Another week has flown along, day by day, night by night, then it's Friday the 13th followed by Valentine's Day. I never was spooked by Friday the 13th. It made no sense to the kid, one day bad things are to be expected. Someplace? Everywhere? Where? I and other kids at school experienced it as just another day, though many of them were superstitious about it, a folk belief with nothing behind it. My experience with Friday the 13th has been good days. Facebook is full of warnings and pictures of the ugly guy in the movies. My last of those kinds of movies was the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I swore off scary movies. I liked one from time to time before. Texas Chainsaw took hold of me and did not let go until it spit me out at the end. I said I'll never subject myself to any such thing again. Over. Done. Several years later and maybe ten years ago, I had a crazy experience around the movie. A woman from Pennsylvania took a shine to me and I thought she was weird. She asked me to dinner one evening. We were friendly. She was in the kitchen looking over the stove and I looked at her video collection. It was all silly comedies and children's movies. I wasn't surprised, but thought how can somebody watch all those terrible movies. I couldn't find one I believed I could sit all the way though. Then, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, right in the middle. I freaked out. I saw myself in the trailer of a psycho. I didn't want to eat. Already there, I decided to be nice and not run out the door. The meal was the worst ever. Everything tasted like cardboard. I suspected she'd put cardboard flavored poison in all my food. It was a spooky moment. At one point I asked how she got a copy of Texas Chainsaw Massacre in her video collection. She likes the movie. I exclaimed, Really? She said it's not so bad and was curious why I didn't like it. The first moment I could get out the door and into my truck became a precious goal, get there as fast as I could go. I said I didn't want to eat and run but had to go, fled, in imagination running for my life, possibly already poisoned.
There was a time in my early years I believed other people's energies had no affect on me, until learning I'm perhaps a little too receptive of other people's energies and need to take caution. I've learned there are different kinds of energies, some aggressive, some not. I know this one old boy, a few years older than me, who radiates energy like nobody I've ever known. It's anger in him. He's angry all the way to the core, or more accurately, from the core outward. But I don't feel threatened in any way by his angry vibes. He thinks I'm a twirp, but likes me a little bit, dumb as I am. Compared to him, I could only call myself dumb. He has a brilliant mind, has skills, experience and knowledge I'm wide-eyed impressed by. I respect him. Anger is his aura. It's an aura you feel instead of see. Intense life. Not someone I would say has peace of mind. He thinks I don't respect him, thinks I judge him. Somebody so different from me it makes me glad to see I'm able to have a friendly association with somebody so radically different from myself, the other end of the spectrum, or so I assess it. I like knowing people different from myself. I live a passive life, largely not engaged with the world around me. I stay at home and wrestle with my own ignorance day by day. I feel the spirit of God all around me on the mountain. The donkeys, Caterpillar, the birds, the crows, the squirrels, possums, coons, the trees, all are in the Garden. But me. They let me live in the Garden with them as long as I don't hurt anybody. The world before the forebrain. A world of peace. I'm grateful to have a home in the Garden. I feel like it makes me whole. My connections with other humans are of the mind, mental, largely, heart too. Connection with the mountain is my whole being. The mountain is my battery charger. Off the mountain, I'm running on battery. On the mountain, I'm plugged in.
