A man goes to rest

He is tired the day has taken it all out of him. there is nothing that can be done. his eyes start to slid closed and the world starts to fade away. He stumbles threw the door to his room his short cut hair brushes the top of the door frame. The sensation is ignored. He shakes off the close that have been covered in the sweet and dirt of the days work. He tumbles into his big bed with his feet hanging off, longing for sleep's sweet embrace. Then it happens as it happens every night. The walls of his heart still contracting the same way that they did when he was standing. The thick muscular walls, made tougher than they should be by the man's size and the need to keep the blood flowing out of the legs, still pushing and pulling while the blood starts to flow on its own out of the lower parts of his body. His brain tastes the rich fullness of life giving fluid that it never gets so readily. The synapses start to fire rapidly. The man has visions and can see clearly what earlier was masked by clouds. the thoughts start to run out of control and the pressure of the blood seems to force open his eye lids. His thoughts drift from the mountains that he misses so much to the problem he is working on for his job. To the women that he has loved and the ones that he wishes to love. He thinks about his friends and his family. He thinks how much his body needs to sleep and he knows from countless nights of the same thing that it will take another hour to slow his mind enough for sleep to truly take hold. He thinks of his heart, knowing that it will beat fewer times than those of his friends. He knows that it will never last him until old age; not because he is unhealthy, or unfit but because he asks so much of that heart and knows that it is tiring. He wills his heart to slow down. he focuses on his breathing. The worries and troubles of the day fade into the back ground of smooth even deep breaths. The world slips into the an realm that is not even attached to the man but he becomes part of everything. He can feel that pulse of the fan above his bed and the clock over the oven switch from 2:13 to 2:14. He can feel the mouse in the living room scamper from the couch to the closet and the eyes of the snake in its habitat watching eagerly the little scampering of the creature safe on the other side of the glass. He can feel the people behind the next door breathing in there own beds. And the faint pressure that the pull moon puts on the cement of the sidewalk out side. He can feel the excitement of the bat as it wheels around the night looking for the last of the insects before it starts to move south to warmer winters. He can feel everything not because he is seeing it or hearing it. The man can feel all of these things because he is part of all of these things and they are all part of him. He is lucidly awake, in the world as if it were a dream but aware that it is all of his creation and he is simple a manifestation of the environment. He tries desperately to cling to this state. He tries to hold onto this peace and this understanding. But he can feel something else now. The sleep that drove him to his bed in such a clumsy state washes over him fully now. He is plunged into his own mind unaware that he is in his own mind.

When he wakes he remembers his thoughts about the women he loved and the women he wants to love, about his friends and family. About the events of the world. But his memory was not connected for the time that he was in the lucid world. A trick of the brain has made him forget his moment of enlightenment. There is only the sweet feeling all over his body that speak of a peace that he has never experienced. Never in his memory at least.

Golden Lightning

You step from the building, you’ve been in for the past eight hours. A just little depressed and not just a little lonely. Those thoughts are quickly put out by the memory that fills your olfaction. Rain. You smile despite yourself and start the long walk home. A thought flashes in you mind, will my books get wet in my bag, but the thought is washed away by the next drop of rain that gently hits you on the forehead. You turn slightly as you walk to get a better look at the storm that is boiling over the mountains. It is coming from north to south riding the ridge line of the mountains. The clouds are thick and dark, lit to look purple in the light of the setting sun. I wander where the lightning is, you think as your head swings back around to look at the mesa to the east. An the next instant your minds explodes in a battle as your eyes catch the bright flash of heavens meeting earth of to the right. Your are not even sure what that battle is about but it is over as quickly as the lightning. You are not sure who won or what was won but you are sure that threw out the maelstrom that was your mind for that instant there was only one constant. The mesa. The idea sticks and you turn your step not really sure what you intend. You move quickly east across town. As your feet move from asphalt and cement to dirt your path begins to rise. Ever few moments the world is cast into bright light and you start counting, out of habit, the time between light and sound. Fifteen.

You keep your eyes on the trail not wanting to make a stupid step. The whole idea of going to the highest point around during a thunderstorm is a stupid step there is no need for another. You push the thought from you mind and hike on.

