Note to the reader: The memoir on Mt. Lemmon was written about 5 years ago; I have been revising it as I go along, here on this blog.
Hot again. One area in the Catalina State Park which runs parallel to Oracle Road issues heavy dirigibles of smoke, bulging up, in slow escalator motions into the sky. No flames can be seen, too far for my sun-shaded eyes. Glare is all in Oro Valley. Without a sun-visor, one conceivably could grill a frank on the dashboard. Things heat up quickly, a steering wheel, to wit. Again with fountain pen in hand (yes, that retro), retro man is with words. I am reminded of an anecdote about Krishnamurti (“K”), who when asked if after all these years of spiritual teaching, if he had made a difference. He remarked simply that a rose must give off its perfrume. Mt. Lemmon must mountain, man must die, and I must write. It is my perfume.
For thousands of years man, in his grandiosity, has projected himself upon the heavens, anthropomorphized the natural world — talking mice, thinking trees, gods of the sea and air, all this psychic energy for incorporative ends, I imagine. If I can label the world, I own it. Grandiosely, we name the planets. What a fabulous ego this species has!
We love to describe, to digest, to name and label, to authorize, to symbolize our world in a manifest way to order our existence, and latently it is like a panic attack striving to reorient, to re-establish up and down, east and west, to align our inner selves like a compass rose. Only this species latitudes, longitudes its own sphere. We love loci, direction, spot and site. That which is non-inclusive or different drives us to distraction. We are a batty kind unwilling to accept battiness as a possible principle of the world itself. We glom onto our experiences like an intense epoxy, leery of the disparate, the unusual. If an alien asked me to describe the one significant characteristic of human kind I might well say our capacity to homogenize.
I’m writing in a Mead notebook tablet. I’d like to fill up the entire pad, a kind of goal, with my scribblings. I like input. I hope for encouragement — I need that. It is lonely here, expressing self, writing for me, writing for other — you. Money is never an issue for me, it is only a concern — one must get on with life and its exigencies. I quest for dialogue. My neediness takes the form of a comment or two about how I have expressed myself.
I need some stroking of the ego, I am not an atom unaligned with others. If I can engage the other, thou, perhaps I can receive rewards in terms of having been listened to, or of having touched another’s sensibilities sufficiently so that he or she responds, differs, reacts, all the verbs that show communication and an enhanced relationship. I write to show you in many ways I am connected to you. A mechanic works on an inanimate engine, makes the transmission run well again. Isn’t there something fascinating about it? A human being makes an object dead to itself perform all kinds of tasks, a mechanical resuurection, mechanic as messiah. As a writer responding to a sentient mind, my hope is to move you, to re-animate you; literature is the world wide web. Each writer spins his web, hoping that you will tread upon the silky spans of words he spins out. It is the writer’s hope as you bring weight to bear upon his threads you will sense the total design and purpose of his woven world. And the writer hopes to capture the trespasser, wrap him in silk, store him aft, make of him a later repast.
On primal levels all is incorporative — from the consuming of the sacrament, the blood, the body for Christians, to cannibalism, the eating of the flesh to enlarge our own spirits and powers. As I absorb you into me, you and I become more than we are alone. We are fused. Like chemicals bonding, we become a greater valence, a third entity. I share myself with you so thst we can simply connect. It is very lonely in this part of the universe; for the few seconds we have, let us strike our shared match and light up our cavern. In Plato’s cave analogy, men took shadow for substance. I would argue that shadows are often substance enough for many of us. Human beings can sustain monumental illusions — delusions — throughout their lives — god(s) for one.
I need a god like a hole in the head. I had a daddy. Once is enough — look how it takes a lifetime to come to terms with father! Remove god and one is free, I state dogmatically, no pun intended. One is free to suffer, then, existentially (you didn’t believe you were off the hook), but one is free. We know that even lava cools and forms stone. The inanimate world, the animate world craves coalescence, to be part of the herd, the group. All is merger. If we can be free of this animal magnetism, we might experience ourselves a bit better. Group behavior of any kind is a phallic salt lick.
Human beings oral sex the world, we take in, we slather, lest we feel insufficient. What is circumcision except an attempt to bring one into awareness. Ouch!
Were there ever in my febrile imaginings, primordial pools of semi-aware, almost conscious matter, milling about, striving, seeking some express way to arrive at form or shape, some entity that might give “voice” to all this drive? Cathected is a pseudo-scienetific word devised to make Freud appear “scientific.” In the original German Freud, I believe, used a word closer to attachment, a more expressive term laden with connotations. In the original Alien, John Hurt, who also played The Elephant Man, examines a field of eggs left by the aliens. In a frightening sequence as he peers closely down upon an egg, it leaps, whatever it was from the yolky effluent, a sloshing effect, and penetrates Hurt’s face and brain — grossly effective, terrrifically jarring. It is my feeling that the primordial ooze took a physical great leap of faith and leapt from within to without, without intention, just cathexis cold, chilly cathexis, and achieved awareness of a sort. (What is breast feeding but the bringing out into awareness.) The rest is the saga of evolution. Consequently I have more in common with the Sargasso Sea, that silky-slurry, sloshy swamp, then with my next door neighbor, Norm, the physical trainer.
When I see a puddle, I see a beginning.
We should form societies for the advancement of puddles. We should put puddles on the endangered species list. We should lobby our senators and congressmen for rights to puddle. And is our wont, we should set up commisions to study puddles. I can see the bumber stickers: Puddles, Schmuddles.
Honk once for puddle
Life is a bitch, then you become a puddle
My other puddle is a puddle
Puddle died for our sins
The Moshiach is a puddle
Over the rainbow is a puddle
A poodle is not a puddle
A puddle is a cathexis, not a dirty word
Ashes to ashes, puddle to puddle
Rest in puddle
Thou shalt have no other puddle before me
Did you ever go to Puddle University (P.U.)?
What a relief to be silly! What is humor but a human vent, the capacity to express what is so painful in terms that are often tasteless and apposite. If I couldn’t laugh at myself, I would turn to stone, the very coalescence I fear.
Leave a Reply