Listening To The Wrong Heartbeat

Icy rain after a few beautiful days of sun.  Spring holds out it's perfumed hand then slaps us in the face.  The herring spawned, but on the islands off shore it seems, so even that seems to have sucked spring away from us.  The eagles and the gulls singing their spring song off on the coast might ass well be in California.  Maybe tomorrow, or maybe next week.  

Ten days ago my doctor said my heart was not acting right and he sent me to see a cardiologist in Seattle, which caused my overactive imagination to really kick into gear. I have not treated my heart well over the years, I scoff at diets and exercise plans, and I tend to worry too much.  I come from a long line of worriers.  I don't enjoy worrying, and I'm not a gratuitous worrier I just worry, randomly and frequently.  A friend is going to fly to Rwanda, she has done it before, but still, I think of the time changes, should she stay up all night before she goes?  Should she sleep all day?  I don't know,  I read up on it.  Then she leaves.  I think she should have stayed up all night not slept on the plane.  She is not the type to do that, but who am I to say?  I've never traveled that far east.  What if she gets stuck somewhere?  What kind of money do they use in Rwanda.  She'll have figured that out.  Jesus.  She knows this.  Stop. it.  

That kind of thing. 

When I have something real to worry about it goes through the roof.  I think Jan hates having Parkinson's mostly because of me, and that's not just my narcissism... wait... or is it?  You see?  She will watch my face when she walks haltingly to the door, and she'll scowl at me, I won't say a word, she'll just say,  "Stop it."  that's it.  I say, "What? I'm just standing here holding the door for you, like a dope."  but I know exactly what she is saying.  She is saying "Stop making it harder for me by worrying."  

The people at Virgina Mason Hospital were unbelievably sweet to me.  They pointed at little squiggles on machines and clucked their tongues and said,  you need to see Dr. So and So.  and very quickly I saw Dr. So and So.  It happened very quickly and before I knew it I was under this big machine and a man was putting a long needle in my femoral artery and taking pictures of my heart.  I was wide awake and feeling wonderful, and strangely talkative, and I told them all a story about the drug fentenyl which they were giving me just then, how when my mother was dying she was given fentenyl and I sat by her bed and read her all of Out of Africa by Isaac Dinesen, and  as I read, I got to a part that I felt was offensive, particularly to my mother for political reasons because of colonial/ imperialist reasons, and so I skipped over it, and my mother lifted her head up from her death bed, just like a little child when you read her a book and said..." Hey, you skipped a part," and didn't you doctors think that was something? and the doctor who was holding the wire that was going up into my heart and was just then looking at a picture of it said,  "Mr. Straley, you mother had a remarkable memory but I think that you worry to much." 

As it turned out it's true.  My heart is strong.  I have big large pipes in my heat, as clear as the Holland Tunnel at four in the morning on Christmas Day, but I do worry to much.  I got back to work and I wrote my resignation letter for my job.  I'm going to put together a book of my poems and I don't give a damn if they get published or not.  I don't give a damn about any of that stuff anymore,  publishing or reputation, or reviews, I'll finish my new novel by summer.  I just love being able to remember the stories I remember and be able to tell them to someone who will listen.

That's all that matters. When the end comes, I don't have to worry, I'll be there. I won't miss it. Today when I woke up the herring were in our little cove and the gulls were singing their spring herring song, lovely and loud. The sea water was a lovely aqua-greenish white and some men were placing hemlock bows on a lines just off the beach.  

Another spring has come and it didn't take any effort on my part after all.  All that worrying for naught.

Spring came at night. 

Now gulls sing their herring song. 

We leave sheets rumpled. 

jhs....Sitka, AK 

We Are Captives

Looking around the web you can see many things that would astound and amuse you,  Lately I've noticed a trend of people performing for animals in zoos or aquariums.  There was quite a nice video recently of a young woman dancing in front of a dolphin tank where a large dolphin seems to be taking notice of the woman's motions and even bobbing its head in motion in time to her movements.  There are others of human babies reaching out to gorilla mothers who seem to want to cuddle or carry the young ones away.  There is even one troubling video where a lioness appears to be mauling the image of a young child in the glass of her enclosure and the toddler is laughing and clapping.   

Modern life affords the illusion of intimacy with animals.  Our old stories surround us now on television and where once the folk tales were told in the context of hunting cultures, or at least pastoral killing cultures where we understood animals as givers of sustenance to humans,  Now we are more likely to see animals  as spokespeople for human values.  Bears speak to protect our forest and fish,  they don't kill fish or deer themselves.   Arctic bears speak for the other creatures of the arctic for their safety and protection.  They wouldn't kill a baby seal or a whale!   The creatures of the earth are the good guys standing against the bad oil companies and the chemical companies, and all the nameless others... the badies....

I suppose that the reality is, is that we are all animals. and of course animals... are just animals.  As animals we all eat and procreate, and kill as we will, some like the dolphin and the ape,  we have trained to understand rudiments of human language.  But to my knowledge no human being nor any combination of computer and human has ever mastered the communication methods of any other species.  We have never been able to share consciousness with another creature,   as close as we feel we have come with our pets and our companion animals, what we really experience is training, projection, affection, and yes, animal affection and trust for sure... but genuine, letter writing, literate communication, as of yet ... no.  

Even without the bullet proof glass between us the barrier between us and the polar bear is thick. I found this photo on the internet the other day and for some reason I was struck numb by it:  A little boy dressed, at least the caption said, "like a Polar Bear"  pointing at a polar bear in a tank in an enclosure..     My impression right off the bat was first...  The Bear doesn't look like a Polar bear to me... But it well could be... but it looks much more like a Brown Bear.  A Polar Bear's head doesn't seem to have that shape... but who am I to argue with the internet.  Also the color.  Under the water he looks kind of white I guess, and the angle could be a bit off  and the person taking the photo should probably know, assuming there was a handy sign.  And far be it from me to criticize a tykes costume but that is looking a lot like a Rat costume to me.

But let's take it at face value that this is a photo of it a human mammal boy pretending to be a polar bear staring at a young bear believing itself to be a Polar Bear,  In a philosophical sense neither of them are.... how to put this... self actualized... but perhaps there is a solution. .  The the little human mammal, well he's a long way off obviously.... clearly not a bear: small, terrible fur, standing on two legs for far too long.  Way too skinny.  Probably lost his blood lust to kill seal pups. This little mammal has been in captivity far too long.   

