The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--25. Now Open to the Pulse

Shell Station Puddle, Fillmore Utah, January 16, 5:17 PM, Steve Brown 

The ability to see, record, or imagine detail is not the same thing as being present in the now.  I have always navigated my way through the world with my eyes.  In introducing my poetry in Sell-Outs Literary Magazine, a magazine a friend and I published while we were still in college, I wrote the following:

I want to write, write well, and maybe say something in the process.  Certainly, a lot needs to be said. But a poem is as much an energy as it is a thing that says something.  A poet doesn't write poems; a poet is receptive to energy--the movement of clouds, wheat being whipped at forty miles an hour, gunfire at the 7-11 down the street, or simply Grandpa flushing the toilet--it's the movement that counts.  When you do say something that needs to be said, it's because the energy is right, not because you feel like saving the world.  The rest of the time you're open to any pulse and you put it down.

It amazes me that I had formed a writing philosophy at such a young age.  What amazes me more is that in all these years, that philosophy hasn't changed.  These are still my guiding principles:  1.  Writing is an energy; it is an act of discovery; when you leave port, you shouldn't already know the route and destination.  Let the winds carry you, and steer as you see what is ahead of you.  2. The fuel is the five senses; everything moves one image at a time.  3.  If you fully know your thesis up front, you might as well not write; the creative act that caused you to form some sort of claim in your head is over; the energy is gone, and the writing will be dead.  4.  Writing is about being open now to the pulse, whatever that might be, which means living each moment fully to keep the energy alive.

What strikes me is that although I knew this well at such a young age, I applied it so poorly.  I wasted enormous amounts of time in my twenties.  And I was incredibly unhappy.  I did wander day after day around the streets of El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico, which is the perfect activity for a single, young writer to be doing to generate ideas.  However, I was seldom in the moment.  Instead, I was unhappily in my head, feeding my fears of being alone, unlovable, while trying to get alcohol to transform me into the extravert I am not.  What's even more astonishing is that even though I absolutely knew writing was my route to happiness, I spent so little time actually doing it.  I was trying to live in my head what I thought a writer should be: a jaded, drunken atheist like Hemingway, drinking my way through a world I didn't believe in the best I could, getting it all down along the way.  Except, I got very little of it down.  What I wrote was good, but my output was 10% of what it should have been given the opportunities I had to write at the time.  Even more tragic is how little time I actually spent in the moment.

Although I understood writing well, I didn't understand living well.  Had I understood then what I understand now, this probably would not be the first book you'd be reading by me.   I would have understood myself well enough to not get in my own way.  That's what we do when we don't feel worthy deep down inside.  We find ways to pretend we're moving forward while actually retreating from our goals.  And we do it so sneakily.   We aren't actually aware we're walking back our contribution to the world before we've even had the courage to state this is who I am, and this is what I can offer the world.   We fear failing most at what we love most.  So, we put our energy into things we're alright at failing at rather than what we are passionate about.   We negotiate our lives away, making compromises with our enemy, fear.  We live our dreams in our head throughout childhood, and then at some point, encouraged by society, we get real, which is a softer way of saying we abandon who we really are.

I partially did that.  I pretty much quit writing for twelve years to focus on being a teacher.  I told myself my love of teaching had replaced my love of writing.  It was a lie.  I'm a good teacher.  I enjoy being around teenagers.  I don't regret going into work each day or my career choice.  My work is meaningful, and I have fun doing it.  But the classroom is not where I'm most alive.  It is either outside, taking in the world, or here, putting down these words.  I've known that for a very long time; I've just been too afraid to give it my all for fear of failure.  I'm not alone.  We give most of our lives to our careers and shave off small amounts for what actually matters most to us--family, friends, and hobbies.  

I am a man who believes in God.  I am also a man who believes in Satan, and I believe that one of Satan's plans is to distract us from the reason we are here on earth and keep us occupied doing everything except what connects us to life, because when we feel that deep connection, when we know this is who I am and this is what I have to contribute to the world, we are completely uninterested in doing evil.  Sin comes from a place feeling hollow, incomplete, lacking, and insufficient.  What looks like pride and arrogance is really deep insecurity.  Every tyrant's fear is that they are really insignificant.  This is true of tyrants of nations, true of tyrants of corporations, or true of tyrants in the home.  A person grasps for power and clings to it most when they know not who they really are.  

