All Things Gnarled and Beautiful

The ultimate questions are not “g-a-lacial” as we might suppose; nor can we feed this wanderlust the stilted paths of human reason. We know what we are but not what we might become if we could make the wind and waves obey, the mind a placid mountain lake. The contemplation of the infinite is best achieved through more than a few drinks; the only way to silence the mind is to kill it. If I could only explain, nay, tear out this tongue if it mislead, how it feels to be genially burnt by the sun. "The horror, the horror," you say? I might be as young as you, old man, if, like a crab, I could crawl backwards through the sands of time, through Auschwitz, the great war, the plantation doors and all the way back to Egypt. Ten thousand slaves could break their backs to make my final resting place and I could finally be alone. "A thousand years of solitude," you say? Make it two thousand, ten thousand, a million and then I might finally have some concept of what we're doing here. I could drink cocoa with Montezuma or human blood with the Tlingit Tribe of the Pacific Northwest and it might be more interesting than a Diet-Pepsi, fully endorsed by Britney Spears. I don't love your cities, rank and rot with vile elements, the billboards offering the perfect human shape. "Here he is:," they proclaim, "a human God." A bloody yahoo, I say. The buildings soar so high you could almost dream of something- more noble. But all day long, the wage slaves graze on dollars bill and vomit forth product. From out of the window, they can hear the syncopated hum of Chinese-classical-jazz. That's our haute culture. "What would Jesus do?" He'd overturn your booths, you bloody capitalist pigs. Oh, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. He'll smite this land as he did Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet I'm content to sit here on a warm grave, contemplating the majestic oaks, gnarled and beautiful, which carry me into the sublime heights of the sky. My grandpa lived not too far from here; "Just toss me over the fence," he'd say. Well, I'd like to say something more meaningful, something intellectually sound but, you see, I'm no good. There is only one who is good and that is God. In the end, the only art is a cross painted with your own blood.

American Sky Bird

Up in the air, Reznor's voice is so much clearer:
"Oh, my beautiful liar, oh my precious whore, my disease my infection, I am so impure." But I feel very pure, flying in this bird of the future. Between seas of clouds, I see land below: cubist paintings of geometric wheat farms, Narnia forests pocked with clearcuts and lego cities crawling with traffic. I feel a spiritual connection with one little red car zigging and zagging on the miniature highway. Oh baby, you're too much too fast but I feel you're a kindred spirit. I'm interupted. "Oh, yes, I'll have a Wild Turkey on the rocks." I flip through the Air Wares catalog. I could buy the robotic pen of the future, a renaissance eagle and lawn chair or an autographed picture of Wayne Gretzky. I chat with my single serving friend, a Universty administrator. We talk about the economy, Wimbledon and Hamlet. We talk about Arizona, the golfing there and the Anasazi ruins. How those ancient ones must have lived, growing their corn and beans, hunting the occasional antelope! What heavenly arid views they must have had from their airy, mountain fortresses! Could they imagine a world that was not sage, red rock and blue sky? Where did Kokopelli's flute song lead them? To a lusher land? To the unknown country? I pull out my flute and play a lustful melody, one that transports my fellow travelers to the green meadows of Ireland, to the dragon head of a Viking treader, to a grassy plain flooded with black rivers of bison. A flight attendant politely asks me to put my flute away. I smile at her and do so. The inflight movie starts. The talking dog fails to hold my attention. Out the window, I can see factories and then the sea. Where are you going, you American sky bird of the future? Somewhere exotic? Hawaii? Utopia? The whole universe wants to know.