The Fifth Sabbath Of January

Two White Goats Forage Among the Weeds in a Field

Two white goats forage among the weeds in a field of grass.

Together they banquet on the bud and leaf and stock of

spurge, thistle, knapweed, nettle, and bindweed along the fence.

A wind kicks up a cloud of seeds from off the riverbank where the cottonwoods grow.

The goats will eat these as well when they've settled.

The white chutes fly far and near, they cannot know where they will go.

The white goats eat, their skin shivering beneath flies,

the sun shining brilliant about them though the day before’d been cold.

The yellow flowers of the leafy spurge sway in the wind also.

The thistle and knapweed bulge with purple blooms.

The white goats eat and the white seeds fly.

City Arts And Lectures

Had two friends call me last night and tell me to turn on the radio to NPR.  It was about 8 and I'd just got the boys in bed for the night.  They sounded urgent. I turned on the radio to a fuzzy signal and heard two voices I slowly recognized.  WB and Michael Pollan talking to each other.  I was pretty excited to hear the old poets voice.  I don't hear it often.  I like Michael Pollan as well so needless to say I sat and listened.

Here's a few things I took from that conversation. 

Wendell is an old man and a farmer.  He jokes like the ranchers I know.  Refreshing and dry.  In listening to him talk he seems senseable.  There's a practicality in the way a farmer or a rancher talks.  The words could be ideal, inept, or inconsequential but the voice is one of serene reality.  The world is as it is and my drawl backs that up.  His voice would go well with the sentence, "Take your high falutin ideals, wad em tight, and shove em back where they came from.  The south pasture needs mowin."  I'm sure he would be much more poetic than I but there you go. 

On his ideas I have to say two things.  Let your agriculture find its way in your place.  Nature will breed itself to adapt to your land and circumstances with a little help and heirloom seeds you can harvest.  It's not that complicated.  In those same thoughts he talked about looking at nature for agricultural understanding.  I believe he quoted Sir Albert Howard who began the organic farming philosophy with his treatise An Agricultural Testament.  Sir Howard looked at four sources of agricultural knowledge in that treatise: the methods of nature, the agriculture of nations passed away, the practices of nations unaffected by science, and methods much studied by science.  WB talked about observing the methods of nature for knowledge about domestic agriculture and this is something that I'd never considered before.  I found Howard Alberts writing and here's a great quote from An Agricultural Testament that sums up WB's words.  Click the link to get the whole document.

The main characteristic of Nature's farming can therefore be summed up in a few words. Mother earth never attempts to farm without live stock; she always raises mixed crops; great pains are taken to preserve the soil and to prevent erosion; the mixed vegetable and animal wastes are converted into humus; there is no waste; the processes of growth and the processes of decay balance one another; ample provision is made to maintain large reserves of fertility; the greatest care is taken to store the rainfall; both plants and animals are left to protect themselves against disease.

It's nonreductive complexity that can be easily observed.  Just open my eyes.

The other thing I took away from this conversation was the idea of the individual stepping up and making an agrarian reality in community.  There are top down methods of conservation that can be implimented, like forbidding the patenting of life, which would help free many forms of agriculture from such big brothers as Monsanto, but the big changes that will make a local difference are to be found only in the place they grow and by the people they affect and who choose to make a difference.  So there you go.  He knew I was listening. 

I wish there was an archive of these conversations but there isn't so I can't direct you to a chance to listen to the poet yourself.  But then again, maybe that's okay.  Maybe I just need to be fine with the limit of listening in the moment and appreciating good friends to let me know I need to turn on the radio.

On Tools

So my last post raised some difficult questions about technology that I'm wanting answered.  Mr. Sayer posted a great comment about it that needs to be addressed and it was always my intention to look at these things honestly as they apply to my place and life.  So, in the spirit of this here blog, I began to wander around my house and think about my niggers.  The dishwasher remains off limits because Sayer is right.  As it sloshes about in the kitchen we can enjoy a bit of quality time roughhousing with the boys, reading and knitting scarves and doing all the idyllic things of modern life like watching such TV shows as Ugly People Who Can't Sing But Think They Can and Fat People Riding Bikes.  There's just no replacing that kind of quality time.  I mean, imagine having to wash dishes together instead of wanking your soul off to the TV.  That's the Dark Age's man. 

I'd actually like to talk sometime about the fact that Sara and I don't often work together in any manual labor sense.  We work together raising our boys and having boys (wink, wink), we work together on the yard occasionally which is nice, but when it comes to home economy it's not something that we do together very often as a team.  We don't dig holes together or run fences or split wood or all those myriad of things that might be considered work.  Washing dishes just made me think of that but that's another post.

I wanted to narrow this work idea down to a single example that I could wrap my mind around and I found it not in intellectual pursuit but in the work itself while hammering away at the "Bathroom Project."  Last night I decided to start using a handsaw.  I'm finishing up my framing downstairs.  It's been a bit of a puzzle getting around the ductwork and the furnace room and making the door rough-ins plumb, square, and true as well as wide enough.  All that aside, a large part of framing is cutting 2x4's to length.  This is simple work many of you are familiar with.  Slap a tape measure on the board.  Measure its length.  Mark the length you want it to be.  Square your line to the board.  Pull the trigger on an old craftsman circular saw your father gave you and grind, smoke, chip, and generally force your way through the wood with a dull blade spinning at a few thousand rpms.  It's all very simple, loud, and egregiously violent.  The squealing that emanates from the garage rivals that of a pig slaughter house and that's before I manage to mangle the end of my finger with a kick back off the blade. 

Now I know I'm lazy.  I should get my blade sharpened or buy a new one.  I've been meaning to.  They're expensive either way.  And I don't have to.  I've framed my basement with a dull blade.  All my blades are dull.  My table saw, circular saw, and chop saw are all wood smokers.  The chop saw can't even get through a 2x4 now since I tagged an old nail with it 20 cuts ago.  It fills the shop with smoke till I'm afraid the board's gonna instantaneously combust.  It's pretty bad when you have to dip your fresh cut wood in a bucket of water cause it's smoking like you've just acetylened it like old spring steel.  My excuse is, I'm just framing not building fine furniture.  If the board is shorter when I'm done then I've accomplished my task and I've not had to work that hard at it.  If my blade is sharp then it works better but it doesn't have to be and I don't really have to think about it beyond keeping my fingers out of the way.  Just push harder my Neanderthal friend, just push harder.  And the thing is: I can.  I can be stupid.  I can treat my tools like a... well Wendell said it best. 

As I'm burning through these boards I have a vague feeling of unease.  Why?  Suddenly last night I'm working and I realize this is Wendell's point.  I set the saw aside, listening to the quiet settle on the shop after being filled with the banshee scream of the saw and I thought, what the F$%# am I doing.  The faint smell of burning wood tinged my nostrils.  I walked over to my peg board, mostly empty of any tools I actually use, and pulled off one of four hand saws I have hanging there.  I've collected them over time, all free, from my father, great uncle, grandfather, etc.  I can't turn down any tool.  It is one of my weaknesses.  I picked one that seemed solid and sharp and I pulled up a board, measured, marked and cut its end off.  The rhythm of the saw filled my arm.  The quiet raking of the teeth across the wood grain filled my ears.  The smell of sawdust filled my nose but not in great smoking clouds.  The board gave away and in a matter of seconds fell into two pieces just as I desired.  I risked no bodily harm.  My ears weren't ringing.  The saw spronged once or twice but I picked up its rhythm well enough in time.  I enjoyed the effort involved.  It was work. 

