"THE LONGING TO BE PURE IS OVER"

consumed (james tate).

Why should you believe in magic,
pretend an interest in astrology
or the tarot? Truth is, you are

free, and what might happen to you
today, nobody knows. And your
personality may undergo a radical

transformation in the next half
hour. So it goes. You are consumed
by your faith in justice, your

hope for a better day, the rightness
of fate, the dreams, the lies,
the taunts. —Nobody gets what he

wants. A dark star passes through
you on your way home from
the grocery: never again are you

the same—an experience which is
impossible to forget, impossible
to share. The longing to be pure

is over. You are the stranger
who gets stranger by the hour.

By now I thought I would have written ten brilliant Montana novels and be the toast of the State.

By now I thought I would have won Publisher's Clearing House and have enough money to fix all my roofs, add a front entry shed, add a rear deck, fence my lot and buy a laundry twinset and a new pickup.

By now I thought I would have built a languishing congregation into hundreds of members, a unique new building, and a really nice office.

By now I thought I would have lost forty pounds and begun to dress in nothing but denim jeans and snap shirts, like Paul Dyck.

By now I thought I'd have this house really clean and all the books organized.  Also, the  filing cabinets of material sorted and edited.

By now I thought I'd have finished writing "The Bone Chalice" and found a publisher, and also finished writing the later version that would so satisfyingly have brought in the blooming of the humanities, neuro-research, embodiment theory, and how to call the sacred while avoiding religious institutions.

By now I thought I could tell you about the co-writer I worked with for a while.

By now I thought I'd be the person I aspire to be -- as soon as I figured out what that was.

But life intervened.

Anyway, I changed my mind.  I don't care about that stuff anymore.  Well, maybe part of it.

Things happened.

I could have died on the buffalo roundup.  Or of burns in the foundry.  Or of suicide at the end of marriage. Or while out in uniform on the streets of Portland, making people mad.  I could have died at the permit desk of Portland Bureau of Buildings even though I always kept bear spray in my desk.  (I don't know whether that would have helped the last victims of in-house shooting.)

Easily I could have died on the road, given as much driving as I've done late at night, long distances, old vehicles, through wretched weather, stunned with ideas and wrestling with issues .

I thought I would be repaid with praise, admiration, people asking me for more.  But NOT.  Mostly no one noticed.  A few attached for the wrong reasons, thinking I was someone else.

So what do I care?  Life is a process and if there is no conclusion until long after it could have been, isn't that enough?  I think it is.  Anyway, what might happen next?

By now I thought I'd have this house really clean and all the books organized.  Also, the  filing cabinets of material sorted and edited.

By now I thought I'd have finished writing "The Bone Chalice" and found a publisher, and also finished writing the later version that would so satisfyingly have brought in the blooming of the humanities, neuro-research, embodiment theory, and how to call the sacred while avoiding religious institutions.

By now I thought I could tell you about the co-writer I worked with for a while.

By now I thought I'd be the person I aspire to be -- as soon as I figured out what that was.

But life intervened.

Anyway, I changed my mind.  I don't care about that stuff anymore.  Well, maybe part of it.

Things happened.

I could have died on the buffalo roundup.  Or of burns in the foundry.  Or of suicide at the end of marriage. Or while out in uniform on the streets of Portland, making people mad.  I could have died at the permit desk of Portland Bureau of Buildings even though I always kept bear spray in my desk.  (I don't know whether that would have helped the last victims of in-house shooting.)

Easily I could have died on the road, given as much driving as I've done late at night, long distances, old vehicles, through wretched weather, stunned with ideas and wrestling with issues .

I thought I would be repaid with praise, admiration, people asking me for more.  But NOT.  Mostly no one noticed.  A few attached for the wrong reasons, thinking I was someone else.

So what do I care?  Life is a process and if there is no conclusion until long after it could have been, isn't that enough?  I think it is.  Anyway, what might happen next?