MY LIFE IN THE THRILL KILL WORLD

donkey jen

It is a moderate time of winter this week. A few days of sunlight and cold. The sun makes the cold feel better than cold under dark clouds. By chance, I saw a weather report for the next week. It looks like every day above freezing and every night below freezing. It's not bad. The floor is not quite so cold. After maybe four winters with two bird feeders, the bird community has worked out a flow that works for all concerned. Blue jays, one black and white woodpecker with red on top of its head, and other big birds go to one feeder. Chickadees dart in for a seed between the big birds. Snowbirds, nuthatches, chickadees, the smaller birds use the other feeder. Cardinals go to both. The birds have an understanding among themselves, something like the way animals of the African plain gather around a watering hole in peace. The family of red squirrels that live in the pines around the house use the feeder the small birds go to. Gray squirrels from the trees across the road use the one the big birds go to. The squirrels don't take everything. They eat what they want and go on. I throw seeds on the ground for the squirrels so they won't go to the feeders so much. They're not a problem, but the birds have to wait when a squirrel is at the feeder. I see the birds in peace with each other, the whole variety of birds, big to small. The blue jays are not aggressive with the smaller birds. They wait their turn when another bird is at the feeder. They perch on the rhododendron branches waiting for next opening. They live in peace. The feeders are the communal station for nearby birds. The hawks know the feeders are here. Among the tree limbs and rhododendron is not an easy place for a hawk to maneuver. They wait outside the grove of trees to nail birds coming and going. I suspect one is living in a grove of white pines up the hill behind the house. I hear it from time to time. I've seen a sparrow hawk fly in here, but it didn't do any good. The birds scattered. The hawk had no reason to wait, perched on the bird feeder, and flew. 

donkey jack

At first, I didn't like the idea of the hawks invading my bird sanctuary. It wasn't long before I caught on. The feeding station is here to feed hawks too. They're birds, they live here, it's communal, they're welcome. They're part of the balance. I once saw a Cooper's hawk land just beyond the window, a big bird with impressive wingspan. It looked in the window, saw me and flew. A red tail lives nearby. I see it sometimes sit on a wire or sail by. It is Justin's hunting buddy. When he was using his tree stand, he said the red tail would fly up and perch on a branch uncannily close to him. Soon after, a deer would appear. He learned the hawk knew he was hunting. The boom of the rifle did not make the bird fly. It stayed in place, just a few feet away. The hawk knew Justin was a predator too, who went after the big animals the hawk couldn't handle. The hawk knows Justin's truck. I think of the thousands of years the Indians lived in peace with mountain lions, rattlesnakes, bears, wolves. Europeans discovered the world was round and went looking for gold. The age of discovery on one hand---the age of genocide on the other. They not only annihilated Indian civilization on two continents, but killed about everything else too. Killing became American tradition unto an attitude pervasive all my life I trained self away from: if it's living, kill it. Buffalo Bill's genocide of the plains buffalo made his name, got him fame and fortune, ostensibly to starve the Indians into submission. Someone I know heard something on the deck in the night. It was a possum. He went and got his gun and shot it. And I say within, Wha? I wanted to say, It was only passing through. He knew. Something to kill. Easy target. Hear the gun go boom. Nailed the sucker. Good shot. By this time in the life, I have emotional, as well as physical, reactions I suppress from view hearing somebody tell about killing something. I'm not a good actor.

