DONKEY POWER

jenny eats her sweet grain

Yesterday, a brake line sprung a leak. Appointment for 1:30 today. Drove the eight miles carefully, plotted the route uphill the first mile, downhill four miles in a gentle slope requiring little brake activity. Downhill another mile, rather steep at the beginning, drop down into lower gear to keep from needing brakes, a gentle downhill grade levelled out for the next three miles with an fairly long uphill toward the end, a right turn at the top of the hill, no brakes necessary, and level for the next half mile. Made it with still enough brakes to stop when needed, like the time someone backed out of a driveway in front of me, unaware a car was in sight. I was glad for what brake I had to stop. If the brake had failed, I'd have used the emergency brake by foot. Found it and put my foot on it for the feel of where it was before I pulled out of the parking space. It would stop, but it was slow to stop. I had to start braking before I otherwise would. It was just a matter of being careful like driving on ice. I've passed my driving on ice test several times on as many kinds of ice. Driving on ice requires absolute focus of attention and knowing your car. I'm glad I'm able to take this front-wheel drive v6 Buick almost anyplace I can take a 4-wheel drive pickup. The 4-wheel drive goes on ice just a little better than front-wheel. A few years ago, I couldn't make it up a certain rise in the road up the mountain from Pine Swamp, almost, but not quite. I knew the 4-wheel I drove before could have made it, though barely. The new brake line required dipping into the well of credit card. I don't like to go there, but figure this is what they're for, necessity. Not that I mind going to amazon a few times a month. 

jack eats his sweet grain

Also yesterday, I took the sweet grain to the donkeys later than usual. They were grazing at the far end of the meadow. I always pour the grain over the fence, because they get rambunctious in their jealous anxiety. They're so excited they squeal, snort, kick, have a body language argument. 

Jack: I want it now, can't stand waiting, now, gotta have it now, please, please, now.

Jenny: Get outta my way. I'm first. Move it. Get outta here. Now. I'll kick your ass. 

Jack: Oh no, can't stand to see Jenny eat and me have none. Squeal. Grunt. Snort. Moan. I can't stand it another second. 

I pour his out for him, most of it bouncing off his head after he goes for the first grains to fall. He doesn't mind. He likes to feel it. Jenny, too, dives into it as soon as the grain starts pouring, liking the feel of it bouncing off her head. Sweet grain from heaven. Neither Jenny nor Jack like me to to talk to them while they're having their treat. They're busy not only eating, but guarding what they're eating, their back ends aimed at each other. This makes it necessary to pour their grain at least three donkey lengths apart. Less than a donkey length between their rear ends makes them anxious, ready to fight off the other, though there never is a threat, until Jenny leaves her grain and pushes Jack away from his. She eats his grain and he goes and finishes hers. It's how they do with hay too.  

jack and jenny

I walked out into the meadow quite a ways before they looked up. Both took off at a gallop straight at me, Jack braying, Jenny squealing. They were so excited they ran to me too fast to stop on the wet ground and grass, and ran by me, one on either side almost touching me with their sides. It was a rush of power. I felt the power in these huge horse forms running wide open within inches of me on either side. Neither one touched me because neither one intended to. It got my attention in a big way. They were huge and powerful. I thought of the Plains Indians riding their horses in a herd of stampeding buffalo, hanging on with their legs while they use bow and arrow with their arms. If they don't hit it just right, buffalo and horse running full speed, the buffalo will fall into the horse, horse and man hit the ground and are trampled to death immediately. The feeling when the donkeys ran by gave me a glimpse of the physical power those guys rode with, from the Comanches to the Lakota. I've not been around horses much. Their power overwhelms me. Two full-sized donkeys on either side of me in their power was like a gust of hundred mph wind for a second. They turned and came back to me, bumping each other, biting at each other, Jenny swinging around at Jack, Jack swinging around at Jenny, and me in the middle. I knew they would not kick me or step on me. The feeling of their power in a brief sparring match was strong, inches away all the way around. Jenny swung her rear end around at me. I put my hand on her rump to stop the momentum. The touch of my hand took the fire out of her. She calms all the way down when I put my hand on her rump like that to stop her. Jack calmed down. I poured the grain for them and got my puny human ass out of there. It was not my power that stopped her, but the gentleness in the gesture.

jenny and jack

My hand against the power of a donkey is no more than a gesture. First couple of times, I put my hand up reflexively to give myself leverage to get away from her. I found every time she quieted down at merely the touch of my hand. I can't stop a donkey from doing anything with one hand, not even with two hands. Jack and Jenny are evidence to me that gentleness works far better than force. I know that I cannot force a donkey. I do not ever attempt to force either one in any way. Their only experience with me has been gentleness and feeding them. When I touch them, it's not to control. I'm their waiter at the donkey hay restaurant and serve them carrots every morning. I talk to them in a friendly tone of voice. I never have scolded or barked at one of them. I'll let out a yelp when Jenny swings her rear end around at me. The yelp catches her attention and my hand on her rump calms her down. My feeling is that she recognizes she is in automatic sparring mode and the touch of my hand reminds her it's her friend between her and Jack. It shows me a great deal of caring and respect. I wanted to see what they would do with me holding the grain container in their midst. It's pretty wild. I stayed this side of the fence today. They get so rampageous with each other over the sweet grain, I don't feel comfortable standing between them while they're sparring. They don't even kick each other anymore. They make kicking gestures and seldom make contact with anything but their back knees. The power I felt in their midst, them jealous and fired up with ears back, swinging around quick as a cat, gave me a good sense of their immense bodies. That I am safe among such powerful beings gives me evidence that gentleness and respect train without training. 

