Where The Blue Begins

Just to be clear... Kukla and I are back in Cincinnati. We arrived late Sunday night after an eleven hour drive from Somewhere, Illinois. Somewhere is not far from Chester, Illinois, the erstwhile home of Popeye the Sailor Man, whom we had tried (unsuccessfully) to visit on Saturday night. Neighbors had no memory of him, of Olive Oyl, Swee'Pea, Wimpy, or any others in Popeye's entourage of once- upon-a-time friends and enemies. "He's pictured on the sign there." I said. "And there's a statue of him in town."

"I wouldn't know about that. You some relation a' his?"

"No, just passing through."

"Huh... Well, you could go ask Jim, down to the Dollar General store, I guess."

We didn't ask Jim. Especially since we had seen all the Dollar General Stores we ever needed to see, and then some, since the outset of our journey. At last count there were at least 14,000 of them in the United States as of last month. We took a room at an "Americas Best" (sic) motel and set out early the next morning in search of a coffee shop that hadn't yet gone out of business. Some two hours later we ended up at a Panera cafe in Somewhere.

Of the sixteen Panera customers, excluding myself, only two were talking to each other. The other fourteen were deeply entranced by their smartphones, although they were sitting together at the same table. After half an hour or so, this scenario hadn't changed. As I passed the two friends who were still enjoying a real Kaffeeklatsch together I found a nice new dollar bill in my pocket and put it on their table. "Congratulations!" I said. "You have been selected to be the winners of this dollar prize, meager though it is, as being the only people here who are actually conversing instead of looking at your phones."

"Oh, my!" said the lady.

"Well, ain't that something?" exclaimed the gentleman.

And they both laughed and laughed, and the lady said, "Well, that's just one for the books!" Which is what my grandmother used to say when something pleased her in a surprising way.

A silver dollar would have been better, I suppose.

***

Now we have been back on Bouton Street for the past 4, 5, or 6 days. And it sometimes seems that we never really went anywhere at all, but I only dreamed that we did. Dreamed the mountains and the sea, dreamed the naiads, all and some... And we did not discover the Lost Worlds (but for traces and subtleties) or the place "Where the Blue Begins" (which is also the title of a very strange and worthwhile book by Christopher Morley). But these and more may yet be revisited and found, even of what has apparently vanished (and yes, there are naiads). The stuff of further journeys, so I hope.

In the meantime, I want to remember and thank the friends met along the way and those among my family, neighbors, and all the other wayside philosophers and fellow travelers who wished me well on this excursion - sometimes even reading these reflections of mine posted here over the past three months and 8,000 miles or more of wandering.

I have already been asked, by one or three, if I am "glad to be home".  And here I have to defer to Hesse in replying that, insofar as a sense of home is experienced "where paths of affinity intersect", then yes, I am always glad for such moments. And, as Novalis asked (and answered) "Where are we really going? Always Home!" That journey and return still await discovery.

Paths of Affinity Revisited

If driving along Route 50 through Kansas had been something of an endurance test on the westward trip, by the time I was midway along the eastbound return, I began wishing that a strong wind might carry Kukla and me off to somewhere in the vicinity of Oz for awhile. After all, Kukla had never met a wingèd monkey or a wizard before... and other such daydreaming notions as that. Besides, I was getting hungry for something more healthy than the Fritters n' Groundhog menu special that I didn't eat at the roadside diner which shall remain anonymous. Would it do, I wondered, to sit by the side of a silo and wait, like the man in the tale of The Food of Paradise* until some celestial morsel should just come my way?

But as you may already know, thoughts do have wings - and consequences. And sometimes the light or the atmospheric pressure, or whatever it is that gives rise to moments of synchronicity do seem to cause a celestial penny or two to drop. By such means beyond my comprehension I very soon found myself whizzing past a sign that read "Nature's Paradise". "What's this?" I asked aloud. "Make a U-turn!" said the GPS Lady who wasn't there. So, I did. And, sure enough, there it was: a little store in the middle of The Land of Silos offering the very food of Paradise I  had been dreaming on. So, in I went. Wouldn't you?

I know that somewhere in amongst the many words I've posted here I shared one of my favorite quotes from the writings of Hermann Hesse - this one from the story, Demian:

"Wo befreundete Wege zusammenlaufen, da sieht die ganze Welt für eine Stunde wie Heimat aus." 

(Where paths of affinity intersect, there the whole world can seem like home for a time.)

And this was so for me in the light of a moment in which I knew I had met a kindred spirit, a fellow traveler. Not a tourist, mind you, but a traveler with a true Gypsy Soul. When one meets such people there can be something like an immediate recognition and understanding... the language of affinity. But the remarkable thing was also that I had, earlier that day, been thinking about the travels of my youth, the travels of so many of my generation... Rumi's "wanderers, worshipers, lovers of leaving" who had - perhaps without ever having read Jung - were taking his advice to bid farewell to their libraries and "wander with human heart through the world". And I was thinking it rather a pity that so few young people today have known the joys and sorrows, the learning that comes of setting out into the Unbekannte alone or with "Birds of a Feather" towards some distant Conference of  the Birds. Yet here was one such a one who had journeyed as I had - as we had -  nearly half a century ago, in a world and time governed by an entirely different Zeitgeist. One who had crossed boundaries of  both Time and Place. And in this chance (?) meeting I suddenly felt hopeful for a whole generation. And it is a very good thing to feel hope in these times.

