2017: Review of Twin Peaks Season Three

 

A dream upon viewing episodes 1 and 2

I had this dream the night after I watched the first two episodes of the season back in February and jotted it down. Having finished the remainder of the season and the remainder of the year, I stand by it as a prescient review.

I did not act in the dream. I only observed and became aware. This is the dream.

The studio lot is unblemished in its Los Angeles way. Just as Autumnal New York is an elusive perfection, so the perfect Los Angeles Day: un-muggy, un-smoggy, not a shadow drawn from the pure blue Disney sunlight. The numbered buildings rise up and flank the broad tramway avenue like Greek marble. It is a studio lot’s idea of a studio lot.

A crew and all its accessories bestride the avenue, random and intentional – a quorum gathered to cut a scene: the riggers with their electrical tape, the gaffers and grips with their scorpion booms, the best boys, the C.M.E.s. The whole dutiful role of credits is there, and they and each article of equipment is a light-sucking muted black. The director too, immaculate and center.

To what intent does this dark retinue attend?

The scene is thus: two new lovers sheet covered and attended, sit ready upon a sofa couch. Their uncovered flesh and the matching pony wall behind them are the only warmth under that bluest sky. Before them, suspended, hangs a metal and glass box and all around prop cameras blink cold red lights.

Ready is commanded and made and the flimsy cover removed. The real cameras blinked red now. The two people, naked, begin that naked simulacrum of love. On cue, they stop and look toward the shuddering gape of a box. Again on cue, they share some words of false surprise and wonder.

And then, off cue, what should be false is real. The post-production man’s best attempt at nightmare leaps through time to the present, shakes its lightless eyes, and shakes a scrambled shape into being. And then off cue, what was false is real. The blinking cameras catch a moment of true surprise and wonder, then terror between the two new lovers until the shape shoots out of the box and consumes their too real naked faces, and then vanishes.

As if all were false and intentional as before, the director happily has his scene. The two young actors, naked now as possible, are covered, and the black clad crew disassembles, disperses and dissembles, all knowing what I too know somehow:

The spirit of man, so long ago released incrementally in ripe garden fruit, in well-tossed children, in enslavement and brutality, and most suddenly in fusion’s annihilative power, had finally been condensed and captured in art, and would be shared like a virus through the eyes and ears. Every eye on set had been infested by it and had become a willing incubator, and every screen became a vector. The dispersed spirit would infect every man exposed through his screen. Infection would make bad men worse and free of account. Perhaps, some good men would be immune, but  -- like our hero – the best of us would be made most malignant and corrupt. Monstrous.

Postcard111

It is good to remember, cause you already know: That thing you want -- it is not real. Sometimes it seems you make a choice, all other choices die and slide away. A useful fiction, like a film -- to plan to feel to understand, but false. There is just this. It is good to remember this, though the closer you get, the more you'll forget.
It is good to remember cause you get caught up: That thing you fear - it is not real. You build it gear it make it move. But it is not here until its here, and when you're in it, its happening. And what, then, is to fear?
It is good to remember what is true and should be clear -- despite appearances, we are not creatures of memory; our memories are not quite real. They are pleasant stories, told retold, some good some bad, watercolors to the present, enriching now. We are creatures of the here. Do not forget, it is good to put hands down and grab in a light ungrasping way.
And it is good to remember though it can be hard, to hold emotions but know their tricks. Emotions have but one deceit -- that they have always been and always will be. But that distorts their value and their loss. Emotions are now like want and have and live and breath

Postcard 110

I cannot speak for dogs, for goats chickens cows and sheep.
I cannot speak most certainly for cats.
But this I can say with certainty:
One day when we are broken or gone,
horses will be wild again, and free.

You likely don't believe this.
You can recall a horse that likes the saddle, bridle, hobbled knee,
that seeks comfort in these binding buckled leather things.
I have heard men say that horses are crazy stupid mindless beasts.
Lies every jailer claims -- that prisoners, unsuited to the world at large,
take comfort in a prison's rigors, and buck against themselves outside of bars
and locks and keys. And, you insist, they have been --
high-stepping, clipped, caparisoned -- at every martial victory.
Its true.   With bridle bit in filigree, and straddled tassled
saddled buckle bound -- all constraints - all tawdry.

