2008-08-24-0641 I was laying here, post dream-world, seeking motivating force. I have a reprieve from hunger/nutrition-yearning (my healthfood, nutrient-rich, calorie-poor rations from my resupply bucket have been getting somewhat unexciting--though I was getting a bit sleeker--leading to desire to arrive at Vermilion Valley Resort soon.): three 3.75-ounce tins of smoked clams, two of oysters, one of vienna wieners (can't remember exactly what those things are called & no label) left behind in a messy site, which I did clean up a bit and will pack some stuff out of. These will help. I may have been needing more cholesterol, fat, or I'm not sure what. My fat this time is the coconut threads. They satiate me but do not energize me as much as the parmesan. I ate the last two of these tins just now.
An early thought was amazement at the richness of the dream world. I sleep more out here than I did in my SD rut. More elaborateness of dreams appears, or more is remembered.
Another thought: my friends across the river appear to be gone. A spot like this-- Cassidy Bridge, across the San Joaquin River--on the weekend, I'd think to find more people. The trail is poorly maintained, though, and, it seems, many trails through areas designated "wilderness", besides the PCT &JMT, are infrequently traveled and poorly maintained. The river is warm here, and has a deep pool. After crossing the bridge only waving to them, I swam back across in the dusk to say hi. Two middle-aged--one white, one asian--guys, professional, well-to-do, from Modesto and DC (formerly Bay Area). Central valley towns interest me. A part of CA I've yet to spend much time in. The cultural contrast between JMT / high sierra hikers (like these guys) and the ones with stock animals who might drive in to a trailhead for the weekend. . . and leave tins of smoked meats behind for me--is something I wonder about.
I was on the topic of waking up, returning to, attempting to find, motivating force. I noted those guys were gone. Other thoughts: I never find myself in dreams as I do now, seeking motive. The forward compulsion, the push to do, seems ever-acting. It is as if, in the dream, the only noted events and memories are when there is something to react to: the river is rising, my quilt is getting wet, boats drift away, and we were to care for these. Now it is snowing hard. A friend has come to visit grandma, who says, with usual demeanor and energy, she's caught cold and is dying. Her friend eats a raw fish. I later go out to get some cereal from a hiker-barrel-like-barrel that is on railroad tracks out where the rising river used to be. Some of the workers reacted to me getting this--but many were drunk, or in the process of leaving for a party from the other half of what was now a duplex. I begin to expect a train to come along and attempt to get the track in order, switches right, but, a section of rails near where the cereal barrel was, I am not finding.
In a related story, I'm with some school-aged (7th-8th grade) friends, Charles Pinkston (sp?), Michael Wilhelm (sp?), and Kyle Decker (now McQuiston?; 3rd grade) made appearance too. A part focus was fantastic visual poems, not unlike the graphic novels (e.g., _Maus_), only these were one page or smaller. Wilhelm and my curiosity got me reading one aloud, or trying to, but it was hard to follow how to read it given the combination and jumbling of words and images. For some reason, Wilhelm wasn't guiding me well, and after, or during, a bus change (Wilhelm may have got us off in the wrong place), Pinkston brought out another of these poems, smaller (~a nearly square section of a dollar), more fantastic, and I began stumbling through that. Pinkston seemed to know how it could be done, or to have a deeper understanding of it.
A way to know you're dreaming, perhaps: read the same text twice and it changes (thanks to Richard's presentation on lucid dreaming at Barcamp SD 3).
Well, the main point was, in the dream there never seems to be this time for reflection.
Morning motive-seeking thoughts turned to the example of Benjamin Franklin, who I've heard more of now (via Librivox audiobook). He was an active, aware culture-channeler if ever there was one.
He had dreams of a world-wide political party or club of "men of virtue." And in reality sort of made a little one (limit 12), called, as near as I can tell, the Junta (J=h sound). Which eventually spawned a few others.
Once, I had my schemes, e.g., the being group.
Franklin, in the morning would ask, "what good shall I do today?"; in the evening, "what good have I done today?" He helped others.
Well, it is definitely the "others" part that has got to me. I'm not sure what to make of, how to interact with the other. In the past I've thought it a type of autism/asperger's, but that was fashionable, may still be.
What to do about, to make of, the undeniably social aspect of being.
Just flailing now, losing coherency perhaps, but in my situation, I've questioned masses of characteristics of the culture, failed to embrace, and so head off to subculture / sect land. Only, where I'm headed, there is no sect, only a recognition that the practice of the wandering, disconnected (relatively) individual is nothing new, will never be, only difference now being it may be easier to collect a broad range of the stories about these people (as was done in part of _Into the Wild_, _Encounters with Chinese Hermits_). Should there ever be a mass movement of these wandering simple livers, will we say anything of consequence to each other as we pass on the trail, or in our kayaks along some deserted coastline? Perhaps, "how's the trail ahead?", or not even that, because the ambiguities, frivolities of that question already begin to overwhelm.
Here, my talk is largely one-way. I limit incoming communication, interaction by living this way. The incoming I've allowed has been a few of the emails that still go my way, the audiobooks, the ebooks, some of the people and things I meet along the way. One of the biggest live-person incomings, by the way, was during my rides with two truck drivers one day long ago on the way here.
I think I could work with someone (others) who felt and relished/wallowed in the ambiguities of life and interaction as much as I do.
But it might have to be a woman (my attraction to her) or a gay man (his to me) for us to remain interacting where, out here, each is free to walk off any which way, and who, like me, is likely to be at a point in life where a type of independence, aloneness has been known and adapted to for so long, that sustained interaction with others/another would require a compelling reason to adapt to. Another scenario is the adult-child interaction--
Rambling mind stopped (momentarily)--I stretch my arms, make a sound, look around.
0850
Peace,
No comments:
Post a Comment