CATERPILLAR NURTURER

 

I chose to leave the house today to go to neighbor's house and do laundry. It was quiet, trees and sky in the windows, a good place to be still and read. Have begun Cormac McCarthy's novel, Suttree, which takes place in Knoxville, Tennessee, enchanted by every sentence. My first McCarthy read. Have seen three or four movies from his stories. He tells such a twisted story I hesitate to go there. Jumped in and enjoy his writing so much, it's the read I've been looking for and didn't know it. Reading mostly information books lately. It's time for a good fiction read by a writer whose prose, itself, pulls me through the story. A relaxing time, stepping outside self for a few hours in friends' house, in Cormac McCarthy's mind. Return home and want to lie down on the bed to cry and tell Caterpillar I miss her, but another part of mind questioned the sense of letting ego indulge itself overmuch in  sorrow. No need to wallow in it. I'd already done that. She's in the front of my mind every minute, remembering her personality, moments from when she was a kitten, remembering the first time I saw her, newborn and held her in my hand for a moment with mama cat's permission. Three kittens, Caterpillar, Tar Baby and Tapo. I fell in love with them that moment, holding them, one at a time.

 

 

 

Wondering what I was going to do with three more cats. It was Mother's Day, 1997. They were born in what is now the donkey den, in a big cardboard box with a thick nest of hay in the bottom for insulation, a hole cut in the side for mama cat, Celina, to come and go. I opened the top and held the babies every day, wanting my hands to be familiar to them as mama cat from birth. Celina was a calico that had been through a blender, irregular patches of orange, black and white. She came to me feral in her first winter. We had freezing rain that broke trees everywhere and left a coat of two inches of ice on the ground for two weeks. I heard her crying to me from under the bathroom. I realized right away it was a desperate cat. I carried a bowl of cat food and one of water for her, walking on ice all the way. Every day I took her fresh water to replace the water that froze in the night. She would not let me see her for a few weeks. I knelt at the opening and talked to her, telling her she's welcome here, she need never be hungry again. It was a month before she let me touch her and weeks before I could hold her. She'd let me hold her maybe ten seconds, then she had to be on her feet. She'd never been off her feet before.

 

 

 

One day I picked up Celina and felt little lumps in her belly. Babies. I fixed a place for her inside the woodshed where I kept wood scraps accumulated over years, someday-I'm-gonna items. I secured the place so varmints could not get in during the night. It was weeks after she was in her new house that she let me see her. I'd open the door and she'd run to a hiding place. I let her be that way. She caught on that I was there to feed her and give her water, provide shelter, not to control her in any way. She relaxed toward me gradually, even became friends with Aster the dog. We would go out to see her in the morning and she would rub on Aster's legs. She let me pet her. I talked to her, kept her informed she has a safe place here with plenty of food. No worries. I can still see the morning I opened the door and she stepped out of her nesting box trim in the waist. She was a mama. She was happy. I chose not to bother her with fear of the giant snatching her newborns, deciding to wait til next day to hold them, let them be hers without interference in her first hours with them. I opened the top of the nest box to have a look and closed it back. I already knew I would not part with these cats. They were my babies, they would have good lives, I would see to it. I could not turn over any of my babies to anyone, fear of the unknown regarding their fates.

 

 

The morning the kittens' eyes opened, two weeks old, Celina ran under a passing car. That's it, cat shit. The differential housing popped her head. It was fast. Leaving me with mama cat to bury and kittens to raise as their mother. For this, I took them as gifts from goddess. I put them in a paper grocery store bag and drove them to the vet's office. I needed instruction and kitten formula to feed them. Vet looked them over, gave them drops for ear mites. He told me they would not live. I already knew they would, though didn't say anything, not wanting to jinx my intention. He did not know that I knew they need mother love as much as the physical nourishment. I turned on mother love in myself while burying Celina. I promised her the babies would have good lives here with me, they would be loved all their lives. Tapo and Tar Baby both left the body at twelve years old. I brought the kittens in the house, set them up a corner. I held them, fed them, watched them, talked to them, named them. They were quick to learn their names and equally quick learning each other's names. Caterpillar was the nurturer, the kitten that keeps the other kittens clean when mama cat has been taken away. This was her title all through her life, the nurturer. She liked it when I called her Caterpillar nurturer. She also liked Caterpillar lioness. A kitten, she looked like a Japanese watercolor of a fluffy kitten. I fell in love with my babies, they fell in love with me, and they lived. Now, Caterpillar turned into a butterfly and flew away on the wind.