donkeys and their shadows

I've noticed my hunting friends like to watch my face while they tell me about a kill. I do my best to keep a poker face, which gives me away. I've heard some stories that make me want to cry. The hardest time I had keeping reaction from showing in my face was the time my friend Jr told me about shooting a hoot-owl out of a tree at a hundred yards, watching my face to see me hold it. One of the great ironies of my life came the night of the morning Jr left the body. Parking at home, when I opened the car door to get out, I heard a hoot-owl in a tree so close my first thought was, why didn't you fly when the car drove up? Next thought, It's Jr telling me he's all right, saying hi and thank you. I wondered why he chose an owl to speak through. At the house I looked up owl in Jamie Sams' book, Medicine Cards. I already knew the wisdom part, but wanted to see what else the book had to say. Owl fit Jr. He was the one I call the only man I've known all along the way who had true wisdom. I found the owl is also the deceiver. It flies on silent feathers and sees the unknown. Both these aspects of owl point particularly at Jr. I was not the only one who knew him to see the deceiver, but knew I was the only one to see his wisdom. I mentioned to two of his friends of many years, separately, a few weeks after he'd been gone, "Jr was the only man I've ever known I'd say without hesitation had wisdom, the real deal." I knew neither one would allow him wiser than themselves. Also knew neither one would see wisdom in him or anywhere else. It's a bible word with no meaning in the now, like prophet or king. It's not a word you hear much on tv. Both men without much school education, though both with PhDs and post-docs in experience, answered after a pause of a few seconds in the same words, "Jr did have some wisdom about him." I took it for affirmative, knowing neither one had seen wisdom in Jr, consciously, and knew both had seen it unconsciously. I wanted to bring it into their consideration to add a new dimension to their memory of Jr.

found on a maple

I personally do not like guns, though had two that were given to me, didn't want either one. After several years of catching dust, I gave them away to get them out of the house. I'm of the belief that guns attract guns. I also believe I'd rather be killed than kill, though haven't had a chance to test it and don't want the chance. I do not believe I'm safer with a gun. A possum wants to sleep under the house, you're welcome. A coon wants to eat leftovers at a bird feeder in the night, you, too, are welcome. It's communal. Coyotes come around in the night, I don't need to kill them. I step outside and yell big and loud, GIT. The giant's left his barn. The coyotes leave. My reputation as a human precedes me. Everything is afraid of humans. The animals left in the wild tell their babies the humans can kill you just by seeing you, they go boom and you're dead. A wild animal weaned by its mother cannot be tamed. A wild animal brought up from birth by humans is easily tamed; it hasn't been trained by mother who knows to avoid humans, rule number one in the wild. They'll kill you just for living. American cops kill three people a day, one of them an unarmed black man, woman or child. It's not safe to be a human in America either. Then we have the homicides and all the other -cides. My way in this world is to go in peace. Merely having a gun in my mind is not peace. Some friends taught me to fill half gallon plastic fruit juice jugs with water and blow them away. I had a .45 that shot magnum hollow points. I went out one day and blew holes in a few. Never touched it again. Hot dang, blew up a plastic bottle. I liked the balance of the weight in my hand. I liked the feeling of power when it went boom. OK, I experienced it, now what? I'm suspicious of "power" so readily available. As for the balance, a brush feels better in my hand. I'm of the belief that guns, like money, create more problems than they solve. A gun is an instrument of hate. I don't trust hate either.    

yard art

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SUBJECTIVE REALITY IN EVERYDAY LIFE

The last couple of mornings have been so bitter cold at 0 degrees with wind, I feel for the donkeys unable to get out of the cold. I recall my own need for a long hot bath after enough days and nights of being cold. I realize the need for the sauna in Scandinavia. Cold all the time, it is refreshing to bathe in heat, soak the heat into the bones, warm them, relax the whole body from bracing against the cold. I like the sanity of the Scandinavian countries. I've seen that Sweden has closed down their last prison. Nobody wants in. In Norway, the prison amounts to an apartment complex without walls, without guards carrying guns. Going out in zero weather not just a few days, but for months could get real old real fast. I want to do something for the donkeys, the squirrels, the birds, but there is nothing I can do but feed them, keep them warm on the inside, help the chickadees and the snowbirds make it through the long nights. The temperature is predicted not to rise above 29 for the day. I'll spend as much of the day in bed as possible and tell myself to pretend I'm in Finland, accustomed to it, no problem, it's like this all the time. It actually does help a little bit. It relaxes the body from bracing so much against it. I feel warmer relaxing and receiving the cold than bracing against it. I tell myself it's another lovely day in Helsinki. Sometimes when I go outside to the mailbox and don't want to put on a coat, I relax into the cold on the way out there and back, return to the house feeling fine and my clothes are freezing cold everyplace they touch flesh.

