DANCING WITH MYSELF

the black box

by tj worthington

One of the better aspects of living alone is having no one to react to my peculiarities. I like the freedom to be peculiar when I feel like it. Like I just now smoked a cigarette/cigar and followed it with a Hershey's Kiss. It's a good combination. Peeling the foil off the chocolate, I thought, this is peculiar. And simultaneously forgave myself. It works for me, why concern myself if it's peculiar? It is what it is, whatever it is. Last night about this time I had a drink of some Wild Turkey and it put my lights out. It's never done that before. And this was only 80 proof. I was on facebook looking at what my DCP friends were doing, gearing self toward writing, poured a drink, sipped on it like usual. I never feel anything. It's why I sip. I don't want to feel it. I want to taste it. I love the taste of Wild Turkey Rye. I never drink to the point I feel woozy standing up and trying to walk. I don't like that. By the time what I'd poured into the glass was gone, my head was spinning. I had to get up from the computer. Went to the reading chair and picked up the book I'm enjoying at the moment, Dancing With Myself, by Billy Idol, an autobio. I'd been through three Chris Hedges books about an absurd society, felt I needed a break, a page-turner, something to hold me in place when I pick it up. Went to amazon looking for some white paint and a birthday present dvd. Something popped up out of the blue, no recollection of how I found it, an ad set specifically to my buying record as I sometimes buy books or dvds having to do with punk. Billy Idol's bleached hair sticking straight up and title, Dancing With Myself. I said, That's it. This is what I came to amazon for and didn't know it. Found a new copy at a good price and ordered it immediately. It was impulse and it wasn't. It was not an impulse in that I knew on sight this is what I wanted to read next. 

richard tuttle

It arrived a few days later, making my day. Carried it from the mailbox to the house like a kid Christmas morning about to open the present he wants to open most. It wasn't a good time to start it, so I flipped through the pictures with family in childhood and rock stars in adult life. I've liked Billy Idol since his punk band Generation X in the late 70s. He had a teenage suburban brat persona. Punk degenerated in London, his band faded out as a result of some success that set the guys in the band at odds with each other. Heroin had a little bit to do with it. His label had been talking to him about going solo, which tempted him, but he didn't want to leave the band mates while they had a good thing going. The band fell apart and he flew to New York with a suitcase and his guitar. Got checked in and second night stepped into a dance club to feel the energy, see what they're doing in the States. He said the people were not dancing, just standing around. The dj put on Generation X's, Dancing With Myself, Billy's attempt to make a punk song with dance rhythms. Everybody ran to the dance floor, the whole place was in motion. He said he knew in that moment he was going to make it. He had apprehension of New York, having heard it can chew you up and spit you out. The Sex Pistols did not survive their American tour. After four gigs they fell apart as a band and went home. The States spitting out the Pistols gave Billy a degree of pause. This is the book I was looking for. I have to make myself stop reading. In the chair under the light of the floor lamp I tried to read after leaving the computer light-headed last night. Couldn't read. The words were not working for me. Had to get up and go to bed. Couldn't get to sleep. Lay there wondering what happened. It was obvious. Had not eaten all day. Fell asleep thinking if I never wake up, heaven here I come.   

richard tuttle

Woke about five hours later, got up around one, went to the desk, started writing yesterday's entry. My head was nodding throughout the last paragraph. Head would fall over to the left, then to the right, or straight down, looking for the tabletop to rest forehead on, but none was there, only the keyboard. I struggled to stay awake throughout the paragraph. By the time I made it to bed around 6, I'd forgotten what I wrote. I felt like I was writing on automatic pilot. Forgot each sentence as I put it down. Which is cool. I stayed with it after telling myself I do have permission to stop for now and finish it later after some rest. No, I wanted to stay with it. This is the place I like best for writing. I feel like it is all coming from the subconscious when I'm so drowsy the mind is not working. I like writing best when I'm so weary I barely know consciously what I'm saying. In the writing, I'm thinking this is the worst shit I've ever put down, just delete it, don't embarrass yourself by letting anybody see it. Decided to go ahead and embarrass myself, let my inner stupid have its moment, and clicked on Publish. Done. Put it on the DCP facebook page and to the bed I go. Woke up a couple hours later, carrot time, weary as a fox dog after running all night, ground-cover snow out the windows. I threw on a sweater and the heavy shirt that is also a warm jacket, and a hat, to take carrots to donkeys and seeds to the birds. Jack brayed and Jenny squealed. I remembered again how deeply in my heart I love Jenny and Jack. My heart glows when I see them. I've learned how to bray with them. I do a deep, extended Oh, bray harmony with Jack. He loves it. So do I. It is a form of communication between us, play, singing together. Jack's ears lay straight back, his nostrils flare and his eyes bug out, staring without seeing. Braying seems to give him a momentary ecstasy. 

