The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--23. Now, Willing to Dig Deep

Hoh Rain Forest, Steve Brown 2019 

 ...it is a sad thing to see the interest in interested men thin out and weaken and die.  We have known so many professors who once carried their listeners high on their single enthusiasm, and have seen these same men finally settle back comfortably into lectures prepared many years before and never vary from them again.  Perhaps this is the same narrowing we observe in relation to ourselves and the tidepool--a man looking at reality brings his own limitations to the world.  If he has strength and energy of mind the tide pool stretches both ways, digs back to electrons and leaps space into the universe and fights out of the moment into non-conceptual time.  Then ecology has a synonym which is all.

--John Steinbeck, Sea of Cortez, 1941

Dang, there is so much packed into that little quote.  Steinbeck's writing has a thickness and a density that is easily overlooked because of his preference for the simplest language possible to carry a concept and his affinity to the common man.  But he isn't light, and there is so much to learn about how to observe and engage from him.

 ...it is a sad thing to see the interest in interested men thin out and weaken and die.  That is the key.  To not do that.  It is what the bards have been writing since words first clung together and crawled out of the mind desperately searching for that connection, this is how it is to think, to feel, to scream, I am, to voice that essential question:  to be or not to be while the heart still beats.   To breathe deeply, to engage in more than measured teaspoons, to swim that tidepool magnificently, digging deep, thrusting forward, avoiding the natural tendency towards tedium and spiritual death--dulled, tainted and tarnished, worn and weary from the simple act of living, limited over and over again in his options, simply by being himself--worn thin by weariness of engaging in battles that seem to have no worth.  How does a man avoid that?

Hemmingway's answer seemed to be to simply do more.    Not be more.  Not do more for others, not grow more.  Just do more.  Travel more.  Fish more.  Hunt more.  Record more.  Write more.  Become fully engaged in not engaging--just doing.  No thoughts but in actions.  An endless movie-reel of adventure until the reel finally breaks, things unwind, and you find yourself with a gun turned towards yourself, mumbling Our nada who art in nada... 

Instead, Steinbeck seemed to suggest that if one could dive deeply enough into the tidepool of life through the disciplined mind, one could touch some sustaining universal all.  It is important to note that although reaching all comes from diving deep into the tidepool of life, all is not the tidepool itself.  It's not something that can be measured in teaspoons.   It can't be measured at all.  It stretches both ways, digs back to electrons and leaps space into the universe and fights out of the moment into non-conceptual time.  It isn't something measurable, but also isn't something unknowable.  He's tasted enough of it on the tip of his tongue to know it is real.  Or, as he says in the Grapes of Wrath:  "Cabon is not a man, nor salt nor calcium.  He is all these, but he is more, so much more...".  

Steinbeck is not an atheist in a traditional sense.  He's not a materialist.  Science is the means, the tool, not the end, the arrival.  The transcendence he longs for is only reachable through close observation of the tidepool--in that sense it is the tidepool.   But it isn't just the tidepool.  Simply swimming around in this life and being isn't enough.  If he has strength and energy of mind the tide pool stretches both ways, digs back to electrons and leaps space into the universe and fights out of the moment into non-conceptual time.  Transcendency in short, occurs only through a disciplined, engaged mind.  And what is that transcendence?  Unlike with Hemingway, it is not the adventure, it is not the escape. It is observing something so closely one becomes part of it, and when one does that, one can taste the all on the tip of the tongue.

Notice "ecology has a synonym which is all".  They are similar, not the same thing.  However, I must admit Steinbeck does do this weird reversal though, which suggests he might be more atheist than I'd like to believe.  He doesn't say, "All has a synonym which is ecology."  That would make ecology the understandable likeness that makes all comprehensible through comparison to something more tangible.  Ecology would then point towards all.  He switches that around and makes all point towards ecology.  In other words, Steinbeck seems to be suggesting God is a synonym for ecology.  If that is true, he clearly was an atheist.

However, we still have that problem:   "Cabon is not a man, nor salt nor calcium.  He is all these, but he is more, so much more...".    A strict Darwinist cannot come to that conclusion.  In science, everything is the sum of its parts.  There is no getting more out of the system than is already there.  There is no more than what already exists.  Yet, Steinbeck clearly states his belief that there is something more.

I believe Steinbeck states "ecology has a synonym which is all" intentionally the way he does to emphasize that there is absolutely no way to reach all except through ecology, through knowing the tidepool and how life connects, intimately.  Transcendency doesn't come through escape, but rather it comes through deep immersion in life.  Science, or knowing, is the means to touch God.   But God is tangible.  The something more, "so much more" does exist.  One can touch that reality and know that it is.  God just isn't above life.  He is life.  He is the great I AM!  The better we understand life--how we are all interwoven, vulnerable, and connected to each other in this great big tidepool, the better we understand God.  Hemingway could not find God because he was looking for a clean, well-lighted place, a sanctuary, disinfected, free from the chaos of life.  Steinbeck wants us to get our boots muddy, to get in the tide pool and dig around in life, because he knows that if God is to really be found, it won't be in a sanctuary--a clean well-lighted place--isolated from humanity.  Instead, God can only be found in the midst of it all--in the daily struggle for life--because God is all.  To know all is to know God.  Ecology therefore becomes a means of transcendency.  The more we understand how we are all connected and dependent on each other, the more we understand the nature of God.  To know each other well is to know God.  And by each other, that doesn't mean just man.  The more I know the spider that climbs along my window ledge well while I do the dishes, in that moment, the better I know God.  Though clearly something more, God is only truly observable in what is real.  His nature is tangible to us at those rare moments we recognize our intimate connections with everything around us.  

Perhaps for Steinbeck, those connections were indeed what was real.  Perhaps God was a metaphor for ecology.   If that was the case, who cares?  The result is the same.  A perfect God would want us to understand the tidepool he created for us well.  He would want us to know what connects us deeply and act accordingly.  Does it matter so much that I care for the spider on my window ledge because I care about how we are connected biologically or because I know how we are connected spiritually?  Isn't it that connection that God is really about.  To be connected through love is to know God deeply.  In those moments we are aware of that, we know God.  In those moments we feel isolated, and either inferior or superior, to all that is around us, we are as removed from God as is Satan, for if God is the great, I Am, there is no knowing Him isolated from His creations.   He exists in a very real sense because we all are.  In the sense that there is no musician without his music, no artist without his art, no writer without his writing, there is no creator without his creations.  God is because we are.  We are His ultimate joy, and the better we understand each other, the better we understand God.  The more we carefully dip our hands into the tidepool, the more we can feel His hands reaching in also, a superior simultaneous action, coinciding with our own desire to understand and feel that connection that is all.

Hoh Rainforest

Here in the sponge land
of moist temperate air
and giant moss-draped
big leafed maples,
these glacier carved
rock canyon walls
are like God,
seen only by those
willing to believe anything

and those willing

to get down in the mold

and decay of life, 

dig through root

and rusted rot, 

moving worm

and slug,

and clumps

of moss

carpeted 

by tiny

white

jeweled

flowers

until stone sacred

stone

is reached.

Mother Theresa

knew God

in the bedrock

beneath crowded clumped

humanity. 

Somewhere above me

shimmers

the great white peaks

of the Olympic Mountains

and I’m caught between

willing to believe anything

and willing to dig deep.

        --Steve Brown, 2003

 

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--22. Father Crowley Point

The Panamint Valley from Father Crowly Point, Steve Brown 2022

After the car floats across the otherworldly plain of the playa in Panamint Valley, one comes to a sort-of lakeshore town (minus the lake), Panamint Springs, that if not otherworldly itself, looks like it's from another continent and culture, perhaps the Middle East, with palm fronds glistening before a heavy stone backdrop.   

And then it's up, and up, and up again, here a bend, there a bend, and, of course, another bend.  That is driving in Death Valley National Park.  The glistening black rock and the views of the almost-white valley below are amazing, as are the wild donkeys, if you should by chance see them.  And that chance is actually quite good.

