RIDING THE TIGER

composition in gray #6

Today I came to the end of an historical novel by Anchee Min, Becoming Madame Mao. It's the story of Mao Tse Tung's wife, Jiang Ching, from childhood to death. Every other paragraph she tells in her own voice, first person, and every other paragraph is told in third person, biography and autobiography in the form of a novel. She likened living as Mao's wife was riding the tiger. Not easily done. High chance of proving lethal.

It's not often that I enjoy reading about people I don't like. From early in the story I didn't like her, and liked her less as her story went on. Mao, himself, I really don't like. He put an end to dynasties and emperors, and became the new emperor of a new dynasty. He was a despot like the tradition of Chinese despot emperors. I went into it open about Mao and his wife, I remember from the news in the Gang of Four days when she was arrested soon after he died and spent the last 15 years of her life in prison, where she belonged. Ruthless betrayals continue under Communism just like they did in a very long history of emperors. It's all they know. Like in the song by the Who, Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss.

Madame Mao never forgot a slight. Later in her life when she had some perceived power, she went down the list and this one and that one disappeared never to be seen again. She ended up in the same prison cell of a woman she and Mao turned on. This woman was the wife of Mao's most trusted premier. He was a yes-man all the way, to the Nth degree, which Mao required. He became a little too popular among the people to suit Mao, and his wife was getting more attention than Madame Mao. They had them over for dinner one night, and on the way home they were arrested and put in prison. The man died soon after. The woman lived eleven more years. And Madame Mao got her cell. It's one of those details that says there really is justice in this world.

Mao and his wife are excellent examples of what Jr's daddy meant when he told Jr, "Stay away from important people." To even know important people in China is certain death. He wasn't talking from China either. Lorne Campbell, a lawyer I used to know, told me the same thing, just different words. He was a little more specific.

It's a curious experience reading about people you can't like. Anchee Min's writing made it possible. Not just possible, made it enjoyable reading. She writes beautifully. Not florid or fancy. It's a clarity she has, she's perfectly clear, so clear you see what she's telling in words. And she writes in English with a near perfect command of the language. She's especially aware of flow in language.

I started with Empress Orchid and loved it so much I found a copy of the next one, The Last Empress, part 2 of same story. In time, Mao came next. In 3 historical novels I got a good history of China from mid 19th Century to 1970s. Such good writing I read mostly for her writing. Talking with a friend a couple days ago, I mentioned I don't like Madame Mao and really don't like Mao. She asked why I'm reading it. For the good writing. Next, which I've already begun, is Red Azalea, Anchee Min's first book, her account of her life in China during the Cultural Revolution and her escape to USA with the help of American Chinese actress Joan Chen.

My time at Jr's is a time of learning Chinese history from start to present. I've no idea why this interest in China came over me except that China has always been a curiosity. Through much of my early life nothing was coming out of China but occasional dissidents. The Bamboo Curtain they called it. I've wanted to know what the writers were writing about, what the film makers are doing, what their artists are doing. I've seen and heard the news about China, but don't believe most of it. I've wanted to see from the inside what's been going on behind the Bamboo Curtain. It's interesting as the oldest civilization on earth, how it got that way and its changes along the way. Now that I've learned pretty well what it's like in China, I do not want to go there.

I love reading about it, but that's close enough. Like I sometimes like reading about the Civil War, but I don't want to go there. I can't help but feel like the Chinese people have been down for so long, so many, many centuries, that possibly the Mao period was such a shock to the system it woke up a nation asleep in Confucious as dogma. The Maoist period was extremely difficult for the Chinese people and will continue to be for some time. They've come all the way out of the old ways. Next, I imagine, they will step away from the Maoist ways too. They'll have to. And, like always, there's no telling what's yet to come.

