Excerpt WIP

What times, it’s hard to even know where to begin. There is no beginning, no end. There is only now, only the smashing present while our human minds swirl in wild abandon of what was, what is and what will be. Also on what we once thought was, what we once thought is now and what we thought would come. Fear and loathing in the collapse of America, fear and loathing in the crumbling of this delusional empire. You have to be crazy to understand what’s going on in the world right now. You have to be crazy to understand where we’ve really been. They’ll fight you to the last; your own mind will sometimes fight you, trying to beat off the nagging truths. It’s easy to get lost in it. It’s easy to feel paralyzed with fear and worry. Times like these make you appreciate all the more the people that came before you, those that fought tyranny, and those that put their lives on the line for an idea. The truly maddening part of it is watching your fellow people continue to engage in the false two party paradigms, those that still believe in the democrat/republican game. You know they are still so far off from the truth. They are still enabling a mortally flawed and corrupt system. You see visions of the future. If others could see these same visions they might start to begin to follow your lead. I am trying to lead but it is lonely out here on the perimeter. The challenge is to reject many of the beliefs that you once held and to accept this new reality while still staying sane enough to somehow continue to function in this new reality that is existing simultaneously within the old paradigm. I somehow just try to stay the line, stand here on this land even if I am all alone and full of fear, doubt and legitimate personal suffering. It seems a fool’s errand, a homey little Americana cliché “back to the land.” Well, for me, it is a life and death situation. For me there are sides forming all around, not just red vs. blue, not just white vs. black, gay vs. straight, Christian vs. Muslim, pro-life vs. pro-choice….all these divisions that do not serve us but only serve the corrupt paradigm that must be crushed. We have to learn to love each other. We have to learn to accept each other. We have to reach out to one another. We have to reject our consumption upbringing. There is a spirit that belies all things, an energy that vibrates. This spirit has as its antithesis a vibration of death and fear. We have been corrupted by the latter and forgotten about the former. We continually choose fear instead of faith. We need to turn it all on its head. We need to have faith, faith in ourselves, and faith in one another. We need to set down our phones and look each other in the eyes and start having a real conversation about this country, where we’ve been, where we are and in what direction we are moving. If screaming worked I would scream. If fasting worked I would fast. If killing worked I would kill. But the only thing that works and the only thing that has ever worked to combat these forces is love. How do we elevate love and sympathy over hate and prejudice? Ah there is the rub!
Why care? Why get involved? Why not just worry about yourself and your own concerns? I can’t answer that question. I’ve always cared. I hid it down deep for different periods of my life but it always came back. I tried to play along to the grand game being played on this chess board called modern life. But ever since I first took consciousness I have felt ill at ease at the social structures and strictures of this society. As a child I was the one who asked his parents’ questions like “Why do we go to war? Why do people have to kill each other? Why do so few have so much while so many have so little?” Questions like these will get a first class ticket to crazy town if you keep asking them and refuse to accept the “that’s just the way things are, honey” dismissals. My parents were raised during the nascent of the American empire, the 1950’s, when heavy manufacturing and industry in America were going to solve all ills. It was a glorious time so say the advertisements from that era. It’s a deep shock when you realize that your parents had been brainwashed just like you into believing in the American dream. Madison Avenue had us all figured out long ago. We weren’t difficult to buy. Not difficult to buy at all.
“So you’re saying progress is a joke and we should all go back to pre-industrial times?” Nope. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that progress in technology and industry has surpassed progress in the realm of human evolution. We are straddling two eras as they drift further apart from each other. I’m saying we need to take the best aspects of progress and apply these things to major world problems instead of making those problems worse by keeping this broken system on life support. I see visions of a future where small communities again thrive, where corporate outfits are seen as the enemy of the common man, where people begin to educate themselves again, a new renaissance in American individualism, commerce and society. When the spell is broken and we return to the goodness that is in all of us and turn away from the selfishness of blind consumerism. I don’t care if it is a lofty ideal and utopian fantasy. We have to carve out this place for ourselves. Any sort of social progress took place because of enlightenment and fierce determination and hard work in the face of overwhelming odds.
Living here on this farm these past few years has been an insanely evolutionary, luminary and revelatory experience. My mind is still in the process of taking in all the information and trying to make sense of it, trying to analyze it and figure out a way to go from here. In my mind I am already trying to live post-collapse and I often feel like a crazy person because of the thoughts in my head. I know I’m not alone but it is hard to tell when you are out in public who might be seeing the same things as you. I connect with different people from different backgrounds all the time who all share a commonality in that they see the monster rising just like I am witnessing it. These are frightening times that are electric with history and reverberations throughout time and space. A coming together of everything at once, all disparate elements and particles held together by the self-same glue. Everything is infinite but for some reason most of us are stuck in the prison of the finite even though the infinite is absolutely everywhere and everything. It is the grand illusion that has to be smashed; the separateness, the dissociation, the otherness, the “us” and the “them”, the inner and the outer.
Then there is the mind fuck that some of the ancients were most likely more intelligent than us, that we are not actually the apex of human evolution and consciousness but perhaps just a deeply demented and disturbed inbred off-shoot.

We Own the Shame.

Flickering light on the tomb,

the theme song from The Young & The Restless

permeating the womb.

Years upon years upon years of encoded electronic images.

Face the screen, look forward to the dream, plan your life

around the scene. Joystick, controller, touch tone, cell phone.

It’s new! It’s improved! This one’s smaller. This one’s wiser.

Keep your head buried in the wires. Addicted to the diction.

Too strange to be fiction.

Playtime for hours. Pavlovian towers. Devolution of a species.

Crap trap the whole thing's tapped. This is what we've been working towards.

Don’t call. Don’t talk. Text me. I don’t want to see your face or hear your voice.

Just send me the codes already. I don’t care.

These lies are becoming threadbare.

Reveal the zeal with which our souls are being stealed. (sic)

I don’t know but I’ve been told. Once there was a way,

but everything must be bought and sold.

A soul cries out in the wilderness, manna in the form of prana.

Or is it prana in the form of manna?

Must be electrix, must be Celebrex, must be freezone, ozone,

motorhome, no place to call your own.

Run that treadmill as fast as you can.

All hail the Toucan Sam. Slam bam, thank you Ma’am.

Great balls of fire, send me your ire.

Burn some tires, the flames licking higher.

The black smoke disappears into the atmosphere.

We’re here. We’re queer.

We’re funny little creatures, scurrying ants

in and out of the plants. Bubble canopies of rubber and steel,

aluminum, windshield glass, we got no class.

Burn that gas, tap that ass, work that dick.

What's making us tick? If everything is okay...

Well, then I guess I’m the one who’s sick.

But this shit’s got to change. Are you ready to name names?

