Annotated Margins

Big Water

2012-01-22T00:43:00.001-08:00

Odd to stand knee-deep in the current of Marys River while supporting one end of a seven-foot sofa—and all around you others are doing the same. It took all day to get a friend moved from her submerged house to dry land. By dark Wednesday evening, we still had not rescued much from the kitchen or the pantry. Humans move slowly when we have to wade the weight and speed of a river with a load in our arms.

The water came unexpectedly, though not as a surprise. Wet, heavy snow that fell throughout the Cascades and the Coastal Range over the weekend melted and merged with the torrents that fell Monday and Tuesday. Farmland can hold only so much water when all the tributaries back up from swollen rivers. Anything manmade quickly becomes amphibious. Very little of what we make for use on dry land can withstand the breadth and power of water.

I walked in the driving rain yesterday to gander at the Willamette River. I was awestruck by the volume and power that carried whole trees downstream. Megatons of power flowed past me in a matter of seconds. (We have found ways to harness that power, though not efficiently.)

Nature, in the end, will win.

The Pain of It All

2012-01-03T00:04:00.001-08:00

Our ETA is just that, an estimate, someone's best guess. Any one of us could arrive a day late and a dollar short, while any number of us could arrive far ahead of when our hosts expected us. In either case, I doubt our mothers were no more or less for the wear-and-tear; after all, after eight months any woman has got to feel the physical effects of pregnancy, and one day either way won't make all that much difference in the remaining days of the expectancy. I'm not a woman, so I can't say with any authority, but it would seem that once the physical pain has begun, it's all just a matter of whether the mother expects the birth sooner or later, and how easily she copes with the pain for any length of time. Pain is pain, unquantifiable...

... at least until the final moments. The actual birth hurt like hell. I remember it clearly, though at the time I did not realize the actual physiological aspects of it. Elastic or not, having my skull squashed so much that it fit through an orifice only half the size of the solid matter that it passed into the cold, blinding light... damn that was painful. And my shoulders... holy cow. If I was to try that again at my age, my bones would shatter—or the woman giving birth to me would split into a few hundred pieces.

Just getting into this world is traumatic, on all accounts. I don't know, because I have not yet gotten that far into the final chapter, but getting out of this world doesn't seem much better. Physical or mental, pain is pain. And this business of killing time until we're laid into another hole... well, it ain't a walk in the park by any definition.

We struggle with ourselves, we struggle with others, and we get caught up in all kinds of things that turn out not to be worth the effort we put into it. And through it all, we forget that we're just killing time, getting from one hole to another.

Most flabbergasting, I think, is how seriously some of us take ourselves, even though we're just killing time between our arrivals and departures. I look at the roster of folks who are running for the next U.S. presidential election, and I am stunned. Fifty to sixty years ago, twenty-four women tolerated excruciating pain to bring twenty-four 2012 political candidates into this world. What were those ladies thinking. All that pain, and for what?

Equally perplexing is that all twenty-four candidates think they can make a difference. A difference in what? Can any one of the twenty-four presidential hopefuls make it easier for me to get from that first hole to the second?

Seriously? I read their bios, and I read their statements. In my estimation, this election year is going to be painful... and I'm blaming twenty-four mothers.

http://2012.presidential-candidates.org/

End of Days

2012-01-01T15:56:00.001-08:00

And so we come to the End of Days. It's all over when December rolls around this year (according the prophetic Mayan calendar). I'm not convinced that's a bad thing. The way we dump toxins and garbage in the oceans, our callous mistreatment of animals, our utter disregard for the ground upon which we walk—we don't seem to be the evolutionary pinnacle that will or should last longer than any other species that has ever appropriated the offerings of this little dust speck near the back edge of eternity.

Forever is a long time. When it's time to do something different than what I'm doing right now, I won't mind catching a new train when it's time to go.

