CATFISH HEALED AND HOME

henri rousseau

The appointment to see auto mechanic was 1:30. I went out to the car at 12:30 to pour two quarts of fluid down the narrow tube with the only funnel I have, which turned out to be exactly the right size, like a wrench. I don't even know if the tube with the dipstick was the place to add fluid. Read the owner's manual on how to add fluid without destroying the transmission. No mention at all of where to pour the fluid. For that one, I was on my own. I did the only thing I could see to do. It worked. Drove to the shop, transmission working like usual, soft rain, wipers about half speed, water puddles in the road. I ran through nearly every one of them, washing the mud off the underside of the car. Didn't have a chance to wash it off for three dollars with a pressure-washer in town. Chuck put it up on the lift and the underside was cleaner than if I'd washed it. The problem was a hose, a small hose about a foot long had sprung a leak where it rubbed against a corner it bent around until it rubbed a hole. The parts store in town delivers right away. Easy to fix. The part and labor cost about a tenth of what I went there prepared in my mind to pay. I was also having two new horns installed. The horns on the car were not stock, came from I don't know what, Appalachian-American (redneck) rigged, as we call it around here. I had trouble-shot the electrical leak to the horns and removed the fuse to the line the horns work on. Goodbye radio antenna, clock, door locking and unlocking device, interior lights. I had not noticed how much I rely on the clock. Only driving by way of schedule, I like to know the time. And I like to listen to Charlotte NPR talk shows during the day in fifteen and twenty minute clips. Sometimes Fresh Air, Robin Young, Diane Rehm, The World, have some interesting subjects to talk about. They give trips to town and back some left brain activity to accompany the right brain of driving.  

henri rousseau

I felt refreshed learning the transmission was taken care of, the problem not on the inside. Chuck played the new horns for me. They are loud, like big truck loud. I sometimes tap a horn to alert deer at night grazing beside the road. They don't know what the two lights are. In deer culture, the ones that find out what the lights are don't live to tell it. This horn duet will get their attention. I tap the horn, too, when I pass Ross's shop and where my friend of many years, Tina, works. While Chuck was working on the car, I went to Crystal's sign-making shop, next to her dad's shop, to see her and visit. A young Alleghany woman came in about some custom tshirts she wanted made. She wore a jacket with a third-world array of rhinestones on the back in a big pattern, covered the whole back. She had tight jeans with rhinestone designs on the back pockets. I was thinking, There's a woman I'm told, thinks what's glitters is gold, and she's buying a stairway to heaven. Jimmy Page outer-space guitar solo. And what a hillbilly accent. I was curious for Crystal to tell me how she handled an issue with day-care personnel, one in particular, where Vada was concerned. She had legitimate cause, would handle it a thousand times better than I could. She did handle it well. It worked out so well for her she did not have to call the powerful woman within for backup. She spoke with the administrator, who understood what she was saying when the option of taking Vada out of the facility came up, a hefty amount a month. Crystal is good at making herself understood. She does it gently and mindfully. She was working on some tshirt orders. She's learning the process, teaching herself well. I had her make one for a friend's birthday coming up next week. 

henri rousseau

In Chuck's shop today, I heard a cut-loose fiddle tune and a tear-jerker gospel tune sung so beautifully in the hillbilly way it pulled both Chuck and me out of our conversation for a moment. A major part of hillbilly singing the people from outside the mountains don't hear is how from the heart the singing is. It doesn't sound like it. You feel it. All mountain music is about feeling. I could see in my mind's eye the people in an old-time mountain church singing the song, not a dry eye in the house. In the old way, the church was called the meeting house, the house for brevity. I love it when I hear a beautiful song someplace by surprise. At Ross's tractor repair and welding shop, he has satellite radio set on outlaw country metal. It's some straight-ahead Americana rock n roll. I hear good grooves in there too, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Bob Dylan, Southern rock, the Stones. It felt today like I was riding a wave where everything flowed so smoothly no effort was involved in anything I did. It all flowed in a continuum of good feeling. First stop when I left Chuck's shop, Billings Tire & Auto, was the new auto parts store in town, O'Reilly's, to see about a battery charger. I've borrowed Allen's battery charger more times than he's used it. It was time to buy one. Found a good one listed at $120 on sale for $65. They had others for forty and fifty dollars, but only with slow-speed charge and extra-slow-speed. This one had an option for high-speed charging as well. The difference of a few hours or all day and all night. Found what I went in there for, got a good deal too. Stopped at the grocery store for catfood, drug store for pills and hardware store to have a spare set of keys made. Every step along the way felt good, accomplishing something that genuinely needed doing. And friendly associations at every stop. Even got a hug from Lynn Worth in Farmer's Hardware.  