CLINCH MOUNTAINS IN MOONLIGHT

jean with janette carter

The end of summer, an overcast, still evening, after a sunny day of big voluminous clouds everywhere. Forecast is a possibility of rain tomorrow. Glad to have it. Mtn Heritage Fest coming up this Saturday with a fair chance of rain that day. There's no knowing until the day itself. Summer people must be going back to winter quarters, according to the gradually diminished traffic in Sparta. I've somehow become attached to watching the cars, trucks, motorcycles, tractors traveling Hwy 18, it's become something I enjoy. It's something like sitting on the bank of a river watching the water go by.

Brings to mind Banks of the River, sung by Carter Stanley. One of the things in this lifetime I'm glad found a way into my life is the music of the Stanley Brothers, Carter and Ralph. And then the music of Ralph Stanley. I don't know what it is about Carter's singing. But every time I hear him, I hear the reasons why. Same with Bill Monroe. Every time I hear him I understand again that he is the man. Jr doesn't like Carter Stanley, because he's mean spirited. Jr was in his world where they knew about each other's temperaments. Jr doesn't respect somebody with a mean spirit, and a drunk too, a mean drunk. Jr doesn't like Ralph because he knew somebody who played mandolin in his band when he was younger, who left the band after awhile saying he'd had all he could take of Ralph up and down the aisle in the tour bus preaching one Sunday and the next Sunday up and down the aisle drunk and cussing everybody on the bus. Popped his Ralph Stanley bubble. That's a sad bubble to pop.

But I don't care, because I don't have to deal with them personally. All I have to go by where Carter is concerned is his singing voice, songs he wrote, and what I take for a very respectable guitar. I don't care if he was a problem child all his life. It's a shame for him and the people around him, but it made him a great bluegrass singer. And that's all we have left til the end of time. A lot of artists are tormented souls who wring out some extremely beautiful works of art. All the years Ralph and Carter were together, Ralph had to take care of Carter, who couldn't take care of himself. Ralph didn't believe he could go on without Carter, but Carter told him to keep on singing the old songs. You can do it. And he did.

The Stanley Brothers and the Carter Family made the Clinch Mountains of SW Virginia legends like Wordsworth and Coleridge did the Lake Country in GB. The image I carry in my mind of the Clinch Mountains comes from the time I was there for an Alternate Roots show at the Carter Fold. During a break, Jean and I were outside blowing smoke into the atmosphere with other smokers. The sky was dark blue, the mountain nearly black and a quarter moon just above the ridge. Jean and I both were in awe the entire time there. It was our own awe from such a deep love for the Carter Family that we shared.

AP Carter's country store is there as a Carter Family museum. 50 cents admission. A whole lot of photographs. A lot of paintings people made from photographs over the years. Items of clothing. One thing and another. Most special that I carried away from the place was seeing AP's shoes. Never polished. Walked hundreds of miles in, the time before pavement. That pair of shoes seemed to still have AP in them with his scuffs all over them.

I love this picture of Jean with Janette. It's not quite my thing to take pictures of celebrities or pictures of self or friends with celebrities. Like asking for autographs, it's not something I do, with exceptions. I have Bo Diddley's autograph. I like having that. Jean wanted me to get her picture with Janette. When she asked me to get it, I was tripping on how cheesy it was to bother people wanting to take their picture because I heard about them somewhere. At the same time, when Jean struck that pose, there it was, had to do it. Janette is the daughter of AP and Sara Carter and Maybelle's niece. They're just folks. When they quit recording, they went back to being plain folks. Maybelle went to Nashville with her daughters and carried on the Carter Family. They were good too.

Jean told me later that Janette kept saying to her, 'I want to go home.' She said she knew Janette meant she wanted to go home like she wanted to go to her heavenly home, when everybody else was thinking she just wanted to get back to the house, which she did. She died about a month after this moment. AP raised Janette and asked her to keep the Carter Family music alive. She gave her life to that, and the Carter Fold is the result. Now that it's been discovered as a Crooked Road (Hwy 58) attraction, they have so much more business than they want, they've had to rethink about everything.

