THE GHOST PARAGRAPH AND THE CIRCLE

sofia and cat toy

 

This the final day of Thanksgiving weekend, a thankful attitude has been with me for four days, looking at the world that is my life, noting gratitude unto overwhelmed. It is seeing in a new light, though not altogether new, in a light that has joy in it. I look out the window, see Jenny eating Jack's grain and laugh within. A few minutes ago Jack was standing at his grain pile eating, Jenny standing behind him after she'd finished her grain, like waiting in line. She eats faster than Jack. She will eat three carrots while he eats one. Jack was aware she was standing behind him and knew what came next. He could have easily popped her on the chin and chose not to. She was anxious, shifting her weight on her feet, watching Jack. After waiting long enough she walked around to Jack's right side, nonchalantly turned her rear end to him and stepped backwards, placing her back knees under his belly threatening. He stepped aside and let her have the last of his grain. She could not have taken his grain soon after I poured it without a fight.

 

 

 

The first day of thinking about thankfulness because we're s'posed-to was Thanksgiving day. Tapped into facebook, it's impossible not to think about it. First thing I came up with was just about everything. I woke from a nap a little bit ago, during which I composed in a dream the first paragraph for a subject I thought I'd write about today. It happened in half dream state and half slightly awake, though the awareness of being awake may have been part of the dream. I wrote it out, sentence by sentence, thinking I'll get up and write down this paragraph composed in sleep. Waking, I sat up on the side of the bed, slipped feet into shoes, Sophia jumped onto my lap. I looked at the dream for the paragraph and the first sentence was gone, then it was all gone, then I forgot what it was about. In subconscious mind, while writing the paragraph, it came to me I am grateful for each one, individually, of my readers. The reader completes the circle of the writing, like a band and the audience. One needs the other to complete the circle.

 

 

 

I'm especially grateful for the people I've met through the writing, the Daily Creative Practitioners among them. This is the best part of every day for me. I enjoy writing to you more than watching a good movie, even. Some years ago, I wrote a weekly column for the local paper. In conversation with the editor one day I mentioned that the time of writing was my favorite time of the week. He said, Really? I said, Yeah. He said, You need a life. I heard his remark as the stupidest assessment I'd ever been offered about myself. He had a passion for changing my punctuation. One day I told him I'd like him to stop messing up my punctuation. He said, What? I told him it changes the meaning and the rhythm when he changes a comma to a period. He said, The rhythm? You're strange. I couldn't hold back. I said, Remember this: I am the strangest individual you will ever meet in  your life. I felt it a safe prophecy as he had the most limited mind of anyone I know.

 

 

 

I especially like about writing in a blog the absence of an editor. Everyone I have talked with who wrote a newspaper column for a period of time said they left it over an impossible editor who could not refrain from making disruptive changes. I left after being censored the third time. I was told at the beginning my column is in my name, independent of the paper. That didn't last long. The final one was in the time of Abu Ghraib prison torture in the headlines and photographs of Geneva Convention atrocities. I was saying this is an embarrassment to all that America stands for around the globe. He said, We are not a political paper. I said, This is not politics; it's history. He said, We can't run it without changes. I said, Then you'll not run it. He said, What should I put in its place? I said, I don't care; you're the editor, figure it out. I wrote a farewell piece to my readers for the following week and was done with it. Five years was enough. Time to pass it on to somebody else. Writing daily is fulfilling. Not in a big external way like appearing on the Ellen DeGeneres show, but in a big way within. I use it as a psychoanalyst's couch, to see more clearly.

 

 

photos by tj worthington

 

 

 

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THE HILLBILLY SHOW SATURDAY NIGHT

l to r, bruce molsky, charlie edwards, bill dancy

 

The Hillbilly Show happened Saturday night, a comedy and variety show, this year the 21st annual, local people entertaining local people. The Hillbilly Show is a fundraiser for the Alleghany Planning Committee, a branch of the Blue Ridge Opportunity Commission headquartered in Wilkes County. The money raised from admission goes to people in the county having a hard time. They give three $500 scholarships to high school graduates of slim circumstances. They pay electric and heating fuel bills for people at risk of losing their power unable to pay the bill. They give garden seeds to several people a year, seeds of the individual's choice. They arrange house repairs for people who can't afford to pay for the repairs. They buy books for the Head Start daycare center in town. No money is skimmed off for any reason. The money is carefully accounted for. All that is taken in is used for its stated purpose. It appears that more money goes out than comes in from the Hillbilly Show. Donations help too. It is a group of modest people, about a dozen, who believe helping the poor an important aspect of being a member of a community. These are people who answer yes to the question, Am I my brother's keeper? It does not diminish anything for anybody in the group to help somebody having a rough time. I have seen by observation and experience the one word that describes best the natives of Alleghany County is generosity.

