The Cellar

Another warm day: songbirds in the tall salmonberry bushes.  The fireweed are showing white seeds and dogwood flowers are in perfect flower along the creek beds.  Dogs rub their back in cut grass whenever they can and kids toter down sidewalks on their small bikes sucking on popsicles sometimes with their helmets unclipped. 

Tragedy of another shooting in the news and the talkers talk of the Confederate flag and gun laws and we parse our words trying to understand the difference between "madness" and "terrorism", between a politically motivated killing, and a culturally mandated one.  

I don't know.  But in amongst all the talk I heard the families of the victims speak of forgiveness, and I found that incredibly moving, black southern voices,  deeply Christian voices.  These people were struggling mightily against their own knee jerk attitudes to find their better selves in their public speech when addressing the man accused of killing their loved ones.  They didn't resort to lazy, or cowardly slander, they spoke out of their truth, and their love of Jesus.  

I so admired them.

If racism is part of what is on the table now, then we must confront it in ourselves.  My own racism comes out ignorance.  I grew up in mostly private schools, and rural communities in the north,  I worked many blue collar jobs and sat quiet for many racist jokes, and laughed and more than a few.  I told myself I was a "progressive" and even radical for my leftist political beliefs,  but too often I stayed quiet when real hatred was given voice and I didn't say a word against it.  Why should I?  There were no Black people around to hear.  I was always adverse to physical confrontation.  I was shy.  Bookish.  I would teach them in an essay.. or a novel.  

Sometimes I did.  But sometimes not clearly enough, and mostly those books never made it into the right hands.  The books were read by the few who were already inclined toward me anyway.  

Don't get me wrong,  I'm not interested in some kind of liberal tear fest here, or worse an AA style feel good confessional. My cheap white guilt heals no Black wounds.  I just think if we are really going to talk about racism we have to start with our own racism... our own limitations and prejudices.  We are all limited by our human experience.  Class and circumstance imprints on us all a certain set of expectations and prejudices. The people who said the sweet and forgiving words to the alleged shooter may well be saints.  But the rest of us live within the parameters of our own experience and we may not be able to love everyone.  We will love the ones we know and have judged to be worthy of love.  Now, of course, this is an argument for broader education and greater faith in our democratic principals and we should trust our institutions to help us resolve conflict with our perceived enemies, not to open fire on them.  But also... we should always be sure just to check ourselves.   Check our prejudices. 

When I was a kid living in New York city, (where my dad briefly had a job) I had snuck out to see B. B. King at the Fillmore East.  It was the late show and I hung out with my buddies after, through some mishap I got on the wrong subway going home and ended up at 125 street in Harlem.  This was 1969,  before it was Bill Clinton's neighborhood and before anyone ever heard of a Starbucks.  It was three in the morning and I crossed he tracks and as I popped down into the tunnel four black men blocked my path.  I took one look and said, "Ooops... I forgot something," and ran up the stairs and to another staircase.

When I got down to the platform I could hear laughter from the other end of the platform. and a young black man came down towards me.  Clearly, now I recognized him as one of the four from the tunnel: a student probably from nearby Columbia University, perhaps a professor,  thick glasses, maybe even a corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches (but thats probably an imaginative flourish)  he sidled up to me and said only,  

"Boo."  

Prejudice.  Pre- Judgement.  I had pre judged him.  Roll those dice twelve times in that same situation and I would probably fail that test twelve times.  I would have needed to live in that neighborhood to know the signs.  I would have needed more information not to pre- judge those men.  

We live in a remarkable age of information.  Perhaps we can put it to use.  Perhaps with more love in are hearts and with less of an instinct to shoot and more of an instinct to point at ourselves we could finally really face the seemingly intractable issue of race, and class, in America.  

Warm evening, sitting

out in the red chairs with you

listening to the birds. 

jhs---Sitka

Urge and Urge and Urge

 

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
 beginning and the end
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and
 increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of
 life.
To elaborate is no avail, learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is
 so.----------------- Walt Whitman 1819- 1892

Spring has come to Sitka, the sun shines more often and when the rain falls it is warmer and more sporadic.  Fruit trees show their blossoms, those that didn't get caught by the freezing rain.   Dandelions have begun their seething rush through the lawns and road cuts. 

I know I should hate them but I don't.  They are the lovely anarchists, the interlopers.  I like how they tent up at night and unfold to smile at the sun in daylight.

The herring have spawned more than a month ago and the great flocks of gulls have dispersed.  Now the King Salmon are starting to shoal off shore and the with them the salmon fishermen, the charter lodges, the trollers, the line crews in the cold storages begin to arrive.  There are two cruise ships are in town disgorging their sleepy, overfed visitors onto the streets to buy their T shirts and trinkets. Pretty girls are arriving in town with every plane, strong young men with every boat. 

Someone has convinced the tourists that no trip on a ship is complete without buying a piece of expensive jewelry as a love token for the woman you are traveling with.  Romance and travel, overindulge, you may never pass this way again.  "Urge and urge and urge the procreant urge of the world"  you would have to be numb to the world not to feel it in the air this time of year on the streets of Sitka.  

I am preparing for the Northwords Writers Conference in Skagway at the end of the month.  I love Skagway, for that town has no shame when it comes to the tourist trade and it comes by it honestly.  One of the fun things I get to do at this year besides hang out with Dana Stabenow, and Don Reardon and the magnificent Buckwheat is to have a public conversation with Mary Roach, the science writer who is the author of among other books Bonk, Stiff, Gulp, Spook, and Packing for Mars.  I've been cramming for this interview for weeks now.  She may be the smartest person I will have ever spoken with in my life.  Certainly she is the only person I have ever met who has had intercourse while being photographed in a sonograph machine,  which I positive people are going to want to hear about.  