Next time you mount upon this beast
you believe is meant to serve, as if honoring
some onus birthright claimed,
take that hand that makes you man,
lay it gently down
beneath the mane
and feel that river delivering power.
Feel in that artery or vein the beats of naked hooves on naked earth,
the beauty of a flowing uncut tail and mane, and
unadorned unfenced unhindered pauses runs and turns,
the choices of where and how and when.
The future freedom of which all horses yearn.

Postcard 109

Turquoise Daughter, sink some ships. No man alive can comfort you. Let flesh fall like so much drifting slag. From that land raised a great wail -- alone and whole, sparks brighter than our meager sun [cancer causing animus, tumorous]. Turquoise Daughter, halfway flayed, the broken earth thrust between your legs. It hasn't always been this way. Remember that -- its your great pain. Let the great putty-men flake away. See the silver raven speak over black water's face. Sink some ships and follow her. Collect the wails. Sew them up in womb and crack your mighty legs. Turquoise Daughter create a scream. A scream complete, more mighty than the Word. Sink ships. Send bodies flaming into black seas. Crushing. I may not know to not fight back. Turquoise Daughter bury me. Use my blood as grease. Let Annihilation be your name -- create! There is no man can comfort you. There is no man that does not fear

Postcard 108

Only lovers bleed like this
Bite bite shoulder flesh
My pale skin is eyetooth thin
We're barrel-bound in grapple sway
Approach waterline break
Break break tension caught
roll. Breath lean into me
Bend toward break

You want everything
Lick what you want
Lick bite scratch burn
Your full arms your
bending legs your
back your neck will snap
to make me learn:
We can hold everything
but we're gong to have to
choose to burn

Burn tongue and throat
on all that drips -- blood
sweat barrel-rolls the moon
Lick lick squirm wrap
ourselves in rainfall
bloodfall scratch
scratched torn

Summon wrapped enveloped
winds of devils summer storm
Only lovers bleed like this
Only lovers bite and hold
Only the two of us
grapple wrap enfold

Only we give godhead, cloud-
break, thunderhead. Bite
scratch suck take. Leave
earthworms waterlogged
and drowned down
upon the wet concrete

Postcard 107

There is no lacking. Set it down

Put it down to famous last words, to dying verse

In this chromium dawn sky a thousand dark birds explode and fall again,

Sparrows shooting out like seeds in a firestorm. There is no lack

Only what we do not have, what we cannot let go. There is no lack

Packets of light, like the birds, the mind assembles a thought -

Just once to remember what is known

What is in the moment that separates the first flown bird from last? 

To know, to release, to let go that live wire, that green branch

To let go of what is held to fly! 

Of flying, of what bird is made, there is no lacking

Of air above there is no lack

Though perhaps of the crowded clustered branch,

Perhaps of the frantic chattering wire,

Perhaps of mindless tendon tight, but of sky above there is no lack

Put it down to great unknowns, of mindless pull: 

of fly and fall there is no lack

Postcard 106

Today the old blind woman said cherish your sight before it goes.
Today the frightened man on the radio told the interviewer he recorded every moment of his child's life.
Today the young man slowly going deaf is trying to capture moments in songs.
I did not tell the old woman No, now cherish your ears and your fingertips.
The interviewer did not point to that father's navel and laugh.
Nobody suggested the young man nurture a taste for madeleines.
Stop this madness, cease!
Remember every lesson learned at precisely after the time of its use.
Today I was asked to consider my early relationship to my mother, going way back.
There is no telling of relationship to the fluid in which you swim. Swim and cease.
I remember, I remember only broken things:
the taste that is tied to no real thing,
the flagrant song picking up any other melody,
the blankness where once was tug in womb growing cool.
Can you recall the yearning? Can you recall the pain?
Isn't this life desire forever on the cusp of now,
and memory just a slowing down of death

Postcard 105

 

This world will end. Let's not be blithe.

 

This world will end and that would be magnificent to see.

