Dialed-In Like Cat Nip

Serendipity. Being dialed in. In the groove or flow. Every now and again, if we're lucky, we get a glimpse of this kind of feeling. For me, when it happens, it often happens outside. Running can open me up to it. Walking. Occasionally while playing a team sport like vacant lot football or pick up hoops. Writing, reading, and talking with people about same presents one of the main veins or avenues of opportunity for this feeling.

Saturday morning I was the only one up. Kicked back, drinking coffee, reading and writing on the couch. Christmas lights glowing and just watching our cat, Carlos, for a good stretch of time. And contemplating the life and actions of a cat. They are a trip to watch, their forever-in-the-moment approach to life. And I thought about how freeing, to be able to just be there, not so caught up in the next thing. So I took the photo above and a couple others. And I scribbled this down in a notebook:

Cats have got zen down.
It's now. And the next.
Fuck tonight, or tomorrow--
neither exist.

Everything is fixed in a gaze.
Or a coiled-spring crouch.
Or a stretched out nap.

Weather forecasts,
shopping lists,
checking balance,

superfluous.

There's not much to that. That's an exercise I call skimming the surface of first thoughts. Just snatching the rough material that's there at hand before it wanders off somewhere else. Hopefully it opens a door, or becomes the on-ramp to bigger flow.

I sipped some coffee, picked up Gary Snyder's "The Real Work," and started reading where I left off. Here's what I found, where he's discussing the value of meditation and his study of zazen:

"It wasn't alien to my respect for primitive people and animals, all of whom/which are capable of simply being for long hours of time. I saw it in that light as a completely natural act. To the contrary, it's odd that we don't do it more, that we don't, simply like a cat, be there for a while, experiencing ourselves as whatever we are, without any extra thing added to that."

Uuuummmm... Yeah. I guess Snyder gets what I'm talking about. Perhaps gets it enough that he can expound on the thoughts I'm having at present via an interview he did in April 1977, just as I pick up his f-ing book on page 97. Go figure. Thanks, Gary ;)

So that's my dialed in moment for the weekend. I love when that happens. It charges me, inspires me, affirms thoughts occasionally. And keeps me tuned in to being open to it happening more. I think it's a kind of experience where you've gotta recognize it in order to be able to cultivate it and invite it back. Make sure it digs hanging out.

Any of those kind of moments for others? What activities or experiences put you in touch or get you dialed in?

"Name Us a King", A Beginning of Sorts

Portrait of Carl Sandburg, by Edward Steichen.

Skate punks don't write poetry. As a rule. At least not the ones I rolled with. But rules are often fickle. Skateboarding, to some, is a form of expression. Poetry can find its way onto grip-tape, or tagging brick walls. It could happen.

I was sitting in the back of Mr. Springer's world history class. 14. Probably rocking a pair of Air Walk shoes, trench coat, bangs long enough to tuck into a shirt pocket. A good look, still ;) I don't know what was discussed in class that day, but I wrote a short poem, between anarchy symbols in the margins. I read it. Thought about it. Re-read it. Got it the way I wanted it. I was still tough--it was called "Duel to the Death." Or was it "Dual?"--there were two people. Maybe Springer was talking medieval warfare. I don't think so. I felt like I did more during that class than the rest of my freshman year at Easton High School. Those who knew me back then would likely concur. But something stuck with me, for having written it, without setting out to.

The next year I was at St. James School in Hagerstown. I still skated. I ran cross country. I got ready for lacrosse. I read and wrote poetry. I found a cat named Carl Sandburg. He wrote the first poem I ever wrote out long-hand and read out loud to myself. I still remember taking a copy of it to our English teacher, Mr. Taylor. It was the first poem that I found and read on my own that I can recall the name of. The poem was called, "Name Us a King." It went something like this:

Name us a king
who shall live forever--
a peanut king, a potato king,
a gasket king, a brass-tack king,
a wall-paper king with a wall-paper crown
and a wall-paper queen with wall-paper jewels.

Name us a king,
so keen, so fast, so hard,
he shall last forever--
and all the yes-men square shooters
telling the king, "Okay Boss, you shall
last forever! and then some!"
telling it to an onion king, a pecan king,
a zipper king or a chewing gum king,
any consolidated amalgamated syndicate king--
listening to the yes-men telling him
he shall live forever, he is so keen,
so fast, so hard,
an okay Boss who shall never bite the dust,
never go down and be a sandwich for the worms
like us--the customers,
like us--the customers.