Yes, this is my comfort zone and I like it. It feels like snow outside, like snow is not far behind. Heavy overcast, mid twenties, just enough wind to make the wind chimes ting a time or two. If the temperature rises above freezing, which it may, we'll have cold rain. Or nothing. Weather forecasts have become so dramatic, I seldom pay attention. I saw a weather-related article yesterday saying North Carolina will get ten inches of snow this coming week. All of NC? Part of NC? By the end of the paragraph it was down to maybe one or two inches or none, and no indication of where. It was presented in high drama like the Bush-Cheney color-coded levels of anxiety we're expected to conform to or die. Snow has been a winter phenomenon all my life; now I'm expected to hype myself into a state of high anxiety over a forecast warning two inches of snow. It has become annoying to hear such exaggerated weather forecasts. Brings to mind a friend who tells the temperature five to ten degrees colder than it is in winter, and warmer than it is in summer. Two inches of snow equals at least eight. Called on the exaggeration, he'll say, "In some places." We live with our heads in media mind, ready to do what we're told: be afraid. The song, Leader of the Pack, comes to mind; Lookout! Lookout! Lookout! Lookout! I felt so helpless, what could I do? followed by another great pop nonsense line, after all the things we been through. Allowing the weather to be what it is, I feel no anxiety about the forecast. Receiving it as it happens is relaxing. Earlier, the sky suggested snow ahead, and now, a few hours later, the sun is out, temperature above freezing. The donkeys stand with one side full to the sun, feels so good after a cold night. It comes under one-day-at-a-time thinking. The day, itself, when it rains or snows, is beautiful in itself. Dreading rain tomorrow ruins today.
A gust of wind passed through, making a brief song with the wind chimes. The chimes bring Japanese composer, Toru Takemitsu, or Takemitsu Toru, into my mind. I discovered him as composer in the soundtrack of a video I was given at least twenty years ago, Japanese gardens. Faulty memory recollects it a National Geographic film. Takemitsu composes with Japanese gardens in the way Leonard Bernstein incorporated American pop into his compositions, and Bartok wove Hungarian and Romanian folk music through his. I've inspired myself to put on one of my favorite of Takemitsu's compositions, I Hear The Water Dreaming. Flute, viola, harp, guitar, with BBC Symphony Orchestra. His music flows through my mind like wind chimes in varying wind. Somehow, it does not distract. The flute and the strings flow into my ears so in tune with my inner space in this moment, outer becomes inner and inner, outer. The wind chimes interject a ting, adding an abstract note now and then, like the drone string on a banjo. I don't like to listen to music while writing or reading. Whatever it is, it pulls me into it. Takemitsu's music flows with my mind continually searching for how to complete each sentence, word by word, waiting for and finding the next sentence, seeing where it goes, word by word, playing with words fluid as air. I think of words being fluid, easy to change, move around, hear the rhythms. Wind chimes don't distract, perhaps having to do with their seeming random notes. Takemitsu's notes happen with the random quality of wind chimes, though held into a seeming order making music. He has listened closely to wind chimes. They are the only music I want in the course of writing. Takemitsu's music enters my mind as flow patterns the mental meanderings ride as freely as with wind chimes.
A gust of wind passed through, making a brief song with the wind chimes. The chimes bring Japanese composer, Toru Takemitsu, or Takemitsu Toru, into my mind. I discovered him as composer in the soundtrack of a video I was given at least twenty years ago, Japanese gardens. Faulty memory recollects it a National Geographic film. Takemitsu composes with Japanese gardens in the way Leonard Bernstein incorporated American pop into his compositions, and Bartok wove Hungarian and Romanian folk music through his. I've inspired myself to put on one of my favorite of Takemitsu's compositions, I Hear The Water Dreaming. Flute, viola, harp, guitar, with BBC Symphony Orchestra. His music flows through my mind like wind chimes in varying wind. Somehow, it does not distract. The flute and the strings flow into my ears so in tune with my inner space in this moment, outer becomes inner and inner, outer. The wind chimes interject a ting, adding an abstract note now and then, like the drone string on a banjo. I don't like to listen to music while writing or reading. Whatever it is, it pulls me into it. Takemitsu's music flows with my mind continually searching for how to complete each sentence, word by word, waiting for and finding the next sentence, seeing where it goes, word by word, playing with words fluid as air. I think of words being fluid, easy to change, move around, hear the rhythms. Wind chimes don't distract, perhaps having to do with their seeming random notes. Takemitsu's notes happen with the random quality of wind chimes, though held into a seeming order making music. He has listened closely to wind chimes. They are the only music I want in the course of writing. Takemitsu's music enters my mind as flow patterns the mental meanderings ride as freely as with wind chimes.
photos by tj worthington
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