Black Mountain College, that mountain in the not so distant view....knew it well - some memories of decades ago, perhaps one more for me

Ray Johnson, photographed by Hazel Larsen Archer.

All rights to Black Mountain College Museum

I do not own rights to this photograph

I know the view from that window in the photograph above....rather, from my standing years ago on the grounds of what was once Black Mountain College in Western North Carolina. Lived near there for some years after fleeing Holy Hill in Tennessee, a refugee from John Calvin with a hankering for mystics all kinds, even those of a nihilistic bent when it came to the delusion that accurate understanding of a rumored but intuited, despite the scientific materialist (more than) bent of the age I was thrown into, THE Absolute. I moved uneasily, but now in old age am a veritable ice-capade performer, gliding gladly between one haystack to many others on a large plain of mirror glass that is the biggest of all hints...

As above, so below.

The point is in the gliding and the falling and the getting up and going on intellectually and otherwise, sense of humor intact viz. film footage, flicker, of Charles Chaplin, a serious thinker in waking life, the clumsy character on roller skates veering in barely controlled falls a folie, like me, a barely controlled fall through and through in hopes to one day, soon cuz lesser and lesser days are staring at me, breakthrough zennily into what is between the Beguine and the veer with less complaints. When asked, I reply:

"ME? me, I'm just veering on the plank....(as in walking it)....Hey, it's a living. Gravity is free thus the pitching forward and backwards, limbs flailing, call me Teeter, or Totter. I read broadly and wider and there's a part in me that holds, as we all must do, really, honestly, the contraries which make for a volatile alchemical mix, a stew of sorts. Just keep adding the garlic, s'why I wear a garland of it around my neck, clove clusters decorating even my Double Taurus hump in old age...the better to pitch forward with....

William Blake's "Heaven" is not a place but a process, a spacious field or vortex or, better, vortices that can and do contain all the contradictions and incompatibles of everytihng that ever was and is and will be (no future in the no where not there aphasia), no one thing is more valuable or better than any other there. Good and Evil and the Blur Between, the Opposites, that endless ARRAY, are held, contained, even flourish with their own view/voice equally valid to all others though differing or different...said "Heaven" then is a rowdy place, yes? Alla that energy is contained though NOT constrained. Hmmm....CONTAINER could be the better description of any Absolute worth its Overalls. n hauls n hells to pay.

So, back to Black Mountain College, and that mountain in the not so distant view....knew it well then, and even now can trace the line of the Blue ridge top edge chalk, how it moves, a very close and predictable horizon that references and refers to the Greater Location in its singular (to the eye) trace. Many views like that to be had in those mounts and tho present and stable, they, to my eyes, were never the same....always changing, ever new. Unlike me.

No surprise that the College itself, too, was a kind of mountain, out of place but in place, of Culture, the Arts, the modern (that now appears provincial and quaint looking back to there from gaudy here), a proper place for brilliance just beginning in mentors and students in an alternative environment and ways (heuristically aka learn by experience and doing the do) of teaching/learning though I imagine that all earliest-to-humans learning was experiential and rife with necessary improvisation while figuring out emerging 'see- and equations as they revealed themselves to eye and thigh (essential!) and hand and feet in the meat and greet of savage Nature which does,indeed IS, Order, Logos and ChaOs (long O to rhyme with Logos), the opposite or both/and (complementarity thanx to Mrs. Quantum for this word).

I was in my early 20's then and knew nothing of Black Mountain College but once there in the area quickly heard of it, did my research at libraries, asked around and realized that the poets then mid-70's blowing in the wind at that time, many of them had been, were, associated with the Black Mountain College (late '30's to 50's I think, many iterations throughout), some of the poets doing well in the San Francisco area once the College was done, or they had got what they needed and headed West. Hard for me to imagine the unstoppable brilliance , say, of Robert Duncan moving about and around Lake Eden there, with Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Mary Caroline Richards, the Albers, Buckminster Fuller, many others, in an extremely rural area with many locals there (farmers, etc.) who dwelt inwardly and outwardly in extremely fixed, rigid belief systems (fundamentalism abounding) which they, as did I, come by honestly. But.....I'll just let the but hang.....

