Good evening;

I'm in the middle of my accounting, and it's after 10 pm. I've been working since 9. I'm going to treat myself and open a document here to you and just type you a few lines now and then as they occur to me.

I'm listening to Art Bell. I like Art. He's talking about an X-Class solar flare tonight. I love what I learn on this show. I never would have known about Michio Kaku's theories of Class 0, 1 and 2 civilizations if I hadn't listened to Art. Do you ever tune him in?

Oh listen!... He's talking about those cattle mutilations in Argentina - their rural affairs person reports the cattle were "...victims of rodents, foxes or other animals.... Wild animals mutilated the corpses...We see these as natural deaths..."

Art cagily disagrees, in order to prolong this topic for another year, I believe, and points out - "the circles of charred grass, the circle in the horse's hoof; the "surgical precision" of the removals " oh, dear...now he's talking about rats, and how they are not surgically precise...I sure do wish he had someone to tell him about the blowflies? :) ...

**********

So, earlier I was thinking about some more of the things I liked about you. I realize that one of the short comings of e-mail is that it's really hard to get subtextual cues of approval (or non). You don't know how many times I nod my head at something you write, or smile, or feel thankful that you think the way you do. We totally miss the calibration of meatspace, and it's a significant loss.

I know we're getting into kind of tricky water, here. I really do somewhat understand this iffy road of "us-ness" - and perhaps the less said about it, the better. But one of the things that makes it iffy is this murky connection - this narrow band of text that we're packing as full as we can - that strips everything away but words that others have defined and we've adopted, and now must use to try and come to truly know one another.

Oh sure, there are these BRILLIANT FLASHES of coherence - covalence - where you and I are so on-the-same-page, and right now I'm living for these, for they make me high - but it's murky nonetheless.

I also know that I run a risk here of making you feel uncomfortable by saying these nice things about you. And yet, you've gotta admit that if we were face to face you would have received PLENTY of compliments from me by now - maybe unvoiced, but you'd have received them IF all the peptide stuff jibbed enough to keep us connecting for this many weeks.

So, I'm making it a momentary point to reflect briefly on what some of those things are that I like about you - making up for the 10,000 nods, looks, murmurs and other affirmations you'd have received by now, had we been hanging. I think it's good for people to hear good stuff about themselves from people who are close to them, when it's true.

I also think it's good for you (and me) to learn what I like, just as I enjoy learning what you like about me. It makes you, through your values, more transparent to me, and my mind can get your "scent".

What you value is what you pursue. What you pursue becomes how you trend toward spending your time. How you spend your time determines what you have to share, and what you are capable of planning, or envisioning. I want to know more about your dreams - not just the ones with a partner, but the ones that complete YOU as a human being and a man. I'm looking forward to hearing those.

I really like how reasonable you seem to be. I notice you're a bit quick to the jump (can you say "button" ?- between you and I, we'll be lighting up like a christmas tree), but I like how you're equally quick at critically looking at yourself. I do that. I do that so fast some people think I lack a working self-confidence, but it's just because the other side of the story is ALWAYS very compelling, and why I didn't see it is often even more so. I'm fascinated by the other side.

I like your poetic turn. I loved the idea of you turning inside out like a black silk scarf...that is *so rich*. I cherish that image. I feel wrapped up in it...And your way of painting scenes is wonderful. You have me storming your bastion, and then traipsing into the main hall, grabbing the flagon from my conquered king, and joining him in his Bed! Now THIS is the way I would have conquered a country! Believe you me...Hell, it's probably what I DID! Efficient. Certainly a lot easier to clean up after the next day..."Make Love Not War:"...Why? Because it works!

You are so fun!

You know, I NEED your honesty. I need your willingness to be self-reflective. I can't tell you how grateful I am that these are your qualities. I don't care how great the physical attraction might be - if someone doesn't have this ability to look at himself, and adjust himself to the timbre of his circumstances, then I can't share deep time for long. After while, the inability to look within only becomes tedious. Conversely, so does the looking only within.

