A YEAR GONE BYE

scott and willard

The music last night at the Front Porch Gallery ran along the lines of young guys killing their girlfriends, one for having a roving eye, another because she wouldn't marry him. Knoxville Girl and Banks of the Ohio. He took her by the golden curls and swung her round and round. He saw her drowning in the river; it was a dreadful sight. These are great songs in the tradition that today's television addict can't connect with very well. They don't have happy endings and they don't deny all but the superficial and cheery. They are the kinds of songs Carter Stanley loved to sing. I believe his audiences encouraged him to love them. It was then a world of very little entertainment that you don't create for yourself, as opposed to now when we're saturated with entertainment.

I don't mean to exclude myself from the category saturated with entertainment. I watch movies of my choice, not the choice of a corporate network. I have a lot of cd's, tapes and lps because I like to listen to the music I like, not music on the radio where I might like one out of ten songs. When I have my own music, I only listen to music I like. At the moment, I'm hearing Schubert quartets by the Melos Qtet. I watch movies, play music cds, paint pictures and read books, entertained to the max, just like everybody around me, in my own way, as everyone else has their own particulars. One of the things I find most interesting about this time is just about everyone is involved in listening to music quite a lot. I doubt any two people in the entire USA have the same cd collections. Might be some along the same lines, but not the same specific titles.

Last night at Woodlawn the music was right there, as always. It was a Halloween theme, songs with references to ghosts, fear, murder. Willard sang a song he wrote called The Shootin, about a murder where he grew up in eastern Kentucky 10 miles outside Hazard. I believe he recorded it with his band Alternate Roots. Willard writes a good song. In a way, it seems like Willard is about nostalgia, "the Norman Rockwell of Appalachia," though I tend to see him more as an artist whose theme throughout his life as an artist has been visual art, vocal art, guitar picking art, song arranging art, songwriting art, Willard uses the world he lives in for his theme. He has made a lot of pictures of people in the old-time ways, and he's made a lot of pictures of people in today's ways. His music is of the past and it's of the present. It's all about living in the mountains. Willard's musical expression is mountain music, old-time, bluegrass, the fusion of the two.

I can't forget seeing at the Hillbilly Show the slide show about BROC members who died over the last few years. The narrator had whatever it took to bill himself in the credits, The Voice of the Blue Ridge. He didn't even have an accent, a city guy who came here not very long ago, giving himself the title owned by Ralph Stanley only. I realize the guy has no idea about mountain culture or who Ralph Stanley is. He may have heard of Stanley and maybe even heard a song or two by him, but all it really told me was he's innocent of mountain culture, knows nothing about it, doesn't intend to, and thought he was being clever coming up with such an audacious title for himself, without an accent even. I accept that he can call himself anything he wants, though an elephant by any other name is an elephant. It doesn't matter to me. It's just that I'm in awe, like jaw dropped to the floor and bouncing a time or two kind of awe. It makes me laugh every time it comes to mind like it did seeing on the screen.

It's satisfying in the autumn of my life to see I'll end my days with the very last of the mountain people. They have been my guiding light for 35 years Monday. I came here to learn, arriving here one year and 3 weeks after seeing that God indeed is. When I saw that, there was no living as if I hadn't. Somebody I'd met in my first year here, who was here from Raleigh, told me it's good I came to the mountains so I can teach these people something. I knew Tom Pruitt and his nephews mostly through that year and knew for a certainty I had nothing to teach "these people." What teaching there would be could only go from them to me. I wanted to learn about mountain culture from experience, not reading about it. When somebody went to Jr to ask him to teach them to play bluegrass banjo, he told them if they can't figure it out on their own, they don't want to learn it. That's how he learned it, knew no other way.

Monday is my 35th year here and the one year date of Jr's departure. Melia, his 2nd cousin, and I will go to Jr's grave with some liquor, pour a sip on the ground and have a sip with memory of him and talk of him. We'll laugh the whole time. For me, Melia is one of his friends he left to me. All of his friends became my friends one year ago. They're a good bunch of people I'm more than happy to have for my friends. In some cases it even feels like family. Our celebration at the cemetery will be a reminder of my Whitehead citizenship as well. All these reasons and more make it a date I want to do something more than just remember it's the day. Jr shared with me some of the best liquor that's ever been made in this world. It feels right to have a symbolic drink with him in spirit. If souls on the other side can see into our world, he will get a kick out of our celebration.

*

FLUID MIND

yellow



Listening to Thomas Mapfumo of Zimbabwe, southeastern Africa, maybe the poorest country in the world, there with Haiti and Albania. Sad situation there. Mapfumo's music I can't explain. Don't know the titles of the songs, the name of the album. Can't understand any of the words. It's like his voice is an instrument and doesn't pull my mind into it. He has a beautiful voice and delivery. It's dance music that has a casual sense about it the way reggae has its relaxed style. They're only similar in their casual way of flowing with the rhythms. His electric guitar players are real pickers.



