Journal the Urban Wild

"Before each sip he puts a finger into it and flicks some of the charcoals which splutter noisely and send out blue sparks. It is only then that I perceive that I too am real." Xingjian, from Soul Mountain











March 3


When you do finally give up the entirety of the game what you are left with is your home and your interests. On a bright and sunny day, the river across the street is an extra benefit. It is like a palace all to its own. I had spent the years previous walking past the front windows perpetually in a hurry, taking notice of the things like reminding myself to clean the dust or pick up the art supplies on the table in the corner. I now live inside the hours and the angles of sunlight as they fill up this row of west facing windows. I walk across the street to say hello to water. Somedays there is no matter whether the quality of the water is poor and the phosphorous might be mounting now that the ice is melting and that a few farmers might access fields long enough to spray over ice. There is a little throb of common sense that comes over all of us at these moments. We place ourselves in the farmer's head and what we wish is that we could move back in time fifty years, hand out the crystal balls to each farm family and ask politely if they would kindly shun the huxters soon to come. The Yahara River is open and clear enough to see the sandy bottom. The nutrients wax and wane depending on season. There will be months that come when the water will predictably turn green. Algae will bloom at any given corner of the shoreline. Young kids, even during this green phosphorous period, will jump off the bridge into the water. Onlookers hope they don't accidentally get any water in their eyes, ear mouth. What is nature, exactly, we might wonder? The river here begins to thicken to old ice a ways ahead. We walk out onto it. Suspended by a foot of ice, a new world opens. It is a radiance like no other. A blue on blue. I ask myself if it is acceptable to wonder if this is a paradise all of its own? Who am I? Would many notice if I moved on and into such a place? A world of its own. Abbey had lived in the Arches and Thoreau at Walden, Haines in Fairbanks. I've made connections to others here on earth, but what happens if I am subtracted from that world and added onto the radiant white ice? Does the man in the office ten hours a day understand this?