"To know there is someone, here or there, with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances, or thoughts unexpressed - that can make this life a garden."
                                                                                                                       ____ Goethe


* A story from the collection, Tales of the Dervishes, by Idries Shah

"That is a Beautiful Tardigrade You Have There..."

An interesting observation of social interactions that I forgot to mention was common in the Santa Fe Plaza. The first time I brought Kukla to the Plaza with me, we found a sunny bench and sat down in our respective places to "watch the world go by". Within minutes, five at the most, some lady and/or gentleman would stop and exclaim, "What a beautiful dog you have! Oh, isn't she gorgeous?!?" or an equally enthusiastic variation on this, sometimes followed with the question, "Does she bite?" Which is a sensible thing to ask before putting a hand in her mouth. But, by then the meeting is already being played out to everyone's happy expectations - providing no dog "smaller than a breadbox" (the kind Kukla does bite) is also present.

Almost as soon as her first admirers had gone along their way and I was looking elsewhere or finding again the passage I had recently left off reading in A Guide to the Successful Raising and Training of the North American Tardigrade, another admirer would come along to ask Kukla's name, praise her beauty, and comment on her outstanding canine qualities - while all the while Kukla blushed deeply and wagged her tail in appreciation of all this heartfelt adoration. Once, too, I thought I even saw her bow and curtsy like a doggy diva.

These "Love at First Sight" visitations took place at the rate of between 12-15 per hour and on each of the three days we sat in the Plaza together. But here is the interesting thing that I noted and much wondered about. After an hour or so we would walk back to the car where Kukla would take a lunch and siesta while I returned to the Plaza and my favorite cafe for a meal. During those solitary walks through the Plaza, or while sitting alone on a bench, not one passerby stopped to tell me what they thought of me (for better or for worse) nor to inquire of my illustrious ancestry or if I might be the famous operatic singer lately performing in "Die Missgeschicke von Hopalong Cassidy". And of the various people I made it a point of asking whether strangers often (or ever) approached them with the same enthusiastic admiration so spontaneously and generously lavished upon this or that dog on their path - the answer was always and ever only a variant of No. 

No, people do not say (at least not within earshot) such things as, "Now there is an elegant and lovely lady of impeccable style and charming demeanor!" Or, "See how this distinguished geezer comports himself with such a cheerful dignity, though rigor mortis must surely be near." Is this not a curious thing, that we should reserve these attentions and commentaries only for one another's dogs?

Next year, when I have carefully studied all seven volumes of the title referenced above, I will bring my beautiful Tardigrade to the Santa Fe Plaza in order to better acquaint her with the ways of human society. I hope her admirers will have much to say.

A Tardigrade 

(Milnesium tardigradum)

Farewell to the West

Somewhere Along Route 64

That Explains Why I Couldn't Hear It...

I had breakfast at a little cafe in southern Colorado this morning. As I was ordering at the counter I suddenly realized that something was out of the ordinary... It was quiet! No music! I was elated, and I went on and on telling the waitress how wonderful it was to just enjoy a good cup of coffee without having to hear the usual dreck.

"Thank you so much for creating this rare ambiance!"

"Oh that's okay," she replied. "We usually got country music goin', but the radio's been busted for about a week now."

Saint Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio

There is a story here...

Enough is Enough: The Long Return

Somewhere along Route 84 South to Santa Fe I realized that although I had already come more than far enough in these past two months of travel, I still had to make the long and tiresome drive back through the Horse Latitudes, the Straits of Diminishing Returns, and the Dismal Plains before arriving back in From-Whence-I-Came, Ohio and wondering whether this entire journey had been "but a dream". As I recall, this moment of insight coincided with the point where Route 84 changed rather abruptly from being a truly Scenic Route through snowy mountain passes, still verdant pasture land for horses, elk and gazelles, and ancient mesas fashioned by millions upon millions of years of weather to yet another divided four lane highway dotted with those ubiquitous roadside franchises as-seen-on-tv and almost every town on the American map, including (so I hereby predict) the Moon.

Along this raceway, cars, trucks, motor homes and motor cycles were speeding northbound, as fast as possible, out and away from Santa Fe while in the opposite, southbound, lanes as many vehicles sped into Santa Fe. Signs warning of Wildlife Crossing notwithstanding, the race was on... to Wendy's! To Arby's! To the Dollar General! Macy's! Or, as a taxi driver expressed it (in the classic Christmas movie, The Bishop's Wife) "Nobody really knows where they're going, but they're all in a hurry to get there!" Carried along in this torrent of Speedomania I arrived in Santa Fe at least a day and a night sooner than I had planned.

The Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis here features a bronze sculpture of St. Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio. Thinking that Kukla would appreciate meeting the wolf, I walked her into the adjacent garden and park. A sign said, "No Dogs!" We went in anyway. At that point I was more than a little ready to argue with any city officer that, after all, St. Francis was the patron saint of animals. Kukla is an animal, etc.,etc. The wolf and Kukla regarded one another in canine camaraderie and the good saint smiled in accord. 

Later, as I was sitting quietly on a bench in the Plaza and enjoying the warmth of an early afternoon sun with Kukla by my side, I suddenly had the sense that the entire Plaza was actually the grounds of a lunatic asylum, and that I and everyone else there were patients of the asylum. The shops situated around the square were seen as children's play stores, or like Hollywood sets, intended only to provide some amusement and diversion for us inmates. All an illusion. Who, so I wondered, are our Keepers?

The Survey Lady came along with her notebook and her sunny disposition. She asked us questions and wrote in her notebook.

Next week I will begin the drive back East. I am dreading all the simulacra of a Faux Noel. 

Symptoms of Cabin Fever or... Maybe It's Just November

The sun begins to brighten the edges of my cabin windows around 7:30 in the morning. By 9:30 it actually rises over the eastern mountain ridges. And by 2:30 it disappears behind the mountains to the west. Once the daylight fades away, the wintry winds come whistling down into the canyon and back I go into the cabin. Even for a certified introvert like myself this is a little too much of a good thing. Of course, if I enjoyed the ambiance of tavern life: triple screen TV, "vintage" music from the 1980's, and beer inspired conversation that is neither, I could always choose from one of the dozen or so booze halls that enliven the main street of Ouray after dark. But, since Kukla went on the wagon, the better choice is just to stay here in the cabin and avoid both her temperance lectures and those dens of noisy propinquity - for both her sake and mine.

That said, I actually have met a few kindred spirits here. Even a bear. But the bear was crossing the street to try its luck in one of the alley dumpsters, so had no time for uncertain socializing, and my kindred spirits had already flown to follow the western zephyrs to their source. Seems I do better with long distance correspondence anyway. I've heard it is the same with bears.

Snow is falling tonight. About six inches cover the picnic table on the hill outside my door. It should be "a sight to behold" in the morning - all that dazzling whiteness under a cerulean sky. Time to unpack my 1937 Kodak Brownie.

Time also to start re-packing my old suitcases (also circa 1937) and get ready to hop in my time machine with Kukla T. Dog. After a brief excursion to Elsewhere in 1897, we will head south to meet up with Ardythe in 21st century Santa Fe. And from there...? Well, as the Zen master said, "When you are on a journey, and the end keeps getting further and further away, then you realize that the real end is the journey". 

Irgendwo, Irgendwie, Irgendwann...

(So goes the song.)

Breakfast With Jung... and Sometimes Dinner Too

It was something of a ploy, inspired by dozens of spy movies of the 1930's and 40's, in which the agent is told to sit in a certain cafe wearing a corduroy jacket with a missing lapel button. At length, a man carrying a large potato will approach him and advise him of a one-eyed tailor whose specialty is the replacement of lapel buttons. "His wife makes the best Strudel... You like Strudel, don't you?" He will ask...

So, while I drank my coffee and sometimes dunked the scone (they had no Strudel) I let my copy of The Earth Has a Soul be clearly seen lying near the table's edge. Then I watched and waited, and it wasn't long before a man came by carrying a large potato. His wife asked if they might join me at table. I agreed, and he returned with a coffee, having left the potato elsewhere. 

As you may have supposed, there was no potato anywhere evident in the above scene, perhaps not anywhere in the cafe that morning. But the two strangers did join me for coffee and conversation - which began with our mutual interest in Jung. And I have since met two other new acquaintances in the same way. One has invited me to consider participating in the annual Christmas radio play to be performed at the Ouray Opera House. Thus does the Spirit of Synchronicity move in Ouray. And I am tuning in to discover where else it may lead.

Here I have to confess that I had at first thought that, although the mountains and the forests are wild and magical, like the setting of a Brothers Grimm tale, that the life of town itself might really be only the usual cast of shoppers going in and out of pretty Kitsch emporia (yes, I like Kitsch too, almost as much as Strudel) like figures in a mechanical train set. Well, there is some of that, and I have peeked in the shop windows too, and admired the nude demoiselle painted long ago on the wall of the 1870's hotel tavern, although she much resembles Norma Shearer. But Ouray is all of that and more, with a rich cultural life that includes ravens and bears and a clear, starry sky. And I am happy to be in this place, where forested mountains rise up instead of hillside condominiums. I wish that all of you  could see this too. 