Mapfumo's music is kind of understated, no sound assaults, just a relaxed flow of the rhythm and the girls singing, the thumb piano making it's particularly Zimbabwean sound and the electric guitar that plays along with it in the same manner. I think of it as a lilting rhythm his band makes. I actually prefer music where I can't understand the meanings of the words. I can hear the music in the voice. Much of Mapfumo's vocals are musical sounds like something a guitar or horns might do, though with the subtlety of the human voice to make all kinds of sounds at will. It's beautiful. It's the kind of music I can have playing while I write you and it's not a distraction. It's just the only thing I can think about, which is probably best.



Today the car broke. Serious problem. Can't run without fixing. Can't get to it till mid next week. I'm immobile for the time being. Hillbilly Show this weekend. Friday night rehearsal, Saturday night the show. Agnes wants me to be Ernest T Bass from Andy Griffith Show. That's going to take some doing. She thinks I'm as uninhibited as she is about cutting a shine. I don't really have any appetite for the stage, even if it's just running about being stupid. I'd rather be pulling the ropes for the big curtain. A good job for me. I can see through the opening between the curtain and the wall where I am with the ropes, a good view of what is going on onstage. I can see what is going on backstage, and can see the audience at will. This way I see everything that is going on, the entire experience. That's why I like to work the curtains.



I refuse to think about the car. It will be taken care of one step at a time, starting with getting it to the mechanic, tomorrow's project. I've learned after living this long that I don't have to worry about it. Worry just adds to it. Things have a way of falling into place when allowed. It's the way of let-go-and-let-God. It's been a rough day for the mind. In the course of the day I forgot too many important things I need to pay attention to. Things as dumb as stepping in front of a car without looking. Didn't do that, but might as well have.



I'm too ashamed of the stupid stuff I did today from forgetfulness to tell it. It was stupid. Yet, it worked out perhaps best for the long run. It's the same kind of frustration Jr felt, ashamed of forgetting things that screw up as a result. However, later I boiled some eggs and remembered to turn the heat off when it was time. Maybe I'll talk with Una about some ginko tea or something like that for holding the mind together. Like if I'm talking and get interrupted, it's gone. Gone forever. Until some time later in the day or the next day. Pop. There it is. I call it the white hair disease.



It turns out I find the forgetfulness somewhat of an adventure. I like a life with minimum drama in it, so I don't set myself up for many adventures. I like adventures like approaching a blank canvas and making something of it worth looking at, something better than a panel of white, which is quite beautiful in itself, can be a powerful visual statement. Google Robert Ryman. He paints white. Does it right.

UNCERTAINTY BLUES

after the rain


I had to put on some Ralph Stanley to listen to today. When a period of time goes by I don't hear Dr Ralph it's easy to remember how good he is at making mountain music, but when I put something on to hear, first notes bring it all back. His music is better than I can remember it. Infinitely better. To me, that's a sign of good music. It happens every time I put on Ralph Stanley music. At Galax a few years ago after hearing bluegrass competition I wondered where bluegrass went, like I didn't hear any or my ears weren't working, couldn't make out which. Walked to the parking space dissatisfied with the music I'd heard, telling myself it must be I'm in an off mood or something. Starting out down 89 I turned on a cd of Ralph Stanley from 1976, thereabouts, with Ricky Lee guitar, Curly Ray Cline fiddle. Instantly, as soon as the sound started I was hearing bluegrass. I drove home thinking when I want to hear bluegrass all I have to do is put on Ralph Stanley. It doesn't matter which album.



Had to turn it off. It pulled me in too far. I want my focus here, with you, and the music pulls it away and holds it away. Daddy's Wildwood Flower is as beautiful a tearjerker as I've ever heard. Had to listen to every verse and sing along with the chorus. And the fiddle, the banjo, Ralph 2 singing. There was never a moment that let my attention go. That's how it is with me and good music. If it doesn't do that to me, I don't care to hear it again. Like Taj Mahal. Every time I listen to him I listen in awe. Can't put a finger on why, but when I hear him my ear for music is satisfied. It's the same with Burning Spear. I can only listen when he's on. He pulls me all the way in whether I want to go or not. Prince. The Allman Brothers. Generation X. The Camp Creek Boys. I can't listen to anything like that when needing to focus someplace else. If the radio were on a heavy metal station, I could concentrate here just fine, but for the noise. I'd admire what they were doing musically, for their own way of expressing, but that doesn't take much focus. I'd have to turn it off for dulling my senses.