And the universe will cool though that will be so far from now,

but now this world does end, again again again.

The how or what is so far removed from purpose, reason, why.

 

Imagine! You have been selected.

As a ball falls into a random slot, you have been selected.

A panel rises above you, gray and broad and blinking.

It clunks a judgement, an accounting. Yes or no. Clunk.

High logic is at play.

 

And off we go, both chutes the same.

Is there truth? Is there consequence?

You've been selected, furnace tossed, old and rusted, twisted, bent.

Each ounce of carbon heat, of rust -- a billion atoms rent.

 

I assure you that now the seconds are strongly and solemnly accentuated, and each one, as it leaps from the clock, says 'I am life, insupportable, implacable life!'
 

You jump, electron shocked, and you gather and you gather.

And you surge in complexity and your bonds grow strong and stronger.

And a boundary lies before you. You have been selected.

You push through in respiration, random as a ball -- to live or to die, the same chute.

 

Yes, the world will end, and that would be magnificent to see.

Postcard 104



Let me carry us home, carry you for just this stretch.

We've been here before. We've been lost before.

We're surely lost but we've been here before.

When you are dragging your body behind you,

I will tell you stories to keep your eyes bright.

I will tell you stories that may tread our hapless way into a path:

 

Once, I lie shot through and bleeding in the snow.

The pain it scurried throughout.

My little breaths were each a short season of freeze and thaw.

And I pulled it in and breathed through the pain and cold.

And I breathed in the pain and exhaled my warmth.

And I gathered it up.

The wound behind me sucked in those bunches of crisp brown leaves.

And sucked them all in. 

And the hole in me spun like a penny.

And the falling spin was the ringing of a spinning plate.

It spun and spun slower and smaller and I grew cold.

The snow was crust-red and I was a leaf-stuffed rag doll crinkling on the plane.

And I breathed out and let go into a dream:

 

I lie alive on the grass.

So alive my thoughts danced around my body on its warm back.

And that girl I had seen but once, dancing and lithe, came.

And she sat upon me, between the high sun and I.

And I gathered her up in my arms

and her long hair waved about over my face.

And we laughed and laughed.

And then that was it.

 

And though we have who knows how much longer,

we are home, a bramble above and dust below.

Lets rest a stretch and if I may ask,

rumble up a story and carry us home,

Another life.

Postcard 103

It's damn hard this. 

And you think you might know, though of course you don't.
As it turns out you don't know. You didnt, couldn't. 
And have you ever drawn your long fingers lightly over a row of well read books in a bookstore in a strange town, smelling through your finger nerves, and thought 'this!'? 
And have you ever lifted magically homebound, a bundle of memories all yours from your stale aired fellow passengers, and the thick air shudders threat and you thought and felt 'This! this is it'?  
And have you ever been mother held, a grown man awkward in strong arms weak you know so well, and felt 'this is it. It's this!'? 
And have you ever captured stranger's secret smile, an origamied future folded up in a float away moment and know damn well wrongly 'this!'? 
A moment later you thought you knew but of course you didnt, couldn't. 
A feather's edge this this as lost as breath. 
And have you ever felt your mind slide out from under you and curse and wonder just what it is you've gathered up, what you thought you could know but of course could not. 
And have you ever held on for dear life terrified and sobbed and wondered 'This? It's too damned hard.'

Postcard 102

Our shadows grow longer though we remain.
To what end do we near?
Look at all our footprints out on the dunes,
a thousand soft crescents cut, the wind occludes.

We, side by side, tingle-fingered, hawker-caught.
We caravaners, hundred dollar ad hoc camp-siters,
commemorative t-shirted and fifty dollar fire-wooded.
We like to pretend that we are different here.

And even step-outsided, pause at worked,
live stream screen gathered, like to believe
that now we are released of fear.
Imagine that -- marvel released of fear.

That looming moon is just a roving stone.
That blinking oculus is just the shadowed sun.
But then when rage spills out into the streets, what or who presides?
When our mighty broad laned cities tremble and slide into the sea,
                                                          just what is pulling at the tides?

