Squatting by the Gift Shop of Me's...

I liked the movie All the Pretty Horses. It was really good. A good rendition of one of my favorite books. Except it left out my two favourite scenes. Like Lord of the Rings, without the Forest King dude, what's with that?

One of the favourite scenes they left out was when he was down in Mexico, his gf dumps him, and he goes into town and gets drunk and gets in fights, over and over, wakes up bloody and battered in an alley. He doesn't fight to win, just to fight. This scene expresses something essentially male.

The other is early in the book, he's walking up a dry riverbed in the morning, going to do some work for his Dad on their ranch. He comes up suddenly, startled, there's a First Nations dude (the author uses the word 'Indian') really close to him, squatting by the riverbank. When he looks at the First Nations dude, the First Nations dude looks at him. He's an alert young guy, and used to the outdoors, so he thinks, 'how did I not notice someone so close to me'?
He didn't notice because the First Nations dude wasn't looking at him. He was just squatting by the riverbank, staring off into the middle distance. But he was watching him, and that's how he was watching him: by not looking at him.
He sees from the experience: that's the way to hunt - you never look at your prey. All living things are aware of being watched. I would expand that to - one's destiny is a living thing.

I think I picked it up from a Steinbeck novel, but I certainly couldn't tell you which one, although I could narrow it down to one of the four I've read. Squatting, and maybe scratching in the dirt. With a stick or something. Staring off into the distance. I've done it for years. It's not about thinking, but contemplating.. sort of..
But I never really applied it to life until reading Pretty Horses. I guess the Steinbeck must have been Grapes of Wrath.

I did the hike from Radar Hill to Schooner Cove again the other day while in the Tofino area. That's the one I wrote about in The Sea (it's still warm, and still safe, here.) That's my favorite entry so far, although I love the Objective Observer too. If you want to know who I am (not saying you do ;) The Sea is it.

This time I did it with three friends; Jesse James, Gillian Anderson, and Jane Austen. I promised I'd change people's names. ;) It had been so personal last time, and this time - so social! I loved it, but a different experience.. we stopped and ate tu'cup - sea urchin - raw. Was delicious. Like life; sweet, unexpected, mysterious. Life is like a box of raw sea urchins...

To the land conduct the roamer,
To the open air conduct me,
To behold the moon in heaven,
And the splendour of the sunlight;
See the Great Bear's stars above me,
And the shining stars in heaven.
...
   Headlong in the water falling,
With his hands the waves repelling,
Thus the man remained in ocean,
And the hero on the billows.

I suppose the last year (almost) of my life has been an act of faith, I read a thing a friend posted on fb today - the top five regrets people have on their deathbed. Leaping into the unknown too much will not be one of mine...

And then we went into the sea cave, and we went around the cliff, and took some cool shortcuts I would never have guessed about. Gillian knew about them, she grew up in the area. And in Schooner Cove I found a feather, from the daughter of my brother eagle, and put it aside for a new friend back in Van. It was the first time I'd been back to this sacred place in about 6 months, and I'd missed it.
One month is too long... as Jane said, "I'd like to do this hike every week!"
mmm - ok.

My second-first blog entry was subtitled, I Am That, yep, this period has been about being who I am. Regret number one was: I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

I may have risked trashing my career and finances, and I'm sure (know) some people think I'm nuts, but...  I've spent the last year living life true to myself. I mentioned in The Sea how, all those years ago when I first came to this coast, and walked this shoreline - it was the first time I really saw the limitlessness, the "Gift Shop" of Life - the fact that you can do whatever the hell you want with your life - Anything!!

In squatting by the river, the sea, my path, I've been 'not thinking so much as abandoning thought,' I 'went through open country, over water meadows streams' - across this land, across my inner land, .. envisioning, digesting, fogging the mind, stirring my soul - "seeing" what comes next.. I've had time to think about all the future possible lives I could have, directions and choices I can take or make, like I said in The Sea - 'walking by the myriad images of the future', or something like that...

What does come next??

I always felt like I was a sailor in a past life, I've always said, when upon leaving for a sketchy journey, and friends were worried I'd die - "I will die, the old me will never return, and a new me will be born, out there somewhere, and...  that will probably happen many times.."

I was a sailor. I was born upon the tide
And with the sea I did abide.
I sailed a schooner round the Horn of Mexico
I went aloft and furled the mainsail in a blow
And when the yards broke off they said that I got killed
But I am living still.