BREAKING OUT OF MONDAY'S SNOW ON FRIDAY

wild turkey stretches in the sun

The mother of invention, necessity, drove me through the plowed snowbank between the car and the road after the day had warmed up a little. With rear wheel drive, it would have required some snow shovel work. Front wheel drive can get momentum running backwards through the car length of clear ground under the car, pushing the rear wheels through the mound of snow. The rear wheels clear tracks for the front wheels to get a grip on going through the snow. It took a wee bit of slipping and sliding, nowhere near a concern, just ice. Returned easily through the tracks made by departure. The six inches of snow has shrunk down to about four inches, though now it's icy from sun warming the surface during the day, melting just enough to make a thin crust of ice in the night. Front wheel drive, new tires, a car that runs perfectly, dependably, good center of gravity, a car I've driven in snow, ice, mud, over meadows. I take it anyplace I'd take a pickup. I use the back seat as a small pickup bed. Back seat and trunk, I have a an enclosed pickup. It has a big trunk. I needed to go to Carpenter's house to pick up two gallons of water for a week of morning coffee. I'd walked up the driveway three times in this snow and Justin drove his truck up and down it. It already had tracks and I knew the snow between the tracks was not too deep for the car. I had a mound of snow at the edge of the road to crash through and spin the front tires through, sliding this way and that, and come out the other side. Driving up the tracks was the same as without snow. Returning to the road was a slip-n-slide adventure for a moment. 

two turkeys

I need to hit those places with enough momentum to force my way at least half through and let the spinning tires use the momentum I'm able to provide for them to pull it the rest of the way. Let the momentum stop and that's it. Stuck as soon as it stops. Then there's no going forward or backward. I've learned the subtleties of driving on snow and ice with this car over the course of six winters. I've driven front-wheel drive, rear-wheel drive and four-wheel drive, all of them several years apiece, to know how to drive mountain roads in every condition with each one. Four-wheel is awfully good. It will take hold of about anything, even sheer ice if you know how to handle it. Four-wheel is handy. Now that I'm not working, don't need to be hauling things like ladders, toolboxes, shovels and so on, taking trash bags to the dump and hauling three bales of hay from the barn to the donkeys is all the hauling I do anymore. The trunk handles it fine. I've found the limits of front-wheel drive, places it would not go that I knew four-wheel could make it. Not many. Not enough to make the difference in expense and weight worth it. Front wheel drive, the weight of the engine is where it's needed, between the front wheels. Every fall I buy two new front tires and put the ones from the front on the back. I like having new tires on the front to pull me through winter. This old car doesn't look like much, but the motor and the driving train are in excellent running condition. I have a good mechanic who keeps it there. Any little thing new that comes up, I tell him the sound or the symptom, and like the guys on Car Talk, he knows what it is. He knows the engine of this car literally inside out, having worked on them at a dealership for a number of years when it was new. It just so happens he knows everything about my car. And, he's Crystal's daddy, Vada's grandpa. 

two turkeys

Main reason to go to town was birdseed. I was out of sunflower seeds. I buy that other mixed birdseed and the birds peck maybe half of it, but they take all the sunflower seeds. Nothing is left but pieces of shell all over the snow. The sunflower seed keeps the birds warm at night, keeps their joints greased, brightens their feathers. And the red squirrels. I've made my feral neighbors somewhat dependent, dependent by expectation. I don't want to leave them without for a day, especially when the ground is covered with snow and ice and it's zero at night. Little chickadees need something in the morning right away. I have to take carrots to the donkeys first and give them their hay. The moment I step out the door, Jack brays, Jenny attempts a bray that sounds like a high-pitched hound's bark. They're hopping up and down, Ice Cream Man finally woke up and has carrots. Carrots make them so happy in the morning they dance. Carrot time is happy time. Next is hay. Chickadees, titmice, snowbirds in the trees overhead call to me to come on with breakfast. The donkeys are ready to graze immediately. Carrots I buy every trip to town. The grocery store sells a big bunch of them for three dollars. It's like giving a kid ice cream. A bag a week. I'm happy to give them that. Was running low on sweet grain for the donkeys, would need some before Monday. A fifty pound bag of grain and a forty pound bag of birdseed from two different hardware stores. I could have bought both from one, but like to give my business to both places. It's my small support for each one. I don't have a great deal to offer, but what I have is best given to people I support. I feel like buying anything is a gesture of support for whoever made it and is selling it, be it working in an American sweatshop in Malaysia, or a regional band selling CDs and tshirts. I want to buy everything I need in Sparta. Exceptions like books, shoes and paint, I get online. I don't have much to support the local economy with, but what I have is given in the spirit of support.   

