Letters to My Comrade

Forgive me my dearest comrade... So many letters, too many in fact, I never send. Shall I send them out here, in this information cross roads, hoping one day you might stumble across and read them?? Then so be it. Let the observers wonder at your identity... let them wonder if it is they, themselves, I address. :) Thus for every one's amusement, your reading materials follow.

June 2009
Dear my comrade,

We are back out at Lake C. How I would love to share it with you. This breeze now, along with the rhythmic lyric of the waves-- such treasures I wish I could send with this letter! Oh, but how ever could i capture the percussive driftwood with the oddly in tune jostling song it produces from the inspiration of the cool summer day?! This day-- perfect example of the Pacific Northwest summer day-- the kind of day where one dresses in four layers. The most scandalous being reserved for the harried sun salutations performed on the shardy, rocky beach when the recipient orb returns from behind perfectly formed clouds. My outer most layer being a combination of fuzzy hoodie and puffy winter jacket [just in case the clouds discharge some of their burden... or the breeze whips into something more chillingly constant]. This new, odd realm I find myself in... so far removed from all the different summers I've had thus far. Were you here, we could explore these oddities together. What were summers like in your youth? What are they like for you now? Would you share in this moment...this kind of day here with me?

Here in moments such as these, I can almost forget... forget all the deception- the pollution- the societal fuck ups- the turgid, putrefying remnants of the town under these very same waves. Almost, it is possible to forget the 100+ years of raping and pillaging the fauna and forest surrounding and connected to this place-- yet some of the scars remain visible from this lake point vantage. One is almost able to block out the pain, the shame, the fear, the anger, the recession, the repression, the genocide, the war against the environment and its victims, desertification, revolutions, occupations, suffering, and death the world over right here in this spot. For this moment, this day-- these fleeting hours of time, this place is my heaven/utopia.

Course we are lucky... tis mid-week, colder than necessary for this time of year, and gloriously overcast. On a sunny day in summer, the other side of American life would be out in deafening droves. Enormous, oil-guzzling, pollution-spewing trucks, monster SUV's, motor homes, motor boats, skidoos, 4x4's, motor bikes, trikes, and anything else that could and would consume past life's blood [fossil fuels] are out with a vengeance! The natural stillness and repose is punctured by the manufactured sounds of manufactured motors, manufactured music, and manufactured means with which to utilize and recreate within this glacial oasis!! [Apparently this country only began determining the impact of peak oil and discussing such findings for a brief moment of our history-- the '70's i believe it was. But such truth was a bitter discovery to face. Fortunately, both before and particularly, it would seem, afterwards, new businesses sprang up selling our consumptive populace summertime luxury, affordable recreation, and noisy interruption of the natural still. Thus the impact of our actions could be perpetually distracted by a pursuit of the best and biggest summer vacation. Surely summer contemplations in natural, quiet settings must never be allowed to bring the truth to mind's eye!] Why are so many still so scared of the peace and still? Are you, comrade? Or do you plunge into them to seek the hidden, quiet truth?

Till we meet and beyond, I am your comrade, ~z