 

 

photos by tj worthington

 

 

 

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SCIENCE AND THE SPIRIT

Multi-tasking today. Was released from hospital after a two-night stay. Went to see doctor Thursday morning in a semi-emergency condition. After seen by doctor, he told me to go straight to the hospital and check in, now. I said, "Can I go home to get a book?" He'd suggested I might stay over the weekend. His answer was, "No." I walked to the hospital, about the distance from my door to the mailbox, leaving the car in front of doctor's office. Once in, they wouldn't let me out. Later, I pleaded that I be allowed to move the car to a longer-term space in the hospital parking lot. It was taken as if I were going to escape and not come back. I was allowed, reluctantly. Displeased with the prospect of staying over the weekend, because staff is reduced to just a few and the hospital feels desolate on weekends, I rankled at the thought of four or more days stranded without a book, nothing but television in the room; only women's magazines and men's hunting magazines in the waiting rooms. I already know there is nothing on tv I want to see. Last time in hospital, several years ago, I had to stay over the weekend. At one point in the day, Saturday, I rang the nurse's station, said I needed some assistance, waited a long time, rang again, same answer, will be right there. Nobody showed up. I walked to nurse's station,  Two part-time CNAs on weekend duty were standing there talking like between classes in school, in a doorway so nobody could go in our out. They looked at me like I was an intruder; they were busy. I said, "Does anybody work here?" Did that ever charge the air with animosity. By then, I was in a mood not to care what impression I made. I stated my need and walked back to the room. They were not friendly after that. They weren't friendly before, either.  

I saw right away a very different attitude among hospital staff in this visit to the hospital than I'd ever seen before. The supervisor of the nurses and CNAs dropped in the room yesterday and asked my assessment of their performance. I waxed ebullient. I said I loved the nurses. All were friendly and responsive to the point they'd ask if they could get me coffee or something else during the day. By the time I left this morning, I felt like all the nurses who'd tended to my needs in my time of incarceration were my friends. Like when I see any of them in the grocery store, they'll act like they've seen me before, will even stop and talk. One of the CNA's this time was a facebook friend. One of the nurses, Tina, who lived across the state line in Virginia, told me she and her husband had the house painted four years ago. The paint on it before was put there by Enoch Rutherford, Grayson County old-time banjo picker who died twenty or more years ago a legend. I told her that last year I'd given my friends Justin and Crystal a Willard Gayheart pencil drawing of Enoch Rutherford. Justin is a house painter. He'll love hearing that Enoch painted houses. Tina's grandmother and Enoch lived almost in sight of each other. She said on weekend nights the air was alive with fiddle and banjo music. The x-ray tech I've known over 30 years. We've seen each other's hair turn white. The ultra-sound operator is my neighbor. He'd also lived in San Diego, where I was born. I saw Richard Nichols, bluegrass bass player, and his boy Trevor, old-time fiddler, who do the hospital maintenance. I hadn't seen Trevor in several years. His hair is gray now. It took a second to recognize him. I wanted to shake his hand as I rolled by, the passenger in a wheelchair, and recognized him for certain a split second too late.  I was checked into the hospital by a beautiful black woman whose face I studied all the time she entered information into the computer. American Indian features, skin tone leaning toward bronze. I attempted not to be conspicuous gaping at her particular beauty.  I was thinking I'd like to paint her portrait. I know it feels creepy to have somebody staring at you. I couldn't help it. She paid it no mind. I was an old white guy. They're creepy anyway. 

