I don't want to die in the city

He was perhaps the last of the old-fashioned lumberjacks.

He worked through old and new and crippling pains, through vicious weather, through the irritants of weaker men, through loneliness.

He survived injury and trees that tried to kill him and dullards who dared to talk at the dinner table.

He befriended the forest, the wind, the horses and dogs.

He succumbed to narrow thinking and... temptation.

He soured in prison, aged in captivity, eroded in the city; a new prison: confined to the streets, the basement market and bookshops, an apartment in the sky with his bookshelves and little gardens. He stared out the windows for years at the grid of rooftops and grey horizons and never a forest in sight.

"I don't want to die in the city," he said, but it had to be inevitable.

He respected women and indigenous peoples and animals and tired drearily of men but he took to me for reasons I don't understand. And so I tolerated him for reasons I don't need to understand. I promised we'd take a trip when it became possible. We'd go see the trees (that tried to kill him). But then I too fell to physical ruin.

A new friend took up his cause. They won a reprieve. She had a car. They fled the city, saw the trees and the lakes.

They left the shore on a boat. He left the boat and in the water he was free of the tyranny of useless legs, but not of an old tired heart. "I don't feel good," he said suddenly to her; the woman on the boat. And the water moved over him and secured his escape from the city.

I haven't spared as much thought for the Lonely Lumberjack because Grandma passed away the same day and frankly she was dearer to me.

I remember that day when Carlos brightened and dropped a shield and declared a revelation; it's okay to ask for help. And soon thereafter he released this poem; my favourite.

My entire life
I have walked
Whatever path alone
Forged ahead
No matter what
Emotions not ever betraying
My stern face

Lately, I have made
A pleasant discovery
It sort of
Crept up on me

To always be alone
Is not
Who I have to be

To bend; accept help
Is to develop
A trust

Not to be like
An old machine
That gradually
Submits
To
Rust

- The Lonely Lumberjack

A little crack

At Poetry Corner last night - okay it’s not called Poetry Corner but it’s a very friendly, fun and supportive monthly gathering where folks share their poetry and any other creative efforts. Okay: At "Poetry Corner" I shared my finished Red Herring game.

Ivan the Tolerable taught us a bit about the accordion and then on his own very snazzy one he wheezed out the Godfather theme and some other Italian ditty, much to the gleeful approval of Papa Italiano who then shared this little brain-buster:

that that is is that that is not is not that that is is not that that is not is that it it is  

This is supposedly a perfectly valid paragraph if you insert the correct punctuation. Most people take a few minutes to figure it out if at all!

Soul Man made some much-appreciated magic with a couple classic Spanish guitar pieces, Math Teacher shared her watercolours and a couple “passing” spectators were prompted to share their favourite travel story as a contribution.

Cradle Man was in rare form this night, rarely given to his almost-permanent compulsive stereotypic (rocking) motion. He sang entirely unique covers to a couple 80’s tunes in his favourite single tone and pitch and his very special fluctuating time signature! I personally love these joyful train wrecks!

The Native’s Wife managed to get us all on our feet to sing and dance a native song. I have no idea what it meant but hey, it was a new experience! I shall have to find out more about it.

The Lonely Lumberjack and his poetry were the impetus behind this creative tradition many years ago now and besides Soul Man, it’s most steady participant. And it was through Poetry Corner, which he himself invited me to, when he was a tenant, and myself a guard, at the local correction centre, that I became associated with this charitable community before eventually becoming a volunteer.

This night we learned that he had stayed home with illness. So someone dug out their speaker-phone-cell-o-phone-machine and we called him up as Soul Man strummed a flexible intro… and as soon as he answered, we launched into song:

When the night has come and the land is dark

And the moon is the only light we'll see

No I won't be afraid, no I won't be afraid

Just as long as you stand, stand by me...


I don't ever sing at these or other community events except on the rare occasion I present one of my own songs on my own guitar, but this night I made an exception and joined in. We sang it complete while through the phone we heard old Mr. Lumberjack whistling along with us!


