In the bathroom I turned all the lights off, and raised the water higher then usual. It was burning hot; my feet were red for hours after. The steam swirled around me and I thought I was outside in the freezing cold mist of Humboldt. On my stomach I was able to submerge my head and ears so that I could get some sort of pure silence. The TV and voices disappeared. The silence was comforting and there the water burned up a lot of anger. I blew bubbles and threatened the water with a surge of waves. I lay half suspended in the tiny tub and thought about how I could be better. There was no offer of advice. Minutes passed and I continued to soak my face and submerge my ears. The water was the place I felt best, the best of the whole day in the hot water. I imagined it passing through my skin to my soul where it tried so hard to cleanse. Warm water makes me feel safe; I think the warmth is precisely the reason why. Baths are always my first remedy for almost anything. I reluctantly left the tub later, and returned silent. I was warm in the chill of the room. Nothing could touch me. And I waited again, just waited for something. Always waiting.

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Houda Point Sunset
Originally uploaded by skinnymalinkee.

January 16
Humboldt again. This time we drove up the 101 all the way. It was raining and we must have seen about twenty separate rainbows on the way up. The 101 between Santa Barbara and San Francisco, follows the east side of the Coast Ranges through the rift valley. In the rainy season the valley is green and the stormy clouds part letting in patches of sunlight fall on the hills. Our neighbor says we missed one of the worst storms in Northern California’s history. Power was out in some parts of the county for the better part of a month. Hundreds of downed trees, and potholes. Landslides had washed out the 101 and we had to be escorted through the area by a truck. CalTrans workers were posted along the wrecked guardrail watching the hillsides ominously. Parts of the road just seemed to be slipping away down the slope. We had to spend the night in Willits (Haha Willits) because they shut the road off completely for the night. But eventually we made it back to the remote area that I love so much.

January 24
David Hume says we are bundles of perceptions, structure and convention guide us. Alan Watts says we follow logos, defining, labeling trying to separate to understand things. Mythos however brings us into harmony with flow and reality. The Great Stream. The rapture as Joseph Campbell would call it. Mythos is a medium for us to touch the divine. In almost every mythology including the bible when a mortal asks to look upon the face of the divine he is told he will certainly perish, but the divine reveals itself in indirect ways and so a mortal may withstand some physical connection and not die. Rumi the Muslim poet said a story is like water in that it is heated for a bath. We only touch the water, not the fire that heats it; therefore water is a medium for interacting with the fire but not getting burned. In physics we study the particles that make up life. We see patterns, flux and no defining lines between us and the sky, us and the animals, us and the desk and chair you sit at. Everything in constant motion. We continually denote things, giving them words, symbols so that the thing and the word become interchangeable. Connotation allows us to see reality in-between the lines and all the things going along with the word we have given something. So it is impossible to encounter reality, which is everything not just, sectioned off into one thing through denotation/logos we can only reach it through mythos/connotations.

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