 

dr roger arias

 

bruce molsky

 

Dr Roger Arias opened the show playing America on classical guitar.  He later played two classical pieces for guitar. He was good. The man could pick. Flowers were thrown onto the stage while he played. I believe the flowers were part of the show. The audience applauded him as enthusiastically as they applauded the country music and bluegrass. This week's Alleghany News mentioned the Hillbilly Show briefly in an article about different events going on in the county this fall color weekend like high school homecoming, a studio tour of the different craft studios in the county. The article introduced the Hillbilly Show thus, "As sophisticated as the studio art may be, Saturday night's Hillbilly Comedy and Variety Show is anything but." Two seats reserved for the press were empty. It struck me somewhat irresponsible of the editor to dismiss the Hillbilly Show so succinctly. I suppose classical music is not sophisticated either. Maybe he was thinking of Meatloaf for sophisticated.

 

the alleghany golden girls

 

the jubilee line dancers

 

Seems to me a responsible local paper might at least acknowledge an important charity in the county of all local people helping out local people, and raising money by way of an annual laugh for the community. It's about the only thing happening in Sparta not high school sports. I suspect unsophisticated has to do with the Hillbilly Show being working class humor that's not quite sophisticated enough for the middle class. Not near as good as television. The music is more of interest to the working class, the mountain people, country, bluegrass, old-time, than to the exurban middle class. Therefore, hardly worthy of notice to an editor who believes only the middle class is literate. Some of the better musicians in the county play at the Hillbilly Show. This year, Tim Lewis picked his banjo. Tim can pick some bluegrass. Charlie Edwards was picking his rhythm guitar and singing. Bill Dancy picked his banjo. Bill Joines picked guitar. Guest artist Bruce Molsky played fiddle, guitar and sang with the band of respectable local musicians.  

 







dottie dorsett the backstage director in red with gary joines

 

judy rimes and

patrick buchannan

sing sonny & cher

 

My role is to pull the ropes that open and close the curtains. I used to try to help out moving mics around backstage, but it messed me up with the curtains. They take some focus. Dottie, pictured above, signals to me and I have a program she marked with open and close throughout the show. It might be almost ten years I've been with the Planning Committee. It appears to me the Hillbilly Show is better each year. Last year and this year the back stage part was handled the best ever. Onstage flowed seamlessly. I like about my place that I can see what's going on backstage, what's happening on stage, and the audience. Like a good Taoist, I participate by not participating. First couple years with them I learned I don't have it for the stage. The stage is not the place for me. This show had nothing but good music throughout, good dancing, good singing, new sound system and lighting. I felt like it was an excellent show that connected with the audience well. The audience was with what was happening on stage from start to finish. Hillbilly Wes, an MC, kept the spirit lively and the audience laughing at his zany humor.

 

cheri choate's band

 

the house band with bruce molsky

 

 

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SPARTA IN FURS

agamemnon

I picked up a paper at Betty's Dollar Mart to see what adult white male has been arrested for sex play with a pre-school little girl this week. I personally consider this one of the great crimes against humanity. Humanity is one human being the same as it is all human beings. Adults playing with pre-pubescent children "in the family way" bypasses conscience. I started to say is without conscience. But I know these men and know them to have conscience. It's denying conscience its purpose. It amounts to turning one's gaze away when passing a picture of Jesus on the wall, ashamed in the light. It does that to the grownup involved, and what it does to the child for the entire length of that person's life is particular to each one, but what's the same is a head preoccupied with shame and guilt. Swiss psychologist, Alice Miller, wrote a book on child abuse, FOR YOUR OWN GOOD. I received from her writing some of the most profound knowledge of my life. At the time I was reading it, a pre-school daughter of friends, and herself a dear friend to me, was played with by an adult. I recognized it in her the moment I saw her, the day she couldn't run to the truck when I parked in the driveway and jump on me like she always did. She stood on the deck beside the door with her fingers in her mouth, trembling. Alice Miller gave the solution to restoring the child's mental health, I shared it with her parents, they followed Miller's recommendations and little girl came through the ordeal whole. I believe it was God's grace that had me reading this book in the time of her need.


