Deep Forest Glade

Far out on a mountainside. Can't you hear the sound of the world saying "Come, come get lost in these forests of arden"

10 August, 2013. I've been reluctant to share some of this. This is tenativly called The Bardo of Macon Hasty but that is only a third of the story. I also have Red Devil popup Milkman, the actor. and Man on Vactation to Vermont as two other main characters. The popup red devil milkman doesn't show up in the exerpt here.

excerpt four

At the Notch

It's later. I've driven to The Notch. If you have to ask which notch, then I am not going to tell you. There aren't that many of them named 'notch'. Some are named 'gap'. There is this strange type of place called a Buell, but it isn't about the topography and the likelihood of making a journey through there. It's just about being a remote spot that no one ever cared that much about in the old days because it was too hard to go there, and really difficult to do anything in those spots to make it worthwhile for someone to claim that place. I don't really know. I am speculating.

That is why I couldn't have been a journalist. I decided that the type of precision that Hemingway had didn't need to be used. It is like a giant styrofoam hammer. It doesn't hurt anything. But it doesn't break anything either. Writing ought to be able to do destruction. Rip out that old stale dry-wall that cordons off the corrupotological looting from the prevy of those who actually do something for a living. I'm tired. It's hot here. I'm on a trail going up to a higher place. The top of a ski lift is up there. And when I get to it there is still farther up the mountain to go. Mountains named after women are different than mountains named after saints. But if the saint were a woman? See how my mind runs.

There is a part here where you can go off trail. Where the rill is the water runs. The torrents will wash away the small stones and dirt and kick out crystal formations, of many different scales. Each of them is a fractal model of a larger or a smaller version of itself, in one sense. Of course, there is a maximum size, that would be the whole pegmatic formation that these crystalline structures convey. This kind of crystal is formed through hydrolic processes when there are cavities left over from ancient volcanism covered over with a thick layer of metamorphic capstone (marble is great for this, which is why rubies are found embedded in marble).

So I bush-whack it over, I'm saying it 'bush-whack'. I think of a town in Pennsylvania at the Delaware Water Gap that, if you'd gone there with political cards during the last presidency and sent off a lot of them from there, featuring the name of the town, it might have raised some eyebrows. The word 'kill' is from the Dutch. The idea that the Dutch were just in the Hudson Valley, those cute maps that they showed us in the 'History' books that they made us read in 4th grade about the history of our nation, didn't point out just how much influence the Dutch had. Just look for dutch or German names on a map and you see the real extent of Dutch influence.

So the English showed up, bully's that they were, and they were like 'we own this now.' And the Dutch, who were already there, were probably like 'how could you, we'll just keep being competent and well do the real deal things, helping people, treating people well, and you can say what you want about who rules. It's a delusion to think that anyone could rule the whole world or that any one family or group of connected allies would be able to pull-off the control of the whole world. And the idea that the purpose of mind is trying to be usurped by gigguiling corporate child-minds (not people who get there through being good at things, but being selected to be the special wonder-kin by those who think that wonder-kin can be manufactured and all you have to do is start bowing toward your younger kinsman and all the rubes will do it too.) That kind of thought is if you actually imagine that people are ever rubes, or that you'd treat people like that.

So what did the Dutch do? They just kept keeping on. they kept clearing land, building dwellings, wheeling and dealing, funding new ventures, and, well, do you need to know what happened? Do you need to hear the surnames of some people who did very well for themselves and then shared the wealth? Do you have to have me say the names?

So, there they were, off in the world, being there. And all of those fools in London who bowed to a corrupt king (who probably suffered from a form of illness) were forced out of here and sent home.

But suddenly, Macon is there. He is sitting on a giant piece of pegmatite and holding a clear piece of well-faceted crystal, turning it in his hand, and looking at the world through it.

"Macon!" I call out. We are in heavy thickets. This is an off trail place, but at the rill in the mountainside. There are parts where the boulders are where there are drop offs that go about thirty feet. And then you can roll down it, if you did fall. You are going to get hurt. And here, at the notch, there are giant trees that surround all of the bolder fields.

