ONE OF THEM DAYS

john mccracken

I'm about to take a vacation. Worn out and tired, I had to write an email this morning that wrecked the whole day. Knocked me down to the ground within. At the grocery store I ran into my friend Susan and she asked how I was doing. My spirit was dim, I said the body is fine, but the mind is not working today. I stopped a few places and saw people I knew, mind like a swamp, nothing going on and not hearing much I heard. I think I was in what WH Auden called, "the slough of despond." Earlier, in Farmer's Hardware, I saw Susan from a distance, thought I recognized her, but wasn't sure. I said to Marsha, "Who is that?" She said, "Sue Senter." I knew Sue as Susan Tucker. I knew Susan was born a Senter. I said, "I thought she was a Tucker," and Marsha said, "It's her mother." That threw me all the further. Susan went out the store before me and I ran into her later at Food Lion. Up close, I recognized her. My feeling is she lost weight, was wearing jeans, and had a pony tail I'd never seen her in. Plus, I've noticed recently my vision is going a bit blurry. Talking with Susan I was disoriented. I knew it was Susan, but my mind was stuck in its somebody I don't know who looks like Susan. I felt like I was in a cage in a new environment and couldn't figure out everything around me. I remembered when Jr Maxwell's mind was slipping away, a similar disorientation. I don't think mine was from mind going away, but from mind being shut down. It's like being online, then the modem quits working. I have to unplug to modem for ten seconds and start over. I carried groceries into the house just in time to take some grain to the donkeys as it was getting dark. 

john mccracken

I went to bed without putting up groceries. Couldn't move. Woke a couple hours later feeling no better. Put on a French film that arrived today, Fear & Trembling, by a director whose films I like, Alain Corneau. It was good. It was very good. The moment it was over, I went back to bed, unable to be up another minute. After a few more hours, I woke, unable to sleep, turned on BBC news and listened for awhile about Taliban shooting up a school in Pakistan, over a hundred kids shot down. Turned the radio off. Couldn't sleep for thinking about another atrocity done for God's glory. I got up and here I am, feeling like my head is a block of wood. I've been through one of the very worst ordeals of my life, one that never ends. It started in late October; as of yesterday, I am back to what they call square one, the starting point. Time to start all over. I've not been wanting to write about this ordeal, hoping it would come to an end some time in foreseeable future. As of yesterday, I learned it will never end. I had to write an email this morning saying I regret with all my heart I got involved in this project, am through with frustration and anger, am disheartened unto indifference, though if it takes all of 2015 to get this project completed, I'll bear down and do it, only because I've committed. I volunteered (BIG error) to make the video at the hillbilly show and take care of getting the video transferred to dvd. Was given a catalog of a place that does this promising results in 3 days. It's two months now. Thought I'd save us some money. This time, it's going to cost more than it ever has. Emails, phone calls, trips to town to take snail mail to the post office. 

john mccracken

I spent a whole week attempting to email the video to them by ways I had to consult a friend who knows computers how to do, and even then had to have her do it for me. Downloading time took so long and I had to do several of them three and four times. Two-thirds of the way through one, the connection would go offline. It gets worse. Much worse. It started much, much worse. Much of the problem was my own ignorance. This is a hi-tech place where I have to ask them to explain what they're saying, like doctors, young guys for whom I am a dinosaur, and not Dinosaur Jr. Now, I have to mail something else tomorrow. And it's all my fault. Like it's my fault they lost all the information over Thanksgiving vacation and when they came back, they'd forgotten it and I called a couple weeks later to ask about the delay. Oh, we forgot about it. Gee thanks. For over two months there has been only one thing I want: this project to be over. They sent a sample copy of the dvd. I put it in the player full of hope that this was it. It's over. Until it cut off two-thirds of the way through the show. It's not over. I had to write an email explaining the problem. It's not over. Starting over again. I noted in the email I regret with all my heart that I'd already given them my credit card number. They've been friendly, but I think my email this morning might have squeezed the friendly out of them. I don't care. I have fallen into the zone of indifference. I don't care if it's not over for a year. I don't care if it never gets taken care of it. I don't care if this starting again solves it. I don't care anything about it anymore. I have come into a kind of debilitating slump. There's nothing I want to do and nothing I'm able to do.

