Chapter 9

A paper for Dr. W

Dr Winston always helped me as best he could. He was one of those people you never minded talking to, telling your deepest thoughts. His was the point of more Socratic method, pointing out flaws in your logic, helping you to work out what you actually meant by what you said. Don't know where he trained, but again - for someone in your mind, you don't need to look to closely unless you want to find all the mirrors there.

I was just happy I had someone to talk to at the odd hours.

"Hello, Herbert. Glad to see you again. Have a seat. How have you been doing with all your projects?"

"Not bad, Doctor. Not bad. Settling in well, at least as well as expected. Say, could you look over something for me? I had to write some essay for College English and thought to bring it up to you. Has something to do with all that stuff I still have attention on - you know, what we talk about."

"Alright, Herbert - just leave it with me so I can study it. I'm sure it will be interesting. We can talk about it during your next appointment if you wish: I'll see you then. Thanks for coming by."

We shake hands and I close the door behind me, seeing the white paper in contrast against the dark wood side table in his office through the narrowing aperture, until again the door faded to non-entity status and my attention went to what I had left:


Fall brought its hot weather to bear, but different with summer, the caressing winds with less humidity and more changes. Standing now in a field, feet in boots against the grass, manure, thorns - barriered against some, against many, I pause to take it all in and the scenes of my mind first empty and then fill, as a tide.

In standing there, I feel some remorse, some anger at the humans. Glancing around, I see the stumps of old residents, flat cut and too large to put my arms around. These didn’t die nobly, but were cut short in their prime by the rapacious man. So I listen and work to find where the the angst is coming from. It’s from the trees themselves, those who weren’t taken and in echo from the younger ones who were there. So I listen, unable to see immediately how I could talk to them. Images, faint, ringed with other impressions, flood in. I am man and so I am enemy to them. But, listening and still, this flows through and dissipates, as if no one had ever listened to them before. Now individual trees come through, this big hickory, that ash, and the really old oak, which even the younger trees wouldn’t dare to grow under its shade. I find, in listening, that really they just want to live in harmony with those around them, including man. And a little respect from time to time would be worth it. The trees seem the true owners of the woods and the land. They have respect for the rocks, which last longer than them, and the sky, which brings them water and is forever there although they see it only as a blur, like an old celluloid filmstrip that flickers with the light. These trees deal in lifetimes that are centuries in length. So a mere man and woman pausing to have a picnic under its mammoth boughs are a scene that comes and goes like a single unauspicious sunrise on a cloudy day; even though to that couple, this memory might last their entire lives.

And in this, with these thoughts, a quiet suddenly comes in. It’s a cessation of noisy thought, like a wind roaring about a house and suddenly stopping, all birds quiet, everything waiting for the next gust. But nothing comes. All these memories, which have haunted me for seeming eons dissipate, draining down into some cold drain, leaving not even residual moisture as they leave.

It’s quiet now. I simply see and hear and feel with no association with previous things, but just for the moment. And flooding in now is nothing. The heart beats, the lungs move air, gravity weighs me down. But thinking is nil. There is the moment and only that.

This is what they must call peace of mind. These trees have seemingly given me a gift I have sought for most of this life at least. Something that I knew, that was familiar, but had eluded me like trying to grasp the fine needlework lace of a spider’s web with a course hand. But now I had it in full tilt, seeped into every seem and flooding, overfilling my singular essence, causing relief and peace to settle into my very bones. I had briefly understood this before, but now found that I could have it at will. It was something I could take with me from these woods, something that would not decay or get dusty or dry out as so many other souvenirs had. These trees knew what they were talking about. There is a harmony to things, a timelessness which is the “Now”, a grand plan of things. Central to this plan is peace, something man in his crowded insane cities long ago lost, but seems to be slowly regaining as he filters out to suburban and rural residences.

But the body calls me, awakens stiffness, wanting to move, to understand this new peace through motion through, under and among these trees. The peace shifts. Other pieces now trickle in as I move:

• A night near Flagstaff, cold, waking to a truly clear, starry night overhead - self-claimed freedom. All my life packed into a rental truck


• Winslow Arizona trudges past - clips of that song "Standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona, there’s such a fine sight to see, she’s a girl, my lord, in a (black-edged) Ford, slowing down to take a look at me ..Take it eeeaazzy..."


• Ex-wife crowds into thoughts, odd that I can't much remember the shape of her face, only the papers served by a "Chaplain" and prepared by a "Legal Officer"; blank to location as there wasn't any expected recourse...


• Machine-gunned clips of instances of inanities from those 25 years working for the cult in California rattle by as some express train full of braying sheep and clucking chickens hurtles past and then is gone, suddenly, the air gusting into fill its absence and the smells, aromas and stench swirling in on that missing mass. Quiet, the ears seek to hear what was there and now gone.