    

jenny and jack

*

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

*

THE CASE POCKET KNIFE

alberto giacometti

The car is running now. I'm keeping the fuse out for awhile to see if it and the dead battery are related. The power antenna is on that fuse, no radio reception. I can live without the noise. It's odd at night with no interior lights. I keep a small flashlight in a pocket. It's like a pocket knife, so handy once I carried one that I take it every time I leave the house. Years ago my neighbor, Allen, mentioned that he never carried a pocket knife. I said something like, if you carry one for a short time, you'll carry one all the time, they're so handy. I noticed about a year ago he's carrying one. Must have tried it. The pocket knife is a good tool. I use it every day. It's a Case Sodbuster, single blade, black handle, stainless steel three-inch blade. For what I want in a pocket knife it's just right. The object itself is a memory of a friend I worked for several years, a true human being. He died by surprise, and I was given his pocket knife. When a friend dies, I ask for something small of no value, a memory. I'd had a few pocket knives up to that time. One was stolen by a guy who came back after taking it, carrying a pint of liquor for me to have a drink with him, I'm the best friend he ever had. I didn't learn til next day that I drank my pocket knife. He sold it and bought some cheap liquor. His brother who then lived in a trailer a short ways down the road told me his wife's wedding ring was missing from on top of the television where she left it. Brother came by to see him with a bottle of liquor to drink with him while praising him up and down as his best brother and best friend. He, too, didn't realize til the next day he drank his wife's wedding ring. Another knife I carried several years I found under the bed liner in a Toyota pickup I'd bought second-hand. It had a 2 3/4 inch blade and a bone handle. It was a good knife for a long time. Then this Case Sodbuster fell into my hand. 

alberto giacometti

I kept the blade sharp, though not razor sharp. A blade too sharp, I cut myself. I cut a finger less frequently using a dullish blade. Carving the bark from rhododendron branches to make walking sticks, I like it razor sharp. I sharpen it on the stone with meticulous care. Carving the bark away is easier with a sharp knife. It gives me insight into why people who work with wood like sharp tools. The sharp blade takes the effort out of carving. None of the walking sticks I carved before are what I want for self. I'm finding walking is simpler with a stick than without. Walked about a half mile today with a new stick carved for myself until it was relaxed in hand and flowed with the rhythm of my steps. Going up and down hills, it makes a third foot. I found the stick I wanted for my own and carved it to what I want in a walking stick. It is comfortable in hand, lightweight and strong as oak. I like the way it walks on the ground, on pavement and gravel. Having a good stick may inspire me to walk more. Walking is not fun anymore. I stay on the pavement, knowing what's in the woods. I don't want to go down the trail to the waterfall and come face to face with a bear, anything, coyote, coywolf, wolf or mountain lion. I have 99% confidence that if I were to come face to face with one of these, I'd be all right. I believe I could handle it, though with wobbly legs. My legs would be so rubbery, so boneless, I wouldn't be able to move. It would take all my focus to stay upright. I don't want the experience. The best way I know to avoid such a fright is to stay out of their territory. I'm happy to have them here, but I won't go in the woods anymore. Hunters I know will not go into the woods without some kind of stopping power, a hunting rifle or a pistol. They know what's in these woods. I've seen photographs of three different bears in the woods across the road. 

alberto giacometti

I keep a box of band-aids readily accessible, though have not yet needed one. I take care with the knife. It has become my friend. Some years ago, I had a fright that I might have lost it. Couldn't find it for a few weeks. Finally, cleaning under the car seat, there it was. I was so happy I promised I'd never lose it again. I'm always aware of it while carrying it like I had $500 in my pocket. It's like my cat Caterpillar, I don't want to lose her either. The knife and I have been a lot of places together. It's been a handy tool hundreds of times. Cut some string, open a box that came in the mail, cut some rubber insulation around a wire, even a screwdriver for tiny screws. Italian/Swiss/French artist, Alberto Giacometti, only used a pocket knife making his sculptures. Before WW2, he was with the Surrealists in Paris. He went to Geneva during the war. All that went before was over. He wanted to find something to do as if no one had ever made any sculpted image before. He carved little one-inch human figures of soap and kept them in a match box. The war over, he returned to Paris and started making his elongated human figures with clay, and his brother, Diego, cast them in bronze. Whenever I see a Giacometti sculpture, I'm in awe that he did it with a pocket knife. He has inspired me in my own making of things, images or objects, to use the simplest method and tools possible. His studio was a small room with a table in the middle that he could walk all the way around. A little room with a small bed and a table lamp was his home. He was the same as a monk to his art. Constantin Brancusi kept his bed in his studio. He, too, was a monk to his art. They were the punk rockers of 20th Century art. Brancusi's studio has been moved to the Pompidou modern art museum in Paris. 

