GRUMPY OLD BASTARD ROAD RUNNER

 

jack's nose

Calm, quiet day after a night of big thunder and rain. I went out with a couple of five gallon buckets to shovel up some donkey droppings to spread under the rhododendron around the house. They are huge, ready for some nourishment. I don't know how well it works, but I spread it on the ground out around the outside edge of the branches where the root tips crawl through the ground. I've been told donkey is high potency manure that burns the plants. I'm assuming leaving it on top of the ground and letting the nutrients soak in a little at a time during rains will be more gentle. I'm not tilling it into the ground. The pink rhododendron that get full sun are blooming now while the ones in the shade are just now popping the buds. In my early years in the mountains the pink rhododendron, the ones the people in the old way called purple, bloomed in late June every year. The  blooming has crept forward in time until they're blooming mid May now. I've watched their blooming season advance closer to the end of winter. These rhododendron have almost rounded tips on their leaves. They love sunlight. The other rhododendron has pointed leaves and white flowers the old people called pink. They also called rhododendron laurel and called mountain laurel ivy. It was a language overlap in changing times the old folks couldn't adjust to. Laurel was laurel and ivy was ivy. Somebody comes along saying that's not laurel and that's not ivy, the old folks would let it go by, somebody else trying to make something common into something high sounding. One of the many insights picked up in these mountains was seeing that the people of the old way before electricity and oil were not less intelligent than us because they didn't finish high school and their grammar was different. We from outside the mountains tend to look at the old hillbillies as none to brite, people who were poor because they were uneducated. I see it so the other way around now, I have to watch judging people who take mountain culture for a lesser version of their own, because I did it for too long a time to admit without embarrassment.

 

jack's topknot

 

When it comes to intelligence, they had it all over us. Their educational system taught them how to figure things out. Ours has us memorizing details. Ever tried to read a high school history text book? Detail after detail to be memorized. So boring you never want to read another book the rest of your life. Bring back the Bible, just because it's good reading. I'm not going to say anything about the twitter generation, because I know nothing at all about them. I see a few in the coffee shop and they act like they're not even there. That's the extent of my experience. Recalling a time recently I went into a local restaurant with friend Bill Nixon from Atlanta. I came face to face with the guy who was to seat us, looked to be about 18. I drew a blank. I don't know how to talk to an eighteen year old. So many generation gaps have gone between us I lost track of the young long ago. I'm looking at the guy and he's looking at me and I don't know what to say. Every experience I've had in recent years speaking to somebody that age, they say, What? I didn't want to go through any of it. I put two fingers up. Bill stepped up. He and the guy talked like peers. The kid talked to him like Bill could hear, and Bill was older than me. Bill has taught art in university much of his life. His students are people of that age and he knows how to talk to them. Knows so well, the guy lit up talking with Bill. The difference, Bill saw him person to person, I saw him the other side of a communication barrier. It was all in my attitude. Bill looks like old Walt Whitman and I look like a retired cop. Now, when I have occasion to address the young, I tell myself to receive them for who they are, like everybody else, and talk like the other can hear. In many ways, it's like being in a foreign country among the young in this time of the life. The ones I know, I connect with them easily. It's the ones I don't know that put me in a state of bewilderment. Perhaps I put too much emphasis on not understanding their culture. I admired that moment in Bill. A bit of urban sophistication was in the mix too, none of which I have.

 

jenny's whiskers

 