I like quiet mostly. Wondering if what makes a farmer different from other people is his comfort with quiet, with thinking about things, with solitude. It's a beautiful fog outdoors. Gives white background to tree leaves in the foreground. It's like Asian art. I continue to feel the beginnings of a new cycle. Don't know if what I see for the direction of the cycle is future memory or a vision of what I want it to be. I'm not ever so certain with the shape of even the near future. Seems like the future is always full of surprises. How can I guess what tomorrow's surprises will be, or the rest of this day's?



For the first time, today I listened to Billie Holiday's song Gloomy Sunday closely on YouTube. It was taken off the market not long after release because so many people were going out by suicide, in a literal way taken there by it. It's a powerful song about a real and true emotion as well as conclusions drawn. It's a beautiful song. I found on YouTube Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit, a b&w video of her standing beside a piano with piano man playing, Billie doing the best she can to stay on her feet, toward the end when her heroin addiction silenced her music and took her on out. It seemed like the film footage was made to get Billie Holiday on visual record singing while there was still something left of her. I found a video of Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie and the Banshees, London punk band from late 70s, Siouxsie singing Strange Fruit years later when the punk scene there was over and she went her own way. I like her singing of it as much as Billie Holiday's. I saw her in concert in 1991, one of my great concert experiences. I like her edge. I like Billie Holiday's truth.



Emily Mortimer and Woody Harrelson in today's film, TRANSSIBERIAN. Two very different people married from love, but so radically different she has a hard time with it. He doesn't even notice. The entire story was based in seeming. First you get the characters as they appear, as they seem, and think you got a fair picture of who the person is, then it turns out you didn't have a clue. Behind the seeming is something very different. Several instances of appearances being one thing and what's really going on another. Emily Mortimer did a tour de force role that showed she is indeed a serious actress. Woody was your cliche American man you see everywhere. The kind of guy that loved trains. Turned out his train knowledge saved their hides in the Siberian unknown on a train with people who seemed to be one way and were quite another. A mystery, an adventure story, and definitely a drama. I admired everything about the film from beginning to end.



At the same time it would be catalogued an adventure, it's primarily a relationship story, a time of she having a rough time with he, then she has an experience that messes with her head so bad she's ready to get back to their mundane life at home, ready to appreciate it. A theme running through the story was her need for roots, and he, difficult as he was in a thoughtless way, was all she had. And through this adventure she came to appreciate him in new ways and learned of his real affection for her. In that way it was a love story too. American baptist soccer mom tested to the Xtreme in something she was given to figure her way through. It's not the kind of gift anybody wants, but she'll never forget the experience and what she gained from it later along the way.



I like the kind of story where just anybody type of people get caught into something by apparent chance and then see what happens. Like in No Country For Old Men where the guy out hunting in south Texas comes up on a site after a Mexican drug dealing shootout that evidently killed everybody. He found a suitcase full of money and made the decision to take it. From then on, we see what it takes him through. He quickly found it was a force bigger than anything he could handle. It overtook him like a tidal wave. A good tale to warn me that when I find a suitcase full of money and dead people laying all about, just go on my way at a quickened pace and pretend I never saw nothin. What would I do with a zillion hundred dollar bills? Lord have mercy, it would make me crazy just having it. What? Fill up the ash tray and buy a new car? You'd see me going about like a rapper with bling all over in a gold cadillac convertible that can bounce up and down like in LA. Rich.

TOO OLD TO CARE

maple tree projection



Another day of skipping the fiddler's convention. When it came time to go out the door, I couldn't do it. I've been on the go so much, the last couple days at home where I want to be have been happy days. Didn't cost anything in gas to get here. Spent the day painting on the new canvas. Painting the background, negative space between the standing figures. Put several thin coats on it, different tones of a color each coat, going after depth in the color itself. I'll continue tomorrow. Putting the coats of paint on top of each other wet blends the colors a bit and makes a patina on the color below it. I'll put on some more coats and get it where I want it or an approximation thereof. I needed a boost to get going. Another ART:21 disc today, #4, every bit as inspiring as 1, 2 and 3.



I wanted to go to the fiddler's convention, knew where I wanted to sit. But it required effort to get from here to there. I was in a groove with the painting and decided it best to stay with it while I've got it. It felt good not to have to get in the car and drive someplace for one reason or another. It was funny to see how much I expected it of myself to be there. That must have been my public self. My private self said stay home if you want to. I would like to see/hear it, but wanted more to stay home. I know I would have enjoyed seeing whoever I might run into to stop and visit for awhile. If I'd been home so much lately that aching for someplace to go had set in, I'd have been there.