The Friday night shift had a nurse, a CNA and another CNA, all three named Ashley. First one I met, the nurse, said, "When you need something, just call for Ashley." I recognized her when she stepped into the room as someone I've seen multiple times, have spoken with, unable to recall where. She said she'd worked in a restaurant before she became a nurse. With that for a clue, I puzzled over the restaurants in town, and couldn't find her in any of them, but knew she was there, she was so familiar. Later, I asked and it was the one I had not been to in ten years. That was when she worked there. I only recalled going there a few times. Now that it's in my mind and I'm seeing the interior, her taking the order, recollection is surfacing, I've been there several times. We have two shopping centers with parking lots. I tend to go to the grocery store in the other one from the restaurant's. I felt right away in her responsive personality that she's held nurse an ideal for herself and worked a long time saving the money. She seemed to me that she was at home in herself. She was where she wanted to be, doing what she wanted to do. Every nurse and CNA I became acquainted with during their shift gave the sense that they are doing what they want to do. The woman whose title I forget, she's head knocker of the nurses, stopped by and we talked. She had the same sense about her the others had, that this is where she wants be today, doing what she wants to do. Present in herself. A white woman's face of striking beauty that I couldn't divert my attention from gaping at. I was painting her face in my mind's eye while we talked. I was multi-tasking, studying her face and focusing on our conversation, right-brain, left-brain, both going at once, yin-yang in motion, balance. I was seeing the feminine, and every one with what I can only think of as goddess energy. I know that sounds corny, but it's the closest I can get. It was healing goddess energy. It was my first hospital experience where I felt healing energy in the entire staff, individually. 

I felt like every one of them I could paint a portrait of as an aspect of goddess, but could never reproduce the presence. It was powerful. I did, indeed, feel for the the first time in a hospital, healing energy in the presence of everyone I encountered. I couldn't help but think frequently, there's something going on here that's important. And the doctor, himself, he generates healing energy. I don't mean to get 1980s California New Age on you, but these are the words closest to what I'm reaching for, the only words I can use to avoid pages and pages of explanation. The sense I felt was this may be the future. First glimmers of the light of dawn in humanity's dark night of the soul. My experience took me from waiting rooms to all over the place. I felt at home and safe everywhere in there. Every experience in my time there was as comfortable as being at home. I'm not even intending this to be a review. It's just that this is my experience. And thanks to a new discovery of science a new pill for thinning blood that dissolves (or something) blood clots. Mighta went pop in my skull or shut down the heart. I went in unaware of the great white swimming under my boat waiting for me to jump in for a swim. This is the second time science has extended my stay in this body. Went through the hole in the big white donut three or four times. That was trippy. I wondered about people whose lives the donut extended by several years, if they gave credit to the scientific method. So much that is wonderful has happened in my life since my previous stay of execution by science, I can only feel grateful, as well as to the healing energy of my doctor and his nurses. Agnes Joines dropped by this morning before I was let go. She had brought Ernest for examination. She told me their boy who lives out West knows the woman who discovered this new blood thinner. That knocked me over like a bowling pin. In my mind's eye I saw the drawing of Enoch Rutherford. More than many interesting coincidences happened throughout the stay. Channel-surfing the tv this morning around 4am, unable to sleep, weary of reading, I found a Led Zeppelin concert. Saw the last hour of it. Raw chance. My experience from walking in the doctor's office to walking out of the hospital was so comfortable and so healing I feel it was divinely directed. Science and the Spirit flowing together, another good balance. 