The other also... he /she:  bad fur,  two thin, probably lost his/her blood lust for baby seal pups and his/her hunting instinct.. Flabby.  Bored.  The enclosure is too small.  The world has shrunken down much too much.  Many would say, it is not a polar bear any more.  Not Nanook at all.  A ghost creature now.  Something else.  

What do you think the boy is saying to the bear?  I don't know.  But, if I were a boy in a bear suit this is what I would say to a Polar Bear: 

 "Get out now, leave, before your transformation becomes  as complete as mine.  I am only six and I am walking in a ghost world, my food is tasteless  and I have no idea where it comes from.  I want to kill a seal but my parents won't hear of it.  I want to taste fresh blood but my sister says Ick.

I come here every week and I look for cracks in the glass or a hole in the enclosure. I either want  to get in with you or for you to get out.  My parents say it would end badly either way,  you would be killed if you got out, or you would eat me if I got in.  

I tell them, I think we could work out something better.  I tell them I bet I can work something out before they work out this whole thing where the earth is warming and you are going to be left swimming around in the arctic ocean or in this stupid zoo.  I say we can work out something way better than that. 

My father wants to take my Polar Bear suit away, my mother says I will grow out of it.  I say no one is going to do anything about it so it doesn't matter anyway.  I'll be back next week.  I'll bring a hammer."

Loney on the ice

the Polar Bear has nowhere

to jump, anyway. 

jhs--- Sitka, AK 

Now let me put down a big fat and probably contradictory and  unpopular caveat here. I'm not ethically opposed to most zoos.  I think they serve a valuable educational and environmental service.  In some cases they rescue animals that would otherwise be destroyed or die in the wild and use them to educate lots of people to the reasons they were orphaned in the first place: deforestation, habitat encroachment, ect..  But a zoo does not solve the problem of habitat encroachment.   And the animal in a zoo is not the same animal that was in the wild.  Killer whales I'm convinced are not meant for enclosures that I have seen built for them.  I don't think Brown Bears are real Brown Bears in captivity but they are some other kind of happy, lazy creature as long as they are fed and amused, and I don't begrudge them that, particularly if the choice was to kill them or let them die.   Nor do I begrudge their keepers, nor the programs that use them for education programs.  

Thinking About It

Hard rain today. the water was sluicing down the driveway and leaving waves of mud along the crushed rocks.  The culverts under the roads were shooting brown water like hoses onto the tide flats below. and any overturned buckets played like kettle drums in the din.  It was a good day for cuddling up, reading books and thinking deep thoughts. 

Then the rain stopped and the sky was a uniform grey, with some sun shining through.  I had written a long essay over the last two weeks about the history of consciousness.  I had pulled quotes from Gregory Bateson and Martin Heidegger.  I had wanted to talk about a sensation I had about being surrounded by mindful beings, and I worked pretty hard on it. but no matter how hard I beat that horse it just would not get up and run. 

I think I violated one of my first rules of writing:  never try to write smarter than you are. 

So, I erased what I wrote and was feeling kind of crappy about not having done a blog post in a while.  Then three things happened,  the fish meetings in Sitka,  Jan went looking for whales, and I sat on our porch staring out at the water.

First the fish meetings:  the parking lots are full, men in suits with brief cases, the coffee shops are full of people talking about allocations,  men and women, from organizations made of long lists of letters, all bickering about take limits, and other laws that are themselves lists of letters, but what it comes down to is people dividing up a pie. 

Jan comes back from looking at the whales.  "How was it?"  I ask her,  "Terrific," she says,  "Lots and lots of whales. More than I saw this time last year.  The herring are here.  They are deep and the Humpback are hitting them hard.  Chowing down."  She tries to take a step forward then pauses for a while thinking...  Jan has a neurological disease that does not effect her thinking but does effect the way her brain tells her muscles to work.  The brain is mysterious. "Those guys at the meeting are going to have to factor in that whales eat herring.  They eat a lot of herring. They are coming in here earlier and earlier.  This is new. It's going to be tricky."  Then something changes in her tricky brain and she walks on.

Then I was sitting on my porch  and a eagle landed in a spruce tree. This tree is a usual spot for eagles to land in the spring and I haven't seen a big bird there all winter.   I think the eagle had a herring in it's talons because a big raven came and started talking to it, in an pestering aggressive tone.  The eagle ignored the raven,  looked right over the top of it's head.  I swear this is true.  This is not some literary fable I'm making up.  Two branches down on the other side of the trunk another smaller raven was kind of chortling and chuckling away.  The big raven continued to harass the eagle but the eagle did not move.  He simply stood on the branch.  Now I couldn't see a herring, or if he had one or not.  The branch of the tree blocked my view.  But soon enough the huge raven took off and so did the smaller laughing one.  The eagle sat there on what is usually a spring perch.   

The only thing I'm going to save from my old essay are the definitions from the dictionary.  I think they might be useful. They are helpful when you are trying to become smarter. 

Soon enough spring will be here and the big boats will be in Sitka Sound, and more whales, King Salmon will be shoaling closer into the shore.  The eagles will be thick in the trees.  The ravens will be talking to everyone and will be trying to rob the backs of pickup trucks in the grocery stores.  They all know what's coming, they all know the near future because they read the subtle signs and interpret them.  They are also in negotiations with each other I suppose.  But then again....I need to get smarter before I write about that. 

Rain, to sleet, to sun

this late winter is nothing

I have ever seen.

jhs---Sitka

mind |mīnd|noun1 the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought: as the thoughts ran through his mind, he came to a conclusion | people have the price they are prepared to pay settled in their minds.• a person's mental processes contrasted with physical action: I wrote a letter in my mind.2 a person's intellect: his keen mind.• a person's memory: the company's name slipsmy mind.• a person identified with their intellectual faculties: he was one of the greatest minds of his time.3 a person's attention: I expect my employees to keep their minds on the job.• the will or determination to achieve something: anyone can lose weight if they set their mind to it.

consciousness |ˈkänCHəsnəs|noun the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings: she failed to regain consciousness and died two days later.• the awareness or perception of something by a person: her acute consciousness of Mike's presence.• the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world: consciousness emerges from the operations of the brain.

awareness |əˈwe(ə)rnis|nounknowledge or perception of a situation or fact: we need to raise public awareness of the issue. there is a lack of awareness of the risks.• concern about and well-informed interest in a particular situation or development: a growing environmental awareness. his political awareness developed.

