MY WORLD

justin throws a dart in the mancave

 

I wanted to write you last night when I came home from Superbowl Sunday, but it was so late and I was so weary from being up since 6, no nap, 45 minute drive both ways, coming home at night in rain. I've learned to take the back roads and stay off the state highways. Our new highway patrolmen are predators. In the past, that didn't go here, but now it does. We've had good ones in the past, really good ones. The most recent to retire stayed here and became chief of police, our first who was not a thug in my time here. I don't like seeing the blue flashing lights in my rearview mirror. It ruins my day for several days. Last time was really bad: 57 in a 45 and driver's license expired a year and a half. I was in my old man camouflage, a Farm Bureau Insurance ballcap. With this hat and white hair, privileges occur. People open doors, speak without defenses. I wore it when Kathryn and I went to Roanoke to see Willie Nelson. People spoke to me like I was somebody to respect, which really blew my circuits. It was an audience of country people. The women at the tshirt table talked to me like I was an old friend. The hat and white hair made the highway patrolman talk to me like he was talking to his grandpa, with respect. The hat didn't save me from having to spend $263 plus tag office fees. The whole experience makes me want to stay home all the more. I'm so paranoid on the highway now I could be arrested for going too slow. Melvin and I made it back to Whitehead where he'd parked his truck. We meet at the parking lot of an old defunct country store and take turns driving. Sometimes it is determined who drives by who has enough gas to get there and back.



melvin sends a dart on its way 

 

Again, the answer to what comes next when I turn my back to the world of the false, corporate news, fake human beings, people so self-serving even their wives and children can't get through. Every time I go to town and see people I know to talk with by chance, and when I get with friends that drink wine or friends that drink liquor or friends that don't drink at all, I pay closer attention now. I have realized that the people of my world, the people I live among and everyone I know, are wonderful people, most of them people I can trust absolutely, and they can trust me the same. This is actually the world I live in, not DC or NYC or LA or anyplace else, even the next county. My world is Alleghany County NC. I don't even like to cross the county line anymore, except when I know I won't be long, maybe to hear live music. Last night with Justin and Melvin, Crystal and the kids, I was paying attention to them reminding myself they are my world, my world is a wonderful place. We look after one another's interest in my world. I don't mean like butt into one another's business, but when somebody needs a hand or an assist of some sort, all it takes is seven numbers on a telephone. In my world, we support one another. We back each other up, right or wrong not a question. Nobody in my world is a fake human being. I live in a world of hillbillies. They are my world. I never allow one of my hillbilly friends to feel shame over being a hillbilly. I keep them knowing hillbilly is good as it gets. You were fortunate in the luck of the draw to be born a hillbilly. For one thing, hillbillies know about and live respect. Respect is something I see little of outside these mountains. I've become so mountain over time that when I visit friends in a city, it's a very short time before I'm thinking of the people I'm around: Don't you know anything about respect? You look down on the people I live among, but they, at least, know something about respect. I learned respect in the mountains.

 

baby vada faye

 

This picture of Vada is out of focus, but it feels to me like it represents her better than one in clear focus. There is something about an out of focus picture that brings it to life somehow, suggests motion. We see each other's faces in motion. She performed for us during the Bruno Mars dance music at half-time. Crystal made video of her dance and put it on facebook. All of us were taken by the Bruno Mars music. We unanimously agreed this was the best music any of us had ever heard on a Superbowl halftime show. The band played music in abundance. Vada has a charismatic charm. She sings and sings, songs from children's tv, songs mommy taught her. I don't dare draw a conclusion, but I see in Vada her great-great grandmother, Faye, who played guitar and sang the old songs all her life. I knew Faye. Vada sometimes seems to me to be Faye herself. She walks like Faye, is featured like her, even has the same look in her eyes. I can attribute it to genetics too, and don't know where to draw the line. I still feel like Faye is in Vada. As a newborn baby I could see in her infinite happiness when she saw that Justin and Crystal were her parents. It was evident to me that she already knew them and was tickled like crazy she turned up their baby. She still has that delight being with them. She's natured like Faye so much it's like the same person to me. Faye had a charisma about her too. She sang with old-time string bands at jams with her music-making friends. Faye was the one playing rhythm guitar and singing. I'd like to see Vada grow up, to see the woman she will become. I think, though, I already see her.