photos by tj worthington

A LOT OF HIGH-SOUNDING WHATEVER

pulpit by tj worthington

I've finished the most recent project and fixed it in place. Made it from parts found over a span of the whole time I've lived here. Every element is something found. No part has been altered except the four wood blocks have been sanded. The little bird at the top was a gift from 45 years ago, a souvenir Christmas tree ornament from Peru. It's a memory of a friend who left the body 35 years ago. I've kept it amidst a collection of found things. I would not have included the bird in the piece if it were going to an unknown buyer. It was going across the road for my friends Lucas and Judy. The bird is in the family, so to speak. The bird is hand-painted wood, not plastic, made in Peru, not China. The box, shelf, I call it the frame, came from the old Dr Grabow pipe factory's wood-working department for making boxes and displays. I think this frame had to do with a display having to do with Dr Grabow pipes. It's made of nice cedar wood and its back is a finish plywood. It's put together with staples, which I like all the better, the very simplest construction: four pieces cut 6 inches long, two pieces cut 41 inches long, a piece of plywood for the back, done. I believe it's original purpose was to hang horizontally. I like it better vertical. This frame has been in the house at least twenty years. It stayed in the room full of my someday-I'm-gonna found objects. Now is the time for realizing the potential I saw when I picked it up and brought it home. Some are the skeletal remains of tree stumps and roots, small, easily carried, wild shapes. 

 

 

 

Next project is to go at a section of pine stump with tempera paint. Only the core remains. It stands upright about two feet. Might stand it atop a stool. Thought I might paint the flow I see in the lines and shapes in the wood. Not to anthropomorphize it or make it look like fish jumping out of water, but to celebrate its own abstract essence, use it for a canvas of itself all the way around, remembering while applying the paint that this is the core of the tree's being, it's what is left of a tree long returned to soil. I will honor it as the relic of an individual tree that once lived. I see trees in the world of plants as the fully individuated plant form. This next piece will celebrate the tree's individual essence. Now is a good time to gather the found things and play with the potential I saw the day I picked up each one. I'm bored of painting inside the lines. It feels, anymore, like filling in the spaces in coloring books. It's a skill. Now I want to bring together art objects I've found along the way, old wood in the forest, even things found at the dump. I have a piece of wood beside me on the left. It is a chip of wood maybe four inches long, about two inches wide. One side is old and fencepost gray, the other side is the inside of the wood where it was ripped by a splitter. This piece broke free and fell into the bed of the pickup unnoticed while somebody was cutting firewood. Wood unloaded, taking the week's trash to the dump, sweeping out the back of the pickup. Within the hour, TJ backs up to the unloading place, went to unlock the trunklid and saw this chunk of wood at my feet, one side old and weathered, the other the raw interior, totally different texture, yin and yang of the same thing. It has found a place among the rocks I stack. This moment it has a small round rock on top of it, and it is standing on a largish white rock that is standing on a smaller black rock on top of a square block of wood. It's good for stacking. It has the earthy color of the rocks, just a different shape, and two sides.

 

god the mother

 

I like using things anybody else would throw away, or already has thrown away. This dark brown tree branch with the two arms upraised was found I don't remember where. It was already old and dry when I found it. By now it is dry to the bone. It soaked up the first coat of tung oil. Before the tung oil it was gray, old gray wood. Two coats of tung oil and it turned to coffee color. I loved it. Of course, goddess would be black. Original mother would be a black woman. I've seen this piece of wood hundreds of times looking for something else. It has been floating about waiting for its day. I felt celebration in it, like Ruth Schowalter's Jubilee pictures of joyous soul in celebration. I wanted it to be an upward feeling. The day I held it to the rectangle of cedar frame, it felt like a puzzle piece fell into place. I wanted the arms to rise up from the top of the frame, and they did, almost a reference to Minoan bull horns. I wanted something between the hands. I thought of a ball first. A little too cliché. I saw the painted bird suspended from a copper wire like a child's toy. My mind immediately took it for a reference to Jerzy Kosinskis's novel, The Painted Bird. Here, in this piece, the bird feels more to me like the lightness of life, the individual soul, goddess/god playing with it like a mother with a baby. I don't mean for any of these allusions and references to appear so that somebody else would see them. They make a story for me in the creation that helps me feel the flow of the piece, that pulls all the parts together into a whole. The flow of the piece, the feeling in it, is for the viewer. The other is back stage, the mechanics of it. I think of these three rectangles something like individual images like tarot cards that have no established meaning; you interpret the image's meaning for yourself. Like a totem of three images. I have my own interpretation. Everyone who sees it will find their own meanings for the images. Or not.

