MOUNTAIN TEMPLE JUBILEE
for
my teacher D. K.
Just after 5 am, old teachers in
my head. I pour first fresh cup, after half-cup of left over coffee from
yesterday, which I like very much, room temperature settled brew, having
learned to drink coffee this way from a styro-foam cup in El Salvador while
staying at Obispo Gómez' in that room off to the side of his house.
Flush with books
fresh ones, more
than I can handle
I've got to get myself
under control
I open the new Cold Mountain,
complete Hanshan translation by Kazuaki
Tanahashi and Peter Levitt. I have carried Red Pine's Cold Mountain since it
was first published as The Collected Poems of Cold Mountain by Copper Canyon
Press in 1983. Studying Chinese Literature at the University of Washington on a
NEH grant during the same period where I was helped by companions with
ideograms and cultural understanding in opening Red Pine's Cold Mountain along
with his notes for each poem. Friendship with friend and poet--B--over 40 years
brings his depth and understanding of Cold Mountain as close as any experience
with literature I have had. B is one of my teachers. I name him here, for the
company.
Yesterday I visited the one who
saw me back from the war in Southeast Asia. Who saw me as a new husband. Who
welcomed me January, 1969, from the year that we'd just been through,
1968.
*
..crowded it's in a square inch
That is poetry in Red Pine's Cold
Mountain #162 beginning, Preciously heavenly something / standing off by
itself..., giving me the three words that opens the way, poetry, poem, poet.
whoever doesn't trust it
meets without accord
Red Pine's note for his
translation reads, The Chinese call their heart of heart the square inch.
*
I open Tanahashi and Levitt's
Cold Mountain, Hanshan and Cold Mountain named in their title. Their square
inch won't replace Red Pine's for me, fine as it is, begins, Honor your own
nature--/ alone, it has no companion. [Red Pine's #162 is #274 in their text.] How
will I distinguish Hanshan's translators now? Maybe it doesn't matter. T&L:
During the years when your hair is black,
in motion or stillness, give yourself completely.
The impulse is to write letters, practice
reclaimed. I became side-lined for a few years by email, remember when you had
to type in the long address twice to accomplish it, to even begin? Email, a
great thing for hustlers, getting things off your chest with misspellings. I've
gone back to letters. Fewer and fewer friends left, my old teacher, still here.
Fewer friends to write to these days. They write letters. I get mail.
*
Sitting in my teacher's study
yesterday, 50 years to the day when we read Wise Blood, Invisible Man,
finishing that first course of study, he read Wordsworth to me. He was my
Romantics teacher. He taught me Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Coleridge, Hazlitt,
Clair. Yesterday he read Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early
Childhood, in its entirety, pausing at times for a digression, pausing to make
a point, sometimes just pausing, as if to better seat the words. A reading with
our heads close to gather, two elderly men in a room seated on two chairs, that
included the voice that would occasionally whisper. He read and we talked for
three hours.
*
I'm on my way up the mountain.
It's snowing at White Pass, still early. Nearly a foot of new snow in the last
24 hours. I've stopped twice already to make notes from yesterday. Pulling off
the road to be sure that certain things won't be lost or left behind.
*
Back on the Highway,
Beloved 12 West
anytime you're on 12
you're going places
he knew he'd been
on a mountain yesterday
where to take that time
but to High Camp
his mountain
in the small lodge
carved from the Goat Rocks.
Music in his little car.
Maybe the spirits would use him today.
Maybe.
He had a late start,
making tacos, flan,
eggs from free range hens
with healthy diets
who eat fresh produce
culled from grocery stores.
He would take the custard
to his daughter's family tonight.
Tremors have returned.
She has M.S.
Steroid infusions over weekend
takes out her energy
before giving it back.
Her body in a sweat marathon.
Teacher home sick from school.
His little car on Highway 12.
It's own zendo.
Preparation for High Camp,
pure meditaion on snow.
He carries images from unpublished
Wordsworth--
joy of pure principle of love--
found in the appendix of a
biography.
His wife understood.
Nature restores.
So does snow and he would go into
it.
The surprise of High Camp
at 6000 feet, back country.
He would have to ski to get there.
He knew these trees from
backpacking.
When this was part of the Goat
Rocks Wilderness,
he had hiked here with friends
climbing up through McCall Basin,
or the back road out of Packwood.
Hogback Mountain, Shoe Lake.
He had brought his wife here,
his children when they were kids,
walking the ridge between two
watersheds
with each step. He had been here
alone.
Climbing Old Snowy,
highest point on Crest Trail
in Washington State. East side
now part of a ski resort.
He had learned to find
backcountry
in here mostly in bounds.
How they created High Camp
without fucking it up
he still didn't know.
He called it his office.
Varnished knotty pine table
by the window, 2d floor,
alone in the loft
looking at Mount Rainier.