I've noticed in a few Scandinavian films how casual the people are with the cold. In an Icelandic film, I saw a woman putting gas in her car wearing a tshirt and it snowing. I've seen them go into a house and leave the door open, it snowing outside, below freezing, my idea of cold, and nobody has an issue with it. In one of the three Swedish films of the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, I saw a man go into a small shed kind of building, it snowing outside, the door open, and build a fire in a little stove. He used no more wood for the fire than I would use for kindling. I thought that little bit of fire isn't going to heat anything but the draft in the stovepipe, and it very little. Outside the window, I see the calf standing still beside the gate, one side in full sunlight, chewing its cud. Ground must be too cold to lie down on. Donkeys, too, are standing still, soaking up the sun on one full side. It's the still time of day after morning grazing to soak up the sun and lie down for a rest. I saw Jenny yesterday lying down. The ground is frozen solid. If I were out there all the time, I'd acclimatize, too, to some extent. Back in the summer, I would sometimes sit on the ground talking to Jack while he grazed. Not long ago, one day when it was cold, I sat on the ground beside Jenny grazing and talked with her. The cold ground was not so bad to sit on. Didn't do it very long. I'd like to spoil the donkeys, keep them comfortable all the time. However, this is what it does in the world they live in. Same as I need a motorized vehicle to get around in because the world I live in is built around motorized transportation. I'd be arrested for going about in a buggy pulled by a donkey.

I'm remembering a sentence I saw that my friend Susan McCachren posted on facebook, the image a Tibetan lama, the words, "We are prisoners of our own egocentrism." It is about the most obvious thing to see. I know it, see it in a wide variety of ways, but don't think to house it in so obvious a straight-forward sentence, nor think of it so succinctly. In a way, it's what I'm addressing in these daily writings, approaching them subjectively, owning up to my own egocentrism, seeing it in relation to the world around me that I interact with. We all do everything in first person. Objective depends on controlled laboratory conditions. Out here in the world, it seems to me the closest we can get to reality is the subjective. Reality is a difficult word to give a realistic definition to, so I'll jump in and see how close I can get. When I start with only God is real, this means only love is real. If that is so, then reality is found in the love feeling in every living being. It has little to do with mind. In human society, we value mind above all else. We've come to believe that a head full of information is knowledge, which it is, though it is not the end in itself. After working the farm with old man Tom Pruitt for several years, he introduced me to an old boy of his generation, Lef Wagoner, saying to Lef, "I taught him everything he knows." It told me he was proud that I'm a learner. But the first thing that popped into my mind was he did not teach me about the poetry of WB Yeats or the films of Bernardo Bertolucci. I knew, however, that he meant in their way of knowledge, how to do things, how to fix what's broken, how to work with cows, how to cut down a tree so it falls exactly where you want it to, even when it's not leaning in the direction you want it to fall. It's a very clever trick that is easy as a thought and it works every time. He taught me how to make a rail fence out of locust trunks. He taught me how to put a fence post in the ground so it will never wiggle, and to stretch barbed wire so it will stay taut for many a year. He was thinking one kind of education and I was thinking another.

Tom's way of teaching was by doing. Fresh out of a culture that thinks teaching amounts to telling information, in class lectures, assigning reading, explaining and testing, there came a time I was frustrated with Tom because he wasn't "teaching" me. We'd spend the fall months cutting firewood for four houses, two of which burned it like it was trash. He would now and then tell me something like cut the tree level with the ground instead of leaving a stump. I don't use wood anymore, but I see my friends cut wood and everybody leaves a stump. It runs all over me and I want to say something, but it's not my place. I see a stump as eight more sticks of firewood left to rot. Tom, with no more than a seventh grade education, had more wisdom than about anybody else I knew. The most important word in the language for Tom was "experience." He taught by experience. I helped him do the work at first, watching him, following his lead, and paying attention whenever he told me something. Eventually, I learned wisdom comes from experience, first hand knowing, whereas knowledge comes from second, third and fourth hand information, which may or may not be true per detail. Experiential knowledge, learning by doing, affirms the old saying that experience is the best teacher. There I was, Mr college educated intelligent, in a world where my knowledge from another world, another belief system, had no meaning whatsoever. I came into Tom's world an over-educated ignoramus. I didn't know anything, the same as I say now of the college educated middle class moving to the mountains, who know how to work the remote for the television, and that not very well. By now, I have education by gathering information and by experience. I feel like it is a balance I live well with. I like having both book learning knowledge and common sense, which I think of as experiential knowledge. I see the knowledge of accumulated information is something on the order of objective, while the knowledge of experience is subjective. Experience teaches the heart. Information teaches the mind. I need both for a balanced life.

