Also from the Yakima library, at the time a volume that became influential in my emerging thinking in poetry and fiction and even spirituality: Regional Perspectives: An Examination of America’s Literary Heritage, edited by John Gordon Burke.

From the chapter, “Crossing the Midwest” by John Knoepfle:

The mind wants to entertain the notion that the further west the frontier the more primitive the life. But that is not so, and that is why the Midwest is so puzzling … And great rafts of hardwood timber were floated down the Ohio River to Cincinnati and Louisville as late as the First World War. … There is room for a native literature in German that remains to be translated … cultures that are supposedly dormant or provincial have a way of flickering into life and proving themselves dramatically related to the contemporary mind. …

Another characteristic of the mid-continental mind is its very hazy sense of itself … But their [cities’] distances from one another help them to maintain life styles that are distinct. … Where is Dodge City? [little awareness of the religious sects and traditions] … (something about a Midwestern ragtime that cannot be explained except in terms of German right-hand piano technique and Black left-hand chord progression arrangements) …

This was all a revelation to me, as would the radical element of the Midwest that Kenneth Rexroth remembered from his youth in Indiana and Chicago.

Had I stayed in the Midwest, where would any of this have shown up in my writing? Or did it, in the exile after Yakima? I would certainly find some of it in my genealogy research that would begin a half-dozen years later and, beyond that, on my mother’s side in Missouri, which technically isn’t Midwest but in my case, definitely German, in part. In discussions of blogging, I would be surprised to see that a tag of Midwest or Midwestern had no impact.

Where does  the book Anti-California show up in all of this?

I thought I was free of the Midwest, in a progression my novel Nearly Canaan explores, but cruel fate would prove otherwise.

Remember, my ashram training had taught me to be aware of vibes and the fact that different places had their own vibrations. My, did Yakima and the surrounding lands!

Or, “If it’s got sugar in it, it’s cake; if it doesn’t, it’s bread,” as someone local said of William O. Douglas’ new book at the time. [The blatantly liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice had returned for his summer home in the Cascades, upriver near Mount Rainier.]

I was still trying to digest previous places I had dwelled in or otherwise experienced.

Remind me that not everyone has lofty ambitions.

~*~

As I noted:

Subway Hitchhikers?
Network of the Heart

Canary folded
= Teletype writer =
Canyon hopper

~*~

My, I was moving up in life! This journaling was getting Serious.

Trying to make sense of my work schedule at this point. “Time for a break = 4 days off, a schedule switch, my last week’s Monday off is today, then my normal Sunday-Monday off days followed by my Labor Day = a well-earned rest. I’m too tired to go to the mountains. Instead, I’m off to the laundromat.” [Good luck if you can follow that. Commiseration if it sounds familiar.]

By mid-October: Using the tape player to rework poems, a strangest joy, back to voice and recognizing what remains incomplete or experimental forms that contain more than I had thought. Also journal notes that need no revision to become poems.

~*~

18:X:77: Our photographer Whiz’s birthday (he was turning 24 to my 29): Snyder’s essays in Old Ways confirms I’ve been on the right track after all, seeking relationships of people to unique landscapes/environments/cultures … [a half century later, what happens when the land itself changes as a consequence of climate upheavals?] …

~*~

19:X, in checkout line at the library, taking a midmorning break from the office, met a pipe-smoking bearded fellow my age or so, Barry Grimes, checking out Allan Tate, Ed Koch, etc. Got his contact info. He and a buddy are editing a new journal along the lines of Paterson. I’m welcome to submit.

Wait, pipe-smoking in the public library???

[A later note in the journal proclaims the tabloid newsprint publication that resulted.]

Comparing [George] Szell’s early and late recordings of Beethoven’s Eroica against Max Rudolf’s; as always, I was amazed by the vitality and clarity / discipline Max obtained, as demonstrated in Cincinnati. The constant daring in each line, each phrasing having a stressed note. (Suppose the stress is largely spontaneous, varying from performance to performance: the players’ improvisation?) Yet the trills together (where Szell gets flutters). The amber warm clarity of tone. Structure revealed. The pivotal balance of conflicting possibilities: a disciplined wildness, savage elegance.

