Living life’s a puzzle, isn’t it? A puzzle we slop into sans choice,  not a single chance to say,  “Hey, wait a sec., what’s this all about?”

            We think we choose our way inside this everflux but only hindsight maps coherent paths from deadends, roundabouts, intertwists, and mazy tangent skips.

            A puzzle yes, alone, sans spirit drum, we flail about wording every point a dozen different ways, talking inactivity as “reasonable restraint”; “planning” we say, smiling in the teeth of knowing better. Without a drum we fumble every pass, stumble in mid-stride, spendthrift our time in paradise, at cross-roads we’ve a mind to try, some day, some other way. Promises! Promises we vow in plenty, silent, sotte voce, and aloud to vagabonds, rascals, and loose women hanging about or en suite within us; some of them are real while others are virtual compatriots who take our vow and run, or shift their genders through mother, father, brother, sister, boy/girl, daughter, son, particular friend.

            Ohhh yes, I have such a one and many more as well. This one, A Sweet Silent Friend, a nun: walking her habits round my mental convent’s cloister.  She, tells her beads upon the stones, stilling inner chatter of do’s, don’ts, wistful wants, as ruby solar-light seeps through stained glass, fills a vault of pews with stainéd light, then transits another windowed wall to cast a glow on arches footed in green lawns calling: “once upon a time” & “innocence”  & “child, woman, crone” & “ravens speak as songbirds perch on branching thought.”

See the stone edifice fall upward launched toward light into chorals of Allé-lu-lias in forests, mountains, valleys, seas, in desert hush, in burning solar storms of love. Turning from her beads, She looks into abyssal depths as seed-self roots and vines Her mystery in cavities of body-mind calling down that blinding light to bud, blossom, bloom the fervent Glori-oh in Om nia Om-ni-po-tence.

            Open up a million senses how, Co-nun-drum step-tunes He/She resplendent green in oboe resonating undertones. He plays the puzzle out: Nets, Labyrinth, Intestinal Maze. Her/His hooves drum goatish thumps in woodland duff. We strive to pace His stutting rush: forever in arrears; too sober in our words; too drunk to stand upright, we run amok among Her trees and vales; we fail, falling behind to watch the shadow play of He/She, sipping uncut wine amid dappled light, capering His gavotte, blowing Her tunes into this marvel spin of rain, sun, moon, wind, dark, and shining afterthought unequivocating ring-round-rose of DEATH in LIFE in DEATH in LIFE in DEATH in…

            See the Goddess wrapt in religious trappings – as Black Madonna she reveals the universal church as something wild, Mithraic, Dionysian, or deeper pagan polyglot desire for a two in one existence – a coupled man/woman/ adrodgyne.

            Out of such dreams our puzzled minds return to light; to blue-sky backdropped clouds of multi-gray puffed up, or flat, or billowing huge in towers dazzle white above around, upon, or nestling into deep dark greens, or cuppish glacial sheets, or prairie sere, or orange rose of sand in seeming empty lands. 

            Out of such sensory overload, experience begins. Melodies of time: the Alabama Hills, Sierra Uplift, Columbia Gorge. Volcano snows outstrip our feeble tales and make a mockery of how or what we choose or chose.

Connoisseurs Of Chaos   

Part One  “Co…”

(a combine, partnership, a company)

            This particular “Co”, “acquaintenance”, tale-teller, friend, working his way to enemy then back-slowly to relation, part of an extended family I think of in the same breath as us, in short this particular puzzle this Conundrum if you will, Aln,                 A             ELL             ENN    Long, long, we met exterior to Friday Harbor’s warm interiors.  Café’s, the docks, restaurants: his hands full of coffee cups, cigarettes, dogs, evening Ranier Ales, ‘Green Death’ (we called it); his voice loud and hoarse; his outward show slim, hard, a crossed up mountain man, teamster, forester, with moonshine glowing “pommie” nose ‘n cheeks.

            Back then we spoke slow/quick obfuscatory tales of past endeavors, lives led, trails followed, chimeras chased for virtue, wealth, sex, love, and all of the above. I wrote them down and he took them;  flattered and otherwise with reverence showing them to friends reminding self of all he’d said back then,

“Good Christ, I’m glad you kept these… I’d forgotten most of them!”