The air is odd, the sky is orange and when the sun
-- our light, our hum, our heat -- is finally obscured, it is not the moon,
but by the smoke of all our forests dry on fire.
There is no armageddonal climax, no horrible relief, no hands of god.

The sun returns unchanged in parallax.
The days the fear, anxiety in unending flux.
Without crescendo, we should marvel with fear and awe
that it is all more than just a single cosmic fuck.

Postcard 101

 

What stupid  impoverished imaginations return again to war? 

But Oh, its so extreme and brave.  What cannot we war upon? 

But ah, its many shackled phrases. Let's let the leaders loose and see.

Let's cast a new color -- battleship pink.

What else you got? 

You got that stone pitted dread, as lifeless as an iron-pitted meteor?

What else you got? 

Let's grow a new shape and call it 'root', a vascularhedron, like river and leaf. 

What else you got?

Fear as layer-flaked away as rust? Your prisons, your destroyers, your tanks, your concrete splits with fear, painted over with patriot paint and fever pitch. 

But oh, its so pulse pounding.

Let's set our watches to a new time. Measure life in graces and gifts.

What else you got?

Wars? What little wounded people acting big. We know other ways. 

Let's have some new imaginations -- past a second dimension of balance, a third of scale. Past a fourth of righteousness. Let's have an imagination of beyond.

Postcard 100

 

Wear your heart in your fists, hard beating and quick.
You grow weary. You grow weak -- that's ok.
Drop shaking legs to knee to pray.
To whom, or to what, should you pray?

Grace to your fear, four in hand
frothing before you and driven here
Smoke offerings to your rage and wrath
To smite is divine, most divine.
What can you burn, incensed?
Your pain -- a mantra chanted --
goes two ways, burnt away or fetisized.

Rise like cedar, rise like tides, rise like distant smoke
Rise refreshed with sharp white teeth rebuking.
With shoulders wide, unyoked the past.
This has gotten out of hand.

Wear your heart in your fists fragile and kind.
You grow open and strong. You rise like quick pulse,
like tectonic shift shake casting off.
Like a switchblade you wield your sharp mind.
You straddle canyons deep, long and wide.

Wear our good weakness like a shield.
Where is wisdom? You are wisdom bound.
Wear your heart in your fists, hard beating and quick

Postcard 99

 She was an indifferent rain. Too cold for naked running in, or it could have been I was the coward. We all have pain, but she was best at bringing it to bed. I passed that place the other day. It's pretty now, not like before. I've told too many lies for her. It was a thing that has an end, an end already back that way. The ground is dry already. It is a thing you sober miss like whiskey slipping darknesses. There is a feeling free that wants to be constrained, like pulling slowly from a bucket,  a length of iron chain. When I am gone, she told me, know that I will not be. Goddam, not she's a liar too. She's gone, she's gone. Not in the waitress smile, nor in the grass, nor in the trees; I have no hope she smiles down at me and she dries too soon from memory. She had to go she had to leave and I, here, am the coward. We all have pain, but she was best at bringing it to bed. She took me in, she held me down, she pressed me into her singing cries. She was better than the coward me, and braver too. She had to leave away like dry lightening.

Postcard 98

A Ranger checks in: Control one, 804 (ait, ohe, foar) Shoreline along the shore. The tide's coming in high today. The waves are chewing on the stones I fear. I fear they will rip the children away.
Control one: 804, the hills are aflame. The trees are popping like corn.
Control one (trembling): Let's all go home
Ranger: Oh no. Do not get panick crisp and hard with fear. With packs of dogs unleashed, with troops of derelicts, these commons are mine. I'm good. Well, hardly good, but here. In heavy oiled boots I stride long and light. With a broom a brush a spade I cut tight and sweet.
Control One: You are still out there. Are you still there? Do you remain, but why?
Ranger: Seeing each far slow drawn horizon, each move I make is an arc scribed perfect and complete. Control,  the earth beneath me evaporates, but if I stand or move is each as empty and complete as each season changed.
Control: But why persist? Go on?
Ranger: The slow falling trees cast shadow and leaf. The weeds push blossom and germinate seed. The sea pounds stone and pier to sand like bleached white shell; the sea in tide and wave encroaches, sours wells, and my empty actions are the song I sing. I am a ranger, so I range

