[MD] Clouds

[Ron Kulp]

Dan,


Be proud to know the awareness which is "alone".
Be thankful the storm did not claim you.
Have solace in what you have gained.

It sounded like a part of you perished on that mountain
And another born.



Thank you for taking us with you on that personal journey.I believe
Most of us here share your alone-ness..








-----Original Message-----
From: moq_discuss-bounces at moqtalk.org
[mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of Dan Glover
Sent: Saturday, February 03, 2007 4:06 AM
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Subject: [MD] Clouds

Hello everyone

I've been away spending time in the mountains. Winter caught me a bit
off guard forcing me to stay longer than was my plan. I brought enough
food for a week so the snow and ice storm I found myself caught up in
didn't much concern me.

I holed up by a frozen rocky creek in between a pair of rather large
boulders that offered some little shelter from the wintery blasts of
wind coming down over the mountain tops. Kindling a small fire to cook
dehydrated vegetable stew provided me with a bit of warmth. My poncho
protected me from the freezing rain. I feel confined in tents so I don't
carry one. I stretched a tarp between the boulders with clothesline to
get out of the weather as best I could.

Snow began falling around the time darkness came. Those mountains are
normally so quiet that I can hear my own heart beating and with the snow
now covering everything the quiet became enormous. Almost unbearable.
There was time to think as I sat there deep in the mountains feeding
small twigs into the fire every few minutes and watching the snow fall
hissing into the tiny flames. Ah, solitude.

I've never been lucky enough to have many friends. Perhaps it would be
better to say any. I remember standing in a corner of the school yard
watching all the other kids play, unable to join in. It's not that I
dislike people. I'm just not much good at small talk and the social
graces that seem to come to others so easily. I find myself time and
again sitting alone in the middle of crowded rooms. When I move to sit
with others they seem to get up and leave one by one until I find myself
sitting alone once more. After a while I just give up. It doesn't
matter.

Alcohol and drugs seemed to help, ages ago. They loosened my inhibitions
but also loosened my anger so gradually all that dropped away. When I
began my zazen some years ago the drinking got in the way so it stopped
one day, I don't remember when. Nothing intentional, mind you. It just
stopped and I could see no reason to begin again. Drugs too. I didn't
need them so I put them down. The price was clarity. And aloneness. Yet
I am never lonely. Just alone.

I seem to see things others do not. There is very little to connect me
with the world of people. Words, maybe. One day I feel I will fade away
all together and that's okay. There's very little here anyway. Very
little that is actually me. I am a cloud passing on a summer day. When
one looks I am gone and one wonders if I was ever here at all.

It is cold there in the mountains. Bone chilling cold. So cold one
wonders if the warmth of summer will ever come again. My food began
running low while the storm still raged. Wave after wave of freezing
rain covered the trees until they began giving way under the weight. I
could hear the branches breaking during the night with loud cracks that
startled me from fitful sleep.

One night I dreamed my dad was there shaking me by the shoulder trying
to wake me so I could go to work picking asparagus before school. I've
always had trouble sleeping and rising early and he grew angry with me,
shouting my name  and shaking me ever harder. I woke with a start but
only the mountains were there. I felt so alone. So alone. The dream had
been so vivid I couldn't reach sleep again that night so I sat and
watched the light grow slowly to reveal an ice-covered world.

Another night I dreamed I was with a woman. Soft. Tender. It'd been so
long. 
I didn't know her yet she was familiar. I knew all her lines and just
how to touch her and where to put my mouth so she responded under my
carress. When I woke I wished she was really there. But, of course...
she wasn't. And I wondered who she was, if indeed she was at all. I
remember how her eyes shined and how good she felt. I went to sleep the
next night hoping to see her again but she failed to return. I woke cold
and hungry.

The food was gone by now so I decided that I should begin my trek out of
those mountains despite the storm. I knew the way. I'd been there so
many times that the maze like-paths are my only friends. The snow and
ice made for treacherous traveling and in those mountains a turned ankle
can mean death. So the going was slow. It didn't matter. I didn't care.
I had time and I had clarity. And there was no one waiting for me. No
one to care. No one to worry.

I tightened my belt all I could yet my pants still wouldn't stay up so I
took the time to make a new hole in the belt with my pocket knife and a
couple days later another and yet another. I felt lighter and lighter.
I'd been out of food for days. I made tea from boiled snow and crushed
pine needles. It was bitter but good. Hunger gnawed at me at first but
as the days passed it gradually grew quiet as my mind grew ever sharper.
I felt good. Yet I felt bad.

We are in such danger. Civilization is so precarious. How did all this
get started. Technology will not save us but it just might destroy us.
Perhaps it would be better to turn back if only we could. But we can't.
Not without being fanatics and no one likes a fanatic. I don't worry for
myself, mind you. I worry for you. I worry for my family. For my loved
ones, all. If only I could save myself I could save the whole world. But
I cannot. We are in such danger. Terrible danger.

No one seems to see it. They go about their lives as if. As if
everything will be okay. They don't see. I envy them. I want to live
paycheck to paycheck and go home after work to plop in front of the tv
and eat garbage and have a soft warm woman to sleep with. But I can't
hold a job and I don't know how to talk to women. So I drift and dream.
And I stay hungry. Always hungry.

I don't understand any of it. I haven't worked a real job in thirty
years. 
And fast food makes me sick. I can't keep it down. The tv is so stupid
that I want to be ignorant enough to watch. I want it more than
anything. But clarity gets in the way. I hate it. Yet I crave it. What
does that say about me? I don't understand.

Even with clarity I find that I don't know much for certain. In fact on
examination I find I know nothing at all for certain. I believe that I
know yet when I stare into the darkness of those mountains I realize how
it is, even though the words to convey what I realize will not come.
Maybe there are no words. I fill my mind with words but they mean
nothing at all. 
Nothing.

It is all a waste, I suspect. Such a magnificent waste. There's nothing
to believe in. An imaginary God perhaps if it suits one's fancy. Not
mine, thank you Jesus anyway. And when we return to the crumbled dust
from which we all sprang perhaps that realization will come to us all. I
just don't know for certain. That's all I can say. And there's no one to
ask. No one with answers. It all seems so exaggerated. So absurd.

On the sixth day of walking I saw something red flitting through the icy
trees. I wondered at it and then I realized I had come to my truck. For
a moment I considered turning back and returning the way I'd come. It
was just a passing moment. Like life. Like this wonderful world. A cloud
passing by on a sweet summer day never to return.

Then I got in my truck, drove to a grocery for some fresh fruit, and
then to a motel for a long hot shower and a night in bed. The mountains
wait. They know I'll be back. Until I am no more. And we will be
together again. 
Forever. If there is such a thing.

Thanks for reading,

Dan


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