Living After Your Own Fashion-A Henry Miller Primer and Beware of the Yellow Dirt

ASPIRING TO BE NONE OTHER THAN HIMSELF

      Wind from the Pacific drives the rain and blows it across the grazing slopes, hard onto decks, pounding it into the rocky bluffs and the sand at the shore. It blows a Henry Miller February Rain and loosens pensive jottings like a current of thought reaching from nights long ago along Big Sur, Ragged Point, San Simeon and Cambria gathered now in a timeless eddy.

      Miller, the experimental, category busting and banned  author arrived in Big Sur in a February wind-pushed rain like the event that soaks the world beyond the window behind my computer screen, down the jagged coast highway from his point of arrival. Miller observed that poet Robinson Jeffers sang of this region and before him Jack London drew inspiration. 
      Comparable to regions of the Mediterranean or the Scottish coast, with a climate and vibe of its own, it captivates thinkers and form breakers. First citizens saw their ancients, moderns sense spirits, artists and writers are inspired and naturalists are awed where mountains, sea and forest commune. Miller wrote of these things in telling of the  people he met and the influence of this place on them.

       I've been slow reading and absorbing his 1957 work

Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. Since the late 60's I have taken emotional, spiritual and creative sustenance from Big Sur and the central coast. Big Sur was the power that brought us here to live. It is the place that renews and nurses life's fraying. And so Miller's tome is a bit of an inner echo. I see evidence in our village of this special natural-psycho-bio clime.

       In his neighbors he found "Ideal material for the making of community." He wrote they may have "arrived from different paths, each with their own purpose and one as different from the other as marbles from dice." In Cambria,  rich in history and independence, we too see our "characters." Living here induces an authenticity. The people Miller saw were "all somewhat peculiar" or "naturals." 

      "Each and everyone of them fed up with the scheme of things and determined to free themselves of the treadmill, lead their own lives...None of them demanding anything more fantastic of life than the right to live after their own fashion."
      To append Miller, I wonder if life itself cannot cast you on waves that wash you onto your own shore of desiring to live after your own fashion. But I'm stuck on knowing why some take a trail where others stick to the highway. I was struck by this as I read Bruce Taylor's blog wherein he pondered how he transformed from the kid in his high school graduation photo to "the old pirate" in the more recent photo.
        These characters are around us whether in our urban climes or on a rocky coast or forest. Perhaps that pirate, artist, bohemian, rascal or whatever lurks within and needs only the slightest invitation to come alive, a place, a group or a friend. 

WASH AWAY THAT YELLOW DIRT

    The Jimmy Seals and Dash Crofts tune from the 1970's came to mind when we returned to find our home coated in yellow dirt.

    Simply a brush against an object and clothing was painted.

  Pine trees had candled and then a wind did its bidding. A neighbor said it was such that a "yellow out" blinded the ridge line. She said it was impossible to see the mountains or  anything beyond a couple of feet.

   And so now our long desired rain can wash us, too.

   See you down the trail.

  

LIVING IN HENRY MILLER'S PARADISE and WHY ISIS CAN'T BE BEATEN

IT IS LIKE HENRY MILLER SAID

   There's a line in a commercial that says "California cows are contented cows." Why not, huh?

    Our "Heinz 57" Joy finds endless contentment in the garden.
    Author Henry Miller, who lived just a few miles north of our home said "I am constantly reminded that I am living in a virtual paradise."
     Amen to that!

   Spring's color wheel is at work on the coast,

  and on the hills and slopes.

WHY ISIS CAN'T BE BEATEN
Because they should be destroyed

    ISIS, a threat to the world, is a particularly challenging problem for Christians.

      Graeme Wood's What Isis Really Wants, in the March The Atlantic is an excellent examination of the menace and peril they pose and underscores why Christians are particularly challenged.  I've read and watched as much as I can, from a variety of sources and suggest Wood's article, even if you think you know all you need to about Isis.

      Followers of Jesus know that he taught to love your enemies, to forgive them, to pray for them. He admonished one of his closest followers who struck out at an enemy. He said to love your enemy is tantamount to pouring coals on their head. Nations do not live for salvation or redemption and their objectives are survival and not perfection or transcendence.

      One can advocate for a loving response and argue that  a measure beyond human justice will bear out the rightness. Some will disagree, but that is only coincidental. In a hard world of cultural and religious diversity, populated by a pastiche of beliefs, analysis, intellect and skepticism, a purely Christ like principle will not rise to the muscle of national strategic policy. This is a fully human dilemma, the kind of vile business that has been set before us in the former garden. And ISIS is a death cult, working to achieve its own religiously inspired belief they are agents of the Apocalypse.

      By civilized standards they are barbarians, ruthless with no respect for life, convinced of their "holy" mission and certain only they are right. They are a perversion of humanity, have twisted decency and justice and live as an evil strain.

      By idealized measure Christians should love them. Not to do so opens a calculus that becomes an entirely intimate equation and is for no human discussion. For those inclined it is a matter for regions of heart and soul and an accountability.  

      In this challenge, from this evil, in this time, in the practical realm of saving life, preventing destruction, stopping a lunatic movement, and destroying evil, ISIS should be eradicated. Their complete and total demise is the work of humanity, faithful or faithless, observant or atheist, contrite, convicted or contemptuous. All of us can then live with consequence, each according to our own. That is more than ISIS would ever permit.

     See you down the trail.