Funny, tho, how weary I am NOW, have been for a long while, of New York City, and dwell on a street in an area that some of "the best minds" of that 50's and after generation, lived, roamed the hood, read and reveled at Saint Marks Church just a 40 second stroll from my apartment door. It means something to me still but nostalgically. Never suspected I'd veer in my free fall into what feels like an encapsulation, a barrier aura, somewhat hazmet mixed with jumpsuit (oy...just saw poor old jumpsuit Elvis in mind's eye_ that is mine and not mine, a separation, that, I'm guessing, is necessary, at least for me now dotage-ing n oy. Serves perhaps to contain my own emotional stew, mixed with 7 decades of memory meeting the man, the stranger, MOI, in his '70's pondering what is being lived and needs to be lived as the, before the, CODA's over. Kaput. Fin. ALTO (tho I was a boy soprano with an angelic voice, perfect pitch - central casting).

I'll let poet John Wieners, one of the better Veer-ers of his batch, be the coda to the above indulgent veer. Ah. That's the word, the V-word....old age, and companionable indulgence BY memory, these are the/my (objective/subjective) "window frame" through which I meet and experience the present world, apart and a part of, with the I that still is me, but as Rimbaud sez, "I is" also "Other".

This text below is from the seventh section of Wieners "A poem for painters" in The Hotel Wentley Poems (1958), in that year I was all of 6 years old, finger in my nose, avoiding the red bike that insisted on throwing me over and over....first word I loved to hate - BALANCE.

Ah, now I can see why I love the more the theme of my entire life -

VEER "here then" "now then" "Quick now, here, now, always (Mister Eliot)

*

Wieners:

At last. I come to the last defense.

My poems contain no
wilde beestes, no
lady of the lake music
of the spheres, or organ chants,

yet by these lines
I betray what little given me.

One needs no defense.
Only the score of a man's
struggle to stay with
what is his own, what
lies within him to do.

Without which is nothing,
for him or those who hear him
And I come to this,
knowing the waste, leaving

the rest up to love
and its twisted faces
my hands claw out at
only to draw back from the
blood already running there.

Oh come back, whatever heart
you have left. It is my life
you save. The poem is done.

Of Orphan Light — A "Fish In A Carriage Rut": A Tribute To Ernest Becker, His "Denial of Death" Book/Gift, It's Salvific Impact After Leaving "The Faith"

What the orphan knows about light —

hidden behind a star 

the ash sings without self-pity

"We are meaning hungry creatures" 

"We cannot get over the fact that tho we are gods—we are gods who shit."

"When the literal world fails us, we turn to the symbolic."

— some Becker-isms as they am or appear to be aka stark 

miasmata-ta-ta-ta (my a$$mz!) such as, if curious, 

sycosis ("papulopustular and chronic" - I ain't talkin' politics - look it up! scritch scratch), psora (some believed to be "a suppressed evil spirit"), and (ACK) syphilis. 

Miasm means, too, unwholesome air. And there's plenty of that, all kinds, "blowing in the daily wind"....

Thus also spake Becker in earnest.

Ernest Becker was a literal life saver for me as a young man leaving fundamentalist religion of youth and teen years. I was frightened but knew I was no longer of that hung up crowd tranced by CERTAINTY at all cost, even that of (at least my sanity which was tenuous enough even before the Calvinistas knocked on the front door of our then very remote house on a hill hovering over a fishing lake, red as the mud all around, and, turns out, as the iron-laden blood-o-Jesus all these 2000 years or so. A fateful knock at the door. Impaction still reverbing in my life. And in a brother who really (differently than me) committed to the Euro-Christian Protestant juggernaut but, to his surprise, found an inner activist that sent him into the streets to preach repentance to corrupt government and cops abusing non-white citizens and immigrants arriving in the "hood" from the violence and poverty that perhaps got a minute on the daily/nightly news.