john mccracken

Devoid of motivation for anything. Thought I'd force myself to write. Didn't want to watch another movie. Didn't want to read. Only one subject in the front of my mind. Didn't want to write about it, but here it is. I can't get into the progression of the story, all the steps along the way that did not work, over and over, until I get so frustrated it turns to anger. Nothing to take the anger out on, so I swallow it into depression. That's where I've been all day, in the depression of swallowed anger. Every step along the way in this project from the very first moment has been a frustration. First, I was promised help by a fickle twenty-something, which never materialized: I hadta, I hadta.... Otherwise, I'd have got help from a friend I could count on, another twenty-something. No help in a project I needed an assistant. From then on, nothing worked. I realized I had jumped into something out of my league. But it was too late. I had to see it through. Two months ago. It still haunts me every day. I have pressure from two sides and I'm in the middle in stasis. I feel like Luke Skywalker in the Death Star's trash compacter. I've been thinking I'd like to do it next year, and do it right, now that I know what not to do. There is no way I can even consider for a nanosecond jumping into this bottomless pit again. It started as a volunteer effort to save our group that puts on the hillbilly show some money. What I did was screw everything up. It started on an off-note and every step along way was off, a fiddle out of tune played by a beginner. In the morning, I'll do what I have to do to get the next step going, another of the many that have promised to be the last. I've given in to seeing there is no end to it. I'll just continue, one step at a time, on this endless journey to nowhere. 

john mccracken himself

*

WINTERIZING THE DONKEY DEN

jenny and jack with winterized shed

The last days of decent weather before the forecast drop in temperature accompanied by wind, rain, ice, snow and everything else that can happen. Temperature is said to drop tonight and be blustery the next few days and cold all through November. Weather forecasts have been so inaccurate the last few years, I've learned to take it as it comes. I looked at the ten day forecast. Below freezing every night and highs each day slightly above freezing and sometimes not. The best part is little wind. I've used the last couple days to get 12 bales of hay from the barn to the stack by the donkey shed, covered them with a tarp to keep them dry. Today I brought 6 bales of last year's hay to stack in the open side of the donkey shed to give them a wall against the wind. The car's trunk holds three bales per trip. I've been using boards and cardboard to cover big holes and cracks in the shed's walls. It had a big hole in a side wall where chickens once went in and out. Another hole with screen up high for ventilation with chickens. I but boards over the openings. The door had cracks between the boards. Covered them with strips of cardboard stapled to the wood. I spread a bale of last year's hay over the dirt floor. They actually prefer the dirt, but I put hay in for insulation if it might help. Now I don't know if both can be comfortable in there. They will work it out. I wanted to leave a space above the stacked hay bales for them to see over it. It was cold and a light drizzle had begun when I went out a few minutes ago to see how they took to the new situation. Jenny was inside and Jack was looking in. I got some pictures of donkeys with new shed and went inside to feel it. Remarkable change just stepping into the space. No wind, but it still felt comfortable inside. 

donkey quarters

I'm curious to see if both will go in at the same time with a wall. What a job it was, dragging the hay bales out the barn door, only slightly wider than the bales, lifting them into the trunk, driving to the fence, throwing them over the fence, going back for three more and throwing them across the fence. They rolled about half way to the shed. I believe the tarp over the six bales will hold them in place and keep rain off them. I'm not worried about the donkeys eating the hay, it being hay they don't like. I put the tarp over the hay to hold the bales in place while donkeys bump against them, push at them, test them. My imagination tells me Jenny may claim the space and keep Jack out, though I'm not convinced it will be like that. One of the many things the donkeys have taught me is I cannot predict them. I like that. It keeps them fresh. I talked yesterday with my friend Marsha at the hardware store about Jenny losing her baby. Marsha knows horses, loves horses like I love donkeys. She asked me about Jenny's udder, how developed it was. I saw it the day before, lying down in the meadow with Jenny grazing around me. I noticed it had not developed and remembered thinking it odd. Marsha said it suggests premature. She said when the foal is born the udder is like a balloon. She said nature has a way of taking out the weak. I mentioned suspicion Jenny did not know what she was doing when she chose to lie down in the mud. Marsha said, "She knew what she was doing." Marsha mentioned that I had suspected February was the first time I felt like Jack conquered Jenny. 

