NEW MOONS & PALE ASSES: On Being Comfortable & Uncivilized, Meditating Naked, Alone, in The Woods

Pray inwardly, even if you do not enjoy it. It does good, though you feel nothing. Yes, even though you think you are doing nothing.

- JULIAN OF NORWICH
Fourteenth century English mystic

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- It's a rare thing, anymore, for a supposedly civilized man in a supposedly civilized society - in the world's only remaining, albeit collapsing, "superpower," as it is - to find himself drawn to a remote spot in a wood for no purposeful reason, other than to to sit and meditate in silence in a weed-filled, secluded meadow in the so-called witching hours.

Completely naked, no less, beneath a very dark new moon, alone in the darkness with nothing but the sounds of critters in the surrounding grass, a whispering breeze, and my own heartbeat to keep my bare ass company.

Needless to say, obviously, I'm not the kind of civilized man of cultural superpower leisure one expects to find naked in the woods, meditating and pacing my breath down to an almost melodious purr.

Hey, I do my own thing. And the tendency to spontaneously strip naked in a field is, well, one of my many quirks. Sue me.

Bloggers and technocrats can't be into that weird metaphysical shit, you're probably saying right now. This is the 21st century! We have Wiis to make us fit, WOW tourneys to make us magical, and streaming audio sermons and e-book bibles to help us find faith...

Trust me when I say that some of those primitive things we've given up to build our civilizations are often the ones that, well, bring us the most peace. And the more we lose touch with things like our bodies, with nature, with our spiritual bond with this here plane of existence, the less peace we will know, our children and grandchildren will know.

It takes some getting used to in our Brave New World Order built upon junk ownership and 24-hour information - the embracing of momentary solitude as a fleeting eternity, the touch of your normally cloth-covered flesh intermingling with dandelions and scratchy twigs and even ants, the whole "Trying to feel at one with the world" thing often left to New Age self-help gurus to make a profit off of at air-conditioned retreats and cult meetings down at the mega-chain bookstore.

I'm sure, well, I'm being judged right now. And I don't care.

Seriously, when was the last time you were so naked and alone, so vulnerable and exposed, and yet felt completely comfortable with it?

* * * *

Throughout the mythology and folklore of much of the ancient world, it was the darkest phase of the lunar cycle that was often seen as the more powerful and benevolent than the full moon, a time for healing and fasting and, yes, even prayers and thanksgivings.

Hell, there's a reason all of our supernatural occult thrillers involving werewolves and teen vampires, zombies and demons, often center around the full moon. Our ancient forebears used to share those same legends, sans cinematography, CGI, or good screen-writing, around their hearths and campfires - for some odd reason, they usually associated the full moon's light with mischief and evil.

The NEW moon lore, however, often gets overlooked. Doesn't make for a good movie or trashy romance novel. Stories involving pale, illuminated demons make for better suspense than, oh, say stories that often involve good omens, faith, and solitude.

Which, well, for guys like me, tends to be a good thing.

Can you imagine if, like with full moons, the same Ohio woods I've learned to disappear into on certain nights, for meditation and contemplation, were suddenly filled with goth kids playing at witchcraft, pale-ass hipsters covered in glitter and opining undead, bloodsucking heartthrobs, or hordes of crop-circle crazy housewives and spinsters in search of Divine Mother Earth crap they read about in some poorly written ecofeminist manifesto?

* * * *

I've meditated, alone, all over this country. And this rather uncivilized ritual is, of course, not limited to mere new moons, nudity, or even the mere absence of other people.

In California, beneath a live oak in an old, abandoned cemetery, overlooking a gorgeous series of box canyons and vineyards. In Wyoming, there was this sea of the most gorgeous golden grain right before a late summer storm I came upon after covering a Legion baseball game - I felt the whole universe burst upon my chest like a mortar. Virginia, well, I had this spot on the farm near the train tracks.

One of the best moments, ever, was in Denver, smack dab in the middle of Larimer Square, at four in the morning, right as snow was starting to fall. Of course, sure, I was clothed in below-freezing weather, and of course, the place was crawling with the usual homeless folk digging for scraps in the trash bins. But, oh, how beautifully still and tranquil a city such as Denver becomes as snow falls.

