There’s a beast within humanity that rises from time to time, and from place to place, that displays its recklessness, its disdain, stupidity, greed. It mutters, “Ah, to hell with it.” It declares, “Let’s exploit this.” It argues, “Get.” It goes for the vulgar, the gimcrack, the cheap. It leaves waste in its wake. In the shallow end, it’s only kitsch. In the deep, it’s monstrous, devouring, deadly.

There’s a beauty within humanity that rises from time to time, and from place to place, that expresses its creative will, its appreciation, wit, tenderness. It sings, “Ah, look!” It whispers, “Wonderful!” It agrees, “Give.” It delves, explores, reconditions, nurtures, offers grace, life.

This is third in a set of northern California road trip ramblings.

Just before sunrise, I walk through the grassy dunes and onto Glass Beach. Here, a half century of discarded intimacies lie at your feet. Millions of consumer products that the sea couldn’t stomach, spewed up, and scoured, in an effort to return glass to its natural state. Certainly a more appealing one. There are bits of brown, from guys guzzling at bars, gazing out from their disappointments, from weariness. Dashes of white, from women at their make-up mirrors, finger-dipping into beauty jars. Chips of green, from teens playing Spin the bottle and drinking 7UP. Stuff people bought they no longer had use for. What was empty, old, broken. The opposite of what we truly want: to be filled, new, complete.

It was early in the twentieth century that residents of Fort Bragg chose this coastline to be the local dump. When Site One was overwhelmed, Site Two was established. It wasn’t until the late 60s that the dumping ceased. All sea-tumbled now, the fragments are collectable. Sea glass also fetches a good price.

Bex joins me, and her kids scuttle along, sleepy-eyed but enthusiastic. We, too, scour the glass, amazed, curious, mindful.
We also find whimsical creations along the beach, made, in counterpoint, from nature’s castaway material. A creature staring out to sea. A cannon-like contraption. Ebenezers (so named after the biblical account in 1 Samuel 7:12).

A burnished car part, submerged, embedded in rock.

Having studied the beach to our satisfaction, charmed from the thrill of discoveries, we head north.

We pass rusted cars with eucalyptus trees growing through their hoods, their roofs. As Neil Young said, rust never sleeps. No, it kills its prey, in a slow, lock-down death. And once again, nature’s had its way, its say, with a sly wink toward alternate, sustainable energy.

To some, the glory of nature is not enough. You must pull it this way, push it that, squeeze it into money.

Like the 1930's schemers who erected Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, to welcome you into “Trees of Mystery,” along Highway 101 at Klamath. It’s a kitschy intrusion — made of wooden beams, chicken wire, and stucco — near Redwood National Park. Paul stands 45 feet tall, and Babe, 35. (In 2007, Babe’s half-ton head fell off; fortunately, no one was crushed.) Thanks to some archaic inner workings, Paul can blink, turn his head, even speak. And, thanks to anatomical specifics, you can see that Paul’s Babe is a he.

“There is no escaping them,” says the roadside attraction’s website. “The moment you exit your car, you notice something different.”

We drive on by.

{  Ira Glass meets Paul Bunyan: For an amusing listen (or read), here’s This American Life’s “Secret Identity.”  }

As Joni Mitchell chides in “Big Yellow Taxi,” “They took all the trees, put ‘em in a tree museum / they charged the people a dollar and a half just to see ‘em.”

We enter old-growth forests, where the air is sweet, curative, crisp.

As with many trees, redwoods are social organisms. Together, they create their own ecosystems. They provide and share nutrients; their roots are shallow but run far, intermingling with their companions. This is one of nature’s ancient support groups.

Welcome to the "Chandelier Drive-Thru Tree." A magnificent redwood, whose branches (large trees of themselves), sprout strikingly out half-way up, like a candelabra — with a hole the size of a truck hacked into its trunk. So you can drive your bubble gum-chewing kids, who take turns on either end of the back seat to tan their arms on the sunny side of the family station wagon, right through. “Providing a unique treat for travelers.” After nearly ninety years, cars still line up, with kids and adults alike scrambling to take selfies. Of course, it will cost you: five bucks per car, three for motorcyclist or pedestrian.

