The truth about Fort Rock

Only one of the Fort Rock homesteaders is alive for the annual reunion this year. Her name is Vivian Stratton, and she was nine when her family moved to the valley in 1913. Almost overnight, sixteen towns appeared, and the number of homesteaders exceeded 2,500. Many were from back East, some from Europe. All were drawn by the promise of free land in an area with rich soil, plenty of water, and a soon to be built railroad. They read of rich black loam that would grow sixty bushels of wheat per acre along with,

“…all varieties of fruit such as apples, pears, plums, cherries, and all other kinds of berries,” of, “…good fields of grain waving to and fro…good level land…many miles of lanes with well-tilled fields on either side, good houses and barns…”

The truth was that the Fort Rock Valley averages eight inches of rain and 345 days of frost annually—and it still doesn’t have a railroad. It doesn’t even have rivers for irrigation. Realtors made money showing the land to homesteaders, lawyers made money filing their claims, railroads made money moving them, teamsters made money transporting their belongings from the railhead, and merchants made money selling them supplies; all while local ranchers watched and laughed.

Many of the homesteaders suspected the worst, but by then they were thousands of miles from home and lacked the money to return. Louise Godon, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a French father and an Irish mother wrote of her mother Bridget’s reaction.

“At the sight of it all, Mother burst into tears. My how the tears flowed! Mom remembered back to her lovely home in Philadelphia—the maple-lined streets, the neat lawns, front and back, of the solidly built house. She remembered her collection of fine china, glassware, and silverware, which we had sold—in fact, nearly given away—just for this God-forsaken land. And she cried some more.”

Crop after crop was blown away, and what the winds missed, the rabbits took. If a family moved before five years passed, or if they failed to make certain improvements, their land was forfeited, so fathers looked for work in other places—often in other states—while wives and children hung on, hoping that next year would be better. As it turned out, the weather had been milder than average early on, and took a turn for the worse in the 1920s. As quickly as they had come, the homesteaders moved away, leaving the laughing ranchers to pay their taxes and swallow up their acreage. Of the many towns, only Fort Rock remains, and it with a population of 25.

Ironically, Bridget Godon was one of the handful who stuck it out. When her husband died of a stroke at age 54, she and her five daughters stayed on to raise cattle, work the land, and earn money in every other honest way they could. When they lost their savings in the bank failure of 1927, they started saving again. They grew wealthier, and when other homesteaders left, they took title to still more land. From 320 acres, their holdings grew to over 5,000. One of the daughters, Alice, was mechanically gifted, so she repaired the machinery and learned to drive. The matriarch, Bridget, died at age 93.

No landscape touches me so deeply as the desert. I look upon it with unrelenting wonder that anyplace can be so beautiful. Like Bridget Godon, I cry and cry but for a different reason.

I suggested to Peggy that we buy a cabin in the desert for vacationing, but she wouldn’t consider it. She admits that the desert is pretty, but she objects to the wind and the dust, to the winters that are too cold and the summers that are too hot. She complains that there is no shade, and she laments the skin-cracking aridity and the extreme isolation. In all of this, she is right, yet for me the desert’s beauty outweighs them all. The stark nakedness of the air, the sky that never ends, the clarity of mountains a hundred miles distant, the smell of dust mixed with juniper and sage after a storm…other landscapes are trivialized by comparison.

I know that the forest and seashore are equally a part of nature, and that they are equally beautiful in their own way, yet they do not cause me to kneel in awe. When I come home from the desert, I feel as if I have come home from a dreamscape. I know it exists, and that I saw it, yet it seems unreal. But then I loved deserts long before I ever saw one. When I finally did visit the Southwest, it was one of the few times when my expectation was inferior to reality.

It might seem ironic then that I feel happier now that I am home. I can best compare the two environments to being tickled. When I was a boy, my cousins would tickle me until I couldn’t breathe. The desert is that way. I try to cope, but the feelings keep growing even while I keep diminishing.

When I first took LSD, the woman who gave it to me warned that it would take over my mind, and that if I tried to resist, it would turn my energy against me. Likewise, it is in the desert that I touch the infinite, and the infinite takes possession. I see my nothingness, and I struggle to find that person who I call myself, that person who normally looms larger in my awareness than the rest of the world together; but all that I have to throw against the power of the desert is exactly equal to nothing. I am less than an ant before a twenty-ton truck. I am not only run over by the desert; the desert is oblivious to what it has done. It holds the truth of my insignificance hard against my face, and in doing this it comforts me. It says to me that I am worth so little that there is really no reason for me to fret about anything.

Less than two days before she died, Bridget Godon’s daughters took her to a hospital in Bend. It was the first time she had ever been to a doctor much less to a hospital. She begged to be taken back to the desert—not to her ranch or to Fort Rock, but to the desert. The nurse winked at her daughters, and her daughters told Bridget that they would be back the next day. I don’t know that the desert would have saved her, yet where better to die than in the arms of God, even if God is a being that takes not the least observance of our existence, especially if God is a being that takes not the least observance of our existence? The whole of the human race could devote itself entirely to the worship of the desert’s tiniest pebble, and neither pebble nor desert would care. In this I find my religion.

High Desert vacation

Wednesday, September 7, 2006,
the start of our vacation

We camped in the High Desert on the rim of a mile wide crater called Hole in the Ground on this, the first night of our vacation. Earlier today, a man who was old enough to know better tried to drive a one ton, extended cab Dodge into the crater on a narrow ATV road that looked like a washboard with the ridges four foot higher than the valleys. He got 500 feet before the downhill side of the road collapsed, leaving his truck stuck and in danger of rolling over. He walked to a ranch house, and the retired rancher and his wife used a tractor, an ATV, and three come-alongs to keep the Ram from flipping down the hill while they pulled it out. The job was dangerous, and the wife rolled her ATV, injuring her ribs. The rancher is losing his vision and had to be verbally guided. They refused payment.

Thursday

We drove to nearby Fort Rock, a 325-foot high volcanic ring that resembles a fort from a Tolkien novel. The town of the same name (population 25) has a museum that consists mostly of homestead era buildings from the surrounding area. It was closed until the next day, so we returned to the rancher’s house and camped in his yard. This gave us the benefit of a picnic table and a hired man’s cabin if we wanted to sleep indoors but, most of all, it allowed us the pleasure of the couple’s company.

They told us to enjoy their ranch while we could because they were selling out and moving to Prineville. The man had recently returned from the blind school at Portland, where three different black men had tried to mug him on the city’s streets. Prior to Portland, he had rarely seen a black person.He used a knife to discourage the first mugger, but carried a pistol for the others. As we visited, a herd of antelope grazed nearby. I asked how long he had lived there, and how he liked it. He said 27 years, and that he had liked it very well because he had never had an argument with a neighbor (there being none) or seen a government inspector.

I told him about my knee problems, and he said he has one knee that is “bone against bone,” but it didn’t seem to concern him much. Maybe it’s easier to put other things in perspective when you’re going blind.

I mentioned that it had been awfully cold the night before on the 5,000 foot high rim, to which the wife responded that the temperature at the ranch house (300 feet lower) had dropped to 18°.

Friday

Last night was little warmer, but Peggy would have taken the dogs to bed with us to keep Baxter warm had I not objected on account of the dirt.

When I awakened, the rancher was loading a homemade mortar and howitzer into his truck. His hobby is shooting artillery in accuracy contests (hell of a hobby for a blind man). I helped, and was amazed by how strong he was compared to me. I consoled myself with the thought that I had just woke up. It proved to be a meaningful consolation as I was later able to drag one of the guns by myself.