The oil spill is finally capped after how many months? I don't think about it much, but when it pops into mind I'm possessed with an enigma. What can I do? Nothing. That the source of the oil is stopped is a good thing, but far outweighed by the oil that has already been spread through the Gulf heading for the Atlantic. Out of sight, out of mind. Al Quaida would do best to sit back in their caves and watch CNN. They don't have to do anything to us. We do to ourselves better than they could ever pull off, even with the help of the CIA. Alice's Tea Party is looking like a homegrown terrorist outfit Tim McVeigh might have dreamed of in his prison cell. In the childhood years reading and seeing movies about cowboys and Indians, pulling for the Indians even though I knew they'd lose, I wondered if an entity as big as a country paid for its crimes against humanity as individuals. I decided a country surely would pay in its own ways. I think about the American murder rate, by far the most in the whole of civilization. Is this our return for attempted genocide and keeping survivors in concentration camps policed by the FBI? I have a feeling it is.



Yet, at the same time, attempted genocide tends to be an American propensity. Take a look at what has happened to a lush 2 continents that had people living all over them, but the integrity of the natural world was left intact. The people lived within its laws. Then along come Americans, initially British, much as they'd rather deny it, and we're hard at making both continents into oil slicks. I've wondered all along in my lifetime when it will come time to pay for all the issues politicians never address that need immediate addressing, are glossed over and put aside. They continue to grow. It's like dealing with our own issues. When one comes up to be dealt with, we stuff it back down saying, later for you. It's looking like it's time to fix all the institutions, etc., that have fallen down like old barns. One thing after another is facing the consequences of dodging real issues. I used to think of it as a jet plane flying straight at the side of a mountain full speed ahead. It seems like where we are in that way of seeing it is the nose of the plane has made contact, is crumpling from impact, the shockwave just beginning in the first nanoseconds.



I can't help but think it's a good thing we have an intelligent man at the helm in DC. Intelligence in our government is a rare phenomenon. I say value it while we have it. It's looking like Alice's Tea Party is making over Sarah Palin, NRA Barbie, into presidential candidate. What is their obsession with idoicy? Reagan, Bush1, Dan Quayle, Bush2, McCain. Now Palin being positioned. Puppets? I'll always remember the Jane's Addiction song, Idiots Rule. They win elections because stupid trumps intelligence on tv. I like being old enough that it doesn't matter. I like it that in this time of my life I can only name one tv sports star. That's Tiger Woods, and only because it's such an easy name to remember. There is bound to be some power in being Indonesian by heritage and named Tiger. Bold name. When you get to be top dog, the next step is the dethroning by the media. Fame and money turn out to be as fickle as the people that value them.

RAMBLIN ALONG SINGIN A SONG

tarbaby

Began the process of preparing the car for paint. Scraping the old clear-coat finish off with a razorblade and sanding down to the primer. All over. Tomorrow afternoon pick up title to car at law office, then to tag office to get tag. In the morning see TarBaby. Vet closed in afternoon. It feels like I'm starting a new momentum by beginning the process to restore the car. I'll think of this an art project, preparing the canvas. TarBaby 's white blood cell count has gone back upward. Maybe an xray will be necessary to find a hidden infection.

A black lab was lying on a towel in the room TarBaby was in. Her nose was banged up, dirt on her like she'd rolled on it. I asked Julie if a car hit her. Yes, it broke her left rear leg. I carried TarBaby to the window letting him look until he saw enough. I feel like I'd like to pet some of these lonesome dogs and cats that are not well, or are on their way to and from neutering / spaying, each one its own reason for being there. But I also don't know them and am not so sure about sticking a finger between the bars to pet the dog's nose. TarBaby seems to have settled in at home there. It must be that he feels safe in his cage seeing all the dogs and other cats come and go. All kinds of dogs out there, big ones too.

TarBaby's malady continues to be an enigma. I'm glad to see he's comfortable. He doesn't give any sign of being uncomfortable. The light is back in his eyes. He's filling out. He gives the appearance of understanding why he's there and gives in willingly to treatment. He seems to know that the others in that room have illnesses and fractures of their own. He has a stillness about him, like from being cloistered in meditation. Every day I let him know I'm not abandoning him. It certainly contributes to his calm demeanor.

Driving down the Twin Oaks Mountain Freeway, the mountains the other side of the river in Virginia were all in sunlight, while this side of the river was overcast, one big cloud. It had a glorious feeling about it. They're beautiful mountains and I don't know that I've ever seen their contours displayed as they were today. The gray of leafless trees. I thought to get some pictures of it, but it didn't seem like it would translate well to a photograph. One of those panorama scenes that a photograph reduces to a few inches by a few inches. A glorified postage stamp. But it was a nice view to enjoy from the top of the mountain to the bottom.