At the top is a sign to Father Crowley Vista.  We turn to the right.  There is pavement and an outhouse and view of a canyon.  It would be a noteworthy canyon back east, but it isn't much to brag about out west.  There are thousands and thousands grander canyons.    The real view, the one worth stopping for, is well beyond the pavement, and as it turned out, legal to drive to.  

It is so like Death Valley National Park to only take the pavement part way to what you really should see.  It's almost as if they want most of the tourists to move on, disappointed, never to return to the park again.  I'm not sure that's such a bad idea.  Silence, stillness, peace, and space are not necessarily well preserved in the throngs of humanity rushing to dramatic edges for quick selfies.   We took the Camry out on a road that I wasn't sure a Camry could handle.  And then we got out and stayed a while. 

If one could stand forever at the top of Father Crowley Point and look down over the Panamint Valley one would be at peace eternally.  Or so it seems.  

That, of course, is not true.  If one built a house there on that glorious rim looking down into the depths of God's handiwork, one would still spend most evenings watching TV and/or obsessing over tomorrow's schedule and thoughts of how can we possibly get all that done?  It is just human nature.  

And perhaps it needs to be.  Are we really ready for constant enlightenment?  Is transcendency at this moment something we really desire?   I think knowing and accepting who we are and what we really want is essential to enjoying a journey--whether it is to Monterey, California or to the end of one's life.  The key is not simply being enthralled with the grand vistas--those rare jewels along the journey--but rather to be as present as much as possible for the entire trip, even those moments the mind refuses to stand still, and the eyes gloss over, and refuse to see.  Those moments too are part of the journey.   A good traveler learns to love the entire journey on its own terms.

When one clings too strongly to something, all of the forces come together in opposition to that tight grip, something many conservative parents don't get.  When one lets go a little, some of the natural force flows towards what you want to achieve rather than against it.  Give children a solid example and an ever-loosening leash as they mature into adults and the desire assert independence also decreases until they find a comfortable orbit around all they've ever known.  Keep a strangle-hold, allowing no autonomy, and each pull on the reigns fuels a force so strong that the child will rocket out into the farthest reaches of space never to return.

The same goes with thoughts.  The surest way to experience no peace is to allow no turmoil to enter your mind.  The surest way to become numb to love is to refuse to feel hate.  The surest way to never fully enter a moment is to expect to remain there long beyond your current ability to remain focused.  A soft eye open is what is needed.  An attending to the moment without needing to dominate it.  Emphasizing observation over action.  Peace is an action--but it's a soft one built upon solid observation and understanding of turmoil.   Love is an action, but it's a soft one built upon a solid observation and understanding of hate.  Attentiveness is an action, but it is a soft one built upon a solid observation and understanding of the fleeting nature of the mind.  

So, there Marci and I stood upon that precipice looking out on a sight that I felt could change me forever.  Father Crowley Point, truly one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen.  The wind blew; it was a bit chilly.  But that's not why we returned to the car.  We returned to the car simply because we had a long drive ahead of us, and it was time to go.  One could spend a lifetime here, but for now, at least, a good twenty minutes was time enough.  

Letting-go is as important as holding-on.    

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--21. Only in Fear, Do We Want to Clip the Wings of Things Ready to Soar

Now, April 12, 2022, 2:10 PM:  One Standard Moment
in the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Steve Brown 2022

Lasting happiness comes primarily from finding peace of mind and peace of mind does not fall from the sky.  We need to make concerted efforts to be kind to each other, to live in harmony with each other and cultivate a deep sense of brotherhood and sisterhood throughout the community.  We need to reflect on the oneness of humanity.

 -- Dalai Lama, social media post, November 20, 2023

Early on in the creative process, I was extremely driven to write this book.  I had been diagnosed with kidney disease, and because of my father, there was a small but genetically significant chance that that I might have amyloidosis, which is fairly fast and fatal.  At the time of our vacation, our 25th anniversary trip, I believed it could well be one of the last vacations Marci and I took together.    

Shortly after our return, I learned that although I have kidney disease, I have a very mild type, and as long as I eat reasonably well, I've got as much chance of living a long life as anyone does statistically-speaking.  Other than restricting my diet, the disease turned out not to be a big deal.

Yet, I was still very driven to write this book.  Although my kidney disease seems to make me very tired, the steroids I was taking gave me short bursts of energy daily.  One of the side effects listed for the medication is "excessive happiness".  Even knowing that, I didn't necessarily feel my new zest for life was drug-induced.  The joy simply felt too real to be artificially induced.  It was not the drugs speaking, I thought, but my evolved outlook on life.  Facing death had changed me forever.

I woke up early, often three or four in the morning, usually from a dream that would provide me the perfect kernel of what I needed next in my writing.  A few of those kernels were so aligned with what I would learn about Steinbeck's philosophy a day or two later during my research that I felt Steinbeck might be personally guiding my hand from beyond the veil.

And then it just stopped.  And here I am with a book that I'm unsure about.  I have thought about quitting, but until I finished my last and only book to date (which I haven't tried to publish), that's what I've always done:  go from project to project, writing some passages I feel are meaningful but never really saying anything because I simply quit before the project comes together as a whole.

I've decided a writer can't do that.  Like a good husband, a good father, a good friend, a good anything--one has to be committed to see it through to the end.  One needs the endurance to push forward when one most believes there is absolutely no reason to do so.  A writer learns to endure to the end, or he learns to not be a writer at all.  That type of learning destroys us from the inside out--the slow erosion of our hopes and dreams.  A man can survive not reaping the rewards of his efforts.  A man cannot survive letting go of his dreams.  He becomes half a man, a shell.  Prophets are stoned, burned and shot, not fully listened to in their day, and still they remain prophets.  But the minute a prophet believes What good will it do? and Why bother? a prophet is a prophet no more.  The same is true for a painter, a musician, a parent.   Or a writer.

A writer only remains a writer as long as he/she believes words matter and that he/she has a reason to put words down.  That can be Oh so difficult to believe especially when one is of the age that statistically speaking your chance of making an impact on the world is very slight.  Fame, which I care nothing about, and the power that comes with it to do good, which I care immensely about, begins while one is relatively young.  Changing the world is the realm of youth.  Having the wisdom appreciate life on its own terms is the realm of the elderly.  Sadly though, so is that reluctant, loosening grasp on one's dreams, and with it, one's desire to live.  A lot of elderly people slowly slope into death broken by the burden of carrying around dead dreams--totally alone under the weight of that huge question, what was it all for?

A belief in an afterlife helps for sure.  The end is not so final.  One is given a psychological extension, an eternity, to become who you want to be.  I fully believe in that, and I don't believe it is merely a concept to ward off the fear of death.  However, I don't think knowing that there is an afterlife saves one from the crushing weight of unfulfilled dreams.   We are built to want to accomplish certain things in this life.  A piano player will never die happily as a banker.  He or she is wired to play.  Play he or she must, or death will come long before the grave does.

However, I am just beginning to understand what keeps an old man young is how well he attends to the moment.  The now, fully taken in, always sings with light, even on the darkest night, because our eyes are wired to see light, and light is there always.  Sit in a dark room long enough and you will see shadows of light seeping in defining forms and giving the vagueness meaning.  In the now, a writer doesn't worry about impact or legacy--only the beauty of the words themselves, and a power and truth that almost seems tangible as the next word tingles the senses, and points towards something not yet named.

I haven't lived my life that way, but I believe it is possible to do so.  I can name people I believe have.  The Dalai Lama is one of them.  He isn't sloping towards death.  He is alive each and every moment.  He is constantly alive in the now that makes up the eternities.

The prophet of my church is pushing us to think celestially, which can be defined as eternity spent at the highest spiritual level possible.  Nothing could be a grander goal, and it begins with now.  How do I enter this moment fully enough that I know that glory of what it means to be alive?

A man who can do that willingly, whenever he wants, will only want good things for the world and will tire himself out in the joy of making the world a better place no matter the circumstances.  Death will come sudden with no regrets because no matter whatever his condition, or the condition of the world around him, he is attentive to the details of now.