 

god the father

 

Next is god the father. He may look like somebody in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Who is to say God looks like he was born in Norway? Thor maybe. Krishna told Arjuna if he could see Krishna as he really is, Arjuna could not survive the experience. Who is to say god the father doesn't look like a knot in a log? Who is to say god the father can be seen? Anything visible is a representation, a symbol, a likeness. I figure if I'm going to represent God visually, physically, it could be everything and it could be nothing. I can pick any old thing. A knot in a log. It's an image of the growth process, evolution, life, spirit, god. Not looking for logic. Looking for association. Even that doesn't matter. I like this representation for looking like Confucius with a chicken head. Like there is Hanuman the monkey god, I've an idea this whiteman God that Michelangelo and John Milton articulated is the whiteman god. Pictures of Jesus made in Mexico are very different from ones made in Austria. Buddhas made in India are very different from Buddhas made in Tibet, Thailand, Japan. We so obviously shape the image of God as a projection of ourselves, you see Jesus pictures in cheap frames in discount stores, a white American guy in a red, white and blue gown. I can't completely de-anthropomorphize God; scriptures do say we are made in God's image, whatever that means. It suggests some anthropomorphic resonance for me, though I don't know how much or in what ways. In the rectangle at the bottom of the totem images is a man, possibly a preacher, leaning on the pulpit praying. The maple squares are like talk balloons in cartoons, though without words. They are like sticky-paper notes, statements with no words. God speaks in silence.    

 

praying man

 

 

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MEDEA

 

 

medea by tj worthington

I had not thought of it before now, but I have a painting on the wall, a favorite that does not leave the house and has its place in my will that only itemized a few things. An heir gotta have it, can't live without it. Its conception came in reading. Visually, I was wanting to paint rock and wood. I call it Medea. Took it to the gallery soon after it was dry. Response by gallery director: "What is it?" First thought: He has to ask? I said, "It's called Medea. It's a piece of wood, a rock and plywood." I added, knowing already it was going to go zip over his head. "It is the moment she is making her decision to do what she has to do." He looked at me with a blank in his eyes. Unto that moment I felt like I was out of my league with this gallery. Having to explain Medea to an educated man who is apparently interested in the arts didn't feel right. I think he was most interested in being seen in an expensive sports car convertible. It just disappointed me. Living where I live in a culture that does not value education, reading or art, I've learned to explain things in the simplest terms. I felt like he was asking me to talk down to him and I wasn't comfortable doing that in the same way I'm not comfortable talking to adults who insist on being regarded like children. I left it there a month and brought it home. Brought everything home soon after. Not because of him, but because of a monthly seven hour round trip and being treated like a truck driver at that end. Since then, Medea doesn't leave the house. It may be my favorite piece of all I've done. I made a set-up with a piece of plywood behind, an orange rock with lichen all over one side and a piece of wood I'd found years before. Painted it black. It was the model for Medea. She was a sorceress, psychic with powers, a shaman from Turkey in the time long before the Ottoman Empire. I saw Medea pacing in a black robe glowing in moonlight, on a floor with lines, a stage. Behind her, a rock that looks like a freely-drawn version of the Greek archipelago. The lichen is the Mediterranean, the orange rock the islands. It's obvious the plywood is the night sky. I use the idea of sky from Tibetan paintings with flow lines. Plywood is nothing but flow lines. The full moon is the open mouth of the sky crying over what Medea is thinking. The painting itself is a stage set.

 

paolo pasolini's medea

 