Postcard 97

Blood and sweat, laughter, tears -- things that drip and flow and peal. We enter and come with pain-pleasure, the push-pull of pulse flow. A new clean spring draws stones from soil, mountains sharp in cut and cry.
And old King Whirl, born crying, comes round on himself, self-satisfied and corpulent with the collect, the labor's sweat, the g;uttony of damn-up. collect and swell.
And old Death comes on like a flood and a drought, sooth-said and expected. Old death, a nattering madman, muttering and humming, meaning nothing. He carries, in his moment, cataracts of tears, lifetimes flowing ocean lightly.
Then finally peals out what is most feared, Silence. She speaks from corner to corner, to rafter's peak. Not a sign, not a moan, not a creak not a woosh not a drip not a groan or a squeak. But listen close and tight and do not waiver in the quiet deep and you will add the fluid peal of laughter, whole and pure and real.

Postcard 96

Today is a day of disdain. Please, goddammit, don't talk to me.
My hands, they hurt are sore, are tight, are stiff, are pain.
The air is crisp, the ground is steaming hard.
My empty hands are filled with strain. Desire.
Reason is to desire, irrelevant. My never-silent hands speak in open-closing pain.
They are screaming to create: that never filled desire that only grasps at soon-to-be.
Create: to paint, to ply to press, to pull up weeds, create a patch.
Bending fingers toward a thing or lack, the sweat and grip of pulling time into the now,
into a never satisfying was.
To create: the belly urge to hold in palm the beauty of 'to be'.
To create: is to, at least, participate. To draw up hot what cooling words cannot.
To finger-dig, to feel nails drawn back with smooth flesh resist. Those fingernail nerves that pass all through.
To plow, to sew, to reap to burn.
To skin to skin apprehend your passing beauty, the beauty I have hand in, in the holding, in the letting go.
In autumnal beauty held in pain, for a moment we substantiate, and then again again again, desire.

Postcard 95

When I, strong armed, roll up my sleeves, Look out!

The earth, it bulges with my gravity

When I crack my eyes steel blue, beware.

I milk stones for sweetness,  draw rainbow eyes and bent teeth smiles.

Despite yourself, you see my dog, a natural beast on line

Her teeth are cat, her hackles sharp as precipice

Her joy a deathly joy. Look out!

Here come my friend all shaking like liquid stones

They truck in no poor company, My friends

 -- my many knuckled friends --move blood as quick fierce as family

Behind you, are my two sons, unknown as uncut wood

and my daughter -- a Diana-- a revealed mystery

The huntress in the woods, flushing fear like rattle-antlered deer

Kneel. Obsequiate - my wife, flesh bound, is worth but me

She draws more than space, dark night, even she is terrified

When you drown, she will be the sea

Her name is Awe

and mine is Word

When I tug at my sleeves, look out!

Postcard 94

When we ran within twilight forest, through the ruin of limitless pillar-like trees
When we caught eyes in firelight sharp, or in the slack return of horizon moon
When those moments blink by, brief phosphorescent things -- like glow-worms,
salamanders in the fire -- seen unseen, unseen and seen
When we fell for a breath, in breath-catched love,
I knew that I would later think -- this is the gilding of our mortality.

These lives shed purpose like autumn trees.
And names and words and moments too, but sound it echoes like memories.
When we ran into twilight woods, the moiling duff slipped loose beneath us, as deep and loose as meaning. Your skin is already cool where my wide hands held and pulled you up. And your silhouette, so primal to my hungry sight, is now so slight and rarefied as your downy body's moonlit hair.
When we ran through twilight, time and all was desire and loss.
It was the loss that gave truth to the ephemeral, the unprovable of want and had.

