meetings with remarkable people: lorraine

i never got her last name. and i knew she wasn't that interested in me when she said, "it's strange, after i say goodbye to someone, i never contact them again." it was a white lie to dash any expectations i had. she did give me an email and it led to 

                            

                                            https://vimeo.com/outofthebluemountains 

videos she puts together for musicians in katoomba, australia, where i met her in the YHA youth hostel. from my diary:

Wish I could have recorded Lorraine's story, so interesting. And people come talk to her in the middle of the night while she's cleaning the kitchen. She still has a sense of wonder about things and people that happen to her, another member of the lucky generation.

i figure she's in her late fifties. she studied animation with a famous Czech film-maker in hobart, tasmania, and worked with disney studios until they abandoned australia. let's see what else i've got.

Did just make a short video of Lorraine give an harmonica lesson:

she showed videos of Jim Conway (famous australian harmonica player) and with whom she studied years ago & his group Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band: My Canary Has Circles Under Her Eyes:

Jim Conway, who now has MS.

Lorraine wants to set up an old Cinema Cafe. She has a storage space full of film equipment, old movies. etc. $240 a month for ten years.

i think that adds up to $52,800. 

talked with lorraine for a couple of hours. she loves doing the video documentaries. Father a navy office, played music & women. Lots of parent fights. Lorraine the oldest, children holding onto her as she watched parents fight. Once she stood between them, father grabbed her & threw her against a table. Mother German, maybe her perfectionism comes from there. 

She's bought & sold houses, taught by an architect she met doing drawings on the street. Learned to be an entrepreneur. At 17 she had a secure gov. job (some program trained her) ended up working with the architect (Swiss I think) who  created a company making jigsaw puzzles. She can make $40 in two hours busking with her harmonica. ESL son in Sydney moved in with his Korean girlfriend who's an operating room expert. Oldest of 8 children, 5 sisters, 3 brothers. Looking forward not back she's now being brought to understand herself. Very good at pattern recognition. 

too bad i can't convey all her expressions and interests, like fighting to build tiny houses, not the thing in australia. at the moment she has way too many interests, like the young irish bicyclist who made a pass at her! she sees him off on his travels. 

 She sometimes covers her mouth while talking & with the accent i have to ask for repeats. Once in awhile she's really struck by something I say & becomes very attentive. She said Paul the guy in my room gay, hard to get close to. Made me a little nervous! L's longest relationship 5 years. 

Recommended she get a job & regular income. Recommended museum guard & guard at construction sites. L's mother very creative making things. She said she already has a sense of accomplishment.

no doubt she'll be another invisible, if special and unusual, person to disappear without a trace. like the flowering tree i once saw behind the post office, blooming with spring and unnoticed by anyone. 

landing on a bomb (stagefright)

i can't remember who said this, but she wrote I jump out of bed and land on a bomb. i spend the rest of the day putting myself back together." this has been my experience over and over again. i climb out of bed in the morning feeling great. five minutes later i'm cascaded with gloom. whatever i have to do becomes overwhelming, not just the next 12 hours, no, my whole life!

it's taken me a long time to make some sense of this. what does my mind do to me? leaving dreams it builds my daytime world all over again. this takes effort. evidently scientific research proves our thoughts wander 30% of the time. concentration of the yoga sort takes years to develop. when i wake my mind expands to include the whole universe. i'm knocked over.

it's the surprise, i'm sure, that does it. reading about stage fright in theater, the conclusion: inadequate or the wrong kind of preparation. the actor Oliver Olivier spent six years fighting his fears onstage. he didn't quit, for fear he'd never return. i don't know his solution, but i know. he was famous for working from the outside in. he'd put on a fake nose and suddenly he'd be Cyrano. he'd walk with a limp. voila, richard the third would inhabit his body.

well, i figure he'd lost his concentration and this method wouldn't work. in other words, inadequate preparation. most modern actors work inside out. they do a lot of personal soul searching, finding emotional moments in their own lives to fill out the character. they prepare by stumbling around in their minds and past experiences. eventually they roll out a living snowman. 

so, when i leap out of bed and explode, it simply means i have not prepared myself for the day. that space between waking and sleeping full of wobbles, broken walls, shifts of earth beneath my feet. how could i solve this? i presume by meditating a moment, not forcing myself into action, rolling with the punches, let the memories of the world i inhabit come back to accrue.

