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?

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.