Oh and if you want the answer to the riddle above, here it is:

That that is, is.

That that is not, is not.

That that is, is not that that is not.

Is that it?

It is.

It’s an exercise to illustrate the importance of ambiguity and punctuation.

At the close of the session Soul Man reported his conversation with the gruff, taciturn and oft-cantankerous Lonely Lumberjack who confessed that he was deeply touched by our musical sneak attack and even surrendered a tear in his eye!

Every once in a while a little crack appears and his little old heart emits a ray of light.

And now here's a special treat:

Together

I’m noticing, over the last few days, how increased mindfulness (or wakefulness etc.) doesn’t only avail wisdom but also the simplest intelligence. I have had many meetings and social engagements lately and have been a little more on the ball and have noticed how much clearer I see the relationship dynamics without the nigglings - the wisps - of pride and paranoia twisting my perception. All these relationships look so much more joyful, beautiful and worthwhile and full of possibility through detached observation.

The word detachment seems to scare people off though. I’m talking about perception that is without these false filters of need; dependency; expectation. I find this hard to describe. For me it comes through organic trust in the lessons I have learned, first-hand, about the illusions spun by instinctive mind. For me detachment has no negative connotations. It is not about lack of love, for instance. In fact it avails so much more love.

I’m sure that Tolle or Buddhist literature would describe a different path for finding this detachment; a path or paths which I seem to have forgotten precisely. I recall these readings too dimly at the moment. For me it came through the habit of creative solitude and a bottomless fascination for truth; or more accurately it turned out, the absence of truth and the forensic study of its displacement. It is why, in my more powerful state of former years, I was strong in leveraging influence; nudging people more toward creativity, before I began faltering and eventually withdrawing, more intentionally of late.

I am reminded the advantages of clarity when one is not so self-interested in the dynamics of relationships. It is enough that we are all alive, human and imperfect together, and taking on this great drama together, as witnesses to the universe, and to our own potential as a creature of harmony; both internal and collectively.

The Lonely Lumberjack is perhaps a little less lonely

I saw him wheeling past me; leaning into his walker, barely an arm’s length away, on the other side of the cafe window where I sipped a fine coffee and nibbled an outrageously large and delicious donut following the collapse of far more humble plans. I downed the last morsels and set out to catch up to him but the old man is deceivingly quick.

It had probably been two years since I last spent any moment alone with him one on one. I’d left his apartment moments after a pair of snarling bigoted tirades aimed at two different minorities. Well, maybe not tirades. Let’s say… tiradettes.

For two years we’ve politely nodded, waved or smiled at group functions, and sometimes even briefly chatted. but given I was probably his second-closest male friend, and officially the executor of his will, there was always the elephant in the gymnasium. He does not make friends easily and maintains perhaps a trio at best. Often, in my more wakeful moments I have told myself I should at least explain the reasons for my aloofness and try to give him one more chance. I don’t need him to change his mind necessarily, but only to keep out of my face the product of his albeit-honest misperceptions which he gleaned in prison; viewing the worst possible behaviour from certain associations while succumbing to tribal illusions. I understand his view, and why it is natural and why certain logic escapes him. In ways he is very wise and in other ways very unwise, but I want no part of his prejudice. It is offensive to people I love more than he, and I don’t wish to feel unfaithful.

So I lingered in the neighbourhood, sitting on a bench, writing on an adorable onion-skin air-mail writing pad surely manufactured a half-century ago which I found in a dusty variety store across the street. Sure enough he eventually came rolling back and I called out to him.

He brought me up to his apartment. I was in financial decrepitude at the time and eagerly accepted a hearty pasta meal with plenty of meat in the sauce. I declined seconds but while washing up in the bathroom he slipped another bowl out undetected and I much enjoyed it again.

“Watch out for that [Theatre Guy],” he suddenly warned me. He’d no doubt seen us sitting together. “Never trust that ___ hole.”