Flash. Ten.

You keep climbing rounding the next switch back.

Flash. Five.

The next switch back.

Flash. Three.

You come to the second to last switchback before the trail levels out. Just on the edge of your vision you see the bright elegance of a bolt, like a jagged woman, touch down in the bottom of the valley. You head snaps without thought to the base of the bolt. In that instant you see a figure at the base of the bolt. You see yourself. Not all of you just the part of you that wanted to take the quick, easy and safe way home. Would I have been at the base of that bolt? You think in awe at the fact that you chose that dangerous was home. A darker part of your mind speaks, having been awaken but the recklessness. I wonder what it felt like. The magenta afterimage of the bolt fades from you eyes and you keep hiking, oddly at ease.

You reach the high stone formation that sits above the town like an unmoving guardian. You drop your pack and sit watching the storm roll off to the south. The lightning still flashing as heaven and earth continue their battle that was started long before history. You turn your head and see the bright reds and pinks and golds of the sun sinking behind the mountains. Three forks of lightning lash out to our left. A gentle peaceful smile spreads across your lips as the last drop of rain hits you on the nose. It no longer matters what drew you up here or if that bolt would have hit you if you had gone another way.

All that matters is that the peace of the setting sun is balanced by perfectly by the turmoil of the storm. And the rock on which you sit is the fulcrum.

You lay back and become part of the balance.

Hidden thoughts in the light of a camp fire

The thoughts sit within the mind for a long time. Not moving, not helping nor harming the process of thought but sitting and waiting. But over time they grow restless and need to be rolled over and milled out. They can not stay in there for ever. But there is no place for them in life even though those thoughts the one that sit patently in the back of the mind are indeed life. They are the connection they are the reality, if such a thing can be said to exist. We do not like these thoughts not because they are dark or evil thoughts but because they can not be ended they continue indefinitely. They can not be broken they continue on forever and without end and this bothers us because we can not get a good hold on the thought. We can not take it by its tail to pull it back to us and beat it into submission and coherence because it has no tail. We can only hope to coil the ungainly beasts of thoughts in the back of our minds and let them be. But they will not be left alone. They will not be ignored for long there voices grow louder every day that they are set aside, so we shut them out. We hide from our thoughts within the space just outside our minds. We make our minds think that they are thinking when they are not. We turn on the TV and lose our selves in the meaningless colors that come from the screen. We turn up the volume on our head sets and block the ever growing noise of our thoughts with the simple minded music that only infuriates the deep uncomfortable thoughts but that calms the rest of the mind strengthening it to contain the long coiled beast just beyond the site of our inner eye. Be brush the thoughts aside and out of view like sweeping the dust under the rug before visitors come. We are worried about our minds being cluttered in case somebody happened to stop by and say hello. But the mind always becomes cluttered. The never ending forever ignored thoughts make sure of it; always knocking things out of place and keeping to the shadows where it can not be seen and where it know that it will not be dealt with because it is the shadows that we always try to avoid.

The never ending thoughts are not something to be feared, though. they are not some dark creature from hell or worse. These thoughts like any other are simple an expression of life. Because they can not be grabbed hold of, because they can not be handles, is what makes them the greatest thoughts of all. They take the mind to places that it has never been. They are the pioneers, the adventurers, and the explorers of the mind.

Sit at a camp fire with some friends. As the stars lift into the heavens, unseen in the glare of the fire light, and the fire died a little, still alive with flame but low enough that the dancing of the hot coals is visible as a base to the dance of the flames, then the thoughts will start to uncoil. It is triggered by the feel of heat on your front side and cold on the back, and by the eyes that are transfixed of the impossible dance of flame and smoke unable to pull away no mater the heat of irritation, there is something more important in the fire. The mind relaxes and the deep hidden though finds that his not being fought anymore. The fire effects the thought as well. The heat calms its rage and makes it a peaceful beast, making its voice not the harsh cry for attention that it normally it but the gentle wispier of a lover. The thought will uncoil itself and come out of the shadows, growing in its infinite way to take up the whole of the mind. After a long time of only hearing the pop and crackle of the fire the mouth will open and part of the thought will escape into the cold night air, to enter the minds of others. It is in the form of a perfectly formulated question that is actually quite vague and distance. Then the other minds and other long buried thoughts come to the surface. The clutter of the mind it reviled and in the red light of the fire the conversation grows deep and intricate. Some times it is enough just to sit and listen other times your own thoughts must get in and make its peace. And the thoughts stretch there long cramped bodies into the cold of the night and the warmth of the fire letting themselves settle upon the new reality that is forming. Now out in the open the thought is no longer a threat, no longer the dark menacing thing that it once was. It is relaxed and at peace.