A man who feels whole is a dangerous thing to the ways of the world.  He only wants others to feel the same way.  He becomes an agent of generosity, of kindness, of peace and goodness.  Society is fueled by competition, greed, and envy.  Most advertisements, for instance, are aimed at making you feel insignificant and insufficient.  Most politics are aimed at making you feel someone has cheated you out of the life you deserve.   Keep a man from his dreams, keep a man deeply unsatisfied with himself, and he is ready to burn down the world for you if you want him to.  But a satisfied man knows he has what is sufficient for his needs.  He knows who he is, and he knows what he can offer the world.  He can't be manipulated the way an unsatisfied man can.   Satan needs insatiable appetites--hungry, restless, deeply unsatisfied nations of individuals seeking desperately to fill holes they cannot name.  What is more dangerous to his plan than a man who enjoys life on its own terms, whatever that may be, and only wants to do good?  Such a man is a disaster to the society of mammon.

So, we are lured away from being who we really are, lured away from our individual talents, lured into being something we are not--because that is the precise place we will be open to enticement.

I had a notion of this approaching my graduation from college.  The following is from a short chapbook of poetry I wrote for my final creative writing class:

I think of this book as several strands of barbed wire crammed into a thin blue plastic Walmart bag--how they rip on through and dangle, each strand ready to uncoil in its own direction.  What you have read is only what is still contained within the bag.  And even that work reaches out to snag up more poems and form various other collections.

I think this reflects my mood lately.  I feel fragmented, one hell-ride of a semester, always between episodes:  take Mitch to school, drive home, study for an hour, shower, drop Marci off at the university, drive back home, study for a half-hour, take kids to day-care, go to class, pick kids up, home for an hour, pick Marci up, go to work, and so forth, and so on.

And then there is graduation.  I am divided over the issue of the certificate that will say I am now somehow worthy of at least dabbling in the American dream.  Part of me, the husband and father, accepts this as necessary, even desirable.  I want to give my family a nice home and be free from the welfare system.  I want to provide.

But I find it hard to pretend I believe in that dream, where we are defined by who we know, what we own, and what we do to bring home the bread.  I don't really believe in objectives, direction, arrival.  All the happiness in my life has been in glimpses:  sunlight reflected off a tin roof, a thin September snow on the mountains, flies buzzing around a fresh pile of dog poop, lupines shaking in the cold alpine wind, one glorious image after another.

On the other hand, all my misery has risen from my cowardliness--how I have tried to go along with things I cannot believe in, and have failed, because part of me, the better part, said no this is not right, don't ask me what my job is, because I am not my job, janitor or poet.  At thirty-three I still live to float an empty pop can down an irrigation ditch and piss into the wind off Notch Peak.

I believe in these things.  When I drank, I drank because I was not strong enough to make a stand for them, but not weak enough to accept that life is about being a father and having a good job.  I care nothing about my role as a father.  Instead, I love my wife and my children, and how Rio, at age one, already has a phobia of closed doors--isn't that amazing!--where did it come from?  He's too young to have acquired it through experience.  This is the stuff of life: fears; failures; small noticings.  That other thing, The American Dream, is bullshit.

Twenty-four years later, I feel much the same way.  Yet, everything is totally different.  What I didn't understand then that I think I'm beginning to understand now is the sound of one-hand clapping.

It's not one thing or the other; it's all.  The meaning includes the bullshit.   The meaning is the bullshit.  It's more than that, of course.   It's floating an empty pop can down an irrigation ditch or pissing into the wind off Notch Peak, as I always knew.  But it is also rushing to get out the door in the morning, the endless meeting that seems to go nowhere, and yet still somehow leaves everyone with elevated blood pressures defending positions that haven't even been defined yet.  It's everyone tripping over their own egos.  It's the casual conversations in the hall that I still haven't learned to do.  It's that phone call you get that turns your world completely upside down and you know you may never be the same again, and you aren't, and yet you carry on.  It is all this.  And it is all good once we learn to enter a moment willingly, of our own freewill, imbedded fully in the reality before us.  And once we do that well, reality is ours to mold however we wish, both individually and collectively.  

A reality misunderstood is a very rigid thing.  It stands strong supported grandly by misconceptions.

A reality well-understood is completely pliable.  It can be molded into whatever we want it to be because we know both the nature of its resistance and its fluidity.

 The sound of one hand clapping is nothing.  More importantly, it is the sound of everything.

An individual who knows well his personal way of best contributing to world knows well the sound of one hand clapping.  It is all around him, in everything.