From seeing TarBaby I went out 18 to Sparks Hill to talk with Allen about painting the car. He showed me how to prepare the present finish for painting. It had clear coat on it. Plus, the front part of it had been repainted and reclear coated. Nearly all the clear coat was gone. All of it was gone from the top and the top of the trunk. We stood in the driveway talking a couple hours on this, that and the other. It had been several years since I've seen Allen. He's mostly doing repairs now. He hadn't painted a full car in 5 years. He said people fixing up old cars like I'm doing isn't happening much any more.

He also told me the engine, a 3300, will go from now on. With 126k miles on it, he said it will go that many more. I said it doesn't burn oil. He said it won't if the oil gets changed. I enjoyed every minute of talking with Allen, and appreciated all he taught me concerning preparation for painting. It has to be sanded all over by hand. If I'd followed my heart I'd be working on car bodies. In the time of my life when I might have started that kind of work, I was such a neurotic portrait of confusion, I couldn't make a rational decision. I wanted to believe it could be done, but knew better in the back of my mind.

It was a period of my life I stumbled through, stumbled and fell, stumbled and fell. No experience living in the world of making money and having expenses. What I had to do to make money, jobs. Attempting higher education and unable to even get started. Not knowing what it was about or why. Primarily, I couldn't read with any comprehension. Reading is essential in educational situations. Anyway, it was then.

2 years sailing the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea, I read every minute to myself. Right away I started reading novels of the French resistance during WW2 by existentialist philosophers, Camus, DeBeauvoir and Sartre. For a couple of years that's what I read. I can't say I started that time with much comprehension, but after 2 years of reading writing way beyond my ability to read, they pulled me along and I came out of it ready to start my education, knowing by then how much I needed it, able to read. I've never used the education to make money, but to give myself foundation.

TALK TALK

cutting the grass

Jr never could understand why I found his life so fascinating. To him, he was making do as needed doing, in motion toward the end of earning money for living expenses. Once he said, "I like to work like hell all week and get drunk on the weekend." Playing music on weekends he always had some liquor nearby. He drank up to the place where the liquor assists the artistry in the picking as good as it's going to, and held it there, this side of too much where the artistry gets stupid.

My life is too boring to talk about; reading, writing, painting, watching movies, listening to music, playing with the computer. When I was at the store, I could tell him in the evenings about different people who came in. Quite often I had good conversation with all kinds of people, which, for me, was more satisfying as a reason to have the store than anything else. The variety of people that came in there told me we have some very interesting people passing through Sparta or have moved here from someplace else. We also have some very interesting people from here.

The one-upmanship games some men play were pretty funny. When that game started, I bowed out. The most fun were the obvious PhDs who teach at some university, neatly bearded, professorial ego. I'm remembering one in particular started quizzing me in conversation, testing my knowledge of this or that to do with whatever. I gave an unsatisfactory answer right off, dropped a caint for can't and them for those, got summed up an idiot not worth talking to and he rejoined his wife browsing.

There was a city guy staying here temporarily with parents who came here from someplace else, talking about making a documentary film about mountain music, knowing nothing about it. Wanted me involved because I'm an "expert." I cautioned him, "I'm not an expert." "Yes you are." "No I'm not. I'm not an expert on anything, certainly not mountain music." It flabbergasted him. He just hadn't heard expert enough to be tired of it yet. I hear it on the news every day; so and so, the expert. I was testing him too, to see if he had what it took to get past that word. It was the end of it. There wasn't anything to it to start with. It made interesting conversation. City people like to talk and I like to listen.

When I met somebody exceptional that day I'd tell Jr about it. Like the man from Florida who was an old-time fiddler originally from the mountains outside Chatanooga, about 40 miles south of where my ancestors lived, and his dad was an old-time fiddler in the mountains there. He told of a time he went to Ireland and sat in with jams learning to play their style. When they played the old-time fiddle tune he knew as Red Wing, somebody sang the words. He didn't know Red Wing had words. He ran it by his dad later, and he never heard of Red Wing having words either. He took it from finding no one he talked to this side of the Atlantic knew it had words that the words to a song he only knew as a fiddle tune must not have crossed the ocean.

One thing I found about old people that younger people don't know is the old folks got soul. It's just that electric music isn't music to them. It's noise. Good old-time music can set old folks in motion their grandkids didn't know they had in em. Go to one of the dance places on a Fri or Sat night in Glendale Springs, Sparta, Cana, Floyd, Flat Ridge, Fries, and see old folks flatfootin the old-time way, floating a half inch off the floor, keeping perfect time.

Sometimes I'd tell Jr something interesting I heard or read about in the news. Like a few years ago I found a paragraph in the back of a Time magazine that told of a Russian mountain village buried in a tidal wave of mud from a melted glacier that ran 75mph. In what must have been a couple of minutes it buried the entire village and everybody in it. He wasn't interested in anything on the news, except something he can see in his mind. He can't see budget deficit in his mind. I told him other odd stories I found in the news from time to time.

