from far away

 

Dear Waiting, 

They say good things come to those who wait.  I dunno.  I do know, that some things have come to me, that I never expected to arrive.  For example, the Pine Siskin- it is a bird that is in my range, my area, but for years (like 16!) I never saw one at my feeder, but then I did see them!  

For a long time I searched the skies for a condor; I live near(ish) to their historical range and the range they set about recover the species in.  I first saw one at the Grand Canyon, and that was a delight, but then, after another wait, then I saw them in Pinnacles National Park.  They are always there in Pinnacles, from my experience, and one day, I will look out my window and see one here.  

But that is about further waiting.  My message today is about what has arrived, despite years of unlikely wait.  This year, the aurora arrived at my back porch!  No more hunting it, it came to me!  I can hardly believe my good luck.  

I took a long trip, like one does, to see Yellowstone National Park some years back- when you go there, you have a list of things you want to see so you can award yourself imaginary badges.  You might see bear, bison, geysers, mud pots, elk, bighorn sheep, moose, beaver, otter, and wolves.  We saw bison, geysers, and mud pots- I don't call it a failure, but it isn't all that many badges, considering.  I went to Alaska, too, where you are almost guaranteed an orca and a bear, but those badges will have to wait.  Also, you might see wolves.

Can you guess where I may next be going?  Well, I am not going anywhere, because now, the wolves, the darling wolves, the wolves of all your fairy tales and metaphorical fears, are coming to me!  I can't wait!

PS  You probably can't wait to hear that song again, either, and you don't have to!

The bookshelf.

 

Dear Reader,

It's time for me to try to tell you about a book I have been reading.  I am reading it slow, languorously even.  I think, as I often do, that it is a book for everyone, but don't I think that about most of the books I am reading?  

Let us think on that while we listen to this, your song for today.  

It has to do with the problem of audience- audience of one, or less than a million, or less than a hundred; the audience is like ants, you know, one only matters to oneself.  One ant is nothing to even mention.  Of course, in writing you here, I do think of audience, I think of reader, listener, viewer.  It's thorny.  Do I do a thing for just one person?  Or, even for the hope of just one person?  

Here is a page from The Observable Universe by Heather McCalden:

CULTURE = LIFE CONTENT

If you have ever found yourself on the periphery, outside of dominant narratives and nuclear-ish families, you will have passed through a period of emptiness wherein the material of  your life was not 'suitable' for any of the things around you.  Meaning: no outlet or form of communication existed to convey your experience, and so the experience remained caught inside you, seething.  Without external channels to link to there's no way to transmit your information, so the internal landscape deactivates.  It shuts down and remains inaccessible, since no actions or language can scrape away at it.  Since you are, in fact, on your own.

The only recourse then is culture.  Instead of one's experience, songs, podcasts, and TikToks are transformed into a shorthand for particular emotions or situations.  At certain points in my life, if you asked me how I was I would have only been able to respond with data.  I could summarize the latest Game of Thrones episode, or recite the anecdote about Esther's dollar bill from This American Life.  I could tell you about the New Yorker story of red honeybees and the 'maraschino mogul,' but I would not be able to answer even the simplest question about myself because I had nothing inside.  I felt like a ghost and quite often when I entered a room I felt people pull away from me as if suddenly encountering a cold front.  Maybe this fetishizes or romanticizes the situation, puts a metaphor on a state of being that quite possibly doesn't deserve one, but how do we talk about pain in a world full of pain?  We can't.  We don't even try.  We talk about culture instead.  That's why it spreads.

  

Let's hope this message finds its audience.

PS

I might have given you this one, instead:

OLDEST TRICK IN THE BOOK

If life has ever scraped you out and left you with no prospects, you can use art as a coping mechanism.  You can apply it to your day-to-day.  Take its content or its forms and use them to patch in what's missing.  Take a fictional premise, maybe even a genre, and adapt it to your situation.  See what happens.

 

Did you ever? Or, A heap of superlatives!

 

Dear You & Everyone Else,

Did you see it?  The Northern Lights?  A few nights ago, after 45 years of wanting to see them, they came to me!  As usual, I cannot believe my good fortune.  I hope you saw them too, and if you didn't, I am sure their light shined upon you.

And that maybe should be the end?  That is sufficient?  I have communicated to you about them?  I have shown you the depth of my feeling for belonging to a world with a spectacle as grand as that?  No, as usual, I have sounded like a car that passed with its radio on very loud, or maybe a sappy greeting cards' message.  You might wonder, why do you do this?  Why do you try to voice, to talk, to write, to think, to paint, to draw?  And the answer is seeing the Aurora, but not seeing, so much as feeling it, and in feeling it, wanting you to witness it too.  Because the enormity of it might feel less lonely that way.  

Thinking all this, and of how to describe the Aurora to you, similar moments appeared:  a raft on a river in the rain, a field of dried grass, an empty, open doored and windowed cabin with a pile of cottonwood fluff in the corner, a whoosh of bird wings overhead, a gray sea that shimmered out forever, a booth at a darkened bar; and these two songs.  The first is a very pithy, plaintive version of what I am might be saying, and the second is so long, so repetitive, you might be droned into something like comprehension.

PS  It isn't without risk, you know, to try to say something.  I might, instead of reaching you, be repelling you with these whiney vocals and endless guitar riffs.  I am always circling, beating about the bush, barking up trees that are wrong, and if I should, somehow, blindly hit the target, I will not know.