Losing Alaska?

Cold weather with a waning moon disappearing into the sea early in the morning.  Last night there was a strange warm wind that started to thaw the ground and small puddles began to appear in the ice pockets of frozen dirt in the rubble of the pathway to my writing shed. 

I met John Haines a long time ago.  He was grumpy and fairly well deaf by then, but if you caught him in a good mood he could be funny.  One night with Wendell Berry on a fundraiser for the Island Institute in Sitka Sound we got him to recite Limericks and tell bawdy jokes, and when he laughed he looked like a woodland elf of some sort.  He like to drink, and tell stories in the right company... he loved beautiful women... he particularly loved smart, artistic women and for being the poet of the wilderness he didn't like to be alone.   He could be gruff and he didn't suffer fools, but as I got older I came to appreciate more and more what he had done with his writing, how, early on he had expressed something important about living in Alaska, something that I come back to over and over in my own life.  From reading writers like John Haines and Richard Nelson and Nancy Lord, I have wondered if  I have lived up to my own ideals, to my own credo that I have set out for myself.   I have come to recognize that  every writer sets a standard for themselves whether they know it or not, every writer believes in something.  They make choices whether they are philosophers or policy wonks, mystery writers, or mystic wilderness poets.  The key, to your own sanity, and happiness in the doing the work, is to know who you are and what you believe.  John Haines did, and he was the first  Alaskan in whom I recognized the conviction.

In the early eighties John Haines wrote the page shown above. Today it appears in his book Living Off the Country: Essays on Poetry and Place.  In it he writes a kind of declaration of concern: "My theme is Alaska, and beyond that, North America: what does it mean to be here in this place at this or at any time--- once, and in time to come?" 

This book is wonderful and is still prescient, it is largely a book of ideas, not a book of public policy,  not an environmental text though John Haines was certainly against rampant development. but more he was in favor of a culture that listened to the land and paid attention to the world.  He was in favor of a humanity that lived in a reciprocal relationship with the earth and the local landscape where one lived.  That is, if you took something from the place it behooved you to at the very, least notice, pay attention, show respect for it and don't expect that thing to just be free and in ever abundant supply as the modern consumer dream world would lead you to believe... that all resourses are at the moment...limitless.

Haines was interested in saving not only the fact of Alaska but the idea of Alaska.  He wanted to save Alaska from the cliche makers who would first put an Idea between the brain and the eyes to filter reality... then sell this idea, all with the intent to make it easier to dig the earth up for the gold, or the oil underneath. "Alaska, the Path To The Future".... Slogans such as these make it seem like each hole in the ground was leading to some social good.   Just as "Jobs for Alaskans" does.  When in fact most of the jobs in bunkhouse projects don't go to Alaskans and each job represents a hole in the local economy where money is leaking out.  

So what do I believe in?  On one hand I love humanity, it's Art and Music,  I love it's crass humor and it's incredible expressions of technological power.  I think a Trident Submarine is a dark and dangerous miracle, I love the infrastructure that goes into the invention of modern brain surgery.  I love the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the French Quarter of New Orleans.  I am grateful for modern medicine, while at the same time,  I believe in the power of the land, and the water, the "other" Alaska.  I believe in the undug, and the uncut, the unpaved and the unbridged. This "left aloneness" cannot be overrun, or else I honestly think the human mind will perish because it will have nothing to reboot to. 

Science fiction writers speak of the "singularity" with grave seriousness.  They predict a time in the future when intelligent machines will think for themselves and will usurp the power  of the planet from human beings.  I'm skeptical that designers wont be building power plugs that can be pulled or alt-control-delete keys that can't be pushed that will prevent such Terminator scenarios.  But as a metaphor the "singularity" looms large in my imagination.  A world in which machines reflect back all of human consciousness can numb and enslave the populace.  A world where humans demand that all environments be mediated first... before we experience them... such a world is a series of theme parks run, finally by a corporate planner.  This is not far fetched at all.  We are becoming far too used to environments made to suit our needs to go back now, to the ancient world where we were humbled by the vastness and the dynamisim of the "other." 

But right now, some humility is needed in order to understand the forces we are tinkering with and it does not take a mystic to hear the grit in the clockwork mechanism begin to slow the gears of our most prized constructs.    

My father, who was a man who was attuned to status, asked me once, who were the big writers in Alaska.  I thought for a long time.  I told him this, and this is what I still tell people when asked about Alaska Literature:  First there is the Land itself,  Alaska is still revealing secretes that we had no idea it was holding, secretes about climate, about paleontology, geology, energy, you name it.  The land and the water are still the greatest story tellers.  And you can't say that about other regions of this world.  Second there are the first peoples.  Their lore is being collected translated and shared,  what they know about the transition to modernity will define what modernity means both good and bad. Their stories are invaluable to our self knowledge.  

Third comes John Haines, the first European poet to take nature seriously in all it's profundity: a solemn man and lover of limericks. 

On a strange warm night

waiting for the moon to rise

I write out your name.

jhs---Sitka

ephemera

More sunny weather and I'm moving into a new writing studio built on the footprint of an old cabin in our yard.  This has a proper foundation and a roof.  This has a floor and a furnace.  This has fine windows and insulation.  This space comes without mildew or mice.  The old place had it's lore, many an unhappy newly single person got back on their feet there.  Many happy people had their first adventures there.  Now it's a a place for my own adventures. My guitars, are here and even my oldest computers,  my Apple IIc is here with the six inch floppy discs containing my old journals and a novel I don't even remember are here. Jan insisted on building me this space, maybe to indulge me... maybe to give us more room in our small  house, whatever, it's beautiful and she is wonderfully generous. 

I'm starting off moving in and going through my old papers and throwing things away.  I've decided to only keep one manuscript each of my old books.  All my old cases except the ones of historical value must go.  Some thirty years of criminal investigations into the fire pit.  Old investment portfolios through several down turns... out out out.... and yellow pads with terrible poetry obscured with mold must go.  I'm sorry the flames must keep you.  