  

 

 

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THE DALAI LAMA: ETHICS FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM THE MOVIE

hh the dalai lama

 

 

Lazy day, a good nap, a little nip in the air outside, a gentle nip. The netflix movie of the day was the Dalai Lama's ETHICS FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM. It is an hour-long talk given at the Albert Hall in London, 1999. He speaks English well. My associations with the Albert Hall is Eric Clapton's band CREAM playing there in a concert video (a guy in the front of the audience obviously on acid, jerking his head up and down so fast he surely had neck problems by the time he was 35), and Bob Dylan playing his transition time there, first half of show acoustic, second half electric. The audience went nuts at the Albert Hall, just like at Newport in USA. It really was an in-yer-face gesture. Now, my associations with the Albert Hall include HH the Dalai Lama. I see him talk, hear him talk, read his writing, and I celebrate within that China overran Tibet and chased out the Dalai Lama and the other lamas, sent them out into the world through the funnel of India. Another example of God working in "strange" ways. Brings to mind a little girl who needed to get away from her mother she was living with and live with her daddy who cared about her. Mommy's new boyfriend beat child such that Protective Services turned her over to daddy immediately upon seeing the bruises. That's what it took to help push her through the transition from one home to another in one day. She's a tough little kid. It must have been time for Tibetan knowledge to go out into the world, like it was time for little girl to grow up loved and cared for.

dalai lama

We need an ethics for the new millennium. The last round of ethics that run from Greeks onward through Western philosophy and religion to now has come to nothing. Ethics is not even something people think about, but for a few scholars. By this time, what we call ethics has become so confused from indifference in the market place where the only ethic amounts to: self first--others last. The Dalai Lama's ethic amounts to others first, self last. A reversal. The Asian view. The balance. The decline and fall of Capitalism will make a big opening for a new understanding of ethics. Enlightenment Individualism in America has devolved into hyper narcissism, self-centered with blinders to keep out all but self. The degression has gone to its most absurd extremities ending itself. This has to be the turn-around time where ethical thinking and living is concerned. Could there be a time for collective humanity that might be called darker? This time we're in is so dark, it has to be the dark before the dawn. That a Tibetan holy man can fill the Albert Hall in this time indicates something having to do with a collective inner need. The audience is white middle class educated, likely university associated, mostly Londoners, liberals. It's in the middle class that revolutions have their beginnings. Might have something to do with why the republicans want to do away with the middle class and education. It's too late to stop it, the revolution to put an end to Capitalism has begun. Occupy and Anonymous are serious beginnings.

dalai lama

 

 

One of the many aspects of the Dalai Lama that appeal to me is his perfectly natural behavior. He talks like anybody talking, except what he says is not spoken by many people. The whole story of Tibetan lamas, every one of them, of which he is one, is in his mind. It is believed by people who have tested it for several centuries, that this Dalai Lama's is the same soul as the first Dalai Lama. His soul is devoted to returning in a new body every time to serve the Tibetan form of Buddhism. This incarnation is his fourteenth, XIV. I look at him knowing the Tibetan Book of the Dead is in his head, the life of Milarepa and the entire wealth of Tibetan wisdom. When I was a kid, I asked the fundamentalist Baptist preacher about wise people living in our time. No. There haven't been any wise people since Bible times. I did not believe it. I did not take him for wise, but figured that it had to be that somebody on this earth is wise. I wanted to find someone wise. There were not any in my world of Kansas fundamentalism and school, as far as I could tell. It became a search in the back of my mind for the rest of my life to find someone out here in the world I would call wise. I found quite a lot of people, both men and women, I thought of as incredibly intelligent with a wide range of penetrating knowledge, a few I'd say just a little bit shy of wisdom.