henri rousseau

Stopped by the coffee shop for a pound of Ethiopian coffee and a cup of the coffee of the day. Saw Bob Bamberg and we talked. He was alarmed by the repeated news of cops killing unarmed black men, women and children, retarded people of any race, homeless, poor people without recourse. I felt jaded hearing his bewilderment. He's bored in his retired years, talking about finding a job, something to do. I was taken a little aback. I'm loving my retirement so much there aren't enough hours in the day. I'm busy all the time with something, allowing self days when I don't feel like doing anything at all but sleep and watch movies. Those are my battery charging days. Naps are about recharging. At home after a successful drive of no engine problems, I took shoes and socks off, stretched out on the bed, pulled on the cover and couldn't sleep. I relaxed and waited til feeling like getting up. I find to lie there and rest is as good as sleep for a quick recharge. Needed to go to Carpenter's house and have a shower, it being a warm day. I noticed on the deck that the phoebe is back, building a nest high on a rafter. Tiny mud splashes sprinkled the deck in front of one of two doors. Judy does not like this. I agree with her, the worst place for a bird nest, except for the bird it's great. Being in a place of exploring gentleness instead of force, I can't knock the bird nest down, but can persuade the bird to suspect the security of this location. I have a toy snake a couple feet long made of a hundred or more slices of wood that allow it to wiggle like a snake. Freaky likeness in the wiggle. Bought it for a dollar. I found some black spray paint and painted the wooden snake a glossy blacksnake. In the morning, I will put the blacksnake on the deck table, a light tan octagon. I believe the bird will see it. I'll go up daily and move it to a new place. If it doesn't work after a few days, I'll find a long branch on the ground in the woods and put the blacksnake on the rafter beside the nest. That'll do it.     

selfie by henri rousseau

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CATFISH THE TALKING CAR

Another crazy day. A cloud resting on the mountain since early morning. Sometimes it precipitates a mist, sometimes a short, light rain, mostly fog. Out the window I can't see past the fence to the donkey meadow. Out another window, can't see the other side of the road. Fog this dense is beautiful to me like a sunshine day, a day of snowing, any weather. I tend to be in agreement with the variety of weather as it is happening. Fog gives the green world the appearance of a Japanese screen and renders the whole outdoors a Japanese garden. The balance of wet and dry is essential to life forms like the balance of light and dark. I like the rain to keep the ground moist for the life forms rooted in the ground and for the forms that eat the ones with roots. Donkeys eat seeds to wildflowers and spread them around the meadow. Went out a little bit ago to make photos of the green world in fog and the glistening colors wet. Wild violet and jewelweed seedlings peep through the ground cover leaves from last fall. Stillness in the air. The windchimes ting one to three notes. Today was the day I was to take car to mechanic to have new horns installed. Friday, when I backed down to the barn for a trunkload of hay, I noticed afterward the car left a string of transmission fluid pearls on the asphalt in the path I'd taken across the road. Oh no. Another problem to solve. The ground was too wet in the low place I drive through to the barn. Slip and side. Made big ruts. Six mudslinging runs building up momentum toward the slope that goes up to the road covered in grass that grew through the gravel. I'd get up it a ways, momentum would cease, tires spin and smoke, nothing to do but back up to the barn and make another run for it. The tires spinning through the mud packed the grooves between the treads, tires slick and wet, unable to get a grip on damp grass.

I walked back to the house to call Justin. He was getting off work and would be here in a while with his truck and chain. Crossing the road I saw the line of transmission fluid. My heart sank. I was down there in the mud shifting forward and backward, forward and backward, getting unstuck from the mud. I thought of the strain I'd put on the transmission and it low to empty of fluid. What have I done? Justin arrived, had me drive the car as far up the slope as I could. He hooked the chain to it, a chain my car was no contest for. He pulled me up out of there so smoothly it felt like I was driving out. Smooth and even, not a hesitation or a jerk. We talked about the transmission fluid, if it leaked that much on the way to the barn, and not on the way back, it's empty. Justin's thinking was a gasket. Today I decided to drive to the shop with whatever fluid is in the transmission. It was the same distance to  his shop as to town where I could buy some fluid. Walking to the car, I was questioning the expensive chance I was taking, driving eight miles with dry transmission. Turned the key, the battery was too weak to turn the engine over. Right away I felt the car itself was telling me not to do it. It wasn't like an omen warning me. It was the car, itself, refusing to go. I would pay attention if I were to take it for an omen, but this was the car shutting itself down. If I were to use jumper cables with somebody else's battery and override the car's direct communication, pleading with me like James Brown, baby please don't go, I would go against knowing the transmission would not make it. When it's obvious, right in front of my face, there it is.   