My friend Meredith I've known since she was a baby. Wasn't around her much, a time or two a year, but feel like I know her. First time I saw her after her PhD, I felt like she was closer and at once farther away. Farther away in that she has impressive knowledge in her head. A time I saw her when she was in high school, she had read on her own for fun, the Iliad and the Odyssey. She was then reading a two inch thick commentary on them. I daresay I was impressed. I might have wiggled my way through maybe one of them, but never the commentary at that age. She now has a baby as cute as she was. Her parents never hit her and she will never hit her baby. My friend Pat, who lives in NY state close to Massachusetts, raised two girls without hitting them. Oldest is now a surgeon. The other works with her in her landscaping business. They are brilliant, beautiful women, inside and out, contributions to the world around them. I'm comfortable in my age, comfortable in my culture, comfortable in my world of friends and neighbors. People come in from outside these parameters and I'm lost for what to say or do. I don't understand people outside my world anymore. I've given so much focus of energy to understanding the culture I live in, the people I know and the mountain of memories that go with advancing age, I don't pay attention to anything outside these fields, or meadows. Nobody tells me anymore I need to pay more attention to the world out there (television). Everyone in my world knows I never will. I've not paid attention to tv since 1961. Only have one now for watching films. Films are art forms. Tv is too, but about as much an art form as a child's coloring book. The art in television is mind manipulation. A century and a half of the study of psychology and what is the result? Mind control by way of television, addictive mind control that creates imaginary reality as directed by.... When you don't watch television and live in a world of people that do, just the frame of mind, ways of thinking make me an outsider. I hear Patti Smith again, Outside of society! That's where I wanna be! Followed by Lenny Kaye's guitar strings. Hail Yeah! Rebel yell.  

 

jack's nostril

 

Outside of society is where I'm comfortable. A thought of being comfortable in society gives me the shivers. There was a time in the life when I never imagined it possible to get out from under the constant assault of other people's expectations, like it would be impossible. The day I turned off caring, it became possible. I came to realize nobody has a right to expect of someone else. I quit allowing other people to expect of me. I quit caring before the move to the mountains. I'm in a place, have been here awhile, where I don't perform other people's expectations unless I agree to it or offer to. I found in these hills that the people outside society are the very most interesting people around. I'm remembering what friend Jr Maxwell told me his daddy, who was born months after the end of the War of Yankee Aggression, told him, Stay away from important people. I was inclined in that direction when he said it, but it was nice to have it so succinctly put. When somebody says, I didn't expect that of you, I think without saying it, that's your problem, not mine. I know I've pist an awful lot of people off with indifference to their expectations. It keeps them away. I don't want around me people who expect of others, especially the unspoken expectations, my favorite kind to trample. I have a maxim of my own on the subject, expect me to walk on your eggshells, they will be broken. It's been my attitude a very long time, so long I don't think about it anymore. It's become my nature. If I wanted to be a social butterfly, I would not choose here to do it. I came to Waterfall Road to perform that corny cliché, find myself. Oh, what a difference it made. A particular church here I liked, felt the spirit good there, went a few times, then the expectations start, "We expected to see you last week, brother." I'm gone. Once expectation raises its head and starts talking, I make tracks, high-speed tracks that barely touch the ground.

 

jenny's eye

 

 

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ADVANTAGES OF WHITE HAIR

robert ryman

For several weeks I've been wanting to get on the highway and drive, just an urge to go someplace nearby, like visit Cumberland Gap, visiting the Bristol country music museum, maybe even go on a Saturday and stop at the Carter Fold on the way home. It both appeals to me and does not appeal to me. Today it happened. Appointment at Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem to have heart read by computer, an annual trip. I've used Alleghany In Motion before, but too often end up listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio, which makes me gag. I don't care that his politics are different from mine, but he's such a liar, an alarmist and general bullshitter. He looks like a German banker in Berlin between the wars depicted in George Grosz paintings: pigs in suits. Thought I'd bypass Limbaugh and leave the driving to myself. It had been awhile since I have driven at a steady run on interstate. Wanted to give the engine some exercise, clean out whatever carbon might be in the cylinder heads. Mainly wanted to give it a good run, like taking a horse out for a run. The car is my friend, same as a horse would be my friend. It takes me to town and back, and to Woodlawn and back. Woodlawn is an hour drive, but it's different from an hour on the interstate. On mountain highways speed varies constantly. On interstate I can put it on seventy and go. It was an hour and a half each way with a break at the turn-around point of about a half hour. Driving around looking for a way to get on the interstate helped ease the engine into the long run.

robert ryman

 

 