 

vada

"all babies are yogis" --- baba hari das

 

 

Through my 60s I knew a wise man, a hillbilly farmer and bluegrass banjo picker. I believe I was guided to him for the purpose of having a man of wisdom to pay attention to. I can't help but see that I was sent to him for some spiritual upliftment, to be an acolyte, a follower, to help him in his time of leaving the body. I projected it something like Elisha wanting to be with Elijah when he ascended, and Elijah passing his mantle (spiritual power) to Elisha upon his departure. Jr Maxwell, my hillbilly neighbor and friend, passed his car to me. My Toyota pickup burned up two weeks before he left the body. He said to me about finding a replacement, "Don't get in a hurry." Then his twenty year old Buick Century became mine. The heirs unanimously agreed it is my car. Nobody wanted it (but me). It spluttered, didn't have a great deal of power, but I knew it was out of time and probably hadn't had new plugs and wires since it was new, or not many times since then, broken taillight, broken headlight, headlights going everywhere but the road. I had the cooling system and the fuel injection system flushed. The money the insurance corporation gave me for the truck was the amount I needed to bring the Buick v6 3300 up to perfect running condition. It was like I just switched vehicles one day. It has 150 thousand miles, is 20 years old and does not burn oil. From oil change to oil change, I never have to add oil. I keep it running in perfect condition. After 3.5 years of driving it as "mine," I still think of it as Jr's car and my role is to take care of it.

 

 

 

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STAY AWAY FROM IMPORTANT PEOPLE

barnett newman, achilles

The first of November, Thursday, I went and picked up my friend Melia, and we went to Jr's grave in Whitehead to have a sip of some liquor and pour a sip on the grave for him. This is the third time we've celebrated Jr in this way since he left the body. Melia is Jr's cousin, second or third, but between them it was just cousin. We do feel like he's with us in spirit, hoping he can see through the veil from the other side, see us laughing and talking about him in happy memories. We always are in a laughing spirit when we're there. Jr, himself, was in a laughing spirit in his life. Laughing is part of the memory of Jr. He was a loyal friend and a supportive friend in an encouraging way. He was the only man I've known I can call wise without hesitation. I was about to say I miss his wisdom, but it's him I miss more than his wisdom. Old-time hillbilly tractor mechanic, sawmiller (sawyer), cattle farmer, welder, bluegrass banjo picker on weekends, bulldozer operator, quit school after 11th grade, and pretty much was the "spiritual" hub of Whitehead. I say spiritual because the people of Whitehead respected Jr in a real way, for who he was.

Jr was a neighbor to everyone in Whitehead, neighbor in the way Jesus used the word. He did not go to church, was baptized at age 11, had his own theology he kept to himself. He believed it was all in the Ten Commandments, all the guide he needed. His humility was a good example of mountain humility. Mountain culture has a wide stripe of humility in it, which varies from individual to individual. Jr's was not of the pious church variety of humility. It came from understanding by figuring it out that living humbly is the only way that works in this world, anyway in a world where everybody knows each other. We have a fear that humility equals weakness, when Jr's humility did not. His feet were in place. He had no question of his place in the world. Somebody who might go into his house in the middle of the night would meet him with a gun in his hand he knew how to make go bang. He kept a .22 pistol on the table beside his bed or in the drawer. It wasn't for killing, only for stopping or slowing down whatever threat the other might be. He told me once, he only told anything once, when I asked him who he looked up to, he looked up to everybody. It seemed a bit of a sweeping generalization at first thought, but second thought was Jr never said anything like that he did not mean. Hillbillies don't speak in sweeping statements unless they're trying to convince you of something, which Jr never did, and conscious ones never do.

I've come to believe that Jr came into this lifetime contracted to take the fast lane to wisdom--- suffering. This man has suffered through incidents in his life that came to him out of the blue, not apparently of his karmic making, blows that would drop a rhino to its knees, at least five of them. I'd personally be beat down by any one of them. The first one happened when he was 23, married five years with Maggie, the woman he could have lived happily ever after with. She played guitar and sang, and incidentally was Doc Watson's cousin, back when Doc was Arthel the kid that went blind. Jr's older brother, Welter, older by 30 years, played fiddle. The three of them played dances on weekends. Welter came to the house on Christmas eve, 1945, wants Jr to drive him to his in-laws house in Piney Creek to see his wife and the 4 month old baby. His second and much younger wife had left him and went back to her mother and dad, probably for protection. Jr said he was "too quick with a gun." Maggie said to Jr, "He's drunk. The'll be trouble. It's Christmas Eve. If you go with him, I'm leaving you." He stayed. Welter found somebody else to take him. He shot and killed his wife, shot his father-in-law three times and he survived, cut up his mother-in-law's face, went outside and blew his own head off in the front yard.