We spent hours touring the Fort Rock museum and visiting with the locals. A woman invited Peggy to her home to see needlework while I chatted with the men. I joined the museum foundation, and we bought two books about the history of the area. The most famous resident was Rueb Long, an author I have adored for The Oregon Desert, a book he co-authored with another rancher. Reub spent his summers at the hired man’s cabin next to which we had camped the night before—I felt as if I had slept on holy ground.

The temperature moved into the nineties as we drove south over Picture Rock Pass—where we stopped to admire a few of the dozens of pictographs that are spread through the sagebrush—and into Summer Lake Valley. Peggy wanted a motel for the night, so we paid $70 at the Summer Lake Inn. That evening, we set out for a walk, but the mosquitoes prevented it. We didn’t see or hear a one of them until we had gone a quarter mile, at which time they descended upon us by the hundreds and pursued us all the way back to our room. We smashed scores of them against the ceiling and walls, creating additional bloody spots to go with the ones that were already there.

Saturday

We had planned to go deeper into the Great Basin Desert, but the weather was getting hot, so we headed into the mountains and didn’t stop until we were at 7,200-feet. Even there, it was warm. We camped on a ridge overlooking our previous night’s lodging. Charles Fremont and Kit Carson had looked off the same ridge on December 18, 1843. For days, they had labored in fierce winds and deep snows, and were facing the possibility of starvation. The lake and valley below looked like paradise to them. Hence the names Summer Lake and Winter Ridge.

It was bow season, and we spoke with a few hunters. I detest the cruelty of hunting (and ranching for that matter), yet hunters have often been among the most generous and kindly people I’ve known. This is one of those ironies of humanity that I have never understood. My response has been to try and focus upon the good in people, and the good is easier to find in many hunters than it is in regular people.

Our ranch hosts were hunters (as evidenced by their guns, bows, and animal heads), and if they had invited us to supper and set a plate of beef or elk in front of me, I would have eaten it. This would not be easy after 23 years as a vegetarian, but I have thought about such a scenario many times over the years, and have concluded that I had rather eat meat than cause offense if I were the guest of a man who made his living raising cattle.

Sunday

Peggy and I climbed Dead Indian Mountain (7,066’) this morning. In the afternoon, she climbed Foster Butte (6,778’) with the dogs. There was no trail and, the rocks all looking pretty much the same, she marked part of her route with survey ribbons. She was as proud of summiting Foster as she was of many more formidable mountains simply because she did it alone on unmarked terrain.

I can’t say that I was entirely sanguine about her efforts, so when she had not returned by 6:00, I packed two quarts of water and two flashlights, and set out after her. I worried about my knee, but I couldn’t bear to wait any longer. Fortunately, she appeared from the other side of the mountain before I had gone a quarter of a mile. She explained that there had been false summits, and that she had spent a lot of time route finding.

Monday (Labor Day)

Peggy climbed Hager Mountain (7,195’), a prominent landmark that overlooks a hundred miles of desert, today. There was both a trail and a road to a fire lookout, but we had no good maps for the area, and I worried that the trail would give out or fork, so I asked her to take the road. It was a steep five-miles on a hot day, and she returned with blisters on both feet and dogs that were limping on burned pads. I felt bad that I had encouraged her to take the road, but at least I had not been worried. Instead, I had identified the few plants that I didn't recognize and read more about the Fort Rock homesteaders. Peggy and I had read one book aloud, and now I had finished most of another.

We hated to come down out of the mountains into the heat, but we needed water and a laundromat. Worse yet, Peggy was out of milk to go with her cookies. We drove to Silver Lake (the lake is now dry). It was the site of a Christmas Day fire in 1894 that killed a third of the 143 inhabitants. We paid $3 each for a shower at the town’s trailer park, which averaged out to be a bargain since Peggy took her usual thirty minute shower, while I was out in eight. As in most of the desert towns, there was a lot of property for sale.

We camped in a quarry from which we could see all three of the mountains Peggy had climbed. The moon was brilliant, and the scene lacked nothing to make it more beautiful.

Tuesday

We awoke to the distant smoke of forest fires, and could no longer see the mountains. As I made my coffee, I watched a large hawk circle lower and lower over Baxter who stood half asleep in the sun, probably wondering what the hell kind of a vacation it is when a dog is nearly frozen at night only to have his feet burned to stubs in the daytime. I knew I should yell at the hawk, but curiosity got the better of me.

Clearly, a 23-pound dog was too big for even a large hawk to carry, but I wondered if the hawk might plan to eat part of him on site and carry the rest off for later. The hawk finally landed fifteen feet to the rear of a still oblivious Baxter. It tilted its head this way and that, obviously in deep concentration about the advisability of attacking something that was so large yet so seemingly vulnerable. When it started hopping toward Baxter, I scared it away. As with the bobcat two years ago, Baxter never knew how close to death he had come.

We returned to the Fort Rock Cemetery (it and the rock of the same name being a mile north of the town of Fort Rock). Peggy continued on to the rock—blowing kisses as she walked—while I looked at grave markers and read about the deceased from my history books. She said she would only be gone a few minutes. She later yelled and waved at me from high on the rock, and I wondered if she was actually going to the top despite the fact that her feet were so blistered that she could only wear sandals. I remembered what she had said about “a few minutes” and returned to my history books comforted.

An hour later, an old man on a bicycle came by. I told him of my worry about Peggy, who was still on the rock, and he consoled me with stories of people who had been killed by falling. I wondered how much longer I should wait before going for help as the area was too big and too rough for me to necessarily find her if I searched all day. There was also the thought that, the sooner she got help, the better her chances of survival—assuming she was not already dead. I was contemplating selling our house and moving to a one room shack where I could pass the rest of my days within sight of Fort Rock when she returned, very pleased with herself for having summited.

That afternoon, we drove to Bend and visited Pilot Butte Cemetery to see the graves of still more of the people we had been reading about. Afterwards, we gassed up and headed back across the Cascades.

Peggy had her heart set on camping near McKenzie Pass, but the actual flames of a forest fire were visible, and the air was wretched with smoke. To my relief, she agreed to continue on a few miles down the west side. I was even a little concerned about this since a change in the wind could point the fire in our direction.

For the first time in decades, we stayed at an official campsite. No one else was there, and no fee signs were posted, so it seemed like a good idea until 2:30 a.m. when we were awakened by chewing sounds under the van. I beat on the floor, and the noise stopped, but only for a few minutes. When it started back, I got out and looked in vain for the source. As soon as I lay back down the noise resumed. We had already met one woman on the trip whose new truck had suffered $13,000 in damages from gnawing rodents, so we left. Ten miles later we pulled over and passed the rest of the night peacefully.

Wednesday

We hiked along the McKenzie River for a couple of miles and then drove home. We couldn’t have traveled more than 600 miles on our trip and probably less than that.

I turned on the radio and heard the news for the first time in a week (the only newspaper I had read was a 1915 edition of the Fort Rock Times, which reported one case of gangrene, two cases of smallpox, and the clubbing of 3,540 rabbits). The announcer said, “President Bush claimed during a speech today that progress is being made in Iraq, even while House and Senate Democrats called for the replacement of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld due to his mishandling of the war.” “I haven’t missed a thing,” I thought, but then learned of the death of Steve Irwin.

