THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH

148. THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH:

How lonely is it at the bottom ? I shan't say but I was sure alone and underneath everything else but did anyone ever tell me it's 'lonesome' at the bottom? never ? and so I'm gonna' be a no-name back-scratching cowboy for the rest of my days and get buried in some paupers' graveyard with no one to save and those are now MY plans for the future and AMEN to that - leave my toes pointing up and let buzzards feast on my face for none of it will matter to me - ('and that moment when the bird sings very close / to the music of what happens') : the 'music' here might refer to a hidden mystical system of high order (Seamus Heaney) OR to the music of the arbitrary (as John Cage would have it) but personal form is a personal solution and the rest doesn't matter ('I watched just today some swooning hawk rise high and up and swoop and dip and within it I sensed that motor of all nature and everything natural running on without sense or governance in the speeding fabric of ALL THAT IS and I saluted - for lack of anything better to do - all that which I saw) and it's at this time that I deign to take routine and make a magic from it : strawberry jam in dollops on vanilla ice cream or a headless nail hammered perfectly into a highly polished piece of molding and the 'Loneliness' I mentioned before then pales when compared with perfection (the ART of doing something perfectly right and with all the proper steps and awarenesses of doing : the ART which goes into the ACT) - oh bury my heart on the lone prairie oh bury my heart on the lone prairie.
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When the BIRD sings very close to the MUSIC of what happens.