do it while you can

the bad news first: 'life's a gamble you lose.' then the good: 'you're free to take chances.'

today's post is in honor of http://www.chicorogue.com/ the first performances of the new group. and it's a bawdy one in bars. check it out and you'll see why i'm in the process of posting 'THE GAMBLER, or the zen of gambling.' a story in poems.

for six seasons i worked on fire towers above the casinos of lake tahoe.

ENERGY

"The energy of the earth,"

he said, "concentrates in

some places." He took off

his diamond studs and

put them on the dresser.

Sally lay naked on the

bed. "Everything in history

comes to this conclusion,

sooner or later. Look

at that sky." The sun

was rising over the Lake.

"The human race keeps

going because of moments

like this." They laid

their cards on the table.

Sally hoped for a

jackpot as she caressed

the one-armed bandit,

closing out the sounds

of the cars on the highway.

"History is a series of

accidents, or it has

a definite purpose. Who's

to say?" The sun came

up like a hydrogen-bomb

and the fires of eternity

consumed the bed and room.

Sally felt the golden rain,

and he cried like a child.

www.pbase.com/wwp/gambler

city vs country

down from the mountains today for four days off. the transition gets harder as the summer progresses. in honor, however, of the occasion, i post a sermon. still rivalling my father after all these years, i've given a few, though in the university context. (the subversive poet at work. a couple were on 'the anthropology of love', another in praise of vampires on halloween.) more standup comedy routines than lectures, i felt the audiences bewildered by my audacity. these notes for a talk on 'grid theory' don't really show the insanity of my approach, but at least you get the ideas. alas, i'm less sure of myself than in the past. the older i get the less i know. is that the way with all of us?

www.pbase.com/wwp/grid

forest queen

ah, love, sweet love. only, not always so sweet. probably we need it to progress in this lifetime, otherwise we wouldn't suffer enough, nor would we write poetry. 'all poetry is love poetry', even if it's about death and loss. love was the beginning. maybe the end? great romantics like edith piaf lived for it. i cast my bread on those waters for many years and miss the roller-coaster rides. (well, not that much.) the great thing about love is it takes you where angels fear to tread, the black hole of calcutta, the dungeons of devil's island. as a friend said, 'you've got to value those warm, fuzzy moments enough. and mostly you get them from your children.' no, no, i'm not cynical, but i am disillusioned. these poems rose from a desperate but ultimately unconsumated affair: www.pbase.com/wwp/judah looking at them, i feel i was wiser then than i am now. some wines you have to drink straight out of the vat.

magic

okay, i'll admit it, the truth had to come out sometime: i'm a lapsed shaman. yes, i used to drum and dance, taking part in winter and summer solstice ceremonies. it seemed to be part of my writing practice, and i even wrote a mini-epic on the subject. www.pbase.com/wwp/spirit you can see how it showed up in my graphic work www.pbase.com/wwp/indians_ghost_dance

yet when i began taking photographs and prozac after contracting asthma shortly after my mother's death, i must have felt more comfortable in the magical world, not needing mystical reassurance (one summer i read 44 books by and about c.g. jung). still, as i climb around the rocks and trees on my hours off, photographing the creatures inhabiting them, i must not have lost all faith! www.pbase.com/wwp/summer enjoy this vision from the past.

the sound of silence

at 13 i found myself making an odd decision: whether to be an artist or a writer. i'd been a bookworm since the 3rd grade, wrote for the school newspaper, couldn't draw, whatever made me think i could go completely visual? of course, i made the logical decision (why not, even at 13 i tended to be level-headed. well, maybe.) then i bought my first computer and digital camera in 2002. i'd always taken pictures, but got frustrated, foolishly not photographing in thailand, india, sri lanka, and nepal. my camera might get stolen. and the new digital age had just begun. to make a long story short, after 9/11 i felt nobody was listening. so i stopped writing. little did i realize i'd probably said everything i had to say in www.pbase.com/wwp/enigma the beginning of '02. (feeling a writer is usually remembered for a one-liner, i've always written a lot of them.) in 'the enigma variations (2002) a summing up' you'll hopefully find everything that's fit to print. after that i've tried out the artist's life. it's a lot more fun and just as frustrating!

the disappeared

what's not so strange is the impact on us of those close to us. say my friend sherry, www.pbase.com/wwp/sherry or my friend berta, www.pbase.com/wwp/berta . the truly bizarre is the disappearance of the man at my storage locker, the secretary of the accupuncturist, the seller at the bookstore, the people who give us a sense of community texture without being close friends. www.pbase.com/wwp/trans . stay in one place long enough, watching these gaps open and re-filled, and you begin to believe, as i have this week, 'all men are mortal. wayne is a man. therefore he is mortal.'

here's a passage from the second day of the cloudwatcher diary.

Last night I suffered death dreams. A Flamenco Master in Black handed me a deck of cards and a guitar. He said, "Study them thoroughly." I awaited a ferry on a dark river. Did I have the fee for Charon? Was this the change into something 'rich and strange'?

Last December, Isabella Nigrido, my personal psychic, said, "You were overly impressed with death when you were young." What did she envision? Was it my preacher father performing funerals, or my friend Max, shot down in the street, at home in his glass coffin the day after we played together? Gazing at his painted, waxen eleven-year-old body while old women in black whispered, I tingled with terror and raced from the room.

I seek to make death my friend, to die before I die as the wise advise, yet on this first day of the season I don't want to release the world. Memories of travels this winter - Sri Lankan civil-war road-blocks in the middle of the night - haunt me. Out of nowhere images of a dark street-corner in Madrid and the footsteps of a passerby in Berlin invade my brain. And I don't want to die. In March my friend Amy experienced the death or her twenty-three year-old daughter from cancer. She rose with her daughter's spirit into the next world before plunging back into her own body and she said, "There is no death." I wish I could believe it.

perhaps there are intimations of immortality in the rocks around the lookout, in some of the spirit pictures i've been adding: www.pbase.com/wwp/summer

the best revenge

my father used to stop in the middle of his sermons and silence me where i squirmed and cavorted in the front pew. (i also went thru a period of being the class clown in high school.) odd, that i wanted center stage when i finally found performing unsatisfying. instead, i got my revenge by writing this play: www.pbase.com/wwp/rite the humor may not be the most sophisticated, but i still get a chuckle whenever i look at it. only many, many years later did i learn most boys have issues with their fathers. may i be forgiven for writing this piece before realizing i'm not alone.