Thursday

Two neighbors died while we were away. One was in his fifties, and succumbed to prostate cancer, the other in his eighties and a victim of diabetes. The younger man was a lawyer, and I hardly knew him, so I minded his death less than that of the older man whom I regarded highly.

Our cell phone—which we bought in case Peggy’s family or the neighbor who was watching our house needed to get in touch—died the first day out, so I returned it today. I was glad for the excuse. I don’t really want to know what’s happening when I’m away. I mentioned this to Peggy, but she kept her thoughts to herself as she often does.

Avoiding hurt by anticipating it

I just called a repair shop to make an appointment for the van. When I got off the phone, I checked with another shop, and learned that I could get the van in there sooner. When I called the lady back to cancel, her demeanor changed from caring to hostile.

This was no big deal, but it came on the heels of an email to Gwen (my mentor in my Wicca group) being returned because she blocked my address. Gwen had said she wanted to correspond regardless of my status with the group. I don’t know whether to interpret her action as coming from fear or contempt, or why she would feel either. Maat, the teacher, said she would refund the $20 I paid for supplies, and that I could expect a check the first part of last week. It is now the first part of this week, and it still hasn’t come. I had thought that—despite everything—these were people of integrity.

I have yet to learn enough about people that I can divine which ones are flaky or two-faced. I have often longed for some formula. For example, it would help a great deal if Democrats were invariably lying bastards and Republicans upright and consistent. Or if religious people were ethical and atheists untrustworthy. But alas, treachery and dishonesty extend equally across boundaries of gender, intelligence, education, wealth, geography, politics, and religion. That said, I have made a few useful observations.

People who are certain that Truth is on their side are unreachable when they err, as are people who blame others for their own bad behavior.

People in cohesive groups reinforce each other’s evil.

People who are lecherous, greedy, or addicted to drugs, alcohol, romance, or gambling, can be expected to put their addiction above everything else.

People who are under a physical or emotional strain are more likely to compromise their ethics.

People usually behave in the present as they have in the past, so I cannot expect them to treat me honorably if I know them to have shafted others.

People who give ethics a lot of thought are no more trustworthy than those who do not. A great deal of thought can pave the way for a great deal of rationalization.

The legal profession attracts people who enjoy finding clever ways to sidestep the consequences of evil acts, their own or others.

There is seldom a connection between legality and morality.

People who seek power over others (as through politics) are usually more interested in dominance than in service.

Those who are not invested in a person, group, neighborhood, etc. cannot be expected to act as though they are.

People who see themselves as victims can be expected to show treachery toward those whom they regard as oppressors, and few are content with getting even.

I can never trust anyone whose sacred cow I have slaughtered through evidence or rational argument. Not only will they pretend that the cow is alive, they will never forgive me for attacking it.

Unfortunately, many of the traits I mentioned are not readily identifiable, and people are capable of surprises no matter how reasonable the criteria I use to define them. I think that, when all else fails and I am treated shabbily by someone I thought I could trust, it is better to not take it personally. Maat did not say she would refund my money and then not do so because of who I am, but because of who she is. The same is true of Gwen who promised to write, but then blocked my e-mail. Seldom (if ever) does a person’s behavior toward me stand in isolation from the way they live the rest of their lives.

Footnote: Maat refunded my money after I wrote to her again asking for it.

Dog stew

Last week was a week of mishaps. One night, my bike bounced away from the edge of a steel plate in a construction zone. I hadn’t even seen the plate when the bike veered to the right. Not knowing what had happened, I turned to the left only to bounce off the plate a second time. By now, I was wobbling badly, and putting all my energy into staying upright. The next thing I saw was a rapidly approaching curb. The bike had clearly decided to end our corroboration, and it stopped abruptly at the curb’s edge, throwing me over the handlebars. I hit the ground, bounced into the air, rolled three times, and found myself dizzy but unhurt in a grove of oak trees. While I was rolling, I sensed that my lower body was turning at a different speed than my upper, and I had the thought that, if I had not been taking yoga, I would have to be carried away on a backboard. It’s funny how much time a person has to think when he’s bouncing.

Friday, we camped in the coast range. I awakened before Peggy, and thought I would hike the short distance to the top of Saddle Mountain by way of an abandoned trail. When the trail gave out, I bushwhacked, but the undergrowth was so thick that I gave up my summit attempt for fear of hurting my knee. I missed hitting the trail on the way back, so—the area qualifying as a rain forest—I spent the next ninety minutes struggling through five foot high salal and briers. The brush was so thick that the dogs couldn’t walk below it or upon it, and they cried in frustration as they writhed through it. I knew they could guide me back to the trail if they only knew what I wanted, but they did not, so it was one of those situations in which dogs could be helpful in theory but are in reality worse than useless (like when you lock yourself out of your car on a hot day, and your dog stares at you curiously as you tell him to lift the little knob with his teeth).

Baxter had trouble keeping up even at my tediously slow pace, and I knew that if I lost him, an inconvenience would become a tragedy. I protected my knee as best I could, but my feet were seldom on the ground, the brush being so thick that I was walking about a foot high except for those blessed occasions when I came upon a log that I could use as a bridge.

With the ridge to my right and the sun to my back, I anticipated hitting the road eventually, but the distance was surprisingly long and the going tediously slow. I knew that Peggy would be awake by now. I wondered how long she would wait before seeking help. I thought of the disappointment of our friends who we were supposed to meet for a picnic at Heceta Head, and of the news crews that would seek an interview when I was finally rescued. I couldn’t decide whether to grant a humorous interview, a grateful to my rescuers interview, or no interview. I decided that nothing I could say—or not say—would make me look like anything but a fool, so I hoped fervently that Peggy wouldn’t go for help no matter how long it took me to return to the van. I hoped she would look at the map (for a change) and see that there was a powerline to the north and roads to the east, south, and west; and would remember that the weather was warm enough for me to survive without provisions. I took frequent short breaks, focused on my breathing to remain calm, and ate salal berries and huckleberries. I regretted that I had no water for the dogs because they were struggling mightily, and I could not carry them.

When I finally hit the road, I felt as if the gates of heaven had opened, but when I reached our campsite, Peggy was gone. I began walking out the way we had come (we camped at the end of the road), and met her driving back. She had been looking for me. My legs were blood-streaked from scores of scratches, some six inches long. When our friends asked me what the hell had happened, I said that Peggy was a phenomenally passionate woman with phenomenally long toe-nails. “She can climb trees like a squirrel,” I offered. Their expressions indicated that they considered her story more plausible. All this happened two days ago, and my knee is a swollen, stiff, aching mess. Eight hours of yoga a week for a solid month, and I am as bad off as when I started.

On our drive into the woods, we listened to CDs I bought at a garage sale last week. I got Bob Marley, The Doors, and Jimi Hendrix; stuff I had always wanted, but had never been able to find for 25¢ each. While I was listening to protest songs and acid rock as a young man, Peggy was tuning into Neil Diamond and Linda Ronstadt (How do people like us come together?).

“Was Jimi Hendrix black?” she asked. And then, “Was Jim Morrison in a band?” I told her about the joys of taking acid or smoking pot while listening to these guys, about how their music had been written by people on drugs for people on drugs, and how Hendrix and Morrison died from drugs. I said that their songs’ erratic lengths and variations made it even harder to keep track of time than the chemicals alone would have caused, so I wouldn’t know if the same song had been playing for three minutes or three hours. I would tell myself that it had to be three minutes because no song could last for three hours, yet my life prior to the song would seem unreal, like something out of a history book. And I wouldn’t just hear the music, I would taste it and see it. As I talked, she drove, and the sun flashed through the trees like a strobe light. The day was perfection. Foxy Lady, Hendrix sang, and I looked over to see Peggy ducking tree limbs that touched the windshield. “My old ladies high,” I thought, “and I am too.”