Buzz, buzz, the alcohol whizzes for and by…

            In this moment of beginning, there are so many space/times we could start… conventionally he we were born is/are not yet dead… or selective plot, with points along the way, and meaning underwriting developmental gists, themes, vehicles; “what the fuck (over), we’d rather not!”  We hold ourselves, at once, too complex and way too simple. After all we are connossieurs and as such we’ll begin, as most do, in the middle working in skips, backward jumps, and seeming present times, mixing it as storytellers can to rhyme with how we live our lives, riding the paths, and waves of chaos, never quite achieving a total understanding of our friends, our loves, our lives. 

            Always there’s a story, words twisting my tail… I cannot bear the circular movement of his mind or mine. I braid my history to his tales… Place names beckon around, inside, and underneath both of us; Mono Lake, Mammoth, Bishop, Big Pine, Independence, Lone Pine, Keeler, Darwin, Panniment, Saline and Death Valleys call us with the salt of Owens Lake shining brilliant at Sierra Rift. 

            Out of Lone Pine the zigzag Disney Road scars the escarpment to Kern Plateau, where most of who Aln became remains, fighting the good fight, saving the Kern Plateau, with injunctions; and Sierra Club’s David Brower, while out in Darwin, Hal, Deborah, and mysterious Greville Healey, scion # 31, of Tudor blood drowns in his cups amid Greek and Hebrew texts sure that the punch line to life’s joke is just a page a way. I’m asked to type a “fair” copy of a letter to a slim friend, in his mind, Lee.

 

Dear Lee:                                                                                                 July 28 1999           

            When I last saw you in November we had Sir Giles Greville Healy, 32nd in line to the throne of England, living in absolute destitution in an empty water tank in Darwin; shuffling around town in a dusty, totally threadbare but once elegant English tweed suit, with a gallon milk jug filled with water and tied to a length of rope slung over his shoulder, his filthy unkempt beard hanging down below his belt. The Apocalypse had personally rained down on him in the desert and to make things worse he carried a battered old Testament written in Hebrew under his arm and muttered curses from Genesis, Daniel, and Jeremiah continuously, in Hebrew and ancient Greek, which he had mastered at Oxford.

            I got back to Darwin in mid-February and went to check up on him and discovered that he was now 31st in line for the English throne.  Another apple had fallen from the royal tree, and, as has happened quite a few times before, dropped a substantial amount of cash at his feet.

            Now the marvelous thing about this man is that he was still living in the water tank but had bought it and all the land beneath it and had hired an interior designer from New York to make it habitable by white man’s standards and even give it a little “Santa Fe chic”.  Apparently she had become captivated by a) Greville,    b) the desert c) the opportunity to help him piss away another fortune, maybe all of the above, and had moved in with him.

            He was giving away money freely all over town (which is four square blocks) to anybody who needed something, anything, which except for Hal is everybody.  My favorite endowment went to Cynthia Red Owl, the old matriarch, who strayed off the Pine Ridge Reservation about 50 years ago and dug in at Darwin with about 50 children.  She got a large brand new refrigerator completely filled with cans of Old Milwaukee Beer, the only brand she’ll drink, and, which, if she can keep her boys out of it is about enough beer to last her a week.  I guess the only way to keep her supplied would be to build a pipeline to the nearest brewery.  But, I have never seen her drunk and no man would dare to lie to her about anything.

            This is the fourth or fifth time Greville has hit the jackpot.  It usually takes him two years to squander every penny.  No one really knows how he does it because after he completes the cycle he has not acquired any possessions except the clothes falling off his back and his old Hebrew bible.

            The last time the eagle sang was in 1991.  He showed up here in Friday Harbor in a brand new Morgan with an attractive young woman he said was his wife and stayed with us for several weeks.  He wouldn’t let us buy any groceries. I found out from Hal, later that year, that he attempted to drive the Morgan to the hot springs in Saline Valley and had completely destroyed the car. (That road is a challenge to a military jeep.)  The girl had left him never to be seen or heard from again. (A cocktail tomato in Las Vegas at this most recent telling-06)

            I’ll be dropping by Darwin on this trip to watch the show, try to get to know Deborah, the designer from New York, who must be a very interesting woman. — Aln

         Aln and we, forever bound by tales – the telling – never mind the facts, detail, shine, ordering of time; we revel among what if’s, might have beens, and “honest to god this is the truth!”  or  “ no really, this is the way it happened.”

