DROPPING IN AT THE JEWELWEED STAINED GLASS STUDIO

varieties of colored glass

Dog Martha from Allan's house down the road came into the house. I leave the door open for Caterpillar to go and return at will. Martha sometimes comes in and eats Caterpillar's food. I didn't let her eat Caterpillar's bowl of catfood and told her to go on outside. She sat just inside the door. She usually obeys when I tell her to go out. She sat just inside the door. I went over to encourage her to go and she looked up at me with sheepish, pleading eyes. Caterpillar was just outside the door glaring at Martha. If Martha were to move, Caterpillar would swat her. Martha wanted to go, but squealed instead. Caterpillar hissed. I encouraged Martha to go by opening the door a little wider for her. She passed by Caterpillar within an inch or two. Caterpillar hissed and Martha tucked her hind end and hurried out of Caterpillar's reach. The look in Martha's eyes was so beseeching it was pitiful. They said she wanted to obey with all her heart, but Caterpillar was looking at her. Dog couldn't move. Couldn't back up into the house and couldn't go outside. Stuck. Caterpillar hissed as soon as Martha moved. Martha out of Caterpillar's way, Caterpillar stepped into the house, not in a good mood. Dog smell in her house, not acceptable. Martha is a grown dog with white hair on her face. I've known her since she was a pup. She's a good dog all the way around. She needs to be yelled at to get her attention, but that's the only part of her short of ideal. She's a good guard dog and a good guardian. Any dog that might try to dominate me would have Martha to deal with. Martha is a tough country dog. She has good stamina and she's strong. She has shorter legs than her big sister Jolene, and when they were young, Jolene could easily outrun Martha. Martha kept at it and taught herself to run faster than Jolene. 

caudill cemetery by tj worthington, 1990, 16x20

I went to see Allan next door. I was taking him a painting I'd made years ago of the Caudill cemetery in Air Bellows. Allan does genealogy and frequents graveyards. He said this is the only painting he'd seen of a cemetery. He said, People don't paint cemeteries. I said, People don't buy paintings of cemeteries. Surely, some have been painted, like old Southern cemeteries I'm sure have been painted. Seems like most people are afraid of cemeteries. Fear of dying. Don't want to face it. A picture of a cemetery kinda speaks of mortality and runs a crack through the liberty bell of denial. I was hoping Allan and/or Gary would be in the stain glass studio. I was wanting to see what they're doing. Hadn't been there in at least a month. Thought I'd drive. It's a little far to walk carrying something. To get out of the car, I had to struggle with Martha and Jolene, both wanting to crawl inside the car onto and over me the moment I opened the door. I had to put my leg up for a barrier, use an arm to push them both back. They're like cows in a stockyard crawling over each other to get to the gate. I yell at them, tell them to get back. They tussle in a pretend fight. They're jealous of each other like the donkeys. A human nearby and both dogs want to be first with equal zeal. Once I'm out of the car they settle down, but only after I've had to struggle through both of them crawling on each other trying to get to me and I'm putting up my leg to stop them. The opening to get out of the car amounted to two dogs struggling to climb onto me while I'm still in the car, desperate. I've known both dogs all their lives. They're good dogs. It's an expression of their affection. I was in no danger. With these two dogs around I'm not even in danger of a bear. They would fight anything for my sake, or for Allan, or for Gary.

