MY FRIEND HAROLD HAYES

john singer sargent

 

My old buddy, Harold Hayes, continues in my mind after hearing him mocked for his failure at political correctness. The old boy is of a generation that doesn't even know what it is. His mind has been gone for at least ten years. He still has enough mind to drive his pickup and go to town every once in awhile to get out of the house and see some people. He's very difficult to talk with. Talking to him, he misses almost everything. When he talks, it's the same thing every time I see him. This does not bother me, I've known Harold a long time, since before his mind went away. Several times in the coffee shop, Harold has come in for a cup of coffee and to see if anyone was in there he could talk to. His head wobbles and his eyes are kind of far away, but Harold is there. Mind out of control, about all that is left is the fine human being that he is all the way to the soul. He was always welcome in the time Selma had the shop. It was in Selma's time I would see him in there. He always embarrasses me when I see him, wherever it is, Farmer's Hardware, any of the places he drops by to visit. He feels compelled to tell everyone in the place, calling their attention, to tell them what a great friend I am. He wants to tell that I took care of his closest friend in his life, Jr Maxwell, in his dying. He stumbles around with words and few know what he's talking about but me.

 

john singer sargent

 

Harold used to be a bluegrass bass player, and a guitar player. I say "used to" because he sold his bass. No point keeping it when he couldn't play it any more. For much of his adult life he made music every weekend for dances. He played bass with Jr Maxwell's band, The Green Mountain Boys, with fiddlers Art Wooten, Johnny Miller, Ernest Johnson, and some others. He learned the bass from Jr's wife, Lois, who was the band's bass player, and took her place. She taught Harold in order for him to take her place. He and Jr were probably each other's closest friends throughout the rest of their lives. In my time of taking care of Jr, which lasted about six months intensive, and a year of looking in on him twice a day and spending time with him. He was lonesome and simply needed some company. His home with nobody else in it was a void for him. Lois died of cancer, and his wife after Lois was a woman from Away who took him for having money, a farm, and left him when he didn't die soon enough. To take Jr for having money, her sights were not set very high. She ran through everything he had in twelve years and left him when he had nothing left and in debt to a degree he'd never been in his life. Then she left him and tried to take his house and his business, which, fortunately, the judge saw through. Everybody in the county abandoned her and she had to leave the county. Nobody would have to do with her. She'd speak to people she knew before, and they'd look away.

 

john singer sargent

 

Jr Maxwell was one of the better respected men in the county. Not that the people who call themselves society had anything to do with him. The people of the county, outside a closed circle of climbers in Sparta, all respected Jr for legitimate reasons, for his character. Outside Sparta, the people of the county have their own culture that interacts not at all with Sparta, but for hardware stores, groceries, gas and bank. In the world of the people of the county, everyone of his generation knew each other. Among the mountain people, they know each other for who they are, not their assets or stylish appearance. Among the mountain people, humility is regarded a virtue. Among the white suburbanites coming into the mountains and taking over, arrogance is a virtue, humility regarded stupid. Mountain people do not take to arrogance in any form or from anybody, and do not tolerate it among their own. I have a bad case of it too. Somebody comes at me from an arrogant place, I absent myself. I've found the best way to get rid of them is to drop some hillbilly grammar. The one I like best is saying them for those. Once is all it takes. They look at me askance and they're gone. I don't even have to go for a walk. Every year, Jr Maxwell would take a day and go around with his tractor to plow the gardens for the widows of Whitehead and the old people past able to do for themselves. Every snow, he took his tractor and blade around to the people of Whitehead who could not do for themselves and scraped their driveways. When Jr became unable, himself, somebody cleared his driveway.

 

john singer sargent

 

Harold Hayes was one of Jr's friends who dropped in on him periodically, sat and talked with him awhile about whatever they talked about. It wasn't a matter of what they talked as much as that they talked. Jr was Harold's closest friend. He looked up to Jr actually as if on a pedestal, regarded that well. I knew Harold before the time of Jr's inability to take care of himself. Every time he visited Jr in the time I was staying there, he made it a point to be sure I understood how much he appreciated what I was doing for Jr. A deep love ran between them, the love between friends of many years. All of Jr's friends became my friends in that time. The day his spirit left the body, one said to me, "Now Whitehead knows who you are," and another, "You get into any kind of trouble, all of Whitehead will back you up." Those were the most valuable sentences ever spoken to me in my life. I value those sentences, the people of Whitehead, the ones who said them in the core of my heart. Harold Hayes would embarrass me when he came into the coffee shop with all the praise from his heart that I'd helped his friend. It never ended when it started. His mind was gone, though his heart wide awake. I am Harold's connection with Jr now that he's gone. And likewise, when I see Harold, I see Jr. We have a bond we both value. My face automatically lights up in a big smile when I see Harold. I don't take kindly to my friend being dismissed by the people who value arrogance. It reminds me why I love the mountain people so deeply.

 

john singer sargent himself

 

 

*

 



LESS COFFEE, MORE TEA

 

cy twombly

Ran into my only pet peeve I do not tolerate a second time. Years ago I was talking with someone who asked me a question. I started answering and he walked away. First time it ever happened to me. Hadn't been in Sparta long by then. Next time it happened, I said I'll give a second chance. Next time around same character, same thing. That day I learned they do it once, they do it a second and third time. After that one, nobody gets a second chance. Somebody talking with me of their own volition, and while I'm speaking walks away, no second chance. I do not tolerate it. It's about the only thing I can think of, besides an assault, that I don't tolerate. It happened today. I've learned it is a certain kind of person that does it, and I don't want such people in my life. At all. I've been in the mountains too long to pass off in-your-face disrespect. Disrespect gets my hillbilly back up. And I can't find any reasons for it not to. It's a matter of boundaries, personal boundaries. You disrespect me, I disrespect you. It tells me the one who does it has no respect for me, so I withdraw my respect for such individual. And I don't mean big-deal respect, but the basic human respect of presence. And when I withdraw my respect, nothing fills the void, like pulling your hand out of a bucket of water, no trace left that a hand had ever been there.