 Christo was here

For the baby to have taken a year, as donkeys do, Jenny would have conceived the first couple days with Jack, which I don't believe she did. She's bigger than Jack and she was kicking him all over the meadow. Kept him looking like Mike Tyson after a slug-fest. Jack's face had that battered look again this morning. Jenny is back in heat, as donkeys go into heat within a few days after the birth. They are back at their courtship behavior, Jack wanting to climb on Jenny's back, and she's kicking with her ears back and her head down. It is not as vigorous a kicking as it was when she was new in the meadow and she didn't know him. This round, they are in love. Before, they were not. Jack was, but Jenny not. Jack fell in love first sniff. Jenny was six months falling in love with him. Their relationship is calm, calm like people who have lived together a year. Jenny commands Jack and he allows for it. Jack wants to be with Jenny all the time and she wants to be with him all the time. Jack has adjusted to having a woman who can kick his ass. She is willful, jealous, aggressive. Jack is humble, quiet, generous and non-aggressive, except when he wants to be. Jack is a good old boy. Jenny is Uma Thurmond in KILL BILL. She is a martial artist with her back legs. Both have powerful jaws and front legs too. Jack and Jenny are very different kinds of donkeys. Jack is a beast of burden donkey, one who would enjoy being a pickup truck for his human friend. Jack makes me suspect the companionship of humans using donkeys for beasts of burden since back into pre-history has linked them to humans in their DNA. Jack understands me talking. He is responsive to me. Jenny is too. I suspect Jenny has some Mammoth Donkey in her, as she's shaped more like a horse than Jack. Jack is donkey. Jenny is donkey mixed with horse somehow. Her head suggests a horse, whereas Jack is pure donkey. Jenny's baby was a miniature of her. 

jen

I saw today that one of them had dug at the grave, though not much. My feeling is it was the loose dirt that was the subject, not grave. They like to dig at dirt. They are good at clearing a circle on the ground of all vegetation to make a dust circle to wallow on. No rain for several days made their dust circles just right. Today I saw Jack rolling on one and Jenny rolling on another. They roll from one side to the other and back, legs swimming, and do it again until they're satisfied. They keep a thick layer of dust in their hair. It keeps parasites down and I suspect insulates in winter. Their hair is thickening and lengthening now. Last year at this time, Jenny's hair was long, curly and hot-chocolate brown. This year it is shorter, almost like Jack's, and a grayish brown like Jack's, with the hot-chocolate color remaining as a frost, a mere suggestion of the curls on her sides. I find it curious how a year with Jack has changed the nature of her hair. I think she is four. Possibly it changes with maturity. Their hair is so thick now, and longer, that it sticks out instead of laying back like in summer months. They are so covered with dust that when I touch one of them on the back, a cloud of dust rises. In the time Jack was new here, I thought it necessary to brush donkeys like horses. I bought a brush. He liked it. I brushed him all over while he stood still enjoying the sensation of his hair being brushed. As soon as I stopped brushing him, he ran for his first dust circle, dropped down onto his side, rolled back and forth, legs swimming in the air, replacing the dust I had brushed from his hair. I thought I was helping to clean him. I was messing him up. I'd brushed away his fly repellent. Never brushed him again. Just now thought I heard coyotes, jumped and ran to the door, opened it to yell at them. Wind chimes.  

 beautiful jen in the donkey den

*

STAND BY YOUR FRIENDS

It's amusing that in Thanksgiving cartoons the turkeys are always brown wild turkeys. The turkeys in the oven today were white turkeys raised in huge factories where the turkeys are raised in boxes called buildings, fed by machine, gathered by machine, killed by machine, and made into the bare-skinned blob in the grocery store meat department by machine. Instead of showing wild turkeys in the cartoons, why not use one of the grocery store featherless corpses in the cartoons? This is the only way we know the turkeys. Almost nobody knows what the turkeys go through from birth to death, and don't want to know. Out of sight, out of mind. Don't want to know because it will spoil the Thanksgiving dream. I've heard it said that if you take a tour of a hot dog factory, you'll never eat another hot dog. That can probably be said of all food processing factories. I don't eat canned food much, except in restaurants, because they are so laden with salt, such that I'm eating spinach-, bean- or corn-flavored salt. I don't like to be too particular about such details in food. To be so particular, I'd have to move to a city that has a big farmer's market, live nearby and consume only fresh vegetables. I don't want to live in a city and don't want to get that involved in cooking. Cooking is not my art form. I eat whatever is before me. I figure people have lived on meat from the beginning of humanity. We've survived it thus far. I'm not going to edit what I eat by reading the ingredients list of unpronounceable words starting with xyz that tell me the product is lethal. I take it for granted and take it for the nature of the world I live in. Don't like it, must accept it.   