[And this was a period of my life with few live classical performances.]

Georgia O’Keeffe … demanded solitude as a painter … wouldn’t allow Stieglitz to enter the studio when she was painting …

As for Lake George? “Too much green.”

Not that I contested that later, in the vicinity. Green, it was.

~*~

12:XII: Conversation with Barry Grimes and Jim Bodeen: “I wouldn’t think you’d have any trouble getting published anywhere.”

My new longpoem more like Basho’s journeys — commentary linking poems rather than most English poetry.

Recitative and Aria
Potential for something there

Be clear or be clever?

Tribe: Neah Bay is our land because we spilled our blood for it,
a basket woven of snakes.

Symbols shaping the way we react to the land. [Wish I had more on that.]

~*~

25:X midnight

Acceptance of three poems from Roger and Dick (always surprising what editors choose, even when you know them) … with a note, “I like what you are doing. Your style is much harder and clearer. Keep to it.”

~*~

27:X

Among lingering impressions from Regional Perspectives ….

The belief that something remains intact in the backcountry, whether that be Vermont (and not Boston or Cambridge also as New England) or “upcountry” South (versus Atlanta or Nashville) …

How many respected but generally unknown writers are mentioned in passing?

There are great differences within each region …

Emotionally, the suffocation I’ve felt, even in Daffodil …

~*~

6:XII

… what my work lacks so much is the female (universal) element: softening, enveloping, making wet, warm …

Is all love-making feminine?

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

 

Kitty’s new place: the smell, the copper drain ring in the kitchen sink, the freezer box suspended within the refrigerator all remind me of Gran’s second-floor apartment. All of those motionless Sunday afternoons hearing invisible traffic, bells, and wind.

Sign outside her window

FORD (blue
LINCOLN (white
MERCURY (red

just like our place in Prairie Depot, Ohio

~*~

A fine salad Kitty created tonight

Pieces of homegrown
watermelon
cantaloupe
peaches

~*~

One of every five commercial apples in the U.S. was grown in Yakima County. Peaches, pears, plums, apricots, and cherries were also valued fruit harvests. They play a major role in my Nearly Canaan novel.

Irrigation had come a long way from the ditches used in orchards in this circa 1913 Webster & Stevens glass negative photograph via Wikimedia Commons.

Orchard labels from Yakima in a Chris Light photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Lithograph label from California Historical Society collection …

~*~

13:IX:77

Pickers began on the apples this morning

seis y media

first the Goldens: the reds come off later

man with a limp
carries the ladder

~*~

14:IX

Ordered new car yesterday, Subaru

Legs for Kitty’s loom finally arrived after a long wait: it’s now “grown up”

Mention of Kitty taking the Greyhound to Ellensburg …

~*~

Where did I hope to be at 30? And how close am I?

Where have I been? What dreams and teachings have I forgotten?

A dusty novel manuscript, an unopened violin case, a holy title I seldom use — and all of these chains to Maya

~*~

28:IX

apples, gone from the orchard
at least around the house
prop sticks stacked between the rows
ladders, folded
sweet smell of bins
awaiting the straddle buggy

She’s in a bummer today. Not a single good word till I got mad and screamed and left the house and mowed the lawn.

Our orchard shack cleaned, inside and out, everything back in place and straight. TV moved from the meditation room [living room] to the bedroom. Good vibes back, our home is home.

~*~

3:X:77

[Desert reality}:

How strange that dew should be a sign of autumn!

This ink has an odor I now associate with Mr. Weiner’s junior high school art classes and later with my high school art class wash room.

Overheard: Yeah, Fort Lewis is a wild place. Kids go in, find live grenades. Fort Carson, too — stretches almost from Colorado Springs to Boulder. They wanted to expand it but faced a vote.

~*~

10:X:77

Called Subaru, told our car’s on the way, probably off the boat on Friday. Last boatload, they couldn’t get our five-speed, though it was promised, per the salesman.

