the housetops how imperfect i am. 

now, that's certainly a claim to fame and form of vanity. can i really be worse than Jack the Ripper, Alexander the Great, Attilla the Hun? i've never reached such heights. i merely forget an appointment, over-reach my ability to empathize, forget the clean the bathtub. these aren't minor pecadillos, i grant you, yet they don't seem to in the same class a serial killers!

true, i'm not always honest. i do pretend to be better than i am. i'm easily embarrassed when i'm found out, when i don't prepare a speech adequately, or miss finding a fire and have to make it look like i didn't. a counterfeit, that's what i often feel like. as a teenager my favorite song was The Great Pretender. i played it over and over again, driving my family crazy. children should never spend too much time with their  parents.

and speaking of parents, how i hated discovering mine had feet of clay. this seems to be a common occurrence in our society. i don't know why it takes so long, until puberty. this must be a shock to have their sweet child turn into a monster of sarcasm. maybe that's why i avoiding being a parent. i knew the day of reckoning would come. alas, and now it's come to me again. 

Log from May 23, 2020

SATURDAY, MAY 23, 2020

LOCKDOWN: how profoundly anti-American it is

i really don't think we thought this through ahead of time, reacting to an internet panic. yes, i see this as an internet virus more than a medical one. after all, what makes Americans?

        1. Freedom of movement
        2. Limited interference of government in public and private life
        3. The formation of small groups
        4. Eating out
        5. The denial of death
        6. A lack of fear
        7. Individual identity

take number 7. masks erase identity and make us all bandits. more than once i've been unable to recognize someone i know, even after talking.  masks also make communication difficult, voices muffled, hearing impeded. and after all the talk of covid being so transmitable (now CDC, months later, says it's very difficult to pick the virus up from surfaces), couldn't it infect the eyes? i feel like we've all been in a form of Islamic purdah. 

as for the denial of death, this is the very foundation of the American psyche. i always think the most dangerous thing i can do is climb in my car. 50,000 Americans die on the highways every year! the line down of the middle of the road is no protection, especially if the trucker coming your way falls asleep, or you do. we live with death on the road every day, yet how little this impinges on me if i answer my cell phone. people die out of sight, in hospitals, immediately shunted off to funeral homes.

and so i live most of the time with a lack of fear. foolish of me, i know. having been hit by a sedan in a crosswalk and thrown over the top of it, i no longer trust traffic signs to protect me. okay, that does contradict what i've said. i am afraid of cars making right turns at a stop signal, and i look both ways when crossing a one-way street. once in Berkeley i was hit by a bicyclist going the wrong way and landed on me back in the middle of a busy blvd. stupidly i stood up and walked away. 

eating out, forming small groups. i am actually very social. at least i like sitting in coffee shops and meeting friends. we hug, pat each other on the back, shake hands. we breath on each other as we converse, keeping the normal American distance, which is probably 2 feet. at 6 feet i might as well be alone. avoiding people doesn't come naturally and i really feel sorry for the kids learning to do so. and was this really necessary, since kids don't get covid 19, with a few exceptions?

the biggest anti-American attributes of the situation: freedom of movement and lack of government interference in private life. commanded to stay home (which i still believe to be illegal), i lost my right to freedom of movement. and forced to wear masks, not meet friends, or go to church, i feel the basic rights of American life taken from me. even a European country like Sweden, where there are more rules, did not take this route. at this point i feel like i've been bamboozled. 

Posted by Smokysun at 9:28 AM    

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Jump off a cliff or risk the virus!

i wonder how many people are feeling the like myself, as the lockdowns around the world continue? to be trapped in your own house must feel like death itself. no theaters, no bookstores, cafes, churches open, means we're afraid to breathe. even where i am, high in a mountain tower, isolated as always on the job, i feel anxious before my days off. 

i have watched a lot of youtube videos. adventurous travelers keep on trucking, where ever there's a crack in the system: snorkling off naples, moving to a new home in portugal, flying to the coast of mexico, taking precautions and accepting the risks. since i can't do any of those things while working, i feel the presence of the end being too close. 

