The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland 71: Ash Meadows Wild

 

Rock Point Boardwalk Picnic Area,
Ash Meadows National Wildlife Area, Steve Brown 2025

1:07 p.m.

I sit at the Rock Point Boardwalk Picnic Area in Ash Meadows National Wildlife Area.  When I arrived, there were a few large families here, and they were having so much fun.  It's great to see kids enjoy themselves where there isn't much to do other than visit a few Caribbean-blue pools; listen to small, clear streams gurgle; and watch for birds and other wildlife, most of it small, like lizards and jack rabbits.  Trails here are boardwalks, and if you abide by the rules, there is no getting off them.  It's hardly Disneyland, but I'm glad some families raise kids to enjoy such places.  I hope somewhere in their young minds, the children are forming notions of the sacred.  Ash Meadows was almost cropland; it was almost a housing development; it was saved by people who believed in the sacred.  

When I first came here four years ago, I was slow to appreciate its beauty.  I thought it'd be a palm oasis, something like the grounds of a Vegas casino, only a bit more natural.  

It's not like that at all.  It's straggly and wild, with lush greenery crawling in, around, and over the dead bones of previous trees.  It's not some manicured forest you walk through, nor is it a lush green pasture of soft, meadow grasses.  It's thick, tangled, wild and chaotic, like the hair of a homeless hippy on heroine.  

I'm probably going to get hell for that simile above.  I'm keeping it anyway.  A mind can form a good metaphor based on an imperfect, biased view of reality.  One can be repulsed by a homeless person at the same time one is learning to see the humanity in everyone in every situation.  One can know how addiction works, how hopelessness feels--maybe even from having gone through both yourself--and still have such a flash-comparison between homeless-hippy and the wilds.

Good literature swims shallow and dives deep.  It's not removed from life.  It takes shortcuts, smashes things together in crude and/or beautiful ways.  It isn't polite.  Nor is it intentionally rude.  It crawls over bones.  It's not manicured.  It's thick, tangled and chaotic--alive.

I fear a world of politically manicured literature as much as I fear a world without wilds.  There is a difference between intentionally exploiting stereotypes for political gain and exploring the human condition and all that entails, including personal prejudices.

I once had someone tell me she didn't like the voice of something I wrote.  She said the person who wrote it was sexist.  I didn't think so, but who knows?  Maybe.  What I do know is that that voice was mine.  Not my only voice.  I have many.  But it certainly was one of them.  It came from my mind, perhaps even my soul (which I guess she thought black).  Basically, she was saying she didn't like me, or at least not the me who wrote that piece.  I may not even be that person anymore.  I'm constantly changing.  There is no static me.  I don't exist.  And neither does she.  But our souls do, and they don't judge.  That's the preference of the ego.  

I didn't remove her from my life.  I really admired her as a writer then, as I do now.  I've actually always believed she is much stronger writer than myself, one of the best I've ever read.

However, I did distance myself from her influence because I know the difference between writing that is manicured for a particular audience and writing that crawls out of the deep and trapses across the red velvet carpet with muddy feet while looking up at you with turquoise eyes that claw deep down into your soul and leave you forever transformed.  That's what I think her writing does.  But that's not what her influence would have had on my work.  Although in college, we seemed to push each other creatively through a sort of healthy competition, many years later that was no longer the case.  As an artist, or as anyone seriously wanting to grow, it is important to recognize not everyone is good for you.  It doesn't mean they are bad people.  It doesn't mean you have to dislike them.  However, it's vital to recognize whether those around you shut down your creative energy or expand it.  I knew if I continued to workshop my writing with her, my writing would no longer be authentic, and that is the only type of writing I'm interested in.

I have no idea if I've accomplished that here in these pages.  That's for others to decide.  But I'm not interested in anyone telling me to trim my lawn and tidy up my mind.

I forever want to write from places where things are wild.  You don't cultivate great thoughts from neat rows laid down between do's and don'ts.  You let them grow out of the soil wherever they are rooted.  That place is wherever you are now, the moment you pick up your pen.

Whatever this book is, whatever it accomplishes, wherever it falls flat--this I know:  I wrote each page from the moment of its creation.  I stood there, looked deep down into the now, and I saw what I could see without any intention other than to record images and thoughts as they slithered out.

It's the same writing process I believed in and articulated when I took my very first creative writing class way back in 1990, and after all these years, it's still the only one I truly believe in.  I've expressed it multiple ways over the years, including like this:

Writing for me has always been an associative process.  I sit down with a single image, thought, or feeling, and then rummage through the equivalent of old magazines in my mind, ripping out bits and pieces, like a collage artist.  Then, I assemble them bit by bit, hoping they'll lead to some sort of semblance.  Perhaps this sometimes leads to layers and complexity that wouldn't develop if I worked more linearly. 

I want something that shimmers like the world through a rain-dappled window at night--blues, yellows, reds and purples pocked and streaked in sub-narratives that mix and mingle and diverge again.  

The best writing is a fossilized trail of discovery, a record of energy.  If the writer knows exactly what they think before hand, that is not the book they should write.  It'll be dead from the get-go.  A good book quickly moves away from the writer's intention.  And if it doesn't, it probably shouldn't have been written.  Nobody wants to read an endless lecture.  But witnessing someone attempting to think--to see thoughts reach out and grab for something solid to attach to and wind around and grab something else, again and again...  That's exciting!  And I think a reader can always tell the difference between a book that regurgitates what the writer already knew and a book that records a writer discovering something new for them.  Poetry, fiction nonfiction--it doesn't matter:  the best writing grows wildly beyond the writer's intention.  