There are those who want to make merchandise of beauty.

There are those who embrace it, breathe it in.

Then there are those who see a wall and splash dreams across it ...

  murals in San Jose

next time: living a dream : cast of characters
last time: living a dream : the watery part of the world

photos: Troy Howell and Gibson Girl Photography 

We each do something with infinity.
Copernicus stood and spat into its wind. Ramanujan poked a hole through its veil. Beethoven went deaf from listening to its music.

Few of us embrace it. Many of us slip our minuscule selves along its edge, our minds tumbling with half-formed questions. Some choose to ignore it altogether.

The ocean is Earth’s infinity, lapping at our feet. It gives us a glimpse of forever. A matter of perspective, of course, it’s a distortion that our terrestrial view provides. As a tenant of infinity, the ocean is but a droplet. A profound, unfathomable droplet, teeming with finite things — algae, crustacea, whales turning somersaults. It cools this spinning top, nourishes, astonishes us.

                                                                                                           *   *   *

This is second in a set of northern California road trip ramblings.

We enter with quiet joy, Bex and her crew and I.*  We rush toward the water, not wanting to stop but knowing we must. We romp in its frothy edge. Rocks rise against the waves, victimized, but rise nonetheless. They become rugged stepping stones, our stoic tour guides with full impunity should any mishaps occur.

*Bex is my youngest sister (Rebecca); her crew are Grant, 14, and Ben, Charlotte, and Max, 11, 11, and 11, respectively.

The rocks lure us further out, closer in, offering us myriad seaside attractions: a mollusk metropolis … a neon anemone ... a theatrical cave equipped with driftwood props and sound effects.

This purges you, whether you think you need purging or not. A single lungs-full of ocean air will swirl into your mind and sweep old dreams away. What remains is pure wonder. It will inevitably be contaminated as you return to civilized living — but for this suspended moment, there is nothing else. You find no answers, because you’re no longer looking for them.

You feel. You feel the vast influences, the endless pushes and pulls, surges and spins, heights and depths. And the waves — light waves, sound waves, water. You feel the leviathan move.

Our first taste of the ocean, literally, was in LA, where Bex and I shared a platter of raw oysters in celebration of doing a road trip together and of our dad, who loved the briny delicacies. The oysters came from waters off Baja, upper California, and Washington state. According to this selection, the further north you go along the West Coast the milder they are.
I remember my first experience eating a raw oyster. At a private party with artist and writer associates, and, mindful of Jonathan Swift’s quote, “He was a bold man that first eat an oyster,” I was concerned that I would gag. I tried it anyway, napkin-ready … tried it, and smiled.

“These oysters must have led mundane lives,” I told Bex as we finished them, “— they produced no pearls.”

In this moment, the ocean is our oyster.

Not for long.

The tide rises. The cavern is closing up. Another set of props will undoubtedly be delivered. Another tug of the sun and moon and we’ll be floundering in true infinity. There will be little mercy then — not from the natural laws. I think of a story I illustrated for Mary Pope Osborne’s Mermaid Tales from Around the World. In it, a guardian mermaid takes revenge against a soldier’s betrayal of her innocent charge, gripping him around his pounding chest, until the sea fills up his lungs.

We hastily retreat, pockets lumpy with small treasures, ancient delights. They’ll go in a jar in the bathroom, or along a window ledge — an attempt on the part of humans to enhance the unremarkable. But there is a serendipitous phenomenon with sea shells: You take one home and hold it to your ear and hear its constant reminder, “I came from the sea … the sea …” The coast may be thousands of miles away, but its memory sighs there in your hand. 

As we leave this vast, quivering droplet, though it still tows on our senses, the forever, half-formed questions return.
But now we have an answer: “What the ocean said.”

next time: living a dream : beauty, the beast, and the drive-through tree
last time: living a dream : through a portal toward paradise

photos: Troy Howell and Gibson Girl Photography  / "Sun" art by my Oregonian friend, Jim Shields

As I pack my carry-on for a cross-country flight to California, I wrap the fossil I found when I was young and scrambling through hills above Laguna Beach with a friend. I’ve kept it all these years, on a shelf with an incense burner from Syria, my favorite books, and a photo from that time in my life, featuring me and my two bests — Jim and Dave — exploring the Pala Indian Reserve below Palomar Observatory.  