CIA hurricane? Get ready. You know who’s to blame:

We are the game. We own the shame. We flew those planes.

Nothing will ever be the same.

The Art of Fetching Water

Carry two gallons of spring water

across the meadows.

Breathe deeply.

Heady air, cold hands.

Laboring breath.

Holy breath.

Black mountains wrap their arms around.

Twilight in the heavenly holler;

sleeping grey trunks of trees.

Focus mind meditation.

The pond is the mirrored mask of the skies.

Rippling water.

Two birds

take wing and fly.

You are here.

I don’t know if there is any rhyme or reason to it. It starts in the gut, rises up into the chest, surrounds the heart and presses against the rib cage straining to be free. It cannot escape so you choke it back down and try to find some purchase to pull yourself through. Everything fails. Social anxiety. Please don’t engage me. I don’t want you to see the darkness inside me. I am ashamed of the storm clouds in my belfry. These purple machinations of madness are for me and me alone. I am haunted by the past, dreadful of the future, spinning daisy chains in my mind of oh how I wish my world could be. I need to be loved and I need to love. For the past 10 years it seems I’ve fallen all over myself to push away anyone who has had the misfortune of trying to love me. There is a poison inside, a thick black tar of self-pity and fear, an adolescent mind in the body of a full grown man. Self-loathing is second nature to me, isolation my defense, solitude my crutch. In the deep cold of a star-struck night I feel connected for a few moments. I see the universe rotating overhead, planets shining, a bright white moon superimposed against a sea of blackened purple space and time.

“You think too much.”

“You are too sensitive.”

“You are too needy.”

If it weren’t for my little furry family of dogs I think I should have expired. Truth be told, it’s money matters, a brooding, self-centered sense of entitlement, a bitterness. I’ve got so much ugliness in my craw to release, so much phlegm and rotten dogma. I’ve knelt and prayed for hours on end for women I once loved, for them to be happy, for them to find some joy, love and peace in their lives. Almost without exception these prayers have been answered. And I am happy for them. I am happy they’ve found someone to share their lives with. But inside I am so very small and I think, “But what about me, God? Can’t I have someone too? Can’t I love someone and allow myself to be loved by them?”

I have slept alone for years. I wake alone; make coffee alone, soldier through weekends alone, holidays and years pile up like slabs of ice on the bank of some lost creek. At times I make peace with my loneliness, take pride in it. Other times I am filled to overflowing with sadness and longing. I stuff it down, way down, further now, be spirited away self-pity. Damn you covetous heart! It’s easier to allow yourself to turn to stone. It’s easier to turn again and again inside oneself. It’s easier to block out the world, to lay fresh mortar in the cracks of the wall. I am bitter over my career, what it’s taken from me. Nights, weekends, holidays…year after year, decade after decade serving smiling families and nuzzling couples. After the shift you go home to leftovers and an empty house. It’s madness. It’s untenable. And now I’m in this place, this place that is supposed to be my home, my motherland and I feel as ostracized, incomplete and unloved as ever before. There are moments of peace sure, ephemeral time-ticks of non-polarity, of oneness with my station and fellows, but they are few and far between. The standard is melancholy, not just a surface affliction but a deep, abiding sadness that has been extant since childhood and that I believe I was probably born with, a dis-ease with the human condition.

I really have no right to bemoan my lack of female companionship. I have reaped what I have sown. I have been reckless, thoughtless, unforgiving, cruel and merciless. Ask anyone who has had the misfortune of trying to love me. So many wonderful women have crossed my path. I’ve taken their love, balled it up in my hands and tossed it aside. By rights I DESERVE to be alone. I deserve the pain. Never mind that my cruelty and insensitivity were born from childhood traumas out of my control. One must grow and evolve, throw back the security blankets that once served so well. These blankets have grown so comfortable even as they are slowly suffocating me. I am so lucky to live in this place, lucky my grandfather purchased this land and that my parents kept it. I’ve not known what the hell I’ve been doing here. I had no real plan. Just move up here and figure it out later. I’m glad I didn’t know how I would be affected. I’m glad I didn’t allow the fear of the unknown to dissuade me. As fortunate as I am for the right to live here on this land there is so much for me to do to continue living here and I often feel overwhelmed. There have been many challenges and I feel I’ve risen to them. As one problem is solved a hundred more arise in its place. I am very far out of my comfort zone and of course, this was one of the chief reasons for making the move in the first place.

At night I step outside as if onto the surface of the moon. The only electric light I can see is that of a satellite in the sky that beams down television programs to dishes across the countryside. There are no other lights visible save for the lamplight creeping out of the windows of my house. When the moon is out and bright the mountains and fields and streams glitter in the lunar light. The mountains are dark and lovely against the heavens. Constellations make their ways across the universal sea. I stand on my two human legs, vapor from my breath rising hot from my face into the cold ether.

Sometimes the only answer you will hear is “You are here.”

“You are here. The rest is up to you.”

Hollow Man

God I can’t wait to get back home. I miss the grey-trunked trees, the primeval forest, the barren mountainsides, the cold earth littered with dry, dead leaves, the nothingness of the stark, star-studded night sky, the silence of the hills, the yawning emptiness. The quiet loneliness of the land reflects my own sadness back at me. The river winds its millennial path through the valleys, slipping over rocks and washing memory and emotion away with its cold clear waters. I need the emptiness; the soft, caressing touch of the invisible ether soothes my soul. The cold hard ground comforts me. The dead weather surrounds me and comforts me in my solitude and introspection. I need the crisp, clean air, the hushed stillness of desolation, the absence of any sort of love or care. These things fill my hollow husk of a heart. These things bring me what might be described as a kind of joy and peace. There are no judgments there, no reprisals, no longing or ambition. There is only the vacuum of space and time. I am aware that my heart is turning to stone. I am aware that I receive no love because I give no love. I am broken and I don’t care. And the mute mountains don’t care either. We were made for each other. I am the silent grey mountain and the silent grey mountain is me.

Bats!

The other night I was driving home from work. It was a bit foggy but not as bad as I had seen it before. The day was warm and the early evening saw brief, violent thunderstorms whose showers were now slowly, eerily rising up from the river valleys and blanketing entire watersheds in thick, dense, ethereal white wisps of fog. So I’m totally zoning out on the landscape all John Muir-style and shit while I’m driving along, around the turns, decelerate here, and speed up there for the long, slow climb out of Dunns into Camp Creek. I’m listening to tunes and keeping a sharp eye out for deer which gather in this valley by the hundreds at night. Then all of the sudden, out of the smoke and fog, a motherfucking bat smacks into my windshield, bounces up over the cab of the truck and disappears into the darkness. It happened in slow-motion; or rather my mind seems to have captured it that way. I saw him when he was about six feet from the windshield, shrouded in smoke and the fractured cones of headlight. His wings were spread as if he was trying to put on the brakes. The light from the truck shown through a pale grey scrim of tissue-thin fabric framed in the most beautiful black wing structure. The body was black as was his head. As the slow-motion frames click on his wings begin to flap wildly, click, click, I can see his face, click, click, his beady little blind eyes and his black head, click, click, his mouth gaping wide still filling his belly with insects…click, click, ...THUMP! He tumbles over the truck and into the darkness never to be seen or heard from again.