My father used a hand saw for as long as I can remember growing up.  He taught me how.  If you don't know then they are very frustrating to use.  The springy steel bounces and warps and jams and skips up the board.  The key he taught me, which came back to me, is keeping the force of your arm straight behind the saw.  You have to make the saw and arm all nice and perpendicular to the board and swing it through with a smooth, strong stroke that doesn't wobble.  Your arm has to mate with the saw.  And the rhythm is important.  It's steady and mathematical.  It powers on the down stroke and rests on the up stroke.  It's something that you have to know and learn.  You can't be ignorant and cut a board with much success.  I of course have already proven the opposite with the power saw.  A monkey could cut something with a power saw.  It may be another monkey's arm but something will be cut. 

My father doesn't use a handsaw anymore.  He can.  I remember watching him saw 2x4's when I was young and they were like lard beneath a hot knife for him.  For me they were like rubber noodles beneath a scoop shovel.  I envied the old man his natural ability to make long boards into short boards so easily.  He uses a chop saw and circular saw like everyone now and has for a long time.  He's good at them as well.  They're good technology and they have their place.  I'd not want to run a hand saw the width of a piece of eight foot ply, though with the right amount of skill and a sharp blade you could.  It sounds like a lot of work. 

So, I've decided that I will cut all the rest of my framing boards by hand for this project.  That will be only a dozen boards or so till I'm done.  A lot little a bit late.  What price did I pay for the power?  I used electricity which I paid for and polluted for and bent over for.  I'm nearly half deaf already.  I don't know how much sawdust and chemical glue I've snorted over the years from cutting boards but I've filled my lungs a few times and come out of the shop with snot and tears running down my face.  I've mangled my fingers twice though I've not lost any yet.  I haven't paid money for most my power tools cause they're old and were given to me or salvaged or gifted and my brother and father have every tool I could ever hope to borrow but I know how much they cost and it's a hefty investment.  What have I gained by power?  Ease.  Ignorance.  Speed.  But I found not dealing with cords increased my efficiency.  I don't get cords tangled or trip on them and I never run out of power or have to find power with a hand saw.  When you know how to use a hand saw it's not actually that much more difficult but you can't work in ignorance.  It's impossible to treat your tools with contempt because they won't work for you if you do.  They have to be sharp and well maintained and well used.  You have to work well. 

Last summer my brother David was back from Boston where he's attending North Bennet Street School.  This is one of the oldest and finest trade schools in the country teaching furniture making.  David is the quintessential craftsmen, with the wild beard and stubborn streak to go with it.  He and I, many years past, built a simple, solid cherry, dining room table for Sara and I to use, us being newly married and having nothing of the sort yet.  I love that table and it's been a beautiful addition to our house.  This last summer, seeing that the finish we'd used had not held up well over the years, he and I set aside a couple days to refinish the surface.  We hauled the table outside and worked in the shade of our large maple tree.  The sounds of the neighborhood filled the air.  The tree leaves rustled and stirred and we talked and drank beer and worked.  Half assed philosophy and fishing stories were abundant.  You could smell the summer air and the fresh breeze rolling down the street.  The boys would come out and run around and help us with the table and sit on its edge while we worked, examining all our doings.  All you could hear from our being there was the soft sliding of blade and metal across wood and good conversation.  All you could smell from our being there was the world as it was.  All you could see was the bright red strips of cherry rolling up in long curls off the table top as we moved the hand planes across its surface.  All you could feel was the sweat on your forehead and the ache of your arm as it changed the wood in front of you and the soft breeze on your neck and the cool beer in your hand as you waited your turn at the plane.  As we worked the surface with David's hand planes he showed me the grain and how it affected your blade and how one should approach the wood and deal with the wood as it was in that table and only in that table.  No table would be approached the same.  No wood could be approached the same. And he showed me how to sharpen and adjust the blades and feel their edge for trueness and how deep to work the cut for the circumstance and all the things that he had learned in a year of woodworking under tutelage.  This was knowledge that could not be plugged in and had to be lived out.  Even with his help I was not as worthy to the task as he was both in physical capacity and skill. 

It was not just these work joys that amazed me but the quality of the craftsmanship was astounding.  As we began taking away finish and wood it became immediately apparent that our first attempt years before with the belt sander had left a surface more uneven than you would imagine.  It had dips and peaks and drop offs and these began to disappear under our care.  When we were done that tabletop was within 1/1000th of an inch perfectly flat.  What real worth is in that kind of craftsmanship besides the soul's worth?  This is about usefulness after all.  Two months later Shepherd spilled his milk on the table and instead of rolling off into my lap or his or across the table to the one irreplaceable manuscript I had unwittingly placed in harms way the milk just sat there in a puddle.  It didn't move an inch.  Flat may be useful after all.

I have to say that this changed how I look at tools and wood in the woodworking sense.  None of the joys of that day would have been revealed had we been belt sanding or power planing.  When I'm working and I pull out the saw my boys go running for the door.  "Gonna be loud," they shout and want nothing to do with it.  When we were hand planing they were under our feet and all about and watching and learning and being at work with us.  What value have I lost with power?  Do I even know until I've let it go?

A Good Meal

Sara cooked up a meal for a king tonight.  I mention it out of respect for her ability and my love of good food.  She made some barbecue sauce and crocked a few local porkchops I got from a friend of mine who raises pigs.  She baked some homemade bread, thick and crusty with a dense soft center that sucked up butter and honey most excellently.  She laid out some applesauce, thick, sweet, and chunky, we'd made last summer from apples up at the ranch.  Overall it was a generous and worthy meal, a meal that feels good to eat and fills you up.  These are Wendellian values I hope to make a regular occurence.

The Unsettling of My Soul

I'm sitting in a downtown brew pub about to enjoy a local porter: the White Eagle Baltic.  It's an especially dumb name for a porter but it looks delicious.  Ain't I a special little boy.  It's small comfort this beer and all its local goodness especially since I'm apparently a nigger and niggerdly and niggerish and being niggered upon and have niggerized a few myself.  WB slapped me around pretty hard today.  I just finished his essay, "The Unsettling of America" and I have to say I'm pretty unsettled by it.  It raises a spectral question that I can't seem to put down: Is there any hope for us?  Is there any hope for me?  There is much of Wendell that I'm going to have to read, absorb, and then set aside.  I feel I've no way of coming to terms with its consequences in my life.  I'm not equal to his task.  The sociopolitical symptoms he criticizes are to large for me to get a handle on and then the only purpose it can serve is for me to accentuate my hypocrisy with a high flown cultural criticism.  That would come so easily to me.  I can imagine I would be really good at that.  That wasn't the point of this here writing though.  The point was to find something tangible and do it.  So here's where I stand.

