There’s a bear deep in the north Minnesota woods tonight
just sitting there, on a fragrant wet bed of pine needles,
moonlight in his hopeful brown eyes, hoping to get a glimpse
of his hero—Joseph Campbell. He’s deep in the woods but
close to the yelling voices and yellow windows lit up
in a big wooden cabin jumping and full of the
Robert Bly Minnesota Men’s Mythopoetic Meeting.
The bear is a guy, and though he wasn’t invited inside,
he’s trying, he’s leaning toward the cabin windows, trying
to fit in. Still though, he’s not looking for Robert Bly.
Doesn’t want to bond with the men, or really eat any of them.
The bear is into Joseph Campbell.
The bear is now on the path of following his bliss.
He needs to, before he goes extinct, and to avoid getting shot.
He hopes Joe has been invited, is coming, is still alive.
Not sure how he’ll know him if he shows, but the bear trusts
his ancestral instinct and his big, wet nose.
If Joe is here tonight, he’ll know; the bear will follow his piss.
Meanwhile, inside the cabin, there’s a guy, Christopher Blue,
calls himself Blue, he’s seated and ostensibly fitting in,
but he wants a beer.
He’s so desperate for a beer he’s not even in the cabin.
The bear is focused, zen-grounded in the pine needles.
How did this happen?
Only ten years ago from this night, Blue was brand new
clean and sober, living inside again, in a place somewhere
south of these deep woods called Kansas City, in a place called
the Country Club Plaza, in his big, mostly empty, victoriously
contented third floor flat in a mansion; rent and all his bills
paid on time, a bedside table stack of tapes of Robert Bly,
Joseph Campbell and Malidoma Somé, and a new used
toaster in his big, mostly empty kitchen, to cook up his
cinnamon toast all those nights cozy, healthy and wholesome
in his new used bed with a window on the Plaza lights;
toast and Perrier, tapes of wisdom and bliss, and
philosophically indirect directions about what to do next.
Now that he had finally come to rest.
The rest didn’t last. That’s how this is happening, tonight.
Blue is not really in the cabin, like he wasn’t in the jobs,
the conversations, ever still enough to stay in love, although
he loved to fall, always hoping love would bring him to rest.
Once a great woman affectionately (quite understandably)
commanded him to heel! but he kept chasing his tail so
here he is, having miraculously gotten himself so far north,
so deep in the woods, in the cabin with all the wisemen
from his bedtime tapes
come to life waking up, and walking up
onto the stage, inside the big wooden cabin.
But he still wants the beer.
The wisemen all sit down and begin to make announcements.
Outside, his nose in the air, deciphering that Joseph Campbell
will not be one of the announcement makers,
the bear gets up and lumbers deeper into the trees.
“Welcome, guys!” growls Robert Bly, warmly, like a
Shakespearian bear. “Welcome to the first of seven days and
nights all us mythopoetic warriors in the woods! You guys ready?”
“Ready!” Everyone eagerly answers, everyone but Blue,
checking his watch, calculating the time (he saw the open until
closed sign) to the closing of the tavern he saw coming down
the country road to the cabin about an hour ago.
“Now listen,” Bly continues, “you may have noticed that
tavern up the country road. We’ve all agreed to no alcohol
during the conference,” Bly pauses and scans the hundred or
so men and sees one down front not looking in agreement,
checking his watch, “but good hamburgers if anybody needs a
break from all this. Anyway, though they’re open until I think
midnight, it is no go walking through these woods after dark.
Bears! Woods full of them.”
Blue is moved that Robert Bly is right in front of him, ten feet
away, he knows what this should mean to him tonight; the
voice he heard in bed, all the books all the poems all that Iron
John that filled him up and kept him up all night way back
then, on the Country Club Plaza; a brand new life with a
clear and ferocious direction—maybe his seventh second chance.
He doesn’t hear a thing, though all the men around him are
laughing and hugging. The cabin windows, though reflecting
back the communal fun inside, are black. His watch says ten.
He sees an exit, past the bathroom doors down a dark hall.
During a standing ovation for something, Blue goes away.
He is so sure, like always, that no one will notice him go away.
Outside in the dark—pine scent in his nose, fireplace smoke
in his eyes, cold night air up his blue jeans, and maybe bears
in the woods—Blue walks into the trees.
Hearing footsteps and horror movie cliches in the woods, he
pops back out onto the gravel driveway the airport van drove
him in on a couple of hours ago, follows it a couple of hundred
yards to the country road, and looks right then left. There.
