Why I live Where Tom Robbins Doesn’t

The Cooper Point Journal Volume 10, Issue 26 (June 4, 1982)

IN ZEN THEY SAY. BEFORE YOU STUDY Zen mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers; while you are studying Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and rivers no longer rivers; but once you have had enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and rivers again rivers. It’s all pretty bloody confusing if you ask me: and that is why I chose Burlington, Washington as the subject of this essay.

Burlington is dull, Burlington is ugly. Squatting in foul contrast to the splendid array of natural beauty surrounding it, Burlington commands attention as would a fart in an operating room. That kind of unashamed, honest expression really appeals to me, and I guess that is one of the reasons why they drove me from LaConner.

To be absolutely fair about it, the citizenry of LaConner had some good grounds for wanting to see me gone. My nearly all- consuming passion for Psilocybe mushrooms caused more than one cow some uneasiness and irritation. I suppose the spectacle of a grown man playing tug of war with a distraught heifer over the ownership of a fungi was not a sight calculated to win me many new friends amongst the local dirt farmers. True too, my penchant for penning derogatory articles about the town and its colorful inhabitants did little to endear me to those ever-growing numbers of fed up, unwilling, though still colorful, subjects of my not so discrete dissertations.

I came here to Burlington then, to start again. You’d think I’d have learned, no? Well it’s a living; and when you are studying Zen, outraged neighbors waving brickbats and cursing at you are no longer outraged neighbors waving brickbats and cursing at you. Happily though, mushrooms are still mushrooms.

RIGHTEOUSLY STONED OUT OF MY mind, and fortified by the realization that I am still quite unknown here, I saunter the sorry streets of this backwater slug sanctuary, savoring the quaint customs of the local gentry. The rancid odor of dead fish rotting in the open air market, or the myriad sights and sounds of drunken loggers settling their disputes with the aid of yard- long chainsaws amidst the boisterous approval of bloated farmers and half crazed volunteer firemen, gorges the very tissues of my grey matter, lacing it with iridescent luminations: my material. Like a voyeur aroused, my pen throbs, pressed tight to thigh, awaiting release from the confines of my pants when, home at last, I can work the tool to a frenzy of creative achievement. Or, which is more likely, make it simply produce more dribble such as this…

Ah yes, Burlington. Samuel Beckett wrote: “The horse leeches daughter is a closed system.” This is pure bullshit, or if you will, horseshit. And, besides, it is completely irrelevant to this essay.

Burlington, indeed! I could talk about a god forsaken little town, this loathsome turd of a town, this Pittsburgh of one- horse Northwestern eyesores, this malignant growth clinging to the Skagit bloodstream, this Burlington. “Burlington,” the very sound rings pathetic, bespeaking promises never really believed. I could go on and on, and I will, about this wasteland caught in the death throes of economic depression, crushed and writhing in agony whilst I heap abuse, like salt, upon its festering wounds. I can continue unrelieved, until every sordid detail and every putrid feature of my adopted home is brazenly enunciated by my not inconsiderable talent.

Or, gentle reader, I can withdraw, mercifully, and now beguilingly, entreat you to follow other unexpected paths as we jointly gape in amazement upon the spectacle of genius uncontrolled. Like Zen udders squirting images wildly against the milking stall walls of your mind. Like words rushing forth in outraged indolence straining to grasp the slippery slug of truth, and beat it to death with a pen. Words and more words, old words and sneword, seemingly never enough words until, glory be to god, they total 5,000 words and I can finally close, thusly:

There is ‘a giant letter “B” painted in bright yellow on a hill outside of town. Can you, by this time, have any doubt but that to my mind, it stands for “BUCKS”?