The Other World

(9:15) Wound up typing in that piece, which maybe made it clearer in my mind.

Well, I do go on, I know. But it is important that you see that one difference between you and us, or you can’t really understand what happened. I mean, you can’t really know what we were thinking, why we were feeling this or that – and that means you won’t understand one thing that happened. You know what happened – or you think you do – but you don’t know what any of it meant. It is true, you see things clearer in hindsight – but only if you also understand how they looked in – not foresight so much as present-sight.

You are living a hundred fifty years on. You are living in the result of what happened, and six generations or whatever it is of consequences. But we were living in it. I can help you to understand, as looking through your life helps me understand. Two views are better than one, always – though it is true, one-view men are better at acting quick. They aren’t slowed down, sorting it all out.

Continue reading 11 – A house divided

[December 23, 2005] My friend, this sequence has been a great happiness to me, even in the midst of my usual angst. : As you well know, I woke up with questions and – suggestions from you? We have interested others in your story, so, I’m ready if you are.The closest I came to interacting with greatness was in talking Indian to young John Muir. The closest I got to being in the presence of transcendent greatness was listening to Abraham Lincoln. I didn’t know him – never even got to shake his hand – but he influenced my life in a way you will recognize.

I spent the 1850s mostly among the Indians, as best I could. The more I was among the white men, the less easy I felt – and mostly all during that time I felt like I was losing my country, just as you do now, and for more or less the same reason.

Continue reading 10 – A changed country

Well, you wouldn’t think it, but I was getting older. By 1854 I was 32 and I felt like I was getting on in years. Now, if I had been doing the same thing all the time, the way you do in your time – or even some in my time, come to think of it, maybe I wouldn’t have felt the years passing in the same way. Or maybe it would have been worse, I don’t know.

That summer in Wisconsin I worked for John Muir’s father as a hired man. This wasn’t something I was used to doing, I was more on my own. But I had my reasons that year why I didn’t go trading. A little mix-up that I thought I’d let some time settle over. Not really anybody’s business, even after “all this time.” It wasn’t nothing disgraceful.

Continue reading 9 – John Muir

[After a few days, I began posting each morning’s journal entries to a Monroe Institute connected group, and suddenly I was performing in public. It didn’t lessen my anxiety any.]

(12:30 p.m.) Went looking to see about Mr. Muir. One source says his family emigrated to Wisconsin in ’48, one says ’49. But I realized after a bit that it didn’t matter in the slightest because Joseph wasn’t there til about 1854! And as I pondered I remembered that I had lived a year in Iowa City, and “heard” him suggest that this should tell me something, and suddenly realized the next part of the story. He said he came home to a changed country. He wasn’t comfortable in Missouri. What more likely than that he would go to the next nearest free state that was still a western state? (i.e. not Illinois) Iowa! But I’ll let him tell it when we resume. This is getting sort of exciting. Continue reading 8 – Leaving slavery country

[December 22, 2005] 8:15 a.m. Back to Joseph, with a couple of complications. A friend emailed that no one could get eight miles an hour from a horse over several hours, day after day, without breaking down the horse’s health. Just the kind of factual error the prospect of which used to paralyze me. And then, it occurred to me all the stuff that was going on (though I don’t know how fast the news of it traveled) that he ought to have been aware of. Oregon statehood question, “54-40 or Fight,” the Mexican War – and no mention so far.

Plus – a very odd feeling – I try to imagine ahead of time what he’s going to say about his life after he came east and I can’t find it! Surely that ought to be reassuring? Well – onward, farther into the real wilderness. I’m not doing anything much different than Lewis and Clark, though in different kind of territory. I sure wish I knew what I was doing, though! (And I wish I knew internal agendas. Here I’ve spent the week mostly channeling Joseph and transcribing and sending – haven’t even looked at the guidance section of the book I’m supposedly writing – and yet I feel it is okay. I suppose this new access is part of that book, or part of the process, anyway.

Joseph, you’re on. I hope you’ve made up a convincing story, and an explanation or two.

Continue reading 7 – Back East