Say, for instance, he is bed-ridden and in some pain constantly.  Instead of focusing on all he cannot do or all he wished he'd done but never seemed to get around to, what he could have done better in his life, those he abandoned, or those who abandoned him...  Instead of worrying about all that stuff, he notices the little bird with the yellow chest on the bony, wet limb outside his window, and the clouds breaking up after an early morning rain.  He hears the heater kick on and feels the warmth of the blanket tucked in tight around him.  He stares at the wall, and watches a spider move across it.  He notices the vase of flowers his daughter has brought him.  He lets his mind wander, and when it comes to his own death, and he feels his body tighten up, rather than running away from that fear, he looks at it the same way he looks outside his window, at the same way he looks around his room, and he comes to know it, knowing full well it is impossible to hate something you know well because hate is just a less-scary name for fear.  It is easier to hate something than admit it is something we fear.

To a man like that, death never comes until his heart stops beating and his brain goes cold, and his spirit is released into the next realm.

A man like that also only wants good for the world, because when totally immersed in the here and now, an active observer of everything around him, a sense of unity and connection is always present.  The feeling of separateness is gone, and with it, the sense of competition and the need to win.  Instead of viewing the world as resource-starved, one realizes that it is resource-rich, and instead of wanting to hoard everything to protect yourself, one wants to give abundantly, wanting the bugs to get their fill from your fruit tree.  

I am not yet that man, nowhere close, by any means.  But I know he exists in Christ.  I know he exists in others too, like the Dalai Lama, who know a moment so well they can look deep down into it and see eternities.

I know that if the world were populated by such people, together we would solve all of our problems, from climate change to war.

This book, I think, is how to become that person.  If not for you, for myself, because I believe if everyone could know all moments deeply, one would also know the eternities, and act appropriately.

It is a disconnected man who wants to burn the world, a disconnected man who wants to make me a foe.  It is a disconnected man who needs to win, and once he's won, sits on a pile of ashes, wondering What was it all for?

A connected man already knows.  He's experienced life moment by moment.  His only goal is for others to know that same joy.  Life is.  Live it.  Love it. Protect it.  Enjoy. 

      

I started to doubt the structure of this book.  I started to doubt a lot of things.  It felt like this book was morphing into something else, something beyond my initial conception, that it was growing wild, and beyond my control.  It was.  It is.   And isn't that exactly what I should want?  A book I have to run to catch up to.  Something I can see grow moment by moment beyond my intentions.  Something wild and free and striving to become.

Only in fear, do we want to clip the wings of things ready to soar.

   

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--20. One White Car in the Panamint Valley

 

There are two great valleys in Death Valley National Park--Death Valley and Panamint Valley.  Both are otherworldly.  With Death Valley, it is the heat, the texture, the lack of fauna (the desert of deserts), and a strange, heavy sodium light.  With Panamint Valley it is simply the immense sense of isolation.  Pretty much all tourism in the park ends at Stovepipe Wells.  Anything west of that seems far too quiet to be in a national park.  Other than the black asphalt, you clearly are in the wilds, Biblical-like wilds, not unlike where Jesus all alone met and overcame his temptation.  There are no pullouts with explanatory signs, no roadside garbage cans, and oh so few cars.  There is just you and the stone and the sand.  A man could meet his mind here.

We begin the drop into the Panamint Valley.  It is like a dream.  A large, yellow gash runs north to south below us.  It climbs quite a bit at the north end, where some large dunes pile up against a mountain where the valley abruptly ends.  The mountains around us are black, so black that at first, I'd thought there'd been a fire.  But no, it is just rock.  It is odd enough I was temporarily fooled even though I grew up less than ten miles from a lava flow.  Something is distinctly strange about them even for one familiar with the west.  I'm coming to the conclusion that there is nothing familiar about Death Valley National Park.  To enter it is to lose connection with your sense of the world even if you know deserts and the western United States well.  

The Panamint Valley is 65 miles long and 10 miles wide.  An alluvial fan sweeps across the valley and divides it into two basins, each with its own playa.  As recently as 10,000 years ago, like Death Valley and Owens Valley, the long gash was filled with a lake, its highest shoreline 1,820 feet above sea level.  The northern playa sits 1,540 feet above sea level, so during the lake's heyday, there was a good 280 feet of water where the highway now crosses that flat, yellowish-white plain.

I look for a designated pull-out.  It is strange that before such an extraordinary sight and in a national park there should be none.  Maybe we left the park, and I didn't see the sign.  I cannot pass this and not at least attempt to capture some minute part of its beauty.  The shoulder looks soft, but I'll risk it anyway.  No cars, of course, are coming.  We haven't seen one for over twenty minutes, coming in either direction, so I ease off the road onto a shoulder of gravel and sand a few feet elevated above the lakebed itself.  I get out.

It's warm, pleasant, but not as warm as the sand dunes at Mesquite Flat were.  This valley must be higher.  It sure didn't look like it though dropping down into it.

I look both ways and cross the road.  Such a Zen landscape.  I take a picture of one white car before an incredibly flat yellow lakebed in front of a distant wall of stone.

If I were to die tomorrow, I would be glad I was here with Marci, and this--this would be one of my last scenes.  

The silence is profound.  I am glad to be here even though I'm not certain how many of those I have left.  I guess none of us are.  I'm just more aware of it than I ever was before.  To be here is good.  How seldom we fully appreciate that.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--19. One Standard Moment Looking into Death Valley

One Standard Moment Looking into Death Valley on a Dusty Day, Steve Brown 2022

Sunday, April 10, 2022.  11:03 a.m.

I pull the car onto the shoulder to take a picture part way down the long descent back into Death Valley.  The heat of yesterday is gone after last night's cold front drove it some place farther south, perhaps deep into Mexico.  But, already, simply from the drop in elevation, it is so much warmer than it was in Rhyolite, even on this cold, cold day.

It is not as clear as I would like it to be.  That bitter wind has mucked up the sky.  Yet, it is incredibly beautiful here.  The distance, though distorted by dust, is still impressive.  Big spaces simply blow the mind, and there are few spaces bigger and deeper than Death Valley.  Time seems to stand still and march on forever simultaneously.  I feel that if I could just stand here and gaze forever, I would want for nothing more.

I know that is a lie, of course.   People are built to want.  Dissatisfaction and boredom are in our blood.  Stillness is a terrifying experience even for the quiet ones and those trained as meditators and Zen masters.  We can only handle so much peace, so much light, so much perfection before we go looking for some noise, some distraction, anything that removes us from being fully present.

I'm aware of that and don't fight it.  I just need a moment to take in the small chunks of rock, the medium chunks of rock, and the bigger chunks of rock--all casting shadows according to their size.  I just need to take in the dry narrow stems of the moisture-starved scatting of creosote bushes. I just need to feel that drop in elevation, and see that space, the salt flats north of Furnace Creek shockingly white even in this pastel stone landscape. 

At this point I know I have kidney disease, but I don't know what type, or how severe, so I'm aware this trip could be my only opportunity to take in this space.  We plan on returning this way, so I know I'll see it at least one more time, but after that, perhaps never again.

Moments right now are tremendously precious.  I have never seen the way I see now.  Every moment is a movie.  Nostalgia hangs deep and robust as Spanish moss hanging from big southern trees.  Sadness and joy sing together in unison.  Every hello is also possibly a goodbye.  I feel frail but deeply alive.  I think this must be what war feels like, although I don't really know for sure.

But I also know human nature, so I don't mind getting back in the car and driving on.  There will be music, and caramel rice cakes, Coke Zero, my wife sitting beside me, and at least for today, the road, always the road--the only place I've ever really wanted to be.

We drive on.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--18. The Ballad of I and my I-Me-My-Mine Mind

A Moment of Recognition:  Everest Brown at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, Steve Brown

It is 5:24 a.m., November 6, 2023.  I have chosen to get up early to read scriptures and write.  There have been many other mornings that I have chosen to remain in bed instead.  Often, it feels like remaining in bed a few more minutes means absolutely everything and that I have no other choice.  That, of course, is usually a lie my brain tells me to get what it wants, a lie that I'm oh so willing to believe.