I chose to paint Medea perhaps for the power of her story, my Goddess image. I love a good Greek tragedy. They are written so beautifully, writing and conception, they've not been matched except by Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett, maybe Harold Pinter, too, and Jean Anouilh. Allowing room for many I've never heard of. Just now had a thought of how I would compose Prometheus Bound. Christ on the cross was first image to flash in mind, Dali's crucifixion, suspended in space. Prometheus chained to a rock by a sentence from Zeus, to have an eagle tear him open and eat his liver every day in blazing sun. He heals overnight in the freezing cold. Prometheus hangs patiently, the god of foresight, knowing the day will come Zeus will need an answer to his question of who intends to overthrow him. Prometheus was chained to the rock for giving fire to the humans. From fire, reason evolved. Reason made the humans independent of the gods, a grievous act by Prometheus against the power of the gods. He pronounced it "thirteen generations" into the future Zeus would be compelled to release him for knowledge of who meant to overthrow him. I imagine electricity is the second fire, the new fire given humanity by Prometheus, telling me Prometheus is unbound. Mary Shelley titled her story about Dr Frankenstein, Prometheus Unbound. Her husband, Percy, also wrote about the unbinding of Prometheus in the time when electricity was the new discovery. We are in the beginnings of the new Promethean age, the Age of Electricity, the second fire, intuition. Intuition is next in our collective evolution, already begun, the next step toward full consciousness. The modern world all around the earth is the changes brought by electricity. We will always have electricity. It won't be generated like it is now. How we make electricity will evolve, is evolving. I feel like Prometheus' story is especially relevant to now. Today is conception day for some art object to make in near future inspired by Prometheus Bound.

 

from lars von trier's medea

 

I don't do that much, make an image from a story, Medea the only time I can think of that I have made an image from a story. Her husband, Jason of the Argonauts, was an ambitious Greek hotshot military officer. Medea was his wife, a Turk, eternal enemies of Greeks, and she was a sorceress, astrologer. She wore black gowns and gypsy earrings, long black hair, dark eyes. She knew her way around in the spirit world. Her psychic powers found for him the Golden Fleece, the reward for which was promotion to top dog in the Greek military, their version of the JCS in one. Jason and Medea had kids and were moving up in years, about the time a successful man finds a mistress. Jason lost his good sense over a babe. He wanted a divorce so he could marry her. Medea didn't take to the suggestion, but complied. She set her plot into motion agreeing to divorce so Jason could remarry, playing the role of friends after the divorce. She asked if she could make the wedding dress, a gesture of peace, giving her blessing to the union. She wove the cloth of phosphorous threads. At the I-do moment, Medea went Zap and the dress flashed in a white-light intense phosphorous fire and cremated babydoll at the pulpit. Before Medea went to the wedding she killed their kids. After babydoll went up in smoke, a chariot drawn by dragons came down from the sky, picked Medea up and took her back across the water to Turkey. The tragedy is Jason's. He survived alone, bereft. It is also Medea's tragedy in that she threw away all she loved in her revenge. A do-not-take-me-lightly kind of woman. She gave her man the honor and glory he wanted, and he betrayed her. Jason might have thought that one through a little better before taking up with a Norwegian hottie he met at the gym in a midlife crisis moment. He did know, after all, not to mess with Medea, or seems like. Brings to mind a movie I never want to see again, a feminine revenge story, reject it so much from my mind I forgot the name and the actress. Now it's back. Kathleen Turner, Body Heat. Thank you, Google. I have been uncomfortable seeing her in a film since. It disturbed me. Like the actor who played Ted Bundy in a movie, I cannot see him in anything since without discomfort, like he was Bundy himself. A testament to good acting.

 

frankfurt opera medea

 

 