shadow on the snow

The grocery store packed with people on a Friday afternoon, never feeling congested, registers flowing with the traffic. Didn't see many people I knew. Parking lot packed. Everybody taking a breather, getting out, restocking some food. I tend to stay away from town on Friday afternoons when the traffic is from hell, the kind that makes people from Atlanta exclaim, "What traffic?" when I complain about Friday afternoon traffic in a town with three lights. Today was no choice. Needed water. Birds and donkeys calling. Low on catfood too. I felt comfortable, at home, where I belong. And, of course, spent twice what I intended going in. I don't pay attention to what I spend at the grocery store. If I don't buy it this time, I will next time,. It's all going to the same place. Grocery store done, went to the liquor store and bought a fifth of Wild Turkey Rye, good sipping liquor. Drove home with a six-inch chunk of ice on the hood, top and trunk lid. Mine was the only car in town with Monday's snow still on it, frozen solid. Even driving 63 through Thompson Flat didn't blow it loose. It will melt in a few days. Had to scrape ice from the windshield and free the wipers stuck in ice. The car started first crank, like in summer. I love a car that starts easily and dependably at zero. The drive to town and back was one of the beautiful days of the year when the mountain landscape is good as it gets, all in snow, clear sky with wispy clouds, and such a relief to have temperature above twenty. Talking with a woman at the gas station, she said we're having a heat wave. Any other time, twenty would be way too cold, but today, twenty was a welcome relief. The donkeys felt it too. They could graze with one side to the sun as to the fireplace, warm their bones before another cold night. 

donkey trail to the watering hole

*

A DAY IN MY WORLD

beverly pepper

I need to consult somebody about what the planets are doing. Mars has something to do with the mix. I can see and feel Mars manifestations everywhere all day long. There is something going on that feels like a planet arrangement. The nice part is the planets are in motion and will move out of this arrangement in time. I'm going into the third week of nuttiness. Dropped in at the grocery store for catfood and carrots, primarily, and found traffic flow in the store was all out of sorts. Four times I came to the end of an aisle into a bottleneck of buggies, and one time in the middle of an aisle. Making the turn to go to the register, it looked like the gates opened at a horse race. I stepped into a herd of buggies mounded up high like they were racing to the register. I found a way around a bottleneck of four buggies that were then stalled by another bottleneck. I avoided both bottlenecks by slipping through an opening before it closed behind me, clean air into the open area in front of the registers. I found the aisle with one of my favorite checkout women, nobody ahead of me. A very strange feeling coming out of a major traffic jam of buggies going three different directions, into the open area, only one buggy each at three registers and one free. And I was gone before the bottleneck of mounded buggies I detoured arrived at the registers. I went for the opening, like Brad Keselowski, and won the race, thanks to a pile-up. I've had moments in the grocery store every once in awhile when a bottleneck occurs at the end of an aisle, but not very often. Four times in one brief grocery store run is a noteworthy record. Reading events in a day like a dream, it was a great grocery store dream. It was so odd it had a dream quality to it.

beverly pepper

A woman from a Fellini film was in there. Approaching the tuna section, she was slowly walking in front of me, very slowly walking. Predictably, she stopped in front of the tuna. She didn't look at the cans. She gazed around the aisle like her mind was gone and she was looking for something familiar, a clue to where she was. I thought, no problem, she'll figure something out in a little bit. She turned and looked at me. Seeing she was not standing there for the tuna, just a place to stop, I said, gently as possible, seeing she was adrift on painkillers or something, "You're standing where I want to be." It sounded really stupid hearing myself say it, not knowing what to say. It sounded spoiled by privilege. And I didn't mean anything like that. I saw she was a benign soul, old with hair dyed black, out of the house, on the verge of losing the ability to leave the house alone. I did not want to push her nor disturb her reverie. She generously moved ahead enough to let me reach the tuna cans. I moved on and she moved on. Old women were in there today, people I've never seen in the grocery store. Perhaps it was the shut-ins day out. The experience was an odd sensation from one end to the other in the grocery store, something like stepping into a Fellini film. And I saw the old Chinese woman from the Chinese restaurant bent over her buggy, red sweater, hair dyed black, a wall of bread loaves behind her like a big Warhol silkscreen titled, Bread. The whole experience in the grocery store was so dream-like I'm inclined to call it interpretation of what I saw. I remember, then, that these images are outside my mind. These are individual people in the grocery store pushing buggies at the same time, and I'm one of them. I am the camera. As was each of the others. It was so out of the ordinary, it felt like I walked into a movie scene in progress.