 

cy twombly

 

I went to meet somebody at the coffee shop at lunch time. I don't like going in there anymore, feel alien. When Selma had it, the air was friendly, lively, awake, fun. She passed it on to somebody who sapped the friendly, lively, awake, fun out of the place in one sweep. First thing, it was made undeniably clear to all the local people who went in there, the people I went in there to visit with, they were no longer welcome. I asked one why he never went there anymore. "She doesn't like me." Asked another, "She doesn't like me." Come in the door from Roaring Gap or High Meadows country clubs and the service is close and personal, like in the movies, doesn't get better. Just a little bit of classism going on under the pretense of liberal. I'd told Selma in the beginning, when the right people found the place, I was gone. Because she was Cuban, the right people stayed away. With present management, all the wrong people have been run off, and I see nothing in there anymore but the right people.

 

cy twombly

 

I walk the political correctness coffee house line, don't say words like nigger, fuck and shit, much, obey disapproval to everyone's heart content but my own. Disapproval in a coffee shop is worse than disapproval in church. Disapproval is the reason I stay out of church. The pretend liberal is such that it makes me not want to call myself liberal anymore. All I see liberal means in the decades of political correctness is membership in the club of the cool people quick to disapprove of words forbidden on tv. Not my set. In this time of the life, I don't have time for, or interest in, self-editing to tippie-toe around somebody's, anybody's PC disapproval. Told they don't approve of something said, I'm awfully inclined to say something like, I don't give a shit. You don't approve of it, you don't say it. I'm not responsible to your approval. Pisses them off. A time in the coffee shop I mentioned I like to watch the race and caught a smarty-pants classist remark, "That's just cars running around in a circle!" I replied, "Yes, in the most minimal way you can look at it." In French it would be her bourgeois nose shot straight up and she was out the door. I laughed on the inside until I about cried, and on the outside pretended not to notice.  

 

cy twombly

 

I have fallen into a pattern there. I take a seat at the bar, pick up the paper and occupy self with something while I wait for anyone who works there to notice somebody came in the door, and sat down. They're too busy to notice. Walk by and don't look, back and forth. Eventually someone notices. I get the coffee. Want to speak to one, forget it. And if permitted a moment of wasted time, it's with an attitude, I don't have time for this (bleep). It feels like in a state or federal government office. At any time I want the attention of anyone working there, I have to arrest their attention, make them look up annoyed, what do you want? I tell myself it's the New Sparta, get used to it, get over it or get out of it. I've got used to it, got over it, am on my way out of it. I want to do my part to support the shop, as I believe Sparta benefits with such a place, but since my friends have been run off, and I'm a working class redneck too, why am I the privileged acceptable one? Today they were mocking and laughing about an old local boy, someone I respect so high up I'd stand up  for him before anybody. I withdrew my attention, thinking, I really don't belong in this place.

 

cy twombly himself

 

 

 

*

 



WEARY AND WORE OUT

Lazy day, unable to do anything but sleep. Slept til three after being up from 8 til 11, then back to bed. I could be there now and sleep easily. Maybe barometric pressure has something to do with it. Maybe I've been on the go for the last three weeks, rarely a day to self, then today, my own, and tomorrow I go to town all day. Today, a day off, I rest. Tomorrow, at it again. I'm worn out from going and worn out already from going again tomorrow. All of the going has been good, no problems, just one after another, too much of it. Today I get a break and can only sleep. Tried to read, but it put me to sleep. Been awake a few hours and still feel like a bale of cotton is lodged in my head. Idly scrolling facebook, articles and videos of the cop in Texas, again, freaked by zoo animals out of their cages running wild around a swimming pool, outta control. Now the victims are blamed, like corporate media usual. I see another case of a peaceable situation, cops enter the scene, immediate mayhem and violence erupts, all of it the cops. Even if there had been a purported fight between black guys, maybe, maybe not, fights wear themselves out. Bully whiteman thug beats up black teenage girl, gets all carried away and hyper like he's in Afghanistan beating up a Muslim girl for Caucasian Jesus.  

No matter all the ways it can be justified, the frenzied cop struck me a bit overzealous, but then I'm a pacifist, so what does my take on it matter? Watching this whiteman thug's performance, running and rolling like in boot camp, going for his gun, I saw a video game in the cop's head, him the hero who shoots everybody around him and walks away, cranks up a new Corvette and drifts into the sunset among urban ruins, a trail of dense white smoke. Because hyper violent video games are legal, like hyper-violent tv, it's against the rules to question their social value. The videos I see of cops shooting citizens in in-yer-face cold-blooded murder, several times in the back, over three hundred times into a wrecked car, no righteous justification can excuse. I come from a time when "civilized society" was how we liked to think of ourselves. The Reagan Trojan Horse turned the government on the people. Aspiration to a civilized society has faded into the forgotten past. The rule now is to kill, maim, suppress the poor, emphasis on black, arrest the mentally ill homeless, throw them in prison without charges, arrest poor people for the thrill of putting them through the trouble and expense of court with fines they can't afford and jail or prison time, people without recourse. Bullying is all I can make of it, legal bullying. We're no more a civilized society than a Christian society, especially the fundamentalist version that usurped the word Christian and twisted the meaning to its opposite.
  

We're divided now between people who call themselves Christians and the Christians embarrassed by identity with the word's new meaning, feeling the need to explain, I am not that. The propaganda of misinformation has turned word meanings upside down in so many instances, words don't mean their meaning anymore. Though I don't enjoy living in a society so willfully given to propaganda, I find it interesting how the propagandists use the fluid nature of words and understand the range of what can be done with words, poets of manipulation. When somebody comes at me with, you-needta, you-oughta, you-gotta, you-should, I back away. It's time for a commercial break. Go to the kitchen, get a piece of cold pizza out of the refrigerator, return when commercial over. People who come on like commercials used to annoy me, now I feel sad for them reducing themselves, their humanity, to commercials. And it saddens me further when I realize there's no bridge between us, like there's no bridge between me and Pizza Hut advertising division. It's a one way thing: you oughta. The only thing I can say is, not necessarily. And that pisses everybody off. 