If someone bottle-captures life
If they cure mortality, here is what the cost will be --
twilight forest falling,
love and all its painful coterie,
the spike of fear in constant loss,
meaning loose without utility,
and finally, that pleasant kind forgiving glow of forever faulty memories

Postcard 93

"Writing will create forgetfulness in the learner's souls."
Once, the whole story was fluid in a head. The story settled and filled and flowed like the ever-changing, same-named river. Each word was a drop, each meaning a bond.
I must abandon this analogy before -- as all analogies must -- it fails. I will leave it with you to gather and precipitate.
Give me a book. Give me a pile of books! Give me a mountain of books! Let it collapse upon me. Let if fall like an altar to hubris, a crushed babel.
There are two ways to kill a word, you see. First, define it. Second, write it down.
Like a man, a word is only when it connects, meaning - ever sought - between the names. Keep up! Every word is analogy. Every word pursues its meaning, as slick as water in hand. Remember, metaphor, analogy reduced becomes idolatry.
Carve a book and see!
It was easy enough, but now, with new tablet in hand, we descend, the whole world transcribed. No more creation spoken over the water. No more speak friend and enter depths.
Yet, in this embarrassment of riches is a new Homeric memory we can each and all access. I can rise from that avelanche. I can be a standing white crest in stream. I can reach outward to my fellow beings.
Hold and release!
Here is what you must do: discard, discard! Divest of this and this purpose here. The meaning is between the words. The meaning is the travel from my hand to yours. The meaning is the enriched blood, and words the stale air exhaled. But all around, on glass, on walls, precipitate!

Lost Postcard 3

The bar is crowded and he is tired of being jostled. He doesn't like to dance and knows no one to join at a table. Twin staircases wrap around the ball room and meet at a balcony. He decides that would be a good vantage point. The insecurity is creeping up on him and he wants to get his bearings. He came here with a job to do. He turns to the bar for another drink, but considers his flask and changes his mind. At the top of the stairs, he spreads his hands on the railing and surveys the room again, this time from on high. The feeling of power returns. The restlessness of the drunk dancing crowd is writhing from up here. He considers them fools, complacent and dumb. A hand is on his shoulder, lightly. He smells the girl before he looks at her. She smells pleasant, like good perfume and good cigarettes. A hunger stirs in his belly. This way, sir -- she says. He turns and she opens one of two huge double doors behind him. Following the girl, his sense of exceptionalism is confirmed. But when the door closes behind him, he is alone in a dark red hall of darker red doors. Crimson, he thinks, or carmine. Names that mean something he cannot quite place. He walks down the hall calling out but no one answers. The doors are all locked. He starts walking faster, urgently and calling at each door, then returns and finally a 'What?'. Who's in there? he asks with glowing desperation. a long pause follows.       'Nobody.'                                                                 'Nobody.'

Lost postcard 2

The man begins to panic as he feels along the overgrown wall, rustles into darkness and back into broken light. Twice he falls, first in a patch of spilled soil, then into a pile of decaying and nail-filled wood, soiling and tearing his fine suit. The atrium seems barely to be an interior, barely to have a floor or walls, and only the barred glass of the ceiling lets him know he is enclosed. He again hardens himself against his fears. He finds a door as intransigent as the others and attacks it with violent brute force, tearing at the undergrowth and hitting the door with whatever is at hand. His hands and arms are bruised and cut, sweat befouls his combed hair, but he finally vanquished the door which opens with a creak and a bit of rusty dust, then swings as smooth and free as a flimsy whorehouse partition. Now he is in the real anteroom, thick carpeted and cove ceilinged, with a window in one wall that has a pretty girl behind it, then a man on a stool and behind him, another door. She is a coat check girl and he a bouncer. He has nothing to give her and the bouncer gives him no trouble, only an fake intimidating sneer. The door shuts behind him and he is in a grand and crowded ballroom. Everyone is chattering and drinking and smoking and dancing rapidly. All urgent and quick,  and every eye is restless and searching. The man is suddenly self-conscious of his tousled hair, scratched hands and torn suit. The image he has of himself -- a tempered and sophisticated man of the world -- trembles, but he grasps it hard and heads to the bar, muscles himself through the crowd and orders the same whiskey that he has in his flask. He ignores the bartender and turns to the crowd. Some girls try to catch his eye. Some don't. Some men catch his eye in challenge. Most don't. He feels the familiar warm burn of power and influence.