His grandfather Joines was a blacksmith in Whitehead. His grandfather Maxwell was killed at the end of the Civil War by a sniper while watering his horse at Killon's branch, near where the bypass meets Hwy 21 at Blevins. Jr's dad was 3 months in the womb when his daddy died. His last 6 months in the womb his mother was in her grief. When he was born, what a treasure he must have been. He was given the same name. Jr was his from his dad's second marriage. His first wife died when their younguns were in their thirties. He married Loretta (Etta) Joines, sister to Pine Swamp fiddler Howard Joines, and Jr was born 5 years later. Old man Wiley lived until Jr was in his early thirties.

Jr's stories were all from mountain culture, which was fascinating to me, and nothing to him. Our conversations at the table brought me closer to the culture, gave me a front row seat to the music world from the inside. He never remembered places and dates, but always remembered the people around him. He liked everybody he knew. That's not an exaggeration and it wasn't forced in him. It came from who he was, all the way deep within. I knew for a long time that God had a special affection for Jr Maxwell. His life was simple as a monk's, and he'd been wrung through several wringers. The wild man in him survived all of it. When his wild man could no longer act out, he could think. His sense of humor was always turned on.

THE MORNING START

the green chair




This morning I woke to a slight noise and started to get out of bed to check on Jr to see that he was all right. I was in my own home and Caterpillar was looking at me from the floor. Went back to sleep and another small sound woke me. I started out of the bed to see about Jr again. It's been over a couple of weeks and this has not happened before. I'm wondering if it's more nostalgia than conditioning. By now memory of Jr is fading from my mind, such that I suspect this appeal to conditioning could be my subconscious mind wanting to keep Jr in the foreground of my thoughts as he slips to the background.



This is the part of grief that is hard to deal with, seeing the other start to fade from the front of the mind to the back with all other experiences that are forgotten until reminded, or totally gone. I'm thinking the start this morning was my mind's way of bringing Jr to the foreground again as he begins to recede from the front of the mind. It's like a best-seller list and a pop music chart. When something that's been at #1 for awhile and you like seeing it at #1, starts sliding down the chart, replaced by new number ones, twos and threes, and gradually fades into forgotten, one feels a minor sorrow seeing it go away. In mid 1950s Bill Doggett's Honky Tonk was #1 for about a year. It was a record I never tired of hearing. I felt sorrow when it faded from the charts, though not major by any means. I never think about it now, haven't for many a year, but when I hear it by chance somewhere, it's new all over again.




I'd forgotten that last night I told myself I wanted to be up at 8 this morning and get the day going. After the 2nd time I woke to a sound that made me jump up to see about Jr, the digital clock said 8:02. Remembering that I'd asked to wake up at 8, now I see what a clever trick my mind played on itself. Or rather one part of the mind, perhaps the witness part, the witness who sees our dreams and understands what we're thinking, tricked the part of the mind that was dreaming with an association it knew would work. Automatically, I started to see if Jr had fallen out of bed or anything else of a long list of possibilities. It turns out I miss that degree of alert preparedness.




Two weeks back in my own space, that ever-ready mind has relaxed. In a way, it's like they say about someone with a limb cut off, that it continues to feel like it's there, like a ghost arm. Habits of thinking, habits in the details of everyday life are slow to change. For Jr it was a slow process from being able to take care of himself to unable, and a gradual process for me to adjust to changes as they came up, like from cane to walker to wheelchair. Tuning waves down to ripples and ripples down to calm was part of what I did too. Now and then somebody came in whose mind was a whirlwind of anxieties and they'd pass their mental fizz to him. When they were gone I'd sit with him and we'd talk awhile, I'd see to calming his mind, getting it back on his track just by talking about anything.


I'd been with him all the way from when his mind was good to when it went blank. Toward the end when his mind was a tiny fraction of its former self, I was able to communicate with him because I continued to see it was Jr Maxwell inside, just severely challenged when it came to expression. One of the most serious problems I had with nursing homes was their absence of interest in who he was or anything to do with his life and his habits. He was a number in a file; don't bother us, we're busy. They have guidelines: lie or you lose your job. A conscious being regarded the same as lumber. The beds equal shelves. I won't even mention the so-called food, because he didn't eat it anyway.


What a time it's been, helping a friend ease into dying, keeping his self-respect intact as he loses control of his self and dwells in the embarrassment of helplessness. In his helpless time I wanted Jr to be able to have someone with him he could trust absolutely. I never lied to him one time and never mislead him in any way. That's how I am with my friends. My friends are people I trust absolutely. That's the kind of friend I am. Being a friend / having a friend is the most important relationship in one's life. Somebody you can tell anything to and not be judged, knowing it won't be told around, is the highest value.