There's been motel rooms in Mississippi, dark, empty truckstops in Arizona, beaches in Florida, dust-choked tamale stands in southwestern Texas near the Rio Grande. Once, in a crowded art gallery opening. Another time while pulling barbed wire to repair a section of fence, perfect transendental moments at rodeos, in barber shops, even while playing chess with a Buddhist monk.

Meditation requires no ritual, no spontaneous nudity. There is no right or wrong way to do it. The magic of life is that it just keeps happening, like shit. It takes effort to slow down the self long enough to catch that beautiful alchemy in the act.

* * * *

So, well, what do I get out of vanishing into the bush, on a lark, out of stripping naked beneath a long-ignored new moon?

In all honesty, I couldn't tell you. The way that can be spoken or written, according to Lao Tzu, cannot be the way. If I put words to the few moments of calm, those moments would cease to have meaning.

- # # # -

CROSSING STATE LINES TO NOWHERE: Of Wonders of the World and Realities of Beauty, Chivas Regal and Beer in a Can

WEST COLLEGE CORNER, Ind. (ZP) -- The bartender shouted last call! just as we stepped out the back door, out into a steel cool October and into the divide that separates two U.S. states.

A town of a thousand residents, split like firewood by a line drawn on a map. College Corner, Ohio, lay less than 75 feet from the doorway of the tavern- disturbingly still, as menacing as a drowned kitten. But in West College Corner, Indiana, on the Hoosier side of town, there's still a packed bar, still life and country laughter and singing.

The Last Viking digs through his pockets for a tin full of mints. He's trying to quit smoking. The temptation offered by an evening's worth of secondhand smoke satisfies nothing, the mints mere placebo to keep the mouth from asking for a cigarette, for one just one more drag off of the ol' coffin nail.

He crunches mints and his eyes water. I puff away of my thirtieth cigarette, a pack and a half in just under 22 hours, trying to remember to turn my head on exhale. We're both three sheets to the wind, firewater eyes filled with bloated pupils, diluted blood forced from our faces faster by the cold.

Mr. Chops, the designated chauffeur, disappeared, lost to tables full of women and slow sips of Indiana-legal cans of Budweiser. Mr. Chops tends to be everyone's friend, even sober - especially if those everyones happen to be fellow musicians, own their own breasts, or can carry on an intelligent conversation.

Calling Chops a sociable guy would be an understatement. Trust me. It's like staring at a naked supermodel for hours and then saying, well, she's kinda cute in the face...

The Viking tells me that he has to let his dogs out, that he wants some company walking the two blocks back to his house. And he tells me, too, that this is his world, his life outside of the quaint brick-and-bullshit facade of Oxford Fucking Ohio.

He sounds almost embarrassed to admit that, yes, the town that feeds us both has become nothing more than a running academic joke, that our paychecks revolve around perpetuating the myth of 1950s ivy-covered youth, and that, yes, he feels more at home crossing the state line, home to a blue-collar nowhere.

As we stumble along crumbling sidewalks and orphaned railroad tracks, I can't help but be envious of a man who finds something meaningful in a place as real as West College Corner, Indiana.

Fuck the myth of Christopher Columbus and Spaniard conquistadors - history remembers their legends, their gilded discoveries of the New World, just as local alumni recall the glory of Oxford. Leif Ericson, and descended spirits, yearn to discover the very real world, to silently find meaning in America's lost nowheres.

Ain't no shame in being a real man in a real world. Hasn't been any shame in it, in North America, since the first settlers crossed over from Asia, since the first Scandinavian explorers came and lost the continent to Spanish, Portuguese, and English conquerors.

The Last Viking popped open a bottle of beer as his dogs ran free into the steel cool October. My jealousy boiled over and I lit another cigarette, my only weapon against a man so free.

My envy could, at least, help keep the mint makers rolling in the dough.

* * * *

The women, the Last Viking promised, wouldn't be much to look at, wouldn't be the sort of barroom eye candy Mr. Chops and I were used to back in Oxford. At least, he promised, we could catch the end of the Boston-Cleveland league championship free of chest-beating, bandwagon Indians fans.