Airport security agents open my case and remove the suspect item. “What is this?” asks one. “A fossilized bivalve,” I say, hoping to sound scientific. It’s a petrified shell on a rock, my inner devil’s advocate grunts, hefty enough to bludgeon somebody’s brains out.

The agents ponder it awhile, then let me pass. A few travelers stare at it, and at me.

Me in transition. Replaying what was and placing it into what is.

Though what is, will be what was, by tomorrow. Tomorrow — it may be days or weeks or months from today — I hope to hand the fossil to Jim, an Oregonian now, whom I have not seen for forty years. It was his foot that struck the object, and I who followed it down an incline, through bracken and poison oak, to find. A joint venture, though I was the one who’d kept it—out of selfishness perhaps, certainly out of amazement with this primeval relic.

I am coming full circle.

I was born in California and lived nearly half my life here. Radiohead’s new Moon Shaped Pool* is my travel soundtrack, particularly “Daydreaming,” with its haunting melody, fragile chimes, tormented strings, heart-aching lyrics. Down to Thom’s reverse murmurings as he retires to a cave, likely a reference to Plato’s allegory of ignorance and knowledge, perception and truth.

Dreamers ...
they never learn, they never learn.
Beyond the point of no return, of no return.
And it’s too late--
the damage is done, the damage is done …

(“… efil ym fo flah … efil ym fo flaH”)

* I resist my editing urge to hyphenate Moon Shaped by considering shaped could serve as a verb: a pool shaped by the Moon. Since tides are pulled by lunar phases, that would be the ocean. But hey, these are musicians, not grammarians.

And yet, as I head up the northern California coast, going from enchantment to enchantment, with each one spinning its own spell, the music dissipates. Other voices swirl in, variations — incomprehensible variations —on a theme called nature (a word too simple for all its vast and mysterious complexities).

Our minds will never expand enough to understand even the fragments.

One of the first signs that I am stepping away from my own reality is a child’s white shoe among weeds. I wonder whether it isn’t lost but simply left behind. For to enter these places you must abandon something. Children know this by instinct. And my own reality, though filled with elaborate illusions of artist and writer, becomes humdrum here, a mere yawn.

I leave it all behind.

The signs continue:

A circular catch of rabbit’s fur (also white) caught on a spur of bark.

A curious question on a hand-me-down whim: Bex asking Max what my name should be and his swift reply, “Merlin.” Bex — an affectionate term for Rebecca, my youngest of three sisters — and her four children, are welcome travel mates on this stretch of the journey. Ben answers readily, too. “Leon.” I can live with both, I say to myself, as much as I’ve lived with the one I was given. A name, of course, is not who you are.

As we look full-eyed to the west, the Pacific winking diamonds at us from dense foliage, Bex and I recall the children’s illustrator Margot Tomes seeing us both at an art exhibition in New York City and calling us eagles. Margot’s first illustrated book was a collection of stories by Daphne du Maurier, including “The Blue Lenses,” in which, after an operation to restore her failing sight, a woman sees people for who they actually are. Margot told us she sees people as animals, and I wonder: Did she have that outlook before or after her work on the book?

And the next sign, both literal and summoning, is a subtle notch in a wayside tree to show fellow seekers that this is a trail to Somewhere. Somewhere running with twists and turns, leading us past nature’s chimeras and surrealisms, until we become thoroughly intoxicated, man, woman, and children alike.

If not for the mark, we may have missed it.

We wade through currents of ferns, clamber over derangements of roots, slip into intimate hollows where you curl into something you didn’t know you were, with no name at all — you could be a toad or a dragonfly — and emerge breathless to enter the next leafy labyrinth. We grow dizzy with sunlight and frondshadow, each of us tangled up in green, in gray, in thick earth-scent.

We trod deep forest duff, so deep it springs back after your foot has passed, as if you never were there. I read about a guy outside Portland who had fallen 120 feet from a Douglas fir and survived because of layers and ages of tree material. A cloud glistened from the ground—some say from his body — when he hit. I read of another who had taken such a fall onto unforgiving dirt, sat up, cursed, and died. The impact had burst his heart.

Nature has no discretion, makes no discrimination. It breathes life and exhales death with equal impassivity.

We cross a small stream that flashes the colors around us; bits of brights remind us we have completely forgotten there is sky.

Burdened trees, deformities of torso and limb, rise up like tragic heroes. They could teach Ents about suffering, but even Tolkien is nameless here. I touch a tree in awe, in compassion. Because humans want to connect, reach out, be a part of the unfathomable fabric. That’s why we skip rocks across water, laze on moss, caw at a crow. It’s a similar desire, I think, that moves us to want to touch a work of art. These trees are haphazard masterpieces. I climb one. Great nests of debris, the hoarding of needle and twig and storm wreckage, weigh them down, darken them. I peer into one mass to see whether it’s an aerie.

And there, filling my eyes and mind, beyond an inlet you must cross — for permission perhaps, certainly for acclimation — breathes earth’s expanse of blue wildness, the moon-shaped and sun-pulled pool called ocean.

The tide is coming in.

I understand that some writers see parentheses and em-dashes as virtually the same. I’m not a grammarian, but I am a writer with a published book or two under my suspenders, so I’m going to address how I use them.

Parentheses. Though not the most popular of grammatical devices, they are handy. They are not equal to an em-dash (pay attention, please)—in fact, they are opposite. Parentheses are useful when you want to make a statement that is less important, almost unnecessary, to the whole, and yet of some interest, or of enough to include. Like an aside in conversation, they add a tidbit of information or comment. The test of whether a parenthetical phrase works is if the sentence or context reads complete without it.

Not so with the em-dash (which I am fond of, by the way). The em-dash is good when you want to emphasize something, call attention to it. (See example above.) Or to clarify, add detail. It can also replace the colon. (See examples further below.) And I use them when a thought, narration, or dialogue is interrupted, at the end of a line. Such as:

“Do you know who wrote that?” he asked. “’America—”
“—the Beautiful?’” I said. “Um ... Elvis?”    [from The Dragon of Cripple Creek]

When it trails off, or for a pause, use the ellipsis.

Parentheses can be awkward. I call them grammatical sociopaths—they distract because they resist group participation. But they do serve a purpose—if anything, they show the rest of the lot how normal we are. I try to use them sparingly (though you wouldn’t know it by this little commentary).

On a technical note, I see lots of manuscripts where the writer uses two dashes to make an em-dash. For a cleaner, more professional look, here’s what you do: Mac users, press the option-shift-hyphen (or dash, or minus) keys. PC users, press the ALT key and type 0151 on the right-hand numeric keypad. Microsoft Word automatically replaces two hyphens with an em-dash when you type them after a word. Also, the em-dash should have no spaces on either side of it in the middle of a sentence.

The em-dash—always welcome. (A parenthesis is welcome as a smile:)  And the ellipsis, well ...

If you were to visit me around this time of year, I might throw you a snowball or two. But alas, we have no snow yet.
Nevertheless, there are always lots of words to go around. Here are snowballs of a different sort.

The form of these poems is called a snowball, where poetry and math come together. Each line has a single word, the first being a single letter, and each following word has an added letter. In some cases, I’ve made a concrete poem, where the shape illustrates the subject. “Convertedevils” includes an inverted snowball. “Transformation” circles back to its title, which has one letter more than the last line, and is turned sideways to convey a growth chart. “A+ to Z” gives Z, at last, its due, and I’ve played with the lines while remaining true to the sequential count.

A bit superfluous perhaps, yet snowballs are fun. You might try your hand at one.


TITLES   1 m  /  2 immortalitree  /  3 convertedevils  /  4 transformation  /  5 A+ to Z

Here is an excerpt from my yet-to-be-published novel, Cygnus. The title refers metaphorically to 19-year-old war-shattered Matthew McCandless, who, home from the Middle East and no longer thriving, hides away in his closet during the day, and is tormented by flashbacks at night. Matthew’s little sister Phoebe is constantly writing poems and drawing pictures for him, which he tapes to the outside of his closet door.
_______________________________________________________________

Phoebe has chosen the purple marker for her letters, because a soldier’s heart is purple, not red.

