The Fireplace Records, Chapter 47
Shoveling Up some Dharma
Caught on the Edges of the West: Highway 101
The Fireplace Records
Four Days in Grayland
Shoveling Up Some Dharma
Mixing up with water a 60 pound bag of Redi-Mix cement, by hand, using a flat metal mixing bin, water hose, a flat-nosed shovel, and shoveling work efforts by me. We used the mixed concrete slush, "Mud", shovel by shovel full of "Mud" over and and over. The hand shoveled batch of concrete slush, carefully wetted for various building constrution projects, created over and over.
Repeated practice can improve one's skills, reduce workoad, and give to us the real life body-mind experences of working,
ways of being-in-the-world, when making things, producing things, doing things.
This sort of workday construction shoveling efforts for eight hours of work a day,
five days a week;
just think about it,
sink your analytical and feeling sharp teeth
into the feeling memories of when mixing concrete.
I never worked that hard.
[The back of my mind
was bounced around and hurt.]
My father bough two acres of a hillside property, with a clear wide view of the San Gabriel Valley, California, in 1957, in Hacienda Heights, He lived and worked there at "the ranch" for forty years from 1957-1997. In 1997 my dad died at age 82, of complications from congestive heart failure, old age, diabetes, and strokes.
In the 1960's I would do 8 to 12 hours of construction work at the ranch each week, attend Catholic High School, play high school team sports, and later attend college and work at the City of Commerce Public Library.
The land was in the Hacienda Heights, Puente Hills,
Turnbull Canyon, North Whittier Heights;
and Colima Road - Highway 30 Regions;
From Rolling Springs on High at the junction with the Angeles Crest Highway
south to Huntington Beach low tide,
85 miles, up to down, Snow to Surf, a scenic ride.
I'd take a bus from Hacienda Heights on Colima Road 30,
through the many southern cities,
Orange County Newer,
and ending at the Seashore at Huntington Beach CA.
I had cousins living in the Stanton suburban rectangles.
We lived within 25 miles of the Pacific Ocean at Huntington Beach.
I would walk a lot,
having all-weather awakenings.
Joining our summertime emblems:
kites and flapping canvas tens,
keeping wind and sand at bay;
Less clothing, showing more human flesh
and shape, feeling open in the sun;
Wet with Sea surf, boogie boarding or body surfing,
a cool satisfied wet body-mind,
seventeen and strong
[eighty now and fading on.]
Sitting huddled around a San Clemente State Beach campfire,
on a dark winter night, exploring youtful enjoyments.
Standing on wet piers, looking at the waves rocking below,
up and down, back and forth, steadily to the shore,
On some lost late autumn morning
long ago in the San Clemente Pier in a parking lot,
people sorting pier fishing gear, bait, food, drink, raingear, chairs ...
The Pacific, always calling, draws the fishermen nearer.
The jetties drew me, the Bays and harbors drew me,
the hard relentless winter strorm seas smashing
into the Bandon Oregon Sea Stacks and rocky cliffs
all drew me, inticiced me, startled me, the rivers drew me;
seeing the tide lines that mark at the shore,
living with these fluctuations, dying with these fluctuations,
doomed yet divine;
drawn to the Pacific, clinging to the Pacific
a lifeline, a sturdy vine, a factual mind
a poem, just hanging on, on a fisherman's line, sometimes rhymed.
1,000 Collaged Images of the Golden Gate Bridge in my brain.
Rolling in and out, past roadway signs
[Highway 101 at Port Angeles, Aberdeen, Astoria, Newport, Brookings,
Eureka, Redwoods, Santa Paula, San Francisco, San Jose,
Salinas, Santa Barbara, Ventura, San Pedro, San Diego .]
Sitting now on a rocky cliff at Bandon. Below us are massive sea stacks
splattered with surf spray as huge waves come smashing into rock.
Powerful sights and sounds never forgotten.