If you hear a knock at the door, look out the window from behind the curtains. Could be Fate. Destiny. Or, as Calvinistas Tourette - PRE-destination. I prefer the gentler Tao which at least sounds, or triggers me less, gentler though the Tao is Nature's Way and we all know about Nature and Her Way - HAIL MARY!!! or as a black pentacostal friend often exclaims, "HELP US BLACK BABY JESUS"....with him, I can certainly "hold with" his petition, prolapsed Calvinista that I, alas, still am, as that Beast in an entrenched part of my psyche - complexes AND archetype (with various flavors and visages but still an OVERSEEING JUDGING OGRE which we are led to believe somehow loves us (my initials monogrammed on a ware house full of lightning bolts just "pour moi" therefore, "Help me Black Baby Jesus!" while I "look busy" dental flossing synapses and mitochondrial flotsam. What's a gazillionth plus spasm blip-critter, homo insatiaable and wired that way, mind!, to do? Call me, Ismail. Call me 

Jasper Late of FlabbergastingTON.

I blather.

Focus, Jasper. Focus.

I found Becker's book, The Denial of Death (1974), in 1975, a year after I outwardly fled the Sanctified....took years and years to inwardly separate with the eventual realization that it, they, is/was/are a part of my inner world for the duration, that despite my existentialist self there is this insistent part self that is still fecklessly, wreck-lessly on the outskirts of the Holy Hill folk, hearing, seeing but alone at a safe distance, a Glancing Belief-Enough to keep the lad oriented otherly toward Hinterlands splintered and cracked as they really REALLY are; I tell him I know it is the deep friendships he misses but not the self-hatred induced by the Calvinism, calcified to "THE Harrowed/Narrowed/Winnowed WORD" attached to an Absurd Unfathomable Terror or, rather, IF fathomed, should be run away from as fast as one can - took me awhile but I did - fled but did not run since I needed a lot of time, and and massive outer SPACE, to sort as long as it took through their harsh Deity (or at least the cultural expressions of it in history past and present, especially in the white USA, BUT that's for another essay or braying for another page) . . .

so, Becker's book was a "providential" find. I devoured it. It gave me the greater context in which to understand how fundamentalism of all kinds are attempts to confront, nay, to deny inevitable Death and still have vast room and freedom to breathe and be present in the life given.

Read a pdf of the book free here:

https://humanposthuman.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/ernest_becker_the_denial_of_deathbookfi-org.pdf

**

How It Was I Came To Be What I Am - A Fable

for 'Spider' Bottas

They would argue over tides
Who bade me come into the world.
One said, Six o'clock.
The other, No, twelve.
I was born at the thirteenth hour
All the while mother arguing, 
This is not the time but a little spell, 
While father argued it was death, 
You are dying and your child, too, 
Is dying. You have been poisoned.

It was full moon and high tide, 
The hour of birth.
All arguments yielded to the tide's.
The moon lit up the stadium 
Of their gripes while I was 
Born amidst their sweeps at
Each other, the nurse neglecting
To wipe me free of blood and salt
Being drawn into their strife.

He was born at day, one said.
No, at night, and he is a she, 
Said the other. The nurse, 
Speaking truthfully, said, 
Cleaning me at last, No, 
You are both right. The child
Is he and she, a hermaphrodite
Born of two days labor, its head
Out of the womb the duration.

Ruination! father cried.
Fame, mother sighed.
Both right, the nurse agreed, 
Of these fables are made. 

Then father tossed me into the sea.

The nurse saved me who later
Became my lover, hiding my 
Sexes with a four leaf clover.

**

This film linked below is based on Becker's book The Denial of Death which is not at all bleak. It's actually vastly orienting and inspiring —Denial of Death::

https://archive.org/details/DenialofDeath_201411

NOTE - The film was made decades ago so the tie-dyed tea-shirt very California surfer dude voice is actually, now, hilarious to hear as he talks existentialism. So, keep a few eye-rolls handy and a sense of humor. I wonder if this guy is still amongst the living.

**

Exodus-Excursus After Folly - An Aging Poet Addresses One Who Wanders In Mountains Remote - Reprise 

for Andrew Linton

Now I've broken my ties with the world of red dust; 
I spend all my time wandering and read all I want.