gary medley's project

Both were in the studio. Gary is working on a big window-sized piece of a palm tree, a beach, foliage, sun in one part of the sky, moon in another part of the sky, playing with different textures and colors of glass, piecing them together as puzzle parts. Harvest moon when the moon rises in the sky opposite the sun setting. It's quite a production. His next project is another large one of Hills To The Sea landscape of Blue Ridge Mountains and a bicyclist. I can't even imagine how he will perform that one. I saw so many pieces of colored glass, I was awed seeing so much can be done with glass. Glass is a whole study in itself. It wasn't very long ago in years that nobody knew what glass was. Glass is a relatively recent invention or discovery or both. Allan has his own projects in his own station. I have to applaud what they're doing. They're making it work for them. They keep at it. They've learned that it is necessary to sell a lot of low cost items. They sell crosses and stars, then wonky stars, wonky peace signs. Wonky means lopsided, no straight lines. They're nice. Gary has begun to make owls with big round eyes. They get commissions for windows, for doors, for things to hang in a window. These are people doing what they want to do and making it work. They are making beautiful objects, actually working with light, playing with the whole spectrum of light. The pieces are put together on a tabletop, how it will appear in the light has to remain in the imagination until it is finished and held up to the light: the moment it comes to life. I've enjoyed seeing their individual progress in the years I've known them.      

by allan joyce

Allan's designing eye leans more to the geometric abstract. Gary likes to translate scenery to glass. Makes it easy to tell their work apart. They have samples showing in the River Rock restaurant next to the bowling alley, the coffee shop, and a few other spots in town. Over the years of knowing Allan, he has educated me in the possibilities of stained glass artistry. I went with him to West Jefferson to see a place with some nice stained glass several years ago. He took me to a stained glass place in Winston-Salem and someplace else, places where he buys glass. The stained glass world is a whole world unto itself. I had never considered there would be such big business in making and selling colored glass in varieties of textures. I've been surprised by the business Gary and Allan have of making pieces with colored glass every day and selling them consistently and often. They evidently have created their own market. Quite a number of people like what they are doing and the number is growing. Before I knew Allan, I knew stained glass was a form some people made some beautiful art with. But I never thought about where they found the glass, how they designed and soldered the pieces together. It is fascinating for me to see the production, like Gary's layout with the palm tree, determining the shape of a piece of glass, cutting it, wrapping its edges in copper foil. I say plural edges. Seems like a piece of glass would have one edge all the way around, but that doesn't seem right either. I can see Gary growing one step at a time. Each piece he puts together is a bit more complex than the one before, using what he learned before and stretching out looking for something new. Allan's eye I see growing conceptually. By conceptually, I mean his visual ideas in the abstract grow more interesting, in some ways simpler, in some ways more complex. It was a good feeling in the studio, good energy, colored light energy.

by allan joyce

allan joyce

gary medley foreground

*

    

FOLLOW THE FLOW

 

 

 

all pics by tj worthington

 

Focus this week is on my relationship with nature, the natural world, the uncultivated world, the wild things, the four-leggeds, the winged, the ground, the green things, earth. This world, my mountain, is my refuge, my home, my need. I know this region of the mountains so well it gets taken for granted, but not too much. I went out on a small lake in a boat fishing with Justin. It was his day off and he had to get some fishing in. Fishing recharges his internal battery. He catches a fish, kisses it and throws it back. He stopped by to pick me up and I rode with him to the next farm down the road, turn up a long gravel driveway to the lake. It's called the Willis lake. The owners live in Winston-Salem, my neighbors Allan and Gary have a stain glass studio where they support themselves selling their wares. Allan takes care of the land, a few hundred acres of largely meadow. It was the old Jim Scott place. Their boy, Sherman, went to school and revival meetings in this house. Sherman has been dead quite a while now. He was a humble man. In NC he did not need a driver's license to drive a tractor on the roads. Sherman fixed a small wooden box to the back of his old Ford red-belly to carry groceries. He drove the tractor to town for the bank, the doctor, the lawyer, the drug store, leading a long line of cars snaking slowly  toward town, temperatures rising, road rage in abundance, but nobody made a problem. Sherman's going to town day. It was excruciatingly maddening to fall in behind Sherman. Couldn't pass. There you are, 10-15 mph and can't do nothin about it. Sherman was a little bit slow and had a good mind too. The people I've known who went to school with him said he was a whiz with numbers. His mother and dad wouldn't let him play with the other boys, retarding him somewhat. The lake was put on the farm after Jim Scott sold it.