The growth of the exploiters' revolution on this continent has been accompanied by the growth of the idea that work is beneath human dignity, particularly any form of hand work.  We have made it our overriding ambition to escape work, and as a consequence have debased work until it is only fit to escape from.  We have debased the products of work and have been, in turn, debased by them.  Out of this contempt for work arose the idea of a nigger: at first some person, and later some thing, to be used to relieve us of the burden of work.  If we began by making niggers of people, we have ended by making a nigger of the world.  We have taken the irreplaceable energies and materials of the world and turned them into jimcrack "labor-saving devices."  We have made of the rivers and oceans and winds niggers to carry away our refuse, which we think we are too good to dispose of decently ourselves.  And in doing this to the world that is our common heritage and bond, we have returned to making niggers of people: we have become each other's niggers.

But is work something that we have a right to escape?  And can we escape it with impunity?  We are probably the first entire people ever to think so.  All the ancient wisdom that has come down to us counsels otherwise.  It tells us that work is necessary for us, as much a part of our condition as mortality; that good work is our salvation and our joy; that shoddy or dishonest or self-serving work is our curse and our doom.  We have tried to escape the sweat and sorrow promised in Genesis - only to find that, in order to do so, we must forswear love and excellence, health and joy.

I'll be honest and tell you that I read this while sitting in a tacobell on my lunch break slurping high fructose corn syrup through a straw and munching down Cheesy Double Beef's.  You don't have to tell me that my hypocrisy knows no bounds.  I think this idea was the killing stroke of the essay, the coup d'etat.  Our grand malaise of culture boils down to an individual sickness.  I'm adverse to work.  Now in my defense I'd say I'm more prone to working with my hands than some may be and I enjoy it as well.  Spending a morning cutting wood in the fall; steam rising from your shoulders as you work, the rhythms and strength of the moment, the sound of cracking wood and the exultation of a perfectly delivered blow sending two pieces to ground from one, all work to produce a pile of wood that can be used.  It's fulfilling to my soul.  But... I burn a natural gas furnace.  I send a check to the gas company and they pipe me fuel.  I do nothing for it except earn a pay check.  Is my furnace a nigger?  I've called it worse things before.  Or my automatic dishwasher?  That's near blasphemy.  My refrigerator, my car, my computer, my ipod, my food, my clothes.  Or, for the love of all that is holy, is my toilet?  I love my toilet.  No really.  I LOVE MY TOILET.  Don't %$#@ with my toilet.  Or my toilet paper.  I hate wiping my butt with pine needles.  That's right, we don't have deciduous forests in this state.  No fluffy oak leaves here.  Its pine needles or poison ivy.  Take your pick. 

All that aside, do I really understand the deep rooted hatred of work that Wendell is getting at here?  I know that I'd hate washing dishes.  If I could get somebody to buy my food for me I would because I can't even stand walking down an aisle and picking it off the shelves in prepackaged splendor.  I'd hate crapping in an outhouse although I hear in the winter you can stack up quite the frozen fecal stalagmite.  Can I even imagine disposing of my own waste?  What about walking to work?  Aside from the fact that it would take a good hour, not so interested. But I have to say that if I can do it for myself, then I should.  So... Can I grow my own food?  Can I dispose of my own refuse?   Can I light my own house?  Can I build my own furniture?  Can I make my own clothes?  Can I cook my own food?  Can I make my own music?  Can I embrace the sweat and sorrow that is work?  For some I can and for some I can't.  So then I ask, can I find a community that will help me?  And this is where I think our hope rests.  Though I can swing a hammer I can't pick a guitar.  Though I can cook a mean ribeye, I've yet to raise a cow.  Though I can do things for myself I can't do everything.  I'm ready for the promise of Genesis.

"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."

And behold, a double cheesy beef burrito emergeth from the maw of the serpent and assuaged the raging hunger of Adam beneath the shade of the apple tree where he lay in repose while listening to Michael Franti on his Ipod and getting his feet rubbed by Eve with the Homedics Foot Pleaser Ultra Deep Kneading Massager with Heat.  And all was well with his soul.

The Sabbath Poems

Wendell Berry wrote a collection of  poems over the course of his life which he called the Sabbath Poems.  They were poems celebrating a life lived and a place dear to his heart.  I thought I'd also celebrate the Sabbath in such a way.  It seems perfect for a Sunday, the act of poetry.  Poetry captures the essence of Sabbath inactivity, thinking about and giving of the life we've stroven for all week.  Poetry's nature is thankfulness and revelation.  Is this not the root of the Sabbath?  So, because I'm not a very good poet though I'd like to think I am, I'll give not just my own poems, which you can thank me will be few, but yours if you want to send me them and of course those of Wendell's that I've found generous to my spirit. 

The Fourth Sabbath of January.

How To Be a Poet

by Wendell Berry

(to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.

Sit down. Be quiet.

You must depend upon

affection, reading, knowledge,

skill—more of each

than you have—inspiration,

work, growing older, patience,

for patience joins time

to eternity. Any readers

who like your work,

doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath

the unconditioned air.

Shun electric wire.

Communicate slowly. Live

a three-dimensioned life;

stay away from screens.

Stay away from anything

that obscures the place it is in.

There are no unsacred places;

there are only sacred places

and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.

Make the best you can of it.

Of the little words that come

out of the silence, like prayers

prayed back to the one who prays,

make a poem that does not disturb

the silence from which it came.

The Joy of Fishing

Yesterday was indeed a glorious day of floating and fly fishing.  We all three caught a Jesus size load of fish that, if we'd not given them back to the river, would have capsized our small, humble vessel.  These were no small, stream brook trout or squishy, tame eastern trout either.  These were wild, river pigs.  The water ran cold and strong.  The air bit a little and froze the water on our fly rods into balls of ice that you had to thaw out with for fingers and then your mouth when your fingers were too cold to do the job, but it warmed up into the day and the wind stayed away and the moss stayed down and the fish hits were fierce and frequent.  I couldn't ask for a more perfect day.  A grand thank you is in order for a Mr. Jeromy Emerling, the progenitor and planner of the day.  Thank You.

The Bighorn; one of the great rivers of the world along with the Nile, the Amazon, and the Jordan.  It's a tail water river flowing through prairie and rolling hills.  The water flows a perfect 40 degrees all year round so it's a fisherman's paradise on mild winter days and hot summer days and any day really.  It's an unflappable river.  I like to think its just naturally that perfect, one of God's creations, but there's a massive wall of concrete from which floweth the living waters and that's just the truth.  Without the dam then it'd just be a muddy, piss-hole of a river.  So I guess technology has blessed me in this way and if I'm honest with myself I wish they'd dam the Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone too.  What a fishery that could be!  Is this wrong? 

I've come away with a few thoughts from this trip that I'd like to work through so I'll post them in a series. They come in the form of questions. What is local? How does fly-fishing fit in with an agrarian mindset? Does Wendell Berry fish? Why is fishing important and what does it represent? Is it wrong to burn up a few gallons of fuel and 80 miles of road to go fishing? And finally, what the hell is Eggless Vegan Canola based Mayonaise and why does it exist? These and more later.