Several nights later I am at home, sleeping out on the screened-in porch when I have to get up to pee. I do this like a veteran somnambulist. I draw back the covers, slide my legs to the edge of the bed and drape them over, search with my feet until they find solid, unobstructed purchase on the floor. My eyes have not yet opened. With my feet firmly planted on the floor I then assume a sitting up position at the edge of the bed. Now I open my eyes, not open really, more like pryingly crease my lids so that the tiniest sliver of light makes it through. I am seeing my back porch through a forest of eyelash. Noting the floor is clear I stumble onto my feet and then gangle forward in a monster of Frankenstein manner, up the step, into the house, across the creaking pine floorboards, the moonlight casting on the boards and lighting my way, hands outstretched and probably mumbling to myself I awkwardly bumble along until I reach a threshold. A doorway! Hooray! I grasp it with both arms reassuringly and push my way through.

(Now just to pause for a moment and consider the quantities of urine that must have been pressing against my bladder to cause me to (semi) awaken, leave the Holy Sacred Warmth and Comfort of The Worshipful Bed and journey off into the night in hopes of relief.)

Through the doorway I shift my body to the left and lumber through an open sliding-glass doorway out onto the wooden deck. I’m multi-tasking now. As I lurch the last few steps I fish out my penis and ready it for draining. At last! I find a comfortable stance on the edge of the porch and just let it rip, full bore wide open high pressure fire hosing going down. I’m already beginning to feel the relief. I begin to smile, kinda laugh a little. Now I’m really getting into it, swaying back and forth with my hands on my hips, listening to the puddle form on the ground below when all of the sudden out of fucking nowhere this motherfucking crazy-ass bat dive bombs the shit out of me and gets all Kenneth Shuler up on top of my head. Somehow (the startling fright I guess) my valve immediately shut off as I 1. Screamed outloud. 2. Started waving my arms all around like a lunatic. 3. Lost my balance and ate shit onto the deck floor in my boxer shorts. I was pretty much asleep during this whole thing, up until the moment I hit the dirt and found myself wounded, on the ground, outside, at night, with my dick hanging out. In a matter of seconds my pack of dogs had me surrounded and was investigating the scene; barking loudly and charging fearlessly out into the front yard to attack. Three stayed behind and guarded me with cold noses and wet tongues. I gathered myself up, pulled myself together and stood up. I felt soreness and dull pain coming from my left knee and looked down to see a nice two inch gash cut across my kneecap and blood running down my shin and calf. Being somewhat used to this kind of thing I just said fuck it and got back in bed and went to sleep.

So if you ever see me waving my arms around wildly and muttering incoherently about “the god damn bats” you’ll know I’m being totally fucking serious.

Reckoning

It is mid-day and it is dark and ominous. Friday night I was sitting in the mountain house having dinner with my sister and a couple of friends. It had been hot as hell all day and we were sweltering inside the house while eating but no one seemed to mind too much. All of the sudden, literally out of nowhere, the wind picked up outside and began blowing HARD. The temperature immediately dropped about 20-30 degrees, the sun disappeared and the air was filled with a wild and frantic energy. The electric lights began to flicker on and off before finally deciding on “off.” We lit a candle and continued our dinner, just went right on with our evening. My friends went home and my sister retired to the cabin. I spent the night on my fold-out sofa on the screened in porch. It cooled down so much during the night I had to get up in my sleep and find more blankets. When the sun came up in the morning I shed the blankets as the light shone on my skin and I began to sweat.

When I left the farm to go see about work and my food at Mountain Creek the reality of the storm that seemed nothing more than an anomaly became apparent. Trees were knocked down everywhere, power lines dangling, branches snapped like twigs….and there was the eerie, ominous silence in which we have now became engulfed. I got into town and was startled by the long lines of cars at the gasoline pumps. The temperature kept rising and rising and the day was spent in a surreal mindscape of damage and ruin. The heartwarming aspect to all of this is how people behaved. People were patient and kind with one another, even in the gas pump lines, there was no cutting, no honking of horns, no yelling or bitching, just calm as if there was nothing out of the ordinary.

I wonder if this is how it will be when it all really goes down and goes down for good. We won’t know it’s for good at the time. We’ll think it’s just a matter of time before order is restored. But when it really happens order will not be restored, the power won’t return. We will be left to fend for ourselves. The small community I live in will survive. These are country people with country ways. Sustainability isn’t just a catch-word or a trend to these people; it is a way of life. Hell yesterday farmers were out cutting and bailing hay just as they would have been doing anyway. There was a slight air of panic in the towns from tourists coming off the interstate but the local people, for all their flaws and faults, were non-plussed and I found myself happy and proud that I was among them. My two years living in the cabin has prepared me for moments like this. All the trappings of civilization fall away and you find yourself surrounded by the silence of the real. I gave up TV over two months ago. I use the internet sparingly, a bit at work and a bit at a coffee shop in town. I can now live without these things without going mad. They don’t matter. What matters is the cool air at night, the feeding and watering of my dogs, the checking in on my neighbors and family.

I’ve long known there will be a reckoning…a reckoning we will see and experience in our lifetime, a reckoning that will make things worse before they get better. Storms come and go through time, it ain’t nothing new. But when a combination of events takes place, it will change. I don’t know if we are headed for a new dark age or not. I don’t know how it will all play out but I do know that our current civilization cannot continue on the path it is on without dire consequences. Our leaders are still completely blind to the truth. We are meant to believe that if the “economy” just gets better, things can go back to “normal.” Well, I’ve been alive for forty years now and I can tell you that there has been nothing normal about the past four decades. Our economy is a lie, it assumes continued growth. On a tiny planet among the stars there is only so much space, so many resources…it is up to the earth itself to shake off our beehive madness. Whether or not this is a conscious act of the planet or just a matter of cause and effect is irrelevant. We have grown beyond our means and it is beginning to show. We need a time-out. We need to pause and reflect. If we won’t do it on our own the earth will do it for us. It will knock down our towers and silence our televisions. It will remind us of the preciousness of clean water and healthy food. It will learn us to be kind to our neighbors, to look out for one another, to finally realize we can’t do this alone. Our addiction to fossil fuels and a way of life that is beyond our means will be broken sooner or later. There is a reckoning in this wind.

SPYCOGA cont...