to quote susan m. weinscheck from One Hundred Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People, a book i highly recommend, after all, we are a mystery to ourselves:

          The latest research on unconscious mental processing shows that people receive 40 billion sensory inputs every second, and are consciously aware of 40 at any one time.

wow, that reminds me of time a friend's teenage daughter in the hospital for a psychotic break. leaving the hospital for the first time, she ran off down the street, her mother chasing her. obviously, she'd lost her filter and the 40 billion hit her with full force. we need to screen up to get the 40 billion down to 40. that really says something.

unfortunately, i'm usually too sleepy, mesmerized by dreaming, to put anything approaching this kind of common sense in practice. i have learned to pull back from the world as it grows black. alas, i'm often too dimwitted. and all day i'm picking up pieces of myself while trying to relate to work, school, friends, all the bits of information streaming  onto my eyeballs. 

changing my attitude

you know, i never thought it possible. i've heard many an admonition to people to 'change your attitude' and i always thought, why, it can't be done, can it? i mean, an attitude seems something inborn, part of a person. it's not a matter of choice. i am an optimist, or a pessimist. i like the way things are being done or i don't. sure, i can still go ahead, being cranky or discontented doesn't stop me. still, i have to admit, the job will suffer, as will the results.

okay, a couple days ago, looking around at the mountains, the weather gorgeous, especially for the end of september, i had a epiphany. i realized how lucky i'd been to lead this life. what was ailing me? in july they stopped paying me to watch on my lunch hour. i added up the money. i'd be losing $240 a month, 12 percent of my salary. taking it personally i felt i wasn't appreciated after 55 years, the amount peanuts to them yet a lot to me.

so, signing on and off for lunch, i've been rather surly. how can they close the lookouts in the middle of the afternoon, temperature and winds at their peak? what a dereliction of duty! four times i've come back from the break to find them searching for a reported fire, the helicopter and crews wheeling about. even one false alarm probably costs more than what they're saving by impoverishing me.

okay, my epiphany and gratitude to fate for having given me my delightful life suddenly made me realize how good i have, and have had, it. true, it's minimum wage, no benefits, no step-raises, no retirement. i will be left eventually hanging out to dry. but i realized i've been able to write, travel the world, and do what other people envy. ultimately, this had a good result.

i got so mad i published the book i'd been holding back for 20 years, afraid i'd be criticized. to hell with them i thought! and now i've got almost 50 books published on amazon, including the important one: CLOUD WATCHER.

                    https://www.amazon.com/Wayne-Pease/e/B07FB9YDB2

i'd been afraid of what people would say. would i lose my job? even now, having done it, i'm on edge. 

but i realized having a mean streak in me show, i was just shooting myself in the foot. after all, i started enjoying the mid-day break, turning off the radio, napping or walking, free of responsibility. i've watched 24 hours a day for all these years and i feel the weight. i enjoy finding fires, i want to find fires, a have a certain duty toward the forest, despite how i sometimes feel (bored or sleepy). every night i have to pee every two hours and i always look around. finding a fire in the dark the biggest thrill.

anyway, i've decided to be more positive and cheerful on the radio. it's true i think everybody caught up in the heroics of fighting fire, the tv coverage, the signs on people's houses: THANKS FIREFIGHTERS. and the big fires bring in the big money. preventing fires brings no publicity or honor. obviously, i feel a lot of the abandoned fire towers need to be refurbished and manned. maybe the pressure from the public will make that happen. 

HAPPINESS: feeling good in your own body

last night's dreaming gave me a present. it might be called ecstasy. it called itself happiness. i was full of light and feeling less like  a candle and more like a quiet rocket. this confirmed what i'd realized long ago. every feeling called happy includes  this kind of pleasure. the common ingredient. and it explains a lot of my addictive behavior. 

luckily or not, i escaped being a drunk and prematurely dead by some trick of wanting to go on, always connected with not wanting to destroy my physical being. and i've always stayed away from needles, even the pin-prick more than i wanted to suffer. and i do like being clear-headed most of the time. an escape from thinking very appealing, but the price too high. 

yes, i'm told all the time i think too much, analyzing, examining different perspectives, my mind always racing. and i do get satisfaction when i can summarize a thought in a phrase. the only thing: i don't enjoy being in the physical world nearly as much. a psychic told me i'd been given this particular lifetime to play, having borne so much responsibility in former lives.