 

 

 

 

The temperature was mild enough, but the air had a chill in it and a constant wind. Three guys from town we knew were on different banks fishing. Three geese swam together out in middle of the lake. Putting the boat in the water did not scare them off. They continued to swim and watched the boat as a curiosity. The wind on the water was cold. Justin threw the lure toward the bank letting it splash into the water like it jumped from the bank, then wiggles to the bottom and swims. He did not catch one fish. He said the water was too cold. I don't care anything about fishing. I go along with camera. First time I had camera in the boat, I went for landscape pictures, none of which was ever worth looking at. This time I sat and waited for It, whatever It may be. Sitting quietly in the boat, gazing all around, even the sky, nothing took hold of me. Suddenly, I saw the surface of the water like I'd never seen it before. It was familiar. Everything about it was familiar, but I was seeing it the first time. I found a zone five to ten feet from the boat where the water made changing patterns with light so fast the eye sees colors in motion. The camera stops the motion. I zoomed the camera down pretty close and pointed at the zone where the patterns were flowing and clicked. Could not see the viewing screen for the bright sky all around, so I'd point the camera at the zone I wanted and clicked. Most often had no idea what I was getting. Some were out of focus, some so blurry it was nothing, and some with sharp clarity. I made pictures of the lake's surface from distance and up close. Sunlight was dancing on the water in sparkles in certain places. The only one I aimed was the goose. Couldn't aim it but by landscape around it and zoom in from there.  

 

 

  

 

Tapped into the zone close to the boat is a very different experience from gaping at the surface of the water. Out a little ways it turns into waves on water. In this zone five to ten feet from the boat I found continually changing abstract patterns that move so fast the eye cannot see the patterns the camera stopped. Following the patterns in swift change, I'd think of how fun it would be to stand in front of a painting by Clifford Still and watch the colors change patterns so fast the eye couldn't follow. Right away, the eye understands there is no keeping up, eye relaxes and I relax. It's like watching a fire, the changing shapes and images, a quickened flow of the clouds. My Swiss cheese memory is recalling that I believe it was Pablo Neruda said the bridge between matter and spirit is water. I can't affirm or deny it, but it's awfully poetic. I think about such ideas gaping at the water in a minor trance, a meditation, fixed on the rapidly changing flow of light reflecting on water. Every living thing grows by principles of water flow, water being the earth's blood. I stand in Spring Lizard Creek that runs beside my house and someone stands in a creek in southern China, we are standing in the same water. Maybe not the same molecules, but water everywhere on earth is connected. Our blood that runs through a vein in a finger is the same blood that keeps feet warm. Justin sat at one end of the boat and I at the other, almost never talking. Not keeping quiet for any reason but we just didn't feel like talking. He was working the fishing reel with what he had on his mind and I holding the camera taking pictures of reflections on the water with what I had on my mind. We don't talk a lot. Something I learned from country people and Justin learned from mother's milk, that presence is the same as conversation. Conversation is about enjoying the presence of the other. Talking does not always have to accompany presence.

 

 

My old friends, Tom Pruitt and Millard Pruitt, brothers, grew up in what ended as Tom's house, visible from the boat. They went to school and Regular Baptist revival meetings in my house. Both have been dead about twenty years. I went to Millard's church for fourteen years. He lived in another part of the county called Glade Valley. Tom and Millard were less than ten miles from each other and had not seen each other in a number of years neither one of them knew. I suggested I take Tom in his later years to visit Millard. He liked the idea. They sat in their chairs and never spoke for an hour. Tom stood up and said it was time to go. A year or so later, I took Millard to visit Tom. They sat in silence for an hour and Millard was ready to go. Both in their late 70s. Snow was on the ground, quite a lot of it, though the paved roads were clear and the gravel roads had the snow scraped off them, snow scraped off the ice on the bottom. Both roads up the mountain were terrible with ice. My 78 Toyota pickup had one-wheel drive in the rear. Not proficient on ice. But I knew what it could and could not do. I suggested I take him down the mountain on the old wagon road that ran the ridge parallel Waterfalls creek beside all three waterfalls. Couldn't see them from the road, but can hear them. I went down the bank once looking for how to get to the third waterfall from there. I tied a 50 foot rope to a tree and used it like a stair rail walking down it backwards, leaving rope in place for the return. It was steep and sheer rock under layers of old leaves. I knew the back road would be in good shape. It doesn't melt during the day and freeze at night. I knew it would still have the snow pack on it. I know the road from driving it a thousand times and walking it a hundred times. It's bad. But I've driven a new Cadillac and a new Honda down it, owner sitting beside me chewing a hole in the seat, and we never scraped bottom once. In snow the road looked like a luge track. Millard's eyes were big as Ping-Pong balls, and we never lost traction. At the top he didn't believe I could do it. At the bottom he didn't believe I did it. It was a smooth ride compared to the others. All it took was following its flow.