 

 

Finally, by noon today, the temperature had risen to about 35 degrees from 14 degrees it went down to in the night. The donkeys and the calves are lying down, full sides to the sun, thawing out their bones. It may take all day. The day's full sunlight must feel good to them after last night's bitter cold--it had wind in it, too, wind full of air dragons. Down here in my little valley between ridges, air dragons seldom fly through. Late in the day I went to a neighbor's house across the road and on the ridge where the wind blows freely. I was in the kitchen area and heard the sound of the glass storm door like somebody had opened and closed it. I looked. Nobody there. The corner of the house creaked at the same time. I realized it was an air dragon. I heard several roar through while I was there. The air dragons seem to like it up on top of the ridge where they can fly eel-like through the barren trees, then *BAM* into the side of a house. I visualize the air dragons something like what we call dust devils. In the summer on a dry dirt road, occasionally the wind will whip up a miniature tornado that goes spinning along the road surface a ways, and it's gone. I'm seeing air dragons spontaneously stirred up, swirling through the air maybe a few hundred feet, then flying apart. Or flying into the side of a house like a bird flies into a window.

The temperature has been so bitter cold that outdoors is good where it is. I was glad for the donkeys the meadow beside the house breaks the wind for them when it comes in from the west like it did the last few days and nights. I'm glad they had a good day of sun with temperature above freezing to dry out from the rain before the temperature drop. Marsha told me not to be concerned about them keeping warm. Marsha is my contact for horse nature. Wednesday morning I went into Farmer's Hardware for a Christmas present and some turpentine. Sat with Marsha in the back of the store with the coffee pot and we talked about horses and donkeys for an hour or more. Marsha is also my contact now with the old-time mountain culture that is going away with the wind. These were our subjects we could have gone on all day talking about. I enjoy conversation with Marsha. She knows these mountains and the mountain ways as somebody who has paid attention with appreciation, seeing it slip away in sorrow, We talked much of our own particular appreciations of these mountains and old way of life. It is hard for both of us to see a society that once was truly classless be swept aside by the country clubs and middle class people moving in here, making the mountain people the working class, the people on the wrong side of the tracks. The same happened to the Tibetans when China took over Tibet and moved people from overcrowded cities in eastern China to Tibet where they outnumbered the Tibetans that stayed behind instead of leaving for refugee camps in India. The Tibetans in their own land are the lower class out of sight, like the American Indian, like the Australian Aborigine. And now the mountain people are becoming outcasts in their own homeland.

I don't believe I'll ever get over seeing my friend Harold Hayes disrespected, talked to like a dog by an urban Florida woman who thinks living here is such a good place to raise the kids. I've fallen into the weave of life in a community where you have to be careful who you talk about, because it might be somebody's cousin or sister or aunt or grandson. In the mountain way, I don't like seeing my friends disrespected. I take it the same as it happening to me. Harold and I have a special bond. He was one of my friend Jr Maxwell's closer friends. He played bass in Jr's bluegrass band, The Green Mountain Boys, for several years. Harold appreciated that I took care of his friend Jr in his last year unto his dying. Our handshakes are the same as a hug. Harold is in his 80s and does not understand political correctness. Doesn't even know what it is. He has some nutty ideas about political subjects that everybody knowing him accepts as "that's Harold." The people I know who know Harold have a deep affection for him. He's a good example of what I call a good man. All the way around. Wherever I am when I see Harold, I stop and visit with him. He speaks to me by a different name every time I see him. He can never remember a name, so he makes one up and that's your name for now. Then you get people who are insulted because he can't remember their name. I always plead his case. I suppose, to put it simply, Harold is someone who cares about the people he knows. And the people he knows care about him. I'm one of the people who cares about Harold. To see him disrespected is hard for me.