Crickets, frogs again start up their rhythmic symphony, celebrating life. The odd "Hoo-Hoo" in some off-syncopation jazz beat contributed by a hidden owl specter. Stuttering and distant Bob...Bob Whites contribute their back beat. And the silence of the wind presses the melody along, strumming the treetops as her string section, now whistling, now whispering. The creek murmurs her harmony, quietly, always present, always flowing. The trees whisper their apologies for interrupting my thoughts.

Then I am back again to the world of the woods and its noises and murmers. I recall an old friend of childhood, the creek, and turn now to go to her, to see if her banks are still brown, her waters till rippling and if she still holds her course. As I arrive, I see she still flows on, as do my memories.

As I pause, I consider today. All this time, I have sought my peace and never found it until now. Now I can have it anytime I want. The diesel-powered railway of thoughts returns:

• There was a lot of learning about people, only to find that when they are massed, theyare too similar to cattle, pigs and other penned beasts. The sad, bored eyes, turned to fright and quick, senseless, frantic action to try to avoid the final herding into some unknown future.


• My own thoughts had always been thus. Milling about, bored grazing on some fodder in the shadows of my mind until chased, when suddenly these thoughts raced about, colliding, biting, hooves thundering on the packed, dry pasture as I tried to herd them into some sense.


• But now I could get peace, quiet and a mere single thought could quietly spin its solo dance to an appreciative audience of self. And the performance could repeat on demand of this regal audience.


• So this dance, then, became forged into a faery sword. Light, unbreakable, gleaming -- this sword shone in the dark and cut deep and true. I had my razor to do my examinations from. If my thoughts would not herd, they could be dissected on the spot, my enchanted sword spilling not a single drop on that grass.


• My training and the cult's spiritual guidance failed me now as it had ever.

There were always questions to their answers, problems resulting out of their solutions. But this time, as after many times prior, there was no underlying faith of "it will all work out." Because it hadn't. Those herded thoughts showed again how frightened and foolish people act when forced down some chute. But that chute and the holding pen were self-erected by their agreements, their beliefs. They had this wide open pasture, sunny and balmy. They could graze as they wanted, yet longed for a rich diet of fattening corn, the security of a feed lot and a single end culminating in a loading chute and being carried away by a coughing, rumbling diesel. They had, with their own hands, cut down the shading trees and split them, sawn them and hammered and wired them into a too secure feed lot. One of their own had been elected keeper, but as soon as he locked the gate, he transformed into just another steer or heifer, there for the fattening. Now they could only look out at the lush, green pastures while they gorged on corn and sipped cool water, not from a wide, wind-rippled pond or babbling creek tributary, but from a metal tank with a float to keep it full and a thermostat to keep it from freezing in the winter. These thoughts were now cattle in their own lot, going to an inevitable end.

I was always the stray outside, wondering how and why they had done this, done that. While they had run about the pasture, I had run with them. Into and among the trees, laying in the high grass on sunny days with eyes half-closed, drowsing. I, too, had tried out the feed lot and had my hand in building it. But then I changed my mind and found myself suddenly on the other side of that fence, now looking in and wondering why and how.

Standing by the creek, among those ancient trees, I saw that I needed to decide something. These thoughts were too random, too uncontrolled. I always had dealt in whole systems and sub-systems. So repairs of equipment came easily. I should be able to do the same with these thoughts. My own mind should operate as a whole system or a sub-system. Logic and reasoning would then follow and be part of this study.

I had to start at the beginning, some Cartesian beginning to make sense of this. Logically, the beginning was to start with logic. I had studied that cult's version of logic, of analysis and decided that that would be the way to begin. Tear life down to its basics and see what it consisted of, mean or pleasant. Start at what beginning, what end of string sticking out of this Gordian knot that might unravel the scene? The simple strand that stuck out: that afternoon by the creek, under and among the trees where I simply “thought-not” for once, for a brief moment. That simple peace of mind, sought with all my herding in California, came when I was back near that creek from childhood. Thirty-some years of push and shove and drive to arrive back at this creek and find what I had criss-crossed these big United States in search of. And found it where I had left it, in a field on a hot summer day.

I trudged back to the house, excited to begin making sense of things by tearing down “making sense” to its foundation and then rebuilding block by block, testing each fit as I went. This would be a memorable project, since it would bring more peace, if only to myself.

Looking back as a topped a rise, again I knew again that peace I had received as a gift from the trees, the creek and the land. This was my base to rebuild my world on. A new, peaceful world - within, at first and then later, without.