From Middle Dyott to Parents' Basement

Today marks the end of my stay in the Middle Dyott apartment at the Montana Artists Refuge. I flew from Helena to Denver and then to Pittsburgh where my mom and brother picked me up. I have to say, the past couple days I've been feeling a bit melancholy about leaving Basin. I've met a lot of really, really great people this past month, both other artists and townspeople. I would have liked to have stayed another month-- at least.

It has been incredibly beneficial to have "a room of my own" to just focus on writing for a month. Overall, I'm satisfied with what I accomplished while at the refuge. I think if I could have written more if I would have sacrificed some of my traveling and experiences, but honestly I'm so glad I did everything thing that I did. I have so much more material to write about now too.

Glacier National Park and Yellowstone were truly AMAZING. I highly recommend them to anyone considering going out that way. Glacier is a lot less crowded and it is really breathtaking, but Yellowstone is just a very very special place. It felt like I was wondering through a prehistoric world at times.

A lot has happened since I last posted and I'd like to revisit some of those things, but tonight isn't the night. So there will be at least one more post on this blog.

It's good to be home and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again, but I miss the mountains already. I think I have Montana in my blood now.

Stay tuned for the conclusion of Live From the Dental Floss Farm!

On The Road Again...

        Last night I got back from the Glacier National Park trip. It was incredible (I'll rant more about it and post more pics later) and my road trip buddies (Tonya, Nicole, and Ali) were all super cool. Culturally speaking, it was a really interesting group with a Swiss-Austrailian (Tonya) an Australian (Nicole) an Iranian-American (Ali), and an American (myself). I found myself translating quite a bit between Ali and the girls. :) We had some really great conversations about stuff you normally don't discuss at the dinner table.
        Today I worked on a found object poem that I'll discuss in further detail later. It's half sculpture, half poem. It's somewhat inspired by Joseph Cornell's shadowboxes and somewhat by the surrealist concept of exquisite corpse. Also, it requires a non traditional effort to read. I finished the basic sculpture (see photo) and need to finish writing the poem so I can paint it in strategic places. This is one of those more than meets the eye pieces and physical manipulation is not only encouraged but required to read the poem.
        Tomorrow Tonya, Nicole and I are renting a car in Helena and driving to a ghost town called Virginia City then to Bozeman where we'll couch surf a night or two and drive to Yellowstone National Park. Should be back sometime Thursday evening. Until then!
        

Do These Pants Make My Butte Look Big?

        This evening Cynthia and I drove down to the Old Wild West mining mecca known as Butte (that's with a long "u" as in beautiful). The Woodford Gallery was hosting a fundraiser for the Montana Artist's Refuge called "Strawberry Moon Celebration 2008". For a $20 suggested donation you got your fill of strawberry desserts-- everything from chocolate covered strawberries to strawberry bread.
        Cynthia played a couple of songs and I read Hurricane Rain, an old crowd favorite, and two poems that I've written here in Montana. The audience was great: very attentive and responsive. On quite a few occasions I had to pause my reading of Hurricane Rain because the laughter was so loud.
        Later Cynthia and I went out to dinner with Jennifer, Karen and her husband Steve, who are all involved with the artist refuge. It was interesting to hear about their lives and artistic pursuits. Jennifer transforms old wool sweaters and other old articles of clothing into new wearable and non-wearable creations. Karen develops her own photos and weaves. Her and Steve have seven horses, two goats, and some dogs and cats.
        After dinner, I loaded up my take-out container with the dinner rolls that came in the basket, and Steve made a comment about "starving artists" before he declared he was treating us all to dinner. Very cool to be around such a positive, supportive group of people.

        Also, at the strawberry celebration a woman named Emma loaned me a book of William Stafford poetry called The Way It Is. I'm looking forward to reading it on the way up to Glacier National Park. I'm leaving Friday morning with the two Australians and an Iranian student named Ali who will be our driver. He'll also be filming and photographing the girls playing around in the snow for a multimedia project they are working on. Should be a great time.

        By the way, thanks to all who have been reading my blog. It's good to hear from everyone! :)

Why Can't I Quit You?

