In the forest of the night

Spider, spider burning bright...

Last night, I took the dog on a walk in the woods while wearing a headlamp. It had been raining, so there was water on the grass. As we trudged up and down the hill, I saw what looked like a skyfil  of little diamonds moving on the ground. A closer look revealed, a closer look revealed a multitude of spiders busy going about their nocturnal business. There had to be thousands of them.

I guess I knew that there were spiders on the hill. And I guess I didn't expect them to go to be at sundown. Still, there was all this activity going on all around me that I'd never been aware of before.

I think that's a pretty good metaphor for life. There's stuff we don't have a hint about going on all around us all the time. Thoreau said "Only that day dawns to which we are awake" I guess something like that is true of the night as well.

Long time gone

It's been several days without a Goat Rope post. I've been on the road a lot lately crisscrossing the state several times to go to citizen advocacy and lobbying trainings. Usually, these are sparsely attended, but for some unknown reason people are turning out by the scores and hundreds. I'm glad--we're going to need all the people power we can get.

Meanwhile, here's the latest Front Porch. Not my best effort, but I was burned out from the road, sick, and uninformed about the topic until the morning we recorded it.

Meanwhile, would someone please tell me when we've hit bottom?

Apropos of nothing again

For some reason, this cheery little jingle by William Butler Yeats has been going through my mind lately:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre  
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere  
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst  
Are full of passionate intensity. 

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.  
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out  
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert  
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,  
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,  
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it  
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.  
The darkness drops again; but now I know  
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,  
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,  
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 

Best book ending ever

This time of year, with darkness and the winding down of December, makes for reflections. Around here anyway. 

Today, in lieu of any social commentary, I have something better to offer...the ending of The Great Gatsby. It happens after (spoiler alert) Gatsby's death and after the cruel and arrogant rich folks leave. Nick Carraway, the narrator who has lost innocence and illusions, is getting ready to leave the city. On his last night he sits and looks at the island across from the Sound.

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning ——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Dude could write.

Two ironies and a novelty

It occurs to me lately that the world is increasingly divided into two kinds of places: those in which it is difficult or impossible to stay and those to which it is difficult or impossible to go. And the difference between the two is shrinking.

AND HERE'S ANOTHER IRONY. Former Massey CEO Don Blankenship has achieved total political victory even while he faces criminal charges from the Upper Big Branch disaster.

NOW FOR THE NOVELTY: would you believe Buddhist campus sororities and fraternities?

Thought for the day

Here's a great quote from someone in my neighboring state of Kentucky, i.e. Wendell Berry. It speaks to my condition:


"it may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings."

Regarding firewood, Sandy, Cheetos and the secrets of my success

Figs in the snow. Photo credit: the Spousal Unit.

Whatever else can be said about 2012 in West Virginia, it's been a good year for firewood. Between last summer's de recho storm and last weeks encounter with Hurricane Sandy, it's laying all over the place.

Speaking of Sandy, while lots of people got it worse, we had a bit of a hit, including heavy wet snow and most of a week without power, water or phone, spiced with transportation/chainsaw issues, falling trees and concerns about rising water. If the Ohio River hadn't been so low due to the late summer drought we might have had some serious flooding.

I wound up celebrating the lights coming back on by taking part in  Darkness Falls, a 7 mile nocturnal trail run. The race course is beautiful in the daylight. In the dark, it was a bit tricky, thanks to Sandy's legacy. The hills are evil by day or night. I think I actually did it a little faster in the dark than when I tried it by daylight.

Here's my secret to the crucial last week of training: lay around in the dark reading a Dylan biography with a head lamp while nursing a bad back, eating Cheetos and drinking box wine. On race day morning,in lieu of carb loading, head to the local greasy spoon for a massive hillbilly breakfast, complete with bacon, eggs, taters, biscuits and gravy. Eat until exhausted. During the race, try to stay on one's feet and not fall in the river.

That's how us elite athletes rock em.

Now you know.

The writing on the wall

I saw a bit of graffiti today that had a Zenlike quality. It just said "Life takes time."

CLOSER TO MIDNIGHT. That would be the doomsday clock.

OCCUPATIONS. Naomi Klein discusses the future of the Occupy movement here.

TO SEE THE WORLD IN A GRAIN OF SAND. Or, to be more exact, to see the amazing biodiversity in a single scoop of sea sand.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: UNIMAGINABLE

Fish day!

We interrupt Goat Rope's regularly scheduled programming to announce that fish have finally returned to the creek in front of the house. For a good chunk of the year, that little creek, fed by two smaller ones, is home to a good number of minnows and crawdads.