I know both of these guys charged in the last few weeks. I prefer to believe there is nothing to either charge, the trial finding them falsely charged. If there is anything to it, they are personally responsible for wrecking the lives of one person apiece, or more that could be unknown. I don't like the idea of seeing two men I know carted off to prison for a long time. I don't like the idea of two men I know playing with little kids, either. It makes me want to give one in particular a meaningful cussing in his face for being stupid; even worse, acting on it. I don't like to call somebody stupid, but Forrest Gump's mother rings in my head, Stupid is as stupid does. I say all this presuming where there is smoke there is fire. I don't want to believe either charge and I do want to wait for the trial to determine guilt. I would not be allowed on either jury, because I'd be as much interested in the well-being of the two men as I would the two (or more) kids. All will suffer, and I want nobody to suffer. This is what the law's about: what's done is done.


My belly-laugh for the day was seeing at the bottom of the front page this "presentation on possible street changes" on Hwy 21 running through Sparta. Everyone forgets, or never thought of it to start with, that there is not one sign on Hwy 21 in Sparta that says Main St. It was the Michigan-to-Florida Hwy 26 before interstates. It's a highway with three redlight intersections as it passes through Sparta. Everyone with a business on Hwy 21 knows the cars passing through are not stopping. They're not shopping. They're on the road from one place to another, looking neither left nor right, going to work, going home from work, driving from Independence to Winston-Salem and back. We haven't had "tourism" since the beginning of the Bush administration. I was laughing at widening the sidewalks and narrowing the road, taking out the left turn lanes and replacing them with trees that nobody wants. The Methodist church cut down the most beautiful trees in Sparta for an electronic gizmo and a better view of the parking lot. SRC cut down all the trees on the courthouse lawn. The two maples beside Farmer's Hardware are about it for what's left of Sparta trees. Thanks, Marsha. Planting new trees in the street? I don't think so. I've an idea the principal planner left out the context of Hwy 21 being a canyon through which passes the air flow of Twin Oaks Gap. It's not always a gentle breeze through there. It's rough on non-native trees; they would never consider planting native trees.


Trees down the middle of Hwy 21 in Sparta, shutting down possibilities to make a left turn off Hwy 21 for the trees, narrowing the road and widening the sidewalks. Has anyone noticed that what could pass for pedestrian traffic compared to the automotive traffic is like about 1 to 1000? Or 1 to 10,000? Has anyone noticed we have sidewalks that are not being used nearly all the time? Has anyone noticed the traffic on Hwy 21 is continuous? Has anyone noticed that if they would remove those ugly plastic tubs full of dead plant matter and cigarette filters eleven months of the year, the sidewalks would instantly be three feet wider. Voila! And Sparta would be instantly beautified, for free. No grants, no taxes. Easy. This, however, is not the point. The point is SRC wants to shut down "Main Street" to vehicular traffic and put up a pretty plywood reproduction of Blowing Rock that will attract wealth only, like Western town facades put up for 50s tv shows and movies, Boot Hill. Characteristic of SRC is the ongoing attempt to make Sparta into something it is not. They don't know it yet, though it seems like they'd be getting it by now, but Sparta will bend to their will about like any mountain man in a pickup will bend for them. They will have to break Sparta. Meaning, they will have to kill it. Sparta is a mountain town, not a suburb of Charlotte.


