Is The Sky Falling Yet?

"Field of Sky" (c) Rick Sievers 9-08


I’m on my way home from a 25 hour work day, sitting in the downtown Vancouver Starbucks. I am halfway home, pausing on my way north in my old favorite haunt. As usual I eavesdrop on conversations to pick up strings for weaving on the page. The urban are talking about the same thing as the country folk. Our nation seems to be on the precipice of another crisis. There is financial collapse on Main Street. And the good ole boys are raking in 700 billion dollars on Wall Street. People seem to be afraid or indignant. They want to know how to keep their homes from being inundated while the sky is falling.

This place is halfway between the p/c trends of Portland and hunkering fire tending in the mountains. The sky is tumbling down all around us. At least that’s what I’m hearing on either side of this steaming caffeinated state.

Soon I’ll be driving home to a new amour of Harvest Brown shingles. I hired a hard working, hungry man to re-roof my cabin and out buildings. He’ll also help staunch the trickles that periodically creep through the roof of our main house. (It’s amusing how the rain seems to find it’s way right in to the cabinet that houses the water color paints.) Right now he’s up on our roof sweating out his life, pounding nails and making my life seemingly more secure.

When he gave me his bid last week he looked at me earnestly and said: “You know, the world is coming down within three months. Dude, you better prepare.” He explains how he has five years of food stored, how the great tribulation is coming, how only fifteen million people will be left on earth by the year 2012. Right now he’s up on my gables, flashing my chimney and binding metal into the eaves. He’s still making a living at the end of the world, keeping the storms out.

Now, he may be correct in his prophecies. He also may be making his fears self-fulfilling. There is a terror laden glee in his eyes as he describes the end of history. I consider what he says. Frankly, I understand his view. And I also muse how we always live near the end of the world. One never knows when life will turn us into something else. Yet, I am still putting a thirty year roof on. I am also adding a skylight on an accessory house that we’re dreaming up from the good green earth.

At this moment I am not afraid. And I’m not overjoyed either. The cabin and house and family need protecting. The sky is wide, wild and wet. We are small. beautiful and vulnerable.

Like yesterday, I’ll come home to find a radio blaring the jargon of "being right" from the top of our chimney. I’ll hear words that dehumanize the other side. The words are like the drug of religiosity. One can hear versions of this same diatribe from the south/left and from the north/right. And here I am in the middle, sipping my coffee, grateful for the cyan and silver in the Autumnal air. I’m grateful for how the muscular clouds dance wildly around the loving sun. I’m grateful to start my day with good news instead of bad.

The rain has been diverted from the heart of our home. A faithful servant of Armageddon nails up the composition with staples and careful cuts. I am rich today.

"Falling Sky" (c) Rick Sievers 3-07
The sun peeks into my empty coffee cup. I know it is time to go home. Perhaps the scary dreams will drift across the airwaves later. But right now I will step gratefully into the fresh morning of falling leaves, heavy with last nights rains.

Season’s change. Yet something… someone… sacred remains true within us. At the moment impermanence and challenge are a part of this world. I’m glad I paused here, halfway, on the way to the future. My cabin is waiting and full of Love’s voices. My home, locked and cluttered, will happily welcome me when I finally arrive. I am always home. I am free in this middle place, sheltered within the elements and rooted in the earth.


Rick

Moles

Photo: When a developer made a mole hill out of my forest in Anacortes, 2007.

When we moved to the farm we made vow to respect all the life forms that live here. We promised to never kill unnecessarily. I had ideals to make this a harmonious place, where everyone’s voice is kind and the landscape is verdant and free. We’ve reached some of this potential. But we’ve fallen short in reality too. This leads me to an important question: “Why do I dream of killing all the moles?”

We’ve just arrived back home from a long sojourn in Northern New Mexico. We planned a day to bask in the beauty, freedom and the creativity of the last nine days. When we got home there were only the mole hills. Everywhere. The one civilized stretch of lawn was mounded with dozens and dozens of Vesuvius like buttes, some a foot tall.

In this part of the northwest chasing the mole is a serious pursuit, one that takes up a whole aisle of the farm and feed store. There are bombs, poisons traps, vibrators and killing tongs. I’ve tried them all. I even had the guilty pleasure of hooking up the old Ford’s tail pipe to conduit and pumping their underground runways with gas. Nothing worked except the old guilt of not being so “PC”. Their bountiful destruction continued unabated. The trees had been dug up. The sacred fairy circle upended. Our sidewalk continually covered with slicks of mud and stones.

When we arrived home I found my $30.00 solar powered sonic vibrator stake had been buried by the creatures. Also, the steel tongued trap that was supposed to impale them was unsprung and surrounded by fine dirt combings. My beautiful yard appeared like the “great dig”, with excavations stretching around the corners of the house. All my ideals and peace had been excavated too. I’d done every thing I could do to control the uncontrollable. Then I was defeated by a humble, resilient pink snout rodent that has never even seen the sun.

I’ll admit that I had a tantrum. Only 24 hours earlier I had been writing the prayer of my life beneath desert spires. Now I was stomping on my brilliantly designed stake labeled: “Sonic Deluxe: Guaranteed to Drive the Moles Crazy.” I also yanked out the steel trap, which proceeded to snap on my hands. I threw it as far as I could into the hedge.