Before I take leave I'd like to quote a bit of scripture.  You may remember this verse.  It's quite famous in this state although there's some controversy in encylical circles as to it's divine inspiration. I personally don't see any reason to believe otherwise.  It merely backs up the biblical personality of one Montana river.  Enjoy.

So says Song of Salmon Chapter 3 verses 1-6.

Daughters of Montana, I charge you
by the gazelles and by the does of the prairie:
A river arises east of here
A rose of Sharon
And a Lily of the field.

What is this coming out of the mountains
like a column of smoke,
perfumed with myrrh and incense
made from all the spices of the merchant?
Look! It is Solomon's drift boat,
escorted by three fisherman and two oars,
the noblest of Montana,

all of them wearing the fly rod,
all experienced in battle,
each with his rod at his side,
prepared for the riffles of the day.

Hyde made for this king the drift boat;
he made it of aluminum from Manitowoc.

Its posts he made of fiberglass,
its base of the finest aluminum.
Its seat was upholstered with white plastic,
its interior lovingly inlaid
by the daughters of Ireland
with cans of Guinness.
See how it glides on thou lovely seam of water.
into its arms like a lover.  

Come out, you daughters of Montana,
and look at King Solomon carrying his Trout,
the crown with which his river crowned him
on the day of his fishing,
the day his heart rejoiced.

From The Bighorn River: I Salute You

If your reading this on the 21st of Jan 2010 then I'm fishing one of the greatest rivers in the world at this very moment.  We're floating and fly fishing and generally experiencing nirvana.  You may wonder how I came to send you this smirk of a post and you can thank the glorious googlian achievment of scheduled blog posts.  I'll let you know how it went when I'm back.  Just know, if there is a more Wendellian experience than a tight fly line and the dappled, butter-yellow sides of a brown trout rolling in a clear montana river then I'll swallow my own hook and pull it out my ass.  Take me to the river!

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made. Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something

that won't compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

the flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot

understand. Praise ignorance, for what man

has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested

when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus

that will build under the trees

every thousand years.

Listen to carrion - put your ear

close, and hear the faint chattering

of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

So long as women do not go cheap

for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy

a woman satisfied to bear a child?

Will this disturb the sleep

of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie down in the shade. Rest your head

in her lap. Swear allegiance

to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn't go. Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.

Wendell Berry

1973

The Bookstore

I received a used copy of Wendell's, Home Economics in the mail this evening that I ordered from Amazon.  What an amazing book.  I'm excited to read it again and share it with you.  I'm a little embarrassed that I ordered it online.  Not a week after I ordered it I read a story about Indie bookstores and their terminal decline since the rise of Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Amazon.  Here's an excerpt from Jeremiah Chamberlin's take on the decline of the bookstore.

As a writer, bookstores have always felt like a home away from home. Whether in Michigan, Mississippi, or the left bank of Paris, the moment I walk through the doors of one of these shops I feel content. And welcome. And every time I’m in a new city, the first thing I do is browse the local independent bookstore. You find things in these places that you’d never discover anywhere else, because each store cultivates its own personality, ethos, and point of view.

So, as a lover of bookstores and a former bookseller myself, it’s been painful for me to watch these wonderful cultural institutions disappear. It’s estimated that in the last 15 years nearly 70% of independent bookstore have gone out of business. True, it’s not all bad news–the American Booksellers Association reported that 10 new shops opened between October and December of 2009. However, the sad truth is that this hardly makes up for the vast number of stores that have closed their doors. And with each lost store, we lose not only a place where people can browse for books, but also an important anchor of our literary communities.

We have both the big chains in our town and Amazon lurks behind every monitor I see.  I love them dearly.  I make no bones about it.  I love them because as far back as I remember, we had no other option.  They introduced a bookish freedom to this illiterate prairie stop that I'd not known before.  When I found the website http://www.fetchbook.info/ I cried a little.  More often than not our library doesn't carry books of any substantial literary value.  If you like Mary Higgins Clark and Robert Ludlum then your set.  I'll admit that I do actually like those authors.  A good story is a good thing.  But for the love of all that is holy!  Carry something with some meat too!  But you have to understand.  Our library is in a rundown building that used to be a parts warehouse.  For the last 15 years the city has tried to get money to make it worthy of a place that cares about its dignity but we've voted it down.  And this year is no exception.  We have a nice baseball park though.  I'm taking a deep breath and moving on before my colorful vocabulary makes the kids worried. 

That said, many years ago I gave up looking for any worthwhile source of literary excellence here in Billings.  I counted my blessings with the internet and B&N and left it at that.  But Wendell would have thought differently so I'm reevaluating.  I think I'll poke around and see if there's a local shop I can call home.  Fetchbook will be a hard habit to break but it would be worthwhile if I found a source of literature that also provided a source of community.  My skepticism is bubbling forth but I'm hopeful.  I'll let you know.

To Cook

There are two primary responsibilities that any person, whether country folk or city folk, can strive for that would make them an apprentice Wendellian.  You can grow your own food and you can cook your own food.  Because it's the middle of winter here in Montana I won't be thinking about growing any food for a good while but I can try and cook and so I have. 

A little history lesson for you.  I was one of the most inept kitchen dwellers in the history of mankind, perhaps only my father being worse.  When I was a young fellow and still dependent on my parents for my sustenance and wellness of mind, my mom went on a trip and left Dad and I to fend for ourselves.  I'll remember this story till the day I lay down on my Viking Pyre and am lifted to the sky in smoke and ashes and drunken bellowing.  Dad's cooking.  I'm in the back yard.  The cat's lounging in a wallowed out nest of grass in the lawn.  All is pastoral.  The day is warm and light dapples the leaves of the Dutch Elm that sways above our back porch.  The back door opens in sudden rush of screeching hinges and sucking air and from the kitchen comes spinning in a high arch like a biblical plague of fire and brimstone, my mom's cast iron skillet completely engulfed in flame.  It turns sideways and hurtles out onto the lawn with a bounce, rolling towards the cat who seems perplexed at the sudden burning terror rushing towards it.  At the last second the cat dives out of the way and the pan flops over on its nest burning a large black hole in the once green and thriving lawn.  The door shuts and dad goes back to cooking.  These are my genes.

I've made a commitment to learn to cook.  This is terrifying to me and I shouldn't admit it in any public form whatsoever but if I'm to follow through on my commitment here then I think it should be addressed.  Don't get me wrong.  Sara can cook and does.  She is a fantastic cook but raising three boys isn't always conducive to time in the kitchen so we end up eating plastic wrapped garbage more often than we should.  The boys of course love it. 

My first documented foray into gastronomical creations happened last night and I'm happy to say it was a smashing success.  Nothing and no one burned.  It's still far from the ideal Wendellian utopia we hope for.  I used salad from a bag, marinade from a package, and I have no idea where my steak came from, but it was delicious.  Just to brag a little:  I grilled up some boneless rib-eye, dripping juice but perfectly crispy where the flames had seared the fat and marinade.  I sliced and sautéed a side of fresh brown Italian mushrooms, Sara tossed a caesar salad and we popped a bottle of Columbia Crest red wine.  The boys were in bed and the mood was romantic.  All was well in the universe and Sara said so herself that the steak was perfect.  Makes my stomach growl just remembering that meaty masterpiece.  I was proud. 