When Jr and Mary learned what happened, Jr was so wrecked he told her she won't have to leave him, because he's leaving her. He went to Wytheville and drove a cab for a while, fell in with Theron Stoneman, who knew of good-paying construction work in Toccoa, Georgia. They went there, and from Toccoa Jr went to Decatur, Georgia, then Decatur, Alabama, working good jobs, ending up operating a crane that went 150 feet up. He was gone a couple years until his mother and dad needed help on the farm and asked him to come home. He'd tried to join the Marines, but his feet were flat as duck feet and he was rejected. His next wife, Lois, played bass in his bluegrass band, the Green Mountain Boys. One night they came home from a dance around 1:30 and the house had burned to the ground. A lightning storm had passed through. Some years later, Lois came down with cancer. Trips up and down the mountain to Winston-Salem for chemo, all the agony that goes with it, then she sat down by a maple tree to put an end to her pain that pain-killers no longer subdued. She shot herself in the head, but survived 8 days in Winston-Salem intensive care, Jr sleeping on waiting room couches, out of his mind and totally in his mind too.

In Jr's grief, Spider Woman entered the scene her fingers walking through the obituaries to find a man. In twelve years she went through all Jr's assets; convinced him to sell the family farm because it reminded her of his former wife, and move into a double-wide. He worked into his late 70s at the sawmill through the winters paying her bills. She got him down to his house, his shop, his sawmill and credit card debt so deep she couldn't spend any more on them and couldn't get new cards. One day she said she was going into town and he waited all night on the porch watching the highway for her to return. Next day a U-Haul truck backed up to the front door and a sheriff's car with a deputy telling Jr he needed to take his guns and he was there to protect her from Jr, which amounted to protecting the spider from the fly. She took everything from the house she  wanted and was gone. No good-bye, kiss my ass, ner nothin, as they say. Then she tried to get what property was left for a divorce settlement and get him to pay the credit card debts. Fortunately, the judge saw through her, as everybody in Whitehead already had seen through her before Jr married her. The community of Whitehead pleaded with him not to marry her. She'd already run through one man, exactly-to-the-letter as she did Jr. After doing in Jr, she was no longer welcome in the county. No one had anything to do with her and eventually she left, and died about a year after he did.

It was a year or two after she left that I stopped by the shop to see Jr after not seeing him in several years. While he was married to Spider Woman I stayed away. Like everybody around me, I knew who she was. I felt sorrow for Jr the whole time he was married to her. I was aiming to open a music store and wanted his take on the likelihood of it working. First thing I saw was Jr Maxwell was dragging bottom, depressed unto despair. He asked me to the house for a drink of good mountain liquor. Jr was a literal connoisseur of white lightning and drank only the very best, made by somebody whose recipe went back 4 generations. I saw that Jr was not only depressed, but he was lonesome. He'd ask me to come back next day for another drink and I did, each time keeping him up on the progress toward setting the store in motion. I wanted to help Jr, but learned long ago not to attempt to help in any way that can't be done with my hands, like picking things up, carrying things, fixing things, like that. I don't dare go into psychological counseling, only because I know better. I assessed Jr was lonesome. I thought I could ease the pangs of lonesomeness by visiting him regularly. When the store started, I dropped by every evening on the way home to have a drink with him and hear another two-hour installment of his life story told like leaves falling off a tree, one here, one there, no linear order, just as they fell.

