Fireside, Cave Paintings and Dreams

My mind is dancing, fickle like fire. It won't stand still--it jumps, flicks tongues, wall rides, scattering darkness, but dives back down before illuminating. Can't see what's there.

I'm sitting in a cave. It's me, the fire, someone across the fire from me that I can't make out, just an outline. Not a stranger, just can't see across the fire.

Can't make out the cave walls. There are shadows. I need to stoke the fire. With what? Drugs bring smoke but no additional light. They are not the stoke.

tucked up in clefts in the cliffs
growing strict fields of corn and beans
sinking deeper and deeper in the earth
up to your hips in Gods
                 your head all turned to eagle-down
                 & lightning for knees and elbows
your eyes full of pollen

                the smell of bats
                the flavor of sandstone
                grit on the tongue.

                women
                birthing
at the food of ladders in the dark.

Gary Snyder chants. The flames dance higher. Figures on the wall...

Art. Poetry. Drawings. The child, surrounded by nature, is the one connected to the Universe. I know these drawings. I've seen them. I've written about them, read about them.

Caves. Fire. Shelter. Food. Primal elements. Fire meant food, community. It still does. Fire pulls the tribe together. It is conversation, happy hour, camping, return from a trail run to crack a beer, sip soup and share stories. Fire lets us see in the dark.

The cave has more. Skateboarding. Future Primitive. A love that began at 13 and has continued through today at 42 and tomorrow at whatever age. The figures on the wall look like this...

Lance Mountain. The figures are also running. Tribal. More of the cave, the walls are showing now. Scenes, images, symbols from my life. The girls. Passions. Shared experiences. Spelled out on the walls of the cave. Plato would be pleased.

I get up and walk to further parts of the cave. The walls are bare. They are uncovered. Unwritten. Still to be written. The writing is from life. From love. From experience. What is the rest of the story? What symbols? What art?

What becomes paintings on the cave walls begins as dreams. Neil Gaiman knows dreams. He has written Dream's story in epic and graphic fashion. He begins "The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables & Reflections" with an artist, a playwright and director who is afraid of heights. In his dreams, he fears falling. He believes there are two possible outcomes to falling in a dream: either you wake up, or you die. No good outcome.

And the artist, the dreamer, finds himself in a dream, climbing. At the top of the mountain, he meets Dream. Dream points out that there is a third alternative. "Sometimes when you fall, you fly."

The most unlikely scenario. It flies in the face of common sense. But we aren't talking sense. We are talking dreams. Why would anything sensical wind up as a cave painting?

Dream for a time in the wilderness

In sandlot football (we actually played on a church lot; it had grass), you diagrammed your play on the palm of your hand. Or maybe you used a stick, drawing it up on the ground. You run a post pattern, you run a go route, you go across the middle and get open. When the plan worked, it was money.

Maybe it's the same thing in life. Rough sketch it in a notebook, follow the scheme, touchdown. Start with dreams for the line of scrimmage. That's where you start. Send vision, passion, sweat and fun long and have them catch the ball in reality.

The trick, there are actually many, is that dreams and vision in particular are not ready made. They are some assembly required and don't come with batteries included. Shit, now I've mixed metaphors; bear with me.

Recognizing our dreams. Jim Carrey gets it. Watching him draw up his life's play at a commencement speech might be the best investment of a couple minutes of your day you can make. I empathize with his story about his dad (except I am the dad), choosing the safe job instead of trying to make it doing what he loved, then getting laid off anyway. And I wrote Carrey's take away message in my notebook. I might post it on the refrigerator: "You can fail at what you DON'T want, so you might as well take the chance on doing what you love."

My time over the last couple weeks has been about being in touch with dreams. It's been applying for jobs, some I want, many I don't. It's been running, doing yoga, strength training, meditating. Hanging with the girls. Walking the wilderness of my mind.

It is a commonplace of all religious thought, even the most primitive, that the man seeking visions and insight must go apart from his fellows and love for a time in the wilderness. - Loren Eiseley

Go apart and love for a time in the wilderness. Literally and figuratively. The Beastie Boys said "a castle in Brooklyn is where I dwell." I've gone quite the other route. I downsized. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, living room, kitchen, dining area, deck. Next to the woods and a huge field that can only be filled by the girls' imagination. Kickball, bocce, field hockey, soccer, fort building in the woods.

I choose not to be a slave to a house that is bigger than I need, that is more work, that keeps me, and/or the girls from truly carpe'ing the diem. I would rather dream and try to make that dream a reality than spend my time, my life, on upkeep and keeping up. Fu** the Jones's (no offense, Jones's).

I am not to the point of living in or building a tiny house, but man do I get it. If you are a Netflix fan, I recommend checking out the documentary, "Tiny: A Story About Living Small." Honestly, I think I was more inspired by the architecture and the folks they interviewed, particularly Jay Schafer, founder of Tumbleweed Tiny House Co., than by the couple who builds their crib, but there is a lot there to take in on many fronts.

What does it mean to try to realize your dreams? What does it mean to go after them? To cast off what society wants you to do, to be, and try to become what you want to be? How about I leave you with thoughts from three folks you might have heard of, rapping on dreams:

People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes. - Neil Gaiman

Those who dream by day are cognizant of a great many things which escape those who dream only by night. - Edgar Allan Poe

Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country. - Anais Nin

Alright, everyone to the line of scrimmage. We're going to audible.

REA-DY. CARREY. CARREY. GAIMAN. POE. NIN. HIKE!

Hubris, Geography, Dreams

I learned the word hubris in third grade. It has stuck with me since. I remembered it as meaning "excessive pride." It's been the downfall of mythological, historic, and fictional characters for as long as stories have been told. Hubris and karma are not the same thing. I'm not sure they're even kissing cousins.

Hubris rears its head in my life plenty. Whenever I'm outgrowing my britches, feeling larger than life. It's like an existential gut check, reminding me that I'm not all that. A little humble pie goes well with morning coffee. Maybe hubris is like a tea kettle with the water at a rolling boil; it's got no choice but to whistle to let it out.

And the hubris whistle says, "Stay humble, my friends."

Some of my reading has brought hubris back into focus. Characters in Neil Gaiman's "Sandman," who want to capture Death, to live forever, and end up summoning Dream and keeping him locked up for 75 years. And when he gets free, he goes about setting things right. There are all kinds of similar story lines. It's the Faust story retold, where someone wants more power, more knowledge, doesn't want to abide by the balance that life seems to move towards. They want to be outside the rules. In life and literature, it rarely ends up well.

Geography has been on my mind of late. The mountains, the beach, cabins, beach houses, New England, the South, the Eastern Shore. Maybe it's a restless leg syndrome of the soul. Wanderlust. Maybe it's being in the same place for too long. Maybe it's feeling like I have burned a path from Easton to DC that my car or truck would drive on their own, without me touching the steering wheel. You've seen what taking the same path too many times does to grass. It's not there to tell you about it.

The last several months of my life has been about change. A life revolution. Except that it hasn't. There is a stasis. Mentally things are different, except they aren't. But I'm also wary of hubris. Don't get too full of myself. Don't overreach. There is something to be said for familiarity. I've seen it when running the same route, of how much can be different, with the right eyes.

Ultimately, at the moment, hubris and geography and dreams combine to want something simple. Maybe a wee bit of solitude at a surf shelter like this one. Read, write, split firewood, try not to break my ribs surfing, cook simply, eat simply, walk and run through the woods. Recharge. And hey, there's a sauna. Sabbatical. Sanctuary.

Long live Cabin Porn for helping dreamers keep it simple, and be humbled by humanity's lowly role in nature's magnificence.