I cried during The Doors Spanish Caravan. “Are you crying because you’re sad that Morrison died young?” Peggy asked. “No, it’s not that. It’s the genius that it took to create such beauty that gets to me.” I considered it inevitable that these guys didn’t live to see thirty because they were cranked without crank. Some people are like tortoises, others like moths; and who is to say which can cram the most living into a lifetime?

When we got to our isolated and unofficial camping spot, we turned the music up, and opened the van’s doors. It seemed like a good time to party, and we had three beers and a bottle of wine to do it with. Half a beer later, we were asleep. The passage of two score and seventeen years has cost me my talent for dissipation, a talent that Peggy never had to begin with.

The young man who sold me the music was leaving for South Korea the next day to teach English. I wouldn’t have had the guts when I was his age. He said I should try it, that it would be easy for me to get a job in any part of the world because all I needed was to be a white man with a bachelor’s degree. “What’s your degree in?” I asked. “Romance languages and literature,” he answered. “Kinda funny isn’t it, learning all that Italian and Spanish, and then going off to live in South Korea?” He explained that South Korea was only his first stop, that his resume had received 125 hits from all around the world. At one extreme, Dubai offered $38,000 a year plus room, board, and airfare. At the other, Colombia offered spending money and a roof over his head.

“Well, you know, I’ve got a wife and dogs,” I said. “Your wife can work too,” he enthused, “but the dogs might pose a problem. They like dog soup in South Korea,” he mused, and I pictured being served a mysterious stew that turned out be marinated chunks of Baxter floating alongside shallots and potatoes.

I'm asked to leave class

I am no longer a student of Wicca, my teacher having given me the choice of apologizing to the class for being aggressive, argumentative, and intimidating; submitting future newsgroup postings to her for pre-approval; or leaving. I saved the three newsgroup threads that precipitated her action. Thread 1, consists of a single posting, in which I critique a selection entitled Another View of Wicca from our required reading list.

From the reading: “...a group which does not recognize the Goddess as primary deity is not practicing The Ancient Art. Indeed, they, generally, know very little about Witchcraft…”

Me: Wicca is no less sexist than patriarchal religions in its perception that one gender is more closely aligned to the deity than the other. It is meaningless to offer that men and women are equal while at the same time arguing that the dominant God is female, and that this makes one gender of humanity better qualified for leadership.

From the reading: “Patriarchal systems teach that there are a privileged few who manipulate the masses, and we are led to believe that our own self worth is direct proportion to the power we hold over others.”

Me: If rule by men is necessarily bad, is rule by women necessarily good, and is the failure of men genetic or societal? Furthermore, how was it determined that bad governance is a male problem rather than a human problem?

From the reading: “This mind set [patriarchal] leads to the view of fellow humans as being both competitors that must be ‘beaten’ and as potential slaves. “

Me: Such positions are like religious faith in that they are beyond question. For example, when I pointed out that some warring monarchs and slaveholders were women, the answer was that they had been indoctrinated by the patriarchy. Men can only thrive in such liberated environments by denouncing their gender: “I am male; males are responsible for war, enslavement, and despoiling the earth; but I can ameliorate my inferiority by becoming more like a woman.”

From the reading: “With personal power, the need to dominate others subsides along with feelings of powerlessness.”

Me: This assumption is based upon the belief that the need for power arises from low self-esteem, yet psychological tests of bullies have shown that they have high self-esteem and feel entitled to dominate. A seemingly obvious conclusion can still be in error in the absence of supporting evidence.

Thread 2, in which I reply to someone who stated that there are two ways to view the world, the scientific and the occultist, and that the latter is closer to childlike wonder. As he put it, children view snow as magic; scientifically astute adults view it simply as snow. That such statements consistently appeared and went unchallenged by anyone but me indicated to me that I could not be a Wiccan on the basis of a shared wonder and reverence for nature and the seasons because even these aspects of Wicca are underlain by a worldview that I find alien and disturbing. I therefore anticipated leaving the group before my next assignment was due.

Me: Your position reminds me of Whitman’s poem “The Learned Astronomer,” in which he expressed the view that describing the heavens scientifically robs them of their majesty. I would offer a few thoughts.

First, scientists become scientists because they love the aspect of nature that they are studying, whereas mystics might revere the macro but are largely unaware—and in many cases uninterested—in the micro. For example, a Druid might possess a great admiration for oak trees, but have no clue how they make food or compete with other species. Astrologers cast horoscopes, but I have been unable to interest any of them in identifying the constellations in the night sky.

When I began studying plants, my father ridiculed me on the basis that I didn’t need to know the names of trees to appreciate them. Yet, after we took a walk, he could not remember a single specific tree whereas I—through my familiarity with them as individual species—could fondly recall a multitude.

Knowledge of something in no way subtracts from an appreciation of its majesty and even its mystery. Indeed, each answer opens up a multitude of additional questions to those who love an aspect of nature for itself. As for appreciating snow, you are doubtless aware that there are scientists who focus on one or more aspects of snow. Why, if science is the enemy of passion and mystery, do you think this is so?

Thread 3, in which I respond to the Thought for the Day with humor and excite an unexpected response.

Thought for the Day: “Magic lives in curves, not angles.”

Me: But the trouble with round houses is that it’s hard to find a place to hang a picture. Plus, every time you lean a ladder against an outside wall, it slides over sideways just when you get to the top of it.

Response 1: “Who said magic lives in houses? Or needs ladders? Or walls, for that matter?”

Response 2 (the teacher): “Hobbits live in round houses.”

Me: By whose standard is the curvaceous more magical than the angular, and with what device did they measure? If the circle is more magical than the triangle, I have lived in ignorance of the fact for a great many years; but I have no doubt lived in ignorance of many things.

Response 1: “Early folks equated nature with magick and there are few naturally occurring angles.”

Response 2: (the teacher): “Nothing in nature is straight.”

Me: Basalt columns are typically hexagonal due to the cooling process, and I would be surprised if someone should see them soaring into the sky, and pronounce them inferior to the pillow basalt that forms around oceanic fissures. Honey bees—which are surely a magical race—make their homes in six-sided chambers, and snowflakes look to have been drawn with a protractor, yet who is to argue that their symmetry makes them less magical than water in its droplet form?

The curvaceous is more representative of the feminine than of the masculine, and so I ask: if magic lives in curves, what then lives in angles?

Response (the teacher): “As always, no one is arguing that curves are better than straight lines.”

I don’t know what she meant by “always,” but when she next wrote, she labeled my faults as she saw them; said that she was being deluged by complaints about me from other students (some of whom were afraid of me); and told me that I needed to apologize to the class, etc.

I have never had my faults enumerated by anyone who took the time to ask if I wanted to hear them, or who did not regard themselves as my superior if not my victim. Perhaps, my Wicca teacher thought that her position entitled her to take liberties despite the fact that I had just told her, “You can expect no better of me than you have already gotten.” In any event, I responded with a single sentence stating that I would drop my name from the class roster as soon as I copied some of my postings. I did not remind her that she had asked me to stay in the class only five days earlier when I suggested that it was time for me to leave; or that she had claimed to welcome disagreement; or that she told me that Wicca requires no specific beliefs, only to later say that it requires “a leap of faith.”