 

he didn't catch it

 

I knew Justin when he was Vada's age and had the good time of seeing him grow up. He is the same Justin now as the Justin I knew then. The very same. He has more experience now than then, but that's it. He has the same attitude toward life now that was in him then. In like manner, I can see the woman in Vada in the child she is now. Justin and I know that we have had previous lifetimes together, the most recent as brothers. We have always felt like brothers, even when he was little. He had a dream a year or so ago, so vivid that when he woke up he didn't know where he was at first. He said the dream covered the whole lifetime from childhood to old age. He said it was like a documentary with him in it. We were close as brothers and I died young in my teens, explaining our age difference now. It even felt to me like I knew Justin before when he was a little kid. I took him to his first theater movie, the Kevin Costner Robin Hood, then all the Ninja Turtles, which I enjoyed as much as he did, plus I had the enjoyment of treating him to them. I took him to see The Bear and Gladiator. I ordered The Bear from netflix and we watched it again last weekend with Crystal and the kids. He said he remembered every detail of the film. That's the kind of retentive mind he has. Motivated, he would have been a whiz in school. But he didn't care about school. He was the generation that listened to Korn, Slip-knot, System of a Down, Kid Rock, Linkin Park. He likes old-time hillbilly music and bluegrass, too. He likes Hank Williams one, two and three, Rodney Carrington, Larry the Cable Guy, the Fast and Furious movies, all of them. When I'd "baby sit" him and his sister, Sheena, I'd rent a kid's movie or two of their choice. We watched a lot of movies together. On his 16th birthday I gave him the new Kid Rock album that was dynamite in it's moment. When his dad heard it, he took it away from Justin. Next day Justin took it back and his dad never noticed.      

 

the new bow

 

 

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THE DREAM OF THE KICKING HORSE AGAIN

cy twombly

On the phone this morning with my friend Carole, I brought up the dream of the kicking horse, the reading of it I'd done so far, concluding with self as irrefutable horse's ass. We laughed at the comedy of it, but she didn't think that was the conclusion, and I didn't either, because I'd continued to search after making the conclusion. I don't mean to deny self as horse's ass. I just don't feel like that's the end of it, that there is more, turn the page. She brought up the mailbox, which I'd left out. It's also the ground where I feed the crows. Crow energy there. The mailbox is an extension of self where communications arrive and depart. In a way, the mailbox is a door to the rest of the world. If friends are traveling in India, they can send a postcard and it turns up in my doorway to the rest of the world. I had not seen a mailbox in those words. Of course, we know that's what they do, but without thinking of it in words. Where crow energy is concerned, crow is my totem. I didn't go to a workshop for finding your totem, it finally came to me after noticing the degree of attention I pay to them when I see them. Out driving, a crow flies across the road somewhere out ahead of me, I often speak out loud, and always think, "Hey, friend." I throw seeds to them there every day. It is my way of getting acquainted with my crow neighbors that live in this area. They fly away the moment I open the door, but that's ok. I call to them when I throw the seeds out of the cup. I don't want to tame them or even try to stop them from flying away when I go out. I don't want to give them the error in judgment to think that if one human treats them well, the others will too. I don't work like that.

cy twombly

Looking at the exact spot of the horse kick in this light, it is a high energy spot for my own energy. Therefore, Carole suggested, the horse is a vision of my being, the whole being, who I am. We'd already talked over the chestnut horse back end and the black and white neck and head. We were not satisfied I'd gone far enough in the examination. She suggested it is self looking at self, a mirror image. We were talking about the balance of tame mind and wild hind quarters. I've been writing over the last few weeks about different kinds of knowledge, or knowing, like first hand information from experience and second hand information from somebody else's experience. Say the head and neck are the civilized man, tame, educated to whatever degree, while the rear end is the natural horse, what my old preacher friend Millard Pruitt used to call "the natural man." In his cosmology, the natural man is bound straight for hell without getting saved and going to church the rest of his life. In my cosmology, the natural man is the seat of common sense, intuition. He is not wicked or evil or even a "sinner." Natural man is the body, or the gross world, which I don't see the same way as preacher Pruitt, though I appreciate his understanding. I don't judge it bad. I see it requires self-control and guidance. Carole said she saw a balance. She noted that in my spiritual quest I have not denied inner natural man, but include him as valid and necessary for balance, that balance is foremost in my thinking for my own life.  She said it is important to me that I be a balance of my whole self, all parts working together for balance, denial and suppression unacceptable. We came to experiences of the last few days with my wild friends, not my only friends, just the wild ones. They are the back half of the horse that I am.

