You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
A recent post here told you of my early encounters with the Leonard Springs. The then largely unknown wooded ravine soon served as a kind of personal refuge for me just beyond our house. It became a microcosm of something much larger in my emerging awareness.
For the chapbook of poems originating in those explorations as well as a supporting photo album, go to my Thistle Finch editions free digital bookstore. Do take a look.
Welcome to another Rabbit Hole on the Internet.
Bumped into Nikki yesterday at the Gables [once a hamburger dive but turned hip]. An awkward moment, but Kat went on to class while I tried to chase down my first lover. How strange the interval of time.
Yes, there was unfinished business to bring to closure, if only we could.
Running into a few others from the past?
MG: “You used to weight twenty-seven pounds” meaning me but she’s married now.
KP: “Just hanging out,” divorced after five years.
“We just got bored”
Now intrigued by my mysterious, ineffable changes, she’s finally wanting to touch me.
I do remember her showing me a photo after an artsy shoot and her joking about having “banana breasts.”
~*~
By dwelling on the other side of downtown during my return to Bloomington, we were introduced a much different landscape than I had known in my residency on campus. Here’s an example from the southside of town by Vmenkov via Wikimedia Commons.
~*~
From Spiralbound Hoosier, with commentary from now.
“Learned Audience, those who recite the word ‘prajana’ the whole day long do not seem to know that prajna is inherent in their own nature. But merely talking on food will not appease hunger, and this is exactly the case with these people. … Talking alone will not enable us to realize the Essence of the Mind, and it serves no purpose in the end.” – Hui Heng, the Sixth Patriarch of Zen, “having taken his seat and asked the assembly to purify their minds collectively.”
The Patriarch again: “Do not talk about the ‘Void’ all day without practicing it in the mind. One who does this may be likened to a self-styled king who is really a commoner. Prajna can never be attained this way. ….”
How I feel listening to so many sermons or radio-evangelist preachers.
“Prajna [Truth] does not vary with different persons; what makes the difference is whether one’s mind is enlightened or deluded.”
Bloomington has brightened so much: the new public library, buses, Dunkirk Square, Musical Arts Center and Glenn Black Laboratory …
That Tuesday afternoon [December 10] when I went for “a little hike,” over the hill, “to catch the sunset” … sink holes all over, found a dirt road “Xmas Trees ¼ mile” and took it past forest and a bottomless gorge and on and on … taking the next left actually took me further astray, until finally, I passed a few houses and asked someone, “Excuse me, how do I get to Leonard Springs Road?”
He either laughed or looked at me as a dope.
“It’s right here.”
I didn’t get home till 7, well after dark. Kat was very worried, actually went out looking for me.
Turns out my little walk was 7½ miles. “Around the block.”
I drew a map, which I later filled in with details.
[Gee, don’t think I had another walk like that till Marconi Station on Cape Cod decades later.]
~*~
One of the things I encountered on that walk was abandoned limestone quarries, which I would soon view as common features tucked away in the woodlands beyond town. They typically flooded in. Here’ are some examples by Vmenkov via Wikimedia Commons.
~*~
Other explorations? A long drive, including Spring Mill [Madison?], Paoli, West Baden Springs, Washington, Amish country, and Bloomfield. But we were back home by 5 and had dinner at Michaelangelo’s up the street on our side of town.
A mention here of Mennonite, though I still knew next to nothing about the faith. We did pass two lovely white-frame, clear-window, “severely simple” meetinghouses, no name attached. The second had an outhouse behind.
Windmills gave the Amish away, before the lack of utility lines did.
White houses and barns.
Clotheslines in January: solid, somber colors or white.
The radiant face of a middle-aged woman on a buckboard who turned to us and waved.
That woman’s face stuck in my mind.
In its first decades, Paoli was known as a Quaker town, the seat of Orange County, named for the one in North Carolina. Included Lick Creek (later Paoli), Newberry, and Beech Grove Friends meetings.
So much Greek Revival / Greek Temple Revival through southern Indiana.
What struck me was the order – mathematical, geometric, classical – of Paoli in its design and construction. A step beyond the state of log-cabin and rough-cut stone development at Spring Mill as wealth built up into brick homes.