richard tuttle

Gave the donkeys some hay, came back and returned to the bed. Slept until up in the day, getting up to take grain to the donkeys before dark. I love feeding them. I feel like an old country grandma piling food on the table, telling everybody to eat, eat all you can. Two movies from netflix today, The Squid and the Whale, and Siouxsie & the Banshees at the Albert Hall in 2002, the same visual of the live cd I listened to recently. I was ready for Siouxsie. Caterpillar ran and hid in the bathroom. Sioxsie gave me a good concert, good band. They get the energy generated into a cyclone of sound around Siouxsie, Take a walk with me-e, Down by the sea-ea. She seems to me an inward woman who has taught herself to take to the stage. She retains her privacy in her eyes. She freely gives herself in her flowing motions, swirling arms, turns and half-turns, contained movement, free and restrained. It gives her motion a stylized dance that works just right with the flowing quality of her vocals, the verbal aspect of her physical motion. This concert was the band grown up, thirty-six years into their career. They'd not played in something like nine years, this concert a re-union tour. It was in 91 I saw them. A dvd I'd ordered arrived a few days ago in the mail, a Siouxsie & the Banshees concert, 1983. This is when I want to see them most. I'm holding off, waiting til the time is right. They'd been a band seven years by then, closer to the time they were playing small clubs in London. The punk scene in London in 75-77 was much like the punk scene in Charlotte now, small clubs around town different punk bands play. It seems a healthy sign to me from what I saw in Charlotte that the bands are leaving the drugs alone largely. Heroin took down the first round of punk in London and New York in a short time. The Charlotte band DSR, Dirty South Revolutionaries, have been together ten years, and played Atlanta recently. I'm glad to see they're not taking the down bound train. 

richard tuttle himself

*

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

*

DON'T TAKE ANYTHING SERIOUSLY

jenny

Ground cover snow fell night before last, a dry snow with enough wet to stick where it fell. Years ago I saw somewhere the Lakota language has twenty-eight, or so, words for snow, differentiating the many textures. Possibly laplanders have more. I've lived intimately with snow in the mountains, noting such a variety of snows that I no longer see it just snow. I feel like when I mention snow it requires enough description to give a sense of the kind of snow it is. The Lakota people lived far more intimately with snow than I do. Some snow is so dry, tiny ice crystals, it can be kicked like sand, doesn't stick to tree limbs. Some snow is so wet it sticks to everything, will stand an inch or two high on a wire fence, will stick to limbs and weigh so heavily the snow breaks limbs and electrical lines. Wet and dry are the parentheses all other snows fall between. Since I've learned to pay attention to the various snows, I don't recall any two the same. It happens, the variety is limited, but seldom. No two winters in my experience have been the same. Our language having one word for snow suggests civilization has been moving away from the physical world inward toward mind. For multiple thousands of years humans lived outdoors. Now we live indoors. With the age of reason, we are moving inward, emphasis shifting from body to mind. How we value body and mind shows in the pay scale. Physical work pays the least. The harder the work, the less the pay. Mental work pays more by degrees, until the highest paid work is entirely mental, accomplished in a golf cart. The snow melted through the course of the day until snow remained only in places shaded from the sun. I carried this morning's donkey hay into the meadow to a place the sun lights up first. Cold mornings I'll see the donkeys standing still at the far end of the meadow, the place they know is warmed by morning sunlight first.