May I never write a book that says exactly what I mean. If I do, I'll be the first to burn it.

And may I never write a book that offends no one. If I do, it says nothing.

Weeds shelter the plants that will bear fruit.  Look closely.  

Into this wild moment I journey.

Again and again.  

Sometimes I even find I'm already found.  And that's also something to release.

Curious is the only free.

The Ghost of Tom Joad Knocking at the Door: A Pilgrim's Journey into the CaliforniAmerican Heartland 70: The Universe from a Small Park in Shoshone, California

Shoshone Park, Shoshone, California, Steve Brown 2025

I sit in my car with the windows open, parked in a gravel lot, all but the hood tucked under the shade of a great palm tree in Shoshone, Nevada.  Homemade picnic tables made from river rock dot the park.  A little trail meanders towards a signpost pointing to various places--the type associated with beaches.  

I look northwest to a high, rounded mountain covered in big, black basalt boulders.  I say "covered" because there seems to be loose, gray gravel below which is not anywhere as dark as the big rocks on top.  Maybe the mound once was a mesa with a layer of lava at the surface, and as it eroded away, big chunks of basalt slid and rolled their way down.  I don't know.  What I do know is that the hill has a big, white DV on it.  Maybe their school is Desert View.  

The wind comes pleasantly in the windows; I can hear birds chirping.  

Next to the road is a bright is yellow SCHOOL sign with a silhouetted circle-headed dad and circle-headed mom walking arm in arm, but no circle-head son or daughter by their side.  Perhaps, they walk to pick up their child from school.  Or perhaps their child let go of their hand and ran out into traffic.  Or maybe little Johnny or Emma Lou was abducted by aliens.  This is Nevada after all.  It's hard to say, but I find it strange that big yellow SCHOOL signs posted specifically to warn you about children crossing the road actually have no children.  However, since the two adults also don't have hands or feet, maybe there's nothing to worry about.  Perhaps, in traffic-sign universe, moms and dads without feet or hands walk to schools to pick up kids who don't exist on a regular basis, and it's all NORMAL because anything is normal if it's just the way things are.  Nothing would be edgy about a person born with a triangle-head in a universe of triangle-headed people.

Behind the SCHOOL sign with no children is desert brush and electrical poles with gray cylinder boxes. Behind those are gray desert trees, perhaps Russian olive.  The black boulder mountain is behind everything.  I have been in the desert enough that it looks reasonably normal to me.  However, to those east of the Mississippi, the scene is probably as odd as a world where circle-headed adults walk to school without any circle-headed child and the sky is always bright yellow.

Nothing is shocking that is common-place.  Anything can be shocking if it isn't commonplace.  Mundane is made through over-exposure.  Exotic arises from the unknown, as does the horrific.  Our perception is defined by what we already know.   Yet, at any given moment, we assume what we see completes reality.  Then, something comes along that shatters our view of reality, and instead of learning we live in a universe of infinite possibilities, we adapt our universe to include the new undeniable data that's arrived, but then quickly zip-tie our view of reality again.  Thus, we live our lives constantly forced to adjust our lenses to accept the reality we've just smacked our heads against rather than opening our lenses wide enough to let in all possibilities.  The surest way to be dead wrong is to know exactly what you believe.  And yet that assurance is what most of us seek.  We want to pin God down like a beetle and place our creator is a plastic box.  Or, we want to wipe out our creator out altogether.  

The universe isn't built for that constrained view simply because no one can truly comprehend an infinite universe, and simultaneously, no once can comprehend finite universe.  How can something go on forever?  But how can it just all end?  What exactly is everything?  What exactly is nothing?  It's as if the universe is built to keep us open, and yet some dark force wants us to limit ourselves from the infinity unfolding right before our eyes.  We shut down the miraculous because it feels safer to eat our bowl of Cheerios and go to work as normal as possible.  Meanwhile, galaxies of infinite possibilities swirl outside the car windows waiting to be noticed.

Slowly, I'm getting better at sitting in that uncertainty and enjoying the infinite possibilities swirling around me.  The odd thing is--and I can't explain this--when I allow myself to sit comfortably in the unknown, I actually feel more solid, more confident.  Our ego separates us out from creation and then makes us beggars for security.  It tells us we are isolated and alone and makes us then beg for acceptance.  It tells us we are unique and then makes us beg to fit in.  It tells us we are mortal and makes us beg for transcendence.  It tells us we need to understand the reality of a universe too grand to ever comprehend.  Fear makes us want to live small in an expanse so great it is impossible to comprehend.   

Bewilderment is a much better approach to life.  Learn to let go, to not know, and be amazed.  And slowly, confidence not attached to outcome opens up as you notice life is happening everywhere, all at once, and that all of it is spectacular on the grand level, and isn't it wonderful to be alive and part of everything even if at this moment that means picking up garbage off the front walk because the Gladbag just split open wide-open and mashed potatoes and green roast beef plopped down on the concrete?

I'm still not in that spot very often, but often enough that when I am there, I absolutely know it is a better way of existing.  I have a deep belief in God, deeper than at any other point in my life so far, but I'm no longer interested in defining God.  Instead, I want to experience God by opening up and letting in light.  Not-knowing seems to allow that better than knowing.  I can't seem to keep my mind from wanting to understand everything, but I can keep it from believing it's anywhere close to having things figured out.  And life is actually much better from a place of awe than expertise.  When you are in that sweet spot, small bits of knowing arise out of the void that you absolutely know are correct and can immediately be successfully applied to a situation.   However, as soon as you attach any ego-sense to that insight, you have removed yourself from that field of endless possibilities until you return that state of openness.