Occupy

Much like the people of my age who follow their favorite (and in my opinion, horrible and worthless) television series, I've been up every morning listening to 'Democracy Now' on NPR. I can't remember the last time I've found a movement worthwhile enough to dedicate so much of my time following, but I wholeheartedly support the protesters. They're right for being pissed off, and I've been waiting for a movement like this since George W. Bush took office. Finally the people are vocalizing their frustrations with the system.

Oops, I may have been to blatant with my political views. There's no better way to make your friends enemies, and your enemies even greater enemies than by discussing politics. Oh well, now you sort of know where I stand--- take it or leave it.

That aside, what I've been meaning to point out is the observations that many famous authors have been making about the movement. You can read them on the Occupy writers website. I'm particularly fond of Lemony Snicket's contribution to this collection: Thirteen Observations made by Lemony Snicket while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance.

If you're not familiar with the Occupy Writers I will be focusing my next post on this group. In the mean time, I hope you enjoy reading the articles that are available on the link that I've provided.

China

I've recently returned from a two month vacation in China. A friend and I took a bike trip (contrary to what I usually mean by "bike trip" this was a pedal bike and not a motor bike) from Sanghai to Xiamen. I have plans to write a book about our journey, but I'm having some trouble with the names of places and association of events due to my lack of knowing the Chinese language and geography.

In addition to the general mapping problems, it's also extremely difficult to write for any extensive period of time at my new residence. The cabin I am currently living at has minimal electricity (just recently we've successfully installed some small solar panels), so I'm summoned to either writing on paper or my typewriter. Obviously my preferred medium for writing, especially when recalling an extensive line of memories, is a computer.

With that said, I will be calling upon the Griffin bros. for some help in my new project.

Posts/pictures of the new cabin soon.

Until then, here's a poorly translated, mildly amusing blog posting from when my biking companion and I got separated in a huge city in China. Enjoy.

Lost in Translation (pardon the pun, and horrible movie reference)

Death

is one of the most feared things by humans. Whether it's for selfish reasons (you have a whole slew of plans, goals, and ideas to carry out before you even think about an eternal nap), or perhaps it's that timeless classic of all fears--- fear of the unknown.

Regardless, there a two things in my entire life that have made me feel mildly alright with death.
This Poem is the second most comforting thing I've come across after losing someone close to me. If you haven't lost someone that you're close to yet you won't know what I mean until that day.

The first thing that anyone had ever told me that made a lick of sense in terms of now, and not once I reach the eternal goddamn land of bliss in the sky, involved something someone said to me after my grandfather's funeral. I was relatively young, and therefore I believed this to be a very unique idea which I soon found out was rather cliche. Nonetheless it was a wholesome, unoriginal thought that I found made a tremendous amount of sense compared to the " Don't be sad, he will be waiting for you in heaven with our savior" stuff I had been hearing for several hours at his wake and funeral.

I am not afraid to admit that I was the biggest sniveling ass at that funeral, and someone had taken notice. Their condolence was something offered in passing, and one that I could tell they were saying just to say something to help me. That, I believe, was an admirable act in its own right, but I don't think this person ever imagined that what they said that day would stay with me for so long.

Simply put, they explained that my grandfather is gone physically, but is still living on through all of us. What we've learned from him and the stories he told us will be passed down, and so he will never really be gone completely.
Damn, that's deep Aunt Jeanie!--but really, something in my mind clicked at that moment and there was an immediate sense of relief.

This poem is the only other time I remember that feeling returning to me...

Thanatopsis

TO him who in the love of Nature holds

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks

A various language; for his gayer hours

She has a voice of gladness, and a smile

And eloquence of beauty, and she glides

Into his darker musings, with a mild

And healing sympathy, that steals away

Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts

Of the last bitter hour come like a blight

Over thy spirit, and sad images

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,

And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,

Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;--

Go forth, under the open sky, and list

To Nature's teachings, while from all around--

Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--

Comes a still voice--Yet a few days, and thee

The all-beholding sun shall see no more

In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,

Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,

Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist

Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim

Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,

And, lost each human trace, surrendering up

Thine individual being, shalt thou go

To mix for ever with the elements,

To be a brother to the insensible rock

And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain

Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak

Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place

Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish

Couch more magnificient. Thou shalt lie down

With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings,

The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good

Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,

All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills

Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,--the vales

Stretching in pensive quietness between;