But the photos, I will keep, and most of the books, and all of the journals. Somehow most of them trigger memories like embers banked deep down in the ashes.  Then there is the occasional note, then there is a letter I can't let go of. and I end up wasting an afternoon reading when I should be throwing away.  but yet.  I threw an entire wheel barrow away in only an afternoon.  When I thought I had already winnowed it down. 

Sentimentality is the curse of the serious writer.  J.D. Salinger described sentimentality as "loving something more than God had loved it."  The example he used is the kitten is perfectly fine but the bright pink bow is just too much.  I suppose  another way to put it is that your characters have to earn our respect, they have to earn our tears,  we can't just cry for them because we are told to. We have to know the characters stories to know their feelings. 

 I'm not going to tell you all these peoples stories.  In that sense this blog post is purely sentimental.  But I don't think it's a waste of time for my readers.  In a sense this blog is a little walk back stage in my imagination.  These pictures many of them are the composites of my characters.  Clearly they are Cecil Younger's family.  That I know is true, and Cecil's family is here clear as day, and so am I, of course.  All my friends who helped me write these books, many are not pictured here (many, many are not pictured here) but many are.  Drunks some of them.  Dead some of them.  Saints and criminals.  I wouldn't have traded any of their love and kindness.  

Writing is such a self indulgent business. In August, I plan to retire from my work with  the State of Alaska, I will be writing more, I will be with Jan more.  I will be at my own desk more and  I can't believe I will have this whole space to myself .  I will have all these ghosts to keep me company.  What a lucky, lucky man I've become.  

jhs--- Sitka 

Funny Weather

The sun came out today and just in time.  High pressure system from the north and it fills me with a joy that is hard to express after weeks of rain.  Just to see the sun and have the rain stop beating on our roof, feels like a Hawaiian vacation no matter that it's 38 degrees. 

I love listening to jokes. To get myself through the last month of solid rain I started reading jokes, and telling them.  Rather than listen to my friends talk about the weather I asked if they had heard any new jokes. Young Finn Straley and I like to talk about jokes and how they work.    He sent me this one by a master joke writer by the name of Jack Handy formerly of  SNL.

“To me, clowns aren't funny. In fact, they're kinda scary. I've wondered where this started and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus and a clown killed my dad.” 

Now I'm not going to parse this out to see why it is funny.  I just think it is.  What I love most about this joke is how well written it is.    I've tried to tell it several times from memory but it you get one word or phrase wrong in the telling, the joke falls absolutely flat.    Comedians, like my son, spend years trying to learn the secrete of this. They talk about timing; the "set up' and "the turn", the "payoff."  It's almost as if a great joke has the requirements of a fine haiku.  Which I think in a way they do, 

I think funny stories in America almost always have a three act format, or three beats. You know this of course, the duck walks into the bar two times asking for a gin and tonic, until the bartender gets upset and tells him that he is going to nail his bill to the bar if he asks again.  So of course on the third time the duck walks in and asks for some nails.... when the bartender doesn't have any nails... boom... the duck asks for a gin and tonic.   Three chapters, three beats. "The Rule of Three".  

I've read in oral histories, many stories in the Native American Traditions have a four part structure.  Four directions,  two pairs,  a balance in the cosmos.  Native stories will often have the Coyote coming back three times before the pay off.  Just different. 

The horrible thing is that although there is clearly a structure... the joke structure is slippery and can be changed by intonation and context.  Unlike haiku, jokes are not so easily prescribed.  No hard fast rules.   

 A cowboy walks into a bar and sees a sign hanging over the door that reads: CHEESEBURGER: $6.50 CHICKEN SANDWICH: $7.50 HAND JOB: $10.00

 He walks up to the bar and beckons one of the three exceptionally attractive women serving drinks. "Can I help you?" she asks. "Excuse me  mam,  I was wondering," says the cowboy, "Are you the one who gives the hand jobs?"

 "Yes," she purrs. "I am."

 The cowboy takes off his hat and says,"Well, I'm wondering if you would wash your hands because I would like a cheeseburger."

I love this one too.  So, still a basic three act play, the structure is here.  But here is another great thing that humor does,  the suspension of disbelief of the totally implausible premise.  As a story teller if you get them buying into your dumb premise.  (a restaurant that would have hand jobs on the menu) your audience is starting to laugh right from the beginning.  You've hooked them.  Good jokes are somehow irresistible. Then in this joke once they are hooked, the joke takes a different turn for the payoff.  

When I heard the joke it wasn't a cowboy.  I added that.  I added that because I happen to know that cowboys while rough, and they like talking about sex, they are mostly pretty fastidious about their food.  It just rang true to me that the man was a cowboy. 

There is a whole complicated issue of what men find funny and what women find funny.  Of course imbedded power assumptions can get both men and women riled up.  I believe this is because there always has and always will be, a great deal of tension between men and women, and where there is tension there is the need to find relief through humor.  When I was young I thought rough sex talk was wholly the providence of men.  Of course that wasn't true,  I just hadn't been allowed into the company of women who talked openly about sex.  I wasn't intimate with women who told funny stories to relief the tension of their lives of subjugation, but of course they were out there.  Cowgirls I met were rough and told ribald stories, and of course bartenders and other working women told rough jokes in which men were the object of their ridicule.   Always, where there is conflict there is the potential for a good joke.  Now,  of course women play on the same field as men when it comes to humor,  even if they sometimes don't get the same respect in the world of comedy.

 Here is something else weird that the last joke illustrates:  Hard, percussive sounds are somehow just naturally funnier than soft sounds.   If the cowboy asks for a hamburger at the payoff.  It's just not as funny as "Cheeseburger".  Cheeseburger is a funnier word than Hamburger. Don't ask me why.  Comedians say that "K" sounds are funnier that any other.  Some say this is because of the Yiddish influence in American humor.  The explosive and guttural sounds of that language had a lot to do with early stand up comedy that came to us from Vaudeville. 

In one of my favorite movies, "Caddyshack"  Rodney Dangerfield was given a line to say,  something like "Hey that gopher just stole my ball!"  but he ad-libbed a much funnier line when he said,  "Hey, that Kangaroo, just stole my ball!"   Try it with any other animal.   Kangaroo is just funnier.

