I’ve been having those kind of thoughts that keep rising to the surface. I call them heavy cream thoughts. They’re the sort of philosophic meanderings that rise to the surface while driving to the supermarket. Apart from being stuck in traffic or doing the daily chores most people aren’t given much opportunity for reflection in their lives. Some people take time out on a Sunday or another holy day to reflect. But the dominant thought patterns on that particular day are created and formulated by someone else. When you’re standing on the supermarket line your thoughts are drawn from your own palette. They fall somewhere between the sacred and the profane. Since the mind does love to talk they’re inevitable. Truman Capote said that all writing is gossip. The same could be said for these strange strands of thoughts. But this is the gossip of the underworld, the other world, the dark and helixed world of the labyrinth.
Been sick. Went driving to Red Bank for heavy cream. Had some heavy cream thoughts come to me as I was listening to Ferron. She kills me. She tears me apart. Why is it we say these things when beauty enters us? Does it break our sky? Or are we so dry, she even sings, “I’m a desert sometimes,” that when beauty enters, it comes through like a knife? I’ve been thinking again and again of sending a letter to Kate and decided that yes I will. Its taken’ me all day long just to make the decision. I’ve been trying. A huge effort, one worthy of the goddesses. But so many challenges. The everyday. The humdrum. These are difficult passages and yet, they are the glue that binds. Even so, my spirit has been soaring today. With the wind. The ocean is whipping up white caps. The horizon is moving on the water. Mountains are emerging. The white clouds streaked across the sky like laser lights. The whiteness of the sky.
In all the hubbub, I think, the soul does try to get through. Sometimes it only squeaks through. We occasionally hear high pitched sounds. They say that’s a sign that you’re losing your hearing. Maybe this is so. Maybe we’re losing the ability to hear the hubbub. Maybe we’re hearing our soul.
There are two rivers flowing in me. One wants to take me to a place where there is quiet. Perfect quiet. Nothingness. The other river is rich. It’s bubbling over. We all know this river. The sacred waters. Lush, full, abundant. Gorging its banks with the sweet placenta of life, songs of the sirens, colors dried on the palette. The rich river that the artists journey to and then leave full till pain resides in their chests. Greed carries them around till they release and create. The two rivers.
Natalie Goldberg says the other side of creation is destruction. So many make the mistake of destroying themselves. The smart ones destroy the canvas. Smear the oils. Cover and recover. Cut, dice, prune, and distill over and over again till only the essence is left, like a fossil on the riverbed. But the fossil, really an elegant Ziegfield having played with time and mud the way the best minds of our generation play with theorems and quantums, comes through the long well of time, dry, bone dry and crystallized with grace.
There seem to be two contradictory forces pulling on us. Always at least two. “Only two,” some might think, “what a luxury.” But these two pull so that my tendons feel stretched to the point of thinning. A small hole shows within the fabric of my being and I wonder, “What kind of fossil will I make?” Some traditions want to direct you towards stillness. It can be a beautiful place. I’ve only had a few moments there. There was one moment where I felt that I blended with sand and sky. Felt no separation. Therefore, no isolation. No effort. No existence. And because I have known that feeling I would long for that again. But direct effort doesn’t bring it near. Even, perhaps, hastens its departure.
The other way round is through creation. Art. Writing. Here it seems that abundance is best but sometimes you must go through a desert. A stinking hot, foul desert. The dust bowl. Here the desert senses, that exist like horsemen of the Apocalypse, are forlorn, hopeless and wasting away.
Follow the black arms of the spider in all directions. Weave. Weave.
Don’t know where the desert came from. Although it always comes, doesn’t it? Maybe the rivers are bordered by deserts on this landscape. And what about boundary? When boundary disappears there is a blending. This is a beautiful thing. Elemental. All the entanglements – gone. Release. Pure release. Letting go too. And emptiness. Blessed, blessed emptiness. Hollow. Hollow like the air coming into the roof of your mouth and following the passage down into your heated organs. Hollowed by the wind, the sun, the rain. Hollow like bones set to dry past white to milky grey. Follow the curve of the hollow hip bone round and round till it spins you down to the hot bed of sand that holds it like a trophy. Emptiness. Elemental. The sun, the wind, and the rain. Boundary. The wall. Emptiness. No thing left. Gone.
By the time this little excursion is done you’ve been through the ecological mill – having turned to dust poured from the dry, white fossil bones. In the hierarchical order of the day, finding your place in the universe doesn’t have much prestige, but it does exist. Sometimes these moments are your way of consoling your soul which must wonder where it can exist in the rushed pace you’ve been keeping. Whole worlds evolve and revolve in the strange avenues of subjective time that seem to parallel the real world time of doing the chores. We can find our boundaries at the edge of the aisle that holds the simple and singular elements. Like the end cap of Aisle 8 where you might find the wind, the sun, and the heavy cream.
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Conversations with Nic by freda karpf is a serio-comic journey through the land of withdrawal. It’s an inspirational book that is every bit as much inspired creative non-fiction as it is a companion guide along the road – to life, recovery, dry spells and all the other odd components of a life that does not fit neatly into the 9 to 5. Nic has many comic segments as well as portions of street level lyricism in language that is real, fresh, alive, and when appropriate, on fire. You’ll find elements of tales in Nic that seem Chaucerian and you’ll see the influence of Homer and Jack Kerouac. Throughout Nic there are characters that come alive and you can imagine that they inhabit other worlds as the journey through the land of withdrawal unfolds. If you’re looking for a spiritual adventure that has wit and Whitmanesque passages, Nic is for you. Agents are welcome to contact freda by leaving a comment. Small, but genuine book publishers. Same thing. I’m looking to be inspired by a creative business partnership with either.