In other moments I am serene as a Buddha, calm as a Hindu cow, light and free as that dancing plastic bag in American Beauty. Multi-colored butterflies flirt around my skull, the waning light at sunset streams through the forest and into my eyes, the bright golden spears of light fracture into an infinite kaleidoscopic pattern of rainbows. This is real. This is not the fantasy world I live in, the one we all live in. This is the winking of the earth, a nihilistic nudge from our Maker. Moments like this I am conscious of my breath, conscious of the weight of my bones and muscle being held down onto the earth by gravity’s pull, conscious of my organs pulsing inside my body, aware of the steady beating of my heart within my chest, the thump thump thump thump that meters out the beat of my life, cognizant of the wind caressing my skin, conscious of everything around me and inside me, conscious of the moon and stars and planets circling, the universe of which we all are part and no one is separate. This lie of separateness is the plague of humanity, this cosmic con that there is anything to lose or anything to gain when we are all husks of dust glinting in the breeze. This comforts me. Death comforts me. I do not long for death but the irrefutable truth of death is difficult to not admire. I can’t wait for the veil to be lifted on this world. I know there is a loving, benevolent force to the universe. If I didn’t I would become a criminal.

Some places you can only go alone.

Some places you can only go alone. No one can go with you. You have to go by yourself. Does anyone out there know what the hell is going on? Or are most of my brothers and sisters as confused as me. I’ve just been making it up as I go along. When I was younger I used to blame others for my troubles. Now I blame myself. Neither is healthy. My troubles? Manic depression. Alcoholism. My brain churns and churns. It burns and burns. I try to lock onto something for a while but then it gets used up and I’m on to the next for a new fix. It started with toys when I was a little kid as best I can remember. My parents spoiled me with toys. I became a collector. I had to have every single Star Wars figure that was available (even the ones only available for a limited time on the backs of cereal boxes.) And I did have them all. This was back in the early 1980’s, before Return of the Jedi, when the only figures they had was from the first two movies. For the first film’s figure set I needed a Jawa. My mother and I scoured the drug stores, department stores and toy stores looking for a Jawa but couldn’t find one. Late in the summer, before I started first grade in the fall, my mom and dad took us on vacation to Daytona Beach and Disney World. At a mall somewhere in between we finally found the Jawa action figure. I was ecstatic. I couldn’t wait to get home and tell my friends. I had a good friend that was a fanatical collector like me and mom kindly bought him a Jawa too. The next figure I obsessed over was the medical droid B1B from The Empire Strikes Back. Again my collection was nearly complete; I had Luke, Han and Leia in Hoth gear. I had all the bounty hunters. I had the play sets to reenact my favorite scenes from the film. But B1B eluded me. My mother and I searched high and low but he was nowhere to be found. How was I to replay the scenes where the droid rehabilitates Luke, first by monitoring him in the hyperthermia tank, then later by reconstructing his hand after Darth Vader sliced it off with his red light saber? I felt I would never know until one day, when out of nowhere, I stumbled upon a B1B on the last row of cards on the rack I flipped through. It was a Super X drug store in Beckley, WV. I’ll never forget that moment.

This may seem like just a random observation of the curious behavior of a small child but it really speaks to something deeper in me. I chase. I capture. Then I move on. It is a sick cycle. I am the perfect consumer I was raised to be; I am never satisfied. I wish I could say that some 32 years later I have changed. But that just simply isn’t true. I moved on from Star Wars figures eventually, first to GI Joes, then to BMX bikes and then to skateboarding. I took all of it in, ate it up then moved on. My next fix became girls, then drugs and alcohol. I’ve been addicted to and obsessed over just about everything I’ve ever been interested in. When I started cooking professionally this trait brought me rewards. But the overall effect of such a tangled up mind is to be restless, irritable and discontent. Whatever it takes to not deal with what’s going on inside, the darkness in me that refuses the light.

My soul craves balance, harmony. But almost everything in how I’ve chosen to live my life rejects these ideas. For some reason I have to have things off-kilter for me to feel right. Remember the character of Ricky Bobby’s daddy in Talladega Nights? I’m just like him sadly. I get itchy when things seem to be going too well. I gotta throw a wrench in there somewhere and get everything going all good and haywire to sleep well at night. Time after time after time I’ve done this. Torpedoed any meaningful chance I might have at happiness with something or someone by getting the jitters and having that gnawing urgency to split, to bail, to tune out, shut down and blow off. The scars on my body attest to a strong tendency towards self-destruction. I’ve cut myself, burned myself, and drank myself into endless stupors thousands upon thousands of times. There have been times when I have made peace with the madness. This pretty much means that I just gave into it and let it do whatever it wanted with me. This led to blackout episodes coming to in strange places with no recollection of evenings prior. This led to 100 mile an hour car chases high on crystal meth. This led to waking up in my truck with a loaded gun in my lap and empty casings on the seat. I went to AA. I finally got sober and off of drugs, but the madness? The madness is here for keeps. It isn’t going anywhere. I have to learn to live with it. That’s what I’ve tried to do all along; to learn to live in this world and not go full crazy. It’s a tall mountain when you look at it. The history of the world, the history of people, where I fit into all of this… It’s hard not to feel irrelevant. It’s hard to go back up that mountain once you’ve come down. The sides are steep and rocky. There are deep thickets of briars and thorns. The rain won’t let up and the wind shakes the trees and scatters leaves over the path. Then the metaphor becomes belabored as fuck…

There was a boy in my dream last night. He was a tiny little blonde-haired thing, maybe about two years old. People were looking for him. He only appeared after everyone else was gone. He didn’t know I was there. I tricked him. I hid behind an old oak tree and spied on him. He came out of the ether and for a few frames he appeared in the sunlight, his white skin glowing in the rays. When I stepped out from behind the tree and called to him he vanished. No one would believe me that I saw him. They thought I was lying. I wasn’t lying. I saw him. I could go there now and he would appear for me. But that wouldn’t prove anything. He would only appear for me and no one else. Apparently he lived in a little broken down shack. I went inside once. Inside was an old worn out mattress, empty bottles and cans on the floor, sunlight streaming in cracked panes of glass.

There’s no glamor in madness. It’s not like in the movies. There’s nothing heroic about it. It feels like there is an invisible cage around your head, a birdcage that fits perfectly around the contours of the bones of your face and skull, the bars are hard as iron, like some twisted metaphysical metallurgy. Thoughts bounce around inside the cage and cause it to rattle. That’s you, walking around your days and nights in an invisible cage of rattling iron. Of course the cage can’t be seen. To all appearances you look normal. There is nothing that signifies this man is in a self-made prison. You have to look closer. People don’t want to; look closer that is. Most people are not interested in your pain when your pain is all that has ever interested in me. Everything else is window dressing and a bunch of pomp and circumstance. In my private thoughts alone I shatter store front windows with my mind, bend street lamps to the pavement, drop traffic lights into the crosswalk, crumble buildings, black the sky, set fire to the trees and houses…turn this beautiful place into the hell scape that is the inside of my skull staring back at me.