"You again? I swear, I try to escape to the mountains and I get hounded by frigging paparazzi idiots. And you. Have you been following me."

"Me?" I say. "You're the one with the spook-guy connections, who has friends in high circles. Guess you pissed some of them off?"

"How do you resign from life? You say I faked my own death. I say, no, you are dead too. Only I've figured it out and you haven't."

"Look it. I don't know how it is that you got my secret list of secret spots and are following me around. Maybe it's what they say about it in the 'conspiracy' press, the only real source of news if you really want to know the worst case of it, but worst cases are never actual unless they are and if they are it doesn't matter if the theory came from a paranoid place, it's still a useful theory. Of course you don't know what the real truth is. What is that ever? That people should be kind to one another. when you are in church at midnight mass do you really care that someone is never there with you at other masses and they are in the front row? maybe that person is only home at Christmas, they are off at battle? Someone looses their dad. Another has a dad who never comes home. Some people go off to 'fight' the 'enemy' by yumming it up at perfectly safe places and never putting themselves out there in any way where they actually take any risks at all. And they end up living the longest and getting the most benefits and then they got to the home and have to spend a couple of years as a zombie until their accounts are drained. Someone, a whole group of them, living somewhere nice on the money of these old prisoners"

"You got some hangups."

"I do."

"Look it, its all OK. You really can escape."

"But you are not dead. Are you? If you were, then why are you still here?"

Suddenly a raven comes flying through the branches of a massive maple tree that is growing from down below and half the height of the tree is above us. The raven sees us, caws, and then veers away. Suddenly there are smaller birds attacking it. The battle rages as these birds rush off across the sky. Macon is looking at the scene through the crystal.

"What is your deal, really?" I finally ask. "Are you from Colchester?"

"Not really. My folks live here. We have a house here. I've got a boat."

"Why aren't you out on the lake today?"

"I will be later. I've been lonely. I can't see my wife anymore."

"Did she get a restraining order? Do you have any kids?"

"No kids. Not a restraining order. I respect her too much to go against her wishes. Its better this way though my heart is broken."

"Whats the worst part of being on Witness Protection."

"Why do you think that I'd know?" he says with slight obvious anger.

"I don't. I'm just imagining, writing a story, making it up. How could I know? I'm a writer, like you."

"I'm not."

"No. you're not a writer?"

"I'm not on fu_c_king witness protection. I wouldn't be able to trust them."

"Are you a fugitive? One of those leak guys? a friend of Snowden?"

"I've got no friends left. I burned through a lot of them. And I can't approach any of the ones that would still care because . . . it would put them in danger."

"So you are kind of a Danger Angel."

"Angel. Wouldn't that mean that I'm dead?"

"What do you hope for in life, Macon?"

"You keep calling me Macon. I wish you would stop."

"Isn't that your name? What should I call you?"

But he didn't answer. I'd been facing away, watching the birds fighting. He was gone now. I didn't know where he'd gone. Did he go up the trail? Is there a small passageway here behind the big crystals that leads into a cave? Are there beasts in there? from another story? (The Cave Beast) A woman who tries to fake her death to get out of a bad marriage (from a different story?) and limestone caverns underneath Vermont and Macon (which is not his name) lives down in them.

If he is here he is probably parked in the notch. It's a long way from anywhere else. But he could have come down from the ski-lift. They run it in the summer for hikers. You'd be staying at the ski area then.

And so I hurried back down the hill to my rig. I was dripping wet with sweat, my shirt was soaked. I looked for him. But I could not find him.

what say ye oh milkman-popup sprite?

"got anything? I got nothing."

Breath
inhale
exhale

Best post

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It is easy to waste time writing about things that I read from the Internet, like politics. But it is a lot of work to make it so that I don't feel embarrassed by it later. So, I don't post it. I think that is fair for all involved. Later, if it still matters, I can edit it. I'll post it then. Or not.