The old wire bridge across White River at Hindoostan: farm-style fencing rather than railing along the sides, three boards on each side as a single lane over a flooded river, in places too widely spaced for our Bug, in others, the bottom boards have broken through. Unbelievable, looking back, that we made it.
Hindoostan settled 1818, vacated 1828: “terrible death” outbreaks of Yellow Fever or cholera. Never resettled. Bluffs nearby.
More formally, Hindoostan Falls. Originally on the stagecoach route.
Nearby, in forest: “Greenwich, 1778, first – in Indiana.” Didn’t get that vital part in driving past.
Vincinnes, founded 1732[!]
Clarksville, founded 1784 by George Rogers Clark, Indiana’s oldest American community; the man hated Indians and wished them all exterminated.
Patoka, 1789.
New Albany, on the Ohio River, was state’s largest city in 1840.
Madison, also on the river, founded 1805, was largest city in 1850.
New Harmony, originally a commune, 1814.
~*~
Spring Mill State Park, an 1816 village of log cabins and a great stone mill a marvelous beauty. Caves and sinkholes all over. As a kid, my family camped there several times.
The great eerie hall of Baden Springs. Decay, the polish gone, earth sinking, buildings crumbling: “new hotel” built in 1901 after fire claimed the first. Who would want to wear a suit and tie while on vacation, even to gamble? As for the waters of the spa? Such formalities!
Caves as vertical shafts of cold air rising and fogging in an otherwise barren field: 66 recorded caves and pits in Monroe County, meaning around our home.
US 150, approximate site of ancient buffalo trail from Louisville to Vincinnes, in 1840 became Indiana’s first toll road. Meaning the earlier ones were private?
Lost River: out and then back into the earth, blind fish and crayfish, endangered by flood-control projects (Orangeville).
Back from the road, facing a creek and hillside, Union Primitive Baptist Church, plain cars still there at 1 p.m. Two doors, men’s and women’s. Plus outhouses.
Further on, Hebron Valley Baptist, 1822.
The eerie silence of caves in a fog: “Do not enter this pit without permission.”
Not sure quite where:
Three caves, two days – strange beauty of the muddy sculptural underworld. The twisting rooms, cold reflective water returning whatever light we introduce. Dripping from ceiling.
Southern Indiana is laced with caves, including Mayfield’s situated a couple of miles from our home, not that you could see it. Photo from 1907 by Arthur Mangun Banta via Wikimedia Commons. Wyandotte was another, public domain image via Wikimedia Commons.
~*~
Brown County thick with stupid gawking, the contrast of neatly-creased shorts and black Orlon socks and oxfords gawking at rural life and earlier eras punctuated by rough log cabins.
~*~
From Spiralbound Hoosier, with commentary from now.
While much of my Great Black Swamp residency has been distilled into my novels Nearly Canaan and Secret Side of Jaya, it also infused an outpouring of poetry. By the time I arrived, the land had long been drained and turned into some incredibly rich farmland. Something, apparently, had been drained from the people as well.
Among the free PDF poetry broadsides available at my Thistle Finch blog are Toward Tiffin, Farmer Disking His Fields, and Prairie Wind. Once again, I must confess to being quite fond of micropoems as well as “found” poems. Poetry can be a state of mind as well as craft, wherever you are.
In addition, you’ll also find a free poetry chapbook, Furrow, and two photo albums, Prairie Depot and Vast Plains. It is hard to envision such a landscape if you haven’t traveled across the American Midwest of Great Plains.
Do take a look.
Welcome to another Rabbit Hole on the Internet.
Kat made her first bread (five loaves): not bad. Also, first bus trip to town and back.
Sitting at our kitchen window and looking out at our new birdfeeder, watching cardinals and titmice, such a treat to examine them almost microscopically: free pets, in nature!
In the year 2003, I will be 55: the door is always open.
She is tired of my talking always about things. Or, as I see 50 years later, facts. Not my feelings. [Seeing that pattern would take years of therapy.]
Kat and I are private people: we know no one we can drop in on.
Mail addressed to Ms Jnana Hodson
Some days nothing goes right – up too early, humidity and heat, killer sinuses – wife dragging feet and my late start to work.