cy twombly

The front part of the horse that is self can be seen in my tame friends, in my lifetime of self-education, interest in art of all facets, interior quests. Seeing what I saw last night addressing the dream, the judgment assessed the front part of the horse pretend spiritual and the rest all ass. Seen through judgment, it's discouraging. Interpreted without judgment it became a vision of balance that I value in self. The back part, the natural part of the horse, is kicking, though not aggressively, flexing, alive, like my friends I call wild. The dream might be saying my natural man is alive and well. That's how I want him to be. Friends do the heedless active wildness for me, like I sublimate through them. They do it and tell me about it and my belly hurts from laughing. I really don't want to get in a gunfight with sheriff deputies, nor do I want to drive 140 on mountain highways at night racing, nor do I want to fight somebody who looks at me wrong. My friends who do these things, and much, much more, help me live the experience in their telling, something I really, deep down want to do, but fail to get my thrills from adrenaline rushes looking over the edge. My spotted head and neck don't like adrenaline rushes. I didn't want to die young this time around, wanted a complete lifetime to experience growing old and see what it's about. By now, I'm on the verge of satisfied. This evening I'll be watching the Superbowl with Justin and Melvin, Crystal and kids. We'll tell wild stories and laugh in the mancave through the second quarter and halftime. For somebody who loves at home the poetry of Louise Gluck and John Berryman, the films of Ingmar Bergman and Zhang Yimou, contemporary Chinese fiction, the Journals of Andre Gide, watching the Superbowl and talking shit in the mancave give balance. Might take a look at my horoscope chart. It is surely in there someplace, the need for balance.

 

cy twombly

 

This dream expression of natural man kicking up his heels brought Pinocchio to mind again in relation to identity with donkeys. I've meant to read the story again, the original Carlo Collodi in translation. Having a problem because it's a little too much a children's story. It's that morality is explained to boys every step of the way. Also, dealing in the obvious all the time gets a bit old in a hurry, like tv. Pinocchio goes through an adventure with seven realizations that take him, step by step, plane by plane, through his spiritual quest to become a "real boy," which I interpret for myself, a true human being. Pinocchio goes through the process from what I called earlier the natural man, the gross plane in another way of looking at it, where we start our quest for enlightenment, or what I call becoming a true human being. The part I'm most curious about is his last adventure when he turns into a donkey. This is what happens to self-willed, self-indulgent boys, they grow donkey ears first and then turn into donkeys. They can't talk anymore; they can only bray. They will live the rest of their lives as dumb beasts of burden, jackasses, and nobody will ever know they were once little boys. It makes me wonder if I'm in my jackass, my African Wild Ass, time of my lifetime quest to become a real boy, a true human being. I want to see how Collodi addresses that period of Pinocchio's inner growth, see what the jackass time is about. I'm curious to see what it is about jackass that brought Pinocchio through the final adventure before his realization. Calling it realization is high-sounding, but I don't mean it like that. Realization suggests too much going out in a ball of light. I prefer to think of realization as finally getting it, palm of hand hits forehead: Duh! What took you so long? The Cars are in my head: O Jackie, I thought you knew the way. I like looking at the dream as my inner African Wild Ass kicking its heels saying he's healthy and alive. I looked out the window just now and saw the black and white calf with Jack and Jenny. A whole new way to look at it.

cy twombly himself

 

 

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THE DAY AFTER THE SUPER BOWL

 



photo by rob carr/getty images

There's no yesterday's news like the day after the Super Bowl. Like Christmas, when it's over, it's over. Christmas is over the moment the last present is unwrapped. Big hype, big expectation for weeks. Then it's over. Poof. Gone to the zone of memories. The Super Bowl game was a truly memorable game for me. The story of the brother coaches, the parents and entire families there for the game, were the real story of this Super Bowl. The worst for the losing brother was this was the first time SF lost a Super Bowl, evidently. SF's last play, fouls committed by opposition overlooked by referee, set the SF coach to wringing his guts. Had the receiver been able to catch ball, both his feet would have landed out of bounds and the pass ruled incomplete. From coach's perspective at the sideline a long ways off looked one way; it was different from the perspective of the camera in close. Hearing news people make noise about the overlooked passer interference turns my ears off like hearing Donald Trump wanting to see the president's birth certificate.