Back to the house, called mechanic to tell him about the car not starting. I said I believe I can have some fluid and battery charged by tomorrow afternoon. Called next door neighbor, Gary, asked if he'd be going to town today or tomorrow. Today. I asked him to stop at a parts store and buy me three quarts of automatic transmission fluid. He was going to the parts store anyway. I thought I'd get him to jump my car into motion after putting in the fluid. He had a battery charger. I had a fifty foot electrical cord. I'm not sure how long I could let the engine run to recharge the battery with a seriously leaking transmission. Better to use the charger and run through the fluid on the way to the repair shop than sitting still charging the battery. I don't know what else to do. I've had to borrow a charger enough times that it is time now to buy one to keep in the car. I've found the plastic funnel to assist pouring the fluid down a narrow pipe. Ready to problem solve. I like knowing a good mechanic, who does reliable, trustworthy work, listens to WPAQ AM out of Mt Airy online. Has a laptop with speakers that give good sound. Chuck and I connect with our appreciation of the Stanley Brothers and hillbilly music. I hear excellent old-time fiddling in there and banjo plucking, hillbilly gospel singing that makes the tears flow. It's ok to shed tears in front of Chuck over a good gospel song. He feels it too. He plays rhythm guitar in a local gospel group, Covered By The Blood. He's Crystal's daddy and Vada's grandpa. He has kept my 93 Buick Century, the Catfish, in motion. 

Gary is back from town with three quarts of fluid. We checked the charger and the battery was fully charged. I coiled up the cord and put it in the five gallon bucket I keep it in. I put the charger on the back seat in case I need it tomorrow. We're set. An appointment for tomorrow same time as today. I'll fill the transmission just before leaving. Don't want it to drain out overnight. This is a frightful experience that in the past would have flustered me into a spin. It didn't take hold of me this time. I took care of it, step by step. The part that made it work so smoothly was my confidence things would fall into place. The car refusing to start told me something I'd been suspecting about this car, it is conscious. First time I blew a hole in a brake line was less than two miles from Chuck's shop. Second time I blew a brake line, I pushed the brake pedal in front of his garage door. It stopped, but pedal went to the floor. Every time something goes wrong anymore, the place it happens is the best place for whatever it is to happen. Today it spoke to me the only way a car has to speak, like a donkey would speak to me, like a dream would speak. I've been gentle with the car, kept it in good running condition. When something breaks down, I get it fixed right away. Today the car convinced me it is aware. I've suspected consciousness in motor vehicles for some time, though had not had any direct communication with one. It brought donkeys to mind and dogs that have been my friends. I learn to communicate with my pets. I'm one who believes "dominion over" means responsibility to take care of and nurture. The last time it had a flat tire, I found it in Farmer's Hardware parking lot. No easier place to change a wheel. It seems like the car and I have found a flow between us.

       

photos by tj worthington

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LOOKING FOR LOST CAR KEYS

scrambled eggs daffodil

Dreams the last few years have been like none of my dreaming before, and so much of a pattern I wonder about the pattern. In a dream I will reach out to shake hands with someone, or reach out to give or receive something, wake and my arm will be extended, hand reaching for dream hand or object. I've dreamed of cat, Tar Baby, jumping onto my chest while I was sleeping. He was standing looking at me willing me to wake. I woke and he was not there. One morning I was in bed dreaming I was lying in bed awake, looking at the window with mini-blinds closed and down. I woke looking at the same scene with blinds raised up all the way. A few nights ago I saw a six-inch ruler I've been looking for. It was lying on the desk in plain sight. In the dream I said to self, "It's not there. This is a dream." The pattern has become so frequent, I'm now recognizing in the dream it's a dream. Thursday, I intended to back the car down the brief hill to the barn to pick up three hay bales for the donkeys. The key was not where I keep the keys. Must have left them in the car, which I never, but sometimes, do. The keys were not in the car. I searched car and house the rest of the day obsessively. I only had a spare key for ignition, none for the trunk. I went through the trash, one item at a time, all the way to the bottom. Went to sleep frustrated that night, refusing to think about it further. Next morning, automatically, the search resumed. Finally, after looking everyplace they could be in the house and car multiple times, as well as the walkway in between, I told self to stop looking. Looking is not advancing the search. I stopped looking for them. Since action was getting nowhere, I thought I'd give inaction a go. Do nothing and see what happens. 

