"all you need is (are) slugs " a Washington State Travel Page by tmmcgrath

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The photo above is of an extraordinary, intellectual, strange-strange old man who lives in Olympia, Washington. I had a long story filed about his...well, enigimatic mega-quirks. It was written by a friend of mine who spent a lot of time with him, essential hired as his driver and handy person. It is a long/interesting/ frustrating/intriguing/unsual story that must have been deleted from my files. I met him...and oddly enough he agreed to be photographed. I won't go further with this story...I can't tell it with the detail and color of my friends account. Basically...he was in the U S military from the mid 1940s to early 60's...a Cold War jet mechanic stationed in New Mexico. What is responsible for the weird-weird twist to this very wise man, is that he was subjected by the military to some intense LSD and mescaline research...the very powerful stuff.

for no logical reason except stumbling upon a file concernig some of my journal writing...I've enclosed some insights (?) totally irrelevant to the state of Washington. I'll make up for that. It's not short, but it's an into...perhaps an intro to .........."the Twilight Zone."

prelude to a journal 25 April 2001
East Glacier, Montana

write on

I believe it all started in the Spring of ‘72, my senior year in high school, when I wrote an unexpectedly well received short story for Advanced Composition class. I think I enjoy writing. Yeah, that's when it all began...if it can be nailed down to just one moment, one exercise in writing...that's when I made the discovery; I love to write.

art ... reveling and rebelling beyond the boundaries transcendental bliss, or adrift in a decaying orbit

Of course...within its vast boundaries, the boundaries of love that...well, let's call it the nebula within us, the nebula love, or the love nebula...the implicit nebula ruthless passion. It's a very ‘cause and effect' kind of place, space ,whatever. Serendipitous exhilaration, ironic desolation, omnipotent ambiguity, shadow and light, et cetera. You've stared at the exquisite, ungraspable sky, the weightless womb surrounding the nebula ruthless passion, also known as the transient love nebula, or the nebula of transient passion and ruthless benevolence. It's vast, abysmal, unpredictable, unparalleled in its capacity to awaken, deliver unquestionable revelations, expanding powers of perception far beyond your idolized walls of imagination...there you cease the to fight, and dismiss the paralyzing burden of self- admired obsession .

Unconditional surrender, you graciously return the wounds and medals The Perplexed Congregation bestowed upon you... A Saturday night of wine, praise and trinkets, recognition for accepting the endless burden of the artists struggle... The Struggle...you read about it long before you realized... the classic, and particular tale of those addicted to exploration and creation...loosely defined as artist...writer, painter, musician, et cetera...a producer of decorations, an anonymous, self-enslaving role to plug a leak in The Congregations numbed senses.

Fulfilled with fearless conviction after the divine epiphany. It is a state of earned, squandered, and re-earned bliss. The long awaited, then forgotten, spontaneous rendezvous with an eternal moment...offering an uncommon glimpse inside the invisible nebula of transient passion and ruthless benevolence...a momentary glimpse that records an empowering, eternal image; a masterpiece of intellectual, emotional and spiritual expression. A flawed mortals creation of unquestionable perfection, a rare image, a work of art that is clearly grasped, fully savored, and witnessed by all without pretentious critique, or mystified stupor...no self righteous, over intellectualized art autopsies, no confused, or impatient observers...the masterpiece, hangs microscopically, eternally within a mind and soul. It is an image come to life, now the observer acts and reacts...tasting the exact aroma of music felt in the souls pulse of the creator when he moved upon his creation, feeling the image draw its first breath. This is the full and enriching, revolving life cycle of art...be it an enormous oil painting of intriguing abstraction created by Picasso (such as the recently discovered Picasso abstraction of Fidel Castro dancing a nude tango with Lady Bird Johnson during a bullfight in Barcelona, as the skewered bull bleeds at their feet, and large, pink, exotic flower petals thrown by frenzied bullfight fans rain erotically across the expanse of canvas)...OR be it dunes of shifting, brilliant white gypsum laid across miles of southern New Mexico, long morning dunes glow orange, blue-white shadows reveal long patterns of detailed sand ripples, dunes converging erotically as edges fade into a single crease of long thighs meeting torso, random footprints cross the fine-boned ripples, descending a 20 foot high dune of yucca studded blinding white sand...later...edgeless footprints of soft, deep sand drifting easy and smooth as liquid from each avalanching step...et cetera et cetera, add a 50 mph wind and erasing tracks instantly, ripples build and vanish...the sun disappears as sand clouds rise...the tone of light becomes monotonously seductive, the soft sting of fine sand across excited eyes ranging erratically through a series of horizons absorbed by a skies of sand in all directions. Earth art. Yes. I quickly hopped a ride on a tangent subject...from a petty probe into the high school writing event that probably propelled my simmering passion to write into a full boil of fruition deprived desperation. Thus, I 86ed the autobiography of my ephemeral climb to literary mediocrity. I shall return later, and lead you up, down, over the edge of the steep trail that has led my impassioned dream of writing significant works of poetry and fiction for the world's enrichment...but, after all that (?)...has led only to this.