So here it comes again. ‘Well, I’m on his circle.” I said. Well we’re already good friends, is what I wanted to say. Better friends than you and I. And furthermore, Theatre Guy is straight. And you’re a dumbass. Sometimes.

I don’t know why Mr. Lumberjack respects me so much. No man alive meets the rigid standards by which he judges men. Me especially I would think. Women meanwhile are sacred.

We met up again recently without incident and soon I will take him shopping for clothes again.

I don’t know if he understands why I cooled off with him. I’d previously warned him a couple times about bigoted conversation but he assumes I’m simply naive about it, and too generous in my appraisals. I wasn’t bothered by his words at the surprise pasta dinner; only disappointed. Perhaps we’ll be able to maintain an understanding going forward and remain friends.

Struggles with justice

Grandpa Munster and the Lonely Lumberjack have a similar resistance to making friends. They make do with very few because they have no stomach for trying to make friends outside of the limited environment of the parole community and related volunteer circles. It is obvious that this is because they are ashamed to present themselves in other circles, or perhaps sometimes – perhaps, I say – that they are angry or resentful at other circles for looking down on them or excluding them, often by official policy.

Their reputation is permanently dismantled.

In recent years I have seen many workings of the justice community; some measure of the indictment process, but more so of the transition process; the supposedly final phase. And what strikes me is how lawyers, judges, police; officials and officers of every type; institutions of every type, at every step along the way, seem to take every opportunity to see to it that offenders reputations are as thoroughly destroyed as possible.

There is a central idea that debts to society can be repaid but the truth is – we never ever ever allow that to happen. It seems essential in practice that their reputations be permanently annihilated.

The problem I wish to point out, from my point of view, is that reputation is what keeps most people out of jail, or otherwise on a “good” path by any codes or standards, legislative or otherwise, in the first place. We don’t seem to recognize that fear of being branded bad is largely what stops us from doing the selfish things which our instincts are always desiring. And this observation is easily supported: Just look at how people behave when given the privilege of anonymity such as internet spaces or the roadways. Motorists and internet commenters are by and large despicable! Anonymity protects their reputation.

When we destroy a first-time offender’s reputation more so than necessary, we are, in a way, sentencing them to life as a full-time criminal. Those who escape such a permanent transformation – I think it is much to their credit. From most insiders’ point of view, prisons are a criminal recruitment and training centre.

I think that most people do not much consider the fact that their reputation is their dearest, most coveted possession because that would lead them to ponder to what degree they are phony. And people do not enjoy pondering to what degree they might be phony.

When we destroy an offender’s reputation (or one who is determined by a court to be an offender, sometimes incorrectly) we are giving them license to turn to the only community who will not punish them for their new reputation and that is – the alliance of full-time criminals.

Please understand that I am not here making condemnations or offering solutions at this time but merely pointing out a problem. 

It is my confident thinking that the only real punishment that exists, the only punishment that is naturally just, is the inevitable self-punishment that an offender brings upon himself – and make no mistake – that includes you and me and everyone else who has never been to jail for our various "unlawful" practices from the great realm of sanctioned lying and cheating that this ill society so unwisely permits and assuages. The punishment we bring upon our self is exclusion from participation in the natural joy and freedom which the nascent burgeoning consciousness of the human species has birthed, yet seems so very uncommonly manifested in this society. Your sins haunt you. Unresolved, they hold you apart from this joyful natural reality.

So why is this dire consequence not enough to deter people from crime?

Because we are all so unaware of that reward. Because from a very early age we have been accepted into the rich human tradition of societal delusion; drawn in by the ruling structures, all of them thoroughly corrupted by communal instinct, and signed off by parents who don’t know any better or who seem not to have any choice.

When we maintain good behavior; truly good behavior: kind, generous, loving and harmonious; not the rationalized "good" behavior which is our normal mode – there are only two possibilities: We experience the joy and the freedom because we are being real and being kind for the incredible joy and wonder of it, or else we do not experience the reward because too much of our kindness has actually come from reputation mongering. In which case we are not much different than the criminals. We have placed ourselves in our own prison of the mind.