Tom Pruitt told me people told him things they didn't tell anybody else. He never understood why. It's because he didn't tell it around and he didn't judge them. We need people in our lives we can open up with; hence, be relaxed with, at home with, comfortable with. One of the primary reasons I disliked the condition of marriage was not being allowed to have friends anymore. Why can't I have friends for the rest of my life? Why don't you want friends? Some have told me what I did for Jr is not done very much in this time. That's part of why I did it.


There is much that is good and beautiful in this time. Barbara Kingsolver writes a beautiful novel. Bob Dylan is making music better than ever, writing volumes of really good songs. Philip Glass shifted the direction of what's called classical music. New ideas opening up at the dizzying rate of species extinctions around the globe. In some ways we're opening and expanding horizons every day. In other ways we're treading the path to collective self-destruction. Like the REM song, It's the end of the world as we know it. It just takes a couple of centuries for the old ways to fade out and the new ways to fade in. A computer is wild enough for me. Blackberry? iPod? Twitter? I do know what a blog is. So maybe I'm still kinda cool, maybe a little bit, a little tiny bit. Another self-delusion bites the dirt.

GOOD TIMES

composition in gray #14

Good conversations today, all through the day. I slept into the morning in no hurry to get up. Up around 10, tea and emails. At 11:30 I met Jim Winfield for lunch at the Circle L. He's on his way out again for 3 winter months in Southeast Asia. Every year he goes someplace in the winter months. Last year he went to Southeast Asia, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand. This time it will be Thailand, Laos and southern VietNam and Malaysia. The winter before that he went to India. He doesn't go to tourist hotels. His adult life he was in the Peace Corps in Ecuador living among rural Indians, Haiti and then Zambia in Africa. He knows how to go solo on the back roads.

From the Circle L I went to Kermit's barber shop. Only man in there was in the chair. Good timing. Kermit is a bass player by night. Tuesday and at least one Saturday night a month he plays at the Jubilee with the Rise & Shine Band, a bluegrass dance band. He's been playing bluegrass bass for many years. He and Jr have been friends all the way along and they made a lot of music together, both respecting each other's musianship. We talked about Jr the whole time Kermit was cutting my hair. Mostly we talked about how much everyone who knew him loved him. It wasn't just liking an awful lot, but love the people who knew Jr felt for him, a love that is real for someone so unselfconsciously real.

I consider the woman who knew him all of both their lives said his was a life of compassion. Add that to what I'm finding that so many people love Jr with a wide open heart and it starts adding up to what I've been seeing for a few years now, that this is one remarkable human being, one to pay attention to. His cousin Richard, who made a lot of music with Jr and they worked bulldozers together for years, called Jr gifted. He had a brilliant mind that in a rural setting turns to learning a musical instrument, sawmilling and figuring things out. Sawmilling takes an unwavering focus of attention, same as bulldozer operating, welding and everything else he did. Every person he talked with he gave unwavering attention.

He told me once he thought himself the lowest of everybody. Everybody he held higher than himself. I saw over the next years what he meant. Just what he said. That is the measure of his humility. I don't know if I've known anyone as naturally humble a man as Jr. His humility was automatic, required no thought. He actually did look up to everyone. He never passed judgment on anyone during our conversations and taught me by example judgment's worthlessness. Other people's business was never of interest to Jr. He respected everyone's privacy the same as he expected his own privacy to be respected. He wouldn't rat on anybody for anything for any reason.

Some years ago Southwest Virginia lawyer Lorne Campbell told me the man he respects is a man who will not rat under any circumstances. He said that's a rare individual. Campbell himself was such a man and had he known Jr, he would have respected Jr as I do. Jr's lawyer Jimmy Reeves always wanted to sit and talk with him whenever Jr went to his office. Telling me about it, he asked me why an educated man like that who's been through college and lawschool wants to talk with somebody uneducated like him. I told him it's respect. I took it to mean he saw in Jr what I saw in Jr, a remarkably intelligent man. He didn't buy it.

A few weeks before his last breath he said out of the blue, 'I've never done anything I'm ashamed of.' It told me this is one of the subjects he studied while drifting in that place between awake and asleep. He said it with satisfaction like it was important to him, as we'd automatically assume, but it's not necessarily a guiding light for everyone. I thought it a good thing to find about oneself in a time in life when there's nothing to do but lie in bed and think.