This was not my first foray into cooking and I've certainly had a fair number of failures.  Once I made egg-cakes, which is like a crepe, for Sara as a surprise and could not get the dough to thicken for anything.  They were watery, nasty and ran all over the pan till they congealed into a lump of loogey looking parfait.  I kept adding flour to the mixture till it was completely gone and I stood there befuddled.  When Sara woke up she pointed out I'd been using powdered sugar instead of flour.  Her goading lasted most the day. 

I feel that if I can learn to cook good food I'll learn to want good food and I'll become less dependent on the man Mansanto and more dependent on my own abilities and local agriculture.  It's got to be the first step towards bringing an agrarian mindset into being.  If you can't cook you can't eat good, fresh food cause it don't cook itself and it don't come in a plastic bag.  It's like any skill.  If you pay someone else to do it then you're a slave to their competency, ability and price.  The market is your mistress and you are its bitch.  And that's whether you're paying Applebees (Ugh) or Kraft to make your food. 

So if I'm successful at the end of this project I'll be able to cook a good meal with good food.  I'll know what good food is.  I may even break my addiction to zingers.  And I'd like in the process to see my place as a source of good food and learn its intricacies and measure its local possibilities.  It's what Wendell would do I'm sure. 

On Living and Dying

I've made it very clear to my sons even at their young ages that when I'm to go on to be with Jesus it had better not be from a damned nursing home with piss running down my leg.  I expect to be taken up into the wilderness of the Stillwater valley and left with my 45 and a bag of beef jerky.  They can come get me in a few days if they want to bury me.  If that's the case then I'd prefer a Viking pyre with torches and lots of booze but it's pretty hard to dictate your burial ceremony from the ever-after so that will depend on who's planning the funeral.  Let it be known to the world then my will and testament.  A pyre, torches, flowing barrels of beer into big mugs and lots of poetic annunciations.  Maybe a hymn or two but only if they're manly hymns.  Make it something I'd like to be at.

I thought of this when I read Jonathan David Price's post Advantages Of Dying Young on The Front Porch Republic yesterday.  Here's a great excerpt.  Read the whole thing.

In the modern health system, life can be extended beyond one’s capacity to live. The listlessness of modern death—especially for men—is that you might not even get a chance to show courage before you forget who you are.

That should be a hit upside the head.  Of course Wendell's already been here.  His short story Fidelity probes this idea with great clarity.  The story is much more complicated than I can really illustrate here.  That's the joy of story.  You can't boil it down to its component parts and expect it to have the same impact.  It's the complete package or nothing.  But I'll summarize so you have an idea and maybe you'll go out and read it.  If you've read any of Wendell's fiction then you'll recognize these characters because he uses them throughout his story lines. 

Uncle Burley is an old man.  I believe it was set in the early 1980's.  His health declines and his family doesn't know what to do so they take him to a hospital out of desperation.  The old man is dying and they soon realize this.  The hospital sterilizes him and puts him on life support and the tragedy of this separation from the land and everything Burley loved becomes immediately apparent.  So Nathan Coulter steals Burley from the hospital and takes him back to his place to let him die in peace on the land that he loved.  Then the story gets good.  The family and community of Port William back him completely and stymie the investigator sent to prosecute the case.  They cover up and mislead  and mock his ignorance and in classic Wendell style make you feel completely and utterly connected to this community and the way that it understands itself.  It's an amazing story with a lot of interesting commentary on hospitals, healthcare, community and of course dying. 

I work in healthcare.  I'm not directly clinical.  I fix and tinker with medical equipment of all types.  I enjoy my work for what it is with its simple technical intimacy.  I like taking stuff apart and figuring out how it works and what's wrong with it and I'll say with only a mild hubris; I'm good at it.  There's a lot of that going around at the hospital.  We are damn good at what we do.  Sometimes I wonder, when I see patients on the edge of death, very old and feeble, what the hell are we doing this for?  Have we no dignity in death?  Are we that terrified of the dark?  What terrifies me is the prospect of ending up on one of the machines I service everyday.  You live life and then you die.  I don't want any hospital purgatory getting in the way of either of those complimentary aspects of being. 

I make my claims on life receiving what it gives me even to the end at death.  These are our limits and in them we are free.  Let me be a free man.  If nothing else then grant me that.

On Toilets

I'm putting in the new toilet this week.  (It can supposedly flush golf balls which I thought a touch silly for a toilet ad campaign.  I'd rather it could flush week old chocolate eclairs but whatever.)  It's a bit early in the process but marital stability knows no price or time frame.  I thought this comic was especially hilarious in lite of my recent construction debacles.  Chad Carpenter's Tundra is brilliant, terribly hilarious and fundamentally life changing.  One of the great comics of our age.

Tundra Comics

Enjoy!

On Plumbing

I've yet to bring up the "Bathroom Project" on this blog and so it's about time.  My one true and pure Wendellian trait is I'm a do-it-yourself-or-die-trying type of worker.  This is often to Sara's chagrin.  I came by that genetically from my father both in mule-headed stubborness and a general competency in all things handy.  I like to think of myself as competent although plumbing tests that theory to its absolute limits.  In my basement is a bathroom in progress or what we like to call with a shudder and a hundred yard stare, "The Bathroom Project".  The project also includes the adjacent laundry room cause it was all one big pie hole when I started.  Actually I've enjoyed the project, though its been challenging and expensive.  I'm two years into it.  Let me recap in under a hundred words. 

Tear out old caveman bathroom.  Scrape mold from floor and walls.  Send garbage to growing hill on the horizon.  Frame laundry room.  Plum in actual laundry drain.  Issue colorful and creative epithets of profanity. Frighten wife and children.  Thank the plumbing God for No Hub Rubber Couplings.  Plug old, grody floor/laundry drain.  Design.  Redesign.  Have Architect friend tell me design is crap.  Use his design.  Make bathroom plan bigger.  Yeah!  Jackhammer up concrete floor.  Lay all new drain pipe.  Love PVC.  Hate Iron.  Learn number one rule in plumbing.  Shit Rolleth Down Hill.  Pour new concrete over new pipe.  Muttering prayers of penitence.  Frame.  Replumb upstairs bathroom drains.  Issue colorful and creative epithets of profanity.  Frighten wife and children.  Replumb all supply lines with pex pipe.  Love pex pipe.  Did it in a day.  Did I mention I love pex pipe.  Fix leaks on tub valve.  Raise too low tub spout when tub comes in.  Install 6 foot jacuzzi tub.  Listen to singing of angels.  Level, adjust, level, adjust, level, adjust.  Issue colorful and creative epithets of profanity.  Frighten wife and children.  Level, shim, adjust, level, shim, glue.  Frame.  Plumb tub drain.  Cut pipe with small blade in tight place by hand with short impotent strokes.  15 minutes of hell.  Fill tub with water.  Feel guilty.  Tub is a filthy, capitalist monstrosity.  A hundred gallons and 20 amps of pure hedonistic excess.  Shove guilt down and allow welling up of joy when the jets kick on.  Hear running water.  See water beneath tub.  Issue colorful and creative epithets of profanity.  Frighten wife and children.  This lasts for the next hour.  Go mad with sawsall to access leak.  Fix leak by contorting body and turning greasy pipe wrench with mouth.  Stress marriage even more by getting dust on wedding dress box.