The mail had a letter to Mrs. James Hodson from Mom Moran …

~*~

Later in month:

Sharon P from Kitty’s Ohio Northern days showed up in the Central State art building, wants to be an actress, just got a divorce. Seems Kitty really dumped on my in her journal the night before, can’t figure out why we’re married, “Most people need each other but we don’t,” ignoring the joys of shared freedoms. So Sharon’s husband had come in and asked why not, I’d say they were never married. And now she’s coming to visit us in the orchard?

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

An evening party in town, a political party fundraiser, after a rare rain had finally soaked the earth …

An old woman’s bathroom, ointments, creams, bottles of prescriptions, tweezers, scissors, lipsticks, perfumes, dirty towels, an unpleasant smell. Quotations taped to the wall.

Hamburgers on the grill. Why do none of their names stick for me? Why don’t I want to speak?

Two old women sit mysteriously behind their cigarettes, one in golfing attire, the other in a pink dress. Sometimes I don’t want a cocktail. I can’t find my friends. Who are these infants, crawling around my legs? Why did I find this place?

~*~

Don’t ever want to live again where I can’t see the Milky Way — Eternal Light — River of Light — our home in the universe.

[Not knowing there was a long dark period ahead.}

~*~

Kitty found an apartment in E’burg and is excited, a “place like Laura’s” or our “town house.” A bohemian dump. Maybe even my encampment on Mondays with a college library or movies and jaunts to the mountains … even courting her anew …

Dinner at New York Pagoda Café …

~*~

Picked up a hitchhiker on my way to work this afternoon. Seldom stop nowadays, did so today as an afterthought, his smile and the modesty of his destination: Union Gap. Fact was, he was walking, not standing; his big backpack barely fit in the Bug’s backseat. Turned out he’s a picker from Tempe, Arizona. Worked last five days on pears, $20 his best day’s pay. Got his check today. Getting cold, wished he hadn’t lent out his second sleeping bag to a friend with a job in town. He puts one inside the other. Once he’s home, he’ll play basketball, get a student ID, perhaps take an acting class.

“Oakland,” he says, “a lot of baseball players come from there.”

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

She’s sick of herself and everything she touches. So I noted.

In early March, while we were still living in town: Sometime today, water began filling the irrigation canal along the hill and the new massive house where the sun destroyed the grass now has all of its sprinklers spraying no matter their son playing professional football.

Apparently, we were visiting the Dolphs at their new orchard.

we are all nearly homeless
hoping for anchors
within our own time

[or: attached to our lines]

CHRONIUM DOWNPOUR

~*~

On 3:IV:77, started a new journal notebook, Vol. 48, Progress 100 sheets, 12 ½ by 8 inches college ruled … tan/kraft cover …

As I recorded, “It’s all here in the solitaire deck — the origin of statistics — all those crazy rules I never quite understood in statistics class — so obvious here before me — bell curve, for starters — the addiction of hands, feel of the shuffled cards, the electric knowledge that there are still undealt cards, in the random orders, with the anticipation of the one that will do it. The sense of yet unmoved faces that could make this hand go down, yes this one, will do the trick. And all those maybes — balance, in numbers and colors, highs and lows, latent moves — aces, kings, and deuces … it’s all there …”

[So I was getting hooked to the game long before I’ve thought]

Palm Sunday, partial lunar eclipse of the full moon. [Are lunar eclipses always full moon?]

Getting her back into the Sunday bed, long, languorous love-making, continuing past climax, slow and warm, in many positions through the morning …

That afternoon, at Gils’ once again sensing the futility of trying to find “the good life” in alcohol and horses, Whiz so loud, Wisteria’s conversation so much about things, my trying to extricate from books and type into my whole-self … back home going for a wind-fighting bicycle ride, my leg muscles taut …

Whiz trying so hard to make everything loving, caring, brimming with feeling — somehow reflecting a fear of his own empty hunger …

Hmm, like that phrase “empty hunger” … in contrast to the stone?

