So if you want the mountain to come to you, 'call to it'! If you want the grave to have greener grass, water it with your heart! If you need the band to play louder, strap on a Fender Telecaster, damn it, and scream to the Gods as you strum! There is no telling what a man can do if he decides to do it! Here in the 'wilds' of the Ozarks I have pretended that I have run and hidden myself away, but, alas... it is not so very true. I have risen in the blue-gray soft glow of early dawn to try my hand at this writing 'wagon wheel' only to be disturbed over and over. It is a good disturb of which I speak, but it is a 'disturb' none the less. I think of the old man Henry Miller (Great American author -'Tropic Of Capricorn', to name only one title of many) having left his beloved Paris to make his way into the 1950's BIG SUR country of California only to find his sanctuary diffused by the likes of every know idiot, writer, poet, painter, tourist and the whatnot stopping in to see the famous 'banned' writer as they passed by; to simply 'chat'! It is a wonderful thing and yet a deadly thing. I find myself in many ways very much like the great author and conversationalist Henry Miller. I have my 'Chicken House' or as I've renamed it, 'The Elijah Creek Cabin'. I have this remarkable place in which to stroll across the field, forest and creek towards everyday. It is a small bucolic looking place on my land; this converted 'chicken house'. And it is here I wish to find solitude with my carried laptop and my dog following at my heels ('Eli') and all of the ZEN that goes into being left alone to only create and draw from one's own soul, brain, senses and muse, -ah, these words, words, words. (And to write these words creating a certain lonely and magical self-scripture)
But there are many times;
I find myself listening to the sounds of tires on the nearby bend of the dirt road and looking up through the sun-filled doorway and windows to see a good friend arrived and ready for talk and a possible 'breakfast' beer. Another pick-up truck to take from me my poet's pen, my writer's dynamic, my chance at making cottonwood trees, tornados, ocean-child dreams, sun-washed pastures, white-tailed deer and bluebirds speak and paint on paper! I am an easy prey! I am a 'roll-over'! I am too nice! I am a dharma angel left to explain all or really nothing at all! It is the frying pan allowing the bacon and eggs to run the stove! I am a flower caught in the free soil of blooming and wilting.
And yet, I have never been happier! It is the tether of friendship. And I am very often left with the choice of throwing these friends/neighbors, -the whole lot of them over-board or chasing the enormous white whale with each of them as fellow salty, drunken shipmates! Ahoy!
So, I stand by the mystical campfire and drink the beers of late morning and afternoon and watch the hawks wheel above in the March sky. I watch the Missouri Moon bathe all in her wash of gold and amber illumination.
Earlier, I now know, there were words to be given a first communion and somehow they ended up at the alter of the agnostic. Oh, heck, there will be other mornings and sunsets to write the genius of the silver wolf. There will, -there will, just wait. The silver wolf never grows tired. Look, he stands by the banks of the flashing creek. See him? You must!
Ah-wooooooo!
-RSC. Elijah, MO.