i keep thinking about that. obviously i've chosen to be selfish: no career to tie me down, no kids, no house. in that sense all time is playtime. and i know people see me as weird. once during a theater exercise, laying naked in a grave, i heard a student above me looking down into the hole, "wayne was a strange guy." there i had confirmation of my weirdo status.

and i think my image at work very likely similar. why would anybody want to sit on a mountain for 55 years. having had no girlfriends in recent history, i'm probably pegged as gay. well, if i was, my body would be having a lot more fun. ah, how can i not remember twenty years of romance with happiness, even if i think i was a lousy lover. hopefully, the women involved remember it with more than simply forgiveness. 

back to my dream. i listened to a whole book by michael pollan on recent experiments in psychedelic experiments in therapy. my own trips 40 years ago a mixed blessing. the most fun was walking around north beach in san francisco. doors got smaller and every cafe patron seemed to be acting a part on a stage, which we probably all are. yet i've never been tempted since. a therapeutic situation might be different.

the subjects experience fear first, then the feeling the world made of love. i contend they simply felt super good. dying on morphine probably very like. and all the people overdosing taking a short-cut to happiness. myself i immediately determined after my dream a trip to the subtropics in order. at a certain level of humidity and temperature, i'm as happy as i get.

"Browsing is the joy of our age."

ah, so that's it, key to my life. i always regret holding onto things, filling up my drawers and storage space.  rather, i'm wiser when i let everything go, almost as soon as i see it. to buy is always to lessen the mystery of the gift. and to stop moving let's the eyes grow tired and bored. fortunately, most things not worth more than a few moments. 

that's what makes a great still photograph so unusual. it bestows upon the instant a subtle reality not known to us every day. and as robert adams said, the photographer fascinated by surfaces. that might go for the traveler too. at the moment i'm wandering through mexico on the internet. i can't believe how much it's changed since my first visit in 1960, when i took a bus from tijuana to mexico city with 200 pounds of books in my suitcase, intending to become a writer. 

and my last visit 25 years ago seems like dream. walmarts! costcos! what is this world coming to? i miss the romance of walking by the blue house in oaxaca where d.h. lawrence wrote 'mornings in mexico', the ride i got back from the pyramids in an old hearse. see what i mean? i'd love to hold onto the memories as if they were real. and books, what have they been but castles in air. the time i wallowed in dostoyevsky or dawdled with cockroach kafka.

i admit, i believe those who don't read and haven't traveled and haven't pursued romance, have missed the chance to lead more than one life. and learning a new language, it gives you a new personality, the chance to say things you never dared in the tongue of your birth. yesterday, i thought, "i've just been given a little sliver of history." everything before and after may as well not exist.  

ah, the butterfly life. butterflies may only last a day, but they make the most of it. and this explains why i've been able to do my job, watching for fires for more than half a centtury. despite being the most impatient person in the world, i enjoy browsing the landscape, every day. as moon and sun change the light, there's always something new to see. true, i can get bored in the middle of a hot, sleepy afternoon, or with lightning that goes on more than three days, wearing me out with pacing the floor. 

when i want more, like a kiss that lasts forever, i overdo it, and it becomes too familiar. the pain and glory of our age is the endless wandering, looking, listening, and ultimately letting go of it all. should i hold on to too much, i'm like the pack-rat who collapses and expires, trying to carry everything home. a little slice of history is all i've got and the endless universe above is but a bookend to this life.

"FALLING, FALLING, FALLING." (ALICE)

unfortunately, unlike alice, when i fall, i don't fall down a comforting rabbit hole, passing shelves of sweets. O no, i follow the dictates of  dr. johnson when he refuted the concept of 'no reality' by kicking a boulder. "there, i've proved reality exists!" when i take a tumble, like the other day in the woods, i land like a rocket re-entering the atmosphere. i don't burn up, but lay there like one of the clods i've whammed into, thinking, "i'm a fool and this is a lesson i have to keep learning."

yes, the other day, walking in the woods, i decided to take a shortcut, scrambling up a pile of dirt. alas, when i reached the top, i lost my footing, hurled across space into another wall of stone and soil. and yes, i lay there, feeling completely foolish, like a toddler who couldn't stand on his own two feet. and yes, since nothing seemed broken, i did smile and say, "some lessons i have to learn over and over again." 