I put the keys out of my mind. The spare ignition key would at least let me drive the car as needed. I could call a friend to bring a couple bales from the barn. No problem. It was about this time I saw it that losing the keys was like a dream. I go to pick up the keys and they're not there. Only it's not a dream and the keys are materially not there. Much review of what I did returning to the house. I keep keys and change in shirt's right pocket when I'm wearing sweatpants, all the time, that don't have pockets, I remembered reaching into the pocket and scooping out the change with fingertips. I noticed I did not feel the keys. I didn't even look, took it for granted the keys were with the change and I just didn't feel them. I've learned my senses are so subjective they cannot be relied upon. They lack credibility. Later, it haunted me the keys were not in the pocket. Taking them out of the ignition, the pocket is the only place I would have put the keys, only two of them on a ring the diameter of a quarter. After thorough examination, I was satisfied the keys were not in the car. It meant they were in the house or somewhere along the path between car and house. Recalling them not being in the pocket with the change I so absently dismissed, narrowed the possibilities to I did not know what. I did carry them into the house in the pocket. They left my pocket somewhere between walking in the door and emptying the pocket. Deducing the keys to be inside the house, I'd looked everyplace they could possibly be and many they would not. Wherever they were hiding, it would be a place I could never think to look, having covered all the places I could think of.

In a place I would never think to look. This is where I bump against the infinite. I never thought to look on Mars or the Moon or, closer to home, Mongolia or Malaysia. I solved the problem of the hay in my head and could drive the car at will. Nothing left to do, but wait, be patient, allow the keys to come forward in their own time. If the keys were playing a hide-and-seek, slap-stick donkey trick on me, I gave them a good laugh. Decided to use the ignition key and drive to Carpenter's house to fill water bottles. Get out of my head for a few minutes. I carry two bags with handles, the plastic bags they sell at the grocery store for reuse, four half-gallon fruit-juice jugs in each bag. Parked the car, went inside to the kitchen sink. I placed the bags on the counter to my left, put four jugs in the sink and started filling one. Moved the bag from left side to right side where I put the filled jugs. Waiting for the second jug to fill, I put the first jug in the bag. In the bottom of the bag lay the keys. It was so nondramatic a find, exactly where I knew they would be, a place I never would think to look, thankfully closer to home than Asia. I carried the two bags of water jugs to the house with a lighter heart. The way the keys appeared was like the pattern in recent dreams. I see the keys in the bottom of the water jug bag, something seen where it otherwise would not be. Like in a dream, walking in the door and noticing Caterpillar's catfood bowls are missing. Or see a donkey walk by a window, wonder how it got out, wake up and see the donkeys at the fence waiting for carrots.

The lost key experience was so like a dream, I wondered if dream mind, the subconscious, and awake mind, the so-called conscious mind, could be merging, the imaginary line that separates them fading, the two minds dipping back and forth into each other. Or possibly left brain and right brain flowing together as conscious mind slows enough to interact with the flow of the slower moving subconscious. Sometimes I like to analyze an everyday life experience as if it were a dream to see what it has to say of itself. It's odd to have an awake experience the same pattern as present dream experiences, especially to the point the line between dream reality and awake reality went away. It's in a time of the life where I learn daily that nothing is as it seems, appears, or is interpreted. The opening lines to the verse from the Tao te Ching posted two days ago, number 53, stays in my mind, The great Way is easy, yet people prefer the side paths. The flow between the conscious and subconscious is easy, there's nothing to it. So I take the side path of trying to figure it out. This is named one thing. That is named something else. Naming creates boundaries around that which has no bounds, compresses them into things, makes an illusion of something out of nothing. And then there is memory, the skyscraper of cards. One day the memory goes away and the cards fall to the floor in apparent disorder, returned to the flow of the great Way. The only way I can figure the keys fell into the bag occurred when I leaned over to pick up the last jug of water to put some in the kettle for tea. The keys slipped out of the pocket during the gesture reaching for the jug from the bag on the floor with right hand.

