A SPARTA EXPERIENCE

found art

The last couple days have been peculiar in such a way I suspect an arrangement of the planets. Here at home, quiet, staying out of other peoples' issues, an email invited me to participate in a civic project I questioned seriously for three days and said ok. A couple weeks later the one who emailed me before, announced she has other things to do and I'm to call so and so and tell him what I want to do. I see no reason to call. There's nothing I want to do. I was asked to do something I hesitate to get involved in and now am told to ask permission to do what I don't want to do. The end. I'm not going past this. Something that starts crazy stays crazy all the way through and ends crazy. It's a natural law. I did like the frog that was dropped into boiling water. Gone. Then I learn one of my friends has pulled some undermining shit on another of my friends. I wasn't even disappointed, it was so in character. Today I saw two women I know hate each other playing like best friends, sweet and happy. No more working on projects that are not my own and no more civic anything. I had my learning years ago. I jump into what I already know is there, get burnt, jump back and laugh at self for not paying attention to self. Told to ask permission to do what I was asked to do pushed me over the edge. It's what I call a Sparta Experience. The part that blew me away, I didn't even have to leave home to have a Sparta experience. It came to me out of the blue. This was the very thing I was wary of that made me hesitate three days to answer. I don't want to do it anyway, and I sure don't want to do it told to ask permission. I saw another friend today throw away a really good and good-paying job out of neurotic fear having to do with self-esteem, unaware yet the job is gone. 

found art

I want to stay home, yet it finds me. Last week a form letter in the mail telling me to report for jury duty in Statesville, an hour and fifteen minutes interstate run, each way. It gives me the willies to think about driving on the interstate, bumper-to-bumper, side-to-side at 75 mph in packs like in a nascar race. I'm not in that much of a hurry anymore and don't care that much anymore. Fortunately, I'm in the age zone excused if requested. Requested right away. The form went out in the mail same day it arrived. Notice came yesterday I am excused. Thank you with all my heart court system of North Carolina. This jury duty form letter came at a time in the life when I don't want involvement in other people's business. It's the freedom that goes with being outside the circle of "making money." Like this craziness that flew in out of nowhere. Other people's mental energy zoomed in on me makes me crazy. It's one of those come-here-I-love-you-get-back-I-hate-you gestures. It's not a matter of being mad. I'm not mad. I've just learned, well enough to get it. Back in 1983, after I'd been here seven years, thought I'd check out the arts council, see if there was anything going on. Preacher Millard Pruitt, whose church I was going to at the time, said, when I told him I'd connected with the arts council, "That'll last about a year." My back went up. I took it for a smart-mouthed thing to say, chose to ignore it. The arts council turned out to be a High Meadows country club women's club. After a year of dreary meetings I committed to involvement in something participatory and egos exploded in my face. Had I not left of my own will, I'd have been invited to leave. 

found art

I told Millard Pruitt what happened and asked, "How did you know it would be one year?" He said, "I know Sparta and I know you." He had worked in the Dr Grabow pipe factory, managed an Esso gas station that is now the Exxon, drove a mail route, kept a farm and was active in the county Republican party. Politically, he thought Jesse Helms was too moderate. He wanted to nuke Iran and blow up the world with Reagan the Great pushing the buttons. He had a brilliant mind outside politics. In politics he was a cement head. He was the embodiment of the Groucho Marx song, Whatever it is, I'm against it. He was everything Yankees like to point the finger at the South about. He was all the words that freak out young liberals, bigot, racist, used the enword, anti-women's rights, a John Bircher Baptist, the Republican party today. Going by what I've learned by now in my own experience, who I am now would say the same thing to who I was then, it'll last about a year. And my reasoning would be the same, I know Sparta and I know you. Then, Sparta and I were mysteries to each other. Now, Sparta and I know each other fairly well. They're glad to see me stay home and I want to be at home. I always see people I am glad to see in Sparta. This is the aspect of Sparta I appreciate most. It's where I see people I know. I like Food Lion because I always see someone I know to speak with for a few minutes. Drug store, hardware stores, bank, gas station, and I head home. Town people and country people are two different cultures. I like people of both town and country. And I like the people I know from Away. 

found art

It sounds like I'm coming from a love/hate thing for Sparta. No. I don't have a hate thing for Sparta in any degree. Only a love thing for Sparta. I accept Sparta's personality as I accept the personality of any of my friends. It is a place to see people I'm glad to know, glad to live among, glad to be in their world. Driving to and from town today, I saw familiar houses of people I know and don't know, and fields, seeing familiar mountain landscape in foreground and background. Everything I see is home. My life before the mountains I hardly ever remember anything from. Still have friends from before the mountain experience, just a few. I don't keep in touch with relatives. We live in such different worlds, we don't have a lot to talk about anymore. They think I live in the toilet of the world and that's where I think they live. They don't want to come here and I don't want to go there, so we don't see each other. I've lost touch with all my cousins. They don't mind and I don't mind. I left everything that went before in my life when I settled into the mountains. I set out to be a solitary, though the necessity of working to generate income took awhile to transcend. I have come into my solitary time and love it, keeping a good flow in motion that isn't too fast. I've worked consciously with my own psychology such that mind is quiet by now. It rattles my flow when a Sparta Experience drops in at home. I apply the rigor learned along the way: if you don't want it started, don't start it. I have a choice. 

