[MD] Clouds

[david buchanan]

Dan and all MOQers:

I think your essay is a beautiful portrait of alienation. The outpouring of 
sympathetic response shows, ironically, that feelings of loneliness and 
isolation are something we all have in common. Maybe that goes past irony 
and makes it all the way to funny. But seriously, I think the picture you 
paint is one that we can all relate to because alienation is the disease of 
our time. That word is a bit vague and it has Marxist overtones, but at 
bottom its just a feeling of not being at home in this world. Its not just 
about being left out of the party or being insulted by the stupidity of TV, 
but that's part of it too. Alienation expresses itself a million different 
ways, not least of all by the desire to seek an alternative vision of the 
world. That's what drew many of us to Pirsig's work and to this forum, no? 
It seems to me that Pirsig thinks he's diagnosed the source of the problem 
and his MOQ is aimed at making us feel at home in the world instead, as Arlo 
has so eloquently and repeatedly explained.

I think that one of the most destructive features of this sense of 
alienation is that we generally blame ourselves, as if there were something 
wrong with us personally. But its not a personal problem. Its a metaphysical 
problem that we all suffer from on a personal level. Big difference. I mean, 
if everybody feels like they're drinking life through a straw, then why do 
we each suppose that its only our own life that sucks so hard? Sure, some 
folks really are painfully shy or socially clumsy but I think even the most 
confident and un-neurotic person in the world feels that way at least 
sometimes. I mean, if you're anything like me, certain social situations 
make me uncomfortable because it feels like I'm just pretending to be a part 
of it. I feel that I must participate in certain events even though they 
seem to be completely ridiculous and embarrassing. The company Christmas 
party springs to mind. Or how about singing the national anthem at a 
baseball game? Never felt so alone as when I was singing a song with tens of 
thousands of people. At parties, when I meet somebody who is particularly 
suburban and full of plattitudes, I have a kind of out-of-body experience 
where my soul leaves for a while until the small talk is over. As a result, 
I've never had a conversation about the weather or my job except for the 
ones I watched from the ceiling.

Anyway, nice work. It made me feel a little bit more at home in the world. 
It also made me put on a warm pair of socks.

dmb


>From: "Dan Glover" <daneglover at hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>Subject: [MD] Clouds
>Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2007 09:06:20 +0000
>
>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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