 

 

 

larry

 

*

 

 

 

 

A WONDERFUL DAY

      white light, by tj worthington

 

April 13, Saturday, I believe will be a date to look back at that pretty much blew my mind all day long. I spent the late afternoon with white middle class people here from other places at the Episcopal church in Sparta. I'd never been in an Episcopal church service. Popping up in my mind is a memory of something old man Tom Pruitt told me 35 years ago. He said a "palin" (paling) was a name for a picket fence. According to Merriam-Webster, the pickets are called pales. Among the old-time people who only knew the old-time Baptist way as the one and only way, no two ways about it, they heard of Episcopalians, but knew nothing about them except they were the next thing to a Catholic. Back then they called Episcopalians, "Pissed over the palin." I couldn't help but think of that driving into the parking lot and walking in the door, pissing over a picket fence. It amused me and put a smile on my face, when in another part of my mind I was involving myself in something entirely outside my comfort zone, surrounding myself by at least a hundred middle class white people from Away. It's not that I have a problem allowing them who they are. Not at all. The years of my working life and entire adult life since the realization that God Is has been among mountain people to the point that mountain culture is mine now. It's the mountain people I'm comfortable among. I had stepped into a house full of people of the culture that used to be mine, but I went native and became a naturalized hillbilly. Among the people of these mountains is where my heart feels at home.

White middle class culture from the Flatland is a very different culture from mountain culture. The only bridge is television, a culture unto itself, a culture both working class and middle class share, though they watch different shows. It's still pop culture. In mountain culture you don't over-enthuse about anything. In Flatland culture over-enthusiasm is the order of the day every day. I stepped apprehensively into the doorway of this place where I was greeted by over-enthusiasm so incredibly false it was over-enthusiasm over-done to the max by a hillbilly middle-class wannabe. I wanted to say, Settle down, I know you better than that. I was looking at what we call in these hills a silver-tongued rattlesnake, a nice way of putting it. She and I have what is called around here "history." I learned long ago, stay out of her strike zone. And there I was, walking through it. It gave me the shivers. I didn't blame the church. It's people like that churches are for. I was glad to see this church was so accepting. And this is what I went there for, what everybody present went there for, "the blessing of a lifelong covenant" between two men. The church bulletin for the service had printed above the picture of the church house, "A home to all sharing God's unconditional love." No kidding, I thought. I know a dozen or more people who go there, and I see in them light of the spirit. It tells me something is going on there that is rare in Christendom, allowing people to be who they are.

Though these, for the most part, were not mountain people, I was beginning to see that valuing individuals for who they are, not for what they are or what they're supposed to be according to a severely judgmental, medieval idea of God, is also the most highly valued tenet of mountain culture. In that way, I felt at home among the Sparta Episcopalians. This was what they called a "celebration." Before the service was over I realized the celebration was the acceptance of allowing individuals to be valuable as who they are. At least three times different women I know got in my face with hands flared out on both sides of their faces, "Isn't it a WONDERFUL day!" Of course, that ran all over my old-Baptist side suspicious of enthusiasm. At first, I took what they meant by wonderful was this opportunity to be so politically correct. But I caught on that what was so wonderful about the day was it marks a calendar date in everyone's life present, that a Christian church is actually embracing something as far-fetched as allowing human beings to be human beings. And more wonderful than that was a church house full of people from the church and friends affirming, embracing two guys everyone knew individually and together. I saw all around Gary and Allan the support that God's love, or simply love, is about. It sounds redundant to say God's love. It's the same as saying Love's love. The point is, God = love. The wonderful part of the day was that love was being celebrated by all present.