A Mountain Retreat

As of this morning I have decided to stay here in Ouray, Colorado, and have rented the little cabin seen at the far end of the row, above, for a month. In many ways, it is situated in the best of both worlds: the quiet grandeur of the mountains and the community of others (yet to be discovered) in the town of Ouray proper. So, there is both solitude and community here.

Ouray has been nicknamed "The Switzerland of America", and there is certainly something of the Geist und Seele of Swiss-German culture and architecture here - including the Architecture of Nature. The speed limit through Ouray's Main Street is 25 mph and vehicles with loud mufflers, or none at all, are effectively discouraged in this convivial atmosphere. There is a good library, a Konditerei, a post office and historical society. So, at least for the month ahead, my thousand-miles-or-more return through the Flatlands and back to Bouton Street will be postponed.


Here, belatedly, is a photo of my Angel of Time & Navigation taken by the shores of Rockaway:

Between Two Worlds (Continued)

A week ago I was in Rockaway Beach, Oregon. with the evening sun streaming through luminous clouds, and looking out to the far distant horizon where sea and sky meet. Seagulls might have been angels then, if only for a timeless moment. Behind me, uphill to the east, Highway 101 still carried its almost ceaseless flow of hurrying traffic, its sounds thankfully drowned out by the waves. But it was there, nonetheless. Because that was where the other world was, the world of taverns and candy shops and all night music venues. The world of getting and spending by which... "we lay waste our powers" and become ever more estranged from Nature*. 

"The Kingdom of Heaven is spread out upon the Earth, and people do not see it." And since we don't see it as such, as, in fact, an expression of the Numinous, we feel that we can trample and despoil it in any way that pleases us, especially if it is profitable, but even if it is merely convenient to do so. This, I think, is the key factor: that we do not see. Because, if we saw and recognized the Numinous aspect of Nature, we could not do what we do without experiencing a sense of shame. Jerry Mander writes on this human failing and its social and environmental effects under the title, "In the Absence of the Sacred". And Jung speaks about the psychological effects of our lost connection with Nature in a newly published collection of essays and letters called, The Earth Has a Soul: C.G. Jung on Nature, Technology,and Modern Life.

Because I have been traveling by less-traveled roads, taking the dotted-line routes whenever possible, and avoiding the "Devil's Racecourse" as far as possible, I have seen some of the most splendid views of mountains and forests, sea and sky that I have ever experienced. And those experiences have been enriched by my readings in Jung, Merton, and others whose writings inspire remembrance of the need to always seek "the wide and luminous view". What a contrast then, to find oneself drawn into the mad tangle of rush hour traffic and "clogged arteries" (of both the roadway and corporeal kind). That we inflict this on one another and ourselves, and continue to endure its effects by choice seems to me proof of our collective insanity. Surely, if we recognized this twice daily activity as something forced upon us by a malevolent dictatorship, we would devise creative plans to escape from and overthrow those powers. But, as I said, we do this by choice and as though there were no viable alternatives. As even Krazy Kat says, "More's the pity!"

Tonight I am writing from a cabin at the edge of the Uncompahgre Wilderness, near the town of Ouray. Earlier today, after writing the first part of this post, I had almost decided to continue eastward on Route 50 and back to Cincinnati. But I checked that impulse, turned back, and took Route 550 to the south. Once again the natural vistas opened out in ever expanding grandeur, so that I asked myself aloud - "Do I really want to exchange all this for a hasty return to Bouton Street and Hyde Park Plaza?" No. I don't. This is where I am now. Near the Four Corners. In this amazing and beautiful array of desert and mountains, forest and streams and sky. Where ancient peoples and dinosaurs once lived. And, if I can find a way to stay here for awhile, even quite awhile, then what do Kansas  and Missouri have to offer by comparison?

When I was on the Oregon coast, looking out to sea, I took a moment to consider the Oaxacan angel on my dashboard: The Navigating Angel who always points forward and silently commands, "Zugzwang!". I set him in place there with reference to a series of paintings by Thomas Cole, "The Voyage of Life". In that series, an angel is pictured with an hourglass that grows ever scantier in its allotted measure of sand. So too, my Navigating Angel holds an hourglass in place under his left hand. And the Sands of Time have run out. I know this to be both a metaphor and a simple fact. At 75 I know and acknowledge that I am living "on borrowed time". Na, und? How am I to best use what remaining time I may have? To think  on this question has a sense of urgency for me. I feel like Peter Rabbit, caught by his coattails in Mr. McGregor's garden, and the sparrows there "implored him to exert himself". And so, I am "thinking it through, with all the brains I've got" while listening to the sparrows, the ravens, the coyotes, et al. This is where I am now. I am still searching for creative solutions and navigational guidance from Our Lady of Perpetual Help who, according to certain texts is cognate with Sophia and also the Luminous Epinoia (quod vide!!!).

* See Wordsworth: "The World is Too Much With Us"

P.S. It recently dawned on me that the number of automobile dealerships and gun shops far exceed the number of bookstores in America.