This is what I love about Sparta, that Sparta is itself. It is what or who it is, depending on how you look at it. I look at it "who," a living entity. And the only truth I have found that applies to Sparta any and every way you look at it, Sparta is different. Not better, not worse. Different. Sparta is itself, like every (with exceptions) man and woman of these mountains is his and her own self. It's only since the white tsunami of suburban middle-class summer-home exurbanites (including myself) that need has arisen to make Sparta into something it is not. I see Sparta allowing a cosmetic makeover about like I see putting Margaret Evans Crouse in a Lady Gaga outfit for church. It aint gonna happen. For one thing, if "Main Street" gets shut down to traffic flow, what about the line of SUVs with moms taking their kids to school in the morning, a line that stretches from the light at Betty's Dollar Mart to the light at Hardee's and beyond? No left turns. A stop sign at every intersection to stop traffic flow. Appears to me it's something about like dumping a dumptruck load of gravel into a stream to increase water flow. Of course, grants would pay for it. Until the grant money ran out and the facade is half done. Sparta is not a fake facade-friendly town. Maybe I don't get it, and maybe I don't know Sparta, but this is how I see it anyway.


They will have to kill the spirit of the town, which ultimately, and not very far away, will be done. And they won't care. I've seen over and over for many years their determination to put makeup on Sparta. What if Sparta's spirit might be masculine and doesn't like wearing makeup? Sparta's name, itself, is ultra-masculine. The Spartan warrior is about as fiercely masculine as the Viking in legends of our collective history. Why go against what Sparta is and frill it up like a trailer park pajama party? Ever thought of calming down, getting acquainted with Sparta as Sparta is? Get to know Sparta, become friends with Sparta, not like you would with a dog, but with respect. Maybe Sparta prefers blue to pink. Maybe Sparta prefers a haircut to a perm. Kermit the barber is right there on the corner. Every bit of this new plan for Sparta is shutting down its flow. The focal point of Sparta, the cross-hairs, has moved from where Hwy 21 crosses Hwy 18 down to where Hwy 21 crosses the entrance to the shopping center parking lot at Grandview, Fifth/Third and Hardees. The part of town by the old courthouse shut down long ago for want of parking. This is the age of easy access parking. Sparta is a dynamic unto itself, even with its own personality. A long book could be filled with all the grants that have been written for money to put false eyelashes and lipstick on what might be the equivalent of a statue of a general like Agamemnon, warrior of warriors, dysfunctional patriarch. And the rain keeps washing the mess off.


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COYOTE SIGHTING

coyote

Driving back from town this morning, I'd turned down Waterfall Road from Air Bellows Gap Road, approaching the first slight curve to the left, a coyote ran across the road in front of me. It was far enough ahead there was no danger of hitting it. It felt like something magical happened. It seemed to have a glow of clarity about it, which was my own inner response to seeing a coyote by surprise. I examined it visually as it darted across the road, from woods on the right to woods on the left. Big ears, long bushy, straight tail like a fox. A burnt brown color accented in black at the tip of the tail, around the neck, the ears. It ran into the woods a ways. I slowed down to watch it run through the trees. It stopped and stood broadside watching me go by from deep enough in the trees it felt it had an advantage if I set out in pursuit. It all happened in about 3 seconds. My visual sense was on full alert, looking with as much focus as I could, to see as much of the beautiful dog as the moment allowed. I chose not to stop, because I didn't want to alarm the coyote.



It is along that stretch of the road I've had some of my best feral animal moments. A hawk has flown above where a hood ornament would be, keeping its pace the same as mine, flying two or three feet above the hood, turning its head to left and right looking behind at me with one eye, using the other eye to fly with. I kept a pace comfortable for the hawk and it flew with me a hundred feet or more. A crow had done the same thing in the same place. This is over a period of a quarter century. I value those moments the highest. Whenever I have such an encounter, which is relatively frequent, it stamps itself in my memory. Like the time I was standing on a big flat rock in the creek down in the woods. I heard coming from a certain direction in the trees, yip-yip-yip-yip..., a pileated woodpecker. I saw this flying red hammer-headed woodpecker flying straight at me in its particular woodpecker flight, black wings flapping something like a duck's, a blur to either side of the advancing red. It was flying straight toward me, yip-yipping all the way, and it flew straight over the top of my head about 3 feet. Behind it was a second one, flying in the same line, yip-yipping, and flew over the top of my head the same as the first one. It was one of the great moments of my life.