alberto giacometti

I'm discovering so much in my art forms during this time of my life that it really keeps me going when other people my age recline in front of Faux tv and gripe cause ever'thing's wrong and nothin aint right. I was pulled into negative thinking much of my life, until I caught on. It took surrounding self with negative-minded people to such an extent it was more than I could live with. I had to withdraw from that thinking. It's been a long time learning to allow. All the time I believed we had democracy, I felt like it was important to keep up. Now that all our media is propaganda, I don't know where to turn to find what's happening. I've come to take all the news as fiction. I don't care anymore. It's about time. The only place that is important is in here, within. Out there has no relevance to my life. What do I care if Lindsay Graham of South Carolina pledges his allegiance to Netanyahu? I'd rather carve the bark off a walking stick than worry my mind over our fickle "representatives." They turned against us, so I turn against them. The politicians are such huge disappointments, they don't rate my attention. Cops who kill somebody in USA every day don't like it when their one-way war turns into a two-way war. Then it's blame the victim time. Best place for me is to stay home. My home is my studio. I feel like my art is at its beginning. I've always felt like that, every step along the way. Carving walking sticks has been so much fun, I think about a couple of big rhododendron trunks on the ground that have been dead several years. It would take months to carve the bark off them. I see them in my mind's eye smooth white wood the tung oil finish turns to honey gold. Don't know what I'd do with them. They're about eight feet long. I think about bringing them home and leaving them on the ground near the house to study them walking by. I wouldn't want to make something functional of them. Home is where I belong, doing my art, carving my sticks and writing to you. 

alberto giacometti himself

*

A DEAD BATTERY AND HILLBILLY PREACHING

joel shapiro

The car is driving me wild. Dead battery again. I'm thinking I've found the source of the drain on the battery. I have thought it was the gps plugged into the lighter hole. But it was there for a long time not draining the battery. A few days ago I pulled a fuse thinking it might help the door latch that was locked up to operate; the door locks and interior lights work on this one fuse. The door latch started working again after the temperature rose above freezing. The battery was fine. I put the fuse back into its slot when the door latch started working. Dead battery. Whatever is draining the battery, I suspect, is in the realm of that one fuse. I can get along without interior lights and without door locks. The door locks annoy me anyway. The doors lock automatically when I take the transmission out of Park. I don't like that. If I need out of the car in a hurry, I don't want to be fooling around trying to get it unlocked first. I carry a small flashlight in a pocket. Around here, there is no need to lock a car, unless it's near Christmas and the car is full of boxes and bags in a parking lot at night. There is an old country saying that locks keep an honest man honest. They don't stop thieves with intent. I never keep anything in my car to tempt somebody walking by. When I leave camera in car, I bury it under papers, trash, a jacket, a hat. I pulled the fuse again today, this time to stay out, at least long enough to see if the battery will keep a charge without it. First thing I checked this morning was the water level in the battery. It was fine. Tomorrow morning, neighbor Allen will drive over and let me jump my car from his battery. Come to think of it, that won't work. He's borrowed an old Studebaker pickup from a friend for hauling in some firewood. His car is not here. So much for that. The Studebaker battery is probably a 6 volt, and mine is 12. I'll figure something out. The battery can't get any deader. Late afternoon, my friends Lucas and Judy will be arriving for a few days. Their car's battery will accord with mine.  

joel shapiro

If all my neighbors were country people, I could stop any car driving by. My neighbors are city people, Republican exurbanites. They don't like to be bothered. And I don't like to bother them. I'll work it out. The county changed after 1980 when the farms went away. The old people who kept their farms died out and the heirs divided the farm into lots, making subdivisions and a lot of money. Some sold the farms to Christmas tree growers. Much as I regretted the Bush-Cheney economy, it put a stop to suburbanites getting away from the enwords. They watch so much tv they think the enwords are lurking in every shadow to rob and kill them. They can't sell their houses in the city to pay for their mountain houses, and they can't sell a mountain house. Several of them have gone back to the city. It's rough on the contractors and carpenters and the town merchants who had begun to count on people coming in here from Away. They stopped coming and the town is now languishing, just short of plywood on the windows. It's not mine to wish it was one way or another. It's mine to go on about my life and let the world around me change as it will. It's mine to do, because that's how things are. I like it or don't like it is neither here nor there. What matters is that I have peace in my heart. I don't have a great deal of time left and am glad of it. My house is one of the last original houses in Air Bellows. Allen, my next door neighbor, lives in a little old farm house he's restored. Old man Tom Pruitt's house has been let go down since he died. The owner won't sell it and won't fix it up. It was twenty-four years ago he died. The house has been empty ever since with a poacher staying in it during hunting season until he stopped hunting. He hunted anywhere he pleased, on anybody's land, on Parkway land. The law knew about him, but never caught up with him. The beautiful old house, built a year or two after 1900, made of oak, now looks like a haunted house and is past restoration. 