Between Two Worlds and Neither Here Nor There

Of the dozen or so friends who said they would be following these posts, I have only had any reply from two, whether by email, telephone, or here. So I don't know if anyone is tuning in, or not. In any case, this may be my final "broadcast".

The above illustration is from Alfred P. Morgan's 1913 book, The Boy Electrician. It is also the logo I had printed and affixed to the sides of my van before setting out on this journey. Around the picture, in large print, are the words, "HARZ RADIO THEATER". All these elements: Morgan's book and its contents, the illustration and reference to a radio theater represent a story, actually a collection of tales and images drawn from folklore, mythology, philosophy, and even the vaudevillian stage. In addition to these, and "cheap at half the price" were specimens, both real and imaginary, including the remains of a fossilized Trilobite and a fish that swam in prehistoric seas some 350,000,000 million years ago. An antique bottle containing what was labeled as Lactidorus Scutigerus, Third Larval Stage, said to have been removed from the Eustachian tube of a Dromedary camel circa 1888, was also "available for viewing". And there were other allegorical, metaphorical, and  generally enigmatic things to be seen and heard for the asking.

But no one asked. No, actually, two people of the hundreds who passed by and looked at the words and image posted on the side of the van did stop and ask. One of them was the other old codger, like myself, Carl, whom I wrote about in a recent post. The other was in a hurry to go somewhere else, and so never "opened the cover of the book" so to speak. And, since my way has never been to bang on a drum, shout through a megaphone, or advertise with that almost guaranteed to be effective slogan, "As seen on TV!" nothing very much came of the ideas I set forth with along America's back roads and byways.

Like Christopher Morley's Parnassus on Wheels, the Harz Radio Theater is an anachronism. It is, I fear, in the same class with the many boarded up movie theaters and opera houses I passed by, and may even have something in common with the trilobite and fossilized fish in my Wunderkammer. Perhaps if I had had a partner who thought it might be more effective and even necessary to bang on a drum (and was willing to do so), or had this been an enterprise of friends, a troupe, say, then I would not have had to carry and replenish the enthusiasm for whatever we might do - right time, right place, right people. Well and so, like the young fellow in the illustration (now turned 75 and becoming somewhat more curmudgeonly - admittedly so) I am still listening in to those faint, hardly perceptible signals that belong mostly to another world and time. I find them worth listening to, and I still believe they are worth passing along in this present age, for the simple reason that they would be worth thinking about and beneficial to the larger human community in more ways than anything "seen on TV" or available at even the Mall of America. 

But even Idries Shah once commented that "it's hard to tell people things that they don't think they need to hear". And I am no Sufi; not even a contender.

When I first set out on this adventure, one of the primary motivating factors (apart from my promise to Kukla - to take her to the seaside) was that I was spending far too much time in my Bouton Street hermitage, with my main social life being an occasional trip to the hardware store or grocery aisles, and the main conversation of those places usually limited to, "How much is that?" "Paper or plastic?" "Credit or debit?" "Did you find everything you were looking for?" And before I began wobbling on the perch, I thought I might yet find "birds of a feather" and other versions of Paths of Affinity on such a journey as I prepared and have described here. At this point, today, in Delta, Colorado, I have not yet "found everything that I was looking for". I have traveled over 4,000 miles and still have at least 2,000 more to go. And at this point I am beginning to question whether I really want to drive all the way back to Bouton Street and the social life of Hyde Park Plaza. 

I have seen a lot on this journey, and thought a lot about the world and time we live in. And I must agree with the astute observation of the psychoanalyst who managed to escape the worst of Hitler's Germany shortly before the End - because I believe it applies to our own present as well:

"Here, life goes on in a most peculiar way - sometimes as though there were nothing the matter."  

Stranger in a Strange Land

At times this journey reminds me of a recurring dream-with-variations that I had many years ago. In the dream I find myself in an unfamiliar urban landscape. People are speaking English to each other, but the syntax and so the meaning of what they are saying is unintelligible to me. In one such dream, I saw the headlines of a newspaper someone was reading on a bus. They said something like, NOW TWICE AS INVISIBLE AT HALF THE COST YESTERDAY. I asked what it meant and was told to get off the bus if I didn't like it. I walked and walked, all through the night, until morning. There was a little corner cafe. I went in. A Mozart violin concerto was playing on the radio. A girl was putting flowers into a vase. "Good morning," she said, "would you care for a cup of tea?" In that simple and sensible query, the world became suddenly coherent again.

Sometimes days pass without conversation. The ocean speaks. The sky speaks. Likewise the mountains, the ravens and seagulls, each according to its nature. But it is a rarer thing to hear words that carry as much meaning as these intimations from Nature. I think it is due to distraction and haste. As the sociologist, Clara Mayer wrote:

"Rightly used, words are the single form of expression that we have in common to convey the intricacies of meaning; they are the channel to ourselves and our universe and each other. Time is needed to use them rightly, and also tranquility. And when we have no tranquility, neither do we have time in any sense that counts."