luckily, a bad gash below my left knee,had taken the blow. a little higher and my knee-cap would have shattered. then i'd been in a hell of a predicament. able to stand, i hobbled toward the lookout like a horse with a broken leg. and for the next week i ascended and descended the stairs one step at a time. i started adding up all the times i'd fallen in the last five years. 

first, a car slammed into me in a crosswalk. my neighbor standing on the corner said i did indeed fly. landing on my face, i didn't feel much like talking to the people hovering over me or the lady driver crying. so, okay, we know i survived that one. i upped my dose of prozac and it made me feel so good, i lost my footing, once rolling down the steps of the back deck, hitting my head twice on a very solid, dr. johnson tree. my back could have broken. it didn't.

then i tumbled over a short ledge at the tower, banging my forehead on a piece of random cement, in the same place the treee had reminded me not to be an idiot. the third time i missed a step coming down the steps inside the lookout, fortunately not from the top, straight into the wall at the foot of the stairs. once again i escaped a fate worse than death. just a few aches and pains. i reduced the dose of prozac, losing a certain bliss in favor of feeling pain. 

okay, last winter, i fell three times in exactly the same way, twisting to the left, one at the top of some stairs in the art building, once falling into aisle trying to escape a lecture i knew was going to get even more boring. that got me a lot of attention i didn't need. and the last time i can't remember. i'd been taking heart medicine and when i cut the dose in half, i seemed to lose my place in the world. this time i increased the dose. 

at the beginning of fire season i tripped near the tower, taking photographs, my foot tangled in a root. i knew i was supposed to be careful, too old to multitask, but once again i forgot, distracted by a flower, falling flat on my face. (no, the camera wasn't broken). alas, i've been discouraged from going out and taking pictures since. 

this reminded of the time when i was out photographing, i thought i heard a rattlesnake, and instinctively jumped. no rattlesnake, but, boy, did i get a lump on my forehead, proof below. all this goes to prove what i read, trying to prepare for old age: AFTER 65 YOU WILL FALL. i've tried to heed that warning to no avail. reality keeps getting the best of me. and yes, i'm still limping. 78 and waiting for the rules of the universe to change.

"Dropping rose petals down the Grand Canyon

                                  

/https://www.amazon.com/default/e/B07FB9YDB2?redirectedFromKindleDbs=truewaynepease

and listening for the echo, that's what it's like to publish a book of poetry," said Don Marquis. 

of course, i should have listened to him, BUT when my income cut 12% by the forest service, it sparked my gumption and i've published 44 books on Amazon. not all poetry, certainly, the works to fill up the shelves between those slim volumes 21 plays, a couple novels, a book of fire season letters, dance photos, pics taken of antiques. a lot of detritus compared to what i enjoy in the poems!

and people will probably read and like everything but the poems. so be it, i did get up at 5 a.m. for years and stumble to the typewriter. in fact most of it written on a mechanical contraption with no electric chords to it. luckily, with the advent of trigger-fingers and operations on my palms, i am long past those primitive days. i did fill dozens of notebooks. in fact several years ago i tossed 125 diaries, feeling them to be simply boring rambles searching for something to say.

that said, i've still got a dozen boxes of photos, spiral-notebooks, and manuscripts in storage, though mice have been shredding them. i figure i shouldn't burden the future with more than a few fragments. and besides, i am nervous. what will the reception for the published stuff be? the silence of the infinite spaces, as don Marquis surmised? or it could be worse! the fame of a jack kerouac who came off his mountain tower to accolades for On The Road. the attention basically finished him, turned him into a real drunk and a crazed catholic drawing crosses and devils all over the house.

beware of what you ask for. those words have reverberated in my skull for a lifetime. and usually when i've gotten misery i didn't ask for, it all turned out for the best. it's as if i have a mis-apprehension of my fate. if i were dictating it i'd be a rich and famous playwright, going on drunken tv rambles like truman capote. i knew early on i didn't have the strength to resist the blandishments of the world, so i hid myself away. it's only from approaching 80 and the final fall i can give up being so careful. everybody might have thought i was a nice guy, but give me a microphone and i'll blab any kind of nonsense.

no, i was a wise child who knew his overblown ego would say many words it would regret. as others have said, BEWARE OF THE SEND BUTTON. it is bete noir, the dark beast who will devour you. and yet, as oscar wilde said, i can resist everything but temptation. i'm embarrassed by my feeble attempts to impress.