Witness what you choose

On a whim on Monday, I took off to the Adirondacks at 2 o’clock in the afternoon even though I had to work the next day.  It was beautiful out and I had this sick feeling of not wanting to waste another gorgeous day.  I filled my car and took off within a half hour after I thought of the idea.  (I was going to write a detailed account of this, but I didn’t.  You can check out photos at www.flickr.com/photos/ratsekad)

On the drive in a constant flow of cars were streaming out of Old Forge.  Not a single car was going in my direction. I climbed two mountains, Rocky and Black Bear.  I periodically called out, “Hello, I am hiking through the woods,” to notify any bears of my presence since I was alone. It was memorial day weekend and I didn’t see or hear a single human while hiking, being 7 pm on a Monday. While coming down from the second mountain it was getting dark.  I went into town and went to a bar/restaurant and ordered myself a giant meal of fried haddock and Black Forest beer, with a dessert of chocolate raspberry pie.  After talking with the beautiful waitress she recommended a bar down the road where a great band was playing.  I headed down there and order a beer and watched this phenomenal blues band play until 1 in the morning. I drove back to Tully, NY where I was pretty sleepy and so pulled off to a park and ride and slept in my car for awhile.  I awoke to sunrise and revving truck engines.  I took off back to Ithaca, showered, and made it into work early. =)

It is important to remind ourselves periodically that the usual schedule we follow is not by any means the limit, nor does it push our limits to experience new and meaningful things.  When you realize that the possibilities are literally endless and you can go anywhere or do anything you want, and not in some cheesy motivational way, but really see it, it is a very freeing feeling.  The fact that tonight the green and red lights of the Mackinaw Bridge will blink endlessly over the crashing waves of the Straits, and a cool breeze will haunt the Badlands of South Dakota, a large white pine will fall in the great Maine woods, and Loons will eerily echo through Adirondack lakes, and those that witness these things have simply made the choice to be there, not behind windows with the flashing blue glow of the television, behind wood walls with porch lights, and lamps, the electric hum, on streets with street lamps, head lights, the beaming glow of the corner store sign.

What quickness with which we pasture-ize the landscape.  How greatly we have changed the American night.
~Floyd, NY

First Book

Cover

Watch out world!  I may be too famous to talk to you soon.

No matter good or evil

The sun shone high and burnt back a brilliant orange from the windows facing south, and silently slipped its way beneath the paint and into the gray rotting wood of the farm house.  Small curled flakes of rubbery white paint fell and scattered in the grass.  Walter sat on the second step of the porch, chin upon hand, a strand of fresh green grass clenched in teeth. His eyes glared to his fields. His nose lingered in the intoxicating smell of lilacs. The delicate but hearty mustards were spreading across the fields, their four flaming yellow petals scattered along candelabra-like stems.  The heavy florets of grass swayed, knee-high, top-heavy, atop their slender stems. A miniature canyon formed in the gravel of the dirt road, flooding with water after each gray mud rain and carving a rut into the drives weaving across the land.  Tangled messes of grape vines strangled the trees and irregular overgrown shrubs crowded any open space.  The wind opened and slammed the screen door.  Walter did not flinch.  No dirt was beneath his fingernails.

The weeds thrived, moving about the earth in any direction they pleased.  No potential food was germinating beneath the ground.  The mustards burned a fierce golden yellow, bending and swaying in the wind, almost rhythmically, as if marching through the soil. As no different than all other facets of life,  the useless and weedy exotic plants flourished, somehow more fit to survive in this foreign land than the reigning plants of its soil, the plants of food and necessity. Fragile. Passive.  A single lone hanging claw of columbine, perched along a rock ledge,  faded from scarlet to a pale pink.  Its wilted hollow spikes dropped to the dirt.

In the mind of every man lies a bed of soil.  It is constantly tilled and churned, lifted up and dropped back down, and turned again; and so, is perpetually fertile. Anything may grow there, no matter good or evil, if it is to be left unattended.

Family

Family is a pretty amazing thing.

Cold Wind Conspiring

There’s a cold wind conspiring
down in the valley below
bound to reach us by morning
better leave before the eastern glow

There’s a cold wind conspiring
along with the noon day sun
by time they meet I’ll be running
and all my praying will be done

Well I gave all my things to my women
and tied my loose ends in the night
There’s a cold wind conspiring
It will be here by morning light

There’s a cold wind conspiring
Beneath this crescent moon
Caused by those in the mountains
and climbing the valley soon

There’s a cold wind conspiring
started blowing years ago
before you and I had said our goodbyes
it was blowing just as cold, you know

Well I gave all my things to my women
and tied my loose ends in the night
There’s a cold wind conspiring
It will be here by morning light

Well I have been through many a storm
And fought the passing rain and snow
But this cold wind conspiring
Is something that’ll never go

Wildflowers

I became intrigued with wildflowers two years ago.  There is still something so amazing to me about them; the only splash of color as they push through last autumn’s dry dead leaves, lying dormant all winter and then emerging from a single seed. A single seed, creating something so small, so delicate, beautiful; a perfect representation of the fleeting season of spring.