Neither Chops or I were surprised when the Last Viking, in his deviousness, had forgotten to mention that the infamous Viking Tavern housed as many real women as real men on a Saturday night, women who smelled of workweeks and overtime, who spoke with twangs and who danced slow dances with farmer boyfriends and mechanic husbands and weathered strangers.

Jesus H. Christ! I thought, watching these women put in requests to the deejay. Beauty! Pure fucking Venus beauty, free of the bourgeois, the airs of Entitlement!

America the Beautiful, tangible tits and cowgirl ass! Dance Brad Paisley and Kenny Chesney and sing Karaoke into the Indiana night so loud the rich city girls burst into shallow, plastic pieces!

The eye candy be damned. Even Mr. Chops, the Red Sox fan, seemed too distracted to catch the final out of what proved to be a pivotal game in his team's march towards the World Series.

Watching real women dance can make men forget about almost anything, even an American League pennant.

* * * *

The Last Viking didn't need the company to walk his hellhounds. He didn't ask me to walk back to his house for my health, either.

Every human being, every second of every day, exists as nothing more than a motive with a pulse. Motives are the blood of consciousness and impulse, the fuel that feeds the fires of thought. Some motives are mysterious and potentially sinister, like the motives behind the tips of shoelaces, those plastic aglets that nobody seems to question. And some motives are innocent and fruitful.

Some motives, too, are esoteric, supernatural and inspired by God. And men can be motivated to play hands of fate just as surely as men can be motivated towards creation or destruction.

The Viking popped more mints as we walked towards an old shed behind his house, a bright-blue building scarred by sections of missing siding. A lone spotlight illuminated the east side of the garage, a simple incandescent bulb standing watch over a wall and an improvised workbench, cans of red paint and paintbrushes.

The Last Viking didn't say what motivated him to invite me deeper into nowhere. He didn't have to say a word, actually, because, like a mother knows love for a child, some monuments to hope speak more with silence.

The side of the barn contained one of the most beautiful testaments to humanity's enduring spirit, to the power of life and death, I've ever seen. And it's in the middle of a blue-collar nowhere, in West College Corner, Indiana.

* * * *

I've walked the Mall in Washington, touched the names of the Vietnam War casualties on the Wall and stood on the spot where a great man once set my country free, at last, in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln. I've heard lectures by Nobel Peace Prize laureates, listened to speeches delivered by some of the world's leading humanitarians and defenders of those who cannot defend themselves.

And beneath a watching heaven, in the heart of Middle America, across a simple state line and down paved arteries through cornfields and soybean patches, the working class of nowhere in particular created a masterpiece so divinely inspired that the great religious texts of the world seem like coloring books.

You see, there's a woman, a wife and mother next door, fighting cancer, who's endured several rounds of chemotherapy. She spends most of her time in this one lonely room, strength coming and going like a bullet train as she fights a battle that she may lose.

There was a time, not long ago, that the woman stared out of the room's one window and saw nothing but an old blue barn. And then the woman's family decided to paint We Love You, ____, in big billboard letters, on the side of that barn. Friends soon started painting their names and wishes beneath the banner, in bright red. And then strangers started stopping by, too, adding their names.

There are now so many names, so many people stopping by, that there's a can of paint and brushes always ready and waiting, night and day. The owner of the barn not only sanctioned the vandalism but embraced it. And people began cooking for the family, taking different nights a week.

The Last Viking had a real man's tears running down his face as he told the tale - he and his roommate were flipping the bill for the eternal light that allowed the woman to see the wall, any time she wanted to, even in the middle of the darkest night. He cooks on Mondays, when he can.

Not even the most damned demons of hell could laugh at such a monument.

In the cool steel night, beneath a star-filled sky, another man was motivated, by unknown forces, to pick up a paintbrush, pry open a can filled with stiff acrylic, and to add his name to the great organic work:

Jason
Green Bay, VA

The Last Viking wasn't the only one with tears in his eyes.