A flash: sitting in the coffee shop one afternoon when the stools at the bar were all taken, in one of the two cushioned chairs waiting for my turn to get coffee, a woman I know in a friendly way came in carrying a big laptop. The other cushioned chair was unoccupied and she sat. Glad to see ya, How are you, I'm fine, how are you? You needta, you gotta, you oughta, you should. Every sentence she spoke began with these demands in this order. Each one was something I don't remember and didn't even hear because it related to my interest in no way all, and I don't listen to sentences with those beginnings. She came from a belief system I don't share, wealth. Then she said, You're supposed to. I put up my hand to say, halt, and said, "I don't do supposed to." She looked at me in shock, like to say she already knew that, questioning herself, why did I say it? She jumped up from the seat like a firecracker went off under her ass, and ran in a bee line, a line straight as drawn with a ruler, out the door. I don't even want to know what was behind that. My suspicion is she was rambling in unconsciousness and I turned the light on. Maybe she embarrassed herself. I don't know. She is of the society that edits meaning out of everything they say. Seeing her go out the door, I thought, What a pathetic life. I'm so grateful to live among hillbillies. 

photos by tj worthington

*

  

BELIEF IS MY GUIDE

It is not easy to look back at how I used to think at any time in the life, even a week ago. The way I think now is related to how I thought twenty years ago, but not the same. To go all the way back to childhood in church hearing the preacher excited about hell and damnation and you-better-not and atheism is evil, I believed it. I remember at age nineteen being talked to by a serious Southern California John Bircher, a convicted missionary. I thought he made sense, while having no idea what he was talking about. This was in Wichita, home of the Koch Bros. In that time, around 1960, the name meant rich people, the kind that impress other rich people, lived in the most expensive house in the most expensive part of the city, hotdogs in the rich people's country club. I worked with the groundskeepers at their country club the last summer of high school, mowing, weeding and watering greens. Probably saw them several times and didn't know it, didn't care, still don't. Though, then, still in my time of indoctrination into a world I could not live in, I would have been impressed. 

the hillbillies

I did not know what I wanted, only knew a great long list of what I did not want. The only motivation for self was education and healing, needed both desperately, and to live an authentic life, authentic by my own standard. I never intended to use my education for job training or use the transcript for credentials. I didn't care about making a C in Milton or a WF in Chemistry. I never had a job that required a degree. I've worked with chainsaws, shovels, axes, hammers, power tools, paintbrushes, ladders. Working an axe is fun and a fine skill. Old man Tom Pruitt could lay an axe down in the very line he made the first swing. I could do it sometimes, but his skill took a lifetime of practice. I wanted to live at the bottom of the working class. My motivation was inability to live a fake life of pretend appearance and kissing ass up the status ladder. This is why I'm unable to run my art through a gallery. Sucking up to the rich at openings and Christmas parties is something I'm unable to do, the same as a duck is unable to meow. Much of living what I believe involves staying out of what I don't want to do. 

roscoe holcomb

Recalling a woman in the coffee shop a year or more ago. As she was leaving, she stopped to speak with a big smile, interrupting, of course, "TJ, it would be to your benefit to pay more attention to the new people moving here." She strutted off, wiggling her ass out the door like she'd done something big. My impulse was to call to her, "How do you know? What benefit?" Automatic editor jumped in like a referee and said, If you don't want it started, don't start it. Back to conversation with friend who was, coincidentally, once new here. Inside, I laughed, like how did she know? She didn't even know me. I only slightly knew her name, had to remind self when she started talking. She sure as hell did not know the people I'd be turning my back to for the opportunity to meet more commercials incarnate like her. I'd be turning my back to my people for the thrill of knowing her people. They need to, and will, continue as her people. If I were to waste my time with the people of her choice for me, I'd be telling Justin, Crystal and Melvin about them on Sunday afternoons watching the race, and we would laugh. Thirty years ago, I'd have thought there might be something to what she said. By now, whatever the benefit might be, I know from a lifetime of experience, anything it could be, I don't want it. It's somebody else's idea of benefit, not mine. 

tommy jarrell and fred cockerham

I dove into the world of the hillbilly, because I like the human beings they are. I like living among the people of the mountains. I appreciate them as friends. In hillbilly friendships, watching your back is part of it. A fickle hillbilly is somebody who has no friends, no backup. Backup is important in a rural community. Backup is friends who watch your back. Like somebody wants to pull some shit on you, if he knows you, he knows your backup. He will decide whether he wants to face your backup before he says or does something stupid. Like when somebody starts talking about one of my friends, I'll step in and say, "Before you go too far, I need to tell you, this is my friend." It means, I'm not mad yet, but keep it up and a landmine might go off right there where you're standing. The hillbilly code is a rough code, and it's hard. It comes from several generations of a hard life, working all the time for very little return, poverty, a culture of poverty. Living in poverty, pretense and shallow thinking have no place on the list of options. The hillbilly code evolved from generations of working in solitude on one's own farm, hunting in solitude, plenty of time to think, so much time it leads to deep thinking and clear mind. Old farmers and their women have a very well-educated intelligence from studying the Bible deeply, their knowledge only known amongst themselves. No one outside their world has a clue about them. They're mostly silent and out of sight, philosophers with little experience talking. It would take a force more powerful than a stranger's notion of a benefit to pull me away from these people.    

morgan sexton

*

DRAWN TO BALANCE

robert mangold

Today I participated  in the great American delusion. Voted. And laughed at myself. I only did it because the republican strategy to inhibit voting by non-republicans tells me there must be something to it or it would not be so important to republican strategists for me not to vote. Politically, I am an anti-republican, not a democrat. The only politician in DC I have any use for is Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont, Socialist. He is the only one who speaks for the American people. The democrats suck up to the rich just like the republicans and support the rich for their favors. I can't afford to call a politician and say I want certain legislation passed and you'll have your reward. I cannot afford freedom of speech. I felt like the local elections were somewhat important. Democracy works somewhat on the local level. I vote to vote against republicans. Only. Just to register one unit saying no to the politics of ignorance. My mind returns over and over to CIA director Casey saying in 1981, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American people believe is false." The CIA's disinformation program is complete. This makes it easier every day for me to live in the world, not of the world. In town today I stopped in the coffee shop for a pound of coffee, saw someone I was happy to see and we engaged briefly in conversation. It wasn't long before I learned I'm expected to talk as if I'm high on Zoloft, everything is pretty, everything is lovely, PC to the max. I encouraged the end of the conversation first chance. I found my spirit is gone from the place. There's no place for me in there anymore. The right people have found it. It's too PC for me. 

