To live

On page 91 from The Living Mountain, by Nan Shepherd,

"For falling asleep on the mountain has the delicious corollary of awaking.  To come up out of the blank of sleep and open one's eyes on scaur and gully, wondering, because one had forgotten where one was, is to recapture some pristine amazement not often savored.  I do not know if it is a common experience (certainly it is unusual in my normal sleep), but when I fall asleep out of doors, perhaps because outdoor sleep is deeper than normal, I awake with an empty mind. Consciousness of where I am comes back quite soon, but for one startled moment I have looked at a familiar place as though I had never seen it before.

Such sleep may last for only a few minutes, yet even a single minute serves this end of uncoupling the mind.  It would be merely fanciful to suppose that some spirit of emanation of the mountain had intention in thus absorbing my consciousness, so as to reveal itself to a naked apprehension difficult to otherwise obtain.  I do not ascribe sentience to the mountain; yet at no other moment am I sunk quite so deep into its life.  I have let go my self.  The experience is peculiarly precious because it is impossible to coerce."

Although I have not had that experience in the mountains, I had a similar experience when I was in my early 20s while sleeping in a nest I had dug for myself in a steep slope of warm sand when I was alone on the north end of Montara Beach on a cool windy sunny weekday. Although I have looked for a photo in Google images showing the steepness of the beach, I couldn't find one.  Perhaps the nature of that beach has changed in nearly 50 years.  Perhaps the nature of the beach changes from summer to winter.

Nan Shepherd's words brought back my experience.  That place and time was where I experienced paradise.

It's been 10 years now since I've visited the ocean.  That was also the last time I visited the Sierra Nevada.  I have lived closer to mountains than to the ocean for most of my adult life here in Northwest Washington and yet I rarely visit the mountains except in my dreams. Reading Nan Shepherd's book was like revisiting the recurring dreams I've had of walking in the mountains.  Some of my ancestors lived in Scotland.  Maybe some memories of the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland are in my DNA.  I am grateful to Nan Shepherd and John Muir for their celebration of life in the context of walking and resting in the mountains.



















For now, I walk close to home near the shore of a 14-mile lake with a view of mountains, surrounded by woods, just a few miles from the Salish Sea, finding a measure of peace and celebration in doing that.

(Thanks to Brain Pickings for inspiring me to arrange to read The Living Mountain through our local library's interlibrary loan program.)

"... It is not despair ..." (James Baldwin) / "... so let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late ..." (Bob Dylan)

Thanks to the Doonesbury video archive on May 9 and Brain Pickings for the inspiration for this post.

After reading about A Rap on Race at Brain Pickings, I downloaded it for free and have been reading it in the last few days.  Although I usually find it difficult, if not impossible, to read anything book length from a computer screen, Open Library's format is easily readable for me.  I'm more than half finished.  It's sobering, well worth reading, provoking a meditation on what has changed and what hasn't changed since 1971, when James Baldwin was 47 years old and Margaret Mead was 70.

It's an entirely different experience to listen to the conversation and hear the emotion in the two voices.  I located the end of the edited conversation (below at what was transcribed for page 256) from the YouTube video for anyone who would like to read along.  Otherwise, I was unable to match the transcript with the quotes I selected below:



Page 25:
James Baldwin:  I realized I was looking at death.  That man wanted to kill me.

*

Page 117:
Margaret Mead:  No. We only talk about ignorance of something that is known.  We don't have a word for the impossibility of knowing something yet.

James Baldwin:  Exactly.  There isn't a word for that, is there?  No word that I know.  And yet that is where everyone begins.

*

Page 135:
James Baldwin:  The life of everybody on this planet is menaced by, to put it too simply, the extraordinary and even willful ignorance of people in high places.

*

Page 138:
Margaret Mead:  And how are we going to -- at a period when there are so many people who have failed to be fitted into the social system in any way, so they are going around shooting twenty people or throwing bombs at random -- how are we going to protect this system which is so vulnerable?

James Baldwin:  I don't think, in this case, that it can be protected.

*

It's a conversation with a growing edginess to it, a difficult conversation.  Curious, I just turned to the last page to see who had the last word.

Page 256:  (Listen beginning at 1:43:46.  Interesting that the transcript doesn't quite match what was said)
James Baldwin:  We're talking about that.  I have to talk about my beginnings, and I did begin here auctioned like a mule, bred as though I were a stallion.  I was in my country, which I paid for and I'm paying for.  Treated as not even a beast is treated.  Died in ditches not even as a mule is murdered.  And I have to remember that.  I have to redeem that.  I cannot let it go for nothing.  The only reason I'm here is to bear witness.

I don't really like my life, you know.  I don't really want another drink. I've seen enough of the world's cities to make me vomit forever.  But I've got something to do.  It has nothing in it any longer for me.  What I wanted is what everybody wanted.  You wanted it, too.  Everybody wanted it.  It will come.  It comes in different shapes and forms.  It is not despair, and the price one pays is everybody's price.

But on top of that particular price, which is universal, there is something gratuitous which I will not forgive, you know.  It's difficult to be born, difficult to learn to walk, difficult to grow old, difficult to die and difficult to live for everybody, everywhere, forever.  But no one has the right to put on top of that another burden, another price which nobody can pay, and a burden which really nobody can bear.  I know it's universal, Margaret, but the fact that it is universal doesn't mean that I'll accept it.

Friendship / Light

From Maria Popova at Brain Pickings:

... Shortly after the American painter was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown and instructed by doctors not to paint for a year, Kahlo sent her an epitome of what Virginia Woolf so aptly called "the humane art."

...

Georgia, 

Was wonderful to hear your voice again. Every day since I called you and many times before months ago I wanted to write you a letter. I wrote you many, but every one seemed more stupid and empty and I torn them up. I can’t write in English all that I would like to tell, especially to you. I am sending this one because I promised it to you. I felt terrible when Sybil Brown told me that you were sick but I still don’t know what is the matter with you. Please Georgia dear if you can’t write, ask Stieglitz to do it for you and let me know how are you feeling will you? I’ll be in Detroit two more weeks. I would like to tell you every thing that happened to me since the last time we saw each other, but most of them are sad and you mustn’t know sad things now. After all I shouldn’t complain because I have been happy in many ways though. Diego is good to me, and you can’t imagine how happy he has been working on the frescoes here. I have been painting a little too and that helped. I thought of you a lot and never forget your wonderful hands and the color of your eyes. I will see you soon. I am sure that in New York I will be much happier. If you still in the hospital when I come back I will bring you flowers, but it is so difficult to find the ones I would like for you. I would be so happy if you could write me even two words. I like you very much Georgia.

Frieda

(Interesting that Frida handwrites her name as "Frieda.")