Humor wants us to resolve our conflicts in ways that are outrageously  silly and life affirming.  Sure there is dark humor and plenty of jokes about death, but they are told by survivors.  When I was little my parents took in eastern european families who had survived the War.  I was very young, but I do remember there was a lot of laughing around our table.   Humor is a survival technique. Many comedians are sad and frustrated people.  Their lives were rich in conflict.   

Can you train yourself to be funny?  I have no idea.  There are clearly ways to be funnier.  Joke telling is a proven therapy for autistic children.  Telling jokes opens up their sense of emotional relationship.  Teach them to tell jokes and they begin to see how they can participate in an emotional world.  One which might remain essentially mysterious to them but one that they can master and enjoy.  There are very few rules for how to make people laugh.   Finn tells me that being funny in public requires an instinct that you hone by doing it over and over and over again, getting up and telling a joke and seeing what the reaction is then going back and editing it.   Comedy is not hierarchical  because the audience is empowered to make the judgment.  Funniness is anarchic and mysterious, there are rules but they are so evasive, as to be almost maddening.  A good comedian should be able to make any audience laugh.   What is funny?   It's almost like asking how to spin gold from straw. 

 Three mice are sitting in a bar in a very rough part of town. They are bragging about how tough they are.  The first mouse says, "When I see a trap, I lay down on it trip the latch and catch the bar in my teeth, then do bench presses with the bar, to work up an appetite,  Then I eat the cheese and leave. 

The second mouse says, "That's nothing,  when I see some Rat Poison, I take it home and grind it up into my coffee so I have a good buzz going all day long."  Then the two mice look at the third.

The third mouse says, "This is a bunch of Baloney.  I've got to get out of here,  I've got to go home and fuck the cat." 

Crass yes, but something about joke telling ties us to some physical and much older part of ourselves, it may be the one vital oral tradition that is still alive today.  Men and women telling jokes about each other, is an ancient art form that ties us all the way back to myth, when we saw ourselves as animals.  Again what people forget about the oral traditions, what people forget about Native American culture is how funny the stories can be, and how all people like to get together and laugh.  We all have this in common.

This silliness, wordplay and gentle combat is what makes us able to tolerate each other, even when we spend six weeks listening to the rain.   

Clear night, half a moon

sits above my writing shed

waiting for her cow.  

jhs--Sitka

No Answer

Strange and depressing weather, like the opening of an old horror movie.  A friend calls in the middle of January and says in a voice tinged with wonder that it looks like his Rhubarb is starting to come up.  Our grass is a sickly yellow and the rain continues to fall while the clouds clog the coast, for days now, weeks possibly I can't seem to remember. The only good thing to report is there seems to be more light in the evening, even if it is a weak and sickly kind.

I decided I wanted to break the mood of my last few blogs and try to write something a bit more upbeat and cheerful this week.  Maybe something even what you would call celebratory, but I don't know that I can:  an old friend was found dead in his trailer last week. His neighbors didn't notice him coming or going for a few days and they became concerned and they called the police.  When they went him they found him dead of natural causes.  

Ron was a big grumpy man. He liked you to think he was dangerous.  He liked you to think he was crazy.  But the truth was he was brilliant and sensitive.  Since the time he laid down his memories of his service on the Mekong river in the late sixties I don't think he ever slept more than a few hours  in a night.  Ever since I knew him he didn't own a bed.  He slept on a recliner surrounded by books.  He studied Native American Literature, and U.S. History.  He had been a History and Lit. teacher himself in a small college in Oregon, a lifetime ago.  Like Big Daddy himself he hated all forms of "Mendacity" and bureaucratic bullshit.  He didn't generate a lot of garbage and what waste he did, he recycled and took care of himself and he didn't feel he should pay his garbage can fee if he didn't need a garbage can.  The losing battle was waged for years.  

Ron liked to drink and make calls.  Sometimes he would call to talk about my wife's whale research.  He was fascinated by it.  He was fascinated by her, for while Ron could be hateful about women in positions of bureaucratic authority, he was a goofy romantic about strong women who worked independently. I know several woman who took his calls as he rambled and asked questions.  He was funny and doting, flirtations, I assume, but not creepy, for he genuinely admired these women.  He told me so.  Ron also loved cats, and guns, and beer, and Wagner, and Beethoven, and the heaviest of Heavy Metal Music.  He had a radio show for a time and he would be banned from the station at times, but he was made for radio with his gruff voice and his willingness to do all night shifts and play anything from Sun-Ra, to The Ring Cycle, to Cannibal Corpse. But then of course there were some screeds which didn't find a suitable audience.  

I once tried to see if Ron would stop talking on his own when he called.  It was ten at night and he called to talk.  I let him run,  it was good stuff mostly, I'm not sure I remember all of the topics that night but surely he mentioned: The idiocy of the Forest Service, Fish and Game, City of Sitka, All Government agencies.  The possibility of his running for office,  advice from me on computers and dictation software, his desire to write a book, The depth that Sperm whales feed,  the size of their brains, how a Sperm whale could certainly beat that fucking freak Bobby Fischer,  what a great little darling our friend Lilly was,  the war tactics of the Lakota,  and the superior intellect of Hunter S. Thompson.  The point being by 11:30 he was no where near slowing down and I was running out of juice.  

Ron had dozens of friends he did this with.  He probably spent thousands of hours on the telephone. I suspect it was his greatest release valve.  In all those calls he probably wrote a dozen books, and gave them to his friends to distribute in their retelling.

Some men never conquer their demons, but some get close.  Horrible things once experienced cannot be completely forgotten.  All a person can do who has been visited by darkness is to reach out towards the light that he sees in others.  That's what Ron was doing in his phone calls.

Ron was a big guy and complicated.  This is an inadequate tribute to him, because I didn't know him all that well.  He was hard to help, because help was not what he was asking for.  Alaska was a good place for him,  Montana and parts of Idaho and Washington are still good, I suppose Texas too, Big Country  where men who have seen too much can have room to ramble about like the wild, big hearted bulls they became.  