robert mangold

I'd rather watch the race with my friends who cuss and drink liquor and smoke cigarettes and laugh at Rodney Carrington humor. After half an hour in the coffee shop, I'm anxious to get with friends for the race Sunday to wipe off exposure to political correctness in its most objectionable form. PC is so incredibly fake I've become intolerant of it. It has been so many months since I've exposed myself to the politically correct ones, the ones who say all the right words, and if you miss one, you're out. They're acting like they're on tv, editing themselves of words not acceptable on television. I take my mental remote and click the power button to off. I'm on the verge of becoming assertive ignoring PC in my language. It's like everybody is a preacher's wife. I used to find them funny, but now I find them severely tiresome. I suppose I'll have to let my taste for Ethiopian coffee fade away. I always have to settle for Kenyan, anyway. Kenyan is just as good, but I prefer Ethiopian. Can I get it? No. I don't like the vibe in there now. It's a vibe of correctness. You have to dress right, talk right, like in a Sunday school class. If political correctness is evidence of being a liberal, I'm not a liberal. They make me ashamed to call myself a liberal. I don't want to be in that company anymore. My friends and I don't judge each other. It's not easy to be in an atmosphere where I'm judged for how I speak. I attempt to speak clearly, but that's not good enough. I don't walk the PC tightrope; therefore, I'm out. I may check one of the other two coffee shops in town to see if I can get some Ethiopian coffee for home. 

robert mangold

The grocery store has some Starbucks coffee in bags, though Sumatran is the closest I can find to what I want. French Roast I've found fairly close. Maybe I'll go back to drinking tea like I did before discovering Ethiopian. Coffee shops are a middle class culture thing, and I am not of middle class culture. If I'm going to give myself over to walking somebody else's line, I'll go to church. It was a strange experience today. I went by Gill's Jeans n Things for a couple pair of sweat pants. Gill and I talked for at least an hour. I enjoy conversation with Gill. He is an intelligent guy with a great range of experience from India to Hong Kong to San Francisco to Sparta. He came here about five years before I did. Married a local girl who was in San Francisco and she brought him home. Gill has been a great addition to the community. We had lively conversation, no judging going on between us. It was especially notable to cross the street after talking so freely with Gill for an hour and feel judged the moment I walk in the door. The atmosphere is so correct. Attempted to talk with someone I'd wanted to talk with for some time, and came away disappointed. PC to the max. Beyond word correctness unto tone of voice correctness, to subject correctness, the list grows longer. I catch myself wanting to say something outrageous like, I'm the lowest down emeffer you'll ever meet. Not my scene when I'm thinking such thoughts. I want to stand up and rap all the forbidden words multiple times apiece. From there, I went to the voting place and made my anti-republican stand. I felt like a subversive at the voting monitor. After filling car with gas, I spent some time not being judged, then spent some time being judged, and went to vote in a state of balance. 

robert mangold

I'm at a time in the life when patience for television mind is dim. I find myself withdrawing from people who live by a checklist of rules and turning my attention to people who are simply themselves with no pretense of being something they're not, just people living our lives. I was overwhelmed somewhat by positive mindlessness. So positive. I was sitting there thinking, balance is what I want, not sweetness and not gloom. I want to be free to flow with positive thinking when I feel it honestly, and go with gloom when I feel it honestly. I'm not afraid of gloom and depression. I've found my times of depression in the past have been very active in learning about self, fulfilling know thyself. I've found that grief lasts six months. It's painful and I don't like it, but I also don't mind it. When a friend dies or a cat dies or a dog dies, I experience grief. I don't shy from it. I embrace it and go with it. I feel it honestly, so I allow it. I never deny it. I still miss Tar Baby every day, five years after. I hope there is something to meeting departed loved ones on the other side. I want to see all my dogs and cats again, and all my friends on the other side. I have so many dear ones over yonder, it makes me anxious to get over there with them. I was spoken to the other day, in a non-judgmental way by a friend, about how casually I talk about dying, leaving the body. I supposed he never knew anyone so casual about it. I couldn't explain why. It's just an attitude that comes from scriptures that know the secrets of life and death. I see the moment of passing out of the body something so wonderful there is no looking back. First, freedom from the weight of carrying this heavy body. I imagine it like carrying two heavy suitcases for hours and finally putting them down, letting go of the handles. What a relief it must be to rise from the body like smoke from a cigarette. I see more and more the saying from Paul, Death, where is thy sting? Sorrow is for the ones left behind. I tell my friends to feel no sorrow for me. I'll be going Home. Nothing to be afraid of. I've come to like it in this world, so I feel no hurry. It is what it is.   

robert mangold himself

*

GRUMPY OLD BASTARD ASSHOLE

Rain all day, sometimes big rain. Wind. Yellow leaves fly through the air on the way to the ground. This year, the trees with the yellow leaves turned first. The trees with red leaves are largely still green. We'll have an extended fall color season this year. First yellow, then orange, then red. The color change is so particular year to year, I wonder how it can be said what weekend will be the peak time or what kind of a coloration it will be. I don't recall but one prediction being accurate, the year the talking heads said it would be a poor year for color. It was a dry year. The leaves just turned brown. I pay little to no attention to predictions for what kind of winter we'll have. Already, I've seen two projected forecasts for the winter. One said it will be long and extra cold with much more snow than ever. The other said it will be the mildest winter ever. Winters are like Nascar races: impossible to predict. We've had four days and nights of dense fog accompanied by sprinkling rain, until today when it poured in torrents. It's on the verge of tiresome. Yet, no matter how muddy the ground gets, I prefer wet to ground so dry it cracks and the springs dry up. Springs are largely dried up anyway. So many exurban houses in the landscape draining the underground water. Wells have to go deeper and deeper. The society of waste comes to the mountains, drains the water, poisons the land, dismisses as ignernt hillbillies the people whose home this land is, impatient, intolerant, wanting everything now, just like on tv. I was about to compare it to white people pushing the Indians off their home continent, killing them by the millions, and say the exurbanites are all but killing us. But, they are killing us with cancer. County government doesn't care. The ones poisoning us are paying more taxes than we are, so we have no voice. 