Gil had a cat named Mousetrap …

~*~

On her birthday, the first of her rejecting me because of her painful vaginal/uterus itching …

Do I blame pantyhose?

~*~

Saturday before Easter …

Earlier notations of impending drought now come to the fore …

White apple blossoms already open, earliest ever; prior record was 20^th of the month. Now the fearful frost watch …

Everywhere, irrigation sprinklers squirting, using the water while they can …

~*~

Realized how much Whiz and Wisteria ape us … for instance, buying a chess board when neither of them plays. In two weeks they’ll act as though they know the Olympics once we’ve said we’re here …

~*~

Nothing much grew there without irrigation. Here’s one major canal diverting water to orchards from the small Yakima River, essentially snowmelt from the southern Cascades Range mountains. Water rights are a legal issue largely unknown in the eastern half of the U.S. My political science guru Vincent Ostrom was an authority on the matter. Finally, it was registering on me.

~*~

Early June:

Back from Tinowit powwow

dancers in angel wings
and Allan Ginsberg’s 50 already

The thinners — man and three women — floppy sun hats, loose dresses waving in the breeze — coming down from the ladders for dinner, chattering in Spanish, their movement like a dance

Also had just read Ecotopia the first time …

Late brunch today at Frasu’s at the airport (I didn’t get out of bed till one) — champagne part of the deal. Stopping to see Wisteria, Abell’s grown, rolls sideways, barks at dogs, cows, birds, and cats, and plays with balls. Laughs at subtle surprises, like when it’s caught or bounces on his head or disappears. A pleasant Sunday afternoon.

Learned how Hamilton lost his watch — gambling with a subject. Then tried to buy a new one at Penney’s, “Like to look at a Seiko under $35,” but the clerk just walked away. Next day he returned but the clerk wouldn’t accept his check. Called the manager, who demanded three pieces of identification before approving the check. At which point, Jeff took the watch off his wrist, said “Wait a minute, I’ve changed my mind. I’ve been treated rudely,” and then took his check back and ripped it up. The clerk looked wounded, as if “not me.”

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Our first winter Out West was accompanied by domestic tensions. As I noted:

Sucking, swirling blaze
fire in here, snow on the roof
faintly false smell of burning tea

candy on the table
bulbs in the box
tears on my wife’s cheeks

Also:

inner silence in contrast to the newsmen made of gossip,

bitching, down the drain to sorrow

Kitty’s down: “I don’t belong anywhere!”

Also unhappy with my Chinook “paraphrases” (her term): “write your own stuff.”

When I go back over the Chinook pieces, add my own smart-aleck comments: the evil thing at the door “must be the cops” or Indian agents … BIA … or go free-wheelin’ into myths and texts … go back over the economy thing I’ve been trying to develop, “we’ll all be tent makers.”

Beer as cheap as Pepsi.

 RITUALS, especially on a day free of the office:

• Rising early, when silence is strong. Or, more lazily, sleeping in, hopefully late.
• Making coffee, to sip all day using a special mug
• Reading sacred texts. Followed with the morning paper
• Cooking. Breakfast. A dinner wine. Candles.
• Shower.
• Planting, Weeding. Harvesting. Canning in old glass jars.
• Washing dishes, cleaning tools.
• Watering the houseplants.
• Cleaning the toilet.
• Returning to a favorite book.
• Split and stack firewood. Or bring it indoors.
• Making love, especially when the moon is full.
• Letting the cat in. And out.

At odds with self: static, knot in lower back.

How dead this living room is without a wood fire.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Vol. 47, starting 29 November 76, was the third tall, tan Citadel … had many poetry drafts and other bits that were eventually published. Now, for a few things that weren’t …

First, an erotic dream a few nights earlier, resigned myself to a wedding feast, mine to a wealthy, rural, landed girl — Quaker family — and, oh, how happy the whole circle was, as if trying to wake me from a heavy sorrow … she had long hair. This dream would haunt me later.

I woke myself, insisting, “But I’m already happily married!”