          We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.  I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like Huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles and hour with the top down to Las Vegas,  And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus!What are these Godamn animals?" Then it was quiet again.  My attorney had taken his shirt off and was porting beer on his chest, to facilitate the tanning process.  "What the hell are you yelling about?" he muttered, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered with wrap around Spanish sunglasses.  "Never mind." I said.  "It's your turn to drive."  I hit the brakes and aimed the Great Red Shark toward the shoulder of the highway.  No point mentioning the bats, I thought.  The poor bastard will see them soon enough." -----------Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas    Hunter S. Thompson

Rain on the roof

I look at my phone

but it does not ring

jhs.....Sitka, 

Winter Holds Its Breath

Hazy clouds and about 38 degrees.  No rain, nor snow,  some sun off and on. The grass still is mostly green and the mothers day Rhododendron have leaves curled like toilette paper rolls.  Here in Sitka the season just doesn't know what to do. 

The news of the world is sad, reading about the killings in Paris: with the attendant protests which carry on their back some of the original racist and anti muslim sentiment.  Fear, and hatred, the trumpeting of universal and unbreakable principles... always ring with the preamble to martial music and war.  But how can we go to war against terror, against an emotion? 

I can only imagine one way, through renewed effort of courage and understanding.  Steadfastness, not in the principles, but in the flawed everyday carrying out of the expression of our principles.  

That's why I was sad that the Paris perpetrators were killed.  I had hoped they were to be captured and given lawyers.  At least one should have had a woman lawyer.  This trial would have been long and talky.  The families of the dead would have been given the opportunity to scream their curses at living  ears, and in time say bitter prayers along side.  To my mind I would want to see families of the prisoners get their chance to talk about their faith and disavow violence yet, again in time,  try to explain what it feels like to see your prophet mocked in a country that does not welcome your faith or your practice.  In my vision of justice I would have this trial go on and on....and eventually have the French people take the verdicts together and see that justice is something that is hard to build together on this earth and not something that is meted out by a few individuals with guns.  

But of course this is just me.  It seems the world likes stories that fit into film scripts... revenge stories...faster solutions.  The wold likes men with guns dispensing justice.  I have been guilty of this myself.  There is nothing like a revenge fantasy to sell copies.   

I am in my second reading of the Qur'an, and have just finished a fine book about the history of Al-Qeada, called The Looming Tower by Jeffery Wright.  I found The Tower a fascinating and well written book, but plan to keep digging.  What Wright says is, the tale of Islamic extremism in the modern world started with Sayyid Qutb  in the 1950s in Egypt.  A relatively obscure writer with relatively few followers.  The idea is a reaction against Western Colonialism certinally  but  Qutb also evolved his ideas from an interesting linguistic reality in the nature of Arabic and it's relationship to the Qur'an.  

This, as a writer, is what interests me about peoples relationship to this text ... but bear with me, because as you will see, I'm no expert here. The Qur'an is pretty much everything on the Arabian Penninsula as far as written culture.  It's hard to overestimate it's importance.  The rules of Arabic grammar, tense, and syntax evolved to accommodate the reading of the Qur'an.  The Angel Gabriel comes to the Prophet first in Medina then in Mecca and speaks into his ear.  The Angel reveals the word of God.  Remember this is the God of Abraham.  Same God of the Old Testament, of Issac, and Noah and Jesus.  Mohammad, the Prophet praises Jesus profusely, in the Qur'an. Much of the Holy text is written in the second person: "You, prophet... you do this... you must tell the people this" in the voice of the Angel of the lord.  but sometimes the Angel is so filled with the fervor of God's word he starts speaking in Godly voice,  "And the Heavens will feel your voice..."   The Angel tells the Prophet how to unify the people at the temple. He tells the Prophet in the most detailed language, how to do real estate trans actions,  Divcorces, Pretty much everything the people need to know.  Why?  To bring them together under one leader in one church. For at this time, some six hundred years after the birth of Christ, most of the people on the Arabian peninsula were not Jews or Christians, nor Muslims but were pantheists believing in multiple gods, some of local sects, some of Roman, or Greek origin.  This caused distention, and also disruption in politics and the economy.  

It became tradition carried on to this day for the followers of the Prophet Mohammad  to memorize large sections  of the Prophets teaching. Some still, by adulthood are able to memorize the entire Holy text.  Now, imagine that.... the voice of the Angel of God, talking directly to you, as if you were a Prophet.  Repeated over and over into your mind, when you were say 7 or 8, Until you remembered every word of a three hundred page text that encapsulated the given law and wisdom of your culture..   

This is not just a book.  This is a deep cultural identity.  Qutb believed and wrote that nothing more was needed in life BUT the Qur'an.   He lived and studied for a time in Greeley Colorado after World War II and he found the new western world to be silly and licentious where he found the life prescribed by the Qur'an was dignified, masculine, Godly, and ordered.  Western, democratic capitalism was rapacious, pansexual, and unGodly.  To Qutb's mind the two cultures were mutually exclusive, they could not coexist. Liberal democracy could only pollute the vitality of Islam.  In 1966 Sayyid Qutb was happy to be hanged in Cairo for his opposition to the opening of Egypt's overtures to the Western developers. .  His teachings have become the foundation of Islamic extremism around the globe ever since:  one very quite and dignified writer who studied in Greeley, Colorado, set the tuning fork humming that would topple the World Trade Center.

I suppose, as a person who respects writing, I should take heart that Ideas Matter.  Writing Matters. How a piece of text is written, the choice of person, first, second or third, is a critical  decision. And I do...because if anything is true this must be:  The words of one Living God appears to have brought us to the brink of war then the words of the same Living God should be able to bring us back from that brink.  And it will be brought back by the words of Silly, and Profane artists, Women, Intellectuals, Jews, and Christians, Palestinians, Native Americans, Homosexuals, and all the multitudes of human and non-human I cannot think of that this One God surely must speak through if this God created and is responsible for them all.  They all, even the hummingbird at my feeder must have a say in this matter of world peace.  Even the scallop on the rocks, and the baby asleep in the trailer down the road.  Surly God, (praise be his name) has not forgotten her.  This baby may grow up to have the answer saving us all. 

God Bless all this love that cannot be killed, by anyone, anywhere, and long may it be shared, freely.   

A night so dark

         I close my eyes 

to see some light. 

jhs---Sitka

.  

Abundance

2015 begins with a high pressure system of northerly weather: whitecaps breaking on the rocks and a hard wind scratching her nails down the grey-green sea.  The ground is frozen today and a Blue Heron stands coiled up on the tide flat, watching, watching.  