joel shapiro

Yesterday, riding with Melvin on the way home from watching tv football at Justin's, we passed Laurel Glenn church, where I went regularly fourteen years and left twenty-three years ago. They locked the door and turned off the electricity twenty years ago. It was one of the beautiful mountain churches of an architecture so simple it had Japanese style. No steeple, no cross, a plain white wooden building with a silver tin roof. It had an outhouse among the trees out back. Seeing it go by in the foggy night, white in the darkness, I felt again my fondness for the building itself and what I know went on inside. I stopped one day to look in the windows. Everything was lined up like when it was living, covered in a film of dust. I loved that place in a deep heart-felt way. Much love energy flowed inside those walls and beautiful hillbilly singing. Originally, it was the church in the Glade Valley region the black farmers of the area went to. It was the black people, the Choates, who built the church in the 1920s. Their cemetery was the other side of what was then a dirt road. The door faced the cemetery, south, where it could be seen from the pulpit at the opposite wall. In the 1950s, white Regular Baptists bought it after the black population thinned out so much they had to shut the church door. Most white kids leave here after school. All black kids leave, with rare exceptions, the exceptions that prove the rule. And some kill themselves. The white people changed the door to a wall facing east where they put their own cemetery the other side of another dirt road. They built a pulpit area on the opposite wall and covered the old walls with wood paneling. The floors were pine with so many knots I sometimes thought of it as the night sky with stars. It never failed to amuse me when I thought about the little church with the most vehemently racist man I've ever known preaching in what used to be a nigger church. 

joel shapiro

In the old Regular Baptist way, the preacher was just a man like everybody else. No collection plate. He worked, had his own ways, beliefs, temperament. He did not have to be educated, not even able to read. The old-time preaching way works best with the least education. It's a matter of opening up to be "a vessel" for the Holy Spirit to flow through, a voice for the spirit to talk with. I found in all the different preachers I heard that education past sixth or seventh grade inhibited the freedom to open up and allow the spirit. Millard Pruitt, the preacher, grew up in old-man Tom's house up Waterfall road. He was Tom's youngest brother. I felt like they were each other's favorite brother. They were the last two to die out. Millard was a man braced against everything and everybody. He'd make me think of William Blake's line, Damn braces, bless relaxes. He was all about condemning, punishment, overseeing with the most judgmental eye I've known. And an ego that was outta sight. He had a loving heart, told me hundreds of stories from his life, stories of the people that lived in Air Bellows, Whitehead, the county. He was adamantine in every part of his mind, unyielding. It even embarrassed his wife how much he hated niggers. It bothered me for quite awhile until one day I realized I am not here to change him. I appreciated him as an intelligent man in many ways, a brilliant mind in a Sixteenth Century theology that goes back to medieval and perhaps neolithic. Would not entertain any notion that the earth was round. The Bible says it has four corners. I had never known anyone like Millard. I found him fascinating all the years I knew him. I respected his theology as John Milton's. I wasn't there to judge, but to learn what the old-time religion was like, to see what was there for my own spiritual path. He gave me the best education I could ask for. In the pulpit, Millard had a facility for receiving the spirit that made other preachers jealous. When the spirit o'ertook him, only love flowed on his voice. The only subject I ever heard him preach was love. This was my evidence that what was coming through had no part of his mind in it. It was such beautiful preaching I never allowed myself to make a tape of it. It was too spontaneous for the moment, for the moment only. 

joel shapiro

*

MY SOUTHERN BRIER PATCH

tony smith

New Year's day I spent mostly in the bed. Didn't want to do anything. Didn't want to be awake. Read some between naps in a new biography of Vincent Van Gogh. Today I passed the half way point. It's 900 pages.Woke a few minutes to seven, thinking it morning. The weather report on the radio for Friday was "tomorrow." I thought, you mean today. Today is Friday. I remembered I was waking from a nap--oh no, it's not tomorrow yet--it's evening. Friday morning I need to get with mechanic, tie the car door closed with baling twine and drive to his shop, taking back roads, to see if he can fix it. I hope it doesn't involve two hundred dollars in parts, or more. Happy New Year. This morning I found the owner's manual, looked up the fuses and pulled the fuse that works the interior lights to avoid running down the battery. I tried everything someone with no experience in such matters could think of. New Years. Things like this tend to happen to me on Friday evening after five o'clock. I have to wait til Monday to make an appointment for help. If mechanic cannot get to it tomorrow, the highest likelihood, I'll have to wait through the weekend til next week. Here again, when frustration reaches the point I can't stand it, I pull back into indifference. It only means I can't go anyplace for almost a week. Good. Like getting snowed in. Plenty of catfood, birdseed and carrots to last a week. Don't need a prescription filled for another week. Turns out it was a good time to be immobilized. Nothing to do but accept. As long as I'm staying at home, I'm not spending money. Money goes a lot further when I stay home. Staying home consumes no gasoline. And it's where I want to be anyway. Don't throw me in the brier patch. 