Black Web

Some days it feels as if you’re just trying to keep all the puzzle pieces together in your mind. Yea, some days it feels just like that. You can’t see the forest for the trees and all that shit. There’s a hamster wheel in your head and the demon’s got it spinnin’. Why is it that sometimes the hardest fucking thing in the world to do is sit still and just be? You think you have to have it all figured out. You think you should be here or there in your life. You feel displaced, out of sync, too far gone and floating untethered through the atmosphere into outer space. People try to help you. People try to get involved. But you push them away. You push them away as if you are being greedy with your misery, forgetting that God put you here to help others and thereby help yourself. You are too entwined in your own circuitry for that though. You tell yourself that when this or that happens…THEN you will reach out and be social. But those things come and go and still you resist. It’s a black web of paralyzing goo that seeps over your soul and tries to block out the light.

You feel like you are pushing yourself farther and farther out into the unknown and it frightens you. You dread the thought of failure, can’t wrap your head around the thought of success. You want to break through the impasse but the comfort of your pain inhibits you. You listen to others speak. You hear their voices but everything is muffled. You feel like you are experiencing the world through a wall of fuzz that only you can see and feel. You forget the answer is empathy and compassion. You find yourself the subject of idle rumors. You scratch your head at the words and actions of some of your brethren. They seem to act like a gaggle of hens rather than men. So and so did this or that. So and so didn’t do this or that. Words and hearsay pile up in stinking slabs in your consciousness. This isn’t what you wanted, this pettiness. The small-mindedness and narrowness pushes you further away, causes you to insulate yourself even more. You reach out sometimes but you can tell everybody thinks you’re different. You’re not really from around here. Maybe you don’t belong. But you do belong. This is your land too. This is your place. This is your time. And you know that when you’ve had enough you will surrender it all to the Master, the Grand Architect. Will you Lord? Will you help me keep this puzzle together? Will you hold the pieces in place? Is this bedrock I’m standing on or just shifting sand? Please tell me. I need to know.

Spring

The season starts in the earth, creeps slowly and magically through roots, rises up in tiny tendrils from the cold ground. The tilt is upon us now. Bright, soft, yellow rays of sunlight cast sideways across the land, shadows deep. The lay of the land begins to appear as an emerald carpet in the lengthening days. Insects are the first to awaken from their winter slumber and with them the return of the birds, frogs, lizards and many other creatures to activity. The sounds of spring are the whooshes of wind, the rumblings of thunder, rain splashing down and water running in gurgling creeks down mountainsides, the whistling of the frogs, the chirping songs of birds, and the far off whine of a lawnmower in the distance. Slowly and almost imperceptibly life rises up from the ground and into the air. Evidence of this can be seen in the soft light green tinged tree branches, the striking yellow hawthorn bushes, bright white blooms on pear trees, and the tiny purple and blue wildflowers cast like confetti in fields.

The Darkness

Down in the dumps today/tonight. Not really sure why but I do know that I have been experiencing an almost crushing loneliness lately, an almost debilitating alienation. I have no one. My mother is immersed in grief and her own issues, my sisters have their families, my father is dead and gone. I’m living up here on this farm by myself and well, it gets tough some times. I don’t have anyone to share life with. It’s all wake up>feed the dogs>facebook>go to work>come home>feed the dogs>facebook>sleep…over and over and over again. What’s the point? I’m blessed to live here on this land but I don’t have anyone to share it with. The longing in me becomes so painful at times…a physical and psychological paralysis. I have a darkness inside that reappears and makes itself known from time to time. I’ve lived inside this darkness for so long sometimes I can’t even recognize it’s there. When I notice myself becoming angry a lot…that is when I remember this darkness inside me, this sadness, this dis-ease. I have to confess to being resentful and jealous of other people, couples, families, etc. I see people posting on facebook about going on vacation and bbq’ing and doing all sorts of things and I feel like I’m missing out, like I’m on the losing end. For me the summer and any holiday is just work work work work work work. Christ I hate myself sometimes. I realize how completely immature and full of shit I am. I try to be better. I try to be grateful. But then my mind goes off on me and I feel all small again. It really is crazy. And I wonder why I don’t have someone. Is it because I’m a self-centered narcissist? Is it because I’m not ready to love or be loved? Fuck if I know.

There are times when I make friends with my loneliness, when I make nice with the pain inside. When I pretend it’s just a part of life, just a part of growing up and getting older. Maybe that really is the deal. And God knows I have a lot to be grateful for…but there is emptiness inside me, a hole in my heart that’s reserved for a woman. Fuck if I know who she is or if she even exists. What woman would sincerely want to come live with me out here on this farm anyway? The closest Target is nearly an hour away! (Still cracking jokes through the tears.)

Well, day two (or three) of the darkness. Stopped writing last night cause I was sick of my own bs. I’m sitting here wasting time in the morning before work. Hoping someone will comment on one of my posts on facebook. So embarrassing. So sad. And then this raw honest vomiting of it all out onto the flickering laptop screen. I don’t want to go to work today. I want to disappear. I want to drive out to the open wastes of Wyoming, park and just start walking towards the horizon. Once you’re bitten by the bug you’re never the same; the insanity bug, the got-to-move bug, the restless bug, the dis-eased bug, the ambition bug, the never-be-satisfied bug, the-gnawing-scratching-emptiness-inside-that-blacks-out-all-joy bug. It’s an infection that lasts forever. It gives a person good stories but it’ll also drive you fucking bat-shit crazy if you let it.

So today, write schedule, take inventory, lead kitchen staff(s), put on a good face and pretend you don’t feel like you’re dying inside; the great masquerade, the great charade, the ego parade. Some days it feels like you're waiting to die, waiting to be snuffed out, waiting for the breath to stutter, gasp and expire out. You feel like a ghost, like a spirit wanderer, like a gypsy soul trapped in this flesh and bone cage. I can’t tell you how much of my life I’ve felt just like that. And it ebbs and flows like a tidal creek, like a low country inlet, like a rising and falling sound shallow against the sea. I’ve gone months, YEARS it seems with little relief and then POOF! out of nowhere the sunlight shines down once again, the waters recede and I again feel comfortable and content in my skin of flesh and core of bones and tissue. The light lasts for intermittent periods of time, sometimes just a day, sometimes weeks and months go by with blissful ignorance of the blackness festering inside me. The times when I am the happiest are the hardest to take. I forget the depression. I forget the black stains on my heart. I laugh and am easy-going and kind. I am selfless, kind, and generous. Along the way something shifts (it often involves a woman) and the light begins to be slowly blotted out by the darkness, like a planet being eclipsed by its moon, the shadow creases the face and spreads exponentially faster until the entire sphere is enveloped in the absence of light. It seems to stay that way for a punctuated moment in time before the light begins peeking back in from the other side, the light burns the darkness away and I feel alive once again. I feel at home here on these fields of green, under these baby blue skies, beneath this canopied earth.