The venerable woods--rivers that move

In majesty, and the complaining brooks

That make the meadow green; and, poured round all,

Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,--

Are but the solemn decorations all

Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,

The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,

Are shining on the sad abodes of death,

Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread

The globe are but a handful to the tribes

That slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings

Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,

Or lose thyself in the continuous woods

Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,

Save his own dashings--yet the dead are there:

And millions in those solitudes, since first

The flight of years began, have laid them down

In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone.

So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw

In silence from the living, and no friend

Take note of thy departure? All that breathe

Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh

When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care

Plod on, and each one as before will chase

His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave

Their mirth and their employments, and shall come

And make their bed with thee. As the long train

Of ages glide away, the sons of men,

The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes

In the full strength of years, matron and maid,

The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--

Shall one by one be gathered to thy side

By those, who in their turn shall follow them.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join

The innumerable caravan, which moves

To that mysterious realm, where each shall take

His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, like a quarry-slave at night,

Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.




William Cullen Bryant

Trips To the Bar Are At Times Disheartening, But Most of the Time...

I feel like life is one big inside joke that nobody lets me in on.



What the hell, after a couple of worthless nights at the bar observing the disgusting habits of human beings I think it's time for a couple of poems by some fellow cynics that I happen to admire.



HAVE YOU EVER MADE A JUST MAN?
by Stephen Crane

"Have you ever made a just man?"
"Oh, I have made three," answered God,
"But two of them are dead,
And the third --
Listen! Listen!
And you will hear the thud of his defeat."

The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

By T.S. Eliot

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question. . . 10
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20
And seeing that it was a soft October night
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all;
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 60
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet–and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while, 90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say, "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while, 100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all." 110
. . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old . . . I grow old . . . 120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

3. Preludes

I THE WINTER evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps	5
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,	10
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
II The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer	15
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,	20
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.
III You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;	25
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back	30
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed’s edge, where	35
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.
IV His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,	40
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,	45
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle	50
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

Do Any of You Know What It's Like...

watching the first season of "The Deadliest Catch" while you're currently living in Alaska, then going out in rainy, windy weather in a tiny skiff to pull the last crab pot of the season? When you get there you find that you've caught a King that's an inch or two over the legal limit, so you hurry to D'Harts to buy a nice bottle of New Z eland Sauvignon Blanc wine, run home to clean and cook the crab, and after you've finished the most excellent meal of your life you return to watch the next season of "The Deadliest Catch". Do you know what it's like? Well I do...

Traveling Through The Dark

Traveling through the dark I found a deer dead on the edge of the Wilson River road. It is usually best to roll them into the canyon: that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead. By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing; she had stiffened already, almost cold. I dragged her off; she was large in the belly. My fingers touching her side brought me the reason-- her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting, alive, still, never to be born. Beside that mountain road I hesitated. The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights; under the hood purred the steady engine.. I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red; around our group I could hear the wilderness listen. I thought hard for us all--my only swerving--, then pushed her over the edge into the river. William Stafford

April 2nd

is the first day that copies of this year's edition of Tidal Echoes will be available for purchase.
Why should you give a damn?
Because my words will be available for the readin' upon the pages of that very journal.
It's a mildly interesting story, I promise.
So stop by and check it out.
(and bring five dollars if you really love me and want my autograph).




I would also like to take this opportunity to publicly thank Flannel-Danel for being my editor and making some wonderful suggestions that helped to improve my story immensely.
That, and basically forcing me to take the leap. Thanks, dood.
YOU DA MAN!

The "Jolly Tolly"

I think it's about time for a personal post. As much as I like ranting on and on about books and poetry my family and some of my friends have been interested in what sort of stuff I've been doing in Alaska. In particular, I've been getting a lot of questions about living on a boat.Usually,they're just some general questions about my living arrangement.--- How much does it cost? Is it hard to keep the boat at a comfortable temperature in the winter? How big is it? Though I've done my best to explain my new living quarters there was still somewhat of a demand for photos.