If you want a good read that tells a beautiful story about some wonderful people, find WILL YOU MISS ME WHEN I'M GONE, the story of the Carter Family. The author's name starts with a Z and is unpronounceable. After reading that account of their lives, I came to love them so much my eyes get wet when I think about them and hear their music. Amazon.com probably has several 2nd hand copies for very little. It's one of those books you read that you don't forget.

DR DAY

Today was doctor appointment day for old man Wiley. That's Jr's other name. The appointment wasn't until 3, giving him time to get used to it being a day. Today the Hospice nurse came by for whatever it was she did having to do with a patch for a bedsore on his left hip, which he got from lying on that hip bone 23 hours a day. I sat on the porch talking with the woman from Hospice who came with her. We talked about all sorts of things, Jr's care the focal point.

It's truly refreshing for me to talk with these women involved with Hospice. They're all people who think about things. They've all come to a crossroad in their lives where they chose to take the road to giving genuine comfort in every kind of way, physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, to people in the hardest time of their lives. They understand why I have committed to stay with Jr all the way. They understand it is not a sacrifice on my part, it's just that this is what I choose to do during the days and nights. Time would pass at home just like it passes at Jr's. I don't feel put upon in any way. On my part, it's what I want to do. That's all. I really do have what it takes to help someone in my world, who is an important figure in my world, someone I respect in very real ways, not idly.

In the martial arts, taking it has equal importance with giving it. If you can kick somebody in the chest, you also have to be able to take getting kicked in the chest. Jr has taken it like Job all the way along. Today in the Dr office waiting room while I was waiting, looking at the Winston-Salem Journal, in walked an old friend of Jr's last wife, a woman I've known since before then. I'm sure she was thinking how odd it is, just like I was. I'd not seen her in a lot of years. She didn't get to see Jr, and I was glad, because I had a pretty good idea there'd be an email or a phone call before the end of the day.

I was glad to see her for herself, though it threw me into a complexity of feelings I was uncomfortable with, like Spider Woman and what she did to Jr that broke his spirit as a man, as a human being, in front of everyone he's known all his life, family and neighbors, humiliated him down to the ground, pushed his face into the dirt. A man who was already humble as a natural man can be, humiliated to the Nth degree. One of Tom Pruitt's sayings: I don't mind you shittin in my face, I just don't like you rubbin it in. I see this broken man in a wheelchair, his mind gone, dependent absolutely on people he can trust, friends who will not allow him to be abused further by institutions and thieves. The man has taken enough.

On the way out the door from the Dr office was Judy Halsey, one of my favorite people and Jr's too. They worked together at a Massey Ferguson dealership, them in the parts department, for several years. It was where the Pines new location is. Jr had not seen Judy since then. She didn't recognize him and he didn't recognize her. When she recognized him, tears about jumped out of her eyes. He caught onto who she was when she reminded him of the tractor place. They talked a little bit, and I was happy for Jr, because he liked Judy an awful lot. His mind was a blank most of the time, but he was aware of who she was and it did feel good to him to see her, though he wasn't particularly happy being seen in a wheelchair. I was happy for both of them. 2 of my friends run into each other after at least 20 years and I'm happy for them. Makes me feel good too.

Jr and I did pretty well as a team getting him in and out of the car. We took our time. No hurry. Then I had to make 4 stops to pick up various things like a prescription for him, and every place I went I found a parking spot in shade. First stop was the library where I saw Sherry, Doug and Debbie all at the same time. I had only one minute, so felt like it was good timing seeing them all three at once. If you want some examples for what I mean by real people, they're all three good ones. When you're in touch with them, you're in touch with who they are, not some fake image they want you to believe about them. They don't need for you to think they're way high up. If Jr could have stood it, I'd have liked to have wheeled him in there to meet them, but he doesn't know them. It would have been torment for him. Maybe. Maybe not. He would have said no if I'd suggested it.