I'm of the attitude that where my friends are not welcome, I am not welcome. It takes me back to the day I came up with my maxim for living in the mountains: Anybody too good for a Pruitt is too good for me. A Pruitt, here, can be anybody of these mountains, anybody not considered on the social ladder. It has served me well using this rule of thumb to identify people to stay away from. My maxim applies to mountain people generally. I've been told a few times I'm wasting my time with people of no consequence. It only makes me laugh and think: there's nothing psychic about you. I've been told it would be to my benefit to pay more attention to the exurbanites moving into the mountains. Again: not very psychic, are you? It amazes me when somebody who doesn't know you at all starts telling you what's best for you, what's right for you, A Rolling Stone lyric comes to mind, "I'm giving you a piece of my mind, there's no charge of any kind." What do you say?, Yeah, thanks--What do I owe you? The way accent crept into my voice after years of living among people of a certain accent, various aspects of the culture have rubbed off on me. One aspect is standing by your friends. It runs all over me to see someone I regard a friend disrespected, someone I respect about the highest. I have a hard time respecting somebody who disregards Harold for not knowing the new people require political correctness in your language, just like in church. I can't help but think anybody too good for Harold is too good for me. My friends are my friends for multiple good reasons.

 

 

*

 

THE DAY THE PETTING ZOO TURNED PRIMAL

 jenny kisses april

 

 

Pictured is my friend April Holcomb Joines kissing my ass. Ever since she heard I had an ass, she has been after me to let her kiss it. I said, Come on, you don't need an appointment. Here she is with Jenny, planting a good one on Jenny's nose. Jenny likes getting face to face with a human making eye contact up close. Jenny likes for me to very lightly rub the whiskers of my chin and upper lip on her soft, sensitive nose, muzzle, whatever it's called. She likes to feel the whiskers, once, out of curiosity. After one time, her curiosity is satisfied. Like here with April, Jenny is curious about April touching her nose with her lips. For donkey, it was an interesting exchange with a human. I've found that donkeys like interactions with humans. They find us more interesting than we find them. I'm noticing, too, that donkeys frequently touch each other, bump, rub, know each other very well physically, weight especially. Sometimes I'll stand beside Jack and bump him with my hip, the way dogs bump each other, to give him a feel for my weight. I'll put my arms around his neck from his shoulder to give him the feel of my arms. Not controlling. Arms are especially curious to him. We don't use our front feet for walking. Until Jack learned that human arms move unpredictably, he would jump when I made a quick arm movement.

 

 

jenny enjoys april's and cindy's attention

 

Jenny doesn't like to be touched. She will get face to face, likes having her head and neck scratched around the ears. From the shoulder back, leave her alone. I touched one of her legs and she jerked it back. I can honor that. That's just Jenny's personality. It will be a little while teaching her that she can depend on my hands not to hurt her. Being touched at all goes entirely against their four-legged nature. We teach our kittens and puppies to like petting. Otherwise, they'd prefer we not touch them. I respect Jenny's apprehension about being touched beyond her neck. For one thing, she has this sex-crazed jackass chasing her with a foot long dong dangling, determined to rape her if she'll just stand still a minute and quit kicking him. She's involved in mind games with a jackass, really tired of him trying to jump on her every moment she's not watching him. I can't have an undistracted eye-to-eye getting acquainted time with Jenny like before with Jack. While I'm giving Jenny a carrot or just talking to her, rubbing her forehead, she is aware of Jack nearby, ready to kick if he gets too close. Jenny has a little bit wilder spirit than Jack. She stands tall, neck up, ears straight up. Perky. It might be her apprehension in her new home where nothing is familiar. About twenty minutes ago, I had to go out the front door and yell loud as I could in my role as the big bad giant that lives in the house among the trees. Coyotes were probably not a hundred feet from the house taunting the calf. I have tried clanging metal, but a big bass human roar does it faster. They really respond to GIT yelled in a monster roar.

 

 

andrea with a treat for jack

 

The donkeys are here to keep coyotes out of the meadow. Nonetheless, the donkeys are pre-occupied with their focus on each other, both in a world they don't understand yet. This is the first time coyotes have been here since Jenny's arrival. Tonight they were all around the house. I hesitated to take more than one step beyond the door. I hate it for the calf to be surrounded by those demons wanting to kill it, yipping and yelling in their shrill eardrum-piercing shrieks. The donkeys were probably at the other end of the meadow. The coyotes know where to find the calf at night. It stays among the tall ironweed and goldenrod in a small section by the creek too soggy to bush-hog. Plenty of grass grows in there. She beds there for protection. This side of the creek has no good protection from a coyote attack. The other side has great protection from coyotes, but neither donkeys nor calf will cross the creek. The meadow is in such emotional chaos right now, all I know to do is let it run its course, let the process of equine getting-to-know-you play out, observe it, be fascinated by it, learn much from it, be in awe of it. Marsha Wagoner gives me good tips on equine behavior. I like her understanding of them, it's empathetic, she's a friend with her horses. I want to be a friend with my donkeys they can trust absolutely. I want them to know that when I take people into the meadow to see them we're all friendly.