I'm seeing an experience a few weeks ago when I was introduced to someone I already knew, though wished I didn't. She looked at me, nodded and turned away. I said in my head, Thank you. A few months ago in the coffee shop I mentioned to a woman I was talking with at the bar I watch Nascar races. The one above who nodded, who I was not talking to, said, "They just drive around and around in circles," smug, proving she's more sophisticated than I, doesn't waste her college-educated intelligence watching working class tv shows. I wanted to be vulgar, nasty vulgar, the kind of vulgar that makes an enemy for life, though condensed and softened my response to, "In the very most minimal way of looking at it, yes." Her nose shot straight up and she was gone. Again, I said in my head, Thank you. Made an enemy for life without even trying. It hurts so good. Such moments remind me that I left the city for the mountains to get away from people like her, the white middle-class suburbanites. Now they've packed in around me so tightly I am glad the Republicans are squeezing the middle-class into the working class. I actively despise how they regard and treat the mountain people. I told Selma at the beginning of the coffee shop that when the right people find this place, I'm gone. Turns out, Selma was Cuban and the right people stayed away. Now Becca has it and she's run off the wrong people, so now I go in there and all I see is the right people. I have no reason to be there. The people I used to go in there to see have been run off. Not high end. Not PC enough. The end came when a country club woman in there said to me, "I bet YOU voted for O-BA-ma." I said, "Sure did. He's a sharp stick in the Republican eye." She said, "I'm a con-SER-vative!" I thought, duh, and said, "I'm a SO-cialist!" I don't want this kind of conversation, ever, anyplace, with anybody. The coffee shop is past tense for me. Another one of those moments when I get with self and say, I didn't come here for this shit. 

The fun part in saying I'm a SO-cialist, she told within a few days everyone she knows that knows of me, he's a socialist. Hooray. Five or so people I never want to meet will see to it for me. I don't even have to think about avoiding them. They avoid me first. I'm pretty sure I have a name for being arrogant among those people. I can easily give them cause to call me much, much worse. Recalling a line from a Steven Segal film. A woman warning him about the people he's going up against, they're bad, really bad. He said, "I'm worse, much worse." And a line from Runaway Train when Voight was told he was a beast. He said, "Worse. Man!" That's how I feel in the company of people that look down their noses at the mountain people. I want them to call me arrogant. I want them to call me as bad as they can make it, inspire the people they talk to to avoid me, so when they're introduced to me they nod, turn away and think: asshole. Alas, I have some neighbors, the most openly fickle people I can think of, fake from the surface to the core, totally informed by tv, Republican, Christian, who once wanted me to be their friend. Didn't last long. Didn't get started. They really tried my ideal of loving neighbor as self. The closest I can come is to allow them who they are, recognizing we do not connect in any way. I'm old enough to know from repeated experience that attempts to go against the recognition never works, leads only to hard feelings and another cluster of enemies, their gossip circles, for life. An aunt passed to me something her husband told her when he was living, If you don't want it started, don't start it. Confucius could have said that. Often I am called to remind self of original purpose coming here, none of it social. 

Talking with my friend Jay at Chris Cox's reading at intermission, he was saying he has too much going on, too much he's involved in, it's stressing him. I said, Man, you don't need that shit. You live on a mountain. Get to know your mountain. It will be your friend. I mentioned that I've had spells of involvement in more than I was comfortable dealing with, going to meetings. Periodically, I've had to pull back to the people I care about who care about me and let the rest go. He's not of that kind of temperament. I didn't want to tell him to do as I do, because my way is not his way. I only told him how I've solved the issue for myself. Not to say do it my way. Only to illustrate how I chose for my own circumstances. He will find his way according to his own circumstances. I wouldn't want to influence him any other way. He's not as comfortable yet with being disliked as I've become. Or so I guess. It would not do for me to advise him. He has good brains. He'll figure it out. I just wanted to say he can find a solution to his satisfaction. If I were to hear myself start a sentence, you should, I would have to do penance for at least two days. First thing I'd do is retract everything said, immediately. Then I'd go inside to the place that sentence came from and educate self again that I have no right, any way I look at it, to presume to know anyone else's should, when there is no should to it. I can't name my own shoulds, sure as hell can't name somebody else's, especially when I don't even believe it is a word worth being in the language. I don't, and would not, rule the world, so I just don't use the meaningless word. When I don't use it, it's not in my world. I feel like I've found a good balance of involvement / non-involvement that keeps me engaged without stress. It has not always been this way. It comes from allowing the flow and flowing with it. Now that I think I've found my own flow, it feels really awkward when I step outside it. I have to pull back into it. As I get used to it, it becomes easier to keep in tune with and easier to jump back into when distracted out of the flow for a period of time. The flow is in my center, feels like solar plexus is where I connect with it. In my own flow is where I belong. I want for nothing else.  

photos by tj worthington

*

PAINTING SPARTA COURTHOUSE

sparta courthouse day

 

 

 sparta courthouse night

These are the two most recently completed art objects. I've been at them for several months, mostly drying coats of oil-based paint. The back wall, the colors, each have seven or eight layers of color. I cut out one square and one rectangle of corrugated cardboard for each color. I painted one side of the cardboard with one color and pressed it onto the surface, rubbing it as evenly as I could for each layer. The two outer rectangles were given the same sequence of blues, and the square in the middle got its own sequence of blues from light to dark. Each layer of paint did not print evenly in its own way. I like the translucent quality of oil paint. Each layer shows some of the layer under it. I find that color depth can be found in several layers. If I were to use just one layer of blue in each section, it would be dull and flat, the colors would have little vibrancy. I built the layers, a couple weeks between each application, until I was satisfied the color had reached a vibration I was looking for. Vibration is the word I use here, because it's the word I mean. I was looking for the vibration I see in a Mark Rothko work, the colors suggesting the light is coming through them like stained-glass. In the case of the day courthouse, I used several shades of orange between canary yellow and almost red. It was depth in the colors I was looking for. Each layer I'd assess while it was drying and felt it needed another layer. Kept on like that until the layer I assessed had the quality of light I was looking for. It's hard to name, like that pink suggestion of an aura on a dove's dust-colored feathers.  