Jr's wisdom came first-hand from experience. He did not read and he stayed away from church. The only second-hand information he got was sitting in the tractor shop talking with somebody who dropped by, gazing out the garage door opening at the cars and trucks going by on the highway, whatever was the new gossip, the cattle market news, timber selling news, the long list of the variety of things men talk about when they get together gabbing. He watched no television and only listened to the radio when bluegrass was on and sometimes country. Only looked at the local paper. One bit of wisdom Jr passed to me, he said his daddy passed to him, I incorporated into my life the moment I heard it, because I already understood it, but not in such clear terms: Stay away from important people. That is what I call sound counsel. I already knew it from my own experience, but had not seen it so clearly put. The moment he told it, I adopted it into my life as a creed. It really is a great insight. All "important" people are self-important. I need say no more. I learned much more than that from Jr, valuable subtle insights into getting through difficult moments in involvements with others. Stay away from important people tattooed on the inside of my forehead is the gift of his wisdom he passed to me, like Elijah leaving Elisha his mantle, though a much lesser version. I miss the lightness of Jr's presence. The night of the morning his spirit left the body, opening the door, stepping out of the car arriving home, a big owl hooted from a tree so nearby I was surprised it had not flown when the car drove up. I heard Jr speaking to me through the owl, thanking me. I hooted back to the owl my own gratitude.

cleve andrews and jr maxwell

by tj worthington

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THE TOUCH OF THE MASTER'S HAND

     scott freeman by tj worthington


Waited much of the day yesterday for the rain to stop at Daytona, and then they called it off. It's been transferred to tonight at 7. Later, back at home, I was at emails, the radio was on WBRF playing bluegrass. The talk song THE TOUCH OF THE MASTER'S HAND played. I'd only heard it a couple times. It's one of those multidimensional old country tear jerkers. It's the story of an old dusty fiddle up for auction. Auctioneer couldn't get more than a couple dollars bid. An old feller walks up from the seated crowd, picks up the fiddle, tunes it, and sets to playing an old-time waltz. The fiddle itself, without the story, is a tear jerker for the beauty in it. The bidding started again after the fiddler played it, and the value went up to three thousand. Asked what's the difference, it's the touch of the Master's hand. From there it goes on to the spiritual dimension. When you're dusty and out of tune, the touch of the Master's hand can dust you off, tighten your strings, bring you to balance, in tune. The touch of the Master's hand can bring out the beauty within and make you a beautiful song. I was glad to hear it again.



It brought to mind a print Jr Maxwell had on the wall in a frame. It was a rendering of a fiddle and the verse to THE TOUCH OF THE MASTER'S HAND. He told me several times over the years he intended to give it to fiddler Jim Shumate of Wilkes County. Once I asked him if he'd like to go for a drive and take it to him. No, not now. It stayed in his mind, but he never would make the gesture to hand it over. I offered once to take it to Shumate, who was getting old unto frailty, too. No, not now. Eventually, Jr died. I've thought about talking to Ross about letting me take that picture to Shumate. But that comes under taking care of other people's interests. Interference doesn't work so well with the flow. I don't like to interfere in other people's business. I'm telling myself if Jr didn't get it to him while he was living, intending it, but never doing it, maybe it wasn't to be. Then again, maybe it was to be, and it's now my time to make the next step, because I'm the only one who knows he meant it to go to Jim Shumate. It's one of those decisions it's hard for me to make. In past experience, it's been the right thing sometimes to interfere and complete something unfinished, and sometimes it's not been the right thing to do. I tend to be of the mind to "let it happen." If Jr didn't see to getting it to Shumate before he died, when he had plenty of warning his span of time yet to go was shrinking to almost none, maybe he really did not want to get it to Shumate. I don't know. So I do nothing.



I never allowed myself to believe I knew Jr's will enough to make decisions for him. While he was living, up to the last day, I let him make his own decisions, never forced him to follow my decisions. I understood his thinking well enough that I could toss him a key word to pull him back onto his track when he was talking to somebody and forgot what he was saying. It embarrassed him to forget in front of people he knew. I could toss him one word that brought him right back without a gap of silence. We made a good team in that way. I never attempted to talk for him, never explained for him, always allowed him his own power to say what he intended, not what I assumed he intended. I learned quite a lot about the nature of the mind watching his mind fade away. Without mind, "he" was still there. His subconscious mind was in full operation. Without the front of his mind, he was functioning on the same or similar mind as the pre-verbal animals. Over years I've learned to communicate in silence with my dogs and cats, and I found ways to communicate with Jr when his mind was not working. In his helpless condition, he was like a baby, innocent, dependent. He knew he was dependent. In the time his mind was gone, he recognized me as the one he couldn't make it without. His eyes lit up and twinkled when he saw me. Not because he knew who I was. I was the one he couldn't make it without. I fed him, kept him and the bed clean, helped him in and out of the wheelchair. I didn't mind that my ego had been forgotten. It wasn't about my ego. Once he entered the tunnel of light, he'd forget even his own name.