We've not had too much of an opportunity to share our respective scopes of vision, but yours seems broad to me. You seem well read. You're no stranger to science, or history. You engage in service, including the service of humor, and entertainment. You have a deep aesthetic sense. You value literature, and beauty. You care enough to teach. You know of mystery. And mastery. You're well proportioned, handsome, and you have the gift of health. You can be as fit and as youthful as you wish. You're strong. You're land-wise. And world-wise. How could I not be taken with you? These are all things I value highly.

And, lest you think I'm being overly complementary again (like last time), I also realize that you can err in all these things - you may be learned, but not think something through; you may compromise your sense of beauty for some less meaningful end; you may accidentally overlook what you treasure...but that doesn't cancel out the fact that those other things are also true?

************

So, I think about this limb we're trotting out on, here - and you point out how we're walking down exactly the road you were afraid of. Me, too. I've been afraid of becoming highly attached to you mentally and emotionally, and then not being attached by the smell.

I worry about what would happen if you liked mine, but I didn't like yours - or vice versa. How would we take care of each other? How do we take care of ourselves? Shut down now? Cool it a little and miss some of the best stuff? I don't know for sure. I've not proved to be very good when it gets to this part. But I think I've become better.

So, we're doomed to sans-peptide certainty, and in need of peptide corroboration. We can't get it, so we just have to decide how we want to proceed without it.

It seems good to help one another maintain enough perspective to remember that we're LIGHT BEINGS (remember ? you said this very well) in love with each other as LIGHT BEINGS.

We may only be awakening the divine in one another - loving that in one another until we meet and know that it was just (but not JUST - GLORIOUS, WONDERFUL, because we chose to have divine fun as light beings) for the time of Being LIGHT, and not for the time of being bodies together (but and oh, do I so hope we enjoy being bodies together...)

Does this sound all right? Can we do this? I'm interested in what you'll feel after you come back from the hills - a little nervous, for I remember the last time you went and reflected ... but this is starting to get good enough to look forward to the next step, no matter what it might turn out to be.

**********

There...that was a good little hour - sort of like a light dinner conversation, yes? And it took less time, too...:)

I'm off to bed. Again, if you want to call, you can wake me in the mornings, too. Yours is always a

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2002

Answers

Wednesday, July 3.

I just got your photo. I LIKE it. When was it taken again? You know, you kind of look the same from year to year to year - same tilt to your head, same look in your eye. Who ARE you looking at, in that camera, for 20 years?

If that's how you look 5 days into the desert, I hope you'll not hold me to the same standard. I get pretty wild looking. I'm thinking about having a friend do my hair up in braids for the desert. I'm just NOT into dealing with a gray dusty mat of tangles after 10 days.

I actually came up with the best LNT strategy I've heard so far. At one of our last Camp meetings, I reminded everyone that I was the person who was going to be staying behind for a day and picking up everyone's MOOP. I made this announcement all dressed up in my white mini-dress and high heels, and reminded everyone I was NOT designed for garbage pick-up.

My wavers are a lot of fun, and about 30-40% of the crowd are wonderful young gay men, primarily from Portland. Oh, don't get me wrong - they're VERY COMPETENT young men - drive big trucks; lug around heavy sound equipment; set up speaker stacks with the energy of a varsity football team. But they can ALL relate and when I tell them I'm going to get nails just for Burning Man, and that the LNT test is whether or not I break one, well - they appreciate the humor of it all.

Anyhow, my dashing fellow - you look more yummy day by day. Keep it coming.

light kiss,

your heaRt wRaver **

: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2002

July 21, 2002

It's almost the end of July, and it looks like things are beginning to take some shape. Next step sorts of things, at any rate.

I've been troubled about continuing to live in my apartment, since I'm rarely there except for to sleep, and it's just too expensive to maintain any longer. My lease is up at the end of August, and I think I'm ready to move on.

I had a very good talk with Douglas and Carol while at the springs today. Things are moving along with the idea of my transferring into a part-time domicile onto the hot springs land. I'll have the cabin for the fall, as early as I want it, and throughout the winter and spring at minimum. I can come and go at will, and they're prepared for me to be taking several long breaks this winter.

I have a number of tools from my old life that I still haven't let go of - norwalk juicer, excellent grain mill, dry-pack canning machine. They'll be perfect up there, for I don't want to cart them around any longer, and I'm pretty certain that Douglas and Carol and I will be connected for a long time. But even if we're not, it doesn't matter.