I suppose that if ten liberals and one conservative (or vice versa) were placed in a group for the purpose of studying and discussing politics, that the conservative would be charged with causing disharmony, and that there would be good reason for the charge despite his efforts to display tact and respect. If the liberals were ignorant of history, government, world affairs, and the reasons for their positions; had chosen their views on the basis of emotion and in opposition to rationality; and had joined the group to have their beliefs bolstered rather than challenged; the break would come sooner rather than later. I lasted six weeks in Wicca, although I had seen the writing on the wall for half that time. I tried to do as the teacher suggested, which was to take what I could use and leave the rest, but neither of us understood that we operated upon antagonistic foundations. Water is not fire; darkness is not light; and a belief in the occult is not a higher form of science. As a materialist, I simply don’t share common ground with one who sees the material plane as a veneer that masks the far more interesting world of spirits.

I don’t know whether to respect myself for my bravery in undertaking a study that I had grave misgivings about from the outset or to consider myself asinine for the same reason. I knew there was no chance whatever that I would embrace astrology or Tarot because these things contradict science. It is one thing to believe something that I do not know the sense of or something about which there is a rational basis for disagreement, but quite another to embrace something that is absurd. The theologian Kierkegaard who coined the term “leap of faith” did not just hold that proof has its limits. He argued that belief based upon proof was ignoble. As Jesus said to Thomas, “You only believe because you have seen, but blessed are they who believe that which they have not seen.”

As I pointed out to the group, the problem with beliefs that lack a rational foundation is that there are no parameters. Telekinesis, alien abductions, reading the future with Tarot cards, and the Virgin Mary’s recent appearance in a drip on the floor of a chocolate factory, have an equal basis. None can be proved or disproved. They are accepted as truth based upon what some call faith, but what I call wishful thinking. Of course I was unwelcome in a Wicca class, and my outspokenness only served to clarify my position sooner.

Bandon burns

I sat across from Idell Panter, a woman whom I hardly know, at the IOOF picnic today. For no apparent reason, she told me at length about the Bandon Fire of 1936. She was nine and had a bad case of the flu when the call came to evacuate. Two horses burned to death before her eyes. Chickens wouldn’t abandon their roosts because it was the middle of the night, and cows died in their barns, too frightened to run.

An elderly man said he had rather die in his bed than to lose everything he had ever known. Houses exploded into flames before the fire even reached them. Two lumber schooners took some people to safety five miles from shore; others ran to the beach and were trapped between the fire and the incoming tide.

When Idell finished her account, we went on to talk of mundane things, and I was left to wonder why she had shared the nightmare with me. I know someone else who survived the Bandon Fire. He and his family literally walked away carrying what little their arms could hold, but Idell’s story was long and detailed and told with haunted eyes at a party, just as the Ancient Mariner had told his tale to guests at a wedding feast.

In the background, musicians played gospel hymns, their shirts, hats, and guitar straps emblazoned with American eagles and American flags. A strong wind blew dust from nearby mint fields, and sycamore shadows leaped frantically upon the blue tarp overhead. Nearby, lodge brothers who traveled the Oregon Trail lay under marble stones into which were carved the customary three links, one for Friendship, one for Love, and one for Truth.

At fifty-seven, I can have all the feelings that I once sought from LSD without even trying. Reality pours upon me like the surf, and burns me like the fires of Bandon. We finished yoga last week with a meditation in which we were asked to picture ourselves filled with light, but I saw flames of red and orange, an orb of fire with me at its center. It licked and tickled, and I loved what it brought me.

The bandleader at today’s picnic was also a carpenter, rancher, preacher, and body builder named Bret Evans. He was so tall that his head was partially hidden behind the tarp that protected the musicians from the afternoon sun. He reminded me of Chuck Conners, and I imagined that if Bret were ever condemned to hell, he would simply kick the gates down and force his way into heaven’s choir.

I never become accustomed to the fact that time is the greatest force of all, and that neither the strongest nor the most beautiful can withstand it for long. In fifty years, Bret Evans will be dirt, yet how can anything ever really be lost? Today happened, and its reality can never be diminished.

Cyber ritual

I attended my second Wicca cyber ritual on Tuesday.

“Let all who wish to meet with our Lady and Lord this night, enter now at the Eastern Gate.
Wild enchantresses of the night, ancient lords of mystery; fill our cups with joyous light.
Be here—we call to thee!
From all places whence came ye, come in peace, and blessed ye be.
Black spirits and white, red spirits and gray; hearken to the rune, I say....
We stand between the worlds, beyond the bounds of time. A place where joy and sorrow, night and day, birth and death, meet as one.”
reproduced by permission of the
high-priestess of JaguarMoon

Why are church services such prosaic affairs compared to Wicca? Criticize the archaic language if you will, and I’ll admit its similarity to Bewitched!, but at least Wicca attempts to create a place of beauty that is removed from everyday life. What is church but two songs, a prayer, a sermon, an offering, two more songs, and a benediction? Or, if you’re a Catholic, a tattered ritual containing language as mundane as a conversation in a supermarket. From the Latin that no one could understand, Catholicism has devolved to the level of special ed.

I have a lodge picnic tomorrow; I’m a week behind in my Wicca homework; and I’m temporarily without a patio roof or a sidewalk to my storage shed. There is a large hole in the front yard from my work on Friday when the sewer main stopped-up, and several other jobs and a coming vacation compete for my time. My knee still hurts, but not to the point that I am handicapped, and my energy level has risen so sharply that I amaze myself by how many hours I can work each day. I almost entertain the hope that I will someday be whole again.

Night + bike + moon + Floyd

I just took my nightly bike ride, and passed a party from which the sounds of Pink Floyd reverberated for blocks. The Dark Side of the Moon harmonized well with the swollen orange gibbous that hung over the city. I rode by downtown nightspots that were so crowded that they spilled into the streets. Then, I passed through the fairgrounds where the county fair will open in two days. The rides, sideshows, and food booths are mostly ready, and the absence of people made the fifty-five acres look like a movie about the rapture. A guard yelled at me from his four-wheeled scooter. I could have outrun him, but turned around and said, “Hi, Sherwood.” “Oh, I didn’t know it was you,” he answered. “I just locked the gates, so let me know when you want out.”

Only birds know the speed and freedom of a man on a bicycle in downtown Eugene. From the street to the sidewalk and back again. Down alleys; over curbs; across parking lots; turning on a dime at any whim. All the while looking for a glimpse of the orange moon that hangs with equal comfort over city and woodland.

Screw 'em

I had my lawyer in Mississippi start foreclosure on my father’s house, but he chickened out after hearing from the buyer’s attorney in North Carolina that this might be in violation of her most recent bankruptcy agreement. When he told me of his decision, I magnanimously offered to pay his expenses. When he sent me a bill for $474.24, I hit the roof and wrote him the following:

"I called my lawyer in North Carolina. I didn't get to speak to him, but then I’ve never gotten to speak to him. His legal assistant said there was no reason for you to discontinue the bankruptcy. I thought about this, and wondered if your fears of going to jail were reasonable. It seemed to me that if anyone went to jail, it would be the bankruptcy attorney who advised you to proceed.