 

petting zoo day for jack and jenny

 

I was glad to see April. Hadn't seen her in several years. She is a lover of the four-leggeds, the helpless, the poor. She has a fascination for serpents that she understands after a lifetime of interest in them. It doesn't trip my trigger at all to have a snake crawling on me, but I understand she likes them. If I knew them as well as she knows them, I'd probably like them crawling on me too. It's what I've appreciated about April all the years I've known her, her way of following her own interest whether anybody around her likes it or not. She has a beautifully realized feminine spirit. A woman who runs with the wolves. Cindy and Andrea are also women who run with the wolves, each in her own way. It's why they're drawn to each other. It's why they wanted to interact with the donkeys. They know a person is inside each of the donkey bodies. Cindy keeps parrots. Andrea loves a chance to interact with a four-legged, a winged, she loves them all. These are people who respect the world outside the human rat-race track where the money game goes round and round. They're a little bit country and a little bit soul. All have lives full of issues. They got together for a Saturday afternoon to ride around, be together, drop in at Allan and Gary's stain glass exhibition on Studio Hop weekend, stop and see TJ's donkeys, have a relaxed day of it, trouble free. And don't get donkey kicked.

 

jack chases jenny, his ears up, her ears down

 

Jenny went off to herself a moment. We saw her raise her tail. She peed and walked away. Jack predictably stepped over to sniff the pee. He sniffed and sniffed. That lip curled up and his face wrenched up like he was tasting raw mustard the first time, and we all knew it was on. Jack took off after Jenny. She popped him in the chest with her powerful back feet, over and over, Jack right behind, chin high, as much out of range of kicking as he could get it. I heard her connect one on his chin that got his attention for a split second. He stayed right behind her, his dinger almost dragging the ground, him almost making it onto her back a few times, but never successfully. He pushed himself up beside her and took the nape of her neck in his teeth to subdue her. She conceded to his control. They walked around and around in a circle, like in a circus ring, Jack's jaws clamped down on the back of her neck, Jenny with her ears laid back allowing him control. He had to have something of a vice-grip hold on her to control her weight and her resistance as firmly as he did. It looked like a National Geographic video live in my back yard. The Wild African Ass. Jack would let go and make another attempt at her from behind, but she kicked and kicked, them running around in the field. He bit her neck again and took her under his control. Marsha told me Jack would assert himself soon. We laughed like children seeing the donkeys perform their most primal pre-human love dance. I suddenly realized my buddy Donkey Jack turns out to be a stallion.

 

jack takes the fight out of jenny

 

 

*

 

BE THE CHANGE

 

donald roller wilson

We have heard a saying over at least the last forty or so years, Be the change you want to see in the world. First several times I heard it, I took it for self-evident sound counsel. It stayed in my mind over years, in the background where we store "truths" we never test or try out. We in the West have our own collection of such truths from various sources, like in China they have Confucianisms, truths that give guidelines to living in peace in this world, if that's what you want. It was about the same time the question about glass half full or half empty came about, the time of New Age books, New Dimensions NPR interview show, workshops galore on how to get rich by visualizing, how to grow spiritually, how-to, how-to. It was a period of about twenty years that the New Age discoveries from applying what had been learned in the science of psychology applied to everyday life, a time of American Confucianisms, something like searching for a new gospel or Confucius found empirically. Be the change you want to see in the world stuck with me as kind of an enigma, like what good is it if everybody isn't doing it? Then I check myself for such a limited vision. Why wouldn't it be good enough if I'm the only one who lives by a given principle?