jenny at the mineral block

Early humans worshiped the sun as God, life giving, sustaining, destroying. I prefer to call them early instead of primitive. Primitive means first, but popularly is taken for backward. Winter mornings the donkeys stand quietly soaking up the sun's rays in a stillness easily taken for reverence by human interpretation. It is a kind of reverence; it feels extra good. We humans exhibit reverence for whatever makes us feel good, inebriants, money, sex, on one level, and the spirit on another. People new to the mountains know nothing about mountain culture and don't want to, but mention the word, moonshine, and they're all ears, laughing and talking, "Can you get me some?" No. I avoid the word with someone new to the mountains. With hillbillies, we never use the word, moonshine. We call it "white," "shine," and several other names. I bring this up as an example of reverence. I've seen people, both men and women, wax embarrassingly foolish over the idea of moonshine. I'm reminded of a Southern Baptist in New York City without supervision. A reverence for feel-good unto foolishness, similar to a reverence for God in some religions unto foolishness. Killing somebody who shames your feel-good is the ultimate foolishness. All it got the Charlie Hebdo assassins was dead same day or next, whichever it was. They certainly had no peace of mind from the moment of the event onward until flying lead found them too. No matter how many virgins (feel-good) await them, there comes a time none of the virgins are virgin anymore. Even in their heaven, feel-good amounts to a limited time in eternity. Two months or less for seventy however many feel-goods. Honeymoon over, back to the same-o, same-o. Some of the most valuable advice of my life came from Meher Baba, "Don't take anything seriously, not even God." I take it to have something to do with being conscious about reverence. Remember reverence is about feel-good. Don't get stuck in it. The sun moves. The spot that feels good early on a cold morning will shift by midday to a spread of insulating hay someplace else to lie down on, soak up the rays and eat later.

snowbird tracks

It's a tall order to take nothing, not even God, seriously. As a remedy to quiet monkey mind, I can't think of a better way. Taking things seriously charges the mind, makes it race. The more I take seriously, the more I engage runaway mind. For someone not on the path, it doesn't matter. To open self to spirit, mind needs quieting, not swept away, but still as a lake with no wind. The Charlie Hebdo assassinations came out of taking God (Allah), by way of the Prophet, way too seriously. There, again, like freedom of speech, all things in conscious moderation. I learned early to take the candy of good liquor in moderation from the examples of people around me who did not. I wanted to be able to taste good liquor all my life, not have to quit by age 40 or die. I have some easily within reach, but haven't touched it in probably two weeks, and then only a sip for the taste. I've forgotten the last three times in town to stop at the liquor store for some Wild Turkey Rye 101. It's the only bonded liquor I've found to satisfy my palate. Haitian rum is almost equal satisfaction, but I have to go to a city to get it. I can't drink socially anymore for the need to drive home, and hangover avoidance. I like the George Thorogood song, I Drink Alone. I don't like to get out of control and let my inner stupid act out. Not many people can handle riding the bull named Stupid. I know I don't even qualify to sit on him, and him penned up. I sit in the grandstands and learn, watch other people, who thought they were up to the challenge, get trampled. Some people say, Ya gotta have some fun. Trampled by a bull is not my idea of fun. Fun involves feel-good in my dictionary. Like what kind of fun can wrecking a motorcycle be? For masculine credibility it's the ultimate feel-good. I've never been one to need every day of my life to prove I'm not a girl. Can't help but take it for obvious, what of it?

jack

It's a sight how freeing it can be to let go of serious thinking. I don't mean to imply I'm there. I've been conscious of letting go of being serious about one thing or another, especially art making, just enough to have something like a peephole experience. I've seen the good sense in it enough to check myself when taken over by serious mind, to back off and say, this isn't going anywhere, it isn't working, it's not in alignment with the flow. Here again, I see other people acting out serious and it makes me want no more to do with it. It's all about peace of mind. It's unimportant to someone who does not value peace of mind. I confess to some reservation about not taking God seriously at first. Whatever it is we call God isn't even close. If we can imagine it, it's not God. If we can name it, it's not God. Mind is not able to comprehend God. Serious has to do with mind. Mind is limited. The spirit is famous for lightness. Serious is famous for heaviness. We are well trained in the serious, especially in the realms of religion and politics. We leave God out of it, the great unknown we can't even put a handle on, even quicker to run between our fingers than water. I take it for sound counsel to avoid being serious about something I know nothing about, am unable to know about. I believe it is so, if someone were to see God as God really is, it would take one out of the body. While I'm involved with a body on earth, the best I know to do is enjoy being in God's dream. To take it seriously would be like Peter who walked on the water til he thought about it. He took it seriously and got wet. It gives me insight into Jesus mind. He was in the mind of not taking it seriously all the time, not just when he walked on water. He walked on land the same. Remembering when he saw Moses and Elijah on the mountain, I think it was Peter who wanted to build a shrine on the site, take it seriously. Jesus said to let it rest, it was for the moment only. 

sky

*