In the late summer and early fall, as noted in this post from last September, the creek often goes dry. The dryness doesn't last too long but it takes the fish several months to come back. Last fall, we even scooped some out of the remaining puddles and put them in the pond where, if they didn't survive, they'd at least make a nice meal for a snapping turtle or two.

Every day after the autumn dry spell I make a point of checking the creek for fish, and have decreed Fish Day to be a holiday at Goat Rope Farm (here, for example is the official announcement from two years ago, when they didn't arrive until April). The little fellows officially arrived yesterday, on Feb. 11. Here's hoping they stay all year.

Consulting the oracle

Image courtesy of wikipedia. We didn't have any around.

The Charleston papers, as WV readers know, have vent lines to which people can call in to express their opinions or questions on any conceivable topic.

And they do.

The Spousal Unit is better at keeping up with these oracular statements than I am and she found a few worthy of making it to the Goat Rope Farm refrigerator. They may have deep hidden meanings or, like Zen koans, could lead to Enlightenment if only one sits and contemplates them. Here are a couple to meditate upon:

I'm just wondering if anybody else who has been eating Slim Jims lately can tell they've got a new taste to them?

And

I don't think it's right that the state provides vehicle insurance for state employees who sit around with snuff in their mouth during the course of their work day.

Finally, it seems that the lottery, which I used to describe to GED students as a tax on people who aren't very good at math, is a recurring topic of interest:

My wife and I bought a roll of 100 scratch-offs--there were three $1 winners and two $2 winners--$7 out of $100. What a joke.

Indeed.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: 7 OUT OF 100

Two bad ideas

Two bad dogs.

It occurs to El Cabrero after reflecting on human history that two really bad ideas have shown up over and over and done lots of harm.

The first one is the belief that we can do X to Y and it will be over and there will be no consequences.

The second is that we can do whatever we want over here and it will have no effect anywhere else.

Does the Gentle Reader have any other suggestions?

IT'S ALIVE. There is movement on health care reform in the US Senate.

AND SO IS support for a public option in health care reform.

SPEAKING OF HEALTH, coal may not be all that good for it.

THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY may have been heart disease.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

How's this for randomness?

Random mushroom picture.

A nearby city's newspaper has a feature whereby people can call in and vent about various topics. Many of these are mini-rants on particular topics or personal messages to some offender, as in "to the person who stole my dog, I hope you rot in hell."

Occasionally, however, there are cryptic messages of a truly transcendental character which could even serve as Zen koans upon which to meditate.

(Did you guys notice the elegant way in which I avoided ending that sentence with a preposition?)

Here's one the Spousal Unit cut out for the refrigerator which could serve either as financial advice or a means of attaining satori:

I have been playing the lottery faithfully for years in West Virginia, but I figured out there is no way to win here. You have to go to North Carolina. I have a friend in North Carolina, and I have been letting him buy my tickets for me.

GETTING IT RIGHT. Here's another item urging the Obama administration not to cave in on health care reform. And, from the same source, here's another on the climate change vote.

NONVIOLENCE. Gene Sharp, a major theorist of nonviolent action, has been getting major media attention lately.

URGENT WHALE INTELLIGENCE UPDATE here.

HIGH IMPACT. From Coal Tattoo, here's a post with multiple links about the impact of mountaintop removal mining.

THE FINE POINTS OF APPALACHIAN CUISINE are discussed here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Caveat emptor

The local paper has a ventline feature whereby people can anonymously call in and rant with a reasonable expectation of said rant appearing in print.

This past Saturday's post included this item, which wound up on the refrigerator at Goat Rope Farm:

To the man that sold me the F-150 in the Wal-Mart parking lot: Stop calling yourself a Christian. You're giving Christ a bad name.

Note to self: henceforth no longer make vehicle purchases from random individuals in the parking lots of big box retail stores, regardless of professed religious affiliation.

THE FUTURE OF COAL doesn't look too bright, according to this NY Times article. Articles like this have been known to cause ruling class hissy fits in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia. But whatever happens, folks here need to start thinking ahead.

ON A RELATED NOTE, climate change could be nastier than predicted.

FRIENDS? Here's the latest on the ongoing saga of Massey Energy, CEO Don Blankenship, and WV Supreme Court Justice Brent Benjamin, who was elected in 2004 with millions of dollars of help from Blankenship. A case regarding all this is now pending before the US Supreme Court.

PONZI NATION, or Madoff as metaphor.

BAD FEELINGS. Experiments suggest that expressing them in words makes it easier to control them.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED