Getting Away - notes from Woodstock, May 2011

There are times when we need to leave the madness behind where it belongs. That is, if you think madness is something that happens in the world around you as you sit in silence watching it go out of control, while you drink hot coffee.

But most times we just carry the insanity with us. For it is the only company we keep, or keeps us. Some BFF.

That weekend in May was not to escape madness, but the drudgery of a dead-end existence, a 9 to 5 job, the sameness of everything, to escape time that is not relative but a fixed number of hours. Enter Woodstock.

2 hours from the city to Poughkeepsie, another 45 minutes by car. (Should take the bus next time). Anyway, on the hottest afternoon of the year, I got there. And did nothing. That was the whole point of it I suppose. I did have plans, but shelved it for fall... if I will remember then. It is amazing just how much we forget. I forget.

Walked around the quaint little town, filled with tourists, hell's angels bikers, flea markets, music,.... and old, old locals. Where have all the young men gone? Never mind. Checked into Woodstock Lodge, about half a mile from the Village Green (though the walk seemed longer in the hot sun), not recommended by the locals (I wonder why), and the last one listed in the directory. And the only one that had rooms available for the night.

What a time! Apparently, this was the only lodge with a bar that stays open till 4am. The rest of Woodstock sleeps at 9pm at the latest. And there's nothing else to do than drink, play pool, dance with old men, and listen to their wild stories. Stories told in slow, drunken drawling voices; of their celebrity neighbors in the Catskills, of Billy Joel buying this guy dinner, then realizing he was broke..so he plays the piano all night (yeah yeah, the piano man's perpetual penury story seem to be the same all time, and how he makes up for it)... of going on gigs with old-time bands and singers...stories under a clear starry sky.

There was the Big Dipper, or is it the Little Dipper, or both? Right over my head. Stars are not something you notice in the city. And even if you do, well.. you don't stop and stare for long. Stars are for quiet places, when the music outside gets inside you, and deep voices tell you tales. And other times of solitude.

Slow. That's what this place is. Where time has no meaning except in the changing colors of the sky. Where early morning dew on the mountain looks like rising smoke or falling rain. Where you follow babbling brooks in the middle of trees to see hidden falls. Slow. Quiet. Peaceful? Not quite. Lonely? Not really. You carry your madness in a backpack.

The Village Green

Hidden Falls

Millstream

 The Blues Brothers taking a break

Open drum circle

Land of Lost Content - A.E. Houseman

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

Lazarus Soul

Dusk
the evening is purple red
and I wait for the music to drift in
through the broken ground.
i called, and though you were silent,
i knew you'd come.

Night
inside the madness a fire rises
burning holes in a sky, making space
for my future travel.
i wait, and see the desert you fear
to cross for nothing.

Midnight
it is all for nothing, your tears
won't revive bones sucked dry
in sandstorms.
i sleep inside a nightmare
with no refuge in hiding places

Dawn
it is not yet time, for words
that mean nothing to ears pierced
by shards of indifference.
i wait in silence in fire and darkness
to break through on my own.

Writing at night

I live over a bar and the bass booms all night through my floor. So it is definitely not the peace and quiet. Nights are not peaceful anyway. And peace never contributed to anything in the world. Without the big bang where would we all be? Would we even be?

I don't know. Do I even care?
But why write at night?
(Why write at all, but that's been done to death... in my head anyway...and plenty have pondered and written about it. But then, everything that has to be said, has been written already... that makes writing about anything at all a futile exercise).

Maybe writing is a kind of death - or at least it feels that way - how we pour out our life through our fingers and stain a couple of pages - a form of blood-letting in the hope of better health; redemption, salvation. And it's always in the longest nights of our lives we seek answers, dare to hope, love, or give in to fears or despair.

Maybe it is the darkness... under its cover, we can take refuge in our dreams and nightmares, without having others glimpse our inner demons. And face them on our own terms. Like making love in pitch dark that makes strangers out of partners and lovers out of strangers.

Night writing is after all just complicated Braille.