(Howell Creek Radio address for October 20, 2012 -- ) # Rustling Squirrels It can be very hard to know what's really important. I'm sitting on a patio in front of the building where I work, eating a ham and cheddar sandwich, watching the yellow-orange leaves rain down on the lane that runs by. It's cloudy, and I have my orange plaid barn jacket on over my office clothing, and I'm trying to decide what's important. I have a meeting to prepare for, and part of me would rest easier just having that done. But there's something rustling around somewhere in the back of my head, like a squirrel in the leaves...a good brisk walk and I might just find out where it lives. What _is_ important? It's probably telling that, if I do go back inside and stand in front of my desk, I'm not going to get much done, not after having heard these leaves rustle, or having tasted the bread and the wine. Yes, the office is my living, and yes, this spinning swarm of leaves is going to be gone tomorrow: a once-a-year phenomenon of no less value than the northern lights, or the swarming of the swallows over San Juan Capistrano. Truly, the office clerk-turned-poet hath ever cause to curse his half-baked Protestant work ethic. It is surely of great, hidden importance that Jesus called his disciples while they were working -- that he made them choose between their paychecks and their souls. This particular office patio has been fitted out with enough chairs for thirteen people, but when I come out here, I am always the only one sitting in them. I button my barn jacket and stride down the hill towards the trees. * * * Learning to ignore the squirrels has been a crucial part of making it to and through adulthood, and of maintaining the skills that make basic friendships possible; yet I'm glad they're around all the same. To normal life they add the interest of unpredictable variety. They _can_ make it very hard to concentrate on what someone's saying; for example, Trixie will be talking to me in the kitchen and I will suddenly have to make a conscious effort to ignore the small scratching around in the corner behind my writing desk, because I know she can't hear it. "So and so called and canceled their lessons today," Trixie says. Rustle, rustle says something under the desk. I wonder how he got in here. I wonder where he lives. I can almost picture it, and smell the leaves and the smoke. He is probably a poem or at least a verse of a poem. Then it's quiet and I can tell he went outside again. Just as I'm looking out the window for him, I hear Tixie again: "...so if I get them for half price at Michael's I think they'll really brighten up the room without costing too much." There's an awkward beat where I'm caught off guard and forget my lines, which makes Trixie laugh at me, and then I laugh too, and we exchange a kiss. * * * When you first begin to follow a squirrel, at the sound of your approach it will fly up the nearest tree and make a show of hiding, then it will reveal itself for a moment: as if by accident, he will let you catch a glimpse of him making along a limb for another tree. This makes you feel as if you, the patient hunter, are skillfully following its trail, and all the while it's leading you further and further away from home. But if you are patient, and willing to miss all your engagements, you'll find out where it lives. There's no explaining the pleasure of this hunt. It is not, at most times, exhilarating; since it has no relation to pace it is beyond mere joy or disappointment. In this cycle of watch and pursuit, you live on the side of yourself that is animal, that exists only as a mere creature on the earth, that has no conception of a thing like an 'hour,' or any time shorter than a day. There is, furthermore, a great difference between the self-aware human and the animal: the animal may take it for granted that his whole body has been keyed up by millennia of selection to do just one or two things extremely well: to run, to bite, to fly, or to feed off the bottom of the lake and to avoid detection. There is an almost elemental confidence that comes with this kind of activity, and humans seem almost depressingly adaptable by comparison. This was how I ended up an hour outside the cities, sitting at the foot of an oak, the squirrel and I watching each other. Just watching. I could have been sitting for hours before I felt the raindrop. I remember a day when I'm five or six years old, playing in the woods near our little home in the far north of Minnesota, not far from Howell Creek. It was late in a bright, bracing morning, probably in autumn just like now. This season is different than the others because somehow it happens that I have a friend within walking distance of our house. Mike is older than I am (why he keeps company with me is something I don't understand), and has his own BB gun, which is fascinating to me, although I would certainly have declined to use it if he'd offered me the chance. The area near our house is a failed Christmas tree farm, so there are rows and rows of tall pine trees spaced at perfect intervals. Mike aims high up into one of them, shoots at something I can't see, and a squirrel falls to the earth, twitching and jumping and making frantic chucking noises. Mike shoots it a few more times until it sits still. I am neither appalled by this nor excited, no more than if he'd thrown a rock at a lilypad. Now I'm back in the thicket, this squirrel and I are just looking at each other. A delusion, as though I suddenly have telescoping vision, allows me to focus on the beady black pupils to a ridiculous extent: they loom large before me like liquid mirrors of ink. I seem to see reflected in them the passive stare of a wolf; whether this has any significance as regards myself, or whether perhaps the squirrel sees all pursuers in this way, I cannot tell. It takes off running again, and after a moment's hesitation, so do I. * * * It may be that no one reads my writing after I'm gone; it may never even be famous while I'm here. No Mephistopheles has appeared to make any such deal with me. What use should I ever make of a Mephistopheles? What would a demon ever have to offer me? If he ever does appear, he will have arrived too late; I have already made my discovery, I have no interest in fame. The desire that moves me is more like an addiction, the fascination of the alchemist for a substance which he has discovered, whose knowledge at once blows the fresh wind of discovery on his face, and at the same time makes him a fellow of the most ancient masters. A cup of tea, a chair and a talk by the fire with Trixie. There is no more rustling in the corners; but at my desk sits a book whose pages are drenched in ink, which almost runs out in rivulets and collects in small puddles -- an ink made of crushed acorns, of small black eyes like mirrors, and of the marrow of small bones. Synopsis: ---------------- Radio address for October 20, 2012, in which I try to describe what inspiration sounds like. I made a mistake while recording this one, bonus points if you can spot it. Music is [_Smells Like Content_][smc] by The Books, [_Tickle Me Pink_][tmp] and [_The Wrote & The Writ_][tww] by Johnny Flynn, and [_Love Is All_][lia] by The Tallest Man On Earth. [smc]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004I2JZQQ/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004I2JZQQ&linkCode=as2&tag=joelsimprpers-20 [tmp]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001D5QI66/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001D5QI66&linkCode=as2&tag=joelsimprpers-20 [tww]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001D5N2RE/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001D5N2RE&linkCode=as2&tag=joelsimprpers-20 [lia]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003EVD8E2/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B003EVD8E2&linkCode=as2&tag=joelsimprpers-20