The air inside had the glow of love about it. I sat kind of reeling from being in a church that thinks unconditional love is something worth honoring with one's life, and actually practicing in everyday life. I was thinking this is more Buddhist than Christian. In Christendom, Peace amounts to a meaningless word over-used on Christmas cards. In Buddhism, peace is something practical in how you live your everyday life. The celebration in the Christian church was indeed of peace. Love = peace. I paused for a moment from the service and went within. I wanted to feel the place, feel if the spirit was in there. It was. Very much. It was a feeling of lightness, both in lightness like the weight of a chickadee in flight and the lightness of sunshine. The sun was out all day after a winter of cold with unpredictable ice, snow and wind. The women who were saying, "Isn't it a wonderful day!" meant it on so many levels that it became a truth to be uttered in awe. It's actually awesome for me to see a Christian church that is enthusiastic about practicing love in everyday life. They were celebrating the love between two guys on the soul level, or the higher self, allowing as love allows, as God allows. It told me things are changing in acceptance of a natural human condition that patriarchal martial religion rejected multiple hundreds of years ago, that aboriginal peoples all over the globe recognized, until slaughtered by Christians. It showed me a spark or even a candle flame of love as a focus of interest happening in Christendom. It's happening in Sparta. It explains to me the loving spirit I feel in the people I know who go to the Sparta Episcopal church. Allan and Gary, the two guys, included.

Fr Lin Walton is the spiritual guide in the church. I can't call him preacher or priest or father. I see him a man with this role. I've had curiosity about him since he was new here. I did the way I learned in the mountains, the way the people I came to know did me, waited and watched, assessed his character by what he does and how people receive him. Over the few years he's been here, I've seen the spirit come into the people I know who go to his church. It's actually been awe inspiring. I called him one evening a year or more ago to tell him that I've seen one friend in particular, Gary, my next door neighbor, begin to blossom spiritually. I attributed it to Fr Lin I've seen other such inspiration from. He is unable to see his influence in the people he sees regularly, like watching a baby grow up is seen more by people outside the house than people living in the house with the baby. I don't see Gary very frequently, leaving a span of time between our visits, so I see the baby crawling one time, and the next time the baby is walking, then the baby is gone and the little person appears. That's how I saw Gary's inner unfolding. He has the spirit. Allan has the spirit too. I've known Allan thirty years and Gary ten, as long as he's been with Allan. I've seen their relationship over the years grow into love, starting off with the spark of love and growing from there, to the point that both shed tears during the vows and Gary, choked up unable to speak, spoke out something he had to say, "I just love Allan." This moment told me the spiritual value of what Fr Lin has done, and I imagine mostly without him knowing what he's doing or how it's being done through him. It was refreshing to be in a church service where unconditional love is not just a pretty Bible verse to memorize for a gold star, but something to practice in everyday life, the fast lane to inner peace. Hooray for Gary and Allan, and hooray for the people of Christ Episcopal Church in Sparta, and Fr Lin for being who he is.


