A SAFE ZONE FOR BIRDS



            red squirrel

This evening's film, Jane's Journey, put me in a somewhat pensive mood. Wanting to get to some painting, wanting to open the laptop and write to you, needing to get up and refill the cup with Kenyan coffee and put a bowl of dry catfood outside the door for the possum. Possum comes by after dark for leavings. Initially, I put Caterpillar's unfinished "wet" food of the day outside next day for Martha the dog or Posie the possum, whichever found it first. If Martha didn't drop by during the day, Posie found it after dark. A gravel parking place across the road I shower with sunflower seeds in the mornings for the crows and whoever else wants them. By the end of the day the seeds are all consumed; at night Posie goes about eating the shells the birds discarded for the seed inside. A pair of red squirrels, also known as pine squirrels, live in a white pine close to the house. They run the ridge of the roof to a pine limb, then another pine limb, down the pine to the ground by one of the birdfeeders. I throw sunflower seeds on the ground for the squirrels so they won't have to raid the birdfeeder. At first, I wanted them squirrel proof, but found if I feed the squirrels too, they don't raid the birdfeeders. Originally, the birdfeeders were closed up by a plexiglas storage bin for seeds that the coon, whose territory includes my space, would break into at night, throw the roof off and get the leftover seeds.

Seeing there was no way I could keep the coon away except by trapping it, not an option, I decided to forget about the feeders holding several days of seeds, dismantled the seed bin and left an open space with the tray at the bottom to put two kinds of sunflower seeds in every morning, enough for the birds and the squirrels to consume in one day. Every morning the 2 birdfeeders are empty and I don't have to latch the lids anymore. I put hooks at both ends of the roof to keep hard wind, coons and squirrels from throwing it off so much. Wind is the only force the hooks work for. Squirrels and coons have no problem with hooks. They have hands like ours with claws for fingernails to help them climb trees and fight. Between the birdfeeders is a huge rhodedendron where I throw a fistful of seeds as high into the air as I can throw and let them sift down through the leaves to the ground. This gives the bluejays, the bullies of the birds because they're the biggest--the law of the jungle, a place to peck around on the ground and let smaller birds have the feeder. And the other way around; when bluejay is at the feeder, smaller birds peck on the ground. None of them are particular about feeder or ground for picking up seeds; the seed is all they want. Also, the seeds are spread evenly over a large enough area under the rhododendron that several birds can peck about and stay out of another bird's pecking range.

So it costs me a little bit a month for the seeds and allowing for the "mauraders" who are not bandits if I put something down for them too. About daily, a red squirrel will step inside the birdfeeder shelter, sit there with tail curled nibbling at the seeds. This happens after the seeds on the ground have run out; they're available to the birds too. This miniature forest out my front door between the house and the road has enough small trees with branches and rhododendron growing that hawks don't have a chance. I saw out the window a Cooper's hawk fly to the ground and stand surveying with a hawk's eye the obstacles for big wings that inhibit maneuvering. Another time I saw a beautiful gunmetal blue sparrow-hawk fly into the wooded zone and sit on the ridge of one of the birdfeeders, it too surveyed the obstacle course. The hawks flying into this zone cannot fly with abandon, it slows them down and distracts their focus of attention. The birds feeding all fly away the moment a hawk enters the wooded zone. The small birds can fly through the tree limbs with ease. All escape.

I love to watch them out the window, especially knowing my birds and squirrels are safe. I love having a pair of squirrels that amount to the same as hawk fodder, a lifespan of about a year, because hawks evidently get them all. This pair of red squirrels live successfully inside this zone that's hawk proof. It's been a year that I've been seeing them. I understand the environmentalist principle that feeding the critters influences them away from the grains they'd otherwise eat. It also turns out to be responsible for bird overpopulation of a given area beyond what can sustain them without people feeding birds. It's not like the birds are immortal. The seeds I feed them are healthy for them, seeds they can't find in their "natural environment." What about all the birds in the days when farms grew fields of grains to feed the horses, picking up the remains of the harvest from farm to farm? Following farming used to sustain huge bird populations, though the way monoculture farming is done now, it's death to the birds with chemicals that poison the bugs the birds eat. I'm not doing that. In fact, I'm not unbalancing anything. Even here in the mountains the human element is eradicating the birds as fast as it can be done. That doesn't strike me as natural balance.

