You do not have to be good

Mykle and I were talking about his rather extraordinary view of evil, which is; that Evil does not exist.
Maybe the view is not so extraordinary as it is unordinary, anyhow-
It's always interesting to be with such a strong and different personality such as he.
Our conversation reminded me of one of my favorite poems, which hung above our bed for years:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.


-Mary Oliver
"Wild Geese"



I have been sitting on the floor framing pictures from one of my enduring obsessions, "The Garden of Earthy Delights" by Hieronymous Bosch. I want to someday go to Madrid to see it in the Prado. One of my favorite parts of it is the painting on the outside doors of it (for it is a sectional triptych that opens), which I first saw on the inside of an album ("Clouds") by Joni Mitchell (my first musical love).
I think obsessions choose you. They keep appearing and you cant ignore them after a while.
I once crashed a party where there was a big wood-sectioned reproduction of The Garden of Earthy Delights on the mantle, triptych with hinges and all. I have never wanted to steal anything so bad. (Except maybe the "Life- sized" carved wooden unicorn skull at 5 & Diamond in San Francisco!) The triptych was cleverly guarded by a candelabra with actual candles though, and I left empty handed. It would have been pretty ironic to steal it anyway.

I love the internet sometimes. A search for that unicorn skull led to this. Go to Ben Shaffer's website to look at his other stuff, which is psychadelic talismanic shrapnel.


His website Ben Shaffer

My website also pops on the first page of the image search for "wood unicorn skull". And this is BEFORE this post is published. Ha ha.

Forgetten Poetry and the underside of rocks

Laudanum













Girls will wait in meadows hoping to catch unicorns
Conceiving a thirst that begins and ends in your body,

Drinking it's white flesh. The way they put their hands
Together, in prayer- it is like a corset: the whittled

Stone in the vial of a whale. Someone shall put an ivory conversation in a box. Another will whisper of lace.

Spoons. They are all listening for the small moment when the temple's last stair falls into the sea.

Herons begin their landing.
In the kingdom of the lynx-eye the palm-tree splits the rock, greedy for rain.

For this is the room where the door comes close. For this is the limestone gallery, the well of dreams, their dormition.

They shall prick themselves with silver sewing needles.
And in the morning be silver and lake; a tincture of snow.

-by Monica Ferrell


It is indicative of my debaucherous lifestyle of the past that poems will show up written in journals that I DIDN'T write but that sound exactly like something I WOULD write, that I have no recollection of transcribing. Like the poem above. Underneath is written,
"What does this poem mean? What is it talking about? Contact Her"

Over the poem is a line drawing of a single magnolia blossom.

Photo by Imogen Cunningham


I have been thinking of Antarctica a lot lately.
The folks down there for this summer season are leaving now, taking the 6 hour ride back to "The Real World" of Christchurch, New Zealand. After all of my resentment (Write this down about me: "I have resented an entire continent before. Kai Smart resents a continent.") I realize that The experience was one of the most incredible ones anyone could ever hope for and I, and perhaps we all, must STRIVE to make our lives that interesting ALWAYS.
I am inspired by my friend Arline, a traveler who just came back from Venezuela, and before that Nepal. My friend Richard is leaving Antarctica after another season and going to Costa Rica (3 weeks), then India (5 weeks), then East Africa (3 months). It's really inspiring. I am such a homebody that I can only stand travel in small doses. 2 months max, usually. Not that traveling solves things. It's just that the world is so wide and so complex. It's inspiring to see it.

Here are some things I wrote "on the ice".

I relate to the monumental range of mountains (that exist! That we can see every moment as we termite away at our little jobs!) only in mystery terms. I do not want to relate to them so much in the terms of science or adventure or discovery. I want to think -and I do- of all the nothing we know about the mountains. I want to think there are secrets there under the sliding glaciers that we will never learn. Not us as a race, not us as a species. I want to think of the place that no one will ever see. The ice, the cold, the remote frozen land, the killing weather,, they will keep an outrageous and surreal secret. A crystalline palace, or a second sun, or perhaps just the underside of a rock that no human will ever touch.

What about those things that are never touched by something living? Is inanimacy the lonliest thing or is it nothingness?


This attitude may seem depressing but I assure you- those vast landscapes brought me awe and joy which I can't replicate here in this part of the world.