The farmhouse, set in a grove of solid trees, was a three-story federal style I would encounter six to eight years later in Maryland or Delaware and then, later, in New England.

Also, an erotic dream of Celeste followed the next day, in fact, with a tender letter from her in the mail …

“Got Yule cards out Thurs, only marginals remain.” Guess that means the ones that needed more personal notations.

~*~

Mount Adams, the distant presence to our west, continued to fascinate, perhaps as an emotional anchor for me.

~*~

In revisiting my journals from this stretch of my life, I’m struck by ways my memories diverged from the timeline recorded in the pages.

I would have insisted, for instance, that the wedding dream took place about two years after leaving Yakima.

On the other hand, the Quaker circle gathered earlier than I sensed.

The office situation was more tangled than I remembered, too.

I’m also more conscious of not having close local connections or friendships in Fostoria, apart from Kitty and her family, and wonder how a local church might have altered that, had I not been such a yogi. Jump ahead, and it becomes apparent that my Yakima contacts, apart from the office, were mostly among transplants, especially our new Quaker circle.

I do wonder, too, if it weren’t Friends, how might I have connected. Unitarian?

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Picked Kitty up after her job Friday and hit Keoki’s for cocktails and appetizers. How I wish she would like it here! Indian crafts show in Toppenish this morning, stopped at Wappenish Bead Shop/Trading Post, very nice vibes — mild ashramic throughout, a place to return. Both Rainier and Adams in the sky.

Ray’s Meat Store, hardback bacon and shoulder of lamb — free pound of ground sausage, free pound of ground beef — friendly old shaky fat fellow. Kitty, afterward, “Do you cook the shoulder the same as the leg?” and then phoned her mother, who said, “The shoulder’s better!”

We were getting to know salmon and crab and rainbow trout, too.

~*~

As my then-wife accused me, where the hell was I taking her? Much of the land was settled within the memory of some of the oldest living residents. The route we entered by, with heavy cloud cover, was highly honky-tonk cowboy. Here’s a historic photo reflecting the early settlement, 1880 to 1920, via Wikimedia Commons.

~*~

Touchy around Kitty, who’s speaking baby talk more and more, drawing me into pointless conversation or interruptions, “How do you spell …” for the umpteenth time, and desires to spend (I just noticed the clutch needs tightening). Now she wants a $139 necklace for Christmas.

Where am I going? What am I doing here?

To again be passive and receptive wouldn’t be bad.

She’s impossible to live with these days. She wants something, wants to buy everything, but that’s not it. Unhappy, clinging to me yet feeling trapped, not knowing which way to go.

A man can live on next to nothing but not a woman. Even in the war, when they were starving, they had cosmetics, they had perfume. (So says my father-in-law, with a sly grin.)

Her Christmas list:

1. Baskets
2. Photo supplies — new tank, shaker, orthographic paper, textured paper, drying rack, timer
3. Blank paperbound sketchbooks
4. Art supplies — easel, loom, ball winder
5. Sachet
6. Mittens, knee socks, sweater
7. Another flannel shirt — 36 or size 12/large women’s or medium men’s
8. Candles
9. Place mats
10. Ceramic cups etc.

Paul [a new sports writer?] was talking about the spirits in his parents’ house (behind you, the cold), thermostats clicking on within warm rooms. Well, it was a funeral parlor.

Where everyone has a fireplace
or wood stove
that works,
everyone burns.
Or could.

Watch the flames
while pondering life
facing death.

With or without smoke.

Or a snake.

Kitty got her four-harness loom on our dash to Seattle … and we stayed with [former Workshop colleague] Franny’s parents, Cortes Island … quite lovely on the waterfront with light snow.

Putting presents away: Avon bottle, English Leather aftershave, an electric can opener — things you get used to, the trappings of middle class.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

We settled into a new three-bedroom duplex with an attached garage, situated at the base of the ridge.

Living in town: the newest and most modern dwelling of my life, even now 50 years later … (of my first decade after college, I’m seeing on aerial photos that the majority have been demolished) … It was about a 30-block walk to the office, something that could be done if needed but still long.