 

neil jenney

 

It has been several years I've wanted to paint the Sparta courthouse, but have been unable to find the way I wanted to paint it. Can't get a good photograph of it for the dozen or so wires draped across the front and all the highway signs on the pole at the corner. It is a photogenic courthouse and no way to photograph it without the distraction of wires and signs. I did get a photo of it in the coffee shop window that was quite nice, full sun on the courthouse. It was clear as a photograph on the window and all the words on the glass had the courthouse for a background. And it was easy to get the picture without getting a selfie in the reflection. That was the only photo I've made of the courthouse that had the zip I think of verging on art. I'd been looking at approaching it in the least brushstrokes, the least lines, let its shape be its art. This had been floating around in my head for some years, but I hadn't made any attempt to apply it. One afternoon in the coffee shop with nobody there to talk with and I'd finished the word jumble puzzle in the Winston-Salem Journal, I sat on the stool at the bar, gaping out the window, adrift in not-thinking, and saw it. Rectangles of orange, four vertical white lines, a pyramid on top, framed in white. Just a few lines. Reduced it to architectural intent, its drawing-board composition: county courthouse. It occupied my mind for several days looking for how to approach it. I was thinking on a flat surface. I found two wooden boxes I've been keeping for probably fifteen years, waiting for the vision of what to do with them. I had some strips of wood that were the right size, cut them to length, columns. The boxes had a sliding lid on them. I think they were originally meant to hold two liquor bottles. They were minimally put together in a factory.
   

neil jenney

 

I liked that the boxes were so simply made they were like a blank canvas. All I needed to do was apply the paint and fix the vertical posts in place. First attempt was thinking I could superglue the posts into place and they'd stay forever. I laugh at myself now. That didn't even come close to working. Nails it had to be. Two five-eighths inch headless nails at either end of each column. Had to hold the nails with needlenose pliers and tap-tap with the hammer. It was easy through the outer pine of the box, then it hit the fir the columns were made from and it was like driving them into steel. Bent a few. Drove the nails below the surface with a punch and filled in the holes with finger spackling. Painted the whole box with a coat of acrylic primer, the columns too. It was after painting it all white that I put the colors on the back, took as long as needed. Had two boxes, but didn't take to making two. First reason: I'm not a factory. I like everything to be the first time. Eventually, it came to mind to make another one blue, day and night. This way I can make two that are not the same. They're independent entities and they make a pair. I like them best as a pair. They are two distinctly different feelings. The one is warm sunlight and the other is cool moonlight. The sliding lid only needed the white pyramid and the blue above. The finger hole I let be the sun and the moon. Chose not to put something in or behind it, gold for sun, silver for moon. That I didn't like. But I do like letting the color on the wall or whatever is behind it, around it, its context, be the color in the circle of sun or moon

 

neil jenney

 

Light, whether window light or from a lamp, casts shadows from the four vertical lines across the front onto the colors in back, changing the colors. The shadows cast on it make vertical rectangles increasing the variety of shades in each color. The shadows become a part of the whole. Moving my head back and forth it changes continually. My feeling about this image is a fusion of abstract expressionism and minimalism. Hearing a tape by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, The Creative Fire, she told of how the forest was the original sanctuary where one could commune with God, Goddess. Trees became symbolized in columns around temples. The columns make a sanctuary of the scene behind them. In town, it is the courthouse. In my wooden boxes, the scene in the sanctuary is color play. It was all play. I refused to take any part of it seriously. I had nothing to go by for what colors I was seeking, layer upon layer, just waiting to see which layer brings it to the feeling I was seeking. Feeling is the only word I know. It was not feeling like anger or sympathy, a totally visual feeling, felt only visually. I can only think of it as looking for a particular vibration, not a vibe projected from what I "want," but by feeling after each application of color, each new vibration.  Mind was in there too, making decisions. Then there is the pyramid held up by the four tree trunks. I thought for about five seconds how fun it would be to paint a caravan of tiny camels walking across the front of the pyramids. That turns it into a cigarette commercial and abolishes the simple lines. Not going there. Whether these painted boxes are art or art-wannabe is not mine to decide. In my own estimation, I think they touch art a little bit. I feel like I reached the original vision. It's always disappointing at first to see the vision materialized, an object in the world of matter with my name on it, a thing. The glow of the vision is gone. I feel like first visioning it was pretty accurate to how it worked out. Asked do I call it a painting or a sculpture, I suppose I'd have to say sculpture, if necessary to pick either/or. Could also call it a painting because I did not make the box. I'll go with painted sculpture.

 

neil jenney himself

 

 

*

 

 

LENDING A HAND

 

 

all images the air bellows outdoor museum of art

The theme song of my life sang in the front of my mind today every time I settled and relaxed. This world is not my home, I'm just a-passin through. If heaven was not my home, Oh Lord what would I do? This heaven that is my home is here, now, my real self, which I have a feeling is opening itself slowly, more quickly in this time of the life than before. It has to do with secure in myself, in who I am, in my own validity as an individual whether treated like a criminal by law enforcement or thought too well of by people who don't know me. I value individual rights, probably because I was taught it all the way through school as American freedom and liberty. The rough edges I'm experiencing in this time of the life is seeing the tightening down of laws and attitudes. The people running things now were schooled by a generic educational system that went by true or false, multiple choice. It's like in school all the time in our lives now. Make a mistake and you lose points, get a bad grade. We're so hyper detail oriented now as a society because our education is about memorizing details. A head full of details is what we call knowledge. It's definitely not wisdom. After sixteen years of school, my head amounted to a trivial pursuit game. Would John Berryman be:  a) symbolist poet, b) beat poet, c) confessional poet, d) concrete poet? True or false: Herman Melville wrote The Tropic of Cancer.

As an individual who has lived in this body awhile, long enough there comes a time when going on out looks like the best way to go. We are souls with bodies. Take off the body like taking off clothes for a shower. Shake that old skin loose, wiggle out of it. It's hard for ego to conceive of nonexistence, hard for mind, too. By nonexistence I mean without the body, thinking of the body as existence. But I question it being that narrow. It's the soul with a body we call existence. The soul without the body also "exists," if it can be said that spirit exists. I'm inclined to think it does. Seems like the spirit would be the core of existence. The issue that bothers me about living so long is the tightening down. It's come to the place we need a filing cabinet in the house, a tall one. The computer has tightened us down in an advanced way. The society all around me is tightening down like a plumber's wrench twisting a bolt with intent that it will never come loose. Over the years this progression has been the way of American society, I've been loosening myself from the belief systems that go with making money, allowing my own flow. My human flow is slower than the pace of keeping up with all around me. Withdraw further inward. Stay home more. Paint more. Read more. Work on projects at home. I don't understand the world around me. And don't want to.