I have never felt more alive then sitting around a campfire in the dead of night with good friends and nothing but the fire to drive our thoughts and conversations.

Into the Darkness

The world seemed to break in his mind as he moved onto the darkness. The world had once been s full of life and light. He had spent so long there that he had forgotten about the world of the dark. As he left the light his eyes took a long time to adjust. The world seemed to be spinning madly about the events that had led him to this point. He walked on threw the madness not because he wanted to but because he had no choice in the matter. To enter the dark was the only way that the light could survive.

How had he gotten here? How had he come to this point? He had to know before the dark swept him completely away. He traced it back threw the days and months and years and found himself standing high on the black rock cliffs that stood above his home town. It had been that night. It had all started then and there. He was watching the sun set over the distant mountains. The sky fiery with reds, yellows, and pinks. He had looked forward to the coming of the night back in those days; even longed for it. It had seemed to him then that the night was when the world came alive and the creatures and the people drank deeply of life. He drank to deeply that night. Latter some would say that it was lust, or selfishness that had driven him to do what he did. Some even said that it was from the gluttony he had for life. But can you be a glutton of life? Can you drink to deeply of something so great and pure as life? He thought about these things, for a time, as he walked through the rest of his history; all the steps that had brought him to this place and at this exact moment.

He had had friends of the best kind. Those that would do anything for him and he would do anything for them. They had overcome the tyrants of the world and all who came in contact with them fell in love. Not with the people but with the life that followed the people. The world had been at peace and times were good and the light was bright. But the world can not maintain like this. The world seeks balance. Just as the light always comes out of the darkness so to does the darkness come out of the light. When you drink to deeply of anything you will regret it in time.

As that time marched forward jealousy and regret settled on his mind like black soot settled of fresh white snow. And when the white cleanness of the snow fell a little slower the soot began to cover more and more of his once pure mind. It built and built until this point this moment when he was forced to forget the snow had ever existed and there was nothing but darkness in him. He feared the nights now even as he embraced there protective cover. It was not so much that the night scared him but he was scared of what he could not see in the darkness. He was afraid of what lay hidden just bellow the layers of lightly packed soot in his own mind. He remembered a time when fear had once been an asset; it had helped him move and fight, but now fear only froze him in place, leaving him weak and helpless for what was to come.

He knew he would never survive to see the light again.

Aside: An ax is happiest when it is used. However, an ax can be put to use just as easily for the good of the forest as for the destruction of that forest. All the ax knows is that it is happily being used.

My bike leprechaun

So for the past few month I have been having issues with the tire on my bike. It has had a slow leak in it for months. The thing is that the problem is very sporadic (who the hell made the word look like something about fungi). Some days the tire will stay inflated for a full day and the next it will be flat in an hour. The thing is that I would replace the inner tube every three or four weeks and the same thing would happen all over again. I finally realized the truth. There is a leprechaun that keep deflating my tire. I thought that I would test this idea and I set a trap one day after I locked up my bike. In the afternoon when I returned I found that I had indeed caught myself a leprechaun.

Well needless to say the thing was pissed. So I did what I thought best. I gave him a beer.

After a few round I we got to talking I found that his name was Roberto (he is a Latino leprechaun). So I ask Roberto "Why, the hell, do you keep deflating my bike tire?" Roberto turns to me with a glassy eyes look of liquid induced joy and slurs in his mix of Irish and Spanish accents "You, freckn' airs, you ran over my bloody wife with that God forsaken thing." I was completely taken aback my this I had no idea. "Man, I'm sorry is there any thing I can do for you?" Roberto took another swill from the little bottle that looked far to large in his hands. "Ah, your a good kid but I'm going to keep deflating your tire." I found that I could not argue with the man. So we toasted to air and went back to drinking.