The so-called natural world is so far out of balance that giving birds a safe place to have their choice of two sizes of sunflower seeds puts a miniscule spot of the planet into a little bit of balance for a short space of time. The more they eat here, the less they'll eat in the christmas tree fields 2/3 of the way around our safe zone. They sing to me spring and summer. This spot of ground was not a good haven for birds before I let the seedlings grow into saplings then trees and planted rhododendron, small ones dug up from the woods years ago. The so-called natural world is under assault by the human population responsible for a high rate of extinctions hourly around the globe for more than half a century. Assault is a gentle word for what is happening to the critters and to us, we the meat people.  Is that a healthy planet? Duh. Is that even a question? When everything living dies off, it will be too late to build a rocket to some moon of Saturn or into another solar system. The part I really don't get, and am afraid of going so far into a jaundiced point of view to get it, is why the human people who have been to college (corporate execs in skyscrapers = ivory towers) keep on with the destruction. The answer, though, is obvious as 1+1, even if you want to make it 11. Money is the only purpose. The only. It's gone so far by now the evidence is everywhere it's too late to turn around the mega-force in unstoppable motion until the house of cards skyscraper, after taking over our government, collapses of it's own too-big-to-fail. What comes next we've yet to see.

*

WILLARD GAYHEART AND BOBBY PATTERSON AGAIN

willard gayheart

Friday night Willard Gayheart and Bobby Patterson picked guitars and sang traditional songs. Sometimes Bobby played old-time banjo and sometimes a bluegrass banjo. Both sing very well. I was telling my friend Justin earlier that I would rather hear them than Doc Watson. Not to throw off on Watson, he draws a huge crowd and it's a good show, but he's so big and famous, that fans cried and waxed emotional when he died. I was asked by somebody same day how I felt about Doc Watson dying. I said, Nothing. Why nothing? I said, I didn't know him. I only know his singing; he has over thirty albums I can listen to any time whether he's living or dead. I saw him in concert once and felt very cool about seeing DOC WATSON in person, live, on stage. Yet it was no different from hearing Bobby and Willard picking and singing when it comes to good music and enjoying what I'm hearing. I enjoy Bobby and Willard more because I know them, which is far from the only reason. I've heard them half a dozen times in concert and declare them Doc's equal when it comes to performing good old songs. Bobby picks a good lead guitar and Willard picks good rhythm guitar.  Together they made some music that makes me happy I'm nowhere else.

Bobby and Willard have made music together in their bluegrass band THE HIGHLANDERS for 40+ years, they make music together at the Blue Ridge Music Center through the summer months once a week. Bobby has made some cds of them that sell pretty well to people passing through wanting a mountain memory to take home. Bobby plays mandolin in the band, and other places plays banjo and bass, too. Willard came to Galax from Kentucky about ten miles outside Hazard. He managed a five and dime store in Galax awhile, his pencil drawing took off and he opened a frame shop \ gallery, The Front Porch in Woodlawn where the music happens Friday nights. Minnie, the twenty year old white Maine Coon, was with us as always, it being her home. At first she didn't like all the people filling up her space and making such a racket on Friday nights. Eventually, she settled into the routine and by now seems to enjoy having all the people around. I always pet her and talk to her telling her she's a beautiful cat. Being a Maine Coon, she doesn't like much physical attention. She'd actually prefer not to be touched, so I limit my petting to a finger on the top of her head between the ears. She likes that, but only so much. I know not to push her too far, so I stop after a short time. There is a time she likes it, then a time she does not. Keep it up and she'll bite. Not hard, just enough to say, Cut it out! My friend Caterpillar is a Maine Coon, so I have good training.