And those moments of oneness are so beautiful.  They speak of God, the light and love, at the center of what appears to be chaos.  From there, and only there, fully engaged in now, can one hear the drumbeat of the universe below the chaos.  And when we hear that drumbeat, we know we are safe no matter what because we know we are, and in that mindset, that is sufficient for our needs:  to be here, on this earth, learning, part of something beautifully beyond our comprehension or ability to control.  We let go and we simply are.

 

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--24. Toes of the Sierra Nevada, No. 1

 

Marci & I Stand with the Joshuas, Steve Brown 2022

Sunday, April 10, 2022.

When you crawl across the toes of the Sierra Nevada, the hills seem to go forever.  At first, they are dry and daggered with coarse brush and Joshua trees.  But compared to what's east of them, they feel lush and green.  Owen's Lake sits in an otherwise profoundly sparse place.  It feels Biblical in its hostility towards an easy life.  In contrast, the dry hills feel verdant and alive with possibilities.  So much so, we had to pull over to take a selfie, having made it to the promised land.  Besides, ever since U2 released The Joshua Tree with that iconic album cover, I just have the need to take pictures of people in front of Joshua trees no matter how visually removed my picture is from the original.  Joshua trees have become stars, so why would Marci and I pass up the chance to get a selfie with a couple of them?

As one moves west towards Lake Isabella, the world slowly greens up until it is eventually quite verdant.  And the hills seem to go on forever, the road winding, and going up and down, in and out, and around.  It's a slow, methodical drive--very relaxing--and always reminds me of drives with my dad in northern California in the hills nestled between the Sierra and Cascades, Eagle Lake country.  Oh, how the late afternoon shafts of sunlight thrown across the highway from between ponderosa pines are burned into the retina of my mind.  I ride in that truck once again, now and then, forever.  My dad may have given me his shyness, and he may have me my lack of confidence, my fear of connecting to people, but he also gave me the woods of California, the Sierra and Cascades, and the sea.  I gladly take it all for those memories of standing on a jagged point, misty fog moving all around me, hearing the breakers thunder below, watching the white waves below crash against black rock--the eye moving outward towards a horizon that never materializes as the gray water and the gray sky melt together in a bank of fog.

Although I've never lived there, California is mine.  It is as deep in me as is anything.  And here I am with my woman, the center of my life for twenty-five years, easing our way once again towards all that is mine.  California.  Magical still, magical always--no matter what the haters say.  We are here, now, and for the moment, that fact stands taller than my recent diagnosis of kidney disease and all that comes with it.  This road, these curves, Marci, and the anticipation of seeing the ocean once again--that is all I need.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland--23. One Moment, January 3, 2024, 5:01 P.M.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door:
Millard County, Utah, January 2024, Steve Brown

Now.  What an amazing time?--almost always.  I am aware that there are people who have nows they desperately need to leave behind but can't seem to, victims of trauma, who have yesterdays that keep them from engaging in today.  That's another book to be written by another person.  Like everyone, I have had some trauma in my life.  I am a child of divorce, as are many.    I was bullied in high school, as are many.  But looking back, I now realize, I never experienced trauma at a level that sitting in a moment fully and just experiencing that pain would not have been beneficial--a means to not only understand myself better but those who caused me harm, intentionally or unintentionally.  Being present in those painful moments would have allowed me to break down the barriers that made me feel alone, isolated, and victimized.  If I had understood the moments I was bullied well, I would have understood well also that the bullying had absolutely nothing to do with me other than that I was considered as an easy target.

Now.  As an observer, what a great place to be.  Engaged intentionally, allowing oneself to hover above, so to speak, and simultaneously film the movie--I think there is a place for that in life.  A vital place.  But outside of Buddhist monasteries, we are not taught to do it, and because of that, we are missing a lot of life.  No, that's not it.  We are pretty much missing all of life.  Most just aren't aware of it.  A life lived not simultaneously watched by the liver is mostly invisible to them.  It is spent in their head, removed by the ego from reality.  Or it passes by unconsciously to fade into an unmarked past.  Or it is lived in daydreams of a better tomorrow.   More likely, it is a combination of all three, which steals enormous amounts of now that cannot later be recovered.

But a life imbedded in the present stretches both ways--deep into the past, where moments can be savored like candy samples from jars on the glass shelf of the mind, the sampling still available far into the vast, unknown future.   For to be grounded in now is to both know my past and be solid for the future.  I think that's what Christ was saying when he told the adulterer to go and sin no more.  Once solid in the now, she could absorb whatever painful consequences would surely follow from her previous bad choice, and she could also be rock-steady for whatever unsure future would develop as a natural consequence from that choice.  The ability to be completely present prepares you for anything and everything.  It is the ultimate surrender.  I am here, now, whatever may come to pass.  