        So I didn't know exactly what to expect when Cynthia invited me to the cowboy poetry reading that was held in Boulder yesterday. She told me that evidently there's a whole sub-genre of poetry centered around cowboy culture. Now I thought that this could probably go a couple of different ways, and it's fair to say I was more than a little curious.
        After almost missing my ride due to my afternoon cat nap becoming a little bit too epic, I saddled up the Honda Accord with Cynthia driving and Nicole and Tonya in the back. Ten minutes later we were walking into a little Methodist church built in the 1870's for Boulder's second annual cowboy poetry reading-- yeehaw! Well okay, there wasn't any yeehawing going on. But there was some fun sing-a-longs. In fact the stage was split between poets and musicians, which gave a nice variety. Although many of the poems were rhyming couplets, which can sometimes be a little painful, there were a couple that really struck me. One epic poem (that happened to be metered and rhymed) about a fictional cowboy who rescued a baby and then later when he was old and decrepit she was his nurse. It was pretty touching. The poet, whose name was Sara, also wrote about being a businesswoman in Helena and longing for the range. She was quite good. Also of note was Kerri Lyn Kumasaka, a woman of Japanese descent who moved to Boulder from Seattle. I ended up buying her book. Cynthia, my jazz musician neighbor sang and played a song on the piano called "Cow on Capitalist Avenue" about a cow lost in New York City. It was written from the cow's point of view...very, very creative. The crowd loved it too. Afterwards there was a ho-down of sorts, with hot dogs and "gourmet" tube steak. Also, some excellent peanut butter cookies.

Moosing Take Two

        Tonight I went out to moose country again with Cynthia. This time Tonya and Nicole came along. The Australians must be good luck because we saw three! A mother and calf which were kind of far away and scrammed rather quickly and then a beautiful single cow that was chomping on a willow bush. It was very exciting! We also saw two elk and a handful of deer.
        I was looking at the big giant moon with the binoculars and out of nowhere Cynthia goes "Do you see the fat woman kissing the old black man?" This is evidently what she sees when she looks at the moon! She's such a riot!
        As an aside, June 12 was my year anniversary since becoming a vegetarian. On my journaling software there is a little icon labeled "Taco" and when you click it, it gives you a randomized Simpsons quote. Here was today's:

Homer: Are you saying you’re never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal.
Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.

The Trouble With Coffee and The Internet

It's been an unusual day here on the Dental Floss Farm so far. I woke up at around 6 am yelling at my brother because I had a bad dream that he borrowed my laptop and returned it with a grotesque colony of black fungus covering the entire keyboard. I couldn't get back to sleep so I climbed down from the loft an hour later and intended to get my day started by making a big breakfast of eggs, home fries, and toast. For something different I decided to make coffee instead of tea this morning. It's funny how sometimes a simple decision like that can alter the next couple hours of your life.

Let me explain: when I went to pour the water in the coffee pot I noticed it looked rather gross. Brown spots, maybe fungus? I don't know. I didn't want to take any chances though, so I decided to look on the internet for directions about how to clean. Vinegar and water it said. So I followed the directs and ran the solution through and then ran a couple more of straight water. By this time the fact that I had only had 4 or 5 hours of sleep kicked in all at once so I decided to scrap breakfast for the moment and go back to bed. I didn't expect to sleep until 1pm.

So I climbed back down and began my second crack at breakfast, which now was brunch. It had been on my mind to look up where in Montana Ted Kaczynski, the unabomber, had lived. So while my home fries were cooking I jumped on Wikipedia and found out he was from Lincoln and then Google mapped that location from Basin and found it's an hour and a half's drive away. So of course I was intrigued and had to read the introduction of Industrial Society and It's Future, his manifesto, over breakfast. And then of course after breakfast I had to read the details surrounding his life, fascinating by the way, and began clicking on a number of the embedded links. The major divergence happened when I clicked from T.K. to Jacques Ellul, who T.K. had cited as being a major influence in his writing. Ellul was a French philosopher, sociologist, theologian, and Christian anarchist. He wrote over 40 books including The Technological Society which is his most important work.

Anyway, there I was with my laptop that I had just dreamt was overrun by black fungus, reading about the dangers of technology for hours while clicking through links like there's no tomorrow and bouncing from topic to topic in my browser tabs. How ironic. I'm going to go outside now.

Why did the Dharma Bum cross the road?