            We became relative-relatives… proof positives of macro-quantum realities… histories and mysteries popping into and out of existence as Creatrix continues to invent vibratory multiverse, material parallel continuities, in short wondrous tales.

            Knowing the other’s lies better than our own we’ve soldiered on, keeping each other company, entertaining ourselves with our comedic vision of life’s perils. I’ve kept him laughing on the brink of falling down depressive cliffs and we’ve laughed, raucous in the car, or gut wrenching dizzy falling brakeless down Cady Mt, over vagrant lives, homeless times, stories of man – kind and now and then wo – man-kind – some of them, unkind…

            This Co of ours; first off, a not so, nut-so camaraderie of Chums.  In the distance drums…  Listen up, my exasperation turned anger into rage. While caring less, his depression simmered underneath. Exploding into existential grief… But that’s the horse before the cart. We set forth, as Co, to a small foray, hauling six cases of canned food, a mercy mission of sorts for poor old Greville hunkered down in a 12’  diameter corrugated water tank. Aln has seen it, sees it as we speak, but for me no picture comes.  That is the way of it! We often hear the words,  see the body and expressions in the teller’s face, hear/feel the twist of words and somehow cannot make it real.

            Aln, is complaining of a bad back, ”Christ, I’ll see the Chiropractor, before we go and I’ll be fine.”

            Standing in line an hour and a half ahead of time, it’s an island thing, his ex-wife, Kathy, friend, keeps me company. It’s not warm yet, at 10 am, we do the island tread in place, keeping warm. My wife Connie arrives, “Where’s Aln?” We laugh.  She continues, “It’d be par for the course if he doesn’t come.”

            Kathy and I compare the ups and downs of expectations while Connie says, “Well, he’s not as bad as our Oakland friend. He’ll drop in to see you in the afternoon and stay for dinner; then promise to come again for dinner on a specific date.  He doesn’t come because he’s dropped in on someone else – and you realize that that’s his job… teaching his friends about expectations.” 

            Kathy looks at me and turns to Connie, “Tom’s version is about twenty minutes longer… I think your short version is much better.” 

            The women smile their secret smiles.

“There you are!”  Aln hails us from First St. The upper end of the down sloped ferry parking lot.  “Bet you thought I’d miss the boat.” 

He’s walking crabwise to the left, bent kneed.  “I’m a complete mess. Mark says I need a lot of work, but hey,  it’s OK.  I’ll be fine.”

Beneath my breath I mutter, “Yeah, right!”

The Kaleetan takes us away…

across deep cold channels, straits, and reaches, among the San Juan Islands.  We are listening to a tape of us, rapping at the library, lo 3 years ago, while the islands flow away… to port, starboard, underneath. Islands we love leaving, love returning to. We call it “getting off the rock”; “going to America”;  “going to the real world” and variations. 

            There’s a quality of heavy rescue, of extrication, of prying out and sallying forth, to leaving.  Procrastinating is an island way of life, we pride ourselves on doing it well, planning a trip off-island brings us face to face with actually achieving. In the summer, two hours ahead may not be enough to make the boat. The trip, 70 – 120 minutes. There ya go, three to four hours from port to port and then, ahhh yess, and then…

            Urban and sub-urban-would be knights imagine island life: dreaming in rented digs of castles, moats, the joy of docks, a boat, or plane, security from, what they fear, surreal neighbors, unseen criminals, most of all themselves, their put off interior lives. They see themselves ensconced in wondrous surround, compound beauty, nature wild: eagles, orcas, hawks, deer, rabbits, coons,big Mount Baker east, The Olympics south.  It’s summer – in their minds warm…sunny…dry… and mild… “Hey it’s the banana belt…” and then, perhaps, they stay for…    Winter.