SomtIms solders nEd ther slEEp.

If Matthew likes her poem he’ll tape it to his closet door, under the swan dream drawing he likes so much.
“I wish I had dreams like that,” he said.
“What kind of dreams do you have?” she asked.
“Um … not swan dreams.”
“This is the swan in the stars,” Phoebe reminded him. “The one you told me about.”

I prA the lord your sol wil kEEp
I dont no whi  war maks U trIed
but ths littl poim wil mAk U

What word rhymes with tired? No matter how hard she thinks, she can’t think of one.

* * *

Someone is calling his name.
Is it his name?
Hm-hm: two syllables. Two sounds stuck together like debris floating toward him on a desert wind.
Muh-huh.
Mmth-you ...
“Matthew! Get down!”
He does not get down. He’s scanning the grounds, examining the face of the concrete structure, pock-marked by a violent disease. The door is solid, shut. Two windows stare blankly at him. He has seen that stare on the enemy’s face; it tells him nothing. Nothing but, “I am your foe. I am the unknown.”
The street is silent, the calm before the storm. Then--
Horizontal hail, bullets hot as hate.
One comes straight for him, its steely, spiraling head the head of a death-bee. He cannot move. This is it, he says. A bullet in the brain, metal meeting flesh, meeting memory and stopping it cold, on a sweltering day, on this city street, in a strange land. He says goodbye to Michelle, who glances over her shoulder from ten thousand miles away, pity flooding her face. He says goodbye to his parents, who stand at the front door, weeping. He says goodbye to--
It blazes past his helmet and slams into a wall.
Lee is there beside him, gripping Matthew’s arm. He has yanked him down.
Corporal Wills yells, “Douglas, the door!”
Douglas aims a grenade and fires. Like a tooth extracted the door is gone, leaving a smoking gap in the brown-stained grimace.
“Clear it!”
They move forward—Wills, Douglas, Matthew, and Lee.
Someone tugs him on the back, and he whips around. Lee’s mom is standing there, her eyes sad-gray, saying, “Promise? Promise? Promise?”
“Lee’s tough, Mrs. Walker” he tells her. “Don’t you worry about Lee.”
Lee is grinning at him. “When I get back—”  
A white-light thunderclap alters their world.
Ashes … ashes …
A muffled voice.
A chunk of concrete in his view.
Mmth-you…
He tries to answer, peels away the pillow.
Smoke ... waves of distortion ... something pale emerging ...
He lifts his head to meet it.
A flower ... floating, unfolding. Pure and white, it opens for him.
A face.
A young girl’s face, calm, with soothing eyes, a crooked, heart-shaped smile.
Phoebe.