They can’t fix the car today. The mess started a week ago with auto inspection. Mr. Muskrat (pointy nose, sunglasses, and cigarette, smiling) and Mr. Ladykiller (cigarette and fast-talking) selling Kat into shocks with alignment and inspection, but the car wouldn’t pass inspection because it needed new king bolts, $60. Next day, to Brinegar’s, for the king bolts and, surprise, rod ($75) … and a long walk to work.
Still, no inspection sticker: the horn wouldn’t work.
Off to Ohio, stopped by state cops (bears), right front light out – warning ticket – and then the Bloomdale patrolman.
After fixing the horn, the turn signals didn’t dink.
In the end, it was a shorted fuse.
And then our check bounced, adding a $5 fee from the bank.
That defeated feeling you can’t get ahead of the game. Can’t save, car’s falling apart, only a fool would write poetry and submit. The more you rework for them, the more you lose from your own life.
“Life is worth living only in retrospect.”
At dawn on the 4th, Nosmo (our black kitten) wasn’t back. The house seemed empty.
Chicago trip; we stayed with Celeste and Luis, edge of the DMZ twixt Hyde Park, University of Chicago, and South Side.
unstretched canvases tacked to walls
massive waves crashing into shore
cold, stiff wind
The Maxwell Street market, block after block of hot goods amid burned-out lots abutting the precinct station house and state college campus. Catholic church, Masses in Spanish packed every service.
Mirrors, mirrors.
Hyde Park, with Frank Lloyd Wright houses
and a Swendenborgian church
~*~
On opening a page, amid Sunday afternoon jazz, a startling confession: “So hard to say what I really feel.” Specifically, it was regarding the music, but the fuller scope came back to haunt me throughout the rest of my life.
With Kat at S. John’s, the heathen beauty of ritual: No music, a relief from music poorly done. I’m bothered by the emphasis on sin, which should not be applicable to those who have been baptized in grace, and also bothered by the political positions from the pulpit … especially interpreting scripture to support family when Jesus clearly called men away …
~*~
21:II:76, a rainy morning: Omkara, our VW, towed in again, the coil had fallen off …
Kat shaved her legs last night, first time in a year or more – their smoothness, newness turns me on, especially after sitting across from JB the previous night, she was dressed up, eyeshadow, too. Funny, looking at your own wife that way and so delightful. Not to take anything away from his partner, who could have swept me away, too.
Delightful? Or deceitful?
The high scolding scream of a little rabbit freed from our cat’s mouth as it runs shitless home.
Kat, with her wanting a divorce …
She wants affairs and a place of her own. So often she fights us yet often keeps us solitary, complaining of Aquarians’ love of friends and strangers.
How strange to see that latter observation, considering how solitary most of my hours in retirement have been.
Can’t take it anymore – her inarticulate depression, her months of “You don’t love me anymore,” her jealousness of my writing and my music, her desire for a divorce, her blaming me for our marriage, her resentment of my practices – my yoga, my Friends, my need for a meditation area, for silence (her yap-yap, her Qs w/out answers, her constant efforts to drain me: the meat, cigarettes, TV, radio, her desire to spend money, her efforts to push me out, to keep me from having friends or from having them over, her withdrawals, her Jekyll-Hyde snappings).
If she wants a divorce, OK. Half the bank account, half our goods, no alimony.
She can suffer in her own stupor. I’m tired of it.
Terrible thunderstorm about 6:30 this morning: green/gray skies, leaves scattered all over the yard, cornstalks flattened. No tornado watch or warning.
Car inspection. Needs new tires but Firestone’s out on strike. They tried to sell me retreads, no deal. I wound up buying Dayton Thoroughbreds, but the shop can’t balance or align them. [wonder who did].
~*~
From Spiralbound Hoosier, with commentary from now.
There’s a huge gap between the previous journal and the one beginning here. Is another volume, maybe two, missing? Did Kat perchance destroy them?
Instead, this one is half Workshop in Political Theory notes, followed by extensive Snyder transcriptions, many of them no doubt from the Lilly Library.
The chronological sequence is ruptured.
And there’s nothing personal, beyond that, in these pages.
We must have made an earlier trip to Bloomington, because I have a listing of research deadlines as of 6/6/74 but apparently for 1975.
Then the minutes from a trip to my first board of consultants’ meeting soon follow.