But until the porter asks for my ticket, I do have some things that I want to do while I'm standing around the platform killing time. Not that I'm much into New Year's resolutions, but I have some significant changes that I want to make. Actually, the things I have in mind for this new year have steamed in the boiler for too long; it's just time to let off some of the pressure. A while back I stopped lamenting what I gave up when I came to Oregon. Two and half years here, I'm tired of wondering and waiting for what and when something will happen.

I could sit around with a banjo on my knee, and wait for someone to offer me a new vocation with benefits and a pension plan, but career jobs rarely show up in the want ads of the dying newspapers, and Craig's List seems to be nothing more than lists of scams.

I could continue to drive an hour, sometimes more, just to play a gig, but I've "been-there-done-that" as a kid, and I no longer want to do that. If I can't play somewhere that's less than thirty minutes, I can probably make myself happy in my own living room. Car seats hurt my back. Besides, I enjoy hanging around with a circle of folks my age at the weekly old-time jam just seven miles from my house.

I could wait for the house my wife and I rent to miraculously remodel itself closer to Corvallis, and we could wait for a self-sustaining Eden of vegetables to sprout in the back yard... but while I enjoy imagination, I take more stock in reality.

Yep, before I run out of chances to keep myself from dying with woulda-coulda-shoulda on my mind, I suspect it's time to board the train so that it doesn't leave without me.

Where There's Death

2011-12-01T23:51:00.001-08:00

The world lost a great guitar picker this week. Bryan was also a decent songwriter, but a u-turn on the wrong day, on the wrong road, in front of the wrong semi…

… Twenty-six-years-old is a hard way to go.

It seems that I know more than my share of folks who have come and gone from this life—an inordinate number who took their own lives, a staggering number of folks who never reached forty, and an indecent number who had children and spouses.

Of the people I know who are now dead, nearly half have been suicides. Take a handful out of the other half, and it’s cancer. I suppose there are some folks I used to know who are now dead, but I don’t know it.

There’s a lot of stuff I don’t know.

Bryan’s death will be far-reaching—not in the sense of Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson, or even Herb Ellis, but a lot of folks knew him, and they knew the band that he started with his college pals. Mostly, people knew the band. On numerous occasions they opened for my band, or we opened for them. Often, we played the same festivals. I’m sure Humboldt County is a bit off this week. Bryan was a homegrown celebrity.

Thinking about him, I get to thinking about others I’ve known and who have died. Some, like Bryan, were performers, and so their deaths had public impact. Most were just ordinary Dick’s and Jane’s, missed only by family and friends.

But I wonder…

Mr. Phillips taught high school English, and one particular fella in class caught some inspiration from Mr. Phillips and took off into the world. That young man met a lot of people, became a performer, went to college and studied under another extraordinary English teacher, became great friends with another English teacher, then became a teacher himself, got married, had a kid, wrote two published books, dropped out of life for awhile to live in the corporate world, and then came back to be a performer and a music teacher, and one day entered the blogsphere on the internet, and continues to be a performer and writer—and continues to meet an awful lot of people.

The young man is now older, and it is possible that his death will be more far-reaching than he’d like.

But I wonder…

What about Mr. Phillips, and two other English teachers… where do they fit into the “far reach”?

Bound and Gagged

2011-11-15T23:08:00.001-08:00

I know a lot about stars, because I ask them questions, and they answer. The moon doesn’t speak much, dancing from the Cascades to the Coastal Range, just before slipping out the backdoor of the horizon, never hinting whether what the stars tell me is truth or lies.

As a rule, I believe whatever the sky tells me. But I’m not gullible. Not like so many others in the world.

We have fettered ourselves in chains, believing what is told to us by those we have mistakenly endowed with the authority to tell us what we should believe, think, and feel. We know they tell us lies, and yet we believe them, because we want to believe them. We have to; it’s cheaper that way.

It’s a consideration of personal economics: what we take in versus what we let go.

Debts / Assets

Net Income / Expenditures

Take / Give

Kept / Taken

Hidden / Revealed

Assuming responsibility implies a certain amount of risk—personal cost, equated to money, energy, thought, social regard.