These two seasoned musicians, Bobby 70, Willard 80, have a relaxed maturity in their music making that lets the music breathe. They know so well what they're doing with the strings that the music flows free of thought about what they're doing. I watched their fingers move with amazement at how freely their fingers of their left hands danced about noting the strings, too fast for thought from chord to chord, never missing a lick with their right hands picking individual strings. To hear Willard tell it, he can't do any better than basic picking. To hear Willard's guitar and see his fingers in motion tells me Willard is quite an advanced guitar picker. After thirty to forty years of his pencil drawing, he has become a subtle artist. Bobby Patterson has a music store in the next building where he sells mountain music cds and he has a recording label, Heritage Records, where he has recorded old-time and bluegrass music of SW Virginia for the same period of time. Alice Gerrard started the magazine Old-Time Herald in the basement of Bobby's shop among all his recording equipment.

Bobby's singing is a good example of good mountain singing that draws no attention to the singer, puts all attention on the song. Where other singers might raise their voices, Bobby goes lower instead of higher. First time I heard him sing, I thought it a little odd, but only because I'd never heard anybody do that before. By now, after hearing him as much as I have, I call it excellent singing. Willard's singing is different from Bobby's and they fit like hand and glove. Willard even seems to get emotional in his singing compared to Bobby. Bobby is straight old Primitive Baptist delivery, where Willard sometimes gets to shaking his head, bending his knees, moves with the music, which is a bit out of the ordinary for his generation of musicians. Such motions used to be frowned upon by musicians and audiences. By now, the younger old-time bands are jumping about like rock stars. How music has changed from Bobby and Willard's generation to present. The young musicians have rock in their growing up and they bring into old-time a new freedom to move with the music. Willard I suppose got it from being lead singer with the Highlanders on stage for so many years. Then with Skeeter & the Skidmarks through the 90s and Alternate Roots in the 00s.

I see in Willard's stage presence an intimacy with the audience like Doc Watson had, though each in his own way. I felt in a Doc Watson concert like he was sending love to everyone in the audience and everyone sent their love to him. It became a big flowing circle of love that I found awe inspiring. Willard addresses his audience with the same loving familiarity as Watson. No matter how many times Willard sings his own songs, they're the ones the audience wants to hear most, especially Ern and Zorie's Sneakin Bitin Dog. Hank Williams' song Mama Tried is one of Willard's songs that to my ear he took away from Williams and made it his own. Willard sings it like he wrote it. Bobby is best known in my mind playing guitar with Tommy Jarrell and Kyle Creed on the classic old-time album, June Apple. To my ear that is one of the great old-time albums with Bell Spur String Band and Whitetop Mountain Band's album Bull Plus 10%. Can't leave out the Laurel Fork Travelers. Hearing Bobby and Willard make music is more than just hearing music. They're the present manifestations of mountain music carrying the flame to the next generation.

*

UNCONSCIOUS BEHAVIOR IN EVERYDAY LIFE

        ellsworth kelly, white diagonal, 2008

I'm hearing myself grow tired of something I've done for a lifetime and lived in a world of people guilty of it, so much so it's not even noticed. It's concern about other people's business that has nothing to do with my business, approval or disapproval, thinking I know more about it than the ones involved. I'm training myself to remember that whether I approve or not of what somebody else believes, does, thinks, is so neither here nor there as to be no consideration at all. I'm hearing in my head the voice of somebody I once knew, "I don't approve of violence!" There was no being around him without hearing it at least once. I wanted to say, but judged it too disrespectful and never got it said, "Then don't do it." Of course, he was talking about everyone but himself. I hear "they" do this, that and the other, aint it awful. I remember with a good laugh walking in on a preacher and an old farmer, both men I knew in friendly terms, talking about the young today, how they do drugs and commit sin without a thought of the Lord. They looked at me for parenthetical agreement and I said, "It's the way of the world." Like where's the big deal? Approve, disapprove, so what? Approval or disapproval change nothing. They're just egoic ejaculations of opinion based in too little information to pass for knowledge.

