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A howl in the night issues forth.
You call for silence, "Silence!" you say.
The night does not exist to cool you.
The night is on fire with one thousand screams;
screams of lust and screams of death.
Outside of your home, there is nothing for you to claim
but the memory of a howl in the night.

2014, The year of Abbey.

For the last few years, I have been trying to keep a record of all the books that I have read each year.  Three years ago, I posted my reading list to this blog.  My then roommate said that she thought it was a bit pretentious of me to assume that anyone would care what I had read.  If you know me, then you know that one of my favorite things to do, is share books that I love with people that I love.  Truth be told, I am even happy to share books I love with people  that I don't much care for.  Who knows, maybe if they read some of the books that I have suggested, they will be better people  (I'm kidding.)  I know that certain books have made me a better person and blown my brain wide open with brilliant and poetic ideas that hadn't yet occurred to me.

Last year, I didn't do so good at keeping a list, so didn't post one.  Maybe I was still feeling self conscious of coming across as pretentious.  Due to the small number of people who have ever looked at this blog, it's hard to imagine coming across any sort of way.  This year, I had planned to post my reading list again but then I went ahead and lost the whole thing.  This leaves me little to post.

However, one thing that stood out about my reading this year is my new found love of Edward Abbey.  I read six books by him in 2014 and, other than the year I was busy loving Richard Brautigan, I don't believe that I have ever read so many books by one author.  The books that I read, in the order I read them, were The Fool's Progress, The Brave Cowboy, The Monkeywrench Gang, Haduke Lives!, Fire on the Mountain and Desert Solitaire. 

I had known of Edward Abbey's books for years but for some reason, foolishly had never read him.  Although I don't agree with every single opinion that he expresses, I find that he is a person of great character, who was not afraid to speak from his heart and to me those are noble things to find in a writer.  As our country become more and more homogenous and people lose themselves in social networking and the sticky web, of the world wide variety, we need more larger than life, bold, wild characters to remind us what it is we are voluntarily giving up.  Who are these iconoclasts today?  Is there still room in this world for untamed souls to shout at us from the wilderness?  Is anyone even willing to listen?

I for one am glad to lend my ear and hope to someday be among the voices doing the shouting.  I thank Edward Abbey for sharing a voice of dissent and sharing it loudly.  I thank Edward Abbey for speaking for the last of the wilderness that we have left in this country.  I hope that in his lifetime, he knew that some people were listening.  I hope that wherever old Ed is resting in the American desert, that his soul is sleeping well and that his wish, "I want my body to help fertilize the growth of a cactus or cliff rose or sagebrush or tree.", has come true.  I hope that someday, I can also break the law in death and that my body can pay it's due.

Thank you, Ed.

Fire on the Hills by Robinson Jeffers

   The deer were bounding like blown leaves

   Under the smoke in front of the roaring wave of the brush-fire;

   I thought of the smaller lives that were caught.

   Beauty is not always lovely; the fire was beautiful, the terror

   Of the deer was beautiful; and when I returned

   Down the black slopes after the fire had gone by, an eagle

   Was perched on the jag of a burnt pine,

   Insolent and gorged, cloaked in the folded storms of his shoulders.

   He had come from far off for the good hunting

   With fire for his beater to drive the game; the sky was merciless

   Blue, and the hills merciless black,

   The sombre-feathered great bird sleepily merciless between them.

    I thought, painfully, but the whole mind,

   The destruction that brings an eagle from heaven is better than

                      mercy.



Writings from Walleye #5 9-28-14

Some random bits of writing from today's Walleye ..................................................................................
I felt the mud between my toes and then my body was cradled by the cool hands of the water.  In the distance, thunder rumbled across the sky, sending ripples across the water.  The air was charged and alive and everywhere was buzzing, fluttering, crying out.  I took a deep breath and let the water pull me under, as if falling into a dream.  I let myself be held by this under sky, held as I had not been since before birth.  Floating in this darkness; this darkness is my home.
..................................................................................
And then we were animals, running through the forest, naked as the day we were born.  We made a playmate, a companion of Death as our bodies twisted, turned, tumbled.  We were wild with breath and hunger.  Drifting with this rock, beneath these stars.  I once dreamt I was a mountain, I once dreamt I was a field.  Their claws and teeth rifled through my hair while I was dreaming, while I was sleeping.
..................................................................................
This is how an animal smells.  This is how an animal tastes.  There is water escaping through the drum of your skin.  This is how a body dances.  The ferns are cracking the walls and Death is there again, watching over us from the ledge.  I had hoped that their voices would be singing, I had hoped their voices would be howling.  The darkness is soft below my feet and I can't let go.  There is a tension that I have always known and I can't let go.  The world is a loosely defined, glowing thing and this is what made me.  A pile of bones, dancing in an arc across the open plains.  To breathe deeply is to make fire with your own two hands.  This is how an animal breathes.  This is how an animal tastes.  I am here, holding Death's hand and we are moving, dancing to the rhythm of the drum that is your skin.
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A light by Maddy. A spider by me. A spider light by Maddy.

Click for full sized image

first bones destroyed

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"Love the earth and the sun and animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and the crazy, devote your income and labors to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and mothers of families, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any
book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency, not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

- Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass*