by jim holt

Here in the green house
I sleep in the world
of his folded arms.
I play so small w/elephants
I play so slow w/cheetahs
I’m shadowed by even the smallest
sometimes
But here in the green house
I know he sees
I walk tall against all things.

—-
I wrote this in Toronto Jan. 26, 1982.

by jim holt

Stay close behind me
- i must show you

see how she sleeps
as if all the strong trees
in the world
sang the same low frequency

- be quiet -

- watch how i listen –

i stand on the rim of
the stolen rib
my curious dancing always
on the edge
of the sharp dock.

—-
I wrote this Sept. 18, 1987, in Burlington, Ontario.

by jim holt

You crystal unicorn you,
so difficult to find,
so easy to break,
I’m a smasher, I’m a farmer
my crops are frostbitten,
my cows are thin,
I have a sign on my barn
for strangers hopeful

——-

I wrote this Dec. 15, 1989, in Toronto.

Ernst had a plan.

Wait until dark, walk down to the playa; find the most beautiful woman in the world.

Simple.

Darkness fell on Burning Man 2010.

He outlined his plan, again. We looked at each other, nodding.

Me? At times I look like a tired aging elf with wrinkles creasing in smile lines, shuffling around having lost the power to stay knee-high small.

Ernst? A gentle giant with glasses and red cheeks shuffling around having lost his power to stay house-tall.

“She’s beautiful,” I reminded him.

“Let’s go,” he said.

As soon as we shuffled past Center Camp and stepped onto the playa, we saw her in the distance changing color…. Vivid purple, neon red …

Our simple plan was unfolding.

At sunset, we found her.

Bliss – the 40-foot stainless steel sculpture of a woman dancing in the Black Rock Desert full of light and air, the golden ropes of dusk dripping through her form onto the ruddy-cheeked face of my friend, on me.

“She is beautiful,” I told Ernst as we both stared up between her legs.

“Yep,” said Ernst.

I touched one of the metal fibers spun to create such beauty.

“Amazing,” I added.

“That’s me,” said a voice behind me.

It didn’t sound like Ernst.

“That’s me,” the voice said again.

I turned around and she was there, having suddenly lost the power to be 40 feet tall and made of stainless steel tubing.

“That’s you?” Ernst and I said in unison, suddenly stunned into silence, suddenly wide-eyed.

Big tea saucer elf eyes and tea saucer giant eyes.

“Yep,” she said.

I turned my head to study the features of Bliss, turned back to study her.

Ernst did the same.

“Can I have a hug?” he asked, giants are so bold when they think they’re still so tall.

“Sure,” she said.

“Can I have a hug too,” elves are so bold when their giant pals reach out.

“Sure,” she said. “I’m singing here tomorrow night.”

“Really?” we both said, still wide-eyed.

“Yep, shortly after sunset,” she explained and was suddenly gone.

Ernst and I walked back across the playa, back to our camp, all the way describing the magic we had just experienced.

“I just hugged the most beautiful tallest woman in the world,” I told Ernst.

“I did too,” he said. “We both hugged the tallest most beautiful woman in the world.”

“And, she was beautiful too, inside I mean, really sweet.”

Silence

“Do you think it was her?” I asked. “Maybe it was just a woman drumming up support for her band, promoting the concert tomorrow night.”

More silence.

“Nay, that was she.”

We both nodded.

Others in our camp, however, were not so convinced.

Next evening, Ernst had a follow-up plan: wait until dusk, return to the playa, and wait for the concert.

Hundreds gathered at the foot of Bliss, then she appeared.

I looked up at my giant friend and smiled … he was a big as a house, as I was as small as a boot.

All around were dancing burners with music in every moving fiber of their own sculpted selves. A young ripped naked Tarzan character sporting only a loincloth and a naked longhaired Thor character near him each carved out dancing spaces around them amid a sea of beautiful women …. But I was made magical too ….. my smile wrinkles etched deeper into my face …. I looked over at the grinning giant Ernst happy and sweating and dancing .,.. his red cheeks burning a deeper crimson because he too was made more magical…..then we received affirmation.

“She even sings beautiful,” we said in smile language.

Sculptor Marco Cochrane joined the band on stage to thank Bliss Dance model Deja Solis who stood next to him.

I looked back at my giant friend.

We smiled at each other and nodded.

“We hugged the most beautiful woman in the world,” we said again in smile language.

Plan accomplished.

by jim holt

My night
has been without sheets
and blankets.
They left my bed,
joined a touring dance troupe,
moving heavy equipment,
painful exercise,

some nights
they pretend to have come back
but I don’t recognize them,
makeup on smiles,
makeup on frowns,
on makeup on makeup
on rough hands seem soft.

——
I wrote this in Toronto Jan. 14, 1980.

The mystery of mass gnome disappearance has been solved.

I found them – the missing garden gnomes.

All my suspicions (previously documented right here on my blog) proved true – except perhaps references to a wheelbarrow-sized mini-gnome car cruising through residential neighborhoods at night with wild partying gnome passengers beckoning others to leave their flowerbeds…. I’m still working on that angle.

It appears I was wrong about one assumption, however … that gnomes gathered in secret at a location unknown to their giant human mentors.

Wrong.

I found both funky knee-high ceramic dudes in flopping hats hanging with non-ceramic dudes in floppy hats who were as tall as hockey sticks ….one big happy family sitting down for a love-in feast asking brothers and sisters to pass the peace and hold the sarcasm … all happening in the desert …. At the biggest best kept secret party in the world ….

Burning Man.

Yep.

There they were hanging in the sun of the Black Rock Desert on a bar top getting splashed with margaritas and bumped by human elbows … happy, happy, happy, just chilling. sharing ….

It was reassuring to find all the previously missing beagle-sized bohemians suddenly content under their groovy knitted gnome hats, hands in pockets, some holding a pipe …. Some laughing, some with fingers dipped inside a homemade brown vest … yep, happy.

Now I’m working on a time/space continuum theory to better explain the apparent lag-time we seem to have interacting with the little buggers …. I’m operating on the premise that gnomes act, interact and party exactly just like their giant homie counterparts only at a slower pace … a pace more in keeping with the pace of shifting sedimentary rocks …

No difference really …. We as the bigger more frantic fleshy ones just gotta learn to be more patient … wait a little bit longer for them to lick the salt and bite the lemon.

It’s all good little dudes.

Now, about those pesky crop circles….

By Jim Holt

There was a tree.

Someone cut it down. Sections like truck wheel cookies were left on the ground.

Leaves – crisp, crimson, crumpled – lay crushed under the weight of the truck snacks.

It was autumn.

My plan for the tree sections … the wheels, as it were, the sweet hardened bark-wound giant cookies … was to make drums out of them … hollow them out …. Lots of work … labor of love … transform the damaged limb bits into some device designed for music … art …. Expression …. Celebration of life …

Time lagged on and I became distracted …

I was pulled away …. I was assigned to cover a murder trial.

A 5-year-old girl was beaten and burned and whipped … I cried when her brother (who had been beaten and burned and whipped) drew a crayon drawing …

His sister was an angel come to get him, he told his interviewer ….

Not very professional. The crying. I do all right with the scores of photographic exhibits … the physics and biology stuff …. Angels sketched in crayon catch me off guard apparently.

So, it’s been a while since I worked on the drums … not yet drums…. Still pretty much, cut down, sections of wood … not yet art, not yet heard …. Just dead.

I had intended to keep the sections dry so I covered them … only to unwrap them weeks later and find hundreds of tiny mushrooms …

Hundreds of puffy white blooms like cookie cream fillings …. All fanning out from what was once strong against storms and rain and wildfire… such a cut down limb so young to yield such cookie sport….

I put it on the table.

Dozens of white fungal domes gleamed like easy-to-push buttons on a musical instrument ….. an instrument with which I should be familiar …. Something as familiar as a saxophone … A special music from a very unique machine…..

all I heard was what resonated … an echo …. an expression … a celebration of life. ….

By jim holt

I fell off a ladder picking apples.

I didn’t stand on the step that reads; THIS IS NOT A STEP, but I was up there.

And the apples in my yard aren’t even that tasty. They’re kind of tart but they taste really good in an apple pie. On their own, though, they’re like the tiny tight green crab apples I used to eat at the cottage.

Well, that was my plan last Saturday. I was going to pick all these apples as opposed to letting them just fall on the ground.

A nice tart apple pie.

Probably a couple of pies.

There are a lot of apples.

I just got through picking as many plums as I could so I was on a roll.

Apple pie and plum jam.

All I had to do was get up off the couch and pick them – then I’d be committed.