"Urge and urge and urge...."  I am sixty one years old and because of my persistent unipolar depression and the cocktail of medications I take to keep that in bounds, the old "fire down below" as Bob Seger sang does not burn as hot as it did as when I was eighteen, or when I was thirty, for which I am frankly thankful.  I can think a lot more clearly now and I enjoy womens company much more without the fire alarm blaring in my ears constantly.  Distracting that.  

I do enjoy lovely smart women.  This week a colleague of Jan's from Norway by way of Denmark and England named Chris Lockyer stayed with us.  She is a renowned expert on the physiology of large Marine Mammals,  particularly whales, for nearly forty years she has crawled around in the guts and heads of whales all over the world plucking out eyes and ear bones to examine. Just as Jan is, Chris is extremely lovely, and more importantly quite gracious and good company.  She has picked up quite a lot of interesting conversational tidbits in her long life.  It is a blessing to sit on a fine, clear evening to drink a soda and listen to beautiful and smart women talk about a subject they are passionate about.  This is a different kind of passion that I'm experiencing now that I hadn't expected.  

The Urge of the world takes all kinds of forms doesn't it?  The herring spawn coming in and the smell of milt in the air.  The conversation of a long married couple.  Dandelions taking over a lawn.  Old friends talking on the phone not wanting to hang up, enjoying each others voice.  

And sex, I'm not giving up on sex.  I can't wait to talk with Mary Roach about sex and death and digestion.   If you have a notion you should come to Northwords and ask her your own questions.  My questions might tend to be writerly, or frankly dorky. (Did your publisher pay for the cost of the sonogram or was that covered by your insurance?) 

I will continue to write about sex, but I'm awkward at it, at least according to my father.  On his death bed, and I swear this is true, he asked me to lean in,  he said,  "John,"  I said,  "What, Pop?"  he said, "You need more sex in your stories."  "Don't make it so fancy, get right to the sex." 

He died a couple of weeks later when I was back in Sitka, just before the herring spawned on our beach.  I think of him now, often... but particularly in the spring, wondering how to put more sex in my stories without making it seem weird... or like I was just doing as a dying mans request.

 Eagles on the beach

playing on their broken flutes,

fighting over fish.

jhs Sitka 

Prison Reading

The gulls are crying over the herring eggs exposed on the rocks at low tide, yet snow, sleet and hail continues to fall at tide line.  Cherry blossoms hold ice crystals, and our old dog barely wants to go out to pee before she runs right back in to lay back down by the heater. 

My friend from prison continues to call.  I sent him two books, The Hobbit,  and the complete Lord Of The Rings Trilogy .  He calls me every day to tell me of his progress, and about all the interest from other inmates he gets in the books.  When I suggests that he could sell them.  He scolds me saying that he would never profit from a book.  He donated the Hobbit to the Library starting off a serious sign up war for it..  Lots of interest in the book because the last installment of the film just showed a couple of weekends ago. From talking with him I have found that reading in prison is a different activity than it is on the outside. 

A lot depends on where you are in your term, and your attitude about your term.  Very early on young men are often energized towards self improvement.  My friend read three books about his culture that I sent him.  He was hungry and he enjoyed them.  He had questions.  He became the secretary of the Naive Culture Association.  Now there are budget cuts, he doesn't complain,  my friend never complains (to me at least) and he never speaks ill of anyone.  He just mentions that there will be no Potlatch this summer as there was last summer.  Cut from two Potlatches a year to one.  There will be an "Indoor picnic, with no visitors" for the Native Culture Club his summer.  He laughed when he told me this and said,  "An indoor picnic with no visitors sounds like dinner to me."  

He is still the secretary but there are not many cultural activities.  Now he reads mostly fantasy.  He was reading pretty childish stuff that he could get from the library and I suggested Tolkien,  he had never heard of him and his books had been stolen from the collection.  So I asked that my local bookstore send him the books. (friends and family cannot send inmates books, they have to come directly from a business for security reasons)  That's when I learned this:  early in a long stretch, books are like sleep, the longer the better.  They lift you out of your circumstance.  Up and out. The Trilogy is like a narcotic in jail, lots of people want it.  My friend keeps his Tolkien locked in his cell.  

I asked if I could buy him a subscription to a news magazine and he was quite clear, "no."  The news of the day made him unhappy.  He says he looks at the Anchorage papers every once and a while and he says the news all seems the same and it all makes him sad.  That's all he would say.  I couldn't engage him.  He was firm.  News made him sad.  When I thought of this it made sense,  He will be eligible for release in seven years.  He does not want to know what he is missing right now.  I told him I will be there in the year before he is released,  I will get him a news magazine then to help him ease back in to the world, as well as some contemporary  fiction, and non fiction.

My friend was arrested during his last semester of high school.  He wanted to be a computer designer or an engineer.  He was a decent student but he had to work extremely hard,  he had obstacles, no more than others, and no more than he was able to overcome.  He was going to graduate and his teachers were proud. Four teachers, a principal and a Superintendent came to be with him at his sentencing.  Because he is a convicted felon he cannot receive student loans.  The only training he can get in prison is small engine repair, and the like.  All college coursework he has to pay for himself,  which he has no hope of affording.  

He asks for no pity. He asks for nothing.  He dutifully is paying back the Public Defender Agency fees he accrued during his case.  Each phone call he tells me how much money he has sent to the court. from his prison job which pays him barely enough for toiletries and the ocassional piece of candy. When I ever mention a problem in my life, my friend prays for me.   

Soon enough I will send him books based in reality,  soon enough I will send him books about the world he will be coming back to.  What will I send him? 

Sleet on Cherry blossoms

the teapot rumbles 

and begins to scream. 

jhs  Sitka, AK 

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,