I have to say it's fitting that that took 301 words to accomplish.  Everything about the "Project" is three times what I estimate.  Three times the cost, three times the time and three times the aggravation.

And then yesterday I spent a pleasant afternoon running my last run of drain for the bathroom and laundry room sinks with my oldest son, a little father son bonding.  "It's like a puzzle," I said.  "Like Sudoku," Zander said back.  He's obsessed with the number puzzle right now.  "Yeah like Sudoku."  He helped me hold the pieces and cut them and measure them.  I showed him how to properly use a tape measure even though it seems I'm often times inept at its use myself.  No mishaps this time.  We glued it up and then I looked at my plumbing book. 

In passing, to find information on the stub out for the wall, I noticed I'd broken my vent by forty-fiving the whole drain line up to the height I needed for the vanity.  I read.  I looked.  I mumbled.  I held my head in my hands.  I paced.  And then I admitted we'd have to redo it.  "It's just like Sudoku," Zander said with a shake of his head.  Yes it is son.  Yes it is. 

The plumbing is done.  If I never plumb again that would be fine with me but it's one of those things that always seems to rise again like hydra's bloody @$*#! head.  As long as I have to take a dump I'll have to turn a wrench.  I'd like to think though that I've learned something from all this.  Perhaps some humility, patience, tenacity, and maybe a touch of vocabulary.  When I'm soaking up to my chin in boiling-lava-hot bubbling water I'll think back and smile.  Its all worth it I suppose.  And as my three year old son Shepherd always says, "I did it myself."

On Community

Maybe I've been a bit hyper philosophical.  This is a good enough community for me.  Spent the evening with a few guys watching the colts smack around the ravens.  Drank some fantastic brews, miller lite not being one of them, though from the amount of money they spent on ads I'd say it damned well should have been.  Ate some food - not just any food but food made with the hand of an artist; cajun wings, bruschetta with fresh veggies, mozzarella, basil and garlic, and a greasy bag of bar popcorn.  Sara hasn't been able to stand the smell of me for the last twelve hours.  Not much to make it better except maybe an 18 pack of miller lite and my beautiful wife in a halter top nearby to open the cans for me.  Damned ads make me so dissatisfied. 

Disclaimer: (Miller Lite is crap.  I was only referencing the insidious nature of Advertising.  We on the other hand were drinking Pigs Ass Porter and Alaskan Smoked Porter.  No ad required.  Happily endorsed on this website.)

On Lineage

On call for work this week till monday morning.  Seeing Grandma for a good talk will have to wait.  Next weekend?  This is the malignancy of modern life.

What Do We Do

It's a front porch day.  From Prime Wisdom by Jason Peters at Front Porch Republic.

Make arrangements to live locally, to scale back, to get used to less.

Do this voluntarily and cooperatively before catastrophe forces you to do it in a panic.

Make arrangements to be kind and useful to one another, to be competent at fundamental tasks, to be willing to do actual work, to help those who can’t do it and to encourage those who won’t.

Make arrangements to stay home more often, to occupy yourself in useful endeavors, to make birdhouses rather than hand money over to Hollywood at the Celebration Cinema.

Love your place. Guard your liberty. And remember: you are free not insofar as you are able to pay; you are free insofar as you are able.

I like Jason Peters.  He's a great writer and a poignant critic as well as humorous.  This piece resonates with me now because I'm in a position of searching as it seems is he although he's much farther along than I by any means.  It's a dark piece that echoes the writers malaise especially for Peters who normally riots with a healthy dose of sarcasm and tom foolery.  Nonetheless its makes a few almost manifesto like statements that are moving.  I think I'll read the "Mad Farmer Liberation Front" now.

Find Your Own Voice

Front Porch Republic had a great post by Katherine Dalton The Roots of Originality on Wendell's newest book of essays titled Imagination In Place which I haven't read yet.

I'm sure I'll get to it by next year when I'm done slogging through the rest of his writings.  Dalton said something that struck me as profound. 

...there is humility as well as rootedness in the kind of originality Mr. Berry loves, a humility that will not be found in the work of those who use their past, their current city, or their color-gathering trips abroad as veins of ore to be mined in order to further a career or to enable themselves to “find their own voice” (a phrase Mr. Berry clearly dislikes). Art, for him, is an attempt at wholeness of expression that must come from a desire for wholeness and haleness in the life the artist is living, and cannot be separated from it. In some way—through imagination and (for the fortunate) inspiration–a writer becomes a medium for his own piece of ground and the people who are, like him, bound to it.

This statement brings to mind my post on The Way We Think.  In that post I commented on how we look at people in terms of defining our reality but now I think it runs much deeper than that.  On the other side of that original equation was the question of how we look at language.  Is our language precise and rooted in the place and people we are connected to?  Now I'm asked how do we look at art?  The purpose of art is not self expression, self discovery, or self renewal.  It's not "finding your voice."  And the purpose of thinking?  Can this rootedness affect us even to the basic function of our existence.  When I asked the question, how do I go about being in this world then I changed even that to be focused on place.  Good art, good language and good thinking finds its fuel in the place and people of the artist.  This is anti-intuitive to the way I function.  I have to admit that even the genesis of this blog was to attain some sort of self-(Fill in the Blank).  It may have been freedom, revelation, purpose, good living, or the plain, old hubris of writing and being read.  So now I'm challenged again by Wendell to explore the basic assumptions of even my art to which I say... Touche old poet, Touche.

Experiment Q

Experiment Q is going poorly.  I haven't even seen the target since I last posted.  There is some sort of disconnect between what we term community and what we experience in the real world and I'm not sure how to overcome the gap.  The isolation of modern society is kindof a catch phrase that goes round in conversation and commentary but doesn't really mean much cause nobody really understands it.  Its not until you intend to commune that it becomes frustratingly apparent and in a passive aggresive trip you up from behind kindof way.  I don't want to be purposeful about it because purpose makes me want to gag.  I just want to it to be the way things are.  So there I am stuck in a bog of disconnected congeniality. 

I reread Wendell's words and I think that I'm missing something important.  In his essay "Native Hill" it is brightly apparent that Wendell connects his personhood with his place.  They are inseparable.  In my quote from last post he says that when he thinks of these things he thinks of the people of this place.  So maybe I only have half the picture of community.  What is place? 

The other issue is, will Experiment Q ever read this and when he does will I have made myself a complete douche?  I've found the public nature of this media to be intimidating.  My wife reads it daily for goodness sake, or so she says.  Its not as if I want to air my dirty laundry although I'm sure that would be quite entertaining, but I did want to be honest about finding a connection with the old poet and thinker and that's difficult. 