It was an aluminum ladder. It’s huge.

As I reached for a particularly fat apple tinted with red, I suddenly felt disoriented and then realized as I’m moving … HOLY CRAP, THE LADDER’S FALLING.

So rather than stay with it and smack my head on the fence, I jumped off.

That’s when I realized how far off the ground I actually was.

Almost all my weight ended up on my left heel. Within a couple of hours it swelled up like a balloon.

All I could think about was – how am I going to cover the world’s most grueling foot race? The one I’ve covered every year for 13 years? I couldn’t even stand.

Many of my heroes were already tying up their running shoes, getting ready to run 135 miles across Death Valley at the hottest time of the year.

Yeah.

And, of all the years I’ve struggled just to get out to Death Valley, this year – ladder or no ladder – turned out to be one of the most problem-fraught years ever.

One roadblock after another fell between me and my favorite crazy race – work, my daughter’s first ever driving test…. And, of course, the near broken ankle.

I made the right decision to stay for my daughter, to be there and see her smile when she left the test vehicle beaming. Excellent.

Fortunately she was able to drive off before seeing her dad bolt out of there, 10 miles over the speed limit.

After more than a dozen races, I knew exactly where the runners would be so I drove straight for Lone Pine. I found BC runner Lori Alexander 15 miles outside Lone Pine …. A long seemingly endless stretch in the 135 miles … near Keeler ….

Keeler is a Killer – that’s what some of the runners say. I don’t say it because I’m not a runner.

Well, ok, I say it. But, I’m still not a runner.

I hobbled out – wearing the special brace boot I bought and wore when I ripped out my Achilles tendon 10 years ago – and I hopped along beside her.

She said she suffered from a heat rash and other hardships – bloating, blisters and burns.

“I’m doing this,” she said, scooting ahead, leaving me pivoting on my brace boot heel.

I smiled.

I checked my camera to make sure I got some good shots of her.

Then I drove deeper back along the race route and found Markus Wiaderek – a German guy who lives near Montreal.

He was 30 miles back. Great pix, great quotes. Good spirits.

I’m no longer worried about selling the stories to newspapers … Markus and Lori and going in my book.

So are scores of other amazing committed runners I’ve chased after since 1998 – guys who ran it with one leg, one guy who ran it who had leukemia … a guy, one year, who was so far back, shoes off, laying on his back, he wasn’t even halfway and every one else had crossed the finish line…. He made it.

Those sidelined because they kept throwing up …. those who side-stepped snakes on the road that were never there…. the guru grand-daddy runner who surgically had his toenails removed…. And then there’s Jack.

Jack Denness from England.

Ten years ago, I pitched his story to the paper in his hometown in England. “Yeah, there’s a guy from your town, he’s 65 and he’s over here running 135 miles across the hottest place on the planet.. Would you like a story?”

“No.”

“No? Are you shitting me? He’s 65 and he’s running across Death Valley.”

“No thanks.”

He stopped running it a couple of years ago and last year when I saw him volunteering his help, he saw me and said, “that must cost you a pretty penny.”

He was pointing at my gut.

He’s right, of course.

This year he ran it again …at age 75 … this year the BBC did a story on him. Finally.

Jack is one of my heroes.

Last year, i got back from Badwater and got into running/walking (more walking than running) 5 miles every day. I held that routine for more half a year.

I proved I COULD get off the couch.

And, this year, I DID get off the couch again. I had a plan for apple pie. I thought of it. I did it.

My gut? Yeah, I’m going to do it. Start running again.

Ride my bike to work? Why not, my daughter has her driver’s license.

The brace boot is off. I walk better than I did a week ago.

One day at time, one step at a time …. It’s a long long long race.

I didn’t spend the last 13 years covering the most amazing heroes and not learn at least a few fundamental things. One foot in front of the other.

“I’m doing this.”

by jim holt

FYI … the plastic bunny is hogtied to the spear-straight limb of wood from our forest, brother.

that lance rests on your shoulder,
as it rests on mine.

let’s go,
and wear that garland of spruce and maple,
step out
of that charred hollow dark
to laugh and run, snap twigs ….

the sun will find us only briefly,
only briefly, brother.

by james arthur holt

This machine of being alone
runs too slowly.
I stay up all night
listening for a flutter,
a valve that rattles,
a phone that rings for your voice.

——
i wrote this in Toronto Nov. 12, 1978.