beverly pepper

From there to the mechanic who takes good care of the car, Catfish, to change the oil. He keeps the Mt Airy radio station WPAQ online for best reception. I step into the garage and hear some old-time fiddle and banjo in the air playing Cacklin Hen. Some gospel music came on next, hillbilly gospel, the kind I love, and I just spoke out loud when This World Is Not My Home I'm Just a-Passin Thru was playing. "This is my song. The song of my life." The angels beckon me from heaven's open door and I can't feel at home in this world anymore. I saw Crystal and Sheena, watched them work peeling stencils from boards they are painting words onto. Crystal is the most inventive mind I know. She is self-taught and knows how to make things work, one step at a time. She's got drive like a drummer in a hard-core punk band. Sheena I've known since she was a baby. From there, in town I saw by chance my friend April, I've not seen in some time, more than a year. A refreshing visit. April is a beautiful soul. I'm always happy to see her. I went to the Subway for a sub to take home. A beautiful young woman the other side of the counter, big, round, Polynesian, beautiful milk-chocolate complexion, a tiny diamond in each earlobe. At home, a movie in the mailbox. I was ready to either take a nap or watch a movie. I'd rather see the movie. MONSTER'S BALL, with Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry. Powerful film. Half way into it, I was thinking if this were a South African I'd be calling it a great film. It's American and tells a particularly American story beautifully. Halle Berry showed me an actress as artist, subtle in her character. Billy Bob was Billy Bob making another classic character. Not many American films can jerk my tears, though at the end of this one my eyes were so wet the white credits on black were white blurs. 

beverly pepper

Two people who were bottoming out within came together in an unlikely mix, a white Southern prison guard racist and a black woman meet in a way that draws them immediately together. Her son had just been hit by a car and killed. Billy Bob drives by and stops, picks the kid up, puts him in the back seat and they take him to the hospital to find he's dead. She doesn't know it, and he doesn't know it, that he was involved in the execution of her husband just a day before. Both were reeling from the experience of the execution, how it got her without income, a kid to take care of, losing her job from the stress of the moment. They fell into each other's arms against their own will, and very much by way of their own will. It became complex. His dad, an old Mississippi retired prison guard racist, a shut-in using a walker. Billy Bob's was a story of a man who had only lived in hate, he and the old man hated each other, both were hateful people. After the execution, things changed inside Billy Bob. He was automatically drawn to help lift up this woman in her most vulnerable moment. When they were first discovering each other, he said, I want to help you. She said, I need help. They were drawn to each other, but their pasts kept them apart. I have to say hats-off to Halle Berry. She showed me a mature actress handling a major role well. She became the role immediately. It was Halle Berry, the artist, with Billy Bob Thornton, the artist, working together to make a beautiful film. I saw one yesterday, Stop-Loss, an Iraq war film that was good until it went totally cheezy at the end. Monster's Ball ended as well as a film can end. It let the viewer finish it in the mind.  

beverly pepper

*

SPONTANEOUS RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS

dr carpenter's chair

Awareness of flow has been in the foreground with me for several days. I'd been unconscious that flow occupied my mind as much as it did. A thought might come and go twenty times in a day, but each time it's only once and it's gone. Last week in the grocery store two registers were open and suddenly a rush of full buggies turned up. I was one. Two women were ahead of me with mounded up buggies, the one at the register taking her time unloading her objects one at a time, talking to the cashier, talking to her little girl standing beside her. I reminded emotional mind of patience. I have all day. Relax  into the flow. Somebody opened a new register behind where I was standing. I backed up and turned into the opening. A man I'd never seen before was carrying a package of a dozen rolls of paper towels and half a dozen sardine cans. I saw him moving toward the space. He stopped when he saw me swing around and went back to his line with three mounded up carts ahead of him. I called to him, "Hey," a lame thing to say, but I didn't know what else to say. I wanted to catch his attention right now. Mister? No. Dude? No. He looked about my age, somebody who would not take to being called Sir except by a kid, and even then I'd guess from his vibe he'd tell the kid he didn't have to call him Sir. I indicated with a swing of my head for him to go in front of me. The flow of his movement toward the place was in motion before I started my forward motion. I felt like I'd interrupted a flow. He took his place and thanked me. We had a brief exchange, quiet and friendly. A moment. The kind of moment that made me feel rewarded for allowing the flow by merely an open exchange. I ran my items through the line, paid and put the bags in the buggy to carry to the parking lot. I stepped into the open space beyond the register aisle and saw a Latin guy on my right pushing his buggy toward the door. He stopped when he saw me start out of my aisle. Again, I felt like I'd interrupted a flow. I stopped and indicated to him with a hand gesture to go ahead. His face lit up, he nodded gratitude and went on. 