It's the end of the world as we know it.

Dude I’m really just high on life today. I woke up late this morning to a stupendously gorgeous day outside here in southern West Virginia. We kicked ass yesterday at the resort for Mother’s Day Brunch. I got to share a visit and supper with my mother. It’s the month of my birth, spring is in its full glory, I’ll turn 39 years old in a few weeks which also marks 7 years in recovery from alcoholism and one year living on the farm in West by God Virginia. I’ve spent the past 3 hours completely dicking off…went for an atv ride with Rudy, laid out in the meadow together with the sun shining on us just digging life and looking at the clouds float by in the sky. A little inner conflict about being so “lazy” today. Why is it that I feel like I must always be “doing” something, getting something accomplished, striving, reaching? I think a lot of people are like this, not just me. Can I just shut it down for a minute and enjoy the blessings of life?

Gotta write something about the craziness of the video I shot last week going viral and creating a shit storm of controversy. The negative feedback I’ve gotten about the video has been at times hilarious, confusing and sad. I like the way the media outlets covered the bit. I dug the jokes the late night comedians made about it. I’ve enjoyed the positive feedback from people who like the video simply for what it is. But it seems my little antic brought out all the egotistical blowhards and their self-important quasi-informed hot air. Honestly I’ve avoided people like you my entire life, you holier-than-thou types, you pseudo-experts, you sniffing down your noses, you arrogant, self-important cry babies, you humorless, self-aggrandizing trolls…I’m glad I pissed you off. I’m thrilled I got under your skin. Because you see every single thing you wrote about me and my little 49 second video says everything in the world about you as a person and literally nothing about me. You don’t know me from Adam. You don’t have the slightest clue what I’m like as a human being here on this planet. I said “Jump!” and you said “How high?” You got played, served, PWNED.

So tell me…howww does it feeeeel? Awwww, how does it feeeeel? To be on your own….with no direction home…like a complete UNKNOWN….like a rolling stone.

Me? I feel fine. It’s the end of the world as we know it. And I feel fine.

Fine.

A Blood Letting

I hardly know where to start writing. There’s no telling where this will go. I’m just gonna peel back the top of my noggin’ and let it rip. I’ve been under a tremendous amount of stress lately. I’ve put it on myself. Here comes the raw, honest scoop regarding what’s been swirling in my head these past few months. Not many people know the true nature of my living situation. Let’s start with the water in the cabin. The water comes out of the mountainside and is collected by a series of pipes running into a spring box. The spring box has a crack in it. Luckily this crack is near the top of the box so it still holds a good deal of water. When I first arrived on the farm last Spring the water was not running into the cabin. The spring box was empty and surrounded by briars and lots of other unfriendly brush. With a chainsaw, weed eater and branch loppers I cleared a wide swath around the spring box as well as a trail leading to it. I found the pipe that feeds into the box buried beneath the crushing weight of fallen tree branches. I sawed up the branches and moved them out of the way. I repositioned the pipe and staked it into place. Water began flowing into the box. After it had filled water flowed down the mountainside and began filling the pipes in the cabin. But when I turned the faucets on only a slow steady stream of water came out. I lived with this meager water supply from last summer until just a few weeks ago. The non-existent water pressure made taking a shower impossible and filling the toilet tank frustratingly slow. The toilet tank wasn’t a big deal since the septic tank was clogged and not draining water off. Long story short, I have not had a usable toilet for most of the time I’ve been living up here. I went outside and dug holes to crap in. I bathed in the river. This wasn’t a really big deal when the weather was warm. Once it got cold it became a problem. I cut a siphon pipe from an old garden hose and used my shop-vac to start the siphon. I began siphoning the water out of the septic tank regularly. Miraculously this must have loosened something in the tank or field lines because sometime around the beginning of winter the tank began draining itself. I was then able to flush the toilet! However due to the lack of water pressure filling the tank was still a problem. I filled the tank and flushed the toilet once a day. Twice the bowl was so full it overflowed onto the bathroom floor. This was really disgusting and discouraging. Still I figured out a way to work around it. (Instead of flushing the toilet paper I burned it in the wood stove. Washing dishes with a just a slow steady stream of water coming out of the faucet has also been a pain in the ass. I began boiling water on top of my wood stove for washing dishes and taking baths. This was a laborious process. Getting the water temperature right is tricky. I would pour the boiling water into the tub and let it sit for 30 minutes to an hour to let it cool down enough to get into. I lived like this all winter. Towards the end of winter something must have broken free because one day I turned on the kitchen faucet and water came flowing out under pressure. At first it was muddy but it soon cleared up and ran clear and strong! Hooray!!!! This victory was short-lived however. Days later the pressure went away again and I noticed water bubbling up on the ground where the water line enters the cabin. It flooded beneath the cabin and collected around the foundation. I hand dug ditches to drain the water over a hillside. This helped but it soon became apparent that most of the water coming down the hillside from the spring box was not staying in the pipes. I decided to turn off the valve allowing the water down the hill. It’s been off for over a week now. I’m trying to let the ground dry up somewhat so I can start digging out the water line and finding the problem. So I went from a slow steady stream of water to gushing water to no water. Now I take my atv up the hill to the spring box with empty gallon jugs and fill them manually by dipping them into the spring box. This is the water Rudy and I use for drinking. Bathing outside hasn’t been feasible due to the cold weather. It’s been raining and snowing a lot still so the ground isn’t exactly drying up. The other night I stood on the front porch naked in the pouring rain and took a shower. It was the first time I had bathed my entire body in months.

Winter is a very slow season business-wise so I haven’t earned much money since around November. My landline phone has been cut off, as well as my satellite tv. The power is still on and miraculously the internet is still working. I’m driving completely illegally. I have no car insurance, registration or valid driver’s license. This has all been very discouraging but I have no one to blame but myself. All these things are what they are. It has begun to get overwhelming though. I have big dreams for my life here and I will make them come true. But I’m ready for something to break in my favor. The solution to the water/septic problem is either a) spending thousands of dollars I don’t have to have someone bring machinery in and dig everything up and replace it all or b) dig it all up myself by hand and get my neighbor and friend Curt to help me fix everything. I wear my clothes over and over again due to not having a washing machine or dryer much less water to wash with. Curt’s wife has taken pity on me and done my laundry for me several times. Other times I load everything up into my truck and spend half a day at the Laundromat getting my clothes clean. Cooking at home isn’t feasible without water for cooking and cleaning up afterwards so I’ve been buying tv dinners that I can just microwave. The packaging and tray then go into the wood stove. It’s really hard to know where to begin getting all this stuff straightened out.