donald roller wilson

The answer comes that if I live my own everyday life in the way I'd like to see " everybody" be, thus make the "world" that way, my own world becomes what I want the whole world to be. The only thing the whole world is going to do besides basic biological functions is watch television. If I'd like to live in a world without tv, I don't have to watch it. My world is without tv. That's all I need. I don't need for everybody or anybody besides myself to live by what I believe makes a good life. It works for myself. I treat the people around me the way I want to be treated, and in return everyone treats me the way I want to be treated. Because I extended it first, it comes back from the people around me, my world. My world is then a  better place. I don't like being talked down to, so I don't talk down to anyone. In return, no one talks down to me. Another of our truths, You get what you give. It's a natural law like gravity. It's invisible, but it's as certain as wind moving the leaves. Once I caught on that this law is infallible, then I saw it is a tool for creating my own world that I live in. If I want people to be friendly toward me, I be friendly toward them. A few times when I've had to shake off an acquaintance I found obnoxious, a noxious personality, all I've had to do was give one little dose in return of what they pour all over me, they're gone. I don't even have to avoid them after that. My world becomes a better place.

donald roller wilson

In the early part of the 1990s I went to a weekly meeting of a small group of people in Boone NC around Edgar Cayce. We would read a page of something from Cayce, then talk about it for an hour. The second hour we told dreams, talked about them, and thought up a "project" to experiment with through the week, try something and see how it works out, and report what we find, followed by discussion. My own most memorable project experience was consciously "putting something out into the world" (acting it out) to see when and how it comes back. I forget what it was I put out there, but it came back right away. I learned very clearly that this truth can be used consciously. Being aware that everything comes back, I can now see my own behavior something like throwing a rock into a pond. The rings go out from the splash all the way to the shore, then they return to the same spot. The principle works physically, mentally, spiritually. Cast your bread on the waters. Throw a handful of little bread chunks to ducks on a pond and the bread chunks they miss will move toward the shore and gather along the edge. Another good saying, It will come back and bite you in the ass. This principle observed makes a giant step toward self-awareness. Recently a friend said of something she'd done she regretted, "It's gonna come back and bite me in the ass!" Understood, this principle inhibits revenge just by looking at what comes next. Kids give back immediately or first chance.  

donald roller wilson

Less than a year ago a Yankee I used to call a friend told me in a rant about the deputy sheriff living a couple of houses down the street, deputy has a dog, the dog pinched a loaf in friend's front yard. So? Good fertilizer. He went to deputy sheriff and gave him a Yankee talking to about keeping his dog in his own damn yard. If my hair didn't already stick straight up, it would have. I said, "You did what? Man! This is the South! We don't do that shit!" I went into a kind of automatic lecture, this guy's your neighbor, may come a day you'll need him for your friend. You made an enemy of somebody who can fuck you up if he wants to. And you don't have any back-up. It was the same as talking to hear my head roar. He was indifferent to hearing anything but he was right. I never dropped in on him again, didn't want my car seen in the driveway. I happen to respect the deputy. And by this time friend had alienated me like he had all his neighbors and friends in under ten years. I heard last week he is talking about moving to California. Marsha Wagoner at Farmer's Hardware told me something her dad, Amos, said to somebody years ago, a summer resident, who was griping about the people around here and the way things didn't go to suit him. Amos said, "Nobody asked you to come here and nobody will miss you when you're gone." These are people who mess up their own lives over and over by regarding the people around them with indifference. The indifference comes back in the same forms it went out.

 

donald roller wilson

 

 

Basically, I believe the only "change" I want to see in the world is for people around me to get along with each other and lend a hand as needed. Seems like that's what it comes down to for me. So that's what I do as able. I don't want more money, more property, a new car. I've managed to bring myself to a peaceable way of living in a world of people I appreciate deeply. I value it with my life. One change I'd like to see in the world is that we abandon the rat race climb and the ongoing need for more, more, more. I have no power to make anybody do anything. It is hopeless futility to be frustrated that things aren't the way I might want them. I pull back from thinking the "world" of the international news or the Bible, and look more toward the "world" I live in, my immediate world of friends, neighbors, acquaintances, relatives, community. In my world of friends and neighbors I can make a difference. One difference I think I've made a little bit, is affirming to the mountain people in my world that their culture is valid and something to be appreciated. It is not as it is seen from the outside, but from how it is seen from the inside. I keep my hillbilly friends knowing I hold the hillbilly in them the highest. People on the outside don't know anything about the hillbilly culture or the hillbilly experience, nor are they interested. I affirm the culture for my hillbilly friends as one who came in from the outside, has the experience of both worlds, and prefers theirs with convincing reasoning. The only man I have known I'd call wise, and I mean wise in the biblical meaning, was a hillbilly, born, lived his life and died in Whitehead. 

 

 

 

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