tony smith

I think of Brer Rabbit from the Disney film, Song of the South, tales of Uncle Remus, that I saw age 6. My only memory was Brer Rabbit (me) caught by some characters that wanted to hurt him. They were talking of what they could do to him. Brer Rabbit said, "You can do anything, but please don't throw me in the brier patch." It struck his captors a good idea. They threw him in. He hopped among the briers, tapping a bunny dance, singing, "I was born in a brier patch." More than likely, this was my first acquaintance with the South. I loved the movie, loved the Southern accent, loved the characters. This is age 6. I've been searching for my first discovery of the South as a place and hadn't been able to trace it past a biography read in third grade of Robert E Lee. Looking for why the interest in Lee, the South. The Uncle Remus stories must have been my very first introduction to the South. I do remember identifying so fully with Brer Rabbit that his plea, don't throw me in the brier patch, has stayed with me all my life. I think it taught me that cleverness of mind trumps brawn. I had the metaphor of brawn sitting beside me. I already knew he had no brains. I'm hearing Chuck Berry sing in my head, "You can't catch me, oh no, you can't catch me." As soon as I had my freedom, I headed for the South. You'll never catch me in the South. Maybe the South is my brier patch. I've found that people outside the South are largely afraid of the South. My brier patch. To say I loved a movie at age six has no bearing on if I might like it now. Age 11, I saw Demetrius and the Gladiators, starring Victor Mature. It was so sentimental, I loved it, cried at the end. Mid-twenties, I was in somebody's house while it was playing on the tv. I watched a scene and gagged. Victor Mature made me puke. How could I have ever liked such a thing? Eleven. I liked Mighty Mouse too. 

tony smith

Live oak trees, Spanish moss, the Southern accent, the Solid South at election times, my symbols of the South. I knew about slavery and the Civil War from school. I was partial to the South in history class. Didn't know the politics of the South until after school when the Civil Rights movement was cranking up. Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee, Bo Diddley, Elvis Presley, Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, later to become The Band, were from the South. The South is where rock n roll was conceived and born. The Carter Family were Southern Appalachian hillbillies in the time before electricity and plumbing arrived in the mountains. Mountain people listened to them on radios that worked from Model T batteries. I had never listened to the Carter Family until I'd been in the mountains a quarter century. The church I went to had Carter Family gospel songs in the hymnal. Hearing Carter Family the first time, I recognized several of their songs. Being able to understand and feel the Carter Family is one of the great blessings of my life. The Carter Family songbook, over 500 songs they recorded, is the songbook for Southern Appalachian old-time and bluegrass, songs AP Carter found traveling up and down the mountains looking for songs. For me, The Carter Family makes a greater icon for the South than any general or politician. The Carter Family are the Southern people, the white people, the culture I live in. I love to hear Sara Carter sing like I love to hear Lucinda Williams sing. 

tony smith

Going by Southern politicians, the rest of the country takes all of us for racist bigots. That's ok. Keeps em away. It's never 100% of the vote that goes to the politician appealing to racism. They most often win an election, though not by much more than 50%. I am here to learn the South and the mountains, not to judge the South or want to change it. I would like to see less racism, but that time will come. It's an historical progression involving belief systems with religion woven in, a mythology. It's slow to change. Like all healing, it takes time. Racism comes from ignorance, and willful ignorance is the slowest to change. This form of ignorance is all over the country. Michelle Bachmann is from Massachusetts. Ted Cruz is from Texas-Canada-Cuba, went to Harvard Law school. He aint Suthun. Bobby Jindal is from India and went to Oxford. Evidently, ignorance has nothing to do with education. It's like the meme that reappears on facebook, You can't fix stupid. Those people are avoidable anywhere, except maybe in an elevator. I stay away from them. They know I'm a liberal and they stay away from me first. Works out just right. As I like to be received for who I am, I like to receive others for who they are. I don't care that some of the people I know are racists. It weakens my respect for them, but that's all. Each one has his and her own history, same as I have mine. I like to know individuals for who they are, not a pretense made up for show. If I judge them, they don't let me know who they are. If I were to judge them for being racist, I'd be a racist about white rednecks. Individually, person to person, I prefer to stay out of their politics and mine. I'm of the old-time way of sitting around the wood-stove, spitting in tin cans, talking about anything but politics and religion. I save these subjects for the blog.  