asters

In neither case was I motivated by wanting to appear to be a nice guy. Both times I felt I had stepped into a flow that was already in motion. I stopped and honored the flow. I felt like it would be arrogant to break the flow and jump in. The first guy was about my age with a long pony tail and a straight-faced stillness that suggested he had spent some time in prison. Very much an inward individual. It was the first thing I saw in him. I regarded him with respect as I do everyone I know or meet experienced in the American penal system. Another day when I was not aware of the flow, I probably would have taken my place as my right--I'm next. I don't know. It caught my attention because I don't recall ever having such an awareness of flow. I feel it when I'm writing and feel it at home. I feel it in traffic. In both moments I saw the flow. Perhaps I had come from standing in place for awhile talking to myself about patience. Slow down. I've seen these logjams happen at the grocery store many times. I walk in the door, one or two registers are open, nobody in sight. In the aisles I see several people and others start filing in the door. I go to the register and half a dozen people are ahead of me. Right away they open two more registers and the flow moves again. I turn around, somebody is in motion toward the open aisle with just a few items. Another part of the flow is I could never step in front of somebody carrying so little without inviting them to take a place ahead of me. I could not stand there and unload my buggy with someone waiting behind me with a few items. It's an awareness of flow I'd not noticed before as such. I felt like the second one automatically deferred to white man with white hair, the sign of a hateful emeffer to an immigrant. I felt like the gratitude on his face, in his eyes, was somewhat out of proportion to my gesture, but I reminded self that white men with white hair seldom say, After you, to a Mexican. 

across the road

Another part of my flow was realizing the people from south of the border came here to work their asses off for a little bit of pay to send cash home to mama, wife and kids, who have nothing otherwise. They get treated like shit, taken advantage of, ignored as though nonexistent. They've learned how to live among white people; stay quiet and out of sight. The Latin people have that minority consciousness about them; look out for white people, learn how to live with being invisible, do your best not to become a target, be passive with law enforcement, stay in your trailer park and watch tv like white people. The tiny Latin population here lives inward, among themselves. I have a heart full of respect for these people doing the best they can to get by in a world hostile to them, good people lured by fairy tales about democracy and money seen on tv. I feel sorrow for them when I realize they are here because they can't make a living where they came from. They have no place there and they have no place here. I've seen that the people who hire them to do labor jobs often prefer their work performance to work by local boys. I can think of two, and know there are more, businesses that hire only Latinos for their work ethic and attention to detail. The best restaurants are the Latin restaurants that few Anglos go to. The big Mexican restaurant, Mis Arados, is rated by a great many the best restaurant in Sparta. The Latins are good people. I feel like they make a good addition to life here. In my association with the Alleghany Planning Committee, we visit the Head Start program in Sparta once a year. The kids are charming and the women working with them care about them with a motherly tenderness. I've noticed again and again the Latin kids had happy round faces, happy eyes, were animated and well behaved. The white kids were drawn, looked depressed, cheerless, some had dark around the eyes from crying in the night. All are kids of parents who can't afford daycare prices. The white parents were poor because they were messed up on crystal meth and whatever else was going around. What money they score at minimum wage jobs goes to their high to assuage their misery. They need help like their kids need help. 

quan yin on cloud mountain

I have seen in this lifetime the venality in the American character grow with an anti-compassionate, zero tolerance zeal that brings something to mind I heard Bill Maher say, "I'm paranoid about the cops, and I'm white." This is a relatively new social phenomenon, white people paranoid about the cops like the black people, though the black people laugh at the white paranoia. They know that nobody white knows what it's like to be paranoid about cops. The Central American man in the grocery store caught my attention with his big smile of gratitude. I wondered what it was that made him appear so spontaneously grateful. The sparkle in his eyes rang in my head the words, random acts of kindness. Such a tiny gesture on my part. Each moment received with open gratitude. For my part, I just read a flow and payed attention to it. I could call them acts of kindness, but at the moment they weren't acts of anything but letting somebody go by who was already in motion. It turned out I allowed them their flow. I doubt either one was consciously aware of the flow as I was at the moment, but they felt it unawares. My reward, a momentary spontaneous greeting from who the other person is, open, unguarded. I think of it a spiritual connection, the god in me greets the god in you. My part of it amounted to a few seconds. Those seconds stayed with me, somehow having a light around them as important moments. It makes me want to become more aware of my own flow in relation to the the flows I am sometimes involved in, sometimes passing through. Awareness of flow has to do with allowing, not projecting my own wants or expectations onto the moment. It seems like awareness of flow comes forward when ego is not demanding so much attention. When I saw two buggies ahead of me piled high, I talked to emotional self: settle down, patience, relax, you're not late for anything, and if you can't stand still for a few minutes, you need help. I turned around in a relaxed mind, able to feel the flow for not being in a hurry, and had two spiritual experiences, one after the other, solely from reading lines of flow and honoring the flow. It became two spontaneous random acts of kindness without assessing the gestures kind or any more something to notice  than walking from one spot on the floor to another. It just happened.   

woodshed

*