He came here with his notebook.
He came to see what he carried.
He wanted to find out what it
was.
He would have to ski to get here.
*
Yesterday, seated beside his
teacher, listening to the familiar voice, his teacher, too had surprises. The
subversive profession. The map of Albuquerque spread out on the dining room
table when he arrived. His childhood before them on the map, his fingers
following the roads where he grew up. Then, his notes written in red ink,
classic penmanship, flashing ideas on poems written 60 years ago. Memories over
75 years. The Cascade of it all. A favorite ski run on his mountain, Cascade,
familiar to his grandchildren who he skied with, had been renamed Tyler's Run
in memory of his sister's son. He had done this with the Ski Patrol. It was not
located on any map. The child is the father of the man. He had those notes from
yesterday, and his teacher had not shied from pictures he took with his IPhone.
He would open these notes with time. His teacher had told a story of a paper he
wrote on Blake's Everlasting Gospel for the poet Tomlinson. Do you still have
that paper? he had asked. It's out there somewhere, his teacher said. Dig it
out, and when you find it I'll come up again and we'll read it.
*
All winter he had been reading
the Chinese poets at High Camp. Mostly through the translations of David
Hinton, whose first anthology, Mountain Home, is the one that had changed his
life. He also brought Gary Snyder, Burton Watson, Stephen Mitchell, but it was
mostly David Hinton these days. And here he was at High Camp with Wordsworth.
Surprised by joy, Wordsworth wrote. C.S. Lewis picking it up for the title in
his autobiography. A story here that broke
his heart. A story that broke him open. Great gift of the open heart.
*
DAY 24 ON THE MOUNTAIN
He didn't come today to ski
He came for the snow and the cold.
Trees too. He knew these trees.
He called them his.
He came for High Camp
but he had to ski to get here.
He had brought his powder skis
ones his son had found for him.
And he found fresh snow in trees.
Nobody here. Midweek.
He rose and floated
lifted by technology.
Next week he would change
mountains
He would be with his son in the
Sierras.
The big resort people flew in
for.
His son would have tickets
and not much money.
It was ok. They would ski.
He would stand at 11,000 feet.
His son.
The son would take him.
Three years ago, now in his 70s,
new again, on new skis, these skis would take off from a mogel landing him 30
feet on the other side of a running creek. He couldn't ski like this at 40, as
a young man. He sits at table with notebook and orange. He opens his Modern
Library edition of Wordsworth to The Excursion and loosens buckles on his
boots. His handwriting is not his teacher's handwriting. His notes, not his
teacher's notes. The Wordsworth biography includes a single entry for the
Appendix, thought to be a possible conclusion to a draft of The Excursion.
Kindred love in fellow creatures
that was what he was looking for
what if he found it?
.................
He'll find the good he seeks
.........
A chain of good will links us to
our kind.
These among the lines that spoke
to him that morning, before crossing back 50 years in time to meet with his
teacher. He had packed them and forgotten to take them. He looks at lines he'd
written in his notebook, wakened by what he finds in the poem--Nature, surface dappled with shadows that
lay in spots...face turned toward the sun then setting...mind turned
inward...sweet sounds feeding the soul...pure discourse...many are the Poets
that are sown By Nature...faculty divine..favoured Beings...
And this:
But in the mountains did he feel his faith.
*
Back on skis
sun peaks out of clouds,
then hides. Snow flurries
and changing light all afternoon.
Wordsworth as Lao Tzu.
The ocean the firmament of
heavens
should not be a barren picture on
the mind.
Only the skis under his boots
touch snow
tip and tail built like wings and
stabilizers.
Tuck the legs after taking off.
Ducking under ropes
he skis over sastrugi
he photographed last week,
Wind-scoured snow sculpture
softened by sun,
retraces
tracks
through powder broken by others
bumping along until
he reaches pristine again
where he's slowed
by all that remains chaste.
Stand, and stay, he tells
himself.
This is the remainder you came
for.
Here he is no longer what he was.
From here he abandons sorrow's consciousness. Incarnate and Complicit,
invisible and sleeping. Powder dried and weathered, helped by speed. He covers
snow-ground at speeds whipping his cheeks, jacket collar flapping. Horizontal Doug
Fir branches that can rip his clothes, snow-hidden bottom ones leaving
above-ground threats that will catch him at knees and throw him into basins of
snow where he has no business being near. He will hear his heart beat fast,
sustaining a pace he swore he would not get close to. Here he is--
Closing the mountain at dusk
snow falling
as the vesper's prayer
So quiet in here
Snow falling in trees
Skis shushing over snow
All this music
still still
Lost late light
Snow change
Snow change
Sweeping the mountain
Sweeping the mountain within
Jim Bodeen
11-15 March 2019
High Camp
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