"Hey, Roberto, aren't leprechaun's suppose to have a lot of gold or something."
"Freckn' bipeds."
"Hey, you are a biped to."

An oral fixation

I was walking around last night and I happened by a dentists office. Considering that it was like midnight it was close. The thing about this office was that I glanced in this large plate glass window and saw right there at street level the dentists chairs facing the parking lot. My memory flashed in an instant to all of the places of oral health, or general health for that matter, and I realize this was the first that had the office open for viewing from passers by. I realized that is must be bad for business, to advertise so openly a man in a little blue mask poking around in some random persons mouth with a little metal tool. There is something to be said for the doctor if he is that open about his practice though. To find out I think I might take a lawn chair and a bag of popcorn down and sit on the other side of the plate glass window and watch the doctor do his thing.

I wonder what his patients will think.

$300 of Saffron

It is strange to me how possessions move from hand to hand. I continually find myself gaining more and more materiel possessions. To be honest I feel like I have to much stuff as it is. Most of the stuff in my apartment I do not really consider to be mine; a chair, the couch, a camcorder, some climbing gear, a unicycle, a snake. I'm just holding onto these things until their owners get back and settle down. Then there are things that ownership does not really apply to in my mind. Such things as food have never really gone under the category of ownable things. I'm not sure if this is due to the fact that I live by myself and can eat anything in the apartment at any time or because I use to work on trails out of a base camp where everything belonged to everybody. There was no such thing as ownership of food. There is also that fact that food is something that is meant to be eaten. There is something to be said about using something for what it is meant to be used for. The purpose of food is to be eaten just as the purpose of a shovel is to move dirt. I might sound strange but when I have a shovel in my hand it is most happy when it is moving dirt, and a saw is most happy when it is biting into wood and food is most happy when it is being eaten. One of the things that it seems that all people hate moving food. Me being the most rooted person in my group of people (I'm really not sure how that happened) I am the one that ends up with all of the food that everybody has.

Me being the caretaker of peoples stuff has come into a something that I have never had under my roof. Yesterday I we helping a friend clean out another friend's apartment. We came across a very decoratively painted circular tin with a clear plastic window in the top. Looking inside the tin we see deep red threads that can be nothing else but saffron. For those of you who do not know saffron is the most expensive spice on the face of this planet. It has a very interesting taste that I actually like a lot but I have never had any inclination to go out and buy the stuff. To be honest I have no idea what you would put the stuff in. If anyone has any thoughts then please by all means pass them along or ask and I can be your saffron dealer (the best deal in the world actually, free saffron).

This whole thing brings up a number of question in my mind. One of the first is how the hell can something be so highly valued. It is just a little thread, it is not like its flavor causes orgasms or anything so wonderful. It does have a good taste but it is not that good. I understand that it is a pain in the ass to harvest this stuff though. It is the sexual organ of a beautiful purple flower each flow has three of these expensive little threads in them and it is a delicate procedure to extract the threads. This leads me to question the sanity of the human population. If it is so hard to harvest saffron then why do we do it. I would think that for a rational person there would be a point that it is not worth it. Any more it seems that there are so many things that people think are better simply because they cost more. I have always been the kind of person that would rather build something than buy it.

Anyway I do not want to ramble to much so i will move to my other point.

When did I become the guy that has the stable living conditions. I have never been much of one for living in one place for all that long. I have never really been a big fan of having a solid roof over my head. I find that I'm perfectly content living out of my car and sleeping under the stars. I think that this is part of the reason that I have always like trail crew so much. But for some reason I have been in one place for over a year now and whats worse is that I have signed a lease to be in that same place for another year. It does not seem right I have always been a nomad and been a big fan of no rent but now it is different I am here and here it appears I will stay. I now have a place that I have to return to at least once a month. The whole things seems odd to me but some how fitting.

So It might not be three hundred dollars worth of saffron but I'm quite sure that it is a good bit more than one ounce which is currently running between $50-60 for low end saffron.