the question is: how do i keep going while in prison? i remember george jackson in solitary confinement practiced yoga all day. it certainly helps to have a cause. i don't really have one. the worship of beauty, the magic of poetry and art seem irrelevant in this time. true, i know that's not true. many folks surviving watching movies, studying art online, visiting with folks in the backyard, yet i have  always been haunted by the sense of the transitory...

that's  part of the problem. feeling nothing i do will survive or have meaning. the truth is any life is finite. as i looked up at the magnificent passing comet a couple of weeks ago i felt awe and at the same time very small. the irony is all of us made of stardust, the right hand from a different star than the left. i'll be recycled in water and air. any breath i have will be breathed by almost everyone on earth as long as humanity survives.

how long that will be should be no concern of mine. yet the present crisis masking the real thing: global warming. the spread of the virus nothing compared to the melting ice-caps and rising seas. i keep wondering if   the antarctic will crack in half, the whole earth wobbling, or meteors fall from the sky. to find the whole earth engulfed by an epidemic leaves me facing my own mortality. i think the best option not always clear.  

fire lookouts, the last guardians of the forest

i hate to see the older generation of forest service folks retire. they joined up from a certain idealism and love of the woods. they had favorite spots, they felt protective, it wasn't just a job. alas, the newer people simply see it as a job to perform, a salary to get, a ladder to climb. a good example is the washington people now in charge. in their last public proposal they urged the selling off of the public lands to the timber industry and mining interests. hard to blame them, since this is the general direction and attitude of the present administration. 

but do they really have to go with the flow? in the past resistance would have risen from within the service itself, those who didn't think of expediency and profit. true, not everything in the past ideal. clear-cutting in the sierra, for example. when i joined up, the mountains here had not been desecrated. the head honchos said, 'we'll leave rows of trees along the road to hide what we're doing.' alas, thousands of people fly across these mountains every day. the scabs not hidden.

and often they won't grow back, the soil unable to hold the moisture. i remember one boss saying how great this program would be. yes, one of the yes-men who approved everything out of the head office. and i could find many examples of bad practices. still, as one forestry teacher at chico state said, ' the forest service divided into 1. those who care about the forest, 2. those clawing their way up, and 3. those who simply go with the flow for a job. unfortunately, the first group growing smaller.

this reflects the change in the country. at first it was seen as god's creation, fully of mystery, to be preserved. luckily, teddy roosevelt jumped in and created public lands, even as much of it was being sold off to the railroads in a great scam, right-of ways never used. the forest service created to care for what was left. despite mis-steps, this did happen, along with national parks and monuments. and the country went along with it, enjoying the natural spaces. this lasted for a hundred years.

what has changed? probably the growth of cities. citizens no longer need the visions of the wilderness to sustain the american myth. in the 1960's the preservationists created the sierra club, friends of the earth, and an environmental movement arose from the university of california, santa cruz. their influence did wonderful work. of course, now everybody blames them for blocking the greed of miners and loggers. they say the conditions of the forest lousy because of them, when the truth is in the reagan era budgets slashed. 

this leaves almost no people in the field whose job it is to further the health and growth of the forest. and this is my point, only lookouts go back to work with a love of the land, deeply appreciative of the beauty they enjoy. as the season has begun, they post photos of the first days at work. this is one reason i would like to see many more lookouts built and staffed. at least there would be someone watching the store. of course, this is a thorn in the side of those who see only with the bottom line. the concern for the public trust fadse into history. only those on towers see what is worth preserving. 

Fire prevention is no longer the name of the game

i always find myself trying to correct a public error. there's no profit in it. in fact it makes me miserable when nothing happens. i keep expecting to create a life-changing blog, one shaking up the world, making it come to its senses. fat chance. crying in the wilderness, that's what it feels like. the tree that falls in the forest with no one to hear!

ok, enough weeping. i'll soon be gone to a better world, leaving this one behind.  let's say it again: FIRE PREVENTION IS NO LONGER THE NAME OF THE GAME. and why is that? in 1962 when i started looking out for the forest service, plenty of patrols were out there checking on campfires and logging. lookouts dotted the landscape to give early warning. alas, most of the patrols disappeared and a huge number of lookouts were closed, especially the california system. 