photos by tj worthington

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TO WALK THE RED ROAD

I feel more every day like I'm understanding the time Herman Melville was in before and while writing Moby Dick. He saw the nation dividing into factions that fell into hating each other unto wanting to kill the other by way of war. Corporate propagandists today have divided us into factions that hate each other. I can't tell if it is getting more intense daily or if I'm just recently aware of it. The division has always been there. It has never been a problem before, under the American belief that each man and woman has a right to their own way of seeing. We have been consciously divided by way of propaganda since 1980, a step at a time. Expressions of racism today have a hard edge of hate out in the open, arrogance. Before, the racism was the same, it was kept to oneself and one's circles. Much as I dislike seeing such vehement hatred out in the open and increasing, I also see that these dark shadows in a culture are the same as dark shadows in individuals--to be dealt with, we need to bring them to the surface to assess how to deal with them. Hatred surfaces, works itself up and needs to be burnt off by way of a fight or a war. War amounts to, essentially, burning off hate. The hate the right-wing media pumps into their audiences appears to me without conscience. Political ideologies don't do conscience. Neither do belief systems, nor corporate coups. I read Moby Dick made aware by Melville himself that hate was swirling in the political air of his time and he saw the American experiment, democracy, in peril. The white whale, white supremacy, broke and sank the ship of state, a democracy of people from all over the world, Captain Ahab dead and tied to the whale's side by harpoon ropes, Ahab a teabagger of the day without compromise.

I tried to read Moby Dick again a few years ago and could not get with it. I found John Huston's 1957 film of Moby Dick with Gregory Peck playing Ahab. It was a remarkable American film. Orson Wells delivered the sermon in the seaman's chapel. It was old-time New England Primitive Baptist style. I felt throughout Melville's story a civil war on its way. I feel the direction American politics has taken in this time is toward civil war. Again, the justification is immigrants of color. I have the division in myself. Last summer I came face to face, not by my choice, with Reaganista Supreme Parrot, the Congress person of my district in NC, who does not represent me in any way, Virginia Foxx. I felt like hell opened up and this presence emerged before my eyes. I backed away automatically. She put out her hand to shake and I could not touch her. I would have had to go straight home and soak my hand in kerosene to exterminate the cooties. I acted like I didn't recognize her, I, a demographic profile of a Fake tv viewer and Limbaugh listener. This angry old white man was angry with her. I could not speak. I froze inside. It was awkward and she handled it well, distracted herself with someone else. The next one paid no attention to the news, cared nothing about politics, had no idea who she was and did not care. She handed me a business card fancy with gold print, which I dropped in the trash soon after. Then took it back out of the trash, thinking it would go good with my collection of things it's really weird for me to have. 

Earlier in the day I was on the phone with my friend Lee, who lives in New Mexico. We talked some about how we both love this period of our lives the best of any other. We both like to stay at home, like being at home, prefer and enjoy the solitary life. In both our cases, we've become comfortable enough with ourselves we don't need to go looking for distraction. I stopped in at the grocery store for some coffee filters I forgot to buy two days before. At the register, from behind, a familiar voice, Hi. We spoke and hugged. She said, "What are you doing?" I would not let self say, Standing in line at the grocery store. Too redundant. I said, "Staying at home." She showed a long face like to say, Bummer. I said, "There is nothing sad about it." She said, "Really?" I said, "There's no place I'd rather be than home." She just accepted it, already knew I was weird. Glad our conversation was cut short by the momentum at the register, I said, Bye, and proceeded on my way. Somebody from the past, from a chapter that ended long ago, a few cycles back. Six years ago I trimmed down the people I see to the people I care about who care about me. In this time of the life, I know who those people are. I've done my time having superficial associations. I don't do it anymore, and don't care who it pisses off. I'm flowing with this cycle, happy with it, staying at home. I don't even like to cross the county line, except knowing I'll be back to sleep in my own bed. I have my purpose for coming to the mountains, which I am still living, and will go on living. This is the place I walk my spiritual path. It is the only reason I'm here. I don't mix socially, never have. Got the name arrogant on account of it, not my concern. 

I did a lot of spiritual reading for a lot of years and came to what all the masters had said, reading is not it. It is in experience. Paying attention to experience, living in the world as it is, allowing others to be themselves, allowing same with self. My spiritual reading in this time of the life has trimmed down to the Tao te Ching. It's all there in beautiful verse form. It's about honoring the god in others. It's about allowing God, not expecting of God. It's about allowing the flow, going with the flow, using the flow to find a tranquil life. And finding a tranquil life, allowing it. I never enter a lottery for fear of winning. I do not want money messing up my life. I'm able to meet expenses and have a little bit of fun too, quiet, at home fun like movies, reading, music, art projects, donkeys, and Caterpillar. The car runs good and all is well. I trouble my mind with news less and less, though continue to be traumatized when I give it any attention, disturbed every day at the rate American cops are killing black people, man, woman or child. It's shameful and shameless. I'm one of few people I know who think anything of it. And what can I do about it? Send a twitter? Leave a comment? I remind myself it's not my world out there on the news. It's not mine until the swat team breaks down my door and blows me away, saying, Whoops, wrong address. Shit happens. As long as my door is still on its hinges, I'll go on staying at home being a detached viewer.         

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