I moved up here because this is where I’ve always thought of as home. I know it’s not constructive to compare myself to other people but it’s hard not to. Almost all of my friends from high school have wives, children, homes they own, etc. I’ve lived a reckless, albeit exciting life since I graduated high school. I made lots of mistakes. I have no money. The only thing I own of any value is my truck. Last year my father died and with him went my biggest fan and supporter. No matter what happened to me I knew my dad was there to help out, both financially and emotionally. He’s gone. I’m all alone. My mother has had the worst year of her life and (as she puts it) I’m the only one of her children that has been giving her emotional support. It’s the very least I can do as far as I am concerned. We talk once or twice a week. Sometimes she sounds okay. Other times she breaks down into hysterical sobbing. I listen to her. I let her cry. I try to sooth her. All the while I’m also thinking of my own life, my own circumstances. I moved up here because I want a HOME, a place to call my own. I’ve been pouring what little money I have been making into this cabin but when my mother dies it is to be split equally between my sisters and me. This gives me an uneasy feeling. I don’t exactly feel like my investment in this place is on solid footing. One of my sisters will probably be cool with me about the farm but my other sister is a total wild card. I could see her pulling some fucked up shit down the road and it worries me. There is an opportunity to buy another home nearby. This is what I’m planning on doing. The cost is low but the place will need a lot of work. But I’ll still be here and as long as I make my payments and get it paid off I will have a home for the rest of my days, regardless of what else happens.

Work is starting to pick up again and I am in negotiations with my boss for my future here. This is another issue entirely and for discretion’s sake I won’t go into it here.

I knew there would be challenges in moving up here. None of this comes as a surprise at all. When my father died, in addition to feeling the emptiness and sadness of losing him, I felt (and feel) a looming sense of my own mortality, the finite nature of my own days. That’s why I moved up here. This is where I’ve always wanted to be. This is the stage where I want the rest of my life to be played out. And behind all the anxiety, uncertainty and fear, among all the infrastructure issues and all the rest of it, beneath everything, believe it or not, I am truly happy. Crazy isn’t it? I am trying my best to live life one day at a time and not get too wrapped up in what will or will not be. I just keep putting one foot in front of the other. And I always find the answer to any dilemma I face is gratitude. So many people on this planet have things so infinitely worse than me. I’m lucky. I’m blessed! So what if I don’t have running water or a working toilet right now? Fuck it dude. Fuck it right in its tight little puckered asshole, man.

Because there are moments in the sun, quiet, gentle, timeless moments of reverie on the forested mountainside with my dog and the breeze blowing. No sound except the wind through the trees, the Bluestone River rushing over ancient rocks. Cornbread ridge shining in the afterglow of another day passed. I focus on my breath. I focus on this second, this moment. I try my best to distance myself from my desires and dreams. I try to achieve a calm, emotionless detachment from the world, from myself, from the worries of the world.

That’s another thing that I haven’t gotten around to discussing: the state of the world right now. I don’t know if this is the end of the world. It may be the end of the old world and the beginning of a new one. There can be little doubt that the world is in flux and that these are historic times. What will the endgame be? Will Jesus return? I mean will he physically manifest himself again here in the mortal realm? All I know is that my soul is at peace even while I worry myself over my own petty human concerns. Modern humanity is (and has been) living a life out of balance. Perhaps nature is correcting things. My hearts weeps for all the people truly suffering on the planet right now. It breaks my heart. One feels helpless and immobile. How much longer can we continue our steady diet of distraction with pop culture and celebrities? Will politicians solve our problems? Ha! What is the answer? The answer for me is to stay right with God and to work on myself, my own consciousness, my own shit. Kindness. Gratitude. Detachment. I have to constantly remind myself that this world is a shadow, a reflection, a wisp of air, a puff of smoke. Poof! It’s gone. Just like that. So whether my dreams come true is really of no consequence in the scheme of things. That won’t stop me though. I told myself when I moved up here that I would be willing to go to any lengths to make this life on the farm in WV work. That’s even truer today than it was almost a year ago.

I hope this hasn’t sounded whiny or complaining. That isn’t my intent. Clearly I just needed to get some stuff off my chest. Peace and love to you and yours, MG

Photoblog: A hike around the Farm for Dad

I get it now.

Today was a day where I felt like I am exactly right where I am supposed to be and doing what I am supposed to be doing. I spent 8 hours of the day outside on the farm working and hanging out with my dog Rudy. This morning I sawed, split and stacked the locust Curt and I cut yesterday. Then I took a break, ate lunch and drove my truck up over the mountain with Rudy riding shotgun. I bought 3 gallons of gasoline, some tobacco, coca-cola and four 25cent slim jims for me and Rudy to split. Back on the farm I fueled up the 4wheeler and went down through the fields to the river. Rudy ran alongside the whole way with her tongue hanging out, ears flopping and I swear to God a smile on her face.

I’ve been visiting this place my entire life. Some of my fondest and earliest memories from childhood are of me and my family picnicking here during long blue summers in the 1970’s. My grandfather used to throw some amazing family reunion picnics back then. All of my extended family would come out, sit around in lawn chairs, talk and eat. The women would fuss over the food in the kitchen of the cabin. The men would play horseshoes and fish. My sisters and I were usually the only kids and we would run around outside, play in the woods, fish, throw horseshoes, go on long walks and take naps inside the cabin in the afternoon. One of the highlights of these long summer days with my family on the farm was when my grandfather would fire up his old John Deere farm tractor and ride us kids down to the river. He’d follow a road he cut himself and take us up the hillside along the riverbank to a high bluff looking down on the island in the middle of the river he owned. Except he never said “he” owned it. It was always “we.” At the end of the road high on the bluff my sisters and I would hop off and carefully climb down the hillside to the fabled and mysterious “big rock”, a slab of granite on the riverbank twice the size of an automobile. I remember feeling adventurous and daring climbing down the steep mountainside and crawling out into the enormous stone monolith. We’d swim in the river, skip rocks and lay in the sun. At night we’d roast weenies over a crackling fire and toast marshmallows. Often we’d play cards or a board game until we got sleepy. There was no tv, only a radio that was always set to the local NPR station out of Roanoke. We laid in bed before falling asleep listening to the crickets and bull frogs serenade the Appalachian night.