vada and found art

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RALPH STANLEY SHOW

ralph stanley & the clinch mountain boys
fairview ruritan 16jan10


Met Debi at the Mexican Restaurant Mis Arados in Sparta and we had some good spicy food before the show. Debi has been taking care of Myrtle with Alzheimer's during the week, Sunday evening to Friday evening. It's quite a job and it is changing Debi. We've talked when she was so frustrated she had to make herself not cry. There was no time for it. I had it easier in a month with Jr every day than she has with Myrtle in one week. Everything Debi does with Myrtle has a loving touch. It's like a mother's love for her baby. Myrtle is in the foreground of Debi's attention at all times. Has to be. Keeping her out of the lumberyard for the old and helpless.



Walking into the Ruritan seating area I noticed sprinkled around among everybody else some people with difficult afflictions. Country people being taken care of by ones who love them, who want them at home and are willing to do what they have to do. I also noticed Debi was drawn to them like they were magnets. I don't believe she noticed. They drew her attention subconsciously. It was the compassion in her connecting with each one of them.



I followed to see where this would lead. She picked a place for us to sit behind a family of women from great grandma, grandma, mama, the kids, one of them with a toddler, the only boy. Great grandma was a bent over and tiny, using a 4-footed cane. She was alert, just had this affliction she'd lived with all her life that was kind of deforming. One of the girls sat staring at us over the back of her chair for a long time after we sat down. Whatever it was they had seemed to be genetic, because they all had whatever it was. Not debilitating, just awkward making. Mama was the one that got things done, drove the vehicle, probably a van, and coordinated activities. Pleasant seeming people happy among themselves at the Ralph Stanley show.



Not far from us sat a man in a wheelchair with a strap across his chest to keep him upright, arms flailing in a twisted kind of way. Every once in awhile he let out a yelp. The people with him were attentive that no harm came to him, comfortable in a Ralph Stanley audience as at home. I saw others with someone unable to take care of self, bringing them out for the Ralph Stanley show. The range of hair colors in the audience went from gray to white. A few grandkids around in the audience. Even a few middle class city people were there that stood out like Americans in Paris.



Everybody else was country people. And I'd venture about every one of them goes to church and is devout. I found myself drawn to the people of various afflictions after Debi drew my attention to them. I looked for them around in the audience, realizing this is what I love about country people. Go to a country dance place anywhere in these mountains and you see people with afflictions brought by the ones taking care of them. Getting them out of the suffocating house to have a good time with something they love--old-time mountain music--where it's safe and they're regarded with respect by everyone around them. The people around them automatically watch out for them.



I carried my copy of Ralph's memoir to get him to sign it. He was at the table when I walked in, no one talking to him or buying something, and I stepped right up, handed it to him and asked him to sign it. He looked at me a moment, I think trying to see if he recognized me, somebody who already had the book. He didn't recognize me and signed it. I wanted to say something, but I'm not good at that and I'd be saying something just to be saying something. I said, 'Thank you.' I'm not an autograph geek by any means, but this I had to do. I got Bo Diddley's autograph several years ago at a show. I like that. Bo Diddley and Ralph Stanley.



When Ralph and I made eye contact, I saw him approaching feeble, noticed his grandson sitting beside him with the air of a body guard, with him at all times in case of anything. I saw Ralph has no danger of getting shelved in the lumberyard when he's too feeble to take care of himself. His family loves him in a great big way. In a country people way. His face had deep lines and furrows with bright living eyes seeing through the mask of old age. If I'd had my wits about me, I'd have asked him to let me photograph him sitting there, wanting something of his face. But it's just not in me to do that. I know it would not be a problem, and I know he'd consent. But I have a hard time being so impersonal with someone I respect. I wouldn't walk up to somebody in the restaurant I don't know and ask them to let me take their picture. Caint do it. During the show is a different thing.



Debi was about to jump out of her skin waiting for 7:30 to roll around. We got there early anticipating a big crowd. The place was full by the time the band started. We were about half way back. My friend Chris Davis was there with her husband, Ronald, daughter, Cheri and friend, Linnea. Chris was a knockout. Black coat to the floor. No buttons. Plain, Quaker plain. In the middle where a pendant would hang, a snowflake made of silver with white gems. And she with short white hair. She knows how to make a visual statement. None of them had ever seen Ralph Stanley. Chris said she felt goose bumps when he sang.



The show, of course, was spectacular. A stage full of good musicians in their time as Clinch Mountain Boys, fellers that have picked a good many years together; guitar and banjo, each 17 years. The fiddler, Dewey Brown, won Galax several years ago. Ralph's grandson, Nathan, playing guitar instead of mandolin. Ralph 2 was not there. These boys can make some music together and they made it in abundance last night. 2 shows, the second more casual than the first. Ralph spoke some, noting this is the 30th year in a row he's played Fairview Ruritan. He said he'd rather play here for mountain people than anyplace else in all his travels. The part I loved was these are Ralph Stanley's own people whose lives he celebrates. This was so close to home, it was about the same place. These are the people God's parachute put me down among 33 years ago. Sitting among several hundred people of these mountains before Ralph Stanley, I said a lot of prayers of thanks that came from all the way in my core.