I apologize for my absence from the site but I got sick on my last day in Las Vegas with some kind of traveling cold which I felt compelled to share with my loved ones, resulting in a lot of snoozing, sneezing, laying about and mutual bringing of soup.  

Christmas came and went, and it gave me a chance to think about our lucky life of abundance.  Let me finish with Las Vegas.  The reason for the trip was to eat at this one restaurant:  Joel Robuschon.  I had read an article about it years ago in the New Yorker, about how the the builders of the MGM Grand had built a mansion for him in the Casino and he had created a 5 star restaurant in an attempt to make the most exquisite dining experience anywhere in the world.  Foodies decried it as unworthy of the title: "Disneyesque"  "slight-of-hand"  Others said he was successful in making the best food from fresh ingredients, with the best staff, ect...  I told myself that if I ever had some money to spare I would spend it with some people I loved at this joint.  And I did.  And it was the most fun I ever had eating.  

Of course it is slight of hand.  They get you a little drunk on the magnificent Champagne  and the attentive staff who will not let your water glass go empty.  The twenty five kinds of freshly made bread, the cold corn bisque with fresh sweet cream, to start, and then push on to all kinds of delicacies, that don't taste like any flavors I could recognize, neither salt nor fat nor sugar, but all were delectable.   We laughed out loud with each course.  We were not trying to play it cool.  The staff started laughing with us.  The chef came out to see what all the hub bub was from these hicks.  We told him our stories.  And when Jan told him about Sperm whales and Black Cod he brought us extra deserts.  (also because our black cod was four minutes late to the table which he was desperately sorry for)  By the end we were all friends.  The Chef came out and gave us bags of food to take back with us, along with extra courses and deserts.  The deserts were miracles of invention.  A Soufflé  warm from the oven that they put home made ice cream into the top at the table melted down into the chocolate-rasperry  goodness. Finn took a bite and looked at me and said,  " I think I might cry."  Emily asked in all seriousness.  "Do you think it would be all right if I went back there and kissed the dessert chef?" 

We left happy, and stuffed,  The check was about twice the amount as I spent on my first car:  a van that I had for about a month then the engine caught fire and I left in a little down in Eastern Washington.  This meal was a much better value. 

Now, would the meal have been so good if we had pulled the exact same food out of styrofoam containers and eaten it at home?  Of course not.  Meals are events, defined by setting and expectations.  Anyone who has been hunting or gathering and eating their catch on a windy beach or around a campfire know.  Wild food tastes better outside.  Grandmothers pies tastes better in her kitchen.  Context is everything in storytelling and in meals.  The story being told at Joel Robuschon is one of european high culture.  It is a trip to an imagined Paris, granted one that only may exist in the mind of a tourist to Las Vegas, but it is a spectacularly decadent Paris  and a Paris, where the waiters are exceedingly kind. 

But I have to say, even if you pulled this food out of a plastic container it would still be unbelievably good.  I will dream about the one perfectly cooked asparagus tip with pate and an artichoke heart appetizer, until the day I die. 

Now, let me tell you about another meal.  I worked almost every day of the Holidays.  I did not work the 25th or the 26th.  The days I'm at the office around 2:30 my friend from prison calls me.  It is part of his schedule.  He has a night job as a custodian, so he sweeps and cleans up. For this he earns about $83 a month for which he is grateful.  He had been serving his time earlier in southeastern Alaska and now he is much further north.  When he was arrested two years ago he was taken directly from high school and they didn't let him get his coat.  Department of Corrections no longer allows anyone to give inmates clothes so they have to buy clothes from their commissary. Commissary has to cover all toiletries, towels, shampoos, soaps, over the counter medicines, and any snack food, you are allowed to have.  Clothes in most prisons can only be ordered a few times a year.  My friend is in a place where it is commonly below zero.  I sent him money this year so he could buy wither clothes the one time he could order them.  He called me last week to say that he got his long underwear and his winter pants.  He was very happy.  

He was also happy.  He was spending twenty dollars on a Christmas Feast.  I asked him about it.  He said his "Cellie" or cell mate is getting out in February and this makes my friend a little bit sad.  My friend is young and somewhat vulnerable.  His Cellie is 62 and well respected.  He doesn't like people coming into their cell and that is fine with my friend.  I believe the prison authorities paired them up to keep my young friend safe.  For the Feast, my friend is making Nachos, he has three cans of Chili,  four bags of corn chips, two cans of refried beans, and one can of jalepeano flavored squeeze cheese.  His Celliie wants meat so he chopped up a can of Spam and added that into the mix.  They heated it all up in the microwave on their section where their cell is and they celebrated the holiday by themselves. They ate on greasy paper plates with plastic forks back on their bunks in the solitude of their cell.  They decided to drink water and save money. This was their Christmas Feast. The last one they will have together.  

I asked my friend how it was, and he said, most uncharacteristically: "Magnificent,"  and I'm sure it was.

Ice cold wind blowing

my neighbor calls to tell me 

he saw hummingbirds!

. 

jhs--Sitka, Ak 

What I Learned In Las Vegas

Las Vegas.  What hasn't been said about it already?  It appears to be the joke about capitalism that everyone is in on. It is supposed to be playfully crass, and venal on its own terms, and if you don't like it you can get the hell out and leave your money behind. 

We know how it works: No clocks anywhere. Keep the lighting dim, perpetual dusk, keep the atmosphere charged with music and noise to keep you awake and alcohol to keep you a bit off balance.  The only place to sit and rest is a place where you can reach for your wallet and give the House more money.

But why does it work?  The town works . . . well, commercial gambling . . . works on a phycological principle that the ego is stronger than reason, and the ego believes that each of us is special.  So special that we believe for us the odds accrue.  

This is not my strong suite so bear with me. The commercial gambling business is built, (I've been told) on the belief that people will keep gambling if they win at least once out of eight times.  One in eight.  Those are your basic chances on any roll, flip, tip, whirl, chuck, wiggle, spin, what have you. Across the board.  Not in every game not in ever turn but basically this is what keeps the business going.  If, on average, the customer didn't win at least once every eight times they (the gambler) would slip the hook and walk out.  More winning than that and it's not so profitable for the House. Now the Ego of every human thinks I've lost in love, I've lost in my job, I lost my dog growing up. I lost my keys ,  ect...  I have lost way more than seven times, so this time, I HAVE THIS COMING to me.  The Ego tells every one of us in one way or another You have suffered enough. Today you are a WINNER.  