This morning was exceptional. I met an 80 year old man in the cafe. He had been a maker of aerial maps. And he loved stories. Telling stories and listening to stories. He was 80 and he knew the keen value of time. After coffee, he walked all the way to my van with me just to see the logo on its side, an illustration from Alfred P. .Morgan's 1913 book, "The Boy Electrician" depicting a young man at his homemade radio receiver and transmitting station. "That's when you could tune into the signals between stations!" He was delighted. "I'm glad we met," he said. "Hardly anybody asks me what I think about anything nowadays... Kinda like those radio signals we don't hear anymore." I hope he comes to the cafe again tomorrow. His name is Carl.

In any case, I will walk by the sea with Kukla and listen...

"I hear the mermaids singing, each to each."
__ T.S. Eliot

From Anlauf to Reedsport: Escape from Eugene and the Devil's Racecourse

The Reedsport Public Library. Reedsport, Oregon. Not far now from the Oregon coast. Have been driving along one of the most quietly picturesque highways in many a day. Others were spectacular, dramatic, like the mountain passes through Colorado and Utah especially. But this is Highway 38, the western route, through miles and miles of mountain forest land, where the road is bordered in the shade of tall spruce and pine on either side, curving down along clear streams and rushing rivers. Far from the madding crowd.

Yesterday’s drive took me into the very heart of the madding crowd, through the rush hour traffic and into the urban life of Eugene, Oregon. I should have known better, but I was remembering the Eugene where I had spent some happy months nearly fifty years ago. It was a place of intelligence and culture at that time, still lacking in those abominations of our time, the tangled labyrinths of six lane roads to Everywhere and Nowhere and as fast as you can and must go (even if you don’t know where you’re going). So I stopped in at a 7-11 “convenience store” to ask for navigational help in exiting Eugene by the nearest back road leading nowhere near any devious link to the Devil’s Racecourse.

An altercation was in progress. One of the thousands of lost souls, all too common in Eugene as in almost every urban population over 537 or so, high on pot, meth, heroin, or all at the same time, was threatening to shoot the manager of the store for infringing on his freedom of speech. The trouble being that his speech was more of a bellowing rage against all and everyone of an ethnicity or color different from his own. Probably without his understanding why, the police were called and he was escorted Elsewhere.

As I said, this scene has been a burgeoning part of nearly every urban environment I have passed through since leaving Cincinnati. The media refers to it as an opioid epidemic, or crisis. But behind the drug related epidemic is another – the crisis of despair that we seem unable to understand, let alone transform. Why is this? Again, I quote Jung:

“Indeed, it is becoming ever more obvious that it is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer but man himself who is man’s greatest danger to man, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes. The supreme danger which threatens individuals as well as whole nations is a psychic danger. Reason has proved itself completely powerless, precisely because its arguments have an effect only on the conscious mind and not on the unconscious. The greatest danger of all comes from the masses, in whom the effects of the unconscious pile up cumulatively and the reasonableness of the conscious mind is stifled. Every mass organization is a latent danger just as much as a heap of dynamite is. It lets loose effects which no man wants and no man can stop. It is therefore in the highest degree desirable that a knowledge of psychology should spread so that men can understand the source of the supreme dangers that threaten them. Not by arming to the teeth, each for itself, can the nations defend themselves in the long run from the frightful catastrophes of modern war. The heaping up of arms is itself a call to war. Rather must they recognize those psychic conditions under which the unconscious bursts the dykes of consciousness and overwhelms it.”

I have emphasized part of the above passage because it echoes what the Sufi, Idries Shah, said in a 1970’s interview with Elizabeth Hall, published in Psychology Today:

Elizabeth Hall: For the sake of humanity, what would you like to see happen?
Shah: What I really want, in case anybody is listening, is for the products of the last 50 years of psychological research to be studied by the public, by everybody, so that the findings become part of their way of thinking. At the moment, people have adopted only a few. They talk glibly about making Freudian slips and they have accepted the idea of inferiority complexes. But they have this great body of psychological information and refuse to use it.
People in this civilization are starving in the middle of plenty. This is a civilization that is going down, not because it hasn’t got the knowledge that would save it, but because nobody will use the knowledge.

Postcards: Impressions from Life on the Road

Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas

Once upon a time, there were white squirrels in Olney. White squirrels with pink eyes. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands, and they were everywhere, just like the ubiquitous gray ones we see in our own parks and back yards, and not too far from Olney. But, there in Olney, though you may search both hither and yon for hours, about the only white squirrels you will see are those pictured on the sides of municipal park trucks, or on the sleeve patches of the constabulary. There is also a street called "White Squirrel Lane". I drove along the Lane for a mile or so with nary a glimpse of any kind of squirrel, let alone one with pink eyes. Finally, I stopped and asked a native.

"What'taya wanna see them for?" he asked.

"They're interesting creatures, I think. And we don't have any where I come from."

"Huh... Well we ain't got 'em here, neither. Not no more."