I like living in a rural community where an awful lot of people like their neighbors and even speak well of them. There is always gossip, but I've come to see gossip as another ingredient in the glue that holds a community together. The people of this county I know look to others with an open readiness to lend a hand whenever needed. Last week, some people from Winston-Salem walking to the waterfalls parked in a place they did not know was soggy ground after much rain. Stuck. I was appealed to for a shovel. I stood around and talked with them and didn't do anything. When they came out of the fix, gratitude was heaped on me, and I was thinking, for what? All I could say was, "It's what we do in the mountains." There was never a thought of inconvenience. Somebody appeals for help, you go do what you can. It's a silent mountain code, one that nearly everybody lives by, simply because it is a belief in the culture, mother's milk it might be called, and daddy's knots on your head, you give help where help is needed. As long as I've lived here, it has been a truth that when something happens to your car, you're on the side of the road unable to go, the first pickup that passes will stop and ask if you need help. The population is now half people from city suburbs who don't know about the code. Those old cultural attributes of the mountains are specific to the mountain people.

 

 

 

In the coffee shop yesterday, somebody asked why I live here, meaning it. My mind went empty. I couldn't even imagine compressing it into a phrase, even a paragraph. It's my entire being that wants me here. This is my home that was waiting to be found. It was waiting for me, the old Air Bellows school house, live-in graduate school. Move in and learn. I didn't say any of that. All I could say was it's the home of my soul. To explain beyond that would have to be at a table with some good liquor to sip and a lot of time. Nobody who asks such a question ever wants to hear the story of its inevitability. He wanted to know if I knew somebody here or had relatives here. It didn't compute with him that my path led me here. I didn't know anybody. Didn't have any idea of the culture I had moved into. I set out to learn mountain culture from my school house of one. When it comes to ideals for education, seems like a school of one is the ideal. Learn by experience. Learn by knowing people. Learn by working. Learn by listening. I don't know even close to what can be known about mountain culture, but I know enough to respect the culture itself and the people who live it. My respect is such that I aspire to many of their values. I don't have it by mother's milk, but I have it by grandmother's love and grandfather's blood. This is the place where my soul is satisfied. This is the place where I have learned to have a heart affection for my neighbors.

 

 photos by tj worthington

 

 

 

 

*

 

SPARTA FLOW

     radial LT, by tj worthington


Selma told me in the coffee shop this morning, and I saw later she'd put it on facebook, that she sold the coffee shop to Matt Kovacich, who grew up here, and his wife. It's a sad day to find out that Selma is leaving. She made a successful business in Sparta during the republican depression that is closing business after business in Sparta. Selma's business is thriving. The nature of the place will change altogether. It will also be a restaurant. I've an idea it will work. My inclination is to resist Selma leaving, but I override the flare of emotion with rational mind to remind myself to allow, allow the flow to work out as it will. It is a flow that only intersects a very little bit with my flow. I do not have controlling interest. It's like the preacher changing at church all of a sudden. I cannot predict how the new manifestation will feel. Selma being gone is like losing the preacher you joined the church for. I have to articulate for myself that I cannot hang on to Selma's presence at the coffee shop when she is not there. It would be as unrealistic as imagining myself with stage charisma. It will be good the place will be a restaurant too, to break the spell of Selma's vibe in the place. I know she feels immense sorrow having had to make the decision. I felt immense sorrow hearing her tell it. At first I felt the inward pull to fall into sorrow, then came what we learn after a lifetime in civilization, not to go with it.

I don't want to lay expectations on the new Kovacich feel the place will have. I will practice allowing again, allow them to make it according to their dream and allow that dream to become at least the success it has become so far with Selma. I believe I can trust that certain of the "regulars" will continue, possibly all. I will make it a point in myself to avoid expectation and allow the flow to be whatever it is. I have another inclination to say Sparta needs Selma here, a successful business on Main St. But Sparta doesn't care. The people of Sparta do not support local businesses except banks, gas stations, liquor store, grocery stores. It's not in Sparta's nature to take an interest in its own. It has never yet occurred to Sparta that taking an interest in the individual businesses in town matters in any way. A bag of black oil sunflower seeds from Walmart is half the price as the same size bag from Farmer's Hardware. B U T. The Walmart bag has 20 lbs of seeds in it and the Farmer's Hardware bag has 40 lbs of seeds. By marketing trickery Walmart is half the price of Farmer's Hardware, when in fact the price is the same at Farmer's as at Walmart. So why send my money to a Caymans Islands bank when what little I have can circulate in the economy where I live? I'd rather give my money to Farmer's Hardware than Walmart any day of the year, even if it costs more. I'm not boycotting Walmart to save the world, because the world is already gone. It's like that teenage thing, be true to your school. In grown up life, I like to think in terms of be true to your town.

Town and county government expresses zero interest in any business in town, except negative interest: gimme. Town and county government are aloof to town businesses, regard them with suspicion instead of with a spirit of welcome and cooperation. Especially when they're Cuban or Mexican or Chinese or Japanese or Canary Islands or Columbians or from anywhere off the mountain or from anywhere on the mountain. Once I told a friend with a business in town who was planning to leave, "Sparta needs you." Answer, "No it doesn't." When I was closing my business, a few people said, Sparta needs you, and I said, No it doesn't. And it didn't. The town of Sparta is indifferent. The ongoing weak attempts at cosmetic Martha Stewart façade surgery has come to nothing. Widening the sidewalks does not mean people will come here from other places to walk on them. Sparta is not a corpse, but only it's vital organs are functioning. Sparta's mind is asleep and has been for a long time. Maybe it's in a coma. I'm inclined to suspect it has always been asleep, but the old people told me Sparta was a lively place until interstates and corporate box stores took the business other places. The so-called Powers That Be don't give a shit about Sparta or anybody in it. High Meadows Country Club is where it's at. Like our so-called representatives in Raleigh and DC, all they want to do with us is the money they can bilk us for. It makes it hard to live in the spirit of "be true to your town," when you know your town will not be true to you.

But things go on and adapt to circumstances. One thing that has happened in Sparta, the shopping went with the parking lots. The rents by the parking lots are such that a business is there more for paying rent than perpetuating itself. In Old Sparta around the Old Courthouse the business is so bad the rents can't be quite so high, but still a business anywhere in Sparta puts all its money into rent and every kind of fee there ever was. Having a small business in Sparta amounts to a hobby until you run out of money to keep it going. I don't see anything but cosmetics happening to Sparta and the rain washes that away. But we still have the head of Farmer Bob Doughton on the courthouse lawn. Sparta could become an interesting place if enough people wanted it to happen. There is history to be written, much history to be written. We have people in the county from all over the world. We have people of every level of education and field of interest. We have a variety of international restaurants. Only the middle class has any money to spend in this time of the working class in depression. For a new business to make it in Sparta now, it must be middle-class-centric. Working people have to drive to Virginia to buy gas for a quarter to 30c a gallon less (state taxes). The Sparta flow appears to be, businesses come and businesses go.