All the time hearing things like, I wish them people wouldn't do that! Whatever that may be, whoever them people may be. What it ends up saying is meaningless. They, them, the others; not we, not us, not me. Recalling a time I was told in no uncertain terms that They say and Everybody knows, you this and you that. I was translating in my mind: They was two names. Everybody was those two plus one more, three names. I didn't bring that up as it would have been taken I think I'm smart. More than once I wanted to say, "Cite your sources," but knew my accuser would not have any idea what it meant, and again, I'd have been acting smart. I didn't want to provoke the "conversation" to go on any longer than the shortest possible span of time. It's pretty boring pretending to take seriously somebody talking in the most meaningless generalizations saying nothing at all, and telling me about myself such that I know for certain he does not have any idea what he's talking about. What could I do? I couldn't talk. We obviously spoke two different languages and he was mono-lingual. Evidently I was too.

How many times I have heard, "I wish everybody...." All I can say to that is when everybody does something or has something, then it's nothing. If everybody wore a tshirt with Abercrombie on the front, then it would be the very opposite of a big deal. It would be a uniform. If everybody listened to Britney Spears, then who would listen to the other Barbie in human form, Christina Aguilera? I don't want everybody seeing Lars von Trier's films or Bela Tarr's films; it would cheapen them down to Hollywood. Pearls were expensive rare, then the Japanese farmed them and the value fell way down. Similar story with diamonds. Dollar General flip-flops are the common variety you see everywhere. Then the designer Ralph Lauren flip-flop, expensive, rare, inaccessible to just anybody. If everybody had to have a twenty-five dollar Ramones tshirt, it wouldn't be long before Roses and Walmart would have them for two dollars. Our educational system has pumped sameness into us unconsciously, the people making decisions without any idea what they are doing beyond following guidelines and keeping the paperwork caught up. Commercials are pumping us with sameness, as are the politicians.

I can't help but be amazed at seeing how, in my lifetime, political correctness has become the culture of the middle class. Fortunately, the ruling class and the working class are not bound by PC. I conform to it in the company of the middle class, like at the coffee shop, only because adherents get so self-righteous about their trigger words, which never has to do with meaning. "I can't stand to hear that word!" Bull Shit. Give me a break. It is the same as churchists saying, "I don't approve of that language." All I can say is, "Then don't use that language." It's more of the missionary mind: I'm right--you're wrong--you must conform to my way or I won't like you. Lord have mercy! The threat of not being liked is so incredibly powerful in the American middle class it manipulates without even trying. What will people think? What people? Whoever they are, they'll think what they think. No two will think the same and all will be judgmental, each for different reasons, their own projected reasons. Mystery solved, now go on and don't worry about it any more. It's funny how climbing the ladder is done by selling self continually, smiling all the time, like-me-I'm-nice, I am the product you're looking for. He's such a great guy, never has a down day, up all the time. Ten years later he blows a hole through his head on purpose.

I have to give credit to the mountain people, to mountain culture, for getting myself over these urban and churchly habits of mind, thinking I know better than others how to live their lives. I've been a slow learner in that department. Through the course of my early years I was told from every influence that only authorities know anything--parents, teachers, preachers--and if you're not one of them you better walk the line. I've been seeing my life in retrospect as the first half characterized by hate and the second half characterized by love. Where I came from before in past lifetimes I don't know, but I sure did not have any previous experience to prepare me for this world. However, my parents had no interest in anything beyond church and keeping the bills paid. The preacher was only interested in church. My mother was only interested in church. I was forced to take an interest in school just like church. Duress all the way. This is how Saturn and Uranus conjunct a Sun in Taurus manifest in every day life. I was born into my horoscope. Now there is something everybody does. We all get born into our individual horoscopes. It's so common that few notice.

*

DAMN BRACES / BLESS RELAXES

     romare bearden

It's been a curiosity since it came to me that the first half of my life and the second half have been like two sides of the same coin. Unto the age 33, parents and church had made an atheist of me for so many reasons it's too many to list. As soon as I stepped out onto the plank with a sword poking me in the rear and jumped, I fell into a world of people that were quite different from the blind sheep following the blind ram. I become acquainted with people who read books and thought about something besides the usual. All I wanted to do was read. I saw more and more I'd been beyond sheltered, even going to public school. Sequestered is more the word, sequestered in a belief system that was absolute, no two ways about it. Breaking free of that belief system required that I turn my back to all of it. The next 15 years I sifted through all I'd been taught to believe, throwing off everything I could decipher that came from the human mind, concluding eventually that religion was a bureaucracy set up for the few to control the many. That's not reason enough for me to take it for inspired by anything but money. I've come to believe I was led to look through the unreality to find the reality. I had to find my way through what I take for a false belief system.