He (and the white squirrel) leaves our story here.

***

Missouri has the most exhortations to follow Jesus that I can remember ever seeing anywhere else. Also, hundreds of billboards with messages personally endorsed by God. And crosses, everywhere. To be properly God fearing and trusting in the Lord seems also to require at least one high-powered rifle and lots of ammo in Missouri. Ammo stores abound. As do the other billboards advertising the latest cures for despair and cheerful deterrents to suicide.

As it was too hot to sleep in the van, I stayed at a motel. In the morning, as I was packing up, a lady came through the parking lot handing out pamphlets. She put one into my outstretched, waiting hand. The cartoon image of Jesus was a little silly (Jesus himself would probably have thought so, too) but the message was something about making the world a better place, so I took what was offered and said, "Thank you. Let me share something with you, along the same lines." I pointed to my bumper sticker and its quote from C.G. Jung:

"The best antidote to the menace of the times lies in the 

cultivation of a more comprehensive consciousness."

The lady had been friendly enough, with a cheery smile, so it seemed possible we might have a moment of conversation. Instead, she scowled and grabbed the proffered pamphlet out of my hand before hurrying away with a muttered, "Have a nice day!"

***

Kansas had fewer gun shops and crosses, but many more grain elevators. Actually, I like grain silos and elevators. Their altogether inventive and practical architecture is a wonder of functional design. There was even a time when I might have enjoyed working in a grain elevator as much as I would have enjoyed being a movie projectionist or flying a zeppelin. But when you are driving along mile after mile of unceasingly flat countryside, and the next town (like the last) is mostly boarded up cafes and gift shops, the sense of déjà vu provoked by yet another grain elevator on the outskirts of another ghost(ly) town is eerily dreamlike and hypnotic. Taking a self-guided tour of one such town, with a wide avenue of cobblestones over which a lone 4x4 rattled along flying the Stars and Stripes, I saw that even the local Senior Recreation Center was closed. A sign read, "No more bingo." Had the last of the senior citizens passed into the celestial realms? I tried to imagine living here. Even living in a grain elevator, even before bingo was no more. Easier to imagine dying, going off to war in anyplace but here.

***

Glad to cross the Kansas border I headed westward in search of Colorado's mountains. While I could see them indicated on the pages of my Rand McNally atlas, I was still a long way from them in real time and space. I had first to pass through the urban desolation of places like Pueblo and Denver, lost for hours in labyrinths of suburban streets, industrial parks, shopping malls and broad avenues of down and out young people who wandered in a drug-induced trance, begging for food, for money, for a way out. And all around these impoverished scenes of dystopian life rose the glittering corporate palaces, the financial institutions offering "Everything you could ever want, and more. More!" The illusions of prosperity. I thought of the one billboard I had seen in Missouri that asked the essential question: "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

Stuck in mid-week-mid-morning traffic and driving the incomprehensible loops and circles of  Great and Greater Denver I finally stopped and refused to go any further until a knowledgeable guidance, divine or mundane, could direct me to the mountain route. Even my GPS Lady was lost. I called 911 and told the lady that I was an elderly man with a dog, far from my homeland, with an unreasonable aversion to Interstate highways, which I call "The Devil's Racecourse", and that I needed her expert navigational help. I actually said all that. She asked me where I was. I replied that I had no idea. As it happened, her shift had just ended. Nonetheless, this Lady of Perpetual Help stayed on the phone with me and became as my personal navigator, guiding me street by street and turn by turn until I could just make out what appeared to be distant mountains through the haze of exhaust fumes. I was free again.

***

Driving along less traveled roads through the mountains of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming is like visiting another planet. Except in the photographs of Ansel Adams, or the landscape paintings of Thomas Cole, for example, I cannot recall ever seeing such extraordinary scenic vistas. Spaciousness gives way to spaciousness, amid ever changing combinations of light and shadow on rock and plain. And in such an environment of vast spaces, thought too, takes wing like a bird released from caged confinement. 

I said I had never seen anything like this, yet there is something like an ancestral memory, like the Alpine vistas of the Harz Mountains and the Schwarzwald... a vision or memory from the collective unconscious. I think it is so. 

O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum,

wie treu sind deine Blätter!

***

Today I am in Idaho, somewhere still among the mountains, the pine forests, the cold mountain air. The place is called Swan Valley. As yet, I have seen no swans. But I may see one. Perhaps, one day, the Swan of Kala-Hamsa. Who knows? In any case, there are ravens here, and they are calling me out into the day.

At the Movies in a Little Border Town

Just on the border between Wyoming and Idaho is a defunct movie house, "The Allegory Theater". Kukla and I walked around to the back and found an alleyway door standing partially open. I peeked inside and felt a hand on my shoulder.

"You'll have to buy a ticket," said the janitor (for that's who he was). "Fifty cents. The dog can go in free. Go on up to the balcony."

I paid for the ticket and we went inside. To my surprise, there were lots of other people already seated in the audience.