This is what I think makes this town work, and in Vegas the employees either work at taking your money or they work at making you feel special as they do it.

But of course odds don't accrue.  The odds always stay exactly at one and eight.  It dosen't matter if you lost all seven pulls before, or one of them, or them all, each pull or flip is just the same.  Now, the odds always stay and will remain irrevocably at one in eight even on that eighth pull . . . or throw or card, or flip.  Whatever.  We don't get luckier. (unless something else changes)  All the odds tell us is: over time if we pull that lever, make that throw, we predictably WILL LOSE, seven out of eight times over time,  and our ego has no influence over that outcome no matter what luck ritual, or pretty human being blows on those dice. 

So here is what I learned in Las Vegas:  God doesn't owe me a damn thing. And I don't know how much I've suffered yet.  And I'm sure as heck not a natural born winner, so I'm not an instinctive gambler.  And as far as numbers go... show me to the dyslexic special Casino with the extra big numbers and the nice ladies who explain the games REAL SLOWLY.  

I also miss the old time slot machines where the coins come pouring down out  onto the laps of the old ladies in the wheel chairs who wore the golf gloves so their hands wouldn't get blisters. 

I hate the new machines that pay in tickets saying have won 25 cents.  This is like spending your time playing a boring video game that, when you lose, says: "Fuck you, you cheapskate!"

I like coming to Vegas during the opening of the National Rodeo Finals because during the opening days the young guys and the stock contractors get to come to the casinos,  These are the guys that work in the back and bring the animals to the show.  They are dirty and they smell bad, and I know they sometimes bring whores up to their rooms. When they take off their straw hats they have pure white foreheads with dirt lines where their hat bands rest.  I saw one kid roll a cigarette and drop it. The blond girls in short skirts giggled and he tipped his hat to them and bent down very slowly in the front salon of the MGM Grand and picked up his cigarette as if he were picking a wild flower from his saddle.  Now I don't know enough about whores in Las Vegas, having only met one in my life. I don't know about those girls  but I know that kid picking up that cigarette was a drunk cowboy.  

I do like that the people who work in the hotels and the casinos seem generally nice, which must be difficult when their jobs must entail things like cleaning up a lot of cowboy puke.  We were walking back late at night with a couple of cowboys who had passed through the YEE- HAA stage of rowdiness on into the completely unintelligible language stage of some kind of bro-yelling . . . until they got on the people mover sidewalk, which was apparently too much. The one who needed the most help, lost it all on the mover and the carpet which seemed a hard thing to clean up.  But the next morning it was spotless. And everybody was still smiling.

The cowgirl fashion includes a lot of fake leopard skin.  This I don't quite get.  But I like it.  Better than real leopards. 

When I was a young man I worked with stock, and I wore the hat and boots.  I loved the work, but I was a terrible rodeo rider.  I rode in three country rodeos.  I got bucked off on my head each time.  An old time cowboy told me I would have to ride about 75 horses before I got any good at it, and I knew right then that I would be a quadriplegic, changing channels with a mouth wand by the time I rode 75 bucking horses.  So that dream died in the crib.  But I have rodeo cowboy envy.  I only won one buckle in my life and it was for a mule race.  The favorite that year was a young woman who was a better mule rider than I was, but I drew a better mule. Anyway, I won, but the buckle was a tiny silver thing.  Shit.  It simply would not do in Vegas this year.  Some of the buckles on the waists in Vegas are as big as boogie boards.  I wanted to take pictures of them but it was awkward asking, and doing it on the sly was even more awkward. 

I also learned that I am not a Vegas baller or High roller, who can throw money around at the tables without a care..  Neither is anyone in my family.  I had planned this trip.  I had a check coming from the royalties for Cold Storage, Alaska.  I did not know how big it was going to be.  I did not ask for a big advance, so I figured it could have been . . . something.  Anyway  it was something.  Finn is working on his own.  Jan works,  I work a good job.  I planned to save the money but a part of it I wanted to share with my family.  So the trip.  I also wanted to eat at this fancy restaurant in Vegas (more on that later).  The check turned out to be . . . lets say enough to make a down payment on a nice American car.  A nice check but not crazy rock star money.  So, I gave Finn, Emily, Jan, and Myself some mad money for gambling.  They were thrilled.  They were grateful.  It was excessive.  I was a high roller, a baller. 

Until they went to the black jack tables that were crowded with cowboys and cowgirls: big buckles and leopard skins,  hats pulled down, Hee-Hawing. It was TWENTY DOLLAR minimum bets at all the tables.  All of a sudden these were Cow women, and Cow men staring at us frightened children with our lunch money from Alaska. "Damn Kid,s are you here to PLAY or WHAT?"  

"Ah... no.. sorry. We are looking for the five dollar tables." and a big round of motherly cowgirl laughter rose through the air like air freshener.  "Honey you haven't been here since the sixties, have ya?" 

 We were not Ballers.  

That's fine. I learned that I would rather give my money away to people I know than lose it.   I started buying crap to take back.  Jan met a cow woman in the elevator  (these elevators BTW are freakishly efficient - 38 floors - push the button and "bing" it's there) who was getting married and tried to buy her a wedding gift.  I also started tipping like Tony Soprano.  That too is an ego thing, but I don't care, it's my mad money. I give the pool guy 20 bucks for showing me where the pool is. Why the hell not?   I hate losing money to the Casino,  so I'm giving it to the help.  "Hey Sharon, how are ya, here ya go."  I can tip like a baller. 

We leave tomorrow.  I loved being here.  Mostly because I was here with people I love so much.  But also too, Las Vegas is a town where you come to contemplate the unknown forces. I know Finn and Emily did.  It really is a religious town.  It is a place where you go and whether you admit to it or not if you are involved in it's major industry: gambling. You are asking yourself, "Oh God, what can I bring to the table? What can I do to increase my odds just a bit? "

Desert night

planes lifting off

and disappear 

over a hundred

million lights. 

jhs-- Las Vegas.