John Steinbeck talked a lot about nonetiological thinking, is thinking--the act of attempting to separate what we want to believe from what actually is real.  He acknowledged that this is difficult, perhaps impossible, because we are not only observers of reality; we are participants in reality.  Objectivity, therefore, does not come easily.

Many years ago, I had a dream where I was questioning Christ about creation.  More accurately, I was using rhetorical questions to argue that the facts established by science rule out any possibility of a God who could be intimately involved in each of our lives, let alone be our Savior.  In a kind and loving but stern rebuke, Christ asked, "Who are you to think you can understand a system you are part of better than I, the creator of that system?"

I woke up realizing I'd never thought of that before.  Ultimately, we can never fully understand creation while being mortal any more than a fish can understand all the stuff outside his fish tank that keeps him alive--such as the electrical socket his water pump and bubbler are plugged into, the distant power plant that feeds electricity, the trainloads of coal that feed the powerplant, or the plants and animals that died millions of years ago and were later compressed under great pressure to create the coal that ultimately keeps our little fish alive.  He can never detect all this, no matter how intelligent he is, because most of what sustains him exists outside his realm of observation.  In short, it is impossible to fully understand the tidepool in which you exist because you cannot get outside it to observe all that affects it.   

Whether I simply had a dream or whether Christ actually came to me in a dream (which is what I believe), what that dream identified was essentially the same problem that Ed Rickets and John Steinbeck identified in trying to understand reality:  how can we fully understand a system we are part of?  I can analyze a story because I'm outside it.  I'm not a player in it.  How well would I do that though as a character?  How does Coyote realize it doesn't matter what he does, he will never catch Roadrunner because of forces beyond his control when he can't get out of his own mind, his own desires, his own thinking?  How does he identify his ultimate reality when he can't let go of his world view because of how closely he ties his identity to being a coyote, a pursuer and devourer of roadrunners?  If he could but glimpse the negative loop that he's in, he could perhaps walk away and be free.

I have a strong suspicion we are all coyotes caught in loops of fixated beliefs and desires, fueled by untrue assumptions.  One of those false beliefs is that we can trust our mind--that it is some stable, reliable processor of reality.  That what we think actually is.  We don't think that about others--just ourselves.  It's the I-me mind, and it keeps each of us running around in our own reality.

I know I can't trust my mind.  Or at least part of it.  My stupid ego gets offended by the stupidest, unimportant crap ever, and if I'm not careful, I find myself getting defensive and justifying my behavior over the simplest things, making up wars in my head that don't exist simply because I feel I'm under attack.  I swing into self-righteous mode, and the driver in front of me becomes an idiot, and the person at the drive-thru window is the most ignorant, rude ignoramus ever born, and I, the great purveyor of wisdom, must somehow set them right and make them realize their stupidity.  I feel at that moment that honking that horn or making that comment is the most important thing in the world.  A day later, those moments seldom enter my mind, and if they do, I certainly don't deem them worthy of wasting any time over them.

How then, can that mind be trusted?--when something so important one moment doesn't even pop up on the radar a day later.  If you believe your brain is a trustworthy instrument to observe reality with, you are probably upset and angry at the world most of your life.  Most of our brain is there to protect us; it is driven by fear; it is reactive.  Only a small portion is receptive to actual thought.  There have been those who've had near-death experiences who claim that they learned that the brain is a filter rather than a generator of thought.  I'm not only open to that idea, I tend to believe it.  It seems to me, so much of our thought is about protecting us from reality rather than immersing ourselves in reality.  Our brain, untrained, removes us from the world rather than connecting us to it.  It filters out the light.  Love, which seems to be outside the brain, though the brain clearly is stimulated by it, seems to be what connects us to the world.  Our empathy, not our intelligence, is what anchors us to reality through a recognition of oh yeah, that could just as easily be me.    

If we believe that our brains cannot be fully trusted, that our initial thought, our gut-reaction, isn't necessarily accurate, then it opens up a world of possibilities not available through instinct.  I personally believe I have a soul that has its own intelligence and that I can access that higher self through a small portion of my brain.  My soul is that part of me which recognizes my connection to all things, that sees me as part of existence, rather than separate and superior.  Whether this concept is accurate or not isn't so important.  What is important is that it removes me from my instinctual self, which always reacts the in the same, predictable, often destructive ways, because it views everything as a possible threat, which limits my ability to think outside the box.  It is this way with everybody.

Take Israel right now, for example.  Collectively, their natural instinct is to punish Hamas, to rein justice down so hard as to wipe Hamas out of existence, no matter what the cost to Palestine, or ultimately themselves, because their need for revenge prevents them from any long-term, strategic questioning.  For example, how many future terrorists are we creating each time an innocent civilian loses a loved one?    They can't think anything through, because like me cut off on the freeway, their brains can only think retaliation.  It is how we are naturally wired.  It is our gut reaction.  You hit me, and I'll hit back.  But is it smart?  And is thinking that you must retaliate for your own safety even real, as in is it a must?  That is where our instinctual brain lies to us--it presents one option as the only option.  It tricks us into believing we have no other choice.  Up until the moment we die, we always have a choice.  It is our one luxury in this world no matter what our circumstances.  We can be put in a place where no matter what we do, the outcome isn't going to be favorable, such as being held hostage or living in a war zone, but we still have thousands of options as to how to react to that reality.  We just instinctually don't believe it at the time.

When you begin to question your own mind, it does not lead to insanity.  It does quite the opposite.  It keeps you sane.  Insanity is often defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  Our instinctual brain feeds us the same limited options over and over again.  We become Coyote in his quest to catch Roadrunner.   Each time we go about doing the same thing over may appear to be ingeniously unique as we build the latest gadget to provide the greatest clobber yet imagined, but because we can't get out of our mind-loop, the outcome is ultimately the same over and over again, often with ever-increasing intensity.  What will our future terrorists be like because of Israel's actions today?  How can Israel possibly think Hamas did not calculate Israel's current reaction in their list of possible outcomes?  It may not be the outcome they ultimately wanted, but it had to at least been considered as a possibility because it is the most natural reaction, the most obvious one.  Whatever Israel is doing, it is not surprising Hamas, although Hamas may be somewhat shocked by the intensity of Israel's retaliation.

Now, what if Israel didn't trust their instinctual brain?  What if, instead, they viewed the world with empathy?  What if they saw Hamas's attack as a cry for help from Palestinians?  What if terrorism was viewed as a symptom of some larger problem rather than as a foe?  What if Israel thought outside the box, and did something truly unpredictable?

What if they had loaded up bomber after bomber with bouquets of flowers with "Sorry, we love you!" notes and dropped them on all of the Palestinian civilians?  How much energy would that have sucked out of Hamas's hate campaign?  Could it have undermined Hamas from within?   Would the Palestinians have demanded their leaders release the hostages?  Would it have created a space where both sides could have come to the table and began again that hard process of sharing the Holyland? 

Who knows?  It's possible.  But Israel will never be able to gather that data because they never tried it.  They got locked in an instinctual moment and responded in the most predictable way possible, and it is likely that Hamas, or whatever terrorist organization the Palestinians replace it with (as they likely will), will do the same.  Like Coyote, we can be oh so clever in developing new ways to deliver blows, but if we can't remove at least part of ourselves from our instinctual selves, we are locked forever in loops of predictable outcomes without realizing we are fueling a plot that has no resolution if we continue playing the same old roles.  We have to realize we are in the script before we can make a conscious decision rewrite our part with a better outcome.

You have to realize you are the fuel feeding the fire before you can cool things down and soften the burn.

That is what this book is ultimately about.  The world is out of control--environmentally, politically, and socially.  How do we cool things down and soften the burn?

And even if I don't have enough influence to do anything about it--how can I at least see things accurately enough to live well and make the most of the here and now in ways pleasing to my higher, spiritual self?--the only part of me that can or ever will be satisfied because that is the only part of me that sees myself connected to all things rather than separate and under attack.  Happiness and separateness are incompatible emotions.  One cannot be in competition, feel envy or jealousy, or feel superiority and feel true joy at the same time.  Our instinctual selves see everything as a competition and therefore everyone is a possible foe.  We are driven by fear, which locks us forever in a prison of our own making.   