Though I've thought about it by name, line, and word, I haven't read that poem, one of the ones that started it all for me, in probably 20 years. I remember trying to imitate it in my own style, with my own words and thoughts. I dove into Sandburg--this cat writing free verse, who had lived as a hobo after dropping out of school, who had served in the Army, who wrote advertising copy and worked as a journalist and wrote about life. American life. A Whitman for the city.

My grandmother gave me a copy of Sandburg's complete poems for my birthday that spring. I know because it says so on the inside page: "To Michael Valliant, Happy Birthday, 1988." Thinking about writing about this poem early this evening got me to go grab that book out of a box in the garage. And go back to one of the poems that started it all, for me. The one I found, not for a class, but on my own. And wrote down. At age 15. Funny what can spark a love of language. A love of writing. And a sense of kinship, a connection with a poet who died five years before I was born. Goes without saying I never met him. All the same, I'm glad he wrote it for me.

I Suck at Guitar Hero...

Running affords more scenery, but not deeply seeing what is there. More deeply than driving or riding a bike, but not as deeply as walking. Or stopping.

Sometimes seeing more is the thing. Sometimes seeing deeply. I need both, in turns, and maybe even at the same time.

The act of running, walking, stopping--the form and shape and substance of a run, journey, trek, is like the act of writing, of what form and shape writing takes. Whether prose, poetry, prose poem, fragment, meditation, essay, or if it includes all these components depends on what it has to say and how it needs to be said.

I suck at Guitar Hero. And I am cool with that. I see how I might get better at it if I spent some time playing it over and again and then think about the waste of time that would be versus spending on the things I want to focus on (don't worry, I've got plenty of other things to waste my time doing ;)

C.D. Wright, Gary Snyder, William Bronk, and Robert Hass regularly amaze, inspire, and confound me. Forrest Gander is starting to do the same as I read more of him.

I think about how to take/push my writing to the next level (whatever that may mean). How to make my words and thoughts worthy of the page, worthy of the canon, worthy of their (the words') readers and the time they give to reading them. I think how cool it would be to be taught by my writing models, by those whose words inspire me, provoke me, make me want to write, to be a part of that tradition, that expression. To have an audience with them. But also to have that time to dedicate. To writing.

And then I think that by finding them (the writers); by reading and re-reading; by studying and talking about them; they are already teaching me.

What I need to write the way and stuff I want to write is to commit. Again. Each day. To commit to myself. To commit to the writing. Commit to the time, commit to the study. Commit to putting word to paper or screen. To let fly. To revise. To throw away and start again and continue until things properly kick ass.

Get to the odd rhythm. The unpredictable line. The song that surprises,
circumscribes a rhombus in place of a box step.

Snare the word in the corner that nobody else saw, or wanted. Marley's refused builder's stone.

Plumb the deep for symbols. The ones that wash the soul in recognition, that speak the names and mind and image.

Influence

William Carlos Williams had a thing for red wheelbarrows. He didn't use a lot of words, but flung it out there as a symbol of everything being tied together, interconnected, if you will. And whether a wheelbarrow, red or otherwise, a farmer, or a pot of flowers, things that Williams experienced is what made itself onto the page. Objects and direct experience influenced his writing. How could they not, eh?

I, too, have been under the influence. Of the stuff I run into on a walk, or a run, or subjects or thoughts that come up in conversation. Of music, sometimes new-to-me stuff like Langhorne Slim or Blind Pilot, other times stuff I am coming back to, like Bob Marley, Mingus, or Hendrix.

I've been heavily influenced by Mr. Williams' notion and example that poetry, or writing, for him focused on the local, what's right around you, rather than having to fly off across the (big) pond. I've been pulled by what has put itself in front of the camera lens, or in some cases, what has turned up as the image later.

I've been inspired by a poet named Frank O'Hara, whose book "Lunch Poems," has served as a guide, a call to action, and an inspiration, for the 30 Days Project I'm in the midst of. O'Hara's book was largely written on his daily lunch breaks as he walked around New York. And it fits well in a pocket, so it sometimes accompanies me on my lunch break and/or walk up town into St. Michaels. The other folks I'm reading, from Gary Snyder to Robert Hass, from C.D. Wright to Tony Hoagland, are all taking root in one way or another.