Who will lend a dipper of water
to save a fish in a carriage rut? 
—Han Shan, Tang Dynasty, China

1

There's a wary Moses in the distance counting pocket
change to give to the ferrier, coins to fit the eyes.
I'm hanging at the back of the crowd. There's manna
enough for pockets. My Red Sea is long parted but old
Pharaoh's got a new army. Each day is a scrape in the tents.
Prayer and fear is sustenance dragged further out by pillars
of fire. A volcano rumored to be God publishes 'Mandates for 
a New Junta', led by a well-bred stutterer (prototypical politician, 
it seems) . In odd limbo there trail reluctant murmurers.

That Golden Calf Incident was a silly mistake, 
an overreaction, but there were agreements made 
at the outset, sealed in blood, first born sons threatened
or worse, guaranteed real estate for dairy farmers and 
bee keepers, oodles of milk-and-honey futures, money 
to be made in hopefully greener pastures. Now it can 
be said with certainty, a 'promised land' comes with 
big catches - I've exchanged one for another, same 
mistake - the barbs are plenty, mostly mistaken people 
thinner than scripture loudly staking claims to land 
and deity in long meander.

It's a luxury, sure. Some choose to wander. Some don't.
Water is scarce in deserts. Wheels are few but for
chariots of war, not many ruts though there's thirst aplenty, 
not the bounty promised before the journey.

A penny for a wet tongue.

I'm of that hung up crowd forced to flee, a victim 
of unleavened fate, or is that too Greek a notion? 

The question begs asking. Unintended impertinence 
must be forgiven. That's the theme, right? the long 
march of history, that of redemption in time though 
each and every has an opinion. Can't be helped. 

Much to explain.

All's a seeming washed in blood.

2

"I say we very much don't merit these

unverifiable epiphanies." —James Merrill

Old friend, I've been reading zen, the death poems, 
and Sayings of the Desert Fathers, in many ways 
the same. These orient, assist. I can still lift a head 
up among stars while swatting flies just to be silly 
for what do stars care at all but for real-ing eyes, 
they're wanting to be the more perceived, more 
than lumps in solidity, but as sublime, as they once 
lightyears dreamed, as a boy's fright-years dreamed, 
too, despite a hard father's boot-steps on childhood's 
stairs just other side the door to send him packing, 

Future's shy Desert Father 
anonymous on purpose, 

beneath the bed, 
a wilderness of sorts, 

hiding still. 

3

Now 

I'm flung further into the fray though I sway up 5 flights
of stairs, long in exile, dizzy with the street, the human
beauty and brokenness there, all those flower pots in 
windows, on stoops, the blossoming tree brightening 
between darker bricks to truly dwell. It is for me, a shy 
son, to see in spite of big chunks missing or torn out, 
to remake the world as it always is for gods long to 
be bread to dwell in our finitude. To them, then, I am
'the Dude', a daffodil in my lapel, gate of heaven and 
h*ll open at the end of the block. I skip forward singing, 
'La La La, ' poems a'pocket. If questioned at the gate 
I'll blame you, meandering still, granting permission 
the entrance to boldly storm.

Between St. Marks and the horizon my fingers still work.

**

Natalie Merchant - Weeping Pilgrim 

(Traditional Protestant Hymn)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JXQczExSS8

ENTONCES 

(for Miss Van & Gerard Manley Hopkins w/apologies)

I'll not. I'll Tchaikiovsky. 
Kvetch, 'Pathetique'. Bleak 
plead, wretch, here stretch 
arms, at least one, grasp as, 
wreckt, wrack on pain, wrench 
kindness render, or try, pity, 
and so end City of willful man 
'is Clod's cruel tred improv 
replete - hyssop, vinegar to
lips sponged tourette-ic cry
'I can no more' reduced 
down to a man, no further 
compression possible, I bear, 
endure, WILL, no choice in 

the matter, Crucible's Riddle, 

dare cling to rhyme and opposite, 

offering two thumbs yet, a

blood-eye, and a dry tongue.