*

A DAY IN SPARTA

anthony gormley, field, 1991

(I've seen this--they all have faces and they're looking at you)

This was a good day to feel the love for the people of Alleghany County. It started in the coffee shop where this great big feller said, "I'm glad I don't fly." I saw in my mind's eye him flying over like a buzzard and shitting, hoping he was not over me when he did it. I said, "So am I." He didn't know what I meant, and doesn't think enough of me to care what I meant. Fact is, I said it because I knew he didn't care what I meant. He went on talking like I hadn't said anything, like I knew he would. He brings to mind a cousin I grew up with, big man, drives a dump truck, smokes a cigar and can't help but sound like everything he says is bragging. It's a form of ego. But I don't care about that as anything but an identifying set of characteristics. We all operate from ego, some of us do it with a little more finesse than others and some of us are all-out bragging all the time. I've even come to the place where I see language as infinitely complex possibilities for saying, "I want." I've come to believe that's all we ever say when we speak. The Australian Aborigines, before they were slaughtered and subdued, forced into a mold of white-man culture with no place in the culture, said the Creator gave us our voices for singing praises, not for talking. Isn't it so,when all we essentially say is I want. Seems like the best thing would be to say I want one time and then be silent for the rest of one's life. No, we have to say it over and over. "Look at that yellow Camaro with the black stripes on the hood and top!"

Met some people from California, here visiting Mitzi Biggins, an interesting couple from rural northern California, which they said is not so very different from here socially, just uniquely its own culture, like here is its own culture. I was sorry I had to leave once we set to talking. I had the BROC meeting at noon. This happens every time I go into the coffee shop in the morning before lunch with my BROC friends. I set twenty minutes to twelve as the time to leave, quarter til if I'm enjoying conversation. I never leave at twenty minutes til. I twist and squirm inside for five minutes wishing I could stay longer, then have to head out the door. It didn't come to me until later, but when Elgin Hatch, the PhD from California who studied white people, came to my house to interview me in his study of Sparta, he told me before he opened the car door I belong in northern California. Northern California is loaded with people just like me. He affirmed it even more adamantly when he entered the house. Here in the coffee shop was one of my neighbors in spirit, first one I'd ever met.

Then to the Kanpai restaurant, the new Japanese restaurant in town that is slowly catching on. It was strange getting a fortune cookie with a Chinese message in it. China and Japan are not allies. Who cares about that in pop culture? The young Japanese (or Chinese?) waiter came here from New York. He's been here about a year and doesn't get Sparta people at all. He's about like I'd be working at an American restaurant in Tokyo. Though I would want to explore and learn the culture. He's not curious about Sparta people in any way. I said to him, "I see so many Japanese movies that when I come in here I feel like I'm in a Japanese movie." He gave me the ah-so look that says I don't understand what you said, but want you to think I do. He said, "Thank you." In Sparta. We have a Chinese restaurant with Chinese people here from New York. We have four Mexican restaurants with Mexicans from Mexico running them. The one the Anglos go to is American Mexican slathered with cheese and brown bean mush. The other three are for the Mexican community, where you find the actual Mexican food, and where only a few Anglos go, the ones unafraid of being seen with the wrong class of people. Since the Sparta Restaurant went out of business more than 20 years ago, there has not been an American restaurant in Sparta that could make it. Northside and Southside diners have been gone several years. The Anglos are in a Depression and the Mexicans are working steady.

We had our BROC meeting waiting for the meal. It was a lively meeting, as usual, with Agnes Joines the head knocker. Agnes is so full of the life spirit she holds everyone's attention while she's talking. She'll interrupt two of the men she sees talking while she's presiding and tell them to pay attention. It's like a friendly family, a family where nobody quarrels. In that way, I'd say Agnes and Ernest more than likely made a happy family when they had kids in the house. When Agnes gets in your face quarreling, she's done when it's over. She's not in a huff refusing to speak for a day or two. It's never like that. She told me she got in Bob Bamberg's face earlier at the Chamber of Commerce. I know what it's like, she's done it to me. I saw Bob later in the library. I said, "I hear you had an Agnes experience." He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "Agnes Joines in your face." He broke out laughing, "Oh, Agnes!" It was one of two great honors of my life that I can think of when invited to join up with BROC, Blue Ridge Opportunity Commission. I sit at the big table of several smaller tables placed end-to-end with friends now of several years, people I respect as high as I can respect anybody. Every one of them is the kind of people I'm glad to have in my life. It warms my heart to be among them.

