CATFISH THE TALKING CAR

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

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

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

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

       

photos by tj worthington

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DROPPING IN AT THE JEWELWEED STAINED GLASS STUDIO

varieties of colored glass

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

caudill cemetery by tj worthington, 1990, 16x20

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

gary medley's project

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

by allan joyce

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

by allan joyce

allan joyce

gary medley foreground

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FOLLOW THE FLOW

 

 

 

all pics by tj worthington

 

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

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

  

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

 

larry

 

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A WONDERFUL DAY

      white light, by tj worthington

 

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

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

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

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

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


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