How do I remove myself from that, and live free, no matter what is happening around me?  How do I enter a moment, through my own will, so profoundly that I see the beauty that radiates all around me no matter what the circumstances are?  From my brief aware moments in the sun, simply absorbing its warmth, or in the shade, feeling a cool, gentle breeze, moments when I'm totally absorbed in simply existing, in taking in all that's around me, undistracted by thought--from moments like that, I do believe it is possible for a person to get to that place most of the time.   I also believe that that place is the only place we can see clearly and that when in that place, all solutions come from a place of love and recognition that everything is connected.

The trick is, how do I become aware enough of the workings of my own brain that I make the choice to remain still?  How do I see reality clearly enough that I open myself to multiple possibilities at all times rather than getting locked down in the same old repetitive actions that bring about the same old repetitive outcomes? 

I'm not sure, but it is worth exploring.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--17. Rhyolyte, Nevada

Rhyolite, Nevada, Steve Brown 2022

Sunday, April 10, 2022

Marci and I stand before stark, stripped concrete and peer through squares of void, ghosts of windows long shattered, of frames of wood stripped away by time, and I stare into the eternal blue.  A frozen bull-whip wind lashes against me regularly and reminds me that forever is experienced one piercing moment at a time.  This is Rhyolite today.  Bitingly real.  Light pure.  Wind bold.  An experience so raw and intense you want to run back to the car and blast the heater but know you shouldn't.

This is what I've got to get down.  The pure light of now that we are rapidly replacing with air thick with the skeletons of the cells of trees, the living sap of life cinderized and sent soaring to smudge the atmosphere and infiltrate our lungs, us constantly breathing in death because we won't do what it takes to put out the fire that consumes our shared home, so caught in our addiction to fossil fuels that we don't make changes that wouldn't even require much sacrifice, if we'd only work together as a whole.

Marci and I walk down the one gravel street among the bones of Rhyolite, Nevada.  It's incredibly cold.  That isn't rare in April in the desert, when warm and cold fronts have always battled, summer eventually winning with its brutal heat.  Also, not historically unusual is that molten blue sky, to use the words of Emily Dickenson.  But in the past ten years, I've witnessed those days of intensely sharp light dwindle at an alarming rate as the west that I've always known quickly slips aways--days so clear and crisp, it once wasn't uncommon to see a hundred miles or more.

But on this cold, bright day in Rhyolite, it is instead the smoke-filled skies that seem like a dream.  This intensity of light feels so permanent, I'm transported back to the west I knew when I was a child.  I remember walking to school in the winter.  I walked north on a street lined with bony elms lit up sharp by the morning sun.  Houses were far apart, but with the long, dry yellow rye, the orchards, and the barns, the western horizon was invisible except at the cross streets.  There the world opened up.  In incredibly sharp detail, I could see the black lava spills just beyond Flowwell; the warm, low Cricket Mountains bathed in sun; and the lit-up cliffs Notch Peak, some seventy miles away.  It was like this every single clear day.  It was all I knew.  I didn't think there was any other reality.  The world was crisp and detailed.  I could see light hit the side of a white clapboard house five miles away.

Walking this gravel lane with my lady now feels the same.  I am exuberant, though cold.

I'm not sure if we'll ever get back to clean skies, but the solutions are there.  What's missing is a united, optimistic sense of purpose.   That feels farther beyond our reach than ever before.  These are dismal days, even in Rhyolite, Nevada, on an intensely bright morning, as we're headed towards the coast, that turbulent zone, spraying and spewing life.

Fear is what's tearing humanity apart.  Designed fear, crafted fear, orchestrated fear.  All because it is more profitable for some to have us worry over the wrong things than have us deal with what's real.   

It is all driven by one lie, a lie the designers of fear believe for themselves:  that there is a limited supply of happiness, and that to get it, we must scramble to the top and be rich in things--things that insulate and protect us and set us high above all that is terrifyingly real around us--big, glossy screens or nifty handheld screens to project a virtual life so real we never have to look reality in the eyes ever again, so long as we can afford the newest and brightest gadget.

But to keep us hooked on that glossy screen, the manufactures of greed must keep us in the matrix and disconnect us from reality as much as they can.    

Here, now.  Whether that moment is in Rhyolite, Nevada on a bitterly cold, clear morning, or one standard sweltering moment under the toxic skies of Ahmedabad, India.  When we stay grounded in a moment and what's real beneath our feet and before us, we care about everything that touches us.  Nothing is separate.  This air I breath needs protection.  This woman crouched in fear in the alley with her two children on the brink of starvation is too real to separate from my own emotions--too difficult to write off as other.

I don't know if there are any solutions beyond divine intervention, which I do believe in.  The earth, like all things, might just need to run its course, the prophesies of ages becoming achingly real moment by moment.  But this I do know--that if there is a solution, it will only be found as we enter that moment of what is real and those imagined separations between us and what's around us dissipate in the intense light of now, us naked and human, no longer sheltered by our addictions--one world either transforming our destiny together or one world burning together.  I also know a God of goodness and truth and light would desire us to attempt to enter that moment together regardless of what the ultimate outcome will be.   Believing the world will end in wickedness is not an excuse for becoming wicked.  Believing the world will end in fire is not an excuse for hastening its demise.

All we have is now, this moment.  Whether that moment be in the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada; burning Kyiv, Ukraine; or the walled-in Gaza Strip.  Tide pools seemingly worlds away are connected by one ocean.  We name what separates us, but the names we give things are constructs, not reality.  What unifies us is what is real--whether we acknowledge that fact, or whether we spend our days each before our own little screen escaping the ever-present reality of here and now.

Now, Marci and I stand up at the north end of Rhyolite across the gravel lane from the train station.  I stare at an old Union Pacific caboose without wheels set down on the earth amongst chunks of white stone--bleached, broken hills behind below a cobalt sky.  The sun here feels warm and good, the wind somewhat blocked by wood ruin before me.  I love the streaks and stains of time.  The Romantics had it right--there is something holy in ruins, something divine in the dilapidated.  They speak not only of the passing of time, but of the process of time, of once new things growing old and breaking down, of the eternal marching forward instant by instant.  They speak of something greater and grander than our human ambitions and dreams but not separate from them either, humanity and nature melting back together over time.  They speak of truth:  of missteps, of fragility, of nature's way of correcting whatever we do wrong over time, and that what we think of as solid, permanent, and separate is but an illusion, that we are actually just earth and sky--forever marching into the eternities together, one standard moment after another.

 

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--16. In the Eternal Now

Garden Chair, Steve Brown 2023

I sit at my drafting table and look out my open sliding glass door into my garden.  It's late afternoon. Up front, the rose bush and peach tree up are heavy with shadow.  There is an old wooden chair with chipped red paint.  Yellow black-eyed Susans and violet cosmos beyond sway gently.  All of this is muted softly by the shade.  Then, just as the garden beds meet the gravel pathway, a cluster of sunflowers catches the evening light, isolated again by heavy shadow thrown behind.  Distant dogs bark.  Outside, the fountain gurgles.  Inside, the fridge hums.  Two worlds mingle.

I have lived my entire life in moments like this.   I've existed during a lot of other times as well.  But I have only truly lived in these jeweled vignettes.  When I look back on my life, these are the images and sounds I remember.  From the time I was five, I have known light and shadow is all I really needed.  This is my purpose.  Of that, I had no doubt.  I couldn't have expressed it.  But I knew it.  Being is its own reason to exist.  Moments are everything.  

I lost my way though.  Oh, how I lost it.  Because I listened to other voices.  Voices that were pragmatic and well-intended.  Cowardly voices from those who feared for my well-being because what they really feared for was their own well-being.  Fear ruled their lives, so it had to rule mine as well--because that's all they knew.  That's alright.  I get it.  I have my own fears that I probably push off on others as well.  However, the fear that there is a limited supply of happiness, that only a few can obtain it, and that life is a scramble to get your position and secure that income while you can--for me, that fear was not inborn.  It had to be taught.  Like so many I was taught to dream big as a child, and by the time I was eighteen, trade all that in for practicality.  Everything inside me resisted that there is anything more important in this life than just being, so I didn't negotiate the two worlds well.

