Chapter-- 

And then a huge naked man came running down the street, chased by a middle-aged woman. I saw a flashing red light but couldn't see where it was.

"It was not appropriate for that man to run down the street like that," my friend said with a slight smile. "He always is between a rock and hard place. Something has disturbed him enough that he takes his clothes off and runs wild in a city street. On the other hand, in a perfect world he would have asked permission from every person that had the misfortune of seeing in. Then he could make a rational choice that his spontaneity couldn't."

"Sadly comical," I said.

"It was not the nudity. Everyone has seen a naked man before, maybe many naked guys of various types. It was the unexpeded nature of it that people respond to. It threw them off their predictable pathway."

"It was not a pretty sight. I would not have given my permission."

He reminded me of all the nudity he'd seen up in the mountain. "After awhile I expected it every day. And so when the casual nakedness appeared I nodded in appreciation and didn't think twice about it."

In the beginning the days were long, a dream that kept transforming through doorways and shadows until you think you are in eternity. Yet, you wake. It was only a catnap! I found myself standing, at times, in the middle of the garden in the afternoon heat, just standing like a goof, standing there conjuring up memories after memories of other days. Perhaps it was only a minute or two standing in that heat but it passed very slowly. All through the day this would happen. I would find some happy spot in the sun and think of the past. I was a happy man.

Soon enough though I was like the others, doing chores, getting to know the people on their own terms, and before I knew it the days were sailing past. When I suffered boredom I would go to the little shack they put me in and write. You always knew I wanted to be a writer. Don't we all in this city? And I have a manuscript but have lost interest in it. It details things a great deal better than our conversation but it's as though I have to let this period of time die away before I complete the manuscript.

My first symptom of boredom was nostalgia. Even the things about the city I despised started to look good to me. The bridges! I had such clear and fine pictures in my mind of driving the bridges and watching the boats in the bay. Or driving up Grizzly at sunset to watch the light play on everything I knew in the world to that point. I even missed television once in awhile. Needless to say they didn't have TV there. Rasputin marked it down as the second evil after tobacco. Yes, even those ponderous desires to succeed that seem to flow effortlessly from the screen and simple, 3rd rate stories that makes somebody millions of dollars; I missed it in a way. What I found in my shack were 1940's National Geographics that had outdated maps.

And I noticed this. Even as I got use to the place my mind, when free, started devising ways to leave it with peace and honor and go to the next destination. I never knew what the next destination was going to be but I was happy to think about it nonetheless.

Someone had suggested Canada. Canada? What's in Canada but more nature? And a funny thing occurred to me. It would be pretty easy to change my identity and go off to the mid-west or east to live. That always seemed very plausible to me.

I really didn't want to think about it. No, I always tried to get my mind to think of something else as soon as possible. Often I simply enjoyed some of the contradictions that existed in the arrangement in the mountains. I figured it existed on its own and was beyond any point of critiquing on my part. But one thing stood out. In the city there is nothing but a massive flux of faces, personalities, ideas, machines, roles, and so on who claw the air for some individual identity. By the time that process is complete, phhhttt, no community. It all becomes an ad hoc affair organized by the lowest grade of energy in nature.

Paradise appeared to me when I walked around the mountain. 'All this gentleness in this bulky thing,' I thought. 'The ease of it despite its outlandish dangers.' It was a great improvement over the stupidity of city living. On the other hand there was sporadic violence and great tensions seething for the most trivial reasons. And odd old guys who took some time getting used to.

There was the guy I used to call, 'the man-who-talks-to-himself' who worked the lathe run by a water wheel they had fashioned from the stream. He had a mahogany table and manzanita products in an air one could describe as proletarian. He wore these old overalls with a Gorilla icon patched in various places. He was a graybeard and talked a long time about his old life as a radical publisher. He printed his flyers and newsletters on an old hand printing press. "There were good days and bad days," he told me. "The 30's were good days, the 50's were bad days. Now the days no longer belong to me." He was not sad at saying this simply an old gy who'd seen plenty of what few see. "Politics," he spat out. "It leads to misery." His hands were shaping a dark-red bowl, from which he was going to drink his wine. "Wine is good for the radical and for the old men in the mountains.