Unless I want to make a grand effort then Experiment Q will have to occur in happenstance and even then I somehow doubt I have the presence of mind to understand J in any depth.  That's neither here nor there.  In the meantime I'm going to read and think.  I'm much better at that anyway.

The Way We Think

Last night I read a small section of "Native Hill" out of the collection of agrarian essays called The Art of the Commonplace.  Wendell wrote "Native Hill" in 1969 and the essay is, in the creative labeling of the editor, geobiographical.  It's an introduction to the person and place of Wendell Berry and one soon realizes that to Wendell these two things are one and the same.  I'm sure I'll spend the next few weeks trying to understand this excellent essay.  It's a shotgun blast of thoughts that lays a foundation for his work.  It expresses the personhood of Wendell Berry, telling the story of how he came to his thinking, and what influences were there to begin his path and it forms the place that he began and how it cultivated him as he cultivated it.  

This is important to me because I'm very different from Wendell.  This is obvious just from sentence structure alone, but it's important to recognize because when I read his works and compare their message with my own life I'm often left disgusted with myself.  He's just so damned irritating in how right he is and how wrong I am.  I seem wrong by my very nature.  Its not as if I came of age and chose the wide road of pleasure and excess as opposed to the narrow, true path of an agrarian mind.  I was born on that highway.  Wired I came and wired I'll go.  I may not have been shot into the fast lane like an 8 lb wailing cannonball as many kids were and are but I've at least been walking the superhighway barrowpit for as long as I can remember.  This is not the life of Berry.  The man grew up in a land still farmed with horses.  By his own admittion, if he'd been born five years later he'd have never understood the old ways.  Try 45 years later and see how well you fare.  This blessing of being the last of a doomed generation gives him the insight that I now have to struggle with to understand.  I'm of generation X - X being a polite symbol meaning: entitled, rootless, narcisistic, little f#$%s.  I'm of a generation that didn't even have to work hard to screw up the world.  We just did it de facto, the very essence of our existence.  They handed it to us in scoop shovel fulls. 

I'm not excusing myself.  I'm just pointing out a very loud difference between the poet and the pupil.  My one ace in the bag is Montana.  I would be such a puke if it wasn't for this state and the people here.  But of course, as I've so ineloquently pointed out, this state is also the hardest part of living off the land when the land could kill you in a moment or a season and I'm quite frequently reminded of that.  Still I have hope.  If there's a land that can still reason in terms of place and person its here.  Thats not, however, my point today.

I want to address community.  This will be an ongoing concern and one which will challenge me greatly.  Wendell said something in Native Hill that peaked my interest. 

When I have thought of kindness or cruelty, weariness or exuberance, devotion or betrayal, carelessness or care, doggedness or awkwardness or grace, I have had in my mind's eye the men and women of this place, their faces and gestures and movements.

Not I.  This idea of having the people of your community form your abstract concepts is mind-blowing to me.  It's the purest form of story.  When I think of grace I think in definitions and abstract metaphysics.  When I think of doggedness I think in metaphor and personal experience.  When I think of weariness I am.  When I have thought of these things and others like them I can't move beyond my self and it hasn't ever occured to me to think otherwise.  Having people form your concepts of the world is simple and bizarre.  It's bizarre because, for goodness sakes, how could I ever know enough people or know them well enough to establish something as complicated as this.  I can't remember their freaking birthdays much less the essence of their character.  Perhaps this is just a Wendellian miracle, born from a man with supernatural abilities of perception, or perhaps I'm just an insensitive jerk without consideration for others.  I think its much more basic though.  I'm sure Wendell has a depth of perception that is unique and sharpened and I'm sure I'm a dick at times but what it really boils down to is community. 

This is not the gag-me form of intentional community that well meaning believers of all sorts trumpet.  This is a basic neighborly togetherness formed out of need, place, common beliefs, struggle, and help.  This is formed by hammering nails together and netting each other's fish some of which are bigger than others.  When I think of my friends I'm sad to say that I could easily think of the fifty icons on my facebook account.  Even sadder is that I could have a few hundred icons to look at but I'm an ass and I like to keep my friends limited to fifty.  But what does it really matter.  They're nothing but text and quizes and videos and statuses.  I can't imagine why I couldn't associate them with any kind of concrete reality like cruelty or devotion.  So you say, get rid of that damned devil if you don't like it.  That wouldn't change anything.  I'm sure in the near future I will leave facebook to the virtual world from which it was spawned and strike out on my own but until I'm willing to look at people in a different way then I'm just farting in the wind to no purpose.  So my goal for this week is to study a friend, to learn them.  Don't take that wrong.  I'd like, when I'm done to be able to associate something real with their gestures and movements and face.  I've a particular person in mind whom I'll give the title Experiment Q.  They'll never know I'm onto them.  Till then.

Asking the Right Question

I’m already off on a tangent and we’re only at post number 4. Ridiculous I know but bear with me. Unless you’re my wife, my one and only dedicated reader, you never had to read the first attempt at this subject which was multiple pages and convoluted and very disagreeable in its complexity and you won’t know this is a rewrite... except I’m incompetent enough to have just told you. Just be glad I filed the other one in the can. I’d like to look at questions. The accomplishment of Wendell Berry is most poignant because he refines the best traits of an agrarian, rural ancestry by using intelligence and education. He asks questions about attuning ourselves to both the natural and civilized worlds in equal measure. He requires an answer to the question how do we live good lives? I say, he is unique in the question he presents. He’s unique because the basic question that premises his thinking is different than the question that premises all other western philosophy from the time of Socrates till now. We ask, what is truth. Wendell asks, how do I go about being in this world.

I’m going to try and keep this short and simple. There’s been carved from our language vast landscapes of bullshit on these two subjects, being and truth so I won’t put on my irrigating boots today. At least I hope. My foundational thinking on this subject wasn’t formed by Berry but by a much older thinker – Heraclitus. However, I don’t recommend quoting Heraclitus in certain company so I won’t. His name is much too prone to double entendre when used with authority in a pub on 1st Ave much less such a seedy place as the internet. I recommend using little known Russian authors for quoting your more abstract and tentative ideas. It gives it so much more authority to say, Sergei Yesenin the great Russian modernist once said, “Men who argue with poets make an arse of themselves.” That’s a Jim Harrison trick I’ve taken to heart. Regardless, Heraclitus is a Greek, pre-western thinker and as such gives us a peak into a different dimension of the philosophical art. Read him if you dare.

I begin with this statement. Perhaps we shouldn’t ask what truth is; perhaps we should ask instead, how do I go about being in this world. Most responses to this statement resound with the sentiment: Aren’t they the same? To quote the fine Russian poet Ivan Aksakov, “No. You’re full of Govno comrade.” Truth rests in the realm of the abstract; being rests in the particular details of the world.

Here’s my piss poor attempt to define being. I’m sure I’ve stolen most these descriptions from Wendell among others but I couldn’t tell you where.