* * *

“Hi, Matthew.”
He blinks the mist from his eyes.
“Did you say something?” she asks.
With uncertainty, he shakes his head. “I … don’t think so.”
“Well, it sounded like it to me.” She giggles. “You’re dressed and it’s bedtime!”
He looks at his clock. But it’s dead because he’d unplugged it—the red numerals burned his eyes.
Phoebe leans close, whispering with toothpaste breath, “I have something to show you.” She tugs his arm. “You’re slippery.”
“What is it, Phoebe?”
“Can you come to the window?”
At the window, with their heads underneath the shade, he kneels and she stands, her hand on his shoulder. He raises the window a crack, and the cry of a cricket springs up.
Phoebe points. “See? The moon’s up in a tree.”
It looks like a used cotton ball. “That’s a gibbous moon,” says Matthew.
Phoebe’s face goes blank. “What?”
“Gibbous. It’s lopsided.”
“Is it supposed to be?” Her voice has a squeak in it.
He nods. “It goes through phases. It waxes fuller and brighter, until it’s—”
“It waxes? Like what Michelle did?” The squeak in her voice now shows on her face.
“Phoebe, you’re too much. When the moon waxes it gets brighter.”
“A what kind of moon?”
“Gib-us.”
“Like, gib-us this day our daily bread?”
“There you go again.” Though he doesn’t feel like it, he can’t help smiling. “Gibbous means it’s not complete, not all there.”
“Oh.” Then she says delightedly, “Like the soap that went down the drain!”
Another smile. “Did it?”
More giggles. “Yes!”
“You gotta watch that with soap.”
“Or like your hand,” she says.
He yawns in place of a reply.
“Matthew,” says Phoebe, “what rhymes with tired?”
“Tired … hmm … I don’t know.”
“I don’t either.”
“Fired, maybe?”
“Fired? Is that a word?”
“It’s a word.”
She tells him goodnight and turns to go, when out of the moonglow and shadows comes something that brings her back, and Matthew hasn’t moved.
Who-who, whoo-whoooo.
What a haunting sound. A sentinel noting secrets in the night. It’s been a long time since Matthew’s heard it, the call of an owl.
It could be the same owl, or one of its offspring, that he encountered when he was a boy, as he and Lee played in the woods, having a fight with two laser pointers from his dad’s small arsenal. They were honing their skills of stealth and strategy, dodging and ducking around trees, aiming the thin red lines at each other, while a chorus of insects provided the score. When the chorus suddenly stopped, Matthew heard a movement from behind, just above his head, and whirled to shoot his light on Lee. It wasn’t Lee. It was a great barred owl, perched on a branch, glaring at him, authority in its wings. Matthew lowered his light, and through his fascination began to feel shame. Against this raw reality, their play had shrunk to foolishness.
In a faraway voice, Phoebe asks, “What’s he saying?” and Matthew doesn’t answer.
She’s tapping his shoulder now.
He stirs himself, and says, “I think he’s looking for a friend.”

© 2015 by Troy Howell

An enormous soot-black toad, covered in bulges and bumps, sat opposite Sparkles in the grass, droning mournfully.

“When a child is startled awake,” he was saying, “from a nightmare, you see, the nightmare ends up here. It’s intended to just fade away. But many nightmares are bold, refusing to give up the ghost. They will not yield to their fate.” He paused to clear his throat. “It is I who must keep them bound, or they’ll torment the child again. If a bad dream tries to escape, I pounce and swallow it whole.”

Early evening shone soft in his eyes, but the moon was hard and cold.

“See these swellings all over my skin? Each one is a—” Suddenly leaping across Sparkles he met a shadowy, indistinct shape, slipping eel-like from the ground. His tongue lashed out, a quick black whip, and it was done. He sat in the grass again, as if nothing had taken place. “—nightmare I’ve swallowed.”

Sparkles was speechless. She repositioned herself to sit facing the toad once more, and studied his disfigured form.

The toad’s eyes bulged, he cleared his throat again, and smiled his serene, horizontal smile. “Another dream down,” he said. “Though occasionally I miss one. They’re sneaky.” The tip of his tongue passed over his lips. “Tasty, in a gristly sort of way.”

Sparkles shivered at the thought, and continued staring. 

“If you’re waiting for a new bump to appear,” the toad said, “that won’t occur until morning, when I climb back under the stone.”

“Oh,” she said, blushing a little. “I didn’t mean to gawk.”

He blinked his eyes slowly as if to say, It’s quite all right.

She motioned to the crumbled walls. “This place, these ruins—so that’s what they’re all about, a nightmare burial ground?”

He nodded. Raising his flimsy four-fingered hand, he swept it across the horizon. “The Ruins of Nhyte straddles the line between Here and There, between the world of humans and the world of fairy folk.”

Sparkles gasped. She had never heard such a thing.

“If you proceed that direction,” he pointed to the land beyond the tower, “you’ll come to a stream. It’s the Stream of Consciousness. Once you cross over, you’re in the human realm.”

“I ... I had no idea!” Her wings shuddered at the thought; it was too frightfully strange. She stood to get a better look, even a glimpse, but fog was gathering there.

The toad settled into his spot. “Now I must be watchful. Children are going to bed.”


text & art © 2015 by Troy Howell

Kathryn Carr’s fantastic work-in-progress illustration for my picture book, Lizbeth Lou Got a Rock in Her Shoe (Ripple Grove Press, 2016). To see more of Kathryn's work, here's her website. I'll be talking more about this book later in the year.