Coeur d'Alene

 

There's more than a simple poetic connection between the "spirit of the Susquehanna" and an afternoon of wandering in Hood River. Of course there is, but let's go to Idaho... our duty to the living and the bloodstream of the earth, the bitter red flow boiling through the land. Sin has been our garment in the world since Eve bit the apple. And the right of present reflection extends no further than the consciousness presently captured—I almost fell asleep passing through Coeur d'Alene (oh, well) writing this—but no matter! I saw the lakes and the mountains as reflection modified my spontaneous consciousness. Coeur d’Alene, like Spokane, is on a flat area (I thought of sin as I thought of the clothes we wore before the world, of the necessary circumspection in which we were submerged in the world of objects, clothed in values, units of thought, attractive and repulsive qualities – but my Self (Moi) had decidedly disappeared for an hour or two as I climbed the ridge close to the snowy lake: it was then that I took hold, for as long as I could fix my gaze on that light, the great attitude of awakened consciousness. The Fourth of July Pass and the  The impressive snow on the steep slopes had dissolved the chaos of objects and names of my Ego into the snowy night. My only thought at that moment was that the Indians once had the Coeur d'Alene all to themselves. Night in the Bitterroots (the Coeur d'Alene River, as far as Cataldo). ANÉANTI, there was no room for rational thought at that level, and that was not the product of bad luck, fatigue, or a momentary lack of attention, but rather the very structure of consciousness. The certainty that meditative thought stemmed from the fact that in it one instantly attained consciousness without facets, without profiles, entirely without cuts and scripted games (without the "abschattungen"); objects surrendered themselves to it through an infinity of aspects, at the bottom of which they later emerged as the ideal unity of multiplicity. Sometimes I would lie on my side in the dark, listening to the earth that was now my blood and flesh, and I would think, "Why Me?" and then I would think about my name until, after a while, I could see the word as a shape, a vase, a bottle, a pencil, and I would see it turn to liquid and flow like cold molasses flowing through the darkness into the vase, until the vase and the bottle were full and motionless: a meaningful yet profoundly lifeless form, like the empty doorframe, would suddenly shine as if alive; and then I would realize I had completely forgotten my own name, while the “meanings of the world” and the “eternal truths” could only assert their real transcendence to the extent that they became as independent of time as I and my enlightened consciousness. World consciousness, on the other hand, was rigorously trapped in “duration”... all that joyful northern life I was thinking of then (like in Maine, with those freezing red twilights) could only exist outside of time, in an eternity of snow and smoke, like the kitchens of Idaho. Or like in Wallace... outside those enormous mines. Or Mullan, in the heart of the great steep slopes. Always following the eternity of the riverbeds and writing like someone grinding their own coffee. “Descartes passing from the Cogito to the idea of thinking substance, like a river flowing into the sea,” I muttered to myself. Spending the night in that room was like singing underwater. All that night, I fought against the Theory of the Material Presence of the Self (Moi) and came out victorious. I awoke to the enormity of the Light, watching from my bedroom window as people helped each other shovel snow from their sidewalks. Then I saw and heard the secret of the Bitterroots (from the pass to De Borgia, Montana, and then Frenchtown and Missoula, following the Bitterroot Riverbed).