The lights went out and an image flickered on the screen, just long enough for me to make a photo with my Kodak. Then all went dark again and I found myself standing in the alley with Kukla, on the border between Wyoming and Idaho.

Signing off now, until tomorrow.

Here's the photo:

Hiatus

To My Friends, All & Some, who have been tuning in here during the past weeks and perhaps wondering where I have got to and why I haven't written anything...

Please Stand By!

Before this week is over I fully expect to be able to arrive in a Place and Time that will permit me an opportunity to write at least something of a synopsis of the days and nights since setting out from Bloomington. Travels through Illinois, Missouri and Kansas were intolerably hot and humid, with temperatures often ranging from 95 - 100 degrees in the shade. This meant that I couldn't leave Kukla in the van while I enjoyed some quiet and comfortable respite from the road in the local Carnegie library reading and writing room. I am now in the cooler mountain climes of Colorado and, effects of altitude notwithstanding,  the Oaxacan Angel on my dashboard still points mostly north and west and sometimes elsewhere too, while exhorting me as always:

"Zugzwang!" 

Travels in Times of Turmoil

  "There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, the earth 

and every common sight, to me did seem appareled in celestial light."

__Wordsworth, "Intimations of Immortality"

"Does anyone think it's easy to be a creature in this world?"

__Patchen

"So, this is Mars?"
1950's 'Space Pioneers' TV

To my mind, we are all refugees, orphans of the storm, strangers in a strange land. And this, quite apart from our cherished illusions to the contrary. My own included.

For the past two days I have been staying with my friends, Matt and Jennifer. After dinner, last night, we took a tour of the city. I wanted to see something of the streets and landmarks remembered from the years I had lived here during the 1980's and 90's, and I suggested a walk past "People's Park" on Kirkwood. "It's changed a lot, recently" Matt warned. He was right.The park had lately become a site of heavy drug dealing and dereliction. The same fate has turned the historic park at Seminary Square into an encampment of lost souls, wandering ghosts looking for a fix or a bottle of anything to quell the pain of their exile.

Seminary Park had once been the home of Indiana Seminary, which later became Indiana University. This was at a time when education was prized under the banner of "Lux et Veritas" and touted as "an energetic quest for the meaning of life". Today the students gather for their notion of  the "wide and luminous view" at Kilroy's on Kirkwood where they can souse themselves into manic oblivion and perpetual fun. The university has a 49 % dropout rate. I don't know what the current rate of "wilted & forlorn" might be, but I would suppose it to be even greater than it was only a few years ago, before the opiod crisis took hold.

Matt, who is a psychotherapist, told me that opioid addiction accounts for growing numbers of the permanently lost and forgotten of this once shining city of learning and culture. As we were walking around the central square this morning, we came upon a man lying in a heap on the sidewalk. Scores of people looked at him briefly and then crossed over to better hear the music that blared from mega megawatt amplifiers set up on the courthouse lawn. Some pointed and giggled. I was reminded of the Eloi in H.G. Wells' tale, The Time Machine. "You see it all the time," said one who stopped to wonder if the man was still breathing. The condition has become commonplace, meaningless, invisible. We give it a name, "the opioid crisis", but this crisis has its roots in deeper ground and gives rise to that yet more pervasive Crisis of Despair about which even less is known, let alone understood.

The psychologist C.G. Jung already understood the matter, and with brilliant insight in his own era, believing that "the more secular, materialistic, and compulsively extraverted our civilization becomes, the greater the unhappiness, senselessness and aimlessness of our lives". Moreover, in an essay Jung wrote in the 1930's, he described what he termed "psychic epidemics", the outward manifestations of disorders rooted in the psyche of man. The "crisis of despair" that is emerging in our world and time can be recognized as just this kind of epidemic. And there is no pill, not even "as seen on TV" that will cure it.

Hurricanes, earthquakes, forest fires, and rampant lunacy in high places notwithstanding, I will end today's travel notes with another quotation from the venerable Dr. Jung, certainly as pertinent today as ever and ever:

"Finally, the best antidote to the menace of the times lies in the cultivation of a more comprehensive consciousness."

Setting Out

   "There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there.
The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place."

 __G.K. Chesterton

"Wake up, Kenny. We're in No Man's Land"

__ my grandfather, Oscar Harz

"Why did the chicken cross the road? To prove to a 'possum that it could be done."

__Anonymous Wisdom disguised as a Joke

In any case, I came this far (Bloomington, Indiana) in order to keep an appointment with my dentist. That it has taken me nearly seventy-five years to get here occurred to me around three o'clock in the morning and kept me awake for nearly two hours, which was as long as I could productively ponder the matter before drifting back into Slumberland - where everything is possible and neither requires any explanation nor a passport to cross its borders. Seventy-five years seems to me a long time to get anywhere at all, though it is a mere drop in the cosmological bucket, but memory of the outset of the journey is not as clear as it once was. And, as I began today's notes, "in any case, I came this far" and here I am again.