The loneliest lumberjack

He’s short, old, bearded and staggers around swiftly, hunched way over and leaning into his wheeled walker. “I look like a dog humping a football,” he says. He’s as gruff an old bastard as they come.

He frequently speaks negatively of himself and much more so of other men. I am one of the very few he can tolerate. Women are angels in his mind. He writes poems for his women aquantances and many poems about his truest lady friend of all: Mother Earth. He even wrote a poem for me once.

“I like having you over,” he said one time, in a very rare moment of sentimentality. I heard this from his little living room behind me as I walked into his little bedroom to peruse one of his bookshelves. “I mean that, you know!”

“I know,” I replied. He wishes I would come more often.

For two years we maintained a friendship on the sly. My workplace forbade it but only after it was too late. We’d already become friends and I was not going to abandon him to make some dipshit director happy who couldn’t manage an ant trap let alone a corrections centre. There is no need to keep secrets now. I am no longer working at the centre and he is in the apartment full-time. But I have not been there in well over a year.

He speaks very ill of black people and very ill of gay people and I have told him rather sternly at times that I wished not to hear it.

“I know what I’m talking about!” he barks. “I’ve known those people…! The things they do…!”

On the flip side he is hugely pro-native and a feminist of sorts.

Finally one night I'd had enough. We’d shared a great meal together and then he’d ruined the night with a little rant. I haven’t been back since then and he has not called in a long while. I used to think I might get through to him, help him see the error in his thinking; that bad behavior is a symptom of being human; not a symptom of being black or gay. and then I gave up that night.

I’ve seen him now and then at creative exchange sessions at the Mennonite church. He’s the one who started the tradition. He usually plays a harmonica or recites one of his rhyming poems about trees or the wind. Sometimes I strum guitar and sing one of my songs. It feels a little awkward now but he has been gracious. At the last session we did more than nod toward each other. He told me why he hasn’t been calling people much anymore, giving me a sort of opening I guess; permission to pretend I haven’t been ignoring him.

“Yeah, no problem,” I said. “I’ve been real busy myself.”

He said he really liked the silly poem that I read, about the time I covered my dinner guests in salad dressing.

Then on Friday I made it out to one of the community’s bi-weekly reflection dinners where thirty or more of us eat dinner, sing a few songs (this night we sang the words to Amazing Grace to the tune of The Lion Sleeps Tonight!) and then someone introduces a topic and we go around the big circle each reflecting on it; volunteers and ex-cons alike, each acknowledging our sins and our struggles and our lessons in life.

The Lonely Lumberjack and I are the only ones who don’t sing along and the only ones who don’t join in the prayer. Sometimes our eyes meet across the big circle. On Friday we hadn’t even said Hi; hadn’t even nodded to each other upon separately arriving.

Then at the close of the night, as I helped to rearrange tables and chairs, he careened by me, leaning into his walker and paused and smiled; a rare event, and patted me on the shoulder. I nodded and smiled and he departed without words.

I think about his life. He spent it on working farms and logging camps and prison. He spent his whole damn life in the company of men. At logging camp dinner tables, it was forboden to speak. This rare potentially social time they spent together; they spent it like wolves or Neanderthals, feeding in silence. Out in the woods it was too loud and dangerous for optional conversation.

Yes, It occurs to me now that he spent his whole life with men, and in environments where men could only be at their worst; uncivilized. No wonder he can’t stand them. No wonder the gays and blacks he knew behaved badly in his eyes. Everyone was behaving badly in his eyes. Prisons and logging camps make ass holes out of men. He hates lazy men too. He has said so many times and at those times I have said, “Hey, I’m lazy!” but he doesn’t care.

I wonder if he knows why I haven’t made time for him for a year. He might. I’m inclined to pick up the phone soon and arrange to come by once again. I should probably tell him these thoughts and try to give him another chance.