[NOTE: All photographs are by Warren Falcon.  All rights reserved.]

Warrentine pic. July 2020.

"Hell Hath Value" - Rendering Gold from the Shite Tongued-Tied Yet Trying But For a Broken Shoe Lace

True this quote of Liz Greene's below. Greene was an astrologer and Jungian analyst (and created The Mythic Tarot deck decades ago). Said (posted) quote is a major reason folks run screaming away from psychoanalysis and many variations since Freud, Adler, Jung and the manic defense plethora of American psychology which avoids depth and goes for HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY in a massive dissociation from Life in lived Reality).

Depth psychology is just that going deep (or like Dante, finding oneself suddenly disoriented and in a strange inner and outer "land"...depth psychology finds ways person by person to consciously going eyes wide (at least one of them!) into the suffering in order to discover meaning which is within it, rather, is derived from it, but is not yet grasped but can be (apprehended, perhaps not com-prehended aka understood in mind but arrives at an AHA, an image, a felt sense, what Carl Jung calls an organic synthesis rising from the tension between the opposites that grip and crush us, thesis <>antithesis endured bringing about a transcendence of awareness that provides a more expansive view in the enlarged vantage delivered by the synthesis that comes from enduring, processing through emotions, memories, stories, scars, fears, et. al.

The very word 'suffer' etymologically (roots of words) combimes 'sub-' beneath, under + 'ferre' which means carry, carriage (we take a ferry across a body of water) thus suffer is "to go under/beneath" to "undergo", and also "undercarriage" such as that of a coach or car. Any deep confrontation by and from the unconscious material/energies which emerge, upsurge, converge, diverge and SUBmerge directly and impolitely (lol) the false delusion summed at the get go in the US Preamble, self evidence of the right of each individual to "pursue happiness..." 

from Jean-Luc Nancy's Prologue in his book, 

Adoration: The Deconstruction of Christianity II

Happiness is very fleeting and inconstant. Best, in my own humbled descent work, to lose the word "happiness" which we do lose, the brief moment of it, not the word, and use, rather, something wiser, aged, experienced, pressed down, cooked leading, or can lead to, a much widened and wiser state of awareness and consciousness - I think and feel that the better word is CONTENTMENT (and, long lived now, I can honestly add this - ENUFF viz being content enough, and each of us is the assessor of what that enough feels like, looks like, etc).

Thus, in analysis one works with someone who is much further along in the descent, the dismemberment to use shamanism's apt description of the process of depth diving or, often enough, being grabbed by a vice grip beneath one's feet and pulled beneath what one thought was sand but was sand alright, QUICKSAND (one of my many early dreams in my analytical journey.

Much to more to say but will halt here.

Zeus' fire is the gift He stole from the gods and then gave it to humans - the gift of civilization "and its discontents" (from Freud's vantage) and, from Jung's vantage, civilization and its mys-(as in mystic and mystery) content, and its myth-(as in mythic/mythology) contents.

We all gotta hold of that Fire. Mircea Eliade's great book, The Raw and the Cooked, gives an account of what we humans do with Zeus' fire which is the gods fire! and now we reenter suffering but much more meaningfully. Each gift gives a boon and a bane.

The boon and the bane are in Gonzalez' post. Certainly what Jungian psychology is about. And other systems, many of the world's great religions and philosophy are fires illuminating, or trying, and transforming (cooking) the burn of existence into meaning even, or, rather, especially that derived of suffering in space and time....which is my definition of human wisdom, that which come from suffering in space and time.

Welcome to BLUES SCHOOL, kiddies. Or as poet William Carlos Williams wrote in his Introduction to Allen Ginsberg's book and title poem HOWL:

“Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going through hell”

BUT/AND, as I wrote in an essay written in a most painful time of suffering in my life, and beginning to get my bearing, a revelation to me as it wrote itself in the essay,

"HELL HATH MEANING."

And, to be WCW-esue abit,

IT DO.

**

from "Lives of the Saints" by American poet Charles Wright