All we have is now.   When we use it well, everything else becomes unimportant.  People do not commit adultery because they are living in the now.  They commit adultery because they are either trying to escape some unpleasant past or escape some unpleasant present.  They commit adultery because they are seeking escape from their situation instead of encountering reality on its own terms.  

Sitting in the now places you in reality not outside it.  It becomes something like this:  my wife and I no longer communicate the way we used to.  Everything seems to lead to a fight.  How does that make her feel?  How does that make me feel?  Is there something I can do now to make this evening go differently than yesterday?  That is now thinking.  It's watching from above, in the moment, from all angles.  It's seeing the gritty details and being open--letting in all of the light, and also letting in all of the darkness, unfiltered, in as objective as humanly possible, which of course, has its limits.  

And it takes training.  Our mind wants to be anywhere but in the current moment.  But the more one enters each moment well, the more one sees how truly beautiful each moment is--even the cluttered, disorderly, uncontrollable ones.  Lately, I've been practicing.  

Now.  I'm on my way home from work.  It's a cold, gray day.  There is a city of mouse droppings surrounding the plastic case of the live trap on the floor of my car by the passenger seat, and there are two mice in it.  I know that not only from the mousy smell, but also because I checked when I got in.  I hate mice in my car, but I know they are just doing their best to survive and reproduce, and my car happens to provide a grand shelter from the elements, so to intentionally kill them seems wrong.  Only part of me hates them--the part of me that fears hantavirus.  Fear makes me hate them.  Otherwise, they are cute, and even if I thought they were ugly, I would still want them to go about their lives trying their best to survive.  

I am scanning the road, looking for places to set the two critters free.  Part of me wants to dump them anywhere.  They have pooped all over the passenger seat and all over the center consul and in the drink holders.  I had to put my lunch cooler in the backseat to avoid contamination.  I placed my phone very carefully on a small turd-free part of the seat.  I just want to get rid of them.  But I can't.  So, I'm looking off the side of the road for suitable terrain.  It's winter.  It's cold.  I am looking for either lots of wild rye or soft dirt, or preferably both, for food and bedding for my little enemies.  I do not want to release them to die.  I don't mind if they die.  Die, we must.  All of us.  From bristlecone pine to stink bug.  I just don't want to cause my furry mouse-foes deaths unnecessarily.

Finally, I see a place.  The old crumbling pioneer house that I love greatly.  I know there's not much rye there.  That's a minus.  But I also know the earth is soft and powdery, easy to dig into.  And there is still cheat grass and goat heads, probably still enough food and nesting material.  And it is off the highway.  I slow down, turn to the left on a gravel road, and pull in next to the adobe-walled remnants of a house that must be from the 1800s.  I grab the trap and get out.  A cold winter wind blasts me.

I fiddle with the trap.  It stinks.  I can't figure out if I pull or push the top even although I've done it before.  It finally moves when I pull it towards me.  I lower it to the ground and the two mice jump out and scurry away.  The trap is full of droppings half imbedded in peanut butter and half dissolving in piss.  I put the lid back on, place it back on the floor, grab a bottle of hand sanitizer, push the pump, and wash my hands, disgusted.  Then I grab my camera.  

While I'm here in this moment, I might as well get everything out of it.  I aim the camera towards the wood and adobe ruins next to a solitary tree.  I realize with all the dust and sand stirred up, the mountains have dissolved, and the place looks even more isolated than it really is, a dust-bowl-like image.  It is profound in a spooky way.  Especially the dark black dead tree that stubbornly bears witness to the fact that this once was a house with a yard, a family, chickens certainly, and cats, perhaps even a dog.  Lives lived together tightly under great big skies.  Lives huddled inside with wind and dust swirling outside, sneaking through the window seals, crawling through the cracks, mice gnawing their ways into the walls to sleep, eat, begat, scurry and thump around in reality.  Mice running through dreams of that family that once was so present here but is no more.  

To be here, now, is a profound honor.  To be at a place I frequently pass by, never quite ignoring, but certainly not fully absorbing either.  But I am here, now, and at this moment that is all that matters.

I wish my furry little foes, who have already vanished into their own world, well, get back in the car, and head off towards another place, another moment, feeling the ghost of Tom Joad knocking, warning us of nows past that may soon be here again if we don't deal with the realities of climate change.