I enjoyed every minute of the game. The best was when Reed ran the ball 108 yards to touchdown. It was the most beautiful run I think I've ever seen. He ran through a channel that opened in front of him as he ran. Ran through the opposition and then outran his lone pursuer. Simply outran him. I enjoy seeing two people running all out and the one in front pulling away from the one chasing him. I believe this was Reed's last game too. Beautiful video to have of that run in his last game. I was pulling for Baltimore, because my friends I was watching the game with were pulling for them. It was important to them. To me, it was White against Red. I could have pulled for the Red as easily as I pulled for the White. The game did not have many good plays at the line, not many runners wiggled through the line. Line defense on both sides was tight. It looked to me like most of the advances were made through the air. I say "looked to me" because if I'd see stats of the game, they would probably say the opposite of what I thought I saw. The teams were so tight that the driving force and the inhibiting force were equal, making for a steady back and forth rhythm.

Baltimore setting out like they did, making the score at the end of the first half 21 to 3, if I remember correctly (I'm sure I don't), did not get my hopes up the least little bit. I was remembering about a month ago seeing Atlanta subdue SF first half to the same degree. Second half, Atlanta didn't score anything and SF caught up with and surpassed them in the second half. They came close to repeating that performance. There was even the time with four minutes left in the game I figured SF would score for certain and win. They were down to the 2 yard line with four downs. Baltimore defense held them in place. SF chose to go for the touchdown on 4th down and it didn't work. Tight game. I like a tight game like that. I also like a loose game. There is something about tv football that satisfies a liking for seeing something different every time, like watching a flame in a fireplace. Years ago, I asked Ted Stern how he could watch tv games, football, basketball and baseball all the time. He answered, "The same way you listen to that music you listen to." I got it. He couldn't have answered it more clearly. It told me he understood that I was hearing something that's equally satisfying to me.

It's the skill I like to watch in the players. I believe that applied for him too. I'm learning a little bit about strategies, though I really don't care to know. I'd far rather listen to music than watch football, though I like to watch football too. Of course, we like to think the games are not "rigged." Yet, considering a Super Bowl game is the biggest money tv event of the year, where it's important that Beyonce NOT lip-sync, and trillions up to be won or lost by gambling enterprises all over the world. Where that much underworld money is involved, it is hard to believe some big money is not drifting around under the table, too. The Super Bowl is about money and nothing else. Four million for a half minute commercial, tells me advertisers know the power of television. In cogressional hearings, they let on like they never heard of television having any influence on anybody. When you can watch films and tv shows about killing around the clock without even trying, the influence on our society is becoming more obvious every week on the evening news. Our tv is about slap-stick comedy, sports and killing. Sports amount to subliminal killing. It is ours to learn to immunize ourselves to the influence of solving problems by killing, every day of our lives. Like everything else that requires an effort of awareness, few will bother. So it's not a solution for the whole, only for a few.

None of us watching the game believed the power outage occurring when it did was anything but sabotage. Before the game, Justin told me the "odds" favored SF in the gambling arena. The lights going out came when SF needed their turn-around that the half-time gave them before. I've seen over and over the half-time change the dynamic of a game. After the 2nd half started, SF had not made the turn to take charge of the game. It was the same momentum as in the first half. When the lights came back on, the dynamic had shifted. SF came out swinging. I saw something today making reference that Louisiana being a "work free" union free state, no electrician union standards were met by the electricians there working the lights. My thought then was that without the union, it would be easy to send somebody in to do one thing in particular and disappear. It has nothing to do with unions or not unions. Offer some working class guy a house on the beach at Waikiki and a million a year for life. His tongue would be hanging out and dripping. He'd be saying, Tell me what to do, boss. Tell me what to do. I was glad to see the ruse was just a few minutes too late for the time SF needed in the second half.

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