tony smith

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WAITING FOR MIDNIGHT

pat monk

Already I have changed the wall calendar. Last year I waited a couple weeks into January, not for any reason but laziness. I like the Ramon calendar, big numbers, easy to make notes on. The hardware store used to give them out, then had to start charging for them, then quit having them. My bank gives them out now. One way or another, I'm still able to find one. Asked a couple days ago what my annual ritual is for New Year's. all I could think of was changing the calendar. We have the calendar New Year, the astrological New Year, the Chinese New Year, etc. Celebrate them all? Celebrate one? I pick the social New Year, Jan 1, the one the people around me celebrate. I have a hard time with one date as New Year's. It's like taking a ballpoint pen and marking a point on a child's rubber ball, saying this spot marks the beginning. How else would you place the spot but arbitrarily? To find out why January 1 is purportedly the first day of the new year, it would take looking at the history of the calendar we go by. My personal preference would be the astrological new year, the spring equinox, which seems it would be the more universal calendar. The other new year dates are specific to given cultures. Yet, I prefer these calendars. In Greece a long time ago, 1972, I brought home a Greek Orthodox calendar, a whole new way of looking at a year. Almost every day has something to do with a saint. Maybe they are more personal than the universal, have customs that go back multiple centuries, millennia. They need translation from one to the other like languages. I also prefer multiple languages to one. Switzerland prints three languages on their paper money, Italian, German and French. American white people want only English on our money, while the American reality is at least two languages. 

pat monk

I had a party to go to, one I wanted to go to, that didn't work out. I dressed up for a late night out in the cold, went out to start the car, hooked up the GPS, and the door would not latch. I could not close it. I can't go anyplace with an open door. The interior light was on, bitter cold winter night. I took the bulb out of the overhead light. I could not approach the problem with the door latch in the dark and intense cold. I raised the hood and looked with flashlight at what it would take to remove the ground cable from the battery. Naturally, it's a battery with new posts it takes a special tool to work with, a tool I don't have. Another light stays on inside that I can't remove the bulb from. Early in the morning, I'll try to start the motor, to let it charge the battery a little until I can find a way to fix the door. Something like this happens every winter on a bitter cold night. The car is 22 years old. The motor and running parts are perfect. It's the electrical, brake lines, external parts on the engine that are giving out. Every time I replace a part, it's new. I'd rather pay a mechanic to maintain an old car than make payments on a new one. I'd rather my money, energy, go toward a man making a living independently by his knowledge and skill, than pay into corporate police state. I call it living what I believe. I prefer the world of individuals to the corporate hive, the reason I live where I live. All my needs can be fulfilled locally. Friends ask why I don't go to Walmart for something I can get there for less than in Sparta. It's a ten dollar round trip to the nearest Walmart. Add ten dollars to whatever I might want at Walmart, and I'm better off to buy in Sparta. I don't want to go into Walmart anyway. For me, it's a moral issue. Walmart tramples the rights of individuals and regards their employees the same as cattle. I can't support that, even buying no more than socks.

pat monk

New Year's and Christmas, the holiday season, is a social time. It's about mixing with other people, having a spirited time, party time. I'm not one for standing around at a party with drink in hand playing pretend charming. I say, if that's what you gotta do, go for it. I prefer to stay at home most of the time. I can't blow party whistles, put on a pointy little hat and act like I'm almost three. I'm not a reveler. I've never had that kind of physical freedom. Inhibited. My preference is to stay at home and let other people act out the social part. I'm one of the people who call Christmas and New Year's just another day. My friend Jr Maxwell saw it the same. One New Year's Eve we decided to sit at the table with our drams and wait for midnight. By the time 12 rolled around, both our foreheads were touching the table. We had more to drink than usual. Both of us were drunk. Twelve o'clock was the end of our vigil. We could have taken another drink, but it would have put us on the floor. We didn't want to go there. We sat at the table talking for six hours. We came away from it thinking it the best New Year's ever. I don't recall a New Year's party that was more fun than we had at the table talking, laughing, getting freer and looser as time went by, talking stupid and laughing at everything. By twelve, only the force of will kept us awake. We were drinking liquor that was at least 140 proof, delicious liquid candy. Liquor affects different people differently. Both Jr and I were happy drunks making it possible for us to drink together in excess. Instead of getting red-faced and looking for a fight, we dissolved in laughter. Jr was one of the funniest people I've known. He kept me laughing for hours at a time.

pat monk

A day came to mind when Jr was in his frailty, though still had his mind. A friend of his dropped by one afternoon. He had a quart of liquor with blueberries in it he'd kept on a shelf for twenty years. Jr and I were sitting at our ends of the long sofa, each with our own table lamp. Friend drove up and came in the door already pretty far along. He stepped over to the couch, told me to get on over, meaning move to he middle of the couch, he wanted my spot. Ok. He pushed me with his upper arm. I caught a whiff of his aura of alcohol. He told great stories from past experience that kept both Jr and me bent over laughing much of the time. I'd never been this close to him before, and felt some powerful energy radiating from him, powerful energy. My feeling took it for the immense anger he carries. This is somebody that when when the guns come out, you want him on your side. He is comfortable with red-faced men looking for a fight. His face is twisted like a Picasso face from battering. The bones in his hands are so crushed that his outer three knuckles sank back about a half inch from usual. He told me that when a man first goes into prison, he thinks he knows how to fight. First thing he learns is he doesn't know anything about fighting. The liquor was so good that over the course of an hour or more, the three of us drank the whole quart. Friend kept us rolling with laughter telling comic stories. He is a comedian. He likes to make people laugh. Jr and I were a great audience for him. I won't tell about his stories. They are all "inappropriate," racist, fascist. His opinions make Rush Limbaugh sound discreet. I would be asked to leave DCP if I were to retell any of his stories. The real comedy was in the telling more than the stories themselves. I've seen Jr almost fall out of his chair at the table laughing at friend's telling of one of his stories. They weren't necessarily true. That part didn't matter, the same as a number on a calendar ultimately does not matter.