I was struck with this primal anger at just another circumstance that I could not control. We all face these. Despite all our expensive, obsessive, well planned efforts life has its own plans. Not all of these are comfortable or accommodating.

What is it about going so deep and then coming back to messes on the surface? I’d spent over a week in “The Land of Enchantment” with seven of the finest people you’d ever meet. One would think that gratitude would take top billing. But anger was there instead. It was only a mole, right?

We came home to find the same circumstances we left. Heather and I were bonded, deep and even closer. But all the other issues haunting us were still eating away at parts of our home. They were reaching their claws up from a dark place, upending the order we were trying to make. They are only moles, right?

As I was writing within the wide adobe horizon I made a vow. I promised to save my own shining life and to be compassionately honest. Ever since I moved here I’d believed the myth that I was the foundation beam that supported a whole household. Strong, stout and stoic. A real man. But I’ve been excavating a real life in the desert sands. And it’s not so pretty and contained like I thought. And many of the ways I act do not create happiness or freedom. The trap I’ve made to control my own life has sprung on my own hands.

I just want to write and paint and live in a home of kind words and soulful work. I want to be happy and sweat my prayers and live in this field like it was heaven. But the world has other plans. Like many others, I am in-between wanting to tighten control and just letting it all be as it is. Is there a middle way? I wonder how to do that? Do I just give in and let the moles destroy what I work on with so much effort? Do I go with “reality”, till up the lawn and let it go wild with flowers and mounds? Do I revisit the farm implement store and try another round of warfare? How does one fiercely protect their precious turf without becoming the product and producer of more violence in our world?

They are only moles, right?
Then why am I so upset by them?

Hard work will be challenged and disregarded. And that hurts. I don’t have the answers except to remember the prayers and the million ways to be grateful. Remember the ocean of islands and the desert blooming with unexpected rain. Remember my sweetheart, who traveled with me. Remember that there is a solid self both above and below the reach of all the excavators.

I am home now. The cabin roof leaked a little while we were gone. But the writing desk is full, flooded with new words and songs. This imperfect life is making us more than control or self made myths could ever manufacture.

Rick

Bark-O-Rama at 4 AM

There it is again,
piercing the night,
rattling through our open windows,
waking us from forgetful sleep.

Folks in the city have an illusion that the country life is quiet. Nonsense. On a sound level I have often found more quietude in the city. There is a primal and mechanical barrage out here. There are the toads, the owls, the coyote, the winding road of racing cars, gunshots, turkeys, geese, cows, goats, ravens. There is large equipment just over the hill making dust clouds. And there is the ubiquitous lawn tractor always moaning from one direction or another. I like the country. I let these pass with appreciation.

But there is one sound that has driven me into fits. Barking dogs. At all hours. At all decibel levels. It hardly seems to matter if the people who steward said canines are present for their opera or not. The dogs bark and bark and bark and bark. The barking comes in waves, just like the silences. It’s as if the dogs are riding the energies and anxieties of the people around them.

I realize how the barking is really no louder than the other noises around here. Why does it lather me up into a sleepless anger? A part of the answer is that barking elicits a primal reaction to possible danger. But the real issue is how I make up stories and judgments. For example: “The owners don’t care. They are unconscious barbarians. Their anger is transferred to their frenzied dogs. They’re neglecting their animals.”

Maybe true maybe not.

I’m awake at 4 AM. I hear two dogs across the road barking obsessively. By 4:30 they have retired their blow horns and it is silent. But my inner landscape is not silent. I am holding onto the very noise that disturbs me. All the stories and memories make my head spin and drown.

Lately I’ve been curious about my reaction more than any outside activity. My head is a bark-o-drome, a circus of tumult. Sometimes I am so full of thoughts. They divert me from sleeping, feeling or living fully.

When I come from work, driving up the gravel driveway, I always pray. I pray that my inner dog will be soothed as much as the outer. Praying helps. Then I go deeper and wonder. What is the point of being riled up over something that is only sound… something I have no real control over? Perhaps it’s the stories and judgments that torture me. Perhaps.

This week I’ve tried to claim something that I’m grateful for every time a dog froths up my inner seas. Being grateful always helps. And if I list ten things that I’m grateful for the peace actually lasts longer than a moment. Yet the inner and outer barking returns. I seem to habitually gravitate to a vigilant state.


Lately I’ve been considering walking across our wavy field and actually contacting these barkers. Maybe I’ll even meet the folks who seem to be deaf to their pets annoying cries. The reality could punctuate and test my stories. I think it’s important to contact irritating and frightening circumstances with open eyes and ears. When I really touch a scary part of my inner or outer world I am always rewarded with a broader sense of self esteem. Like telling a counselor or a friend the whole story. Or taking the initiative and introducing myself to my partner’s ex-spouse. Putting a face to the fear brings a strange relief.

I subscribe to something which I have a hard time following: “I’d rather have real problems than imaginary problems.” I’d also rather have real joys instead of imaginary. Frankly right now I’d rather turn over and go back to sleep. Oh, sweet silence. But I get up, again. I look across the dew of the early morning. The field is calling me. I hear a sound on the other side coming from the dark house in the forest. Perhaps I’ll stay awake this time. Perhaps I’ll walk. Perhaps I’ll contact one of my stories in this world rather than in the dream world.

Rick