Bloodroot

Fishing

I took 40 kids fishing yesterday throughout the day.  I think there is some inborn thing with fishing and men.  I have never even been much of a fisherman but I really enjoy it. And being out there teaching children how to fish instantly made me feel fatherly.  I found myself sounding like my dad, feeling like a dad… and well, I already look like my dad. And I can’t help but think back to when I was little with my dad towering over me, showing me how to fish or giving me advice after a sports game.  Being outside, circled around a pond, helping children cast into the water under the spring sky, catching bass, there eyes looking up to me in excitement and admiration, I couldn’t help but feel fatherly and enjoy it immensely.

Fishing on Sage Lake

Beginning

On stage again. Bright swirled graffiti painting on brick behind us.  Lounge chairs and dimmed lights scatter in front.  There is the warm fluid-like flow of the alcohol, a shimmer, the faint smell of marijuana and incense.  Sweat dripping from the mic.

We finish and tear down and disperse into the crowd. An old drunkard stalks up to Rana but scares her off.  She gets up and sits down with us, the man watches and laughs.

The new band was on. The music blared and the dance floor moved, moved, the bass subtly hidden in everything, rumbling the floor, rattling behind picture frames, pounding in your rib cage. A blonde, peering out of the huddle at me, wanting to be seen through narrow eyes, skirt flailing and waving in circles to the music, her short blonde hair combed neatly against her white skin, a long stare, finally charging forward and pointing at me, and beckoning for me to come onto the dance floor.  I wave my hands in helplessness and take a swig of my drink. ”She likes you,” says Rana.  Jack laughs, “First show. You are gonna get laid tonight, my friend, nice work.  That never happens to me.”

I leave for another drink.  A familiar woman is at the bar alone, sipping her drink, head down. There are certain people who’s lives are disease, their actions contagious, infecting those that get close to them.  She’s wearing a pink skirt, and though she was very beautiful, she has a sadness and bitterness sewn into her face that makes her very ugly. There is that draw, the pull to her, as there is with any addicting thing. She looks at me with no recognition even after seeing me a thousand times. I keep moving.

The drunkard man approaches me at the bar. “I can tell you have a good sense-of-humor. You need that to get through life,” he starts as if continuing an earlier conversation.
“That’s true.”
“I’m fifty-five and never been married,” he half-shouts drunkenly from his deeply pitted face that carries his thick rimmed large square glasses that magnify his already wide-eyes.  His hair is slicked back close to his head. “Sense-of-humor…  intelligence…. beautiful.  That is what you need.” He counts off on his fingers.  “But we loose our looks in age.  We do.  What can we do about it?” He trails off, his mind lost some where in a spring garden years ago.

I return with Gabe, smiling behind his long black hair.  “What he said was true.” We take off in the truck for the night to a large house in the country, a big red barn converted into a loft apartment, over-looking the lights of the city.  Here in country, the city is far off, pulsing endlessly, the whole thing fitting in your hand, behind glass, framed, as if it were on display at a museum. This is the power of the wilderness, what it will do to a city.

Everyone huddles by the wood burning stove, Bob Dylan crackles on the record player.  They are looking at Jack curiously with his blonde hair, half pulled up in a bundle on top of his head.  He looks like a ninja.

“So what is your story.  How did you all get here?”

A smirk grows on Jack’s face in anticipation.

Well, here we go.

“I was married and divorced..,” he starts.  We’re all divorcees.

Parrots

I stood in the center of the smokey wood cabin, strumming the guitar and singing a tune.  The band played on. The walls shook with music amongst the apple trees.

The last snow fell in the darkness of spring night, but the sun was now rising over the mountains of East Africa and moonlight painted the orchards.

She sat in the chair watching me; the type of woman with hazed eyes and a nose ring, the kind who wears a purple sweatshirt with red parrots on it:

Dangerous.

Peninsulas

I am still working on this new song, but…

Mackinaw at night

Peninsulas

 

You’ll never know what I saw

On the bridge over Mackinaw

Burned my eyes, broke my heart

A single land pulled apart

 

I don’t want to make amends, girl

I’m just asking for what it’s worth

I don’t want to leave you behind

Questions ringing in my mind

 

Open roads of cherry trees

Green eyes mirror the lakeside breeze

That old blue truck rides the shore

We’ll make sunset, we did before

 

Haunting lights red and green

Darkness covers what I’ve seen

Frozen span over straights of awe

Lost my love crossing peninsulas

 

I don’t want to make amends, girl

I’m just asking for what it’s worth

I don’t want to leave you behind

Questions ringing in my mind

I can’t seem to remember why

I decided to leave your side

 

You’ll never know what I saw

On the bridge over Mackinaw