From the Kanpai I drove to the library to pick up the new painting of Jr I'd put in the library for a month. I wanted people who knew Jr to have a chance to see it. It's part of my ongoing campaign to keep his name alive in the memories of people who knew him. I told him some time before his mind went away that he will not be forgotten in his county. I spoke with Doug at the desk for awhile, waiting for the suicide bereavement meeting to be over. I went in after seeing Bob Bamberg come out, and saw Julia Simmons, Mrs Santa Claus, an English woman here from King, NC. She's light-hearted and lively, involved in this and that, very involved. Her husband plays Santa Claus in stores and around. She was doing something about how to deal with losing a loved one to suicide. I'm sure it would have been interesting, but I don't fall into that category. I've known people who have done it, but not close enough to give me trauma. I like Julia and we hugged. Norma Richardson was there. I gave her a hug for all she'd been through. What she has been through would take a big, long book to tell. I only know a teaspoon of the ocean of her life, but what little I know gives me a great big respect for the whole human being she is. Norma is one of the people in my world I hold way high up, and not unrealistically. Saw Kate Irwin on the way out, another woman I respect way up high, stopped and visited with her awhile. When I see Kate I feel tremendous respect.

On the way home I stopped next door to show Allan the painting of Jr. Wednesday is his day off. We visited a few minutes, talked about one thing and another. I came home and took a nap. Full day in just a few hours. Good feeling day all the way along. Sartre said hell is other people. I say heaven can be other people too.

  *

THE RAGE WITHIN

victor vasarely, souzon

Gradually, I'm learning the best way to live in this world is without expectation, without worrying over one thing and another. I catch myself worrying and look at it a moment somewhat detached, and what do I say? What are you worrying about that for? Maybe something somebody said that I took the wrong way, know I took the wrong way, and hold onto taking it the wrong way. Not very productive thinking. I'll catch myself worrying over something for days and weeks at a time, then re-enter the scene I'd been fussing over in my head, or see the individual, and it was not anything like the story I made of it in my sorry mind. Then I have to erase it from my mind and remind myself it's an affinity for drama I have that wants to make everything interesting. Drama amounts to conflict. Though the need for conflict in my mind, which probably started with a preponderance of conflict all around me in the early years, has been waning over the years; still mental conflicts remain. I have a little more control over them now than before. Every once in awhile something happens that pushes a button and another conflict arises. I've come to think of the need for conflict always there, always looking for something to blame it on. Like people I've known who are mad all the time. They're always mad at somebody for some valid reason. I've come to see they're mad all the time; simply put, mad. Every day somebody gets blamed for making them mad. I catch myself doing that and hit the brakes, sometimes. Better even, not to start.


I tend to blame republicans and Reagan for the present divisions going on among the American people. The divisions were already there. I'm looking for a way to detach further and see a little farther horizon. I've an idea this tremendous national conflict we've had over the last 30+ years is an expression of the American people's need for conflict. Again, half a century of television. Conflict upon conflict, continuous conflict, not enough on one channel, switch to another channel. Conflict is the foundation of entertainment. Tv as constant entertainment means constant mental conflict. It takes more and more conflict to keep the average television viewer satisfied. Get up from the tv, go out in the world someplace like a discount store, get mad at the woman at the register, get mad at somebody who left their grocery cart loose in the parking lot, get mad at the car that parked too close and it takes some squeezing to get in the door. How many times have you heard, "That really makes me mad!" I'm coming to see the madness was already there waiting to be triggered with justification.