I'll have to sleep in the trailer now and then, when guests arrive - but that's a joy (until winter - nothing a good radiator (or a trip to texas) can't fix) and a small price to pay for hanging in a place that lets me start to unravel the tight coils of business life from around my ankles.

In exchange, I'll be helping to prune their blueberries for the season. I walked their patch today and evaluated whether or not that was work I could offer them. It fits my criteria pretty well: it's valuable to them; every hour I work for them is an hour less that Douglas has to prune, and that's VERY valuable to him. I can do it whenever I want, in chunks as it feels good. I can easily rack up a couple hundred hours between now and April, and that should satisfy any desires for rent on their part.

The plants want me there. They're in exactly the stage that my pruning skills are best with (I'm good with blueberries - Carol thinks the berries called me, and she has me in her sites to be helping over the years. We'll see...) and I can help make their fields much healthier.

I did tell you that I once sharecropped a large blueberry patch for three years straight, didn't I?

So, this is actually pretty significant. I'm not sure, but I think I'll move at the end of September. I'd love to do it before Burning Man, but it's just a bit too much to squeeze in. Carol's been wanting me to be more involved with the land for a long time. She believes that her land is calling me - that the springs wanted me to bring my arboretum, and that her blueberry farm (halfway between the Springs and Eugene, in a town called Leaburg) is calling me, too.

She understands that there's nothing guaranteed here - that it's all in process. As long as we can be useful to one another now, it seems to both of us like it's a valuable thing. And it sure takes a load off my mind, for I was wondering how I was going to get on with the business of visiting family and friends, becoming an "absentee owner", and not going broke. Living rent free means that I'll have enough money for some gas and plane tickets, and THAT'S extremely important, given my propensity for long -distance relationships with geographically undesirable people.

But such are definitely worth it when said undesirables write things like:

"It's always been a dream of mine to establish my own arboretum. Or an edible landscape. A Dan Henklein "habitat", actually, it would be, with beeches, and hollys, and boxwoods, linden, oaks, and berrys of all kinds, and hazels of every variety and my favorite apples. But that would be more for your area."

So, I suppose you may just get whatever amount of opportunity for this that you seem to be wanting. You'll have a doorway to taste of that through me, at any rate. My friends have five different pieces of excellent land. They look for people to hang with them on the individual pieces, and bond with some aspect of one of them. No one has yet dug into the Springs with a love of the land besides Richard, the caretaker (they don't make the opportunity that available, either).

Douglas says that this land up here in Oregon is what he calls the Fourth Garden. He says that Eden was the Third, and that a HUGE number of people come here to get right with their spirits through planting and growing and understanding the cycle of life as it comes through CULTIVATION, not EXTRACTION.

I'm growing a fantasy of watching us get closer while you take care of your schooling and your two year Texas commitment, with some break times spent together (at minimum!), and some of that in my element here at the Springs and the park. Oh, it's all so fun to think about. I sure do wish you were here! I can't wait to hear what you have in mind.

: : : : : :: : : :: : :

-- Anonymous, July 22, 2002

You are so nice to me.

I just wanted you to know my left-brain is now ready to join my right- brain in a marriage by proxy. But who then would be the proxy?

Better wait.

I have SO many surprises for you......................................

Dan

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2002

Hello Darlin'.

That's a country song I think.

What if we fall madly inlove at Burning Man?

After all THIS, too.

Remember how I said Burning Man accelerates relationships? And you said, "Oh. You must mean ACCELERATES."

And then, like, crazy things happen in wartime. Which this is SUPPOSED to be.

You could sit on my lap on a great cusion in the dark under the stars protected by the dark I have a torc for you with tiny horses and riders on the finials mine has beautiful dragons or wolves not decoration but just a touch there on the neck and the wrists where it counts intense to flirt asa they press on the neck like a tickle of erotic asphyxiation but not not dangerous real not decoration sexy for reasons only the initiated know torcs were the first wedding rings you get mine I get yours and you on my lap like cool tantric sex kissing like gods under the stars on an overstuffed cushion in the dark in rainbow corkscrew chasms flying together forever.

That letter I never sent? There's a Justice of the Peace in Gerlach. I'm trying to get in touch with him. Just in case.

-- Anonymous, July 23, 2002