Being is living and talking about everything according to its nature, how it comes to be and how it grows, and is intuitive of the natural world’s interdependence. Being is accepting the world as it is rather than justifying and/or changing the world. Being involves a process of truth seeking but it does not suppose there to be a question what is Truth? Being is not merely acting on moral, value, judgment, or philosophical imperatives; those actions are only progeny of the reasoning that precedes them. Being is as much intuitive as it is rational. Being is as much science as it is poetry. Being is primordial. To be is to be fixed, embedded and immersed in the physical, literal, tangible day to day world, but Being is very much of the nature of water – always adapting and changing but always the same. Being is primarily an immersive relationship both with creation and with people. Its meaning emerges from this relationship. Relationship’s primary task is concern and from that emerges action of all types: doing something, producing something, attending to something and looking after it, making use of something, giving something up and letting it go, undertaking, accomplishing, evincing, interrogating, considering, discussing, and determining. Being is fundamentally revealed in stewardship, which is care.

Now truth is defined as… Just kidding. I’m not gonna give you the satisfaction because I said I wouldn’t bring my big boots today. Being is dependent on the world around you and truth, though we deny it passionately, is dependent on you. That’s my line and you can disagree with me if you want. That’s the funny thing about terribly true statements. I can’t prove it in any concrete fashion. I can, however, define with a measure of certainty what it is that my place and the world demands of me. For example, if I piss in my pint of beer it will subsequently taste like bud light. This is a true and measurable fact.

So in summary, here is the primary discrepancy between the questions of being and truth and it is one of perspective. Seeking to discover truth and applying said discovery leaves the world at the mercy and whim of my own fancy. Whereas someone who asks the question, how do I accomplish being in this world, may discover truth but in the process must attempt to adapt themselves to it. The difference, though seemingly subtle, is vast. Who is required to adapt? Who is limited? Who is accommodated? In the first instance, the world is remade according to my discovery: to my self-realization. In the second, I am adapted according to my place in this world. I am responsible to my limitations.

Thus it seems imperative that before anything else happens. I ask the right question in the right manner.

How do I accomplish being in this world?

Wendell, in his essay Native Hill, said, "It is not from ourselves that we will learn to be better than we are."  And as usual, he said it best.

On Lineage

My wife Sara has gathered close to four generations of wedding photos from our family.  They're meticulously hung in our dining room.  Its actually impressive to see.  She put a lot of work and money into it.  Last night a new aquaintance examined them.  This is nothing new.  They intrigue people.  A dozen friends had gathered at our house and Jared, whom I hadn't met till that night asked when my family had come to Montana.  No one had really asked me that before.  I gave him a blank gaze and just didn't quite know what to say.  My own genesis wasn't immedietly apparent to me.  The question ferreted out a measure of shame in my mind.  I should know these things.  I should know them because I'd been told the stories before and now I realized I just hadn't listened. 

The thing about your own personal history is that it's complicated.  The story spider webs into the past along a myriad of lines and chances.  It's difficult but I'm given over to knowing it now.  Wendell would.  It looks like I'll be paying a visit to my 90 year old grandmother.

On A Silent Morning

Now what?  The weather is still frigid.  We got a foot of snow and no where to go.  The walls are closing in.  I rose early to go to work.  It was frigid at 0 degrees.   The air held a stillness that I had to stop and appreciate.  This is perhaps my first step towards a Wendellisian understanding.  (I'll come up with a more intelligent description later.)  Stopping for silence and pissing outside.  They both seemed appropriate for the moment.  Both were difficult to achieve in the mirthless grimness of an alberta clipper.  Indoor plumbing and a car heater were much more appropriate.  There are two truths that become immediately apparent on such mornings under such adverse conditions.  Firstly, eskimo syndrome is the condition whereupon a man's pecker, being adverse to the cold and shrinking a distance directly proportional to the farhenheit value to which it is exposed, and a man's protective outer garments, being necessary in the cold and growing in thickness in proportion to the frigid temperatures encountered, pass each other on the way out leaving a frightful obstacle of length and gap to overcome.  Put bluntly, it's a two inch pecker and six inches of clothes.  Secondly, there is no silence as pure as the silence of a sub-zero morning in a snow shrouded land whether city or country.  It was, as Jack London so masterfully penned it in White Fang,

"A vast silence reigned over the land.  The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness.  There was a hint of laughter...  It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life." 

With that thought nagging me I climbed into my car and drove to work on empty roads.

The Beginning

It’s January 5, 2010. The temperature outside dropped to 20 below this morning. I’m concerned about this temperature. I’m disturbed, not just because it freezes the very marrow of my soul into a coagulated lump of spite and bitterness, but because it makes me doubt Wendell Berry.

I’m warmly enjoying a bit of fiction by the old poet and mad farmer this day but I can’t help but question his viability. There are many who would agree wholeheartedly with my lack of enthusiasm for if there is any common thread among pure stock Montanan’s it is this: we think getting back to nature is bullshit. Back to nature is a vast and uncomplicated stamp we use to simplify all thinking that smacks of mother earth, nature hikes, environmentalism, bear bells, organic granola, and sandal toting, buffalo humping ideas that arrive along immigration routes from the farthest bastard infested reaches of the continent.  I admit it’s a bias and one that, if I could have my say, would not stain the venerable Mr. Berry's visage. But without the study and thought which Berry requires of us, one bangs the stamp down and moves on.  I would doubt his viability as well; and do on a God forsaken day such as this. For day’s such as this, as well as most other days in this state, make you realize that nature, given its dithers, would eat you up and crap you out quicker than a bear in a berry patch. I'll let you know, that’s pretty damn quick: quick and messy.

Homesteaders in this country went mad with its emptiness. They froze and boiled and starved and scraped at an unmerciful earth. This is a far walk from the Garden of Eden. And yet… we love it. Like a spurned lover we can’t seem to tear ourselves from its clutches. The mountains, the rivers, the emptiness calls back like a siren, leading us on to certain doom smashed among the crags and washed up on the prairie sea.  There is a consensus, unspoken, that nature here was once a mean bull with a bucking strap that needed rode and broke and there's those that came and were broke themselves against it and those that came and made this a place to live.  This leaves a lingering worry in the back of one's mind whether such a bull is ever really broke and need we test its congeniality unnecessarily.

For those of us who live here, it has been noted and stated and argued that Wendell Berry is an idealist with no bearing on reality. This is the gut reaction of most natives when I read his essays aloud in the hopes of a profound discussion. “He doesn’t live here."  And I realized that this is true, (not in an obvious sense but in a profound one). This place and this time are different than the place and time of Berry’s thinking and living. But this does not make him wrong. If anything it makes him right. I’m positive that the thinking is good but has to be placed in context to time and place. Thus…

At some point you stand up and ask what the hell this means and go out and find it.  Enough philosophy.  I will find Wendell Berry here in my place, amongst my own lineage and understand and possibly change.  No idealism.  I won't tolerate it.  Or not exactly.  It will be kilned.  My guess is I'll be an abject failure at most things Berry.  But if I believe he talks rightly then I have to attempt life in a manner condusive to that truth, whenever it be manifest and however difficult.  Truly, I think this project will suck on too many levels to imagine.  But so be it. In the coming year I'll read and think and talk and criticize and mock and live Wendell Berry.  Maybe in the end I'll find him.