the reason given always financial. we don't have the funds. lookouts too expensive, even with their staffers supplying their own vehicles and working for minimum wage, which i still am after 56 years and no benefits. "the upkeep, the maintenance, it's all too much!" other than a paint job and new appliances, my lookout has had nothing new in twenty years. "patrols have to take care of you!" i started taking out my garbage and bringing up my own drinking water so that didn't have to happen.

what is really going on here? i've heard the forest service now spends half  its budget on fire. and it used to be if a forest had big fires, the next year they would get more funds. now, if they have big fires, they get less the next year. this happened on plumas national forest the year after one of the worst disasters in fire history: the burning of paradise california. were we being punished? i don't think so. we were encouraged to have bigger and better conflagrations. then we would get huge amounts of money to fight a particular fire, without any increase in next year's budget. 

yes, money comes to big fires. people celebrate the firefighters: thank you, thank you. if the crews extinguish small fires nobody says boo. the organizations become heroes. opposed to the forest service in california, calfire, the state organization, has been flooded with money: new planes, helicopters, engines, cameras, on and on. they have benefited tremendously from the increase in homes and lives lost, from the immense growth in acreage. 

i have answered my own question. prevention keeps fires small. if the aim were to do so, THERE WOULD BE MANY MORE LOOKOUTS FOR EARLY WARNING. unfortunately, lookouts work too well. they have reported themselves out of job. expensive technology costing much more than tower maintenance feeds the ego. of course, no one in any organization would tell the truth, they might not even think it. when will legislatures and voters wise up? i suspect not any time soon. 

how to prepare for your end

I'm not the best person to organize this post. having been suicidal most of my adult life, i should be an expert in saying goodbyes. trouble is, i want to choose my own time and place - to jump off a cliff. i don't particularly like the idea of a virus suffocating me. still i am preparing, and i have a few recommendations. 

WRITE YOUR OWN OBITUARY

even my best friends and family knew very little about me. and especially when familiar faces around town depart, i'm astounded by their stories. i decided to make a preemptive strike. why let others make up things, or deliver platitudes. why not tell them the good, the bad, and the ugly? at least you will be real to them.  the more you reveal, the more unforgettable  you will be. if you're afraid of being a character and pass as a normal citizen, the less your image will live on. here's my own example: https://smokysunsheaven.blogspot.com/2020/02/obituary.html

WRITE DOWN ALL YOUR PASSWORDS

give them to family and friends. don't forget your facebook password so everybody can be notified. as for banks, be sure and give them to whoever you deam responsible. if you don't do this, it will play havoc with those who would like to help clean up your act. this is also a way of letting them know who you are (were). 

COLLECT ALL YOUR DOCUMENTS

that's what i've been doing today, making sure everything  on an external hard-drive. these have gotten incredibly cheap. make sure you get one with enough space. i have thousand of pictures, drawings, digital artworks, personal documents and records. i spend 40 years as a writer and 15 as a photographer/artist. as usual, if you don't have an advocate, all your precious creations will go in the garbage. recently i've seen this happen to half a dozen fine artists  in town.

CREATE A FEW BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS

i have fifty books on amazon. anyone who has amazon prime can download them for free. i have failed to find a audience, so this may have been a futile endeavor. i encourage you to try. a least write your life story for your children. forever after they will be full of questions that can never be answered. i've thought of dozens of questions for my mother. alas, those can never be cleared up. she did make four and  a hours on tape about my childhood, plus several other manuscripts. they make feel i have an identity. 

KEEP YOURSELF HEALTHY

i know this seems odd. my feeling is: the healthier you are when you die, the better you will feel about letting go. for example, i've doing everything to boost my immune system, faced with this crude and stupid virus. here's a list:

sleep
exercise
reduce stress (avoid the news if possible)
vitamin C
zinc
probiotics
vitamin A
garlic
black elderberry
l-phenylalanine
quercetin
citrus bioflavonoids
vitamin D3
echinacea
beta glucan

unlike many people, i'm an absolute believer in using supplements with a shotgun. true, my doctor once said, "you have very expensive pee." i would rather have that than missing the one small item my body absolutely needs. best of luck to you.