"Today, your bill came, and I was flabbergasted that you would drop my case in midstream to cover your ass in the event of an unlikely worst-case scenario, and then not just seek to cover your expenses but to make a generous profit for 0.00 hours worked (that’s what your bill said). It’s beyond me. You make money. Sheila ____’s lawyers makes money. My lawyer in North Carolina makes money. The judge makes money. The bankruptcy trustee makes money. All the support people who work for the lawyers and the courts and the bankruptcy trustees make money. Yet, I get screwed—regularly.

"Why regularly? Because courts and lawyers are disinclined to ever settle anything for keeps. After thirteen years of late mortgage payments, cancelled insurance policies, delinquent taxes, mean-spirited letters, foreclosures, and bankruptcies; I would think that the court would conclude that Sheila ____ is not, never has been, and probably never will be, a person who is inclined to pay her debts; but, no, they said that she only had to be no more than 30 days in arrears for six months, and, as long as she did that, I would be back to square one at the end of six months. It seemed like a pretty raw deal to me, but my lawyer—speaking through his assistant, of course—said it was the best I could get.

"Then, she was 30 days in arrears, repeatedly, but even that wasn’t enough. I still have to pay more lawyers and judges, yet most of them won’t speak to me. they won’t answer my letters, they won’t respond to my e-mails, and when they do write, they don’t give me the courtesy of addressing me as Dear Lowell or Dear Mr. Thomas, or even of signing their names because, truth be known, they’re not going to make a lot of money off my little problems, so they don’t see the need to show respect, or to keep me abreast of what they’re doing, or to act in a timely manner. I pay them what is to me a lot of money, yet I am repeatedly treated badly by the minions of a system that is created first, last, and always to make money, money, and more money for itself by insuring that justice is not served."

He wrote back offering to settle for his newspaper publication fee, but I was so mad that I had concluded it to be my ethical duty to stiff him and any other overcharging bastard who puts a title in front of his name and a line of letters separated by periods after it. For instance, my most recent orthopedist bill arrived today. She charged $784.50 for three injections plus $495.00 for administering them.

These were not office visits. These were occasions when I was squeezed in between office visits. She would run in, stick the needle in my knee, pull it out, hand it to an assistant, and leave. We’re talking under a minute, and for that she charged $165 a pop. A person working for minimum wage earns only a little more in a week. A journeyman carpenter or plumber makes it in two days, but his knees, back, and wrists are shot before he’s sixty. The inequities of recompense in our country are so outrageous that I don’t understand why there isn’t a revolution. How much worse do things have to get?

Yoga teachers and lifestyle counselors

I took ten Yoga classes under five teachers in two weeks before signing up with Jay, the husband of a nurse with whom Peggy works. His big muscles and shaved head seem more appropriate for a skinhead than a Yoga teacher, but he is a good teacher and—I believe—a good man.

I still have my membership at Bikram, but was unable to convince myself that working in 105° heat was a good idea. I joined because of the recommendation of one doctor (Bob Arnot of television fame), but was unable to find other laudatory sources. My orthopedist said that the heat would strain a person’s heart. I don’t know what the truth is, but I do know that I would have to be utterly convinced of its wholesomeness before I could force myself to stick with a program that I find so distasteful.

I also went to a free session with someone who calls herself a healthful lifestyle counselor. We spoke for an hour about my arthritis, sleep apnea, spirituality, family history, and other things. She charges $195 a month (with a six month minimum) for two sessions per month but offered to knock the price down to $145 if I signed up on the spot. I would not have enrolled anyway because she was so obese that she had trouble getting out of her chair and because she had little to offer, so the sales pressure was like running over a dead snake except that it demoted her ethically.

She is the second such person I have consulted. Ten years ago, I went to another woman, one who had shelves of dietary supplements that she seemed eager to sell. Her ad boasted of the dozen books she had written but failed to mention that they were in the form of eighty page Xeroxes.

Today’s consultant even threw the title Reverend into her mixture of revenue options. Her ordination was by the Non-Church Church, which she described as a religion that encompasses all other religions. I thought this must be pretty hard to pull off with sects that are violently opposed to being encompassed, but I didn’t say anything. Neither did I mention the seeming irony of the fact that, if her religion encompasses all other religions, that

Button day

I rode with Peggy and another button-collector, Carmen, to Portland yesterday to the home of Jocelyn for a button sale and book signing. As president, Peggy knew everyone, yet upon her arrival, friendship was ignored in favor of shopping. As I watched the hobbyists standing elbow to elbow around a table with their eyes cast downward, I imagined a band of surgeons forced to postpone socializing until the patient was saved. Afterwards, Jocelyn said that endorphins race through her body when she is looking at buttons, to which I replied that the affliction is even worse than I feared.

It is not uncommon among button collectors to lie to their spouses about how much they spend. I was shocked to learn that this is even true of people who have been married sixty years. I trust Peggy on this as on all scores. When, years ago, I began to grow resentful of her growing expenditures, we agreed that she can spend as she pleases as long as I get an equal portion to spend as I please. I save my portion. Someday, I will be rich and can see the world, whereas Peggy will have to stay home and panhandle. Because I have little interest in seeing the world, I will probably share my wealth with her, and she will probably spend it on buttons, leaving us both to starve.

While Peggy shopped, I visited for an hour with Jocelyn’s mother who is 88 yet one of the most intensely intelligent and erudite people I know. She reminded me of Queen Elizabeth II in her hat and elegant clothes, and she threw out words like parse and eleemosynary that I hear so seldom that I had to think what they meant. I listened to her discourse with others for quite awhile before she and I hit upon the subject of local geology. She confessed to knowing little about it, yet she spoke knowledgeably of recently discovered faults and volcanic protuberances, and referred to books by every prominent geologist in Oregon. As with the words in her vocabulary, I had to make an effort to recollect their identities. She eventually moved on to other subjects (horses, ranching, farming, and her collection of antique lace), subjects about which I truly am ignorant. When she had picked my brain of all content that interested her, she abruptly excused herself and moved on to other people.

She stood in stark contrast to Carmen who is two years her junior yet had to be reminded repeatedly as we drove, just where it was we were going. Still, for kindness, integrity, and even perceptiveness, I would never think to doubt Carmen, whereas the woman in the hat seemed a little too pleased with her brilliance for me to know what to think of her.

Jocelyn suggested that Peggy might someday succeed her as the state’s preeminent authority on buttons. I later asked Peggy if this was conceivable, and she said that Jocelyn was just being kind, that there is another collector in Oregon—a quiet woman who keeps to herself—“who knows forty times more than I do.”

The thermometer hit 105 yesterday. I ran errands on my bike during the worst of it and noted that the streets were as empty as Dodge City before a shootout.

My neighbor is dying, and I never knew him

Peggy spoke to our neighbor, Deborah, today while both were walking their dogs. Deborah said that her husband, John, is dying of prostate cancer. When Peggy told me the news, I got on my bike and went looking for Deborah—who was still walking her dog. I gave her our phone number and said we would be honored to be called upon day or night.

I didn’t even know John had been sick despite having been his neighbor for sixteen years. I last spoke to him last August. On that day, he had driven 250 miles (round trip), and climbed the 10,358’ South Sister. Our conversation lasted maybe three minutes, yet it was the most we ever talked.

Of our nearby neighbors, John and Deborah are the ones we know least and, despite his being my age and most of the others being much older, he will most likely be the first to die. As I sit here picturing him in his bed no more than eighty feet away, I must confess that my main worry is whether Deborah will move, and the house become a rental…. I consider it very strange to pass nearly two decades of my life next door to someone whose face I can only vaguely recall. His hair is light-colored, but whether blond, or sandy-brown, or prematurely gray, I can’t say. And his eyes—green? blue? hazel?—I have no idea. I didn’t even know he had a daughter until Deborah mentioned it. Nor did I know that she and John have been together six years. I would have guessed two, three at most.