The Lonely Lumberjack: Changes

My entire life
I have walked
Whatever path alone
Forged ahead
No matter what
Emotions not ever betraying
My stern face

Lately, I have made
A pleasant discovery
It sort of
Crept up on me

To always be alone
Is not
Who I have to be

To bend; accept help
Is to develop
A trust

Not to be like
An old machine
That gradually
Submits
To
Rust


- The Lonely Lumberjack

The Lonely Lumberjack: Saddle The Wind

What would it be like
to saddle the wind
and ride on
such a streamlined steed

To traverse over the highest peaks
to have it answer
to your every need.

To skim the waves of the oceans
enter into the deepest ravine
brush the tips of the Redwoods
sweep the rooftops clean.

You could keep pace with the elephants
race with a fleeting gazelle
cruise through the tallest steeple
ring its massive bell.

Swish through grasses and flowers
causing them to nod and sway
to travel throughout the night
be far, far away
come the day.

Brush through the pines
making them rustle and sigh
prowl around the eaves of buildings
some not tall, some very high.

Only the wind is the freest of spirits
to capture it would not be fair
instead, let our imaginations take us
somewhere away out there.


The Lonely Lumberjack

The Lonely Lumberjack and I spend moments together on brief regular occasions. I am fond of him.

Life in the bush came with harsh struggles and dangers, I have learned , as did life behind bars. One had to be tough. One had to bear somehow, the idiotic things that so many men will do when they are gender-segregated for so long.

A man among them who knows integrity; who knows work-ethic and discipline; who knows the great powers to be harnessed from solitude and quiet and the pristine reality of natural spaces, all of which he is denied; how does he tolerate the unescapable clamor of idiocy?

Who would blame him for wanting to lash out?

Who would blame one, who has been judged harshly against the superstitions of the day, for judging others in turn for the unaccounted harm they do?

It takes some insight to detect the illegitimicies of human habit; to see the great harms in normalcy.

I suggest that this wisdom is rarer: To see that all of life is constructed for the purpose of doing harm and all these offences which surround us are natural and inevitable and born of programming necessary to our very existence, and that our own capacities, however occasional, for decency and balance are something to be proud of and celebrated and pursued and multiplied, but not to be taken for granted; not to be expected in others; not to be a cause for rage when others do not measure up to our own, perhaps excellent, but precocious, standards.

This, I would have the woodsman perceive, if I had my way.

I'm starting with the man in the mirror. I'm asking him to change his ways.
- Michael Jackson

I never yet heard man or woman much abused [who] I was not inclined to think the better of... and to transfer the suspicion or dislike to the one who found pleasure in pointing out the defects of another.
- Jane Porter

It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that makes them angels but because they do not expect holiness from one another but from God only.
- William Blake (1757-1827)

Ode to a friend

The Lonely Lumberjack
Bore no ineptitude.

He felled trees
And subordinates
In equal measure.

Strawberry season

The Lonely Lumberjack is to thank for this Rebel Camp NaNoWriMo prompt:

The man was short but carried himself lower still, hunched over a wheeled walker as he struggled through the door of the Queen O’ The Dairy Restaurant & Ice Creamery. He wore a long white beard and his white hair spilled out below a black bowler hat. Half-bent, he toddled slowly toward the serving counter where young Pamela stood in three-toned golf shirt, matching visor and name tag. She chomped chewing gum and drummed her fingers on the countertop waiting for Father Time to arrive at the designated Order Here area.

As he inched within two metres of the order area she figured he'd come within hearing range. “Welcome to the Queen O’ The Dairy Restaurant and Ice Creamery! How can I help you?” she chanted gaily. “Shit!” she added. The old man looked up, startled. “I mean - Thank you for choosing the Queen O’ The Dairy Restaurant and Ice Creamery. How can I help you. Sorry. I keep forgetting they changed the script this week. They do that every once in a while just to mess me up and make me look stupid.”

“How dare they,” said the old man dryly.

“I know. So what do you want?” said the girl.

“I’d like to order some refreshment.”

“Yeah, so what do you want?”

He looked wearily at the illuminated display boards behind the girl. “I want a strawberry malt.”