His mind gone, he looked at people who came to visit him like trying to focus his eyes to see if it was somebody he'd ever seen before. They'd talk to him. He'd talk with them. They'd leave and he'd ask me who that was. I'd explain briefly in terms he could understand. He'd say, "Is that who that was? I wish I'd known." Then it's gone. The day before his spirit left the body, I called his cousin Richard Joines, asking him to come see Jr today if he'd like to see him one more time. Richard just about flew over the top of the hill. He walked into the bedroom. This day Jr was on the left side of the bed. The door was by the right side. Richard walked in the door and around the foot of the bed. Jr watched him all the way wondering who that was walking around in his bedroom. That kind of bewilderment in his eyes. Richard stood over him, they were face to face, and I saw two columns of light go from Jr's eyes to Richard's, like Jr's eyes were headlights. Jr put his arms up, hands open inviting a hug, saying, "Richard." Jr conscious was not a hugger. I left the room saying to myself, this is all theirs, not mine. I was having to tell him who people were by then, but not Richard. First cousins, neighbors, bluegrass musicians, friends all their lives.



I have to add how privileged I felt among Jr and his relatives and friends. They are the kinds of people you only find in the country. A few who sold out and moved to a city in Florida, like Ocala, or in NC, such as Statesville. Jr was so devoid of judging others that a wide variety of people became his friends. He didn't care what you did, had done, how much money you had access to, who you knew. He valued people by their ability to work. He respected hard work and skillful work. Talk didn't impress him. He also respected a bluegrass musician almost as a brother. Unfortunately, by the nature of the situation, musicians of old-time and bluegrass are abandoned by their musician friends when they stop making music, for whatever the reason; arthritis, a hand cut off at the sawmill, any reason. Active musicians are only where the music is playing. When a banjo goes out of the jam group or band, a new one replaces it. They don't visit each other much in retirement. It's lonesome for the old musicians. Jr's fiddler friend, Johnny Williams, visited periodically, up to the very last days. Harold Hayes, bass player of Jr's band The Green Mountain Boys, continued as a regular visitor. I saw how many people I'd come to know through Jr when I wanted to do something to tell them I appreciate them, too. I found some very rare recordings of Jr in three times in his life. Had Bobby Patterson make a hundred copies for me to give to each one of them. In a week I had given every one out individually, directly from my hand to whoever it went to, and came away calling it the best week of my life.



Knowing Jr Maxwell, just to know him to talk with from time to time over the years, has been one of the great privileges of my life. All the way along, from childhood, I have looked for someone I could see was wise. Before Jr, I had known two women, one still living, I would call wise. Jr is the only man I've known I'd call wise. I've known many I'd call incredibly intelligent, brilliant minds, big accomplishments, good people. When I found a man of wisdom, he was a hillbilly tractor mechanic, farmer, sawmiller, drank good mountain liquor every day, had made plenty of it in the past, a man who made his living however it could be done, buying and selling cattle, tractors, trucks. As I heard his life, it turned out he'd had 5, at least, major blows from out of the blue, none of them caused by him. They were like lightning bolts. One, in fact, was a lightning bolt that hit his homeplace when a small lightning storm passed through while he and his wife Lois were making music at a dance. All of them were devastating blows. I saw his soul taking the path of suffering this lifetime, the fast track on the spiritual path. I discouraged having a preacher come to the house before Jr left the body. Jr, for certain would not want one. I knew with the same certainty that Jr's soul would do like a helium-filled balloon. Some of the people needed to know if he was saved. His baptism record was found. You don't get baptised without getting saved first. All rejoiced to know Jr's soul was all right. He never went to church. He was as humble a man as I've ever known, humble as a dove. It wasn't righteous piety. It was true humility. Patience, he said, was everything.

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