We even had a fireplace, come fall and winter.

Summertime, though, had us learning the intensity of the desert sun, including the need to close both the blinds and the curtains in windows being struck by direct sunlight. The radiant heat was brutal. That was especially true of our living room in the late afternoon. Many houses had extra blinds on the outside, too.

As I set up my meditation room slash studio, I noted: European/American Eastern poetry reflects a resignation, where Asian/American Western has an acceptance of life / one is essentially sad, the other full of discovery and delight / the curious juxtaposition of East and West here!

While I was reading the Hindu classic Patanjali, the doorbell rang. Thought it might be the mailman, answered it to find an old man carrying Bible tracts denouncing crime, asking if I had watched the presidential debates, handing me his Bible to read two verses — an answer, he said — talking all the while of meekness — but this was no dialogue, no conversation — it didn’t matter if I were here or not, only that there be an audience.

In his demeanor, no meekness, yet my feelings were mixed. Admiration in his determination going door-to-door, but sadness in his lack of holy radiance. His book for a quarter? “Can you speak to the dead?” and “Is Hell really hot?” And then his magazine, the Watchtower.

He kept speaking of the Kingdom. “Kingdom, isn’t that what it’s all about?” Guess he’s never heard of love.

Well, you can speak to the dead but don’t expect an answer.

Rosh Hassahna began that night — a new year of thanksgiving.

We were certainly on the verge of a new year, personally.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

My journal entries from the Yakima years weave together — or more accurately jump among — a half-dozen major fronts in my life. In revisiting these in the upcoming postings, we’ll focus on one front at a time, hoping to gain a little more context of what was happening at the office, at home and my marriage, in the great outdoors, in my literary efforts, in my spiritual life especially as a Quaker, and with a grab bag of extras. The result will mean overlapping the chronology in advancing the timeline, but it’s the best I’m coming up with.

I should introduce Yakima, however briefly, by noting it’s the name of the River and Valley, the County, the City, the Avenue. Sometime after we left, the tribe and its large reservation altered its spelling to set itself apart from all of these other usages. They use Yakama, rather than Yakima. Fair ‘nuff.

Hardly anything grows without irrigation, so water becomes a significant consideration. The economy is principally agricultural — a fifth of the apples sold in the U.S. are raised there, with another fifth in Wenatchee County to the north. Peaches, pears, apricots, cherries, and plums are also prominent, as well as hops for beer brewing, barley, hay, and, after we left, wine vineyards. Cattle, sheep, and horses were the primary livestock, and logging was also a major industry.

Getting used to the arid landscape was a challenge … “like living on the inside of an ashtray,” as I read somewhere, describing another interior Far West scene.

The big snowy mountain to the west, which we could view almost everywhere, was Mount Adams, which we initially confused with Mount Rainier, which was visible from a few points.

Politically and socially, it was conservative, yet participated in a high level of collective action. Perhaps it was pragmatic more than ideological at the core.

~*~

Produce, produce
clear dry air
and everyone a gardener

 I just hope this elation lasts.

~*~

Here goes!

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

It’s amazing how much piles up in a short time. As they say about moving every five years to get clear of unneeded possessions? Here’s what went out in this relocation.

• Newspapers pages from places I almost worked.
• Notes to myself.
• Narrow neckties, worn-out belts.
• Love letters and photos.
• A wooden finger. Yes, that one.
• Rough drafts and manilla folders.
• Torn-up mat board.
• Crayons.
• Cardboard boxes, wrapping, and stuffing paper.
• A half ream of employment rejection letters.
• Topographic maps of Monroe and Lawrence counties, Indiana.
• Also, Catskills trails maps, Upstate New York.
• Day campers’ cartoons of “Fat Steve.”
• Duplicate copies of my college journalism or the embarrassing mistakes.

~*~

As I also noted:

After three months of unemployment, dejection, and waiting, we’ve made it … to Yakima, WA.

No Friends Meeting, but perhaps someday … Lord will make a way

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.