That, however, was the religion I had argument with. I hadn't yet seen that the religion was not of God. The religion was a bureaucracy like the school system, a creation of the human mind. I wasn't yet able to see through it to the real thing, God, God that religion stood in front of like a shield blocking the light. I had to get through religion, like through a tunnel, to the light on the other side. Religion is a good first step, but, either fortunately or unfortunately, I was unable to drown myself in denial. I take it for fortunate. One of my big questions was, how can all the rest of the world be wrong? If you don't go to this church and believe this preacher in particular, you're wrong, you've failed, by God. It does a number on a kid's head to sift through obvious nonsense presented as Truth. Even in these latter years of the life I deal with there being no Truth. All the way along through religion and school I was trained to believe there is Truth. Now I don't believe it. I've even come to see that what we call morality is self-serving self-preservation. Act "morally" and what comes back will be moral, as well, leaving me in peace--no turmoils with other people, no turmoils within. Morality basically amounts to not stepping on other people's toes, not provoking. Like the saying, If you don't want it started, don't start it.

I do want the return on my actions to be to my liking, so I treat people around me to their liking. There are some who call that kissing ass or being a chameleon, but I'm not seeing it a means to an end, but a way of being. I'm not a chameleon to pay attention to somebody besides myself. Nor am I kissing ass treating somebody right. I see in my baby friends my own memory of that time, how good it felt to be fussed over, talked to in baby talk, served unconditionally, held as center of attention. We still are like that, though we get it in different ways grown up swimming about in the world of others. This is where morality comes in. Bump into somebody and it starts a fight. Morality is about not bumping into others or guidelines for how to get out of it when it happens. Asian martial arts is about not fighting. I'm finding that regarding others more gently than I have been in the past has a subtler but similar affect to petting a cat. We tend to calm down when somebody is gentle with us. I think of Suzanne (Mellow) Irwin. She's a calm, quiet soul. I feel it when I'm around her. I like being talked to by her, because her gentle demeanor relaxes. Like William Blake wrote, Damn braces; Bless relaxes.

Caterpillar has her song I've sung to her since she was a kitten. It is her song and it's around her name. As she grew I continued to sing the song to her. It relaxed her every time. It set her to purring right away. I felt like it took her back to her inner kitten. I continued to sing the song to her throughout her life. She's fifteen and the song relaxes her as quickly today and as thoroughly as it has all the way back to kitten. I rub her lightly on top of the head between her ears where mother licked her in her first two weeks. I find that relaxes her as quickly as the song. Going by my belief that a cat's consciousness is along the lines of a young child, a simple song a one year old could distinguish its own name in would be understood by a cat. A cat that understands, Want some catfood? Want out? understands the sounds in relation to experience that these sounds mean food and door. A kitten can understand its name in a brief song same as a baby can. Her name calms her. She knew it was her name when she was a month old. They understand their names, and their names are important to them.

In the first half of my life I didn't understand any of that. I didn't understand anything, actually. I'd learned a lot of answers to test questions, but couldn't put together the why of anything. My adult education has been about why, seeking principles and patterns, learning to see, for one thing, history repeat itself. And to see prophecies work out enough to learn they can only be recognized after they've manifested. Cannot be predicted exactly. Like all the guessing now about who is the red dragon. What if red dragon has been here and gone? Came, did his work, and gone by way of Alzheimer's back to the dark side with the lizard people. The funny part to me from what I've seen of prophecies is the people most afraid of worshippers of the supreme demon turn out to be the ones worshipping that which the supreme demon symbolizes. And I've seen that when you give an evangelist enough time, you'll find him involved in what he preaches most vociferously against. It doesn't really do to make a fuss against something, because it then turns out it came from within self, projected like a movie on a screen, giving the illusion it is out there, not in here.


*