Today was hot, and the heat has made me sleepy, and I have no more to say.

What to do about Bikram

I visited a non-Bikram Yoga class today. The teacher spoke in soft tones while chants flowed from a CD and water gurgled from a fountain. A blue banner proclaiming Peace hung near a palm-shaped Japanese fan. The floor was imitation bamboo. We moved slowly from one posture (asana) to the next in the comfortably cool room. The teacher gave alternate asanas to a man whose arm was in a brace, and she inquired frequently about my knee. At the end, she led us in a five-minute meditation during which I giggled as I thought about the Bikram class that was being held a few blocks away.

There, the temperature was 105°, and the walls were blank except for floor to ceiling mirrors. The industrial carpet was striped so students could place their mats in even rows. The teacher stood on a platform as she unceremoniously led her students through 90 minutes of memorized instructions. She told them not to leave the room—not for water, not to use the bathroom, and certainly not to escape the brutal heat. She told them that misery was good. If they were like me, they constantly asked themselves whether they were sufficiently dizzy to justify lying quietly on their mats for the next asana. They hoped to god they would be able to survive the session without passing out and, when it was finally over, they had pounding headaches. With difficulty, they made their way to their cars and wondered if they could drive safely.

I missed my Bikram class today. I missed the clarity of memorized instructions as today’s teacher struggled to tell her right from her class’s right. I missed its pace and austerity, and I knew that if the room weren’t so damned hot that it would have my loyalty. I continually struggle over whether to ever set foot inside a Bikram studio again. It is easy to say, “Listen to your body,” but bodies prefer the status quo. I could do things today that I knew I couldn’t have done had I not put in a week in the Bikram heat. What is best for my body? I really don’t know. I do know that I would like for Yoga to be something to enjoy rather than to simply survive.

A certain disillusionment creeps in

The Bikram who started Bikram Yoga put together 26 Hatha yoga postures, taught them in a hot room, wrote a book about it, and had his lawyers send cease and desist orders to anyone who used similar methods without paying him a $5,500 licensing fee plus a franchise fee. A group of California Yoga teachers formed a group called Open Yoga Source Unity and sued Bikram. In 2005, the Open Source teachers secretly cut a deal that benefited them but didn’t help other instructors. Now, other Yoga teachers are copyrighting their methods.

During my web surfing, I also learned that Yoga Journal runs feature articles on celebrities along with plush Yoga vacation options. It formerly refused to accept ads for events other than the ones it sponsored. I was naïve in thinking that millennia old Yoga, a practice that owes it existence to shared teachings and cooperation, was at least one area of human endeavor that had escaped cutthroat competition.

None of this means that Yoga does not offer significant benefits, but I was immensely saddened to be reminded that there is absolutely no pathway to goodness. It is entirely conceivable that a person who has never read a book on philosophy or embraced a spiritual practice can still be a thousand times wiser and more compassionate than the most respected philosopher or devotee.

I have already offended one of the leaders in my Wiccan class, and he refuses to acknowledge my apology. What does this tell me about Wicca? What do Islamic terrorists tell me about Islam? I suppose there are many good and wise Wiccans just as there are many good and wise Moslems, but sometimes it seems that the worst people are the very ones who embrace a given practice with their whole hearts.

Open house

Peggy and I went to an open house today at Phil Conner’s. Most of his guests were from the Eagles or VFW, and they appeared poor both in money and education. Such people lack pretense, and I sympathize with how little power they have in our supposed democracy.

I focused most of my attention on a man named Ray who said he first trained with the ski corps during World War II but was then sent to jungle school. Both schools were in Colorado, and he never fought on skis or in a jungle. Instead, he was part of the Normandy invasion, fought his way across Europe, and then served in postwar Japan. As soon as I heard the word Normandy, I began to cry. Conscious of the fact that I was at a party, and grateful for my sunglasses, I hid my sorrow as best I could. Ray was hit in the face by shrapnel, and came away with fewer teeth, bad hearing, and a Purple Heart. He gave his Purple Heart to his daughter, so his son bought him a replacement off Ebay for two dollars.

I left Phil’s in time for my second Yoga class. I thought I might be better able to pace myself, but I was too tired going into it to last over an hour, although I did avoid the cardinal sin of leaving the room. My repose allowed me to observe that not even the experienced students did every exercise.

I left too spacey to drive, and sat on a bench until I cooled off. When I finally cranked the van, I forgot that it will only go into gear when my foot is on the brake. After much frustration, my head cleared enough to leave.

I get my third shot of Synvisc tomorrow at 1:00, which means that I will have to attend the 9:00 Yoga class. Thirteen hours between classes doesn’t seem like enough, but I don’t want to miss a day. I hesitate to say that my knee feels better after only two sessions, but it is definitely not worse. Only my back feels overtaxed despite my efforts to protect it.

Bikram

I signed up for a month of Bikram Yoga yesterday (at $15 for one class or $30 for thirty classes, I couldn’t resist). An unbelievably energetic teacher named Meadow led us through ninety minutes of vigorous exercises in a 105° room. Sweat did not run in rivulets from the twenty students; it descended in sheets that formed puddles and spilled over the sides of their mats. Three of us were first-timers, the other two seemingly young and fit, yet one of them left after thirty minutes, and the other took frequent breaks. I was hell-bent on sticking it out, but I became so dizzy near the end that I had to rest for short periods. The teacher complimented me on not leaving the room.

No one spoke either before or after class. I assumed they were either anticipating the misery or recovering from it. I looked at how young and beautiful they were, and I knew that, in the absence of desperation, I would not be there. As I biked home, I had trouble staying oriented, and I thought I must be ill. Then I realized that I was just sleepy.

The older I get, the more I find that young people are my doctors and, in this case, my teachers. I am tenacious in my belief that authority figures should be older than I, but, alas, the only way to avoid taking orders from my juniors is to never try anything new—and certainly to never get sick. Yet, there is a positive aspect to how I think about authority figures as I age. Namely, I sometimes refuse to follow their instructions. Yesterday, Meadow kept yelling things like, “Bend your back toward the wall; bend it farther, farther, farther than you ever thought possible,” and I reflected that she wouldn’t be the one with the crushed disk.

I took a class at a regular Yoga studio the day before. The group was small, intimate, and philosophical. I would have signed up for a month, but most of their classes happen before I get out of bed. By contrast, Bikram is factory Yoga. They have classes all day long, all around the globe, and they never talk philosophy. Yet, I am convinced they can help me unless I push myself too far. The extreme heat is supposed to prevent this. It is also said to relieve the body of toxins. If this is true, their carpet must contain hundreds of pounds of noxious bouillon crystals.

It is 1:00 a.m., and I am still drained, yet I look forward to going back this afternoon, maybe because I think it will be easier, or maybe because I can’t believe it was really that hard. I was the only one who laughed during class. I kept looking at the misery around me, and thinking about how we were all paying good money for it. The absurdity tickled me, and I giggled repeatedly.

As I left the building, a man on the sidewalk was screaming obscenities at a woman, and she at him. Another man and another woman had been doing the same thing when I entered. Continuing on, I passed a bike tire locked to a post, the rest of the bike stolen. I usaully avoid downtown and its desperate people.