Saying that “it’s all about money” begs the question. The statement is true, and yet it’s not. Right now I have to pay my rent, but only because I choose to live that way. I know many people who do not pay rent, or a mortgage, quite a few who have consciously chosen their lifestyles. Society looks down upon those people.

No one has ever definitively answered whether or not we are our brother’s keeper, but many of us choose to believe that we are, even though the “keeping” is, in reality, only giving. The friend with a need for a shoulder upon which to cry requires our energy, and a considerable amount of thought. Exhausting really, when you put your back into it, but we do it, I suppose so that we’ll have a shoulder upon which to cry when it’s our turn at the guillotine.

Life is all about that. Giving people our time, energy, thought, money. But too often, as I listen and watch, too many people seem to want an equal return on their investment. I don’t want to be like that. I want to act and give from the heart, unbound by thoughts of what I should ask for in return.

I think, though, I fall short of that goal.

A car stalls in the roadway, and you can bet I’m going to be one of the first people to help push the vehicle out of traffic. Out of the kindness of my heart? No. I do it because it only makes sense. The longer the car stays there, the more traffic will pile up. The longer traffic piles up, the more grumpy people get. The more grumpy people get, the worse the mood around town. The worse the mood around the town, the more I have to put up with grumpy attitudes all around. I don’t want that. So... I push the car out of traffic not from some goodness in my heart. I do it simply because it’s the right thing to do.

The gal in front of me at the market was two dollars short of her bill. I handed the clerk the two dollars, and the woman, after thanking me from the bottom of her heart, left. Did I pay her delinquent tab out of some goodness in my heart?

No. I just didn’t want to have to witness a commotion at the counter in front of me.

Trolley Travels

2011-11-15T00:21:00.001-08:00

T— and I never thought we’d own another home, but we bought one back on September nineteenth. The caveat: it has six wheels, two in the front and dualies in the rear. It doesn’t go very fast uphill, and it sucks down the gas as fast as jays eat figs, but I suppose that’s to be expected from an old 1987 Toyota Dolphin motorhome. Our best friends have one, and they talked us into buying one that was for sale just a mile down from where we live in a conventional home. (I say conventional, because there is a big movement going in America with people who live on the road, and people who have decided tiny houses are better for the planet. One of these days, T— and I will be among them.)

Our best friends named their Toyota motorhome “The Yoda.” T— and I named ours Trolley, after the little transportation gizmo that would take Mr. Rogers from his neighborhood to the Land of Make Believe. I can’t think of anyone more peaceful than Fred Rogers, and his Trolley always took him to a wonderful place. We intend our little transportation gizmo to travel in peace, and we don’t intend to let it take us anywhere that’s not wonderful. (No trips to Texas or Nevada for us!)

It took my buddy and I a month to get Trolley safely onto the road—new side window, new refrigerator, new plumbing hoses, a new interior water pump, and a new furnace. After the maiden voyage on October 24 to Cannibal Mountain, I discovered more things that needed refurbishing: leaky front window, slow leaking dualies on Trolley’s heaviest side, doors that wouldn’t stay shut.

This past weekend was the first that we had not taken Trolley to the coast. I just figured I needed to use my days off from work to finally complete the refurbishing. I think it’s all done, until I discover something else that needs work: engine starter, heater and various other hoses, leaky radiator.

Future plans are to convert all of the interior electrical systems to solar, and the engine to biodiesel.

The weekend after Thanksgiving, we’re going to caravan to my gig in Yachats, on the coast. We’re experimenting with Trolley as the “tour bus,” and Yoda as the “support vehicle.”

We’re thinking that we’ll never go hungry. A musician can always play for dinner and drinks. My buddy is an engineer and can fix anything, and can convert even a motorcycle to solar power. T— and S— are amazing cooks, crafters, sewers, and knitters. We have trades to trade... and life to experience.

All we need is a good plan of probable probabilities before we set sail permanently.