pat monk himself

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CALF MEDICINE DAY

jenny, jack and 21 from the road

 

Thought I'd make a run down the road to Whitehead to see the guys at the welding shop. Car would not start. Justin was across the road in the woods with chainsaw cutting a trail through the woods to drive his truck through. I thought I'd walk over there and find him, have him stop by on the way out and jump my battery. I was walking up the road when I saw Jesse's pickup stop by a gate to the meadow. He had brought his two girls and friend David Parsons with him. David is quite a good country singer. He made a self-produced album ten or more years ago and plays at places around the area from time to time, small places. He sings folk style with acoustic guitar. They had come to give the calf some worm medicine and to put something on it for lice. I welcomed them to the petting zoo. The girls asked if the donkeys were safe. I told them the donkeys would neither kick them nor bite them, but I had to add I can only really say they won't bite or kick me. I don't know about somebody else. I said the chances are good, very good, the donkeys won't be a problem. Jenny walked right up to Abby, who started petting on Jenny, who doesn't like being touched. Zoe, her sister, stayed back a little bit. Abby wants to be a vet and is interested in everything to do with the animals. She was right there with her daddy asking questions and getting good answers. She wanted to be in there as close as she could get. She watched Jesse wrestle the calf down to take charge of its head so he could put the medicine in its mouth. David put some solution on its back for lice.  

 

david, zoe, abby, 21, jesse, jenny, jack

 

I used to be impressed by knowledge that had no practical application. Possibly, I learned the attitude from school, where if you're going to do something you have to be great, succeed, be famous, have wealth. By this time in my life, I'm more impressed by knowledge that is practical, knowledge you function by. In addition to the other. Jesse's knowledge I would have completely overlooked before I came to the mountains. He would have been just a redneck farm hand that never heard of Wallace Stevens or Robert Rauschenberg, drove a pickup and wore a ballcap, talked with a hillbilly whang, and didn't know nothin. Today I laugh, I mean ROFLMAO, at what I would have missed. At this time in my life, I look at what Jesse knows how to do, Justin too, and many others like them in these hills, my Tennessee ancestors, and I am stunned by the knowledge. I rode in the pickup with Jesse and Justin when we went to pick up Jenny. Driving a road with woods on both sides, one says, "There's a doe." Didn't even have to indicate direction, which side of the road, anything. The other saw it almost as immediately. I search the woods as fast as I can and never find it before we're gone from sight. Every time. I've never found a deer one of them spotted in the woods, and the other says, "A big'n," or, "I'd let that'n go for next year." I barely know what they're talking about. They talk hunting all the time. I've gained extensive hunting knowledge from them. Have even been in Bass, outside Charlotte, the Walmart of sporting goods. If they don't have it, it does not exist. Jesse is people that say to me, "I'm probably boring you to death," and I say, "No! No! Go on," when they're telling me about dragging a ten-pointer uphill all the way to the nearest place he could get with the truck. A buck the size of a donkey is heavy. When they tell hunting stories, the situation they had to drag it out from is part of the adventure.

 

david, 21 and jesse

 

I listen to their adventures hunting, racing, fighting, all of it, and love it as much as I love a good talk by somebody like Jane Goodall, a good reading by somebody like Robert Bly, a good show by somebody like Louise Nevelson, a good film by Krzysztof Kieslowski, good banjo pickin by Kyle Creed. I love hearing their hunting adventures. These are rugged men. I've walked over land with Justin he told me he dragged a buck out of a few weeks ago. It was a great distance, long uphills, a creek to cross. He took me in with him when he carried the parts in for his tree stand and ladder. I offered to carry something. No. He said it's a one man thing. You don't take in any more than you can carry yourself, because hunting is a solitary thing to do, mostly. They take their kids. Justin says Vada will have her first deer before she's five. She will. By the time she's in high school, she will be a foxy, stylish babe after her mama, will like to ride horses, bow hunt and she'll be able to fight a man. Justin and Crystal and I have talked many times about the world she is growing up into. Rape culture is bad in colleges now. By the time she's in Jr hi and high school, it will be there. It already is, but it will be far more pervasive in ten to fifteen years. She's going into martial arts training as soon as she's able, age 8, thereabouts. All of us want Vada able to defend herself from men. We know the world she's growing up into. Like Melvin, Jesse and I say, "Justin's gonna end up killin somebody over that young'un." I've known Justin all his life and he knows I love to hear his hunting stories, fishing stories, fighting stories, whacked out on drugs that would make your hair stick straight up to hear about stories. He knows I don't judge him, so he tells me like it is. These guys are wild. That's spelled W-I-L-D. They're armed at all times. And they're fun. Their kids love them like crazy. So do their women. Good people.