Medea is a powerful story of the feminine, and I don't mean the dark side, except at the end. She was from a land rich in Neolithic archaeology where goddess figures are found everywhere. Medea was still with Goddess, may have been a goddess herself. She seems to me the fullness of the feminine, the light and the dark, the psychic powers, the willingness to give all in love, all that goes with goddess. Medea can truly say with conviction, I am woman. I'm recalling a saying I haven't heard in a long time, since before political correctness, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Medea is the extreme of that aspect of the feminine. She's even such an extreme in love. She is the yin/yang, a balanced woman, a goddess. Medea was from the Age of Goddess in the patriarchal age. Women did not concede to men in the Goddess time like they do in the patriarchal time. Goddess is coming back and women are coming back, too, as full human beings with a choice of whether to attach self to a man for survival, or make it on her own, or in partnership with a man or woman, instead of subservience. I see Medea, herself, a woman who embodies the energies of the feminine a woman has to draw from. She's like the fullness of Goddess, all that is woman. Jason didn't know his good fortune. Aint that just like a man. Recalling a few years ago, I was with Justin who needed to see a guy he worked with on a Saturday for some reason I don't remember. A mother and son lived in the next trailer, the son not long out of prison; the windows had clear plastic duct-taped onto the frames, the exterior of the trailer showing what the inside looked like. They fought all the time, both drunks. We step into the trailer of Justin's friend; the guy's wife and two kids had just left him. Chainsaw on the living room shag carpet, and work boots. Empty beer cans lying about that hadn't found the way to the trash basket yet. Ashtrays full. Kitchen empty. Television going opposite the recliner. The guy was helpless. His purpose was gone. He didn't see in time to help himself that she was his purpose. He didn't appreciate that she washed his nasty underwear and socks. Another Jason who simply failed to get it. Wife goes back home to live with mama and daddy until she gets back on her feet. In him I saw a pitiful version of Jason, same story, not so Xtreme. Man doesn't get it; woman says, I'm outta here, whatever it takes.    

 

nancy kovack as medea in jason and the argonauts

 

 

from lars von trier's medea

maria callas as medea

 

 

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PICTURES FROM THE APRIL WINE TASTING

the crowd

muffet and todd

jeremy

ann, dudley, frank, barbara

selma and ann

dudley

muffet and dudley

Another wine tasting at Selma's Backwoods Bean Coffee Shop in Sparta. She has a wine tasting the last Friday of the month 6-9. Four different wines to taste, all of them red tonight. I'm not one to fuss over wine and go oo-ah about the bouquet and all the fruity flavor talk. It was good wine. It's all good. I go for the company, to see people I like to see in the coffee shop to visit with. I've not been to town much over the last month or so and don't get to see people like JoEllen and Todd, Dudley and Muffet, others and several not there tonight. The coffee shop has been for me a place where I have made new friends and where I go to see different ones I know who frequent the place. Joe Allen Delp is often there in the mornings. I enjoy conversation with Joe Allen, a mountain boy whose stories of past adventures make the people from Away look at him in wonderment that anyone could be so wild, and Joe Allen wasn't necessarily wild compared to what wild can be. The people that are really wild don't go into coffee shops.

I spent most of my time this evening with Todd Smith, the holistic chiropractor in town, and his wife, JoEllen, people I enjoy a great deal, both equally. And talked with Dudley a good bit and Muffet. Dudley has been a friend for about 10 years. When I started the radio show, I went to Dudley to teach me how to work the mechanics of putting on a radio show. He was a radio producer in Washington DC for his adult life. Retired to Alleghany. His wife, Caroline, had advanced MS and he took care of her like a mother with her baby up to the very last day. I can't say he's to be commended. He was doing what comes natural. Caroline went on last year after some time in the nursing home, and it wasn't much later Muffet turned up from Indiana. She and Dudley had been close years ago before either of them was married. Both are unmarried now and have come back together. They're setting out on a long driving tour of USA and Canada, keeping a blog during the trip to be viewed by invitation only.

I knew half the people in there, or less, and was comfortable, among friendly people, everyone open for conversation, and conversation flowing around the room free of blockage. It felt like the right number of people. Not too many and not too few. A lightness was in the air tonight. It seemed like everyone was in an even temperament, happy to be among the people they were with. The finger food was good, the bread especially. I was happy to see a clarity in the air, telling me the coffee shop has taken on a clear, happy energy, Selma's goddess energy. She is the soul of the place and the air in there is as clear as the air around Selma. It's her radiance that draws everyone there and keeps them returning often. The coffee shop is about the only thing happening in Sparta besides the Jubilee on Tuesday and Saturday nights. It continues to mesmerize me that the coffee shop in Sparta has the spirit inside of someplace in Europe or South America. It is a universal feeling in there. Races and nationalities figure as nothing, merely identity. Like Quan Yin, Selma is a goddess of compassion. I don't even need to expand on that. It's just how it is.







   selma



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