From there are many penciled Snyder transcriptions; am guessing they’re from Lilly Library. My deep immersion in that sanctum.
Gary was, in many of these, far more prosaic than I now expected. Perhaps that’s a liberating insight!
As for the Stoney Lonesome poetry crowd or Bloomington Quakers? So far, nothing.
That was about to change, though. And how.
~*~
Stretching between the courthouse square and downtown and the college campus, behind the camera, iconic Kirkwood Avenue figures prominently in my novel What’s Left as well as the earlier, Daffodil Uprising, though not by name. This time I would be living to the west of downtown. Photo by Yahala via Wikimedia Commons.
~*~
From Spiralbound Hoosier, with commentary from now.
Upcoming presentations will break from the chronological sequence into topics, as you’ll see. Our life was getting richer in everything but money.
Or, as I noted, back in foothills …
Frankly, I can’t envision my return to Bloomington without her.
Our Bloomington goods runs? Three trips, I’m seeing now. Using whose pickup, with the tarp flying behind it? Followed by our green VW Bug.
Ottawa, Ohio, on the site
of the last Ottawa Indian reservation in Ohio
seat of Putnam County on the Ottawa River
Realize that the move to Bloomington allowed me to reclaim, fully, my Jnana moniker.
Bloomington redux was also, in a way, a return to the grad student realm I inhabited in Binghamton, but with the twist I was now married and officially a research associate, quasi faculty. And my hours were so much more flexible, even regular.
This was second of the three times I stepped out of the newsroom career and had no guarantee of reentry if things soured. The ashram was the first. For me, this was risk.
Much of this move is abstracted in detail in my novels Nearly Canaan and The Secret Side of Jaya, though I did move the locale to the Ozarks – I had already used Indiana extensively in Daffodil and, later, What’s Left.
~*~
From Spiralbound Hoosier, with commentary from now.
Reporter Tom: “I was building a cabinet several nights ago and everything kept falling into place, everything fit, I cut the wood just right and there was such a good feeling of simply working that in a way I didn’t want to finish the thing. They never taught us to work that way. It’s always to get the thing done.”
Nowadays, no sense of craftsmanship. No unity of elements or workers. Just things, not creation.
For Esquimaux artists, objects do not have to be seen but treasures to be unwrapped and felt on special occasions.
~*~
Kat still edgy, depressed: “I hate myself!” This time burning rice meant for dinner; out of sorts, suicidal?
The emergency brake won’t work: she drove 200 miles with it on …
As she said, Saturday morning, looking at parents and their children in this town: “They never had a chance.”
“There’s no place I feel home,” she pouts in her hometown
Unlike a turtle, going anywhere!
Iron pills seem to be helping her green complexion and mine.
Sunday morning [note, I was writing day of the week rather than the number of the month through this stretch of journaling]:
“My wife was a great thumping bitch this morning.”
I find myself shocked that I actually admitted that. Typically, I make excuses for those closest to me; I try to see their good side rather than shortcomings.
Bly’s Tooth Mother or Stone Mother describes my Nikki, earlier, ultimately pulling me toward paralysis.
I kept seeing the girlfriends in my life as dancing goddesses, not that we were actually dancing. Their role, though, seemed to be as a counterweight to my seriousness.
I’ve been stunned to see notes regarding a playful Gopi at the ashram who at 15 had been drugged, raped, taken lesbian, involved in crime, as well as exposed to museums, art, and literature. She nearly swept me off my feet, and here, two years later, Kat was coming in second by comparison, even at the core of my obsession.
Now, with Kat, I was placing great hopes on our Indiana move: a hothouse, in a way, to raise our seedling in. As I journaled, “We’re so apart here: there are no models, no challenges, no competition. The wind beats her down. She’s afraid to give rein to her private visions, her terrifying garden, ‘going over the edge.’ She won’t know herself till she does.”
On the reflection of this span of my life, I’m seeing how bitchy she was throughout the marriage. Where would she be if I had just walked? I was about to say this is the biggest point where I ultimately failed, but will leave other possibilities open for comparison.
Revisiting these pages is emotionally heavy for me, I’ll confess.
Now I see neither Nikki nor Kat or even Fay as “mothers,” at least with me. And Celeste had already ruled herself out.
~*~
From Spiralbound Flatland, with commentary from now.