* * * *

The Last Viking put his dogs away, popped another handful of mints. I lit another cigarette as he talked about the sheer wonder of being able to look up at night, at any time on a clear night, and to see stars - he pointed out Orion, that great bowman in the sky, his belt marking not some silly border between Ohio and Indiana but an ethereal state line between Mankind and Eternity.

We were both still drunk, still lost in conversation and thoughts of the wonders of the world one finds in blue-collar nowheres as we headed back to the bar, back to find the elusive Mr. Chops. As we crossed the railroad tracks, one of those real women and one of those real men walked together, towards an old pick-up. Both said hello, as if the world was perfect.

The world, of course, is far from perfect. But sometimes, crossing state lines to nowhere, mere yards from an Ohio somewhere, can make even imperfection a thing of beauty.

- # # # -

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL: I Never Learned to Play Lead as a Kid, But I Sure Figured Out How to Destroy Guitars

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- As a guitarist, I readily admit that I suck serious ass.

Always have. Always will.

I've sucked serious ass, proudly, since my first band, since the Unus Marx (short for Unusual Marxist - I was 15) days, since I figured out that I really have no need for that bottom E string, gave up on trying to play glam rock, and learned to love the good ol' Power Chord.

* * * *

I was 14 when I tore apart my old starter electric, one of those suckers with a cheap, flat tremolo bar and an amplified speaker built right into the body. My parents paid a whopping $50 for a guitar with one working pickup and rust on the tuning pins.

First, I pitched the goddamn whammy bar, gutted that three-inch speaker and replaced it with the severed head of a teddy bear.

Yes, a teddy bear head was my first guitar accessory. It seemed logical at the time, almost abstract art.

And then came the ritualistic mutilation, the tagging. I stripped off the shiny black finish with a belt sander, painted the thing primer gray. With a blank canvas, I used industrial spray paint and black lacquer to add texture.

A skull and crossbones carved here and there, with a dull chisel. BLACK FLAG and SOCIAL DISTORTION and NIRVANA and MELVINS written on with Sharpies, a huge anarchy symbol carved into the neck with a pocket knife.

That guitar even survived this one night in high school when my friends and I, in our infinite need to prove our machismo, decided to hang the damned thing from a tree, use it for target practice.

I played my first gig ever, in front of an audience of three girls and a Dead Head stoner, with that Chinese-made Silvertone, the .22 rounds still buried in the plywood body. The sound was horrible and self-loathing and implosive, a barbaric YAWP! for the waning years of my teens.

I realized, a while back, that I was never asked to join bands because some group of guys need a rhythm guitarist or bassist anyway. I was asked, usually, because, well, I used to be a big dude and I liked to drink, do all sorts of nasty drugs, and fight.

But how I loved that damned, piece o' shit guitar. Bullet holes and all.

* * * *

Some guitarists are all about the finesse, about the rhythm and meter and form. Even the best solos are, to some degree, nothing more than formulaic and repetitive exercises in scale. I've never bothered to learn a lead or solo part in my life - that's for musicians.

Me? I maul at the fretboard like a retarded orangutan, with just about as much charisma and skill as one would find in your average drive-by shooting. Strictly a chord strummer, a rhythm hunter in the darkness, tone-deaf and uncoordinated.

That original electric is long gone, the teddy bear head and neck and body and pickups carried to Heaven, as smoke from a burn barrel. And the drugs are gone, the unchecked juvenile rage subsided.

Despite my ass-sucking levels of musicianship, I still enjoy playing every once and a while.

* * * *

As the rain came down a few nights ago, as it poured off the roof and the box fans rattled in the window sills, I picked up my old acoustic, this shitty Korean 3/4 size I've owned for more than a decade.

When that old Silvertone died, the Korean acoustic became the eldest son, left the farm with me, transversed the United States. Given what the acoustic's been through, I'd have to say that Koreans make some pretty durable cheap guitars.

It's been spit on by two fiancees, puked on and threatened by numerous women, borrowed by skinhead drug dealers and black strippers and roommates and recovering addicts, fondled by poets and former prostitutes and soldiers and migrant laborers, dropped in the Pacific from a fishing trawler.

I like durable guitars. They live forever and, well, tell better stories than I do.