The drive was a good one with the window open and no radio. Followed mind wherever it went. I wore my everyday hillbilly garb that kinda sticks out in a city, like the ball cap I've worn for ten years, the bill frayed across the front. On the highway I took the cap off, wanted white hair visible. White hair has great advantages. First, white hair is the sign of diminished memory. So I don't have that backpack of too many memories to carry. Second, white hair acts as something of a white flag that says I come in peace. Third, people tend to make allowances for white haired people. Like you fart in the grocery store while talking with somebody you haven't seen in awhile, and you get away with it. "Oh, that happens to everybody," somebody will say. "Don't worry about it." Or nobody will say anything, it accepted among white haired people that farts happen. It's something old people tend to have in common, the occasional fart that takes a life of its own. It makes me slightly regret I didn't always feel the freedom to let farts happen instead of suppressing them. Fourth, no one suspects somebody with white hair of juvenile delinquency. Excellent camouflage. With white hair, people think whatever you're doing has authority behind it, perceived maturity. Fifth, a freedom comes with white hair if you care to exercise it. White haired people tend to get grumpy, and they're not afraid. "What you gonna do? Kill me?" It's an attitude. You know they're not going to kill you, but if it were to happen, it would be received a favor. That's not generally true, however. It's just a part of the tapestry.

robert ryman

I confess to loving the freedom that goes with white hair. Especially in my own behavior. Something inside, like old age, has me feeling free enough to say what I mean, unable to in the past. I may turn out to be a cranky old turd. I don't care if I do. Something I discovered that I did not anticipate, though saw in retrospect it was obvious, other men my age tend to have calcified minds locked down in right wing politics. I see it along the way in men as they leave school and go into the work world. The only explanation that makes any sense to me why men tend to lock down in right wing belief systems where they tell you what to believe and you profess to believe it, is military. Obey. Until the end of the draft, next step after school was military for the men. Still is in most countries, as well as here. The military belief system is the most common among men. It's the one most looked up to in men. I'm recalling a couple times somebody said, "You been in the military?" Of course. I said, "Yes." The other said, "I thought so." It's good they didn't ask what I thought of it.

robert ryman

Men get it drilled into their heads to be obedient, do what you're told, until it becomes the nature of male culture. What would we do without rebels? And rebels are made to feel so guilty for breaking from the obedience mold. Another freedom with white hair, white haired rebels can do whatever they want. Nobody takes them seriously, so we're free to do whatever. In the world of music, Willard Gayheart in Woodlawn, Virginia, 81, picks bluegrass guitar with the best. Other musicians don't play down to him. He holds them up with his rhythm, allows fiddle and banjo to play and not concern themselves with keeping rhythm; Willard has the rhythm under control. He likes to sing old songs from the 1920s, I Get The Blues When It Rains, and Bob Wills Texas Swing songs like Take Me Back To Tulsa. In Willard's world of regional musicians, white hair is a sign he's been pickin a long time and knows a lot of songs.

robert ryman

I feel like I've seen white hair express differently in different people. Some wear it with a kind of authoritarian I'm-in-charge-here attitude, some with a kind of piety. In the time my hair was turning white, I decided to change haircut. Didn't know what I wanted to do with it. In that time, I was in London for a few days seeing thousands of people everywhere I went. I saw white hair about every way it could be done. It appeared like no matter what a man did with white hair that needed combing it had an aura of vanity about it, somehow. The ones that I saw with a crew cut looked best to me. Simple, easy to manage, easy to wash. They didn't look primped over. All I need is mirror sunglasses to be taken for retired highway patrol. Some people take me for retired military. My car doesn't show that. It's the classic old man car, comfortable interior, good motor that will scoot. I kicked it into passing gear a couple times today and let it wind the rpms way up. The motor loved it. I was happy with the car's round-trip performance from departure to arrival. A good three hour run. It's been wanting to do that. And so have I. Good to get on the road with no radio and mind surf.  

robert ryman

 

 

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FOGGY MOUNTAIN TOP OF THE MIND

        eva hesse, drawing

     

I'm finding myself in a phase of life where my peers are breaking down, ailments galore, dying, what have you. One thing I find is I stay home more, like all the older people I've known. Out running around spending money is a youthful activity. Older, you have other things on your mind besides how you look and the name brands of your clothes. I know how I look. I rarely look in the mirror. Just not curious. I've quit shaving and run over my face about once a week with hair clippers and let it go for another week. Hair same way, though less often. This is something I grew into, like driving up the mountain into a cloud, which on the ground is called fog. The fog is a place of the mind, less active, even at peace, uninterested in confict, long spaces of no thinking, peaceful blank spaces of no mental agitation. Lots of forgetfulness goes with it. Names disappear when you need them. I can see them go away. I think of them running down the groundhog hole. I've seen this natural progression in a number of people I've known well enough to see declines in mental and physical abilities. Almost every one of them was annoyed by being less able to do what they could easily do before.