Way up that road he sees lights, red and blue neon cursive
and the glow of the coach house lamp, swinging in the wind.
Maybe a mile away, and a long one in the dark, but Blue
walks briskly, thinking of beers not bears.
Tries not to think of what he may be missing right now of Bly.
Through the door of the tavern called Dave’s Stagecoach Inn
Blue’s glasses fog up, turn everything blurry orange, and
it’s the usual sour beer smell and self-pitying country music,
but he’s glad to be in here and orders three Budweisers.
“ ‘Spectin’ two others?” asks the bartender, bloodshot eyes
magnified behind thick, greasy eyeglasses in the dark. No face,
Blue can’t see a smile, doesn’t hear one. But he smiles.
“Nope! All three for me, short of time. I’m at the Men’s
Conference down the road, and I’m not even supposed to be in
here drinking, so I’m on a tight drinking schedule!”
When he says Men’s Conference, low snide laughs burr
somewhere in the bar, somewhere in the dark orange blur.
Blue pays, drinks the three beers quickly, his body grateful,
but his soul and spirit need more satisfaction. So, he walks
slowly down the bar toward the light of the jukebox.
He hears breathing along the way, but no one says hi.
At the jukebox, the bright song menu on top lights Blue up,
exposes his face to the room, and he begins to scans the songs;
the usual again—all the tough and tortured misunderstood
men singers who of course just have to get back on the road
or down to the tavern since nobody especially women
don’t understand them—those songs.
But then, up on top of the juke menu, C7. “I Can’t Breathe.”
Somehow, someway, C7.
That song, by Pussy Riot.
Blue smiles again, walks back to the bar, hands the bartender a
five dollar bill, asks for quarters, the bloodshot eyes stare, blink,
Blue says ok, and another beer, gets the change, feeds all of it
into the jukebox, punches in C7, a lot, probably too many times,
slides the Budweiser into his jacket pocket, turns and starts slowly
walking—moseying, as they might say in Dave’s Stagecoach Inn—
down the bar, nods goodnight to the dark, whoever’s there, out the
tavern door, and Blue runs, fast, straight across the road, almost gone,
but stops beneath a streetlight and pulls out his beer (priorities)
and drinks it all down, foam and all, nonchalantly walks back
across the road and drops the empty bottle into a green recycling
bin by the side of the tavern, then Blue runs. Into the woods.
But he’s not too deep in the trees before he hears the glorious
unstoppable voice of Nadya Tolokonnikova
shearing the needles off the pine trees all around him, also
a rumbling inside the tavern, headed toward the front door.
Blue keeps running, like a fullback, weaving in and out of
the pine trees like they’re tacklers, except the trees’ last thought
would be to tackle him, rather, they are welcoming him,
embracing him, sheltering and perfuming him as he flies
through their low lush branches
brushing his face and shoulders with sticky, friendly resin.
Ahead, he sees something breathing.
Vaporous puffs of breath, like the ones coming out of him.
Only much larger puffs, puffing out of something leaning on
a tree. Something much larger than Blue.
He stops running, out of breath,
bent over, hands on knees, puffing up
a wall of vapor between him and
whatever’s breathing by the tree.
Now walking towards him calmly
on two legs, coming out of the darkness
making profound eye contact; brown eyes,
big, round and square into Blue’s blue eyes.
“Robert Bly is looking for you.”
The calm, resonant voice of the forest,
all atavistic.
“You’re a talking bear?”
The jittery, anemic voice of the airport,
a couple of hours ago.
“... I mean, I’m down with Myth,
the Mythopoetic, and I’ve never metaphor
I didn’t like—get it? never mind—but
a talking bear in the forest is pushing it.”
“Do you want to follow your bliss or not?”
It’s late, it’s dark, but whatever color comes out of the intense
blending of brown and blue, out of the intensity of Blue and
the Bear staring at each other, whatever that color is, it’s bleeding
together, pooling and lighting up this whole section of the forest.
And now, as if someone clapped their hands, it’s dark again.
“Wow. What was that? I’m Christopher Blue, by the way.”
“I know. Hello. I’m the Bear.”
“Yes. Well. So you know about Joseph Campbell?”
“Uh huh. I was hoping he’d be here, but I think maybe he
died. Still, I need to get close to this, close to whatever’s
happening with those guys at the cabin. I’m alone
out here a lot of the time, Blue. Walking around.”
“I was in an airport bar before I got here, full of people and
three football games on, but I was alone there, too. I need to
get close to this, too.”
“Why aren’t you in there? I’d go, but I don’t think it would
work out. You went to the tavern?”