“A what?”

“A strawberry malt.”

“A strawberry what?”

“A strawberry malt.”

“A malt?”

“A strawberry malt.”

“A strawberry malt?”

“Yes. A Strawberry malt.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I want a strawberry malt.”

“Wait a minute,” said Pamela. She turned and left him and pushed through the swinging door. Another girl was standing at the hot dog production area carefully painting a fingernail strawberry red.

“Where’s Steve?” said Pamela.

“How would I know? I’m not his mother.”

“What’s a strawberry malt?”

“How would I know?”

“Oh, for fuck sakes. This old guy wants a strawberry malt.”

“It’s a code word for blow job.”

“Fuck off. It’s not.”

“Give him a strawberry milkshake.”

“Really?”

“That or the blow job, honey. It’s your choice.”

“Oh fuck off.”

Pamela returned to the service counter where the old man looked up at her stone-faced. “We don’t have strawberry malts but we have strawberry milkshakes. Will that be fine?”

“I want a strawberry malt.”

Pamela put her hands on her hips and clicked her gum noisily. “We don’t have strawberry malts here. Do you understand? It‘s twenty-twelve in case you haven‘t noticed.”

“Twenty-twelve for a strawberry malt? That’s highway robbery.”

“The year is twenty twelve. A strawberry milkshake is two-eighty-nine for a small.”

“I want a strawberry malt.”

“We’re all out of malts. Come back Monday.”

“I want a strawberry malt today.”

“Well, I’m sorry about your luck. Go try the Five and Dime, gramps.”

The man stared at her. Pamela stared back.

He spoke: “A sundae then?”

“No. Monday.” I won’t be working that day, she thought.

“I want a strawberry sundae.”

“You want a strawberry sundae?”

“Yes; a strawberry sundae.”

“Fine. For here or to go?”

The man stared at her. “Where the hell am I gonna go?”

Pamela shook her head. “Have a seat then. I’ll bring it over to you.” She grabbed a cup and held it under the soft serve dispenser, shifting the cup about to create the required swirl.

‘A sundae, without the swirl, is like an oyster, without the pearl,’ the tall and gawky assistant manager had serenaded on the day of her training. And you’re making me want to hurl, she had added silently and then laughed out loud. The assistant manager had laughed then too and winked at her. If only she’d had her spray can handy she would surely have peppered the spindly fucker right then and been out of a job and then horrendous days like this would never have come.

She ran the dish under a stream of strawberry sauce then and looked over where the man was still hunched and ponderously inching toward a table.

“Crushed nuts?” she asked.

The man stopped, erected and stared at her. “No. Just old age and arthritis.” He bent and pushed off again. Pamela frowned, looking back and forth between he and the tub of peanut sprinkles.

S is for Sister Moon

He tells of that with which he is most familiar.

He tells of Mother Earth and Sister Moon.
His verses speak gently;
Tales of the forest and the wind;
Tales of the lonesome cabin,
And the solitary figure; the observer in the wilderness.
He writes about the wild things and the ancients and the passage of time
And the growing divide between nature and man.

He is the Lonely Lumberjack.

He is perhaps the architect of his own suffering
But aren't we all?

The wisdom and the peace in his poems seem at odds
With the bitterness that slips into his voice.

I wish to know him better
Though there are barriers to his freedom.

Here is one of my favourites:


MAKE IT SO

They are ghosts now
All that is left
Are ghosts
Of memories
Of the hills
And valleys
Thoughts of times past
Recollections that always last

Faithful animals once raced
Over these hills and dales
Dogs, sharp of nose
And tongue
Now their baying is stilled
As if never begun
Others cannot hear their voices yet
Only one is capable of that
One that is now bent and weary
One that has hung up
His hunting hat
Still, when the days are short
And frost is in the air
One person still can hear
The baying of his friends
Over the hills just over there

Those faithful animals that tried so hard to please
Are the ghosts of the past
Of long, long ago
Until that one so bent and weary
Can join them and make it so

- The Lonely Lumberjack