Eugene was very different when I moved here twenty years ago. I never felt fear then. I saw it the way the Oregon Trail settlers saw it—as the Promised Land. The town and I have both changed. It is growing from a big town into a bonafide city that doesn’t spend nearly enough on law enforcement, and I am growing into something that I am not sure about, but something ever better.

Yesterday, as I walked the sidewalk to a hopefully safer place where I had locked my own bike, I looked at the many desperate people, and I knew that none of them would bother me. Sweat was pouring from me in such abundance in the cool air that I looked as if I was dying from something that could be contagious.

A year and a day

I have waited since last summer for admission to a Wicca internet class, and was finally accepted. I signed a contract on June 30 to be a student “for a year and a day,” to complete assignments on time, and to send $20 to my teacher (Wiccans—at least these Wiccans—don’t accept payment, but a token gift is required). There are five students, four mentors, and the teacher. We have weekly assignments, a newsgroup, meetings on mIRC, and a great deal of personal attention. Much is given and much is expected. So much that I am quite overwhelmed, but also quite delighted. It is a new and strange world, and I look forward to learning more about it. Here is a part of my application form.

1) How do you define your religion/spirituality?

I feel spiritual mostly when I am in the woods or some other purely natural setting. I do not believe in supernatural entities, yet I am often drawn to particular objects (rocks, trees, colors, smells, locations) with trust and affection. I would like to think that the affection of which I speak is returned, but I doubt that it is. I also feel myself to be immortal, but again my feeling is in conflict with my intellect. Likewise, I suspect that awareness pervades the universe, but I see no evidence for this either. If something does not make intellectual sense to me, I cannot embrace it consistently.

2) What led you to your religion?

The desire to believe that the universe is not indifferent. I want to feel permanently and deeply connected to what is as opposed to feeling like an ephemeral being that doesn’t matter. Do I then get these things from my religion? No. What I do get is a sense of overwhelming, and, at times, excruciating, wonder. These are not feelings that I seek out but feelings that come to me naturally. As to the other things (like believing in connectedness or purpose), I don’t really know what these things mean much less whether they are true.

3) What are your strengths?

I am a good writer and handyman, and possess a fair amount of knowledge about a variety of things. I am also good with dogs, resourceful, sentimental, gentle, frugal, orderly, humorous, personally and domestically clean, consistent in my affections, thoughtful in small ways, and willing to do what must be done.

4) What are your weak points?

I am prone to loneliness, depression, feelings of futility, and obsessing about things that scare or anger me.

5) Does your immediate family share your religious beliefs? If not, what are their beliefs?

My wife has no religious beliefs. She gives religion too little thought to even qualify as a theist, atheist, or agnostic. I have never known her to be different, although she was brought up a strict Southern Baptist.

6) How do they feel about your being a witch?

I have belonged to four churches, was a non-resident editor for American Atheist, and briefly attended the local Self-Realization Fellowship, so she would neither be surprised, nor would she expect me to stay with it. She would consider it one of my weirder attempts at what might be called a religious affiliation, but she would not give me a hard time about it.

7) Are you ‘in’ or 'out' regarding your religious beliefs? To what degree?

I would talk about my religion if asked, but no one asks. My experience is that the older people become, the less likely they are to discuss religion. I am an active Freemason and an Odd Fellow, and most of the people I spend time with are in those fraternities. A belief in God is required, but the term is undefined, and not considered a proper topic for discussion at lodge events.

8) Is there anything else you think we should know about you?

I consider all forms of divination as things that might be interesting to study, but not as things to be taken seriously. I do not believe that spirits can be called into a circle because I do not believe that spirits exist. I would interpret such things as meaningful contemplatively, psychologically, and socially. By way of comparison, I would offer that I feel very positively about the religious aspects of my lodge memberships, although I am aware that my actual beliefs differ greatly from those of my fellows.

My lodges give me permission to define my beliefs for myself, and this makes it possible for me to worship with a completeness that I could not feel within the context of a group in which well-defined beliefs were required. I can feel connected to both my lodge brothers and sisters and to WHATEVER IS without having to worry about whether my beliefs are so different that I don’t belong. If I can do as much within this class, I am likely to prosper.

My conclusion about god is simply that he does not exist, at least not as a conscious, purposeful, caring entity. Despite this, I believe in something that might be called a higher power. Call it energy, beauty, love, or whatever; I cannot completely let go of the notion that there is something greater than we of which we are a part. I mean by this that we are of it rather than it being of us. It is the ocean, and we are the droplets, and I take some little comfort in that.

Synvisc

I had my second injection of Synvisc today, a lubricating fluid that is injected into the middle of theknee from just below and a little to the outside of the kneecap. I get three shots, seven days apart, and they are supposed to relieve the pain for six months. I’ve never had a doctor do anything that hurt half so much as to stick that long needle into my knee. I don’t flinch or even stop asking questions during the injection (she’s in and out of the room in the time it takes to stick me, so I have to take advantage of every second), but if the pain were any greater, I would have cried.

Peggy has a new bike, a hybrid between a street bike and a mountain bike. We took it and my bike to the mountains Wednesday, and rode nine miles on a gravel road while the dogs ran alongside. My hands tingled for the next three days. Yesterday I was unable to hold a glass of water.

I feel like I’ve aged twenty years since my surgery in February. I always thought I would hold up at least as well as my father—who could put in a hard day’s work in his mid-seventies. Maybe I got some bad genes from my mother.

Sleeping with magnets

I slept with hardware store magnets wrapped around my knee for the past three nights. I read that magnets might alleviate the pain and swelling, but the relief is more marked than I could have hoped for. Since the swelling is as grotesque as ever, I suspect a placebo effect, yet I should think that a placebo effect would require that I be deluded, but how can I be deluded when I can see the swelling in my knee and fully expect it to hurt?

Dream friends

Twice lately, in my dreams, I created friends who I knew would disappear when I awakened. Each time, I held them tightly and said, “You are real here, but when I wake up, it will be to a world in which you have no reality. There will be no house in which I can visit you; there will be no grave to mark a life that used to be; and there will be no one else on the whole earth who has any memory of you.” The thought that they were imaginary wrecked me because where can a better friend be found than in one’s dreams? For their part, they accepted their fate, telling me that they could not leave me because they came from me, and were me.

I knew this was true, but I wanted more. I wanted to see and touch and hold them, and the wrinkled face that met me in the bathroom mirror did not remind me either of myself or of them. The dream was the reality, and the face was the alien. Or so I wished it to be. In reality, I knew that the face was a constant (or at least as constant as anything in my life), and that the dream creatures were so ephemeral that I could not even count upon seeing the same one twice.

My last dream friend was a blind man. The previous day, I had consoled myself about my knee problem with the thought that things could be worse—I could be blind. That night, in my dream, a blind man took me by the hand and led me through many dangers. He could do this because he saw by wisdom while I only had physical eyes.

Oh, but I look so old when I get up! The face that first greets me looks ten years older than my normal face, which means that it will my normal face ten years from now. The years roll on despite my protest and disbelief. Only yesterday, I was a boy. Now that boy is like a recently remembered dream person who I can almost reach out and touch, but not quite because we are separated by realms rather than miles. It’s as though he exists in an overlapping universe that I can only see from the corner of my eye. When I was that boy, old people said life would be this way, but no boy would have believed them. If an old man appears wise, it might be because that is the only respectable role left to him; so it is to wisdom I aspire.