      

air bellows outdoor museum of art

 

 

*

 

HEY JOE

     that's joe on the left

Went by the coffee shop today at lunch time for some Ethiopian coffee and a homemade scone, made by Selma. Joe was in there talking with somebody I'd never seen before. The other guy left and Joe came over and we started talking. I like to visit with Joe. He has a refreshing mind. He doesn't gripe all the time, and when he does gripe, it's in uncertainty. He's not somebody to tell you it is this way or that, no three ways about it, and isn't concerned that you necessarily agree with him. He's a mature individual who realizes we all have different experiences. He even understands that he and I, facing each other talking, we are each having a different experience. Even though we talked together, what he remembers from our conversation I'm sure is very different from what I remember. For one thing, I remember seeing Joe, and he remembers seeing me. That's a radical difference right there. I don't mean that we're radically different in matters of race, nationality, language and gender. We have similar education level, we both read books, and we both think our own thoughts. I say radical, because I see radical differences between any two individuals. This has to do with why we have such a hard time getting along with other people. By hard time, I mean really not understanding each other. In my generation a lot of young girls, 18-21, would feel suicidal because nobody understood them. I had a couple of friends who talked like that, and one made half-hearted attempts. I'd think, but not say, Get used to it; nobody is ever going to understand you.

I'm attempting to give you something of Joe's character that I could describe, but it's all so freely flowing like spirit, one aspect of him blending into another aspect, shifting in and out of memory, a full human being, which I cannot begin to comprehend. This has been my problem all my life, feeling awed by the fullness of anyone I'm around at the moment, the fullness of spirit in them, a mind that works very differently from mine, like as if from another country, another culture, another language. Always uncertainty in attempting to guess someone's thinking, attitude, beliefs. Earlier in my life I thought I understood other people, knew some people. Later, that fell away when I realized I don't know anybody, not even myself. I don't even know Caterpillar, the cat I've lived with 15 years. I know her habits, her characteristics, but I don't know her as another cat knows her and I don't know her as she knows herself. She's a gray long-haired cat very easy to get along with and a loving friend. By now, I don't try to know anybody. I let the spirit flow and see how we interact. I like my interactions with others best when I don't concern myself with preconceptions. I like receiving people I'm around as they want to be received, simply by paying attention when they talk. That's how I think I know people around me best is by allowing them who they are. How else can I get to know them? I can't get to know somebody by thinking, What tacky taste!

Looking at Joe in my mind and looking for a way to describe him accurately that he and ones who knew him well would find acceptable characterization of who he is, I draw a blank. All I see is spirit. I see spirit in my memory before I see his face. I talk with the spirit of the other, not the face or name. I see Joe someone who knows the tree by its fruits instead of judging when it comes to knowing others. He has enough understanding to know judging doesn't get it, but we also have our life in this world that really has a hard time giving up judging. Let's just say he's not judgmental. When I'm talking with Joe I don't feel like he's sizing me up, assessing me in relation to himself and finding me not looking too good by comparison. I don't feel like judging is going on with Joe. I don't dare say he doesn't judge, because we all do, but it is weak in him, not strong. Weak because he understands. Joe came up West Virginia fundamentalist like I came up Kansas fundamentalist; we have that bridge of understanding between us that is automatic like birds of a feather. When I first met Joe I thought of the state of Mississippi. When I lived in South Carolina, people said of SC where poverty was concerned, "Thank God for Mississippi." Now in North Carolina, people say of NC where poverty is concerned, "Thank God for West Virginia." I couldn't introduce myself saying, "You remind me of a joke." Joe is not a West Virginia cliche. I doubt he even watches Moonshiners on the History channel. I can just about say I'm certain he does not. But I don't know for sure. He might be a hillbilly wannabe and never quite had what it took. I doubt it.

When Joe's spirit and my spirit are interacting vocally I feel a real exchange of thoughts or ideas, what have you, passing between us like two colors of water blending together when they meet. It's not many people I feel so free with conversationally. Free in that it doesn't matter if we disagree. It matters not to me, matters not to Joe. We explore the differences in how we see things. We both understand no two people think alike or see from the same perspective. Therefore, we can laugh at our different ways of seeing whatever the theme. Joe's spirit is not confrontational. That's what I think I like best about Joe conversationally. Not confrontational. I've never been comfortable with people who are always wanting to stir something with some kind of in-yer-face confrontational remarks. When that starts, I'm gone. I've never found confrontational talk entertaining, certainly never interesting, and all I see is ego spouting like a lawn sprinkler in all directions. Not so with Joe. The line of thinking his childhood religious experience led him into was an interest in theological writings, looking to get a better understanding of scripture than what you can get from a harping preacher. What it did to me was spit me out, made me abandon Christendom, in other words, religion. Both Joe and I understand religion is another matter of the few controlling the many, a control device, free money.

I think maybe Joe would define himself a skeptic who allows. He may be skeptical of something somebody believes, but doesn't concern himself with converting the other to his way of seeing. He allows the other their own point of view. He'll freely allow himself to ask you what you mean when you're not being clear. That's a good thing. I like that we can talk about anything too. No restrictions due to belief systems either way. I've an idea if each one of us laid out what we believe about God, the Christ, salvation, they would be very different. Joe might look at it and say we are very far apart. I'd look at it and see we're the same. I'm not sure if he's seen beyond Christendom enough yet to see that all the religions are based in the same core. I short-change Joe to assume he might not see that. I don't mean to do that. What I'm getting at is his spiritual education by reading and experience has been largely in Christendom. I've found all the religions so much the same, I could flow from one to the other; all I'd have to learn would be the culture around each one. I could become a Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist easily. They're the same to me. The very same. They just grew up in different cultures. Like people growing up in different cultures, the religions would be that kind of different. I'm not sure if Joe sees Christendom as a pearl on a string of pearls. Joe doesn't seem to be as alarmed as I am at how dreadfully far Christians have twisted the words of Jesus from their obvious meanings. Again, I short-change him assuming that. Like I say, I really don't know him well enough to answer any questions for him. But I do enjoy throwing thoughts around in the air like boomerangs with Joe.


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