* * * *

I sat on a stool in my apartment, that folding two-foot ladder I call a stool, and I played classic punk songs, rebellious American folk songs, outlaw country - unplugged and barely in tune.

The Misfits' Bullet. Social D.'s Bad Luck and Story of My Life. John Anderson's Seminole Wind. Hank Williams' Angel of Death and Lefty Frizzell's Long Black Veil. Even Tom Waits' Jockey Full of Bourbon.

Not exactly covers. More like abstract, interpretive art. The kind of art one makes in spite of their humanity, when they're all alone and can get away with it.

Spontaneous and humorous and askew and downright perverse. Like taking a shit and seeing the face of the Virgin Mary in a turd.

And I played like I always have, like a retarded orangutan, with just about as much charisma and skill as one would find in your average drive-by shooting. I tried to sing, in that old gravelly baritone, the one I used to use when, well, I thought I could actually sing like a rock star.

And the neighbors above me stomped on the floor. And someone yelled from outside in the rain.

And I just wished I still had that old bullet-ridden carcass of a guitar, just to plug it in, to just bang away with blunt force, just to piss off the neighbors.

- # # # -

WHEN AS DUST, WE ALL JOIN THE GREAT WORK: Hey, Uncle Rich! Got the Trowels Clean! Can I Butter Some Stone Now?

HE WAS AN ARTIST.
HE CONQUERED STONE WITH HIS FLESH.
BLOOD OF CONCRETE, ROCKS IN HIS BONES,
HEART OF GOLD

Those words would've been perfect for my uncle's tombstone, if he'd wanted one. Not some silly factory-ready epitaph, not some stupid bullshit greeting card farewell, and certainly no Bible verses.

Listening to my parents' voicemail Wednesday morning, that was all I could think about as I sat on the loading dock at work, staring at a rusting brown Dumpster, wishing I could cry.

He was an artist, and I can visit him anytime.

My uncle had, after fighting cancer for several years, departed this world, mere days after the last of his children graduated from high school. And he fought until the end, fought for every breath, just as he'd fought every other thing that'd tried to break him.

He left my aunt with explicit instructions - no funeral, memorial service, or other frivolous things. His ashes are to be delivered unto the Columbia River, his soul left to bond with the salmon and the grizzly bear.

Rich was an artist, and now he'll be turned to dust.

And for an artist built like a grizzly, there is perhaps no better ending. He died in his sleep, entering his own eternal hibernation, to one day awake in another, freer world, where his growl scares no one but the wind, where he can be happy with that. He deserves one hell of a monument, but he'd rather just be returned to the earth, to the Wild West wilderness that spawned him.

And even though my aunt says she's not ready to part with him just yet, she'll one day take him down to the river, my five grown cousins in tow, and grant his last wish.

Still, I thought I'd better write him an epitaph. Words are, well, cheap, but they can occasionally mean something.

* * * *

Rich was an artist, and I don't care what the world says.

When I was a child, I used to watch him conquer quarried stone and build magnificent things, structures that would shame the architects of the Great Pyramids.

At the time of his death, he'd last been employed as a mechanic. He'd worked numerous other jobs, worked on a ranch, as a short-order cook, a carpenter.

But in my memories, Rich was, and will always be, a stonemason, the master of hammer and chisel and trowel, one with the ancients who built Stonehenge and the Roman Aqueduct, a modern incarnation of the everyday artist who built Europe's great cathedrals and the Great Wall of China.

Watching him work his trowels, watching those tools butter up bricks and granite and other stones, was like watching de Vinci sketch or Titian select models.

He'd stare at a pallet full of flat stones for an hour, pick through them like a child digging through a box of chocolates, lay them out on the ground in seemingly random patterns. And then he'd pull his masonry hammer from his belt, chip off a few corners here and there, birthing order from his chaotic mess.

Rich would then prep his surfaces, apply his wire backing, and mix his mortar precisely. As he worked his way up from the bottom, his chaotic piles of rocks would grow into chimneys and foundations and facades, retaining walls and fireplaces. As he finished, as he would work his knives over the joints, adding a groove here or there, leaving his own subtle signature in the mortar.