        Yesterday was by far my most incredible day out here. I planned to take a jaunt on Moe's Huffy to get out of my apartment for a bit, but it turned into an odyssey as soon as I made the turn onto Cataract Creek Road.
        Cataract Creek Road is a narrow dirt road that winds its way along Cataract Creek and deep into the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. At the entrance near Basin there's a horse ranch nestled in a lush valley that's surrounded by nothing but mountains and sky. The scenery is absolutely stunning. The further back I pedaled, the closer the road paralleled the creek until the incline began steadily climbing and became mountainside on my right and creek on my left.
        Cataract Creek at this time of year (because of the snow melt in the mountains) is a roaring, foaming, gushing body of water that tries to get down the mountains as quickly as possible. I climbed down to a place where it was accessible, and the water was ice cold. No surprise there. While I was poking around down there looking at the stones a woman appeared on the road and called down to me. In trouble again? But no, she was just going for a walk and noticed me.
        She asked me if I was from the Artist's Refuge. At this point I'm thinking: what is there a sign on my back or something? Is it really that obvious that I'm not from around here? But anyway, we got to talking and turns out she owns a store in town called Montana Dreamwear and her husband is a poet by the name of Earl E. Martin who is a Vietnam Vet and has a book out called A Poet Goes To War. I'm going to have to get my hands on a copy.
        Celeste and I had a very esoteric conversation about the creek and the mountains and the air, and she pulled out a black rosary and told me that although not Catholic anymore she still comes up here as often as possible to be spiritual. I agreed with her that it was indeed a very spiritual place. I said it felt very familiar, like I had been here before in a dream or something, and she replied that I must have an old soul. I don't know about such things, but I do know that if I lived in Basin I would be walking or biking that road as often as possible.
        When we parted ways I continued on up the road as it got steeper and steeper and finally I got to a dark cool side of the mountain that still had snow on it. I don't know how far I traveled, probably 7 or 8 miles one way, but I was gone for hours and really didn't feel a want for anything. Riding back was all down hill, a tad scary on the ole' Huffy with the weak breaks and no suspension, but it got the job done and I wasn't even conked in the head by any falling rocks.
        I'll try to get some pictures up the next time I go, I forgot to bring my camera.

6732 Words And Counting...

        Tomorrow it will be one week since arriving here at Montana Artist's Refuge. I just tabulated my production thus far (don't worry I didn't count them manually, MacJournal keeps track) and I came up with 6732 words between my blog entries, memoir project, and poetry. To some reading this that may seem like a lot, to others not that much. It's difficult to quantify creativity in terms of word counts but I'll say this much: I'm doing good but I could be doing better. Procrastination is a tough nut to crack and I feel that I've spent too much time avoiding writing so far. The good thing is one can only procrastinate so much in the middle of a June snowstorm like we got here today (I woke up to 2-3 inches on the ground and it continued snowing and blowing all day). That being said, I feel like I've settled into a writing groove these past couple of days and feel optimistic about what I'm going to accomplish here. My goal for next week by June 18 is an additional 13464 words, which is double my current word count.

        Now a word from my sponsor Owyhee® Idaho Spud: "The Candy Bar That Makes Idaho Famous":
                        
                        *BEGIN CORNY MUSIC*
                                If you want a candy bar that's not a dud,
                                Reach for an Owyhee Idaho Spud,
                                Rich chocolatey-coconut shell,
                                Surrounds our mystery gooey gel,
                                So if you want a treat for not a lot of dough,
                                Grab the only candy bar shaped like a potato,
                                Owww-yyy-heeee! Idaho Spud!
                                "The Candy Bar That Makes Idaho Famous."
                        *END CORNY MUSIC*

        Now a word of advice from me: if you are ever in the tiny little grocery store in Boulder, Montana and you spy an Owyhee® Idaho Spud in the candy section next to the checkout, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT reach for it. Don't be deceived into thinking its 1970's style wrapper is "retro." In reality it has probably been sitting there on the shelf since then. Don't think "For 69 cents how can I lose?" You can loose, believe me. Don't be fooled by the ingredients that list chocolate and coconut, because it's not an oversized Mounds bar shaped like a potato, it's a hideous abomination of a candy bar filled with only God (and the chemists who mistakenly created it in the lab experiment gone horribly wrong) knows what. And yes, it is really that bad. In fact, for this monstrosity I think I must reference the immortal words of the famous cultural critic known as Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons: Worst candy bar ever. No wonder Idaho is nowhere near famous.