For the drive home, I went out 21 to Bledsoe Creek Road and took it to Spicer Mtn Road and it on back to 18 and the house. It's all been paved and changed totally since he saw it last, esp the Cuban subdivision the water pipe from the river made possible.

At this moment I'm hearing Thelonious Monk's album from about 1962, Straight, No Chaser. Charlie Rouse plays tenor sax. Monk on piano. It is the perfection in jazz to my ear. It's like hearing an abstract expressionist painting by Willem DeKooning. There's something pure about it, like Tommy Jarrell and Fred Cockerham playing together. It's pure. It's art. It's the real thing.

ART AS YOU FIND IT

composition in gray #5

The picture above I found on the sidewalk close to the door at WCOK. I've seen it there ever since the radio show began in August, 2003, that many years, 52 times a year. Every time I see it, I appreciate it there all by itself in a field of gray. Last Saturday was the time to get the picture of it. Took several, looking at it in different ways. This is the one that's closest to what I see looking at it. It says to me a full moon rising behind the ocean, the waves in the foreground. It doesn't mean this is what you're supposed to see in it. It's just what I see in it. The other way around it's a smiley face.



It's about the size of a gallon paint can. Basically, what I see is something that size sat there a long time and whoever painted the white on the side of the building was a sloppy painter. The other is just made up mental stuff, the need to find meaning in patterns. Like the face you see in trees from time to time. It's not a face, but we make the association, then it is a face.



The other composition in gray pictures are found on the cement slab porch at Jr Maxwell's house. I spend a fair amount of time sitting on the porch reading, watching the traffic go by, which is a lot more interesting visually than it seems, esp when a hundred motorcycles go by on a Saturday, chrome and lots of bright colors, a long roaring rumble. A Harley club from a big city. Charlotte maybe. I look around at the cracks and the varieties of textures and varieties of gray every day enjoying the entire surface like I'd like to turn it up on its side and display it as art. Then it would fall apart and have to be taken to the landfill. The part I like is that it's a piece of art only I am aware of. People walk on it, think nothing of it, a smooth surface. If I point any of it out to somebody, they tell the next person they see that guy's nuts. And they're right. I wouldn't have it any other way.



I'd rather be someone who sees beauty everyplace than someone who says this, that and the other thing can be called beautiful, but not anything else. That's what Kulture Vultures are for. Like moving from painting to painting in a Monet exhibition with a crowd of people wearing headphones being told what's important about each individual painting. The beginning of stasis. When I found myself at Jr's every day, I questioned how I was going to get you a nice picture every day. I went into my mind where I see beauty everyplace, and gave myself the exercise to find it where I am, wherever that is. It's everyplace. All I need is the eyes to see it.



I tend to find the backsides of buildings more interesting than the front. The front is made for pretty, dolled up. The back is where we live, where the cars are parked, the door we go in and out carrying groceries, where the trash is put out or just left. That's where the stuff of our lives is found. I was taking pictures one time years ago of that big hotel restaurant in Glendale Springs. All was photo pretty. Then around back it needed a coat of paint a long time ago, nothing was done for looks; the cars, the trash, the delivery trucks, casual, at home. A totally different atmosphere.



20th Century art has come to the place that art is whatever you see with an eye for beauty of whatever your particular idea of the beautiful might be. Museums are nice. I go to one whenever I'm in a big city. But all the rest of the time, I've no access to a museum but through books, internet and film. So I let the world all around me be my museum, then I don't need to go to a city to see a museum. What I see there is great. But I never see there a deer jump from standing still straight up over a 4 foot fence of barbed wire and just barely clear it with the back feet, enough effort to make it with little room to spare, and no more. The motion in it is as beautiful as a swimming snake.



Today I saw a young buck with an 8 point rack jump a fence and trot out into the field a ways, head up high and stop, looking for his harem perhaps. I thought, Man, that crown on your head makes you a target with a slim chance of seeing the new year. Enjoy your life as a deer while you got it. Your face with glass eyes will be sticking out of somebody's wall this time next year. Somebody's idea of art.