 

de-lousing 21

 

The word from Jesse today is hopeful for 23. He said the calf is not yet able to stand up, but it's energy is coming around. He said he poked it with a prodder and the back legs made an effort to stand up, but couldn't make it yet. That told him the calf was recovering and he would be bringing it back to the meadow in a day or two. For fun, I told him to tell 23 its friends are looking forward to it coming back. I say it. They are steers. Jenny was as curious about the proceedings around 21 as Abby was. She had to see everything. Curiosity is very much her nature. She sees something like a dog walking down the road long before Jack. Not long before, I had given them carrots across the fence. I gave Jack a good rubbing on the underside of his neck and under his jaw. He likes it, though not too much. Jenny, seeing me petting on Jack wanted me to rub her neck and she liked it. I've found she only lets me touch her after she's seen me rubbing on Jack. Then she wants me to touch her. It had not been fifteen minutes since I'd been petting on Jenny that Abby started petting her. Abby was good with Jenny. For quite awhile she acted like she didn't see Jenny, was just there observing. Jenny came closer, she reached out her hand, touched Jenny's nose, and that evolved into a petting. I thought: she'll make a good vet. Calf de-wormed, de-loused, and examined, it walked away as if unperturbed by the medicine, like this is what we're doing today. From there, they rode Jesse's pickup down the hill to my car, and I walked with Zoe. She asked about how the calf fell into the creek. At the car, jump cables out of the trunk hooked up to Jesse's truck, car started. Drove to Whitehead and back. The doors are working like nothing ever happened. The door I thought would never open again is working like before. The fasten seat belt light goes on and off according to habit.  

 

jenny's turn for attention

 

 

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LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING

     martin uzman, winter oak

The brakes on the car went out today at the most opportune place and time it could happen. I thanked God for it in a conversational manner, like, Thanks. I'd gone to see Chuck Billings the mechanic to get an inspection before I get a renewal on the tag. As I pulled up to the door at his garage, pushed on the brake pedal to stop, it stopped then the pedal made a soft popping sound and went to the floor. We looked and just inside the left rear wheel on the ground saw a circle of wet brake fluid. A rust spot in the brake line gave out. It happened to the brake line on the right side in July a couple miles from his shop, making it easy to get there with what little brake I had left. Today it was as I pulled up to the door. I can only take that as the Divine hand saying, "Howdy," letting me know He has His eye on me. It's not a critical, judgmental eye, but a helping eye, loving assistance, the kind of assistance I couldn't live without. I saw on facebook a picture Milly Richardson put up with a saying in it, I think they're called memes, maybe--pronounced meems. It was an Einstein quote saying there are 2 ways to view life. They are, #1 as if nothing is a miracle, #2 as if everything is a miracle. I thought when I saw that I'm of the latter mind. I see everything a miracle in that way of being guided by God, by the Flow, and protected too. When I allow. I've come to see that allowing is an expression of love. When I allow somebody to be who they are without me feeling I need to change something about them, that's a love expression.

This is something I've found important in my everyday life in the last few years. I have a friend I have watched grow up from a baby who has turned out to be the closest friend of my life. We are different people in a lot of ways and we understand each other. He's 30 now with wife and 3 kids. I do not for any reason correct him or try to change his thinking. He doesn't do that to me and I don't do that to him. From an old people perspective, I call it allowing. I allow him to live his life as himself without any attempt to control or manipulate. In a way, a big way, I think of not talking to him the way older people talk to younger people (you oughta, you needta, you gotta, you should) as a love expression. It's my way of saying I trust you to understand your life and your decision making. I don't need to be telling anybody how to live their life. Too many older people allow themselves the impulse to tell younger people what to do, because we see it from a perspective of a different kind of experience. I heard myself start a sentence twice in my fifties, "The kids these days...." I told myself there will not be a third time. On 60th birthday I went to see Papa Roach at Ziggy's in Winston-Salem. With the same purpose, a decade later reminder, I went to see Thrice in Charlotte on 70th birthday. In a crowd of young rockers I see the kids these days are cool people. I have nothing to teach them. I need to learn from them.

It was several years after I fell in with Meher Baba that I could entertain dealing with love. I'd grown up a Kansas baptist in a severely dysfunctional home (normal), no experience with love or compassion. Love had been shut down in me by age 10. When it came time to get married and reproduce I had no love to call upon. It wasn't about love. I thought love will come later. It didn't. What I thought of as falling in love was falling in heat. I had an argument with Baba for some time about love. Like I don't get it. I was looking for a way to tap into love realistically, not artificially or playing pretend. It seemed like a closed door. One day driving to Sparta, coming out of the curve after Deadman's Curve, heading into Thompson Flat, it came to me that I had read in Baba's discourses that understanding equals love, they are the same. Great flash. A welling up of joy inside, I said out loud, "I can do that!" Understanding was my doorway to love. It wasn't long after that moment, in years, I fell in love with all the people of my world, the people I see every day and the ones I don't see, the ones I like and the ones I don't like. I felt I understood them and forgave them everything that annoyed me before.

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