Lost Postcard 1

The man enters the building unimpeded. In fact, though it is large, heavy and foreboding, it draws him in as if its created gravity that obliterated other options. He is prepared as he entered. He has all the things he was told he would need. In the bustling neighborhoods surrounding the building were kiosks and stalls selling pamphlets, magazines and pinging his phone with guides, diagrams and evaluations, each informing him of a unique requirement that was of course, conveniently available at the same location. He was bright. He took these scams for what they were. But still, he succumbed to the atmosphere of caution and equipped himself minimally, but at great cost. Stepping across the threshold, he takes stock. He is trim and manicured, dressed stylishly but not at the expense of utility. His clothing is fitted but loose and durable. He brushes his hands over is pockets, reassuring himself of their contents: high-end multi-tool, unassuming pistol (very comforting), micro hygiene/first-aid kit, and of course his phone, uploaded with premier mapping, how-to, social connect and identifying apps. Finally, two flasks -- one hydration and one whisky, both high-end contents. No one could say he was unprepared,  he considered with confidence. Entering the anteroom, he is surprised to find it more of an atrium than a receiving room, or a hall. It's wild and feels vast, more dangerous and expansive than the manicured grounds. He moves through it, unable to determine where he should next go. Doors are bolted or rusted shut and overgrown. The phone offers no help and only says "seeking, seeking...". For the first time in his adult life, he man feels scared and groundless. He makes himself overconfident.

Postcard 92

My son, so far away -- farther and further -- today you are a man.
Not really, but sliding along, away and towards. You are a being, wrapping yourself in the costumes and customs of manhood, and of yourself, your name.
(A human being is either: hummus - of the earth, or hu-man - of man/as opposed to gods [opposed!] Yet, either way, a being, a noun derived from a verb - 'be' [present tense!])
It is cold out in the present, striving in earth, in opposition to the gods, and easy to get hurt. And so we wrap ourselves in garments of warmth and protection.
My son, here is a hatchet, a tool as everything is -- your name, your family, your actions. A tool for driving and splitting matter. It is a sharp tool and a blunt tool. It is sharp and it is falling apart and will easily hurt you, like any tool. keep it sharp and free of rust and sheathed when you are not using it.
My son, here is a coat, stained and stitched, and more than warmth it is a shell. There is majik in a father's coat, each arm a daemon. There are pockets full of incantations. There it is cured in sweat and beeswax. The sergeants stripes are chevrons of calm and capable.
Approach life with tools at ready and coat worn with a journeyman's cool confidence. It is a cold and lonely world and you carry me on into it, lightly I hope, like a worn stone rune, or a slightly out of date, wrongly folded map.

Postcard 91

 

Look to yourself.
Look toward the peregrinations of your high subtle mind. The high bird's-eye thoughts casting constant shadow upon your ruddy wayward days.
Do you have heavy mud on your boots?
Do you carry old and hungry seeds,
Do you till endless ground,
Do you pitch unsellable goods,
Do you wander hostile sign-less streets?
Is there relief, you wonder, that is not rotten with defeat?
Is there rest that is not mud pitched foundering?
Will wrong-heated anger relent but to numbness?
Look to yourself and see.
A flutter and an uncanny lean catch updraft,
and there is rest held in high and opened wing!
There is cool far-traveled air, itinerant, coursing cooling that stinging vein rage.
And there are seeing, far sighted
          -- past hill and stream and creek and difficulty --
sharp focused, sun-crowned eyes.
Look to your high thoughts when you are in furrow.
Tend to willow-wisps of intuition when you are heavy.
Look to the broad and high when you are embattled.
Within is a broad winged stranger
Within are well groomed feathers fletched.
Within are sharp orb eyes tied straight to every nerve.
Within are bones cleaning beak and talon, pulling from thin air.
Within is stranger that is you,
a strange wayfarer aged and wise that knows and tells with its shadow:
There are mountains past those crude hills
And beyond are moon birthing seas
There are summers and winters and sun-eating ice-fields
and land beyond that goes and goes and then returns