I still don't.  I've learned there is a time to feed Mammon.  If you don't, like those who worried about me when I was younger feared, it can indeed devour you.  

But I already knew what was real for me when I was five.  It was out my backdoor, out my window, in my yard.  It didn't matter what door, what window, or what yard.  As long as there was light and shadow and reasonably clean air, I was in a moment, and I was born to spend an eternity there.  

I knew it on the Avenues of Salt Lake City, when on a way to my friend's house, I crouched down near the sidewalk to watch an ant move across a section of chipped concrete.  It must have been early morning.   The sun was low, and the ant moved across pebbles that were like boulders to him, and what drew me, what made me crouch down, were the great shadows thrown by these little bitty pebbles and this little bitty ant.  Amazing.  

I knew it on a cold winter's day on a ranch in Cache Valley when a hard slant of light ignited the rust on the hood of a dark green cattle truck otherwise buried in eighteen inches of crusty snow.  Glowing icicles dangled from mirrors, fenders and running board.  Damn, I knew it.  

I knew it in college, hiking high in Rocky Mountain National Park with a friend, when I saw two college girls sitting on a big boulder, squinting at the sun, golden light playing with thin strands of their hair and warming the front of their bare legs, honey skin dipping into these very rugged boots just above their ankles.  I was so shy then, even more than now.  Yet, I knew a moment when I saw it.  With a giant camcorder over my shoulder, I worked up the courage, walked up to them and said, "If you don't mind, can I film you sitting in the light like that?"  They were beautiful.  No doubt about it.  But what caught my attention was the squinting into the sun--that human desire to see the light touch an object and render it into something more, which in this case, was the ridge of a snowcapped peak.  Through their squinted eyes I could see their amazement, and I knew they were feeling that same awe looking at the ridge as I was feeling looking at them.  To be.  There is no question there.  To not be only arises when we lose focus of the fact we exist to be blown away.  When we are solid in our primary purpose, we are solid.  It's when we start worrying about what others think--how to make an impression, whether we're good enough, whether we have enough and are making our mark, fulfilling some notion of legacy--that we become lost.

When we stick to the moment--tune ourselves into whatever task is at hand, focus on the thing or person before us totally...  In those moments, everything is absolutely right--even if the person we're giving our attention to is sort of an ass.  Try it.  Next time someone is hassling you.  Step back.  Observe the scene.  What's happening outside the blinds.  The light on their face.  The way their lips are moving.  The expression in their eyes.  Don't react to it; just observe.  Your anger, your hate--at least for that moment--will be gone.  You will know better what they need.  

I seldom remember to do this, but when I do, it does work.  It has to.  You cannot observe something closely and not become part of it.  As a teenager, we often call that connection love.  I observe she has cute little freckles on the side of her nose and I'm in love.  What I really am is connected.  That that feels so powerful that I label it love is okay.  Connection is why we're here.  

Light is essential.  I have a pot of vincas hanging from a wrought-iron chandelier from Mexico that I turned into a planter.  Right now, those blossoms are on fire.  For me, the joy I see looking at that is what matters.  Why would I let so much in my life steal that away from me?  I do, but not as much as I used to.   I am slowly learning.  Long gone are the big addictions.  The alcohol, the pornography.  Now it is the smaller distractions.  Mostly laziness, numbness, and petty distractions that keep me from being me.

I write to remember what I knew so long ago:  I live in this moment only.  I exist elsewhere.  I have to.  We all have to.  The world nags at us.  It has to.  There are bills to pay.  Mouths to feed.  We must give that beast it's due.  It will not die.  But it doesn't need near as much of our lives as we willingly feed it.  It asks for a tiny bit of us, and we rush into its gaping mouth, yelling "Devour me!"  So, it does.

As a teacher, even at the high school level, I will occasionally have a student come up to tell someone stole their pencil.  I hand them a pencil and give the best advice I know:  "Do you really want to reduce your life to a pencil?"

I don't always follow my advice.  I often reduce my life to feeling I need to teach someone a lesson or express my sense of injustice at them cutting in line, but when I do, I'm not truly in the moment, and I may be existing, but I'm clearly not living because who wants to spend their life reacting to crap that doesn't matter when life is swirling gloriously all around you?

Yet, we do.  We give huge amounts of our lives away to the great nada, or in other words, our stupid egos trying to insulate us from the vitality of existence.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--16. The Shady Lady

The Shady Lady Bed & Breakfast 2022

The last light of day hung over the jagged western horizon as we climbed up the steep rock-rubble incline north of Beatty Junction on the hottest day I've ever experienced in April.  Topping out at 108 degrees in one place near Badwater Basin, it was the hottest I've ever felt even though I have been in 117-degree heat before.  There is just something uniquely dense about Death Valley heat.  It felt good to have the sun go down, but I kept the air conditioner going even while going up the great incline.  

Alluvial fans in Death Valley are truly profound--steep, wide and strewn with chunks of rock from the size of cows down to pebbles, but nothing too rounded.  No, not here.  This is a brutally beautiful landscape, and everything is hard-edged, even the pebbles.  This is the land of drums and cymbals and clanky bells that also can be oddly soft and pastel, the way Ravel's "Balero" begins soft and pastel from the beat of drums.

Our headlights ate up the rocks and very occasional weed or brush in the eerie lightless silence as the last green edge of day on the horizon was swallowed by night.  By the time we entered Daylight Pass, daylight was but a myth slinking off into the depths of subconsciousness before being snuffed out by the ever-present blackness of now.

And the wind picked up.  Oh, how it whipped up--as hard-edged as the landscape itself.  The road, before strait as an arrow up the incline, now bent one way, then the other, as our headlights scooped in the edges of mountains on one side and the edge of a wash-ravine on the other.

It was amazing, but we were tired.  Oh, so tired.

Eventually, we topped Daylight Pass and the small town of Beatty appeared suddenly below us.  I don't remember the drive down really, but from subsequent trips, I know it's not far.

I do remember standing outside at a small gas station in a fierce wind, getting cold.  Oh, how quickly the weather changed.

Down the street, lit up by Casino lights, palm trees whipped wildly in the voodoo night.

* * * * *

The thirty-minute drive up U.S. 95 to the Shady Lady Bed and Breakfast seemed an eternity.  I wasn't sure how well-marked the former brothel was, and I was afraid I was going to miss it or had.  Because of a weak signal, GPS wasn't updating our location.  We floated around in the deep Nevada darkness, the wind whipping dust and debris across the path of our headlights, searching for our bed for the night.

At last, Marci saw it up ahead to the right.  I put on my blinker and worried about the car that was fast approaching behind us because our turn was not much more than a spill of gravel that led us on the rutted path to our destination.

The place had great reviews, but I was beginning to question my research.

At last, we pulled up, headlights shining on a picket fence.  The wind was cold and fierce.  The branches of the trees whipped around as big swooshes of wind swept in from the desert audibly significant.  I unpacked the backseat of our car, hoping the wind would not remove the doors.  We each had a suitcase.  I would have to come back for the cooler.

The wind swooped in again as I tried to open the gate, the trees swinging their leafy loads in big, black shadowy swooshes shattering the calm light cast on the stone pathway leading to a well-lit porch partially enclosed in exotic wrought iron.  I was afraid no one would be awake.  We were much later than we had anticipated.

I can't remember if I rang, nocked, or if the door behind the screen door was already open.  Once in, a light was on over the front desk that subtly lit a Victorian sitting room off to the left.  Here I was, standing in a house of prostitution on a wickedly wild night with my wife.  Nevada.

Sort of.  Gone were the prostitutes.  Gone were the lonely men trying fill giant holes in their souls or escape the unescapable bland pressure of ordinary life.  In short, gone were the men trying to escape themselves.

