Madbird Mentions
A publication across the pond, the Zen of Coleman Barks, and George L. Smith State Park
Happy fried egg, bird people,
If your work week, like mine, has been a tiresome, dizzying affair, congratulations on making it to the weekend. Thanks to mechanized society, I will have 48 hours of space — not enough time to get any significant tasks accomplished, only enough time to partially ignore those tasks before ending the weekend with the Sunday evening blues. Please forgive my pessimism. This is the time of year when teachers start to feel frayed at the edges. At least there is pleasant, sunny weather in the forecast. I will take time to rest tomorrow and also to put my bare feet on the bare planet. Perhaps I’ll stir up some dirt in the herb patch, do a little meditating, or take a nice long woods walk.
I dislike feeling so beat because of my profession but such is life. I still enjoy teaching most days or I would find something else to do. Lately, I’ve been a bit depressed reading through old journals, some from twelve or more years ago. That young man was so full of dreams, longing, passion, etc. His poetry wasn’t great but damn, he wrote a lot of it. He wanted badly to express himself, to find a way to do that. I just hope I don’t let him down. I have been working away at an essay collection that he first theorized years ago. Some of those notes he scribbled have made there way to me in the form of thought patterns. I know it is my duty to put a foundation down, and I know, God willing, that I will continue to. I guess I’m trying to say that I wish I had more time to do it, and I wish I wasn’t shaken violently into conscious awareness by an alarm clock most days. The worst part of teaching is the drudgery of repetition. The best part, other than the chance to affect the lives of young people in a positive way, is time off. Here’s to the time being right for writing when free time comes!
I mainly wanted to share some publication news here. I’ve been meaning to for a bit but haven’t gotten around to it. At the end of last year, a story of mine was published in a journal in England. The story is about an annual trespass I take each winter after deer season; specifically, it is about last year’s trespass. I tried and failed to make it to the junction of two creeks, which I had located on a map, deep in a privately-owned wilderness. The story includes a strange dream I had that inspired me to take the hike, how a tarot card reading following the dream validated my desire for adventure, and thoughts on things like private property and plots of planted pine trees. It is a come-along-with-me narrative that I enjoyed writing. Please check it out if your interested.
The story is called “The Black Bear Dream and Trespassing Scheme.” It was published in Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature. You can find it here.
Also, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the passing of a legendary literary figure who, for decades, lived in a community close to me. Coleman Barks was the renowned translator of Rumi, the famous 13th Century Persian poet. He was also a brilliant writer and poet in his own right and taught English at the University of Georgia for thirty years. Coleman was known around town as a jolly, light-hearted, Dionysus-type character. He gave beautiful heartfelt readings and wrote narrative poems, often funny, that strike at the complicated heart of humanity.
Although I am close with several folks who knew Coleman personally, I sadly never got to know him. By the time my prefrontal cortex fully developed, he had reached older age, and, suffering from a couple of strokes, had become somewhat reclusive. That’s what I heard at least. He still had visitors at times, but it was clear to those visitors that his mind, after such health issues, was not what it once had been. A few years back, a friend of a friend who visited him on occasion slipped Coleman a copy of my poetry book, and I received one of his in return with a nice inscription. I will always treasure that copy of his selected poems.
One of the things I love most about Coleman is the sound of his booming southern voice. He was a burly man with a smile — some of his friends called him “Bear” or “Big Bear” — and when he spoke, his Chattanoogan tongue announced itself. I always admired the fact that even though he was a sophisticated academic, and a world traveler, he never felt the need to alter, or worse, to lose, his native Appalachian dialect.
Coleman, from all accounts, was as genuine and natural as a person can be. In interviews and readings, he always seemed so spirited and carried a lightness that suggested he understood something about life that most missed — that it wasn’t all that serious and that love and connection was what really mattered. He seemed unafraid to confront even dire matters with a funny word. While recently finishing the book The Way of Zen I was thinking of Coleman before I heard word of his death. Zen emphasizes the importance of naturalness. A person is complete when they don’t worry too much about their own image, when they don’t get in their own way, and when they’re allowed to be fully awake to the present moment without the mental associations that typically drag most of us down. I was thinking of the figure skater Alysa Liu, too, who seems to embody this idea. In both her routines and interviews, a graceful playfulness, a non-seriousness, reigns. It’s interesting how a degree of detachment from the kind of anxiety that usually plagues performers can allow them to do such beautiful things. Both Alysa and Coleman are good examples of this.
Coleman lived a long, full life. I am pleased to know that such a lovely man made it so far in years. Sometimes it seems that such blithe souls can’t be held down in physical reality for very long. I have always heard that only the good die young. Maybe there is hope for me yet. Maybe my pessimism, however slight, keeps me more attached to my perceived problems and so to the illusory physics of this planet.
Please enjoy Coleman and Alysa doing their separate yet somehow similar things.
See what I mean?
To close this out, I wanted to share some photos from one of my favorite Saturplays so far. If you missed it, in our recent Modes of Resistance series, we discussed the importance of finding a day each week to ignore your to-do list, to tune out from media, and to simply exist, rest, or do something that reminds you of your humanness. To practice your need for exploration and play.
A couple of weekends ago, while visiting family in southeast Georgia, I hit up one of my favorite parks in the area, a state park called George L. Smith, named for a local dead politician. The park is known for its 400-acre cypress pond, which is formed by several creeks and which empties, through an old grist mill and dam built in 1880, into Fifteen-mile Creek, a blackwater stream that flows through my home county. I love paddling through the huge cypress trees there. In the fall, the needles of the cypresses turn bright orange and make for a gorgeous scene. But this time, I was there to hit the footpath. There are over seven miles of hiking in the park but I particularly love the three-mile loop trail north of the lake that winds through a beautiful upper coastal plains sand dune area replete with an iconic longleaf pine-wiregrass-turkey oak ecosystem. This is what southeast Georgia looked like previous to so much of the land being converted to agricultural use. I love to imagine, while taking a stroll there, that I have stepped through a Pre-Columbian time portal. The trail runs through some prime gopher tortoise and indigo snake habitat and some great birding territory. I didn’t spot too much wildlife this day but found a quiet, sunny area near an old dried-up ephemeral pond bed to roll out my little gypsy rug. I meditated and prayed there for some time, giving thanks to God for the freedom to enjoy such a wonderful place and day.
Here’s to you all finding such a place and time this weekend (or whenever you can). I hope you enjoy the photos.
Until soon, friends. Next time, poetry.
Beautiful all around, especially looking at the photos of your little camp at GLS State Park.