He began talking without prompting from me. He said that when he was young he was a disc jockey at an LA radio station and discovered a young singer named Woody Guthrie. "Me and Woody were pretty tight, then we hung with young Hollywood types before McCarthy. Those were good days."

He was going to speak no matter what I said. It was cool and light and though it was quiet I had a feeling of the air filled with life. Speak, old man, I thought to myself. Speak your memories. But rather than memories he began to declaim to the air, as though I wasn't in the little shack with him; as if I was invisible. When he could he punctuated his orphic exclamations with a hand shooting out when he could safely let go of his dark-red bowl.

"The distinctness of each thing of significance so that it can be viewed as complete, unsullied by the horrible working hands of the fierce judgment."

"The knowledge that the Muse is Real, that God is Real, that the Spirit is Real, that the Mind is Real and that he who knows these things the best and with ease and joy empties what he knows; and he who knows that he can not possibly know what is supreme in its totality is the man of deepest happiness."

"The politician is a clot that an idea must move through in searching for the future."

"Hope and be happy because the people strive to be free!"

"All strive toward their happy destinies; earnestness negotiates away threats to the future."

"There is no rest for those who see the future."

"To learn to be delighted by the surprise and the sensuous that lurks behind the next corner."

"Scorn shudders from the obdurate buildings and moves the massive shift of humanity walking through its shadows. It is dripping from their faces and breaks out, occasionally, in hysterical laughter."

"Abundance, excellence, sustenance; these are some words that save humanity!"

"The world is full of itself at this point in time-joy be to that!"

I had started to back away from the man-who-talked-to-himself and leave the shack as unobtrusively as I could. He was not looking at me. He was declaiming like a great prophet from the Old Testament. I wasn't going to interfere with him. I felt he was capable of writing great poetry if he sat himself down and disciplined himself but he was always in the shack, standing in front of the lathe and singing his talk to the birds, dragonflies, and water bugs.

As I walked up the path to the main house I thought to myself, "If only the works of genius could be forced out as a corporation forces out its products!"

There were quirky moments of devious fun. The women made sure of that. But my constant pleasure all during my stay was sitting and listening to the people. They viewed me a man they could confess to. They were not ignorant or dumb by any means but educated and weighed down by the ponderous earth. That was my impression. If they had only let go of the ponderous earth.........

There was one man in particular who haunts me to this day. He is the one I think about and wonder what happened to him. His name was Peter and, after dinner one late afternoon, we walked outside to a wonderful breeze It was quiet so that the stream was roaring. I had gotten into a long discussion with Rasputin at table, during dinner. He wanted me to be honest in an assessment of the place and I told him and the others I was very impressed but I wasn't sure how long it could last. "After all, one of these days, some of these people will want to move on. And others will want to change the place. And others will, even, want to be the head honcho." Rasputin laughed, "Anyone who wants to be head honcho can have it right now!" The others laughed and I was amazed at their simple trust and faith in the operation.

After dinner we walked outside and I found myself next to Peter who I had only spoken to several times. We wandered near the fence and looked over at the quick falling dusk that would bring the night. When I looked at Peter he was staring at me with a broad smile. "You see, we are an experiment so whatever feelings you my impress on us are just marks of the laboratory."

I was a bit surprised by this. "Do you really see yourself as an experiment? Just that; just playing out your spirit to see how they mesh or conflict with other experiments?"

He fit his finger under his chin and looked off to the side as though deciding whether I was criticizing him or not. He seemed almost grave. "I'll say this if you let me. And I've thought a great deal about this. People have talked about it but not honestly. They have talked about it incognito, with various strategies to prevent them from actually admitting the truth."

"And that truth is?"

