I do hope this ends soon.
It’s making me hole up even more than usual, as I’ve gotten hints that various people are trying to get ahold of me: clients, friends, maybe even a relative or two. But for the most part, I’m only available via email just now. Not answering phones or checking messages, either.
I’m not psycho, it just has to be that way for a few days. This happens to be one of those Taos moments where the focus is indescribably intense. The energy is almost unbearable and can be really painful for anyone yearning for humor and lightness. For better or worse, all my powers of self-absorption and single-mindedness are activated by this dynamic — I dovetail perfectly with hell, you might say, although while I’m here, I may as well get something done. For now, I think I’ll take a nice hot bath and go to bed early.
That really is how it can be, which is why I tell everyone thinking of “retiring” here to get a life and not take down their porch swing. Most of us live behind one kind of mask or another, but forget that crap here. IT JUST DOESN’T WORK: the weakest link will break, regardless, and you won’t know it was there until it does. Exciting! — and great for certain kinds of work, but some don’t get out alive.
I think I’ll blame it on the mud. When spring finally comes, it’s gonna feel so good, no one will be able to stand it. Great, even more stress.
Actual mud-wise, by the way, I read in the Taos News that there’s absolutely nothing to be done. The road department can’t grade the roads (like I asked them to do with ours) because the grader would just make bigger ruts, and if they try it when the road is frozen, it damages the blade! Applying gravel doesn’t work either, because the pebbles just sink down through the goo. Ai-yi-yi…
The mud is my shepherd, I shall not want.
I am a toad buried deep within, waiting for the warming sun.
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I find that small quantities of Vonnegut, taken at intervals, can reduce stress. Here’s a dose of which the title of this entry reminded me.
John
The Last Rites of the Bokononist Faith
(excerpt)
God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, “Sit up!”
“See all I’ve made,” said God, “the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.”
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God.
Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud
that didn’t even get to sit up and look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!
Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!
Good night.
I am ready to proclaim jhf as the supreme poet of mud. (Vonnegut comes close.) Everytime you write about mud, my friend – heroic mud, not just the stuff of mud-pies – you get me thinking. This stuff lies just beneath our feet all the time. We don’t give it enough respect. “Generations have trod, have trod, have trod”, G.M. Hopkins said, but they can only tread thus mindlessly if they can get a purchase on the good earth, not go sinking below the surface. That’s no longer a study in ennui, it’s pure tragedy. It’s the German armies bogged down in the Ukraine (well, maybe mud was on the side of the angels that once). It’s cummings’ goat-footed balloon-man dying seven fathoms deep rather than cavorting in mudlusciousness. The ancients always figured hell started somewhere below the surface, where the lights went out and dark spirits prevailed. I say (easy for me to say, with solid ice below my feet here in Canada) scatter those evil spirits with as much lightness and wit as the subject will admit. Your last post was full of that.
I don’t know about poetry, but these conditions are like a prelude to the end of the world.
I guess I’ll be ready when it comes, then. We already learned what it was like to have no money for years, so the next depression won’t be unfamiliar either!
Haha.