And I've been vibing on the local, the people around me. By two teachers, who make the time to write and play music and recently threw their new CD my way, which makes my mind cruise along with it, as well as kicks me in the arse to question how productive I am with my own free time. By an artist friend and several year source of pants-kicking, Rob Brownlee-Tomasso, who makes a commitment to spend time in his studio each night working on a new painting or series of paintings. By a cat who Mike Keene and I had a chance (loaded word) encounter with on the Appalachian Trail, who ended up moving to the Eastern Shore for a time, buying a sailboat from Mike, has fixed it up, and is neck-deep in his dream to spend time sailing it all over the place (currently cruising down the intercoastal to South Carolina, I believe). You can follow Woody's saga here (any blog called "The Peanut Butter Diet" is worth something!) And by other writers in the round, including another now Easton writer/blogger, whose frequent soulful posts and tip on Gary Snyder's book, "The Real Work," has opened up some new avenues, or country roads, or singletrack trails of thought.

This influence is a funny thing. It's what I encounter, it's what I read, it's who I run into, it's who I run with, it's what I do with my time, it's being present and mindful around our girls, to hear the endless creativity they employ not just daily, but minute to minute. It's all connected. And because we're all in different places and the culmination of own points influence and experiences, it's all unique. Uh-oh. The same, all connected, but all unique. Well, that sounds like a paradox to me...

Two Churches

The shaman looked for God in the church,
but He was not there.

The activist looked for God by meditating,
but He was not there.

The priest looked among the waves
and the mountain climber between pews,
nothing.

Blake said that 'one law for the lion and the ox
is oppression.' Blake's law looks nice on a coffee table.
It's fair game over cocktails.

God isn't invited to cocktail parties. He's not up for debate.
Not allowed to be relative or
renamed.

We'll let men name our laws, we don't lose sleep over oppression.
But don't let God be found somewhere we're not looking. We want
God on our terms.

The shaman surveys the land and searches his spirit.

The activist changes the world through good works.

The priest contemplates in prayer and
the climber summits truth.

Each knows what they need.

Once Removed

Robert T. Valliant, my grandfather, at his father's shucking and packing houses in Oxford, Md., where Bates Marina is now. Circa 1905.

My dad turned his knee around backwards. Kneecap got whacked side-on by essentially a 2" x 10" or so and spun it clear off its hinges. He was a boardsman for a Chesapeake Bay log canoe at the time, likely racing with Doug Hanks at the helm. That was the end of his log canoe sailing days.

Our family has become further removed from the water with each generation. My great grandfather, Jeremiah Valliant, was a partner in William Valliant & Brothers packing houses in Bellevue, Maryland, until a business falling out saw him open his own competing shucking and packing houses in Oxford. He had four young'ens, an even two boys (Robert and Jeremiah) and two girls (Louise and Harriet). The two boys would end up running Valliant Brothers Marina, where Bates Marina currently sits at the end of the Strand, same Oxford location as the shucking and packing houses.

Robert was my grandfather. He's the young lad pictured above. He was born in 1899 and lived to be 95. Marina owner and beyond, he was a lifelong fisherman. He kept detailed logs of every time he went out, what they caught, who he went with, what they used. He took my dad fishing, and he lived long enough to take me fishing a number of times from when I was little. I still remember turning around and seeing him peeing in an empty milk carton at the back of the boat. I never asked where the bathroom was after that.

That love of fishing, boating, and being on the water translated directly to my father. But he doesn't own a marina, he's an accountant. His education and occupation don't put him right on the water, though he'd no doubt love to spend more time there.

When I was 15, I came into a 13' Boston Whaler with a 40 horsepower Evinrude outboard motor on it. It was tied up behind our house, in shallow water or mud if the tide was out. $5 worth of gas and you had more than a day's adventure. There wasn't a creek between Oxford and Easton that we didn't explore or a beach we didn't pull up on. Maybe a couple, but not many. I wasn't that concerned with a driver's license when I turned 16, it couldn't hold a Zippo to being on the river.

I feel connected to Oxford, the Tred Avon, the Eastern Shore, the Bay. A bond in the blood and in the bones. But I am further removed. I wonder if I have it like my grandfather did. Or my father does. The water, creeks, rivers, bridges, is where I feel it inherently. But I don't do enough with it. I get it when we're on the water with the girls, or this summer on a stand-up paddleboard. And I look for more.

Unrelated Fragments

Downpours glut. Senses
and themselves. Hum
or drone to roar. Background
to forefront.

Smells

become

intense.

Coffee. Dog. Candles.
Ground. Light inside
stands out. Turns wet. Succumbs,
assimilates into noise.
Gray. Sleep.
Or more awake because

---

A camera is permission to look closer. To see through the surface. A deeper glance.

Patterns. Metaphors. Productions. On the house.
Newly framed, things

become
beyond common.

---

That there were train tracks next to Holiday Inns was a running joke. There always was. It became comforting.

Shaken awake at 2 a.m., the bed rattled out smiles.