* * * *

He worked best with a large chew of tobacco in his cheek, with plenty of soda pop handy and country or classic rock music playing in the background.

Occasionally, he'd even try to sing - with a mouth full of Skoal, brown spit dripping down his beard as he bellowed out of tune. On most job sites, other construction workers would beg him not to dance, too, as the laughter generated could potentially lead to an accident.

As funny as it was, it was a thing of beauty. But then again, Rich was a beautiful man.

* * * *

Rich was a master, a man of dust and stone, in place of flesh and bone.

I spent portions of two summers working with him on job sites, sweating away in the Virginia heat for a whopping wage of $3.75 an hour, watching him build his marvelous creations and, most importantly, learning to build my own.

I hauled cinder blocks through tick-infested fields, dragged wet concrete up flights of scaffolding. I cleaned out at least a thousand buckets, chipped off at least a ton of dry cement from bucket trowels and tuck trowels and wheelbarrows and mixers.

Day after day, I'd cough up concrete dust for the first fifteen minutes of lunch breaks, learned to love cans of cold pork and beans and tins of mustard-covered sardines. I'd eat in silence and then stare at my poor blistered hands and bloody forearms for another fifteen minutes.

I'd hurt some days so bad that I'd want to cry. And as we'd drive home at the end of the day, he'd poke fun at my occasional whining, buy me a Coke (and sometimes a bottle of beer, if I worked hard), and debate the finer points of everything.

But I never once considered quitting. When one gets an opportunity to watch an artist, to be taught by one, only idiots and other worthless bastards walk away, crying about hardship.

True artistry is not taught in classrooms, nor explained by neutered MFAs in sterile lectures. And true art is hard, dirty work, rugged and mean and covered with scars. The carpenter is no different than the sculptor, the person who rivets the steel girders of bridges and high-rises the equal of muralists and photographers.

The rest is just bullshit history, the kind written by pompous architects, theorists, and other worthless critics. Art is not for them. It remains in the eye of the beholder, and it takes many forms. There is art, somewhere, in everything crafted by Man.

Rich was an artist, and he taught me to trust the dust.

* * * *

My Uncle Rich will soon be turned to dust, cremated down to the same gray dust that once covered his jeans and his shirts. And his ashes will one day clump atop of the water of the Columbia, floating along the surface for a time, then sinking to the riverbed.

And somewhere at the bottom of that mighty Pacific Northwest river, his human remains will mix with sediment, will bind with it, and will fill the crevices in between the worn river rocks. And there, finally, the creator will become part of the Great Creation, grout to hold stones in place, to slow down their eventual erosion, mortar against the forces of nature.

It is a perfect final work for a master mason.

* * * *

I have yet to cry. I don't think I can, actually.

I last spoke to my uncle two years ago, when he called my parents' house one Christmas, to wish his big sister's family a happy holidays.

We spoke for maybe five minutes, about nothing in particular. He did, however, brag about the beauty of the Oregon countryside, brag on his five sons, and brag on his life.

He was content.

And from what I've heard, he spent the rest of his days trying to keep it that way.

* * * *

Rich was an artist, and I can show you the marvelous stonework he created with his own hands.

Oh yeah, that two-story stone fireplace up at the Wintergreen Resort? He built that sucker. One of the homeowner's neighbors once called it the most beautiful fireplace she'd ever seen. And I think that may be the best compliment anyone ever gave him. As I rode home with him that night, the three hours back to the farm, he kept referring to himself as The Artiste...

That foundation on that farmhouse out in Burkeville? Hell, he and I spent four days digging those footers, and that lady's goose attacked us every morning. The damn thing even shit on the bucket trowels anytime we left 'em sitting around too long.

Oh, and that blockwork out in Buckingham? Took forever. Every day we'd get on-site, work for five minutes, and then it'd rain. Rich would just get pissed, kick something, swear at the sky. But it went up eventually.

And, yeah, he never once trusted me with a float. Said I put too much pressure on the concrete, left indentations. Never once saw 'em, but he swore up and down they were there...

And we can go to Oregon, too, and I'll show you his last masterpiece...

- # # # -