And now, after all these years, after madness and uncertainty, after travelling the highways of America, after marriage and divorce, after decades of career work as a chef and cook, after the passing of my grandfather, my grandmother and my dear departed father, after a lifetime of GOING the road ends here and now I stay. When I am out in the fields and forests caretaking the land my soul is filled with joy and peace. My mind is calm. I take deep strong inhalations of pure mountain air as I work. The only sounds I hear are the rushing of the river and my own breath. Often during these tender moments of living I think of my father and my grandfather. Both men loved to work outdoors. It’s pretty funny that I now enjoy these same past times. When I was a teenager growing up in the suburbs I hated yard work, despised it in fact. But I did it and I did a lot of it. My dad always had me out there doing something in the yard: mowing, weed eating, pruning shrubs, raking leaves, picking up sticks and pinecones, hauling rock, splitting wood…the list goes on and on. I fucking hated every minute of it. And sometimes I hated him too. I wanted to be out with my friends or running around with girls. My dad and I would have passionate arguments on the necessity and utility of yard work. I don’t know who aggravated who more….most likely it was me.. And now all these years later I’m out on the land with my chainsaw, weed eater, branch lopper, etc. and tending to the land the same way my dad taught me to. I laugh out loud at myself when I think of all my idiotic adolescent protestations to “working in the yard”, saying aloud, “I get it now dad. I get it.”

A Winter's Wood

A Winter’s Wood

is next to the cabin,
piled high,
some neatly in stacks,
others happenstance and
laying where they fell.

Precious heat emanates from inside the
richly glowing cabin walls, wooden…
reddish-brown and comforting.
The charred stovepipe exhausts smoke,
white hot stove aflame.

Tin soldier trees are
in formation
in the wilderness night.
Winds are blowing, snow falling.

Super Bowl Chili

Super Bowl Chili

makes 2 quarts

2# ground beef
1 medium sweet yellow onion, diced
1 medium green pepper, diced
1 large tomato, diced
2 cloves of fresh garlic, minced
4 T chile powder
2 t ground cumin
1 quart fresh cold water
1 cup crushed tortilla chips
1 bunch scallions, white part only, diced
1 jalapeno, diced
2 T fresh cilantro, minced
juice of 1 lime
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

sour cream
shredded cheddar cheese
Fritos Scoops

Method: In a thick-bottomed soup pot brown ground beef over medium high heat. Drain grease. Add onion, green pepper, tomato, garlic and spices and cook for 5 minutes stirring regularly. Add cold water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer for 30 minutes. Add crushed tortilla chips, scallions, jalapeno, cilantro and lime juice and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring regularly. Season with salt and pepper and serve topped with sour cream, shredded cheddar cheese and fresh jalapeno slices. Eat with Fritos Scoops!

How time can just ruin a man

I’m sitting here in the cabin with NFL Primetime on the television, Rudy outside barking, the wood stove emanating warm dry heat and a bluish moon rising over Cornbread Ridge. I spent the entire day with my buddy Curt. We drove into Princeton and ran errands which included going to Lowes and buying new bars and chains for our chainsaws and then driving out True Road in Summers County, visiting with my friend Josh, his wife Ginny and their two adorable youngsters. We took in breath-taking southern West Virginia scenery all day, driving back roads up and down and over mountain after mountain until finally dropping down beside Bluestone Lake. It was frozen over from shore to shore. Barren mountains formed a ring around the body of water.

We crossed over into Hinton and went to see Curt’s brother, Kevin, who is just a few years older than me, who is at a nursing home after a tragic and horrible motorcycle accident several years ago. I hadn’t seen Kevin since I lived up here when I was 23, over 15 years ago. Back then I had spent a good deal of time with him. I used to go cutting firewood with him. He cut it and I hauled it into the truck. One day I remember we brought back 4 regular-size pickup truck loads to the cabin in just a few hours. He was full of life back then, wiry and muscled, tan and more than a little wild. We used to listen to Bocephus in his red Chevy z71 truck while barreling around sharp curves on dirt roads above the hollow.

The man I saw today was just a husk of the man I once knew. I followed behind Curt as we walked down the hallways of the nursing home, past other men and women in advanced stages of decline. We arrived at Kevin’s room and found him slumped in a wheelchair asleep. Curt began crying as soon as we entered the room. He went to his brother and lovingly cooed words to him while petting his head and kissing it. I stood to the side and just witnessed. Curt is one of the toughest men I’ve ever known…perhaps the toughest. His hands are thick and strong and rough as sand paper. He held his brother and wept. I was grateful to him for letting me in, for not being ashamed or embarrassed to share this moment with me. He tried to wake him but Kevin only opened his eyes and looked at us. He was confused and distant, mumbled a few words and drifted back to sleep. We only stayed for 20 minutes or so. As we left I put my arm around Curt and patted him on the back. Once outside the depressing building where people go to die Curt’s spirit lifted and we took off again on mountain roads towards home.

We drove to Nimitz and then got on Ellison Ridge and dug the countryside as the sun began sinking in the western sky. Enormous meadows stretched out in open spaces between steep mountainsides. We talked about old times, Curt spinning yarns about being a boy in this country wrecking cars, hunting deer, growing weed and chasing girls. Later we filled jugs with gasoline and headed back to Wolf Creek Hollow. Back at my cabin we tuned up our chainsaws and went out into the cold night and sawed firewood.

Mountain House of Rock and Wood

Lovely images come forth in my mind of the home I am in the process of building. A spacious, warm, loving environment for family and friends from near and far to come visit, spend time, relax, dig the West Virginia back country and share our lives and experiences. This thought excites me the most. I picture my big mountain house of wood and rock, built from the land around it, with a steady stream of loved ones flowing through throughout the year. That is what I want. That is what I desire more than anything else in my life I think. I truly feel like I am home and I want to take care of this place, treat it right and share it with my dear ones.

The summer cabin I am living in and working on right now should be completely finished in a couple of years. At least that is the time I’m thinking and hoping it will take. With the wages I earn working as a chef I am able to buy materials and it may take that long to be able to pay for everything. The work I am doing myself with my friend and neighbor Curt’s invaluable help. But when it’s done it will be paid for! Then I will begin the process again on a proper house and when that is finished the cabin will open up (as well as rooms and living space in the new house) for friends and family to visit on a more regular basis. I see meals shared on a big table in the late summer evening of vegetables, fruits, meats, cheeses…grown, raised and fixed right there on the farm. I smell campfires at night. I hear the telling stories. I see beautiful faces of friends illuminated by the fire. Huge Christmas feasts with a house overflowing with friends, family and love.

So tonight as I sit here at my desk with the lamps burning and the wood stove glowing red from the heat of roasting logs, Muddy Waters on the stereo, the hound dog stretched out on a fleece blanket next to the stove, tonight it may just be me and Rudy down here in the holler but I know others will be arriving shortly in the scheme of things. Won’t you pull up a chair, kick up your feet and have some laughs with me on the porch? Later I’ll take ya frog giggin’!