             In a pinch two days of food, all gone from the market in one day,  if the ferry goes down.  Power outtages of 2 to 12 days, is the generator up to snuff? How’s the well, the septic tank, the water lines? Are the culverts and the ditches clear? Do you have three cord of dry wood stacked; can your partner swing an axe? How about kindling? What about the endless gray, from mid October to May, June, or mid July?  This year we’ve had lovely warm spring days and freezing nights, through summer; the flowers stay and stay, loving it while the veg and fruit trees have thoughts of late fall.  Pacific Northwest quote Banana Belt unquote, most times borderline rain for Douglas Fir. Island trees are fine grained. Islanders who stay are too, wanting more than anything to get away, yet gleeful coming back from freeway wars and city zoos.

             Gleeful too we drove off first,  having loaded in the choke point middle lane and front. A rare treat for Islanders, we lead the 180 cars plus through Anacortes as they disperse with us to points north, east, south.  We move smooth to Mount Vernon for Carharts for Aln and then down I-5’s corridor to Seattle’s REI.  Some cooking gear for me, and a sleeping bag exchange for Aln.

            This is our first freeway venture – on the road – poor Jack and Cassady had a simple time on two lane roads with hardly more than rough and ready trucks and here and there a straight_away with hot oil burning the nostrils from the engine vents – seatbelts? air bags? – Oh my and their Dharma was that aftermath let down from World War juice and subsequent mountain highs.

            We are rapidly imbedded in that highspeed bumper to bumper adrenaline slush of too many single occupant cars with less than a one-one thousand interval.

            Aln is locked up as firmly as the traffic – gridlocked in his own night-mares: bad back, uneasy friendship, imagined futures against uncontrolled reality, and a dread of freeways.  We arrive at REI because I’ve been there and know the way despite the twists and turns of offramps, the narrow highspeed lanes of Seattle’s not so free, free_ways, and streets.
            Nothing is simple with him… processing a return of goods and trade and adding extra cost, and going out and getting back in,  would you believe, twice?  Proving we were honest customers and not two “old scoundrels” – shoplifting, to a lovely older woman guarding the exit/entrance.  She and I treasuring the absurdities of Aln coming out the entrance, going in the exit to be spurned by locked doors. His puzzlement made us both laugh, she and I, and he, the innocent_martyred_wanderer, wondering… it was fine. “Where’d you find him?” She asked, in a whisper.  “That’s a tale worth telling over dinner.”  “Ahhh, too bad!”  And he and we survived to drive back across a bridge, hunting a NorthEast address in Sandpoint.

            “I know just the way you want to go,” he said.

            Every which way pondered! We were lost and found and lost stumbling left, right, into u-turns complete circles, “I used to work and live in Seattle I kin find it, I know just the way.”

            Twice we nearly come to grief, driving in circles or in long spirals that nearly brought us to Edmonds 20 miles away. At last, admitting his defeat, he relinquishes his role as guide and I let my car find its way to the vicinity of our friends living among green lawns, and high-end homes, spectacular flower shows in just around the corner, chi-chi neighborhoods.

            We roam wide streets, vast vacuumed lawns, trophy houses with classy drapes, drawn. Spotless side yards, without cars, trailers, or rv’s,  parked for show on streets or driveways.  Eerie to see wealth displayed by an absence of acquisitions, and not a single bike, skate-board, wheel toy, or childish litter…surreal as in Magritte cut-ups, or Escher stairways without beginning or stopping point.

            Paranoia seeps in, actively we look for cops, surveillance tools, expecting private pinkertons or Gestapo stops amid such posh and circumstance. We quickly wind our way back into nearby ancient navy housing, cinderblock gray, with wild green mowed lawns, middle and lower class islands caught in rising expectations, speculations just around the corner from the risen rich.

            Our friends, greeting us with joy, a stroganoff with wine and talk, this part planned by phone, sweet Cathy young and prone to poetry, her friend a rising star happy among guitars.  We laugh over food, conversation, and listen rapt to Aln going on and on about REI and the idiocies of exits, entrances, credit card re and deceits.

            We safely spend the night. They nestled in their bed. Aln takes the couch. I gladly take the floor.

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