Well, I finally got my act together and took some pictures of my boat, the harbor, and downtown Juneau to give everyone a little taste of what my life is like in this little city nestled in the mountains along Southeast Alaska.

Here she is, in all her glory: The "Jolly Tolly", a mid/late 70s Tolly Cabin cruiser nearing 30 ft in length. I'm renting her from a nice fellow named Justin who responded to an ad that I posted.

This is the float I live on. I only have a few "harbor neighbors" who live there year round, so it's a peaceful place to live and the view of the mountains on Douglas Island is wonderful.

In case you were wondering, floats do tend to look the same when you're on the docks. Thankfully, the harbor has them labeled. For any of you who want to visit me just look for this sign.

This is the other side of the old gal'. I sort of had to jerry-rig a tarp awning on that side of the boat because there was a leak by my bed from where the snow gathered on the ledge and started to melt during our current warm spell. I used a milk jug filled with water to weigh down the overhanging side. From now on you may refer to me as MacGyver.


Here's the view from the inside. This is taken from the door leading down into the main living quarters.


The kitchen is pretty much a "what you see, is what you get" sort of set up. Only, that's not entirely true either. There is a sink with running water, but since the temperature tends to fluctuate so severely during the winter it is impossible to tell which days the water line will be frozen. So, instead of relying on the kitchen faucet, I've gotten into the habit of always filling the blue container (far right) at the tap outside.
On days when the temp. dips below zero, the outside taps freeze proposing a separate issue; one that includes wandering down float after float until you find one that works.

Here we have my bed. The lower bunk is where I sleep. The upper bunk acts as a shelf for my books, photography, and the like.

Here is the "dining room". The lay out provides ample seating for whenever I invite a few of my fellow harbor folk over. Most of the time though, it's just Gat and myself, so it doubles as "the office", hence the pile of papers on the seat.

Yes, there is a toilet on board. Unfortunately, like the kitchen sink, it's not really useful in the winter. It's hand pump operated so when the water in the lines freeze it's a pretty useless instrument. For now the bathroom serves as garbage, Gat food , and "dishwasher" storage.

These next two pictures are of the upper, interior of the boat. Since the lower part of the boat is separate from this section, the area tends to stay cool. This enables me to use this part of the boat as the "fridge" area.

The right side of this area has all of the electrical hook ups. The radio and lights on the boat run on the battery so there's a main extension cord running from the meter outside into the boat. The battery charger gets juice from the main cord and provides electricity to everything else on the boat that doesn't run off of the boat's battery.

This area is dubbed "the porch". The tarp offers a good bit of shelter so it's a nice place to just relax and hangout. I have a couple of camp chairs inside that I bring out here. It's down right comfy and Gat and I sometimes spend our mornings here--Gat with his ball and me with my coffee.

Moving on to some pictures of downtown... This picture is probably the epitome of Juneau. A small city nestled along mountains on the coast,

Here's one of the rivers that wind down the mountain, and back from that there's an avalanche chute. There has been quite a few avalanche warnings this past week since the weather has been abnormally warm and rainy.

...and a happy Gatsby roaming the paths toward downtown Juneau.

One of the docks leading out to the ocean. To the right you can see some of the houses on Douglas Island.

The Tram-- I can see why it's so popular amongst the tourists in the summer, the scenery is wonderful. Though I have to admit the photos in this post don't really do the little city justice. In the winter it seems that Juneau is a city resembling a black and white photo-- the Mountains and sea are varying shades of gray with buildings adding a bit of dull, selective coloring. The city almost seems sleepy in a way. In the summer it's full of energy and color.




Over all, I really like it here. I hear a lot of the locals complain about how they feel trapped. Granted you either have to fly or take the ferry to leave, I really don't mind it. Cities have never really been my thing, but there are plenty of trails to hike and boats to take that will get you out of the city in no time.

Living on a boat is a lot of fun too. I would take it over a over-priced apartment or campus housing any day.

...Plus, it helps that Gat is a really easy roommate to get along with.