Mountain High, A Writer At Large

And I will pray for her
I will call her name out loud
I would bleed for her
If I could only see her now

The landline on Lily Bay is in a dank garage, at a small desk by a grimy window. As I turn on the dim lamp in the corner I can suddenly see that I am the only source of light this high for miles. The rain comes down in an insistent sheet. Other than that it is dead quiet on the hill. Nothing in the woods that wasn’t huddled in some dry corner, like I was waiting for the phone to ring, the beer to run out or the rain to stop.
The first time I called someone picked up and said
Herro? in a mock-racist Asian accent. Eventually they hung up. After a few more tries I turned off the lamp and sat drinking in the dark with the rain pouring down. That was last night.

I was up by 5:30 this morning and I had 1,200 words down by 10:50. Now I write this post.  There’s nothing doing in town except of the Monster Truck/Kid Rock variety. There’s no television, no internet and only bad poetry to keep me inspired up here.
Most nights I read or get drunk…I found a copy of Raymond Chandler’s Poodle Springs and had a good night boozing with the old boy. He is absolutely one of America’s greatest writers; an outsider of the literary coterie but a giant as far as I’m concerned, and an inspiration for generations of Western Men like Charles Bukowski and me. Yeah, me.

It took me two days up here to lose the nightmares and I might not clear off the shakes for two more caffeine-riddled afternoons on the screenporch writing, white-knuckling it and hacking it out.
The evil in our hearts lurks waiting for the chance to spring upon us, when we are most vulnerable and w/o our usual devices of distraction. No cell phones or internet, no television and no women. Perhaps there is a poet somewhere loudly declaring that true love will never die. But not this one. Evil will live in our hearts forever. It is this dark mass that comes upon us in torrents while solitary and alone on top of a mountain, in a dark garage that smells of motor oil and compost. Somewhere too in our hearts is love, it’s true, but it is shrouded in the dark wings of love lost. This is Karma. All that we have done and had done to us is still with us. We can kill off that part of ourselves, join the walking wounded and march on like so many brave ones do. Or we can hang on to our pain, keep it alive and let it unfurl around us like smoke and bad prayers rising from the mountains of our isolation.

Bucolic grey clouds are moving in over Lily Bay, as persistent as iron, as I write this. The rains will bring with them the breeze. A glorious breeze that will bend the ginkgoes and rage through the screenporch. The thunderheads will take over the mountain and the lake will get flat as glass.  I’ll wait out the rains and ride out my blues.  It’s certainly better than spending a soaked night in a dark garage on top of a deserted mountain, waiting for the phone to ring.

The evil that men do lives on and on.
-Iron Maiden