Instead, a pleasant lady in her early sixties wearing Bermuda shorts checked us in.  I apologized for us being so late.  She said it was no bother and that people often came in late after long, adventurous days in the park.  She apologized that the themed rooms where the ladies had once done their work were all taken.  All that were left were the private residential rooms.  I said we didn't care, and we didn't.

There was a time when I was mesmerized by Nevada's neon wild west outlaw culture.  I spent my summers as a youth in Reno.  I loved the lights igniting Virginia Street.  I loved the billboards of the showgirls at Harrah's all lined up in leotards kicking out powerful legs in unison, feathers high, sparky outfits hugging the edges of voluptuous thighs.  I liked the mystique of Mustang Ranch--the hushed tones my fellow Mormon friends whispered about the evil that went on there and the money the owner made by selling out his soul to the devil.  I loved the bells and whistles of the casinos--the sound of coins tumbling into metal trays.  I loved the smoky air and sound piano music coming out of the small lounges off to the side of the great expanses of slot machines on acres of gaudy red and black carpet.  I was a kid, so all of this I viewed from a distance, walking to the bowling alley at the MGM Grand, which only made it more intriguing, more intoxicating.

But somewhere along the line, I changed.  Marci and I stay in Vegas frequently, but it is not a destination of choice.  Usually, it is the halfway point to the coast.  Sometimes, in the dead of winter, we go there simply because it's warm.  I still love an evening of listening to free music in one of those little lounges off to the side of the casino, and I love the fountain of the Bellagio, especially when "Time to Say Goodbye" by Andre Bocelli and Sarah Brightman accompanies the thundering waters, but overall Vegas bores me.  And though I once was very drawn to the outlier culture of strip clubs and whorehouses, and in my mind, said things like, "A society that allows for that is actually far healthier than one where it occurs in secrecy, unregulated," I am now too aware of the misery sex industry causes to be drawn to the wild west nostalgia that in no way has ever matched reality.  I have deeply felt the void that draws people to the night, so there's no judgement there.  And in my college years, I spent enough time in topless bars to know the women who work there are real--just regular people trying to make a living.  But the thick, sticky dread that hangs in the air is just as real.  The dark side isn't exotic--just dank and miserable.  Dens of addiction destroy people's lives.

So, unlike in the past, I hadn't been seeking out a place like The Shady Lady as a cool, unique Nevada experience--to get a taste of the underbelly without really entering it.  That would have been me twenty years ago.  What I had been searching for was somewhere affordable to stay.  The campgrounds in Death Valley were booked up and a Motel 6 in Las Vegas was $160 per night.  I could not wrap my head around paying that much money for lodging that reminded me of my life when I was poor and lived in apartments that weren't much different than budget motels.  So, I thought I might find a bed and breakfast.  And I did.  Great reviews.  Out in the desert.  Not too far from Death Valley.  Perfect.  The Shady Lady.

We were guided through the main kitchen by our host, and then down a long hallway that bent somewhere in the middle.  Eventually, it opened into another living room and kitchen.  We were told we could use the fridge and stove if we needed to and that there were grills out back.  This was the former dormitories for the girls.  We were taken to a small, clean room with a double bed, a couple of nightstands, a bathroom, and not much else.  We were tired and it was perfect.

I would make a couple more trips to the car, unload the coolers, and put the blue buddies in the freezer.  As I unpacked the cooler, I talked to a man who had a thick Australian accent.  He was the brother of the woman who owned the place.  He was pleasant and very interesting, but I was far too tired to collect, let alone, remember his name.

* * * * *  

I woke to the sound of peacocks.  Soft morning light poured through the curtains.  I remember seeing a white peacock sitting on a sunlit high, wooden fence.  I can't remember if that was from our room or some other window I looked out after I got out of the shower and began to wander about.

I do remember how the sunlight bathed the back of the pure white bird in yellow light.  I remember how much I wanted to get outside to see the grounds and desert beyond.  I pulled on my hoodie as I knew it would be cold.  

A warm yellow light poured through the glass on the kitchen door and onto the cupboards.  I decided that was the easiest way out without disturbing other guests.  Outside the sun rose over some very ordinary dry Nevada mountains--low, and even in the blue morning shadows, yellow with the hair of cheat grass, they slowly marched southward to Mexico, or northward to Canada, depending how you looked at it.  I decided it was all the same--those low mountains frozen mid-step in time.

Timeless.  Once you get out Vegas and Reno, that's what Nevada is.  And that's what I love about it.  It never changes.  Just over the border from the county I live in Utah sits a small casino.  I grew up passing it on the way back and forth to Reno.  Later, in college, I stopped there many times for dinner while out exploring that great emptiness called Nevada.  And I still stop there once or twice a year, and in all that time, from the mid 70's until now, that little casino and cafe have changed very little.  Although they did add on a bigger dining hall, the only real changes to the place are the silencing of the dropping coins with the newer slot machines and the replacement of long sedans and muscle cars with the various auto styles throughout the years.  Other than that, walking in there hasn't changed since I was ten.  

That is not unique in Nevada.  Austin, Eureka, Tonopah, Ely.  They pretty much stand still in time--just like the mountains.

Although the nights at The Shady Lady are now very different, outback, in the morning light, the view across the desert I'm sure hasn't changed.

That is why I seek Nevada.  That immortal time that stands tall with forever long mountain chains that seem to be marching to Canada or Mexico, but in fact, at least on the human scale of time, are marching nowhere at all.

I think most people want to get somewhere.  Perhaps that has been my biggest problem in life.  I just want to stand on a dry lakebed in Nevada and witness time not moving at all.  Maybe that isn't even a problem.  Are we here to do?  Or are we here to be?  Probably a little of both, but I stand with the trees that are simply satisfied standing in place absorbing the sunlight and growing inside.

I do want adventure.  But all the adventures I seek take me to a place where I can simply stand and absorb the sun.  The Shady Lady is now such a place.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--15. Working Days 8: Fires & Floods

Halfway Hill Fire from Dry Creek, July 8, 2022, Steve Brown

Among the environmental trends undermining our future are shrinking forests, expanding deserts, falling water tables, collapsing fisheries, disappearing species, and rising temperatures. The temperature increases bring crop-withering heat waves, more-destructive storms, more-intense droughts, more forest fires, and, of course, ice melting. We are crossing natural thresholds that we cannot see and violating deadlines that we do not recognize.

--Lester R. Brown

The muddy water whirled along the bank sides and over crept up the banks until at last it spilled over... Then from the tents, from the crowded barns, groups of sodden men went out, their clothes sopping rags, their shoes muddy pulp.  They splashed out through the water, to the towns, to the country stores, to the relief offices, to beg for food, to cringe and beg for food, to be for relief, to try to steal, to lie.

-- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, 1939

April 29, 2023

Today is a big day in my average life.  I am a gardener, and the heat is on.  It's been a long, wet winter, the wettest we've ever had in Utah since records have been kept.  We received more than twice our average snowfall.  And spring is finally here.  Today it will reach 79 degrees.  I woke up at 4:30, itching to get out into the soil.

Yet, I know the warm weather isn't necessarily a good thing.  Last summer much of the Pavant Range burned.  Although we weren't evacuated, there was the very real possibility our home might become part of the inferno.  We were busy getting ready for a wedding until we weren't.  Fire took over our lives.  It had to.  In one afternoon, everyone's focus instantly changed.  I went from worrying about whether the yard would be ready for the wedding to wondering instead if all around me would be ash in a matter of hours.

There is an odd calm that sets in when you realize you might lose everything.  You switch from the low-level frenzy that rules so much of our lives--always rushing to meet the next deadline (work, social, or self-imposed) to doing whatever needs to be done in the moment and letting go of any expectations of the outcome.  To expect things to go a certain way with a fire outside your door would be foolish, so you just do.  So, I rushed around, packed up what could be hastily packed up and put in the car, took photos of everything else for insurance purposes, and then went outside to watch the world burn.  Up at my mom's house, they did the same thing, as did everyone else in town.  Lawn chairs lined a good portion of 500 South.  There were oo's and awes.   Despite the undercurrent of dread, the movie was the biggest, brightest, awe-inspiring, suck-your-whole-heart-and-stole-out-of-you production any of us had ever seen.  Until the moment you combust into flames, fire feels more like a seducer than a foe.  With every stand of trees that explodes, you want to cry for you know what has been lost, yet you anxiously wait for that next burst of orange because for that moment you have become the fire, and its life is your life, and for both of you to carry on, you must be fed.  All you want is to be dazzled no matter what the cost.  Or at least part of you does.