"We are failures here. Every last one of us has failed in one capacity or another. Don't you find this to be true? And you, too, no matter how you feel yourself to be a stranger here....you too have failed. Otherwise, you wouldn't be with us!"

I was taken back by his statement. I have to admit that the great weight I had felt for some time had to do with failure. I had failed someone but I wasn't sure who. I tried to shift it out of view whenever I could.

"What do you mean? You haven't failed. This is the beginning of a great success. This is what I see. Yes.

There was a rock that had, over the years, been rounded and embedded in the soil. Peter sat on it and held his head. "This has all been done before. Over and over again. And it doesn't change anything. There is no change. No stopping the darkness. We are little failures in a massive failure."

I felt a moment of nausea. Peter had stooped down and was picking little daises that grew wildly around the rock. He uprighted himself and looked at me. "Don't believe me. Just look for yourself."

"Can I ask you what you are going to do? If you have judged this project to be a failure what are you going to do?"

"Forget, forget, forget, forget." Peter threw his hand up with a clump of daises between his fingers. "Memory," he said with disgust, "is full of illusion. I want facts. I want the beauty of machines operating at full efficiency. I want to live in a place where the aspects of one's personal existence are more important than the impersonal existence of the world at large."

Peter stood up. He was a bit taller than I. His hair was long and braided into a ponytail. He wore overalls with shiny buttons on either side of his hips. His arms were long, lanky, and hairless like white ash stripped of its bark.

"You see, talking like this destroys everything. I can understand why people don't go to confession any more. It drains the strength from you but you want to do it more and more. Do it once and you must do it forever until nothing is left but a mess of jelly.

He had obviously been thinking about this for some time.

"I'll tell you some more things too. Do you want to hear a little theory of mine? That's one good thing about living up here....so much silence that you can think up a hundred different theories."

"Sure, tell me your theory."

"When the church, I mean the Catholic Church, the one I was a member of, against my will, when that church was at the height of power many hundreds of years ago, the merchants and capitalists were just getting started. They were in the shadow of the church. And being not quite in power but feeling their oats they saw that the strength of the people was drained from them by confession. So they conspired with the new science, Galileo, Newton, and these fellows; they conspired to free people from confession and give strength back to the people. For a brief moment there was freedom; a great opening of mind and spirit. But, just as quickly, what strength had been liberated from the church was drained by the new enterprises. Work became the great confession. A confession that we are greedy animals. Do you know what I mean? Do you understand what I'm saying?"

A little. You're talking about the Renaissance period?

The Renaissance! Yes, the Renaissance. And after came the great closing down into a military machine. Do you know what I mean?"

I laughed. "Of course, I'm running from one right now."

No, no. The whole society is a military society. It's all organized around the idea of the military. The society is a vast field of war where the strongest weapons and best strategies win out. Do you know what I mean?"

"No. But your theory interests me so continue."

"I've lost my train of thought now." Peter was sweating in the early evening. He rubbed his white bare arms as though he were cold. "I...I don't know. People have told me I'm paranoid but I know what I'm saying is true. I can see it all the time. Even in the little towns here in the mountains."

"Perhaps you are seeing what you want to see."

Yes, yes. What I'm trying to say is that there is no progress only transformation. It's a theory I had after I read science. There's a theory in science that says there is no progress only change. That's a subtle idea humm? You see, then, there's no progress from the freedom people have struggled for; there's only change from one form to another. What freedom is won over here, is lost over there. Do you see what I mean?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe you're right. Can you put your theory a bit closer, a bit clearer and simpler?"

"Oh, I never thought I was going to talk about these things so it comes spewing out like nonsense but before you leave I will make it concise for you. That's a promise."

I smiled at him. "I look forward to that. Before I leave we'll sit down with some wine and talk about this theory of yours."

He moved away from me, toward the gate and moved slowly down the incline path to the creek. As I watched him I wondered why I didn't get more history from him; his own history and what had brought him to the mountains.

David Eide
January 24, 2014