From Kermit's I went on to Twin Oaks to see TarBaby. This time his cubicle was on the floor level. Before, he was on the second floor. I sat on the floor and opened the door inviting him to let me hold him. He stepped into my arms, walked up my right upper arm onto my shoulders where he walked back and forth a couple of times, sat down awhile, then walked down my left arm to be held. I held him with his forelegs draped over my left arm, held him and talked to him, assured him I'm not abandoning him. He knows that. I saw confidence yesterday too, that I'm still with him. I'm grateful to Jr for insight into the importance of visitation in confinement. TarBaby looked much improved today over yesterday. He was relaxed like he'd been expecting a visit.

BOYCOTT OF ONE

composition in gray #13

A new statistic came across the radio yesterday. 39% of Americans believe evolution is the process of creation. That means 61% don't. I'd like to see a survey of the percentage of people believing the earth is round. It's good the tyranny of the majority doesn't apply to natural laws. If only 39% of people believed gravity, it would be too low a percentage to allow as a law. We'd all float rapturously into space, freezing to death a few miles up, then crisping like pork rinds. Ignorance really is not bliss. Maybe that has something to do with why we're not such a blissful bunch of people in Prozac Nation. Not much danger of evolution going away due to low approval rating, or the earth flattening like a pancake.

I recall in the 50s when the Russians put up the Sputnik, suddenly we had a rush in America on science and math that lasted a year or 2. Deeply rooted American antipathy toward education wins in the end. During WW2 the intellectuals in Europe came to America, the brain drain, got jobs teaching in universities, raised our educational possibilities, and now those intellectuals are dead of old age and the few that have carried on their legacy do it in private funded by foundations, berated by politicians. They keep quiet. In America we don't kill our intellectuals. We ignore them. When we get an intelligent man in the White House, the forces of ignorance gather round like demons and render him ineffective, or kill him, whichever.

I've been looking at this last election that was something like the white man's last stand, finding it interesting to see it happen in my lifetime. At the same time, I know the white man isn't going to take it lying down. White man has a lot of power, all the big power. Even though things are quiet now, I have a feeling a groundswell, something like a tsunami could be happening in the collective subconscious of white man.

It could rise up suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, and cause quite a problem. The Cheney-Bush administration demonstrated white man foresight doesn't exist. If a lone gunman gets Obama, he better be black. A Clarence Thomas type black man that tap dances for white man could easily be hired to do it. If a white man were to kill Obama, the entire world would come down on American white man. Would he care? Hell no! We got all the nukes we need and multiple thousands more.

I don't believe any of this will happen, mainly because things never happen as bad as a jaundiced projection can make it look. Everything is subject to infinite possibilities of change, so the way something looks now to somebody who listens to the news maybe 15 minutes a week, reads no journals of higher learning, investigates nothing, is even less informed than a recliner quarterback, is certain not to ever be the case. It's how the mind works, drawing lines between dots like in the constellations, making apparent order out of apparent chaos. Trying to figure things out, possibly looking for foundation.

It doesn't work for me to try to figure things out on such a scale as the American Mind or direction or anything. I can't even figure out what's happening in my own present moment, let alone somebody else's or everybody else's. I like to believe the images I make by joining dots with lines are the way things really are, but they are not. Not even close. I'm in a time of my life where I want to draw all my figuring-out mind inward toward my own immediate world and think not at all of anything outside my literal arm's reach.

I won't drink CocaCola because the plant in Columbia hired hit squads to kill union activists and their families. My boycott doesn't hurt CocaCola at all, but I support my own integrity having a DrPepper. I think of it every time I punch the DrPepper button instead of the CocaCola on a drink machine, also realizing every time it makes no difference to anyone but me. It's my own personal thing, the boycott of one.

I doubt I've even been right in my political projections or even how I see the present moment right where I stand, let alone Washington DC or New York, Beijing, West Jefferson, Sparta, even Whitehead. Right now at this moment, TarBaby has his front legs draped over my left arm. Tapo is on the foot stool waiting for TarBaby to get up so she can have the special place.

My mind is focused entirely on Jr and being there in the house with him. It's a cause of a bit of stress in that I can't be 100% and do everything with a smile for him. I have to allow myself my inability to be all-seeing, all-knowing where his condition is concerned. There's a bit of stress in the need to maintain my own life at the house while I'm devoting all my time to Jr's well being. I need my own time, which I take without guilt, that makes it possible for me to spend all the rest of the time with Jr. I like to keep something close to a balance. Sometimes I feel out of balance and sometimes in balance. A wavering thing, a wave.

The news has become a nuisance for me. I turn it on and it's full of silly stuff like a kid in a box in an attic and a fake spaceship balloon. Surrealism has become realism. The absurd is our cultural foundation. Makes it interesting. It's like the art of the 20th Century that was way out there and incomprehensible to the masses, now is our way of life. It's said art precedes life, in that it happens first in art. Drawing lines between dots again.