I have come to take it as natural as baby fat going away or growing pubic hair and all the hormone whirlwinds that go with that period of one's life. My teen years were the ones I'd dislike having to live again. The confusion in my head was opaque. I prefer this time of drifty mind and driving slower than ever. I find I'm driving 45 now in the 55 zones of Highways 18 or 21. Scared of highway patrol too. I can't afford a $50 ticket that will run my insurance rate up so it ultimately costs around a thousand dollars. I maintain the insurance corporations ought to be paying the highway patrol expenses. Insurance corporations get the thousand dollars over a ticket that is $50 for the state. The state is paying the highway patrol for the insurance corporations. Tax dollars from the people that work for a living, not even getting a living wage. Corporate lobby makes laws in favor of the corporations on the state level as well as the federal. This has been going on for so long, they've got us by the throats and they know it. They aim to keep it like that. And they will as long as they're able.



I'm reminded of a joke Dave Vaught of the VWBoys told onstage last time I saw the band. He was speaking of the bass player, Fat Albert Blackburn, who was bald, saying he grew up through his hair. I find myself growing up through the beginning phases of what we call old age. I tend at this time in the life to think of old age when one becomes feeble. Everyone dreads feeble. When I was looking after Jr Maxwell in his old age, feeble hit him hard. I was able to make it not a problem by being able to get him a glass of water so he didn't have to make the effort and end up on the floor. I carried him a few times when his legs could not hold him up. He protested that he was too heavy. I told him he's no heavier than a hay bale. And he wasn't.



First time I scooped him up, his eyes about jumped out of his head when his feet left the floor. It was momentary fright, about like picking up a cat. Some years ago Caterpillar would have a moment of anxiety being lifted up from the floor. From the moment her feet left the floor, her eyes got big and round. I realized when she was a kitten I was probably picking her up so fast it disoriented her. So I raised her from the floor slower and she relaxed into being lifted. Fast, she braced against it. I suspect it made her head swim. I was aware of this in cats and saw the same in Jr. The times I had to pick him up after that first time, I did it more slowly, deliberately, giving his mind that had slowed down considerably a chance to stay with the motion. It was disorienting the first time. But not the second time. I only had to carry him to get him through a doorway in the house when his legs were about as sturdy as wet spaghetti.



I'm growing up through the different phases of old age; first, the white hair, then memory fading away. The latest science says coffee is good for inhibiting Alzheimers. I drink some good Kenyan or Etheopian coffee every morning. Not because of this Yahoo! news bite, which I look at as may or may not be so. But because I like it. This news bite justifies it when I'd been questioning it. I'm not interested in going all the way into Alzheimers or have the mind just go away like it did Jr. I wouldn't want to be in that situation. In a nursing home I wouldn't notice that everything they fed me had the nutritional value of jell-o and ketchup. I wouldn't remember I'd been staring at that ceiling for months and months. Like everyone, I don't really care to drop off the edge into complete helplessness. Considering that's not my call, I really don't believe it's in my future as I grow up through the cloud on the mountain of age.



Everyone my age is looking at this. Some worry about it, some don't. I'm among the ones that don't. I think. When the doctor diagnosed heart failure, he said, "You're gonna die." His actual words tattooed on the vacated drive-in screen of my mind. All I could think to say was, "Duh." The only thing that really bothers me is thinking of the mess I'll leave behind. Australian Aborigines had it. One spear. That's it. I'm a post-WW2 American consumer who would rather buy onions and potatoes in the store than grow them. Hoeing a garden is not what I was put on earth to do. It is not among my talents. I have come to like the gradual changes. When I take the fear out of the changes, they can be fun. Like I'm reversing letters in typing rather regularly now, like whne for when. Sometimes I even leave out words, like the implied "you" in get me a beer. I don't mean that one, but several that are two or three words left out. I understand they're "implied," but no reader would. That's what rereading is good for now. It's ok. Like Jr said, "If it aint one knot in a log, it's ten." There's always something. These are just some of the things we grow into.



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