Another part is anchored to hell with a good sturdy chain of dread.

But the one thing you aren't is frenzied.  The experience is too far out of the norm to be connected with any emotion you feel in daily life.  You are free from the petty worries you allow to rule most of your days.  There is no clock, no calendar, no deadlines, very little sleep--only fire.

Next came the flood.  Or a small taste of what a flood does.  My brother, with a lot of help from Marci's family and me, had worked for weeks at preparing the small, oak and maple filled canyon that runs through our property for the wedding of our son Rio and his fiancé Eden.  We trimmed trees, cleared fallen branches, widened a trail, and raked and mowed an area around a gorgeous Rocky Mountain Juniper that they had picked out as the visual alter of the ceremony.  It looked gorgeous.

But we were worried.  The county had let us know that a fire increases the amount of water run-off from a mountain thunderstorm by five times.  An extremely rare one-inch super soaker becomes five-inch catastrophic event.   That wasn't likely, but some flooding was.  We were in the midst of the worst drought in 1200 years, yet our prayers for rain had changed.  They became very specific--Please Lord bring us rain, but please, please give it to us in small doses.  No longer did we yearn for the heavens to let loose.  

In the midst of the push to be ready for the wedding, I found out a life-celebration for my former boss and mentor, the poet and publisher Bobby Byrd, who had passed away a couple of months before, was taking place in El Paso.  He was just way too important to me to not go.  Like so many others, I loved the man.  So, just a few days before the wedding, Marci and I dropped everything and headed to the border.

The monsoon season had been very good for the drought-ravaged Southwest.  New Mexico was lush.  Even the sagebrush took on a darker luxurious green than the normal pale blue-gray tint.  And between the sage, long blades of dark, almost black, grass swayed in the unusually moist breeze.  We hit several downpours that thundered on our roof, the wipers slapping madly to keep the highway visible.  Small waterfalls rushed down the grassy road banks, and little rivers galloped along the roadside, bucking and bouncing joyfully along the way.  

It was awesome to see.  But we kept saying things like, "I sure hope it isn't doing this at home."  And then we got a phone call from Lloyd.  It had done exactly that.  Not much rain had actually fallen at Dry Creek, but up on the mountain, a cloud had let go.

My brother said the flood sounded like a freight train.  A torrent of ash, mud and debris came charging down, gouging the creek bed in places to twice its depth, and in other places twice its width, and spilling over the banks in one place and spreading a layer of black-ashy-mud a couple inches thick all over the ground.  

As luck would have it, the particular place it spilled over was exactly where Lloyd and the rest of the family had spent so much time prepping for the wedding.  On the phone, my brother was optimistic.  We were not.  But so much had happened, I didn't really care.  I was on my way to celebrate a man who was like a father to me, and that fact together with the gloriously lush landscape out the window was all that really seemed to matter.  Rio was getting married.  Spending his life with Eden was all that really mattered to him--whether he knew that or not.  The wedding would take place, and it would be great no matter what happened.  It's not the day that counts, but the years that follow.

Although we worried about another flood right up until the wedding ended and everyone moved to higher ground, all went well that day with only a sprinkle falling.  Summer ended, winter came, and we received record amounts of snow over that charred terrain now so prone to flooding even under the best of conditions.

These are our days.  This story is not unique to my family and me, except perhaps, that so far everything has turned out well.  That so often is not the case.  Environmental catastrophe has become a common part of life.  Almost nightly, we see entire towns wiped out by tornados, fires, or floods.  Not everyone's lives quickly return to normal.

We need to tackle the problems--of that there is no doubt.  If we don't, more and more of our lives will be devoured annually by what were once-in-a-century events.  In Steinbeck's time, floods mainly inundated and consumed the poor whose lives were relegated to the mining camps and flood plains, unprotected from the elements by sturdy homes and reinforced riverbanks.  Global warming has upped the ante.  Nobody is insulated from environmental catastrophe anymore.  And climate change is too large to be dealt with one person at a time.  Individual actions like recycling or riding a bike to work might feel good, and if possible, one certainly should make those choices, but because your efforts don't necessarily translate into your neighbor doing the same thing, any real solutions must happen collectively.  What we really need are politicians committed to doing what's right for humanity in the long run rather than seeking short-term political success pandering to corporations and constituents who put short term profit and comfort ahead of long-term sustainability.  We need laws to govern how our electricity is produced, what cars we can and cannot drive on our highways, and what we may and may not plant in our yards.  Not only must we be willing to vote for and support politicians willing to make those hard decisions, but we also need to demand that those are the only politicians who stay successfully in office more than one term.  There is no other way.  We simply cannot change the trajectory of global warming with societies continuing to function as they are.  We need collective action on a grand scale.  We need to be willing to sacrifice together for the future the way we did during World War II.

Yet, we still have our small individual lives that unfold one day at a time.  That's where things get difficult.  I can change all I want, but if only I change, when it comes to climate change, everything remains the same--a bullet train headed towards the collapse of not only humanity but life as we know it.

In the meantime, I have my own life, and the lives of everyone important to me.  We need joy.  We need to do.  We need to be.  Lives need to be lived.  Vacations need to happen; families need to gather.  Life can't just stop until we have the collective willpower to change our collective destiny.  There is no future without hope.

Here's what I think needs to happen.  If you aren't ready to go completely green now, cling to the carbon-producing vice you enjoy most, that makes you feel most alive--whether that be a fuel-guzzling 4x4, jetting around the world to exotic destinations, taking a cruise, or getting a fountain drink in a giant Styrofoam cup daily, and do it with joy, but swear to yourself that in every other aspect of your life, you will do whatever it takes to cut down your own carbon footprint, and then follow through with that.

Then, promise yourself, that the moment someone proposes banning your particular treasured vice, you will support that measure against your own interest for the greater good of not only humanity but all of the species around you.

Back in the 1980s, it became apparent to me driving without a seatbelt was just simply stupid.  Yet, I would forget to buckle-up more often than I would remember.  Then something miraculous happened.  They outlawed driving without a seatbelt.  Somehow the threat of getting a ticket was enough to push my brain to remember to buckle-up my seatbelt until it became habit.  Now, I buckle-up without ever thinking about it.  I never pull out of my driveway unbuckled.  Was that law really an infringement on my freedom?  I don't think so.  It gave me greater freedom to stay alive amongst the crush of metal.

This is what freedom is all about:  the right to think, express, and worship as you choose--to be who you are at your core and express that freely.  It's not about the right to crap on someone else's lawn or in the park or playground.  We can save humanity and all life on the planet without infringing on everyone's basic rights to be.  We should all be willing to give up everything except those basic rights in order to live without the fear of being swallowed up in the next record-breaking storm, flood, or fire--that next once-in-a-1000-years-event that happened last just four years ago and is now happening again.

For most people, there is very little freedom when displaced and desperate due to environmental catastrophe.  Most will do whatever it takes to survive and feed their families.  Choice is reduced to instinct.  Freedom is a luxury.  It is bought not only through the sacrifices of democratic participation, but also through the collective efforts of a society to protect individuals through the power of the whole, for individuals to be willing to give up something dear to them for the greater good.  There is no freedom when every man acts on his own only for his own good.  There is only anarchy, fear and suffering.  

There will be no freedom if we do not collectively work together to solve climate change.  There will only be each individual against the world.  If we want freedom, we must collectively fight for a sustainable future.  When economic systems collapse, so do social ones.  Most individuals will do anything to provide basic necessities for their families and themselves.  Freedom is but a dream on the doorstep of starvation except for the rare Buddha, Christ or Dali Lama who know and have trained the spirit to rule the mind, and the mind to rule the body.  For everyone else, there is no freedom before extinction.