My New TROLLEY Blog

Without a Light

2011-11-09T00:35:00.001-08:00

        Morbid Mike—my wife and daughter have called me that since the invention of dirt, because it’s true. I don’t mind the darkness; it’s where I spend most of my time. Nothing wrong with that, I figure, since life is more peaceful and quiet when the sun don’t shine. Give folks a little bit of light and they wreak havoc. Blow out the candle, they run and hide, which opens a lot of space for those of us who don’t mind sharing, but who prefer to spend time alone.
        Depression? No, that’s a whole other disease that afflicts too many of my friends, and too many people I used to know, but who no longer walk the Earth. The darkness I embrace is not sadness, self-pity, or denial. My darkness is the opposite, is positive acceptance that some of the nastiest shit I could ever imagine and think is really happening right now on the planet.
        People kill each other, no matter the age of their prey, and too often because of race, creed, or religion. People nonchalantly kill animals, sometimes for sport, too often out of sheer cruelty, or for the promise of money. For some people, killing is a thrill. Somewhere along our timeline, we got an idea to rationalize killing as justice.
        But the darkest thought of all is that the idea of killing is alive and well in all of us. Who among us has never harbored an idea of what it means to kill? Who among us is honest enough to admit it? The seed needs only the light of day and particular circumstances to become real for any of us.
        A coyote nabs our chickens, so we kill it. A shark gets too near our boat, so we kill it. A tree mucks up the view from our living room, so we kill it.
        We kill for only one reason: fear, What is it that we fear?
        Darkness.

Chatting With Death

2011-11-05T23:43:00.000-07:00

Death knocked on my door just a bit after sunrise today. He’s been knocking every morning since I was born, but I had not seen him in such a long time that I felt honored by the visit.

He seemed a bit melancholy as he glided effortlessly toward the dining room, even a bit more lugubrious as we chatted around cups of black cinnamon tea. I asked why he carried such hunched shoulders, and rasped such languished sighs from deep within his cowl. He said it was because there was no longer any fun in collecting the dead.

“There’s far less dignity these days,” he said. “Too many kill without remorse, and too many die long before I’m ready to collect them. It used to be old age, sickness, and war were the only real reasons for my efforts, and in war it was just a handful of ignorant savages who thought it honorable to kill and die for causes that, centuries later, no longer meant anything. But now, war takes everyone… the ignorant, but also innocent women and children. The killers bomb markets, even schools, and spray bullets into peaceful gatherings. War is no longer designated to a particular plot of land where armies meet. The world has become a battlefield. Do you know how many kids die from gunshots on the streets of Detroit, Miami, Berkeley, Oakland… ?"

And in impoverished countries, people die from tainted water. In America, more people now die from drug overdoses than from automobile wrecks or heart disease. Too many people die for all the wrong reasons.”

We sat silently, simply enjoying one another’s company during the last few minutes of his visit. As he got up to leave, Death thanked me for not being afraid of him.

“What’s to be afraid of,” I asked. “There is a fate more scary than death. It’s called life.”

Passing Thought

2011-11-03T00:43:00.001-07:00

Those who came before us are nothing more than passing thoughts susceptible to the editing of growing older. We may have known them once, may even have spoken with them, or invited them over for coffee, but now, being so long ago, we can only imagine them, because they are gone.

Those we knew are real enough, because we keep them in our heads, and if what we think is not real, then you and I must be crazy.

Agony Christened

2011-10-28T23:37:00.000-07:00

The main character of this story sits at his desk to read these words that I write about him. He feels a chill at the nape of his neck, because in the previous chapters up to this point—unread by you, the reader, because they remain unwritten—every other character in this story was found in a garage, behind a bush, in a dumpster, or along an alleyway, either stabbed, shot, or choked to death. So many dead characters in this story, that now the main character of this story wonders whether he is next.

The protagonist of this story feels a surge in his fear as he reads this first sentence of this second paragraph. The plot will get thicker here; it has to. This story ends at the 371st word, so something has to happen now to avoid losing the interest of the reader, you who has no more time than to read this from your cell phone, or from your computer at work just before lunch. And so, with only one character left alive in this story, the main character of this story looks toward the thin curtain flapping limply near an open window. He hears the old house creak as it settles toward the last three paragraphs of this story.

The main character of this story knows he is the only character left as he reads these words being written about him, and in just nine words past the previous comma, he knows without doubt that he will die next.

“Don’t do it!” he yells. “Please don’t do it! If you kill me, too, there will be no one left to walk the dark and unsettled landscapes you have imagined to carry along the story. You will have only locations and settings, with no one to carry the plot or to execute the story. You will reach the ending with no conclusion. You will have nothing left to write about.”

A flash. The main character of this story drops the pages of this story, runs to the open window mentioned in the second paragraph, and he watches in agony as mushroom clouds begin to appear one after another. So many that, even before this story can reach its final period…

Chicken Little

2011-10-27T00:05:00.001-07:00

Apples fall by the hundreds from the ancient tree along the side of the house. Some hit the ground with a pop, some with a sploosh. Most of the apples hit with a thud so loud that my two little Chihuahuas run to the porch for cover. Swee’ Pea and Bluto are no dummies. They know the apples, if they land on a little dog, would be nothing less than the “Little Boy” dropped from the Enola Gay.

        As I began my weekly task of collecting the five hundred or so apples that fall each week, one skimmed my head before it hit the ground. I felt the weight of the impact in my feet, less than a foot away from ground zero.
        An apple, six inches in diameter… I nearly went to my knees when it hit my shoulder. Amazing.
        I picked up the apple that hit me, and I began to wonder about the weight of the sky, the combined mass of all the planets, asteroids, and stars… and all the stuff we don’t even know exists.
        What is the weight of eternity? The thought of it and I can feel my mind twinge from the weight of the question.
        I think often about the expansiveness of the universe, and it doesn’t bother me. I think of forever as confined to a certain immensity. What lies beyond eternity intrigues me more. And to then think that all of it has weight.
        Astrophysicists would most likely argue that there is no weight, that a body floating in space is contained within a void of weightlessness. Frankly, I don’t take much stock in modern science. The folks doing the research look at things from a skewed perspective—corporatized, financed, human-centric by default.
        A few “maverick” ideas within certain realms of science postulate the fullness of the universe, claim that even within a small space—say from the Earth to Mars—the whole area is pack with stuff.
        All of that stuff has to carry some weight, even in infinitesimal infinity.

Aristotle dismissed the idea of the atom. Indeed, Atomic theory wasn’t really dragged out of its dusty closet and popularized until the Victorian era, a time of opulence and egocentricity. (Humans, in these more “modern” times, really do think the universe was built for and around them—thus the universe doesn’t need to be too expansive, since we don’t take up a whole lot of space.)

Just Maybe...

2011-10-22T00:17:00.001-07:00

July 1, 2001, 6:34 p.m.—the busboy at Belle Vallée knocked over my metal dobro, the guitar I had played for fifteen years. The head stock snapped off, with some nasty jagged edges. I tried, and two luthiers tried... but the dobro died. It now decorates the carrot patch at my daughter’s house.

But... my search to find a replacement guitar may finally be over. I am in possession of a brand new Simon & Patrick Woodland Pro Folk—fourteen frets on a twelve-fret scale length, slotted headstock, and a gorgeous antique sunburst.

My new Godin rep showed up at the store yesterday, and the first new item he pulled it’s case was the S&P Woodland Pro Folk. Two weeks ago, when he called to introduce himself, my new rep and I got to chatting, and he had asked what kind of stuff I played and what kind of guitars I liked. Only in hindsight do I realize that I got set up. My new rep is no dummy. He brought that particular guitar on purpose.

I’m glad he did. The Woodland Folk may be the answer to my recent flummox. It just feels good in my arms, and my fingers get around without slamming around the strings.

I will know after my gig this Saturday if I have found my new guitar.

(I put one of my spare LR Baggs Active M1 pickups in it tonight, and then recorded a new song. I was pleased with the outcome.)

Time’s Up

(My new song)