“Yes, Bear. I drink thinking I’m gonna get close to something
but I get farther and farther away every time. It doesn’t really
work out.”
A cold wind rivers through the trees overhead and when
Blue and the Bear look up, they see a powdery blue and bright
white brocade of sky and stars.
“They were looking for you, some of them. Bly, too. They saw
you leave before, out of that side door. I saw you. There’s some
kind of African water ritual happening tonight and everyone’s
supposed to be there. Led by the great Malidoma Somé.”
“Yeah, I know. I love that guy. In the ritual, we all get naked.
Naked, light a bonfire, and walk out into the lake in pairs.”
“I wish I could go. I’m already naked. But I’ll watch from the
trees and cheer you on. You’d better get down to the cabin, Blue.”
“Yeah, I’d better, Bear. Better get ready to strip. I can hear them
beginning to sing. You going to be around later?”
“You know where to find me.”
Blue winks at the Bear and walks ahead on the path, his nose
picking up on the bonfire smoke ahead, towards some kind of
singing in the trees ahead, but he hears the Bear rhetorically
clear his throat, so he turns a head back to him.
“Uh, Blue? You do understand the significance of this ritual,
don’t you? What it’s all about?”
“Loosely.”
“I understand it deeply, in my fur, though I can’t be there.
All you guys get naked, exposed, together, all in a bunch—
no hiding, no shame, everyone open and witnessing each other
in a circle around the fire, with dignity, complete acceptance—
and you each privately bring the thing or things, plural if you
want, your biggest wound, and throw it in the fire. It’s your
secret shame, you keep it to yourself, don’t gotta tell anyone
else, but once it’s in the fire, everyone curses it, yells at it as it
burns in the fire. Then, you guys all chant, cry, dance
and sing the smoke of it into the sky, all goddamn GONE!”
“No shit?”
“You’re all naked and singing and dancing in a big circle
around the fire, going out of your fucking minds with joy and
freedom from your shame, then—at some intuitive moment—
Somé and Bly will start walking toward the lake, pulling the
circle into a line which will bisect at a tree where Somé stands,
probably in a really charismatic, shamanistic way, just a bit
before the shoreline, paring you guys off into pairs, and then
you walk into the water to ask the Great Spirit—I forget the
rest of his or her mythological name—for your own big strong
personal blessing, to replace the shame you just burned up.”
“Fuckin’ hell, Bear. So that’s what’s about to happen to me?”
The Bear puts his big comforting paw on Blue’s shoulder,
drawing blood.
“That’s what’s about to happen to all of you, Blue. I envy you.”
“Oh no. Oh damn. I’m sorry. You should be there too. But let’s
you and me do it together, later on, just us chickens!”
“Yeah?” asks the Bear, squeezing Blue’s shoulder.
“Oh yeah.” says Blue.
Walking away from the bonfire with his back, his butt cheeks
and his soul as red-hot and bubbling as Christmas morning
sausages, Blue sees Malidoma Somé ahead at his Shaman tree
looking like big trouble and bigger love.
“Your eyes!” Somé puts it all in a nutshell, to Blue.
“Tell me about it!” commands Blue, but not really.
“I don’t think I can!” laughs Somé, holding Blue’s face softly
in his hands. “Or should.” Blue is on the move forward
toward the lake, but Somé sees something and says something.
“Your shoulder. Claws? Something get ahold of you tonight?”
“Yes. And the night is young.”
Blue is at the end of the line, he’d had a hard time walking away
from the bonfire, but now he’s on his way to the water,
the line of men pairing off, and waiting up ahead,
looking like his partner to walk into the lake with, is Robert Bly.
Naked. Grinning at Blue. Like more trouble.
Blue can’t believe it. He stops in his naked tracks and can
almost hear his tapes of this man ten years ago
back in bed in Kansas City on the Country Club Plaza.
Blue turns around and Malidoma Somé is still back there,
looking at him like—oh yeah man, this is happening!
Bly and Blue wade into the water hand in hand, wavelets
lapping up on Bly’s furry white old body, and on Blue’s strong,
sure-footed legs, walking over sharp underwater rocks
and it hurts and it doesn’t hurt and it doesn’t really matter.
Robert Bly starts laughing.
“Want to go get a beer later?” he asks.
“Maybe,” says Blue. “My treat. But it’s not really on my mind
at the moment, you know?”
Now they’re both laughing. They keep on laughing.
It stirs up the water. The bear, up in the pine trees,
out of sight, but not too far away, predicts tidal waves.