In the time of my first dog here, Sadie, we were out for a stroll in about 4 inches of snow, walking down the back part of Waterfall Road, the old wagon road up the mountain. The road went along the ridge such that the ground went downward rather steeply on both sides, trees all around on both sides. To the right when the leaves are off the trees the waterfalls can be heard and seen a little bit, going toward Whitehead from here on the mountain. The muffled silence in a world of snow is a silence as profound as the blackness inside a cave. A crow flew upward over the ridge from my left to right, flying just a couple feet over the top of my head. I heard the sound of wings. To mind came the hymn, Angel Band, I hear the sound of wings. It was a sacred moment. Come angel band, come and around me stand. Powerful song. There's nothing in this world like singing this song in an old-time Regular Baptist meeting, the slow, old-timey way, no piano.



There was the time of driving down the mountain, leaving the pavement at Air Bellows, down the road to a place where it leveled off for a ways, on my left, sitting on a fence post, the classic barn owl with the round head and the spike pattern in its head feathers. We made eye contact as I drove by. I was surprised it didn't fly away. The night of the day Jr's soul left the body, when I drove home and parked, opened the car door, a very short distance away, in a tree just the other side of the road, a hoot owl sent me a beautiful hoot. I hooted back to it and said, Hello, Jr. To let him know I got it. In the time I wrote the column in the Alleghany News www.alleghanynews.com/backwoodsbeat/ sometimes I'd go someplace outside and sit in one place to write. This particular time I was in the woods across the road, the sun was setting, it was starting to get dark, I had a train of thought going and couldn't stop. I was writing fast as I could go to get it done before returning to the house. There was time. There is still plenty of time in the gloaming between sunset and darkness. I heard a screech owl over my left shoulder. Very near. I felt what mice must feel when they hear that trill so nearby.



Another time writing in the woods, I'd found a good flat rock by the side of Waterfalls Creek. One side of it sloped gently into the water. I sat cross-legged on the part that was level and dry. I'd started whatever it was, when a water snake swam to the rock I was sitting on and put its chin on the rock just a few inches from my crossed legs. It looked up at me. I looked at the snake. I know them to be harmless, flight instead of fight. They have teeth, but not fangs. They also look like diamondback rattlesnakes, which scared hell out of me the first several I saw. The snake stayed there looking at me a long time. I changed the subject I was writing about and wrote of the encounter with the snake as it was unfolding. The snake came around to where the rock sloped into the water and crawled out of the water beside me to my right. It crawled over to me and curled up, not coiled, beside me. I told the snake, don't get on me. If you get on me, I'll jump, that will scare you, you'll jump, we'll have an unsuccessful association. Stay off me and you're welcome to do what you like. This is your home. I'm just passing through.



Cement-headed me didn't get it that the snake was trying to tell me something. It would look at me with eyes that said, I am a serpent. You're supposed to be afraid and get up and leave. After a period of apprehensive time, the snake went back to the water and swam in the pool part of the creek in front of where I sat. It gave me an Esther Williams watersnake swim routine, and it was up there among the very most beautiful things I've seen. The snake was watching me watch it swimming around and around. It took off over a shallow section over rocks to the next still pool, head held high, riding the water like a surfer. It turned around and swam back up against the current to the pool in front of me. It looked at me with frustration. It swam over to a place where it swam up beside another snake twice its size in the shade of a rock standing on its side. I assumed then the snake I'd been watching was a she. The big snake was eye-balling me like it was wanting to cast a spell on me. I remembered snakes charming birds with their eyes. This bull watersnake was drilling his focus on my eyes. It became unsettling. I finally realized I was sitting on their afternoon sunning rock. It was that time of day. She needed her sunning rock. The two of them lay there side by side, glaring at me. I decided it was time to hurry up my writing and go. It was feeling creepy. I thanked the snakes for allowing me to enjoy their sunning rock, and apologized for taking so long to catch on to what she was trying to tell me.



Feeding the small birds is my stay-at-home encounters with the the feral world. I don't want to tame them or make them unafraid of humans. I keep a distance they're comfortable with. This morning I went out to feed them about an hour earlier than usual, went to the mailbox first. All the way to the mailbox and back I saw and heard the birds, the snowbirds, titmice, chickadees flying through the trees toward the feeders, calling to me. One of the red squirrels ran the length of a white pine branch. The birds living in the cluster of trees around and near the house gathered in the upper branches of the trees around the bird feeders watching the giant that feeds them walking back from the mailbox. I put seeds in the birdfeeders and around on the ground. They watched. A brave chickadee flew down to the feeder to be first.

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