Young guys are really bad at that, going around seething with anger over home conflicts, "Did you say somethin about my mother?" I'm remembering back in jr hi when I was working with some guys my age in the summer. All of a sudden one year, mother became fighting words. "You callin my mama a bitch? I don't care what you call me. Don't you be talkin bout my mama." It's universal. Right after puberty the guys get all defensive/offensive about their mothers. Not their actual mothers, of course; the idea of mother. Something to start a fight with. "Keep your mother off the streets, won't be no motherfuckers." That one means you want to fight now, because there's no avoiding a fight after dissing the holy of imaginary holies so frontally. Naturally, the kids that have the most drama at home between mom and dad are the kids that need to create conflict every day. One man I know who is especially volatile needs conflict in his mind to feel alive. He keeps the drama going all the time with everyone in his life. He has the name of being overbearing. He's become my example of the meaning of the word whenever I hear someone use it in reference to someone else. Now I know what it means. He's mad all the time inside, constantly tuned to a venting experience. Kicking ass feels good for awhile to somebody angry all the time.


I forget that the primary reason, the number one reason, I came to the mountains from the city to do hard labor on a farm for beef cattle was a belief that came from I knew not where that some years of hard labor would work off my own anger, which was considerable. Once I conceded to divine protection, I didn't need the defense I unconsciously used the anger for. Like my mother uses church to stiff-arm people from getting too close, I feel like I was using anger for the same purpose. Maybe. That sounds a bit thin. There's more to it than that. The anger had nothing to do with manipulation. It was from an entire childhood of having no recourse. By God, when I'm on my own I will. Much rage within that motivated behavior I'm ashamed to even think about now. Not extreme behavior, but expressions of attitudes based in deep resentments. I have walked off a job a couple times for being talked to in ways I don't tolerate in my adult years. I still have the attitude that if an employer has the right to fire an employee, the employee has the right to fire the employer. When I say I don't tolerate, it doesn't mean I fight about it. I just make it clear in whatever way is suitable to the moment that I don't do that shit to you, you don't do that shit to me. It took a long time to get there.


My neighbor Allan Joyce, a very distant relation of James Joyce, handled the same situation I'd been in once and couldn't handle, a job I walked away from after a stormy cussing over something that had nothing to do with me. This particular surveyor was a monster to work for. Off the job, a good man, good neighbor, treated people right. On the job, the intensity of his psyche was like a laser beam compared to a flashlight beam when off the job. He was so intense, and furious within, that the least little thing set him off on a cussing streak, throwing his hat on the ground and jumping up and down on it, like in cartoons. I saw my respect going away like an avalanche. I stopped working for him because he was my neighbor and I didn't want to completely lose respect; when it's gone, it's gone. I found as time went by that I actually had lost respect. Allan, who worked successfully for him for several years, told me one day of a cussing he got at work over the walkie talkie. Allan cussed him right back, over the walkie talkie. He told Allan he can't talk to him like that. Allan said, "If you're going to talk to me like that, I'll talk to you like that." The end. He never talked to Allan like that again. I was floored when Allan told me. That was all I had to do. No, I had to puff up telling myself I don't have to take that shit, until I blew my stack. And Allan handled it in just a few words. No big deal. End of issue.


There is the story from Steve Earle's biography of him finally, after wanting to know Bob Dylan for years, getting to open for a Dylan tour. Big deal for Steve who held Dylan the highest. Some time into the tour Steve was getting mad because Dylan never looked at him, spoke to him, acknowledged him in any way. One day Dylan's manager came to Steve Earle and told him Dylan wants him to watch his language on stage. Earle's automatic reply was, "Fuck him." Next day Dylan spoke to Earle, started paying attention to him and they became buddies, I guess as much as you can be in that world. Might have smoked some reefer together and talked about business. If you like a good biography, Steve Earle's is a very well written life story of an American man becoming conscious in the course of his experience. By the end, I felt like I knew Steve Earle the man behind Steve Earle the star. I like Steve Earle the man, which helps me like his music more than I would just hearing it on the radio. Instead of hearing him and seeing videos of concerts, I have insight into what kind of a human being is writing his lyrics. His lyrics attest to who he is. I see him somebody who had to find a way to get over his own interior rage, and has lived his life maintaining and fine tuning his balance. I believe he has come close enough to reaching his goal to be a great American songwriter that by the last days of his life he will feel satisfaction, maybe for the first time.

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