John Prine
October 10,1946 - April7, 2020
Showing posts with label Prine-John. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prine-John. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 7, 2021
Tuesday, August 18, 2020
Friday, April 17, 2020
John Prine, you wrote my life - day 15
UPDATE: Sad news: John died April 7 of covid-19.
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of Johnand in hopes that he recovers fully from covid-19 and is released from the hospital soon, I'm going to post here one chapter a day from that writing, along with a YouTube clip of John singing the song that inspired it (as long as a YouTube clip exists of it).
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
Up in the mornin', work like a dog
Is better than sittin' like a bump on a log
Mind all your manners. Be quiet as a mouse
Some day you'll own a home that's as big as a house
Kiss a little baby. Give the world a smile
If you take an inch, give 'em back a mile
'Cause if you lie like a rug and you don't give a damn
You're never gonna be as happy as a clam
There's big old goofy man
Dancing with a big old goofy girl
Ooh baby
It's a big old goofy world
"Do you know anything about horses? Not much? Well, I'll make this short. In the quarter-horse world there are three primo lines. This horse I got has two of those lines on both sides of his parentage. The lady I got him from drinks a little too much. By noon she can't say her own name, and so she doesn't take very good care of her animals. He was in clover up to his knees, and I found out he had a condition called founder. So when I told her, she felt so bad about trying to sell me a damaged horse that she GAVE him to me."
He actually whispered the word "gave", but with great emphasis and an upward toss of his eyebrows, which his eyes followed. He was quite serious, as though it were no stretch to think being so drunk by noon that you can't say your own name is only drinking "a little too much", and the tone and animation of his story telling made me laugh. "You Texans are all such characters," I said.
The look of puzzled surprise on Toot's face (that's what the name on his business card said: "Toot" Barkley) made me add, "I'm sure it seems normal to you, but to the rest of the world, you Texans are characters."
Toot showed me pictures of this new horse which he's very proud of. He's particularly proud that the horse has finally grown to trust and respond to him. He looked surprised and puzzled again when he told me that the horse had only been handled by a woman and it disliked and mistrusted men, and I said I could understand that stance.
I spent the whole following day in a little motel room, trying to get a note of some quality and duration from my newly purchased violin. I don't know how to play. I wonder if I can learn. It came into my possession in De Queen, Arkansas just a couple days before. Not so much on a whim as it was on a schedule. For many years the idea of playing a fiddle had floated in my subconscious, surfacing only momentarily from time to time, and now it had manifested. Well, the instrument at least.
After I bought the violin, I drove straight on to the Gulf of Mexico, expecting a much needed healing of big water and salt air. What came first, however, was Port Arthur, Texas. Oil refineries, swampland, alligators. Rain. Lots of rain. And a large, probably endangered species, bird on a wildlife preserve swept up and into the grill of my truck, thudding dead in the road. This was turning out to be just what the cards had foreseen - disastrous.
So I drove on, and when the road ended in a ferry with only one spot left, I drove on and filled it. Crossing the water, I crossed the border from what was ailing me to the healing power of Gulf waters at Galveston. The following day I found a nearly deserted beach where I opened the tailgate of my truck at water's edge and tried some more to play my violin. Soon enough I gave over and got in the waves. What cares can you have when you're playing with pelicans and fish that spurt up out of the water like popcorn? And dolphins!
Movement through time. Moments. Maybe they just arrive. Maybe you force their hand. Electron excitation. They say the electron eventually loses the energetic charge that made it jump to its higher orbit and finds its way back into its original shell.
At some point the world may shift. You won't feel it coming, and you won't be able to look back on the moment that it shifted and say you felt it moving. It just takes a little hop, like in the Rocky Horror song, and there you are. In something not entirely unfamiliar, but certainly shifted. And it's there that you realize you will never end. You will just keep shifting. And you will go on and on and on and on and on. And that realization is immediately both maddening and sorrowful. And then you accept it. Same as the steps in the grieving process. The compensation for this realization is that this shifted dimension is one of heightened awareness, synchronicities, and ephemeral eureka moments of understanding. And so, with your new eyes, you travel with a sense of adventure and wonder.
Except for the times when you slip back into your pre-revelation state of third-dimensionally limited reality. And then you vibrate with the same frequency as the world around you, and so you interact with it according to its rules and seem like an 'ordinary' human creature...dull, slow, frustrated, ignorant and tired. Maybe moreso than you were before you experienced the shift.
And when you get stuck there, you take a drive to Texas.
-------
And that's the last chapter of my story before I got stuck in time again.
Wash your hands. Don't touch your face. It's not over.
And bless John Prine. He left us treasures.
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of John
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
John Prine, You Wrote My Life
a life unstuck in time (to borrow a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr),
so this story can go on and on in dis-order, added to at any time the whim (or need) arises
Chapter 15
Big Old Goofy World©
---The Missing Years
Up in the mornin', work like a dog
Is better than sittin' like a bump on a log
Mind all your manners. Be quiet as a mouse
Some day you'll own a home that's as big as a house
Kiss a little baby. Give the world a smile
If you take an inch, give 'em back a mile
'Cause if you lie like a rug and you don't give a damn
You're never gonna be as happy as a clam
There's big old goofy man
Dancing with a big old goofy girl
Ooh baby
It's a big old goofy world
"Do you know anything about horses? Not much? Well, I'll make this short. In the quarter-horse world there are three primo lines. This horse I got has two of those lines on both sides of his parentage. The lady I got him from drinks a little too much. By noon she can't say her own name, and so she doesn't take very good care of her animals. He was in clover up to his knees, and I found out he had a condition called founder. So when I told her, she felt so bad about trying to sell me a damaged horse that she GAVE him to me."
He actually whispered the word "gave", but with great emphasis and an upward toss of his eyebrows, which his eyes followed. He was quite serious, as though it were no stretch to think being so drunk by noon that you can't say your own name is only drinking "a little too much", and the tone and animation of his story telling made me laugh. "You Texans are all such characters," I said.
The look of puzzled surprise on Toot's face (that's what the name on his business card said: "Toot" Barkley) made me add, "I'm sure it seems normal to you, but to the rest of the world, you Texans are characters."
Toot showed me pictures of this new horse which he's very proud of. He's particularly proud that the horse has finally grown to trust and respond to him. He looked surprised and puzzled again when he told me that the horse had only been handled by a woman and it disliked and mistrusted men, and I said I could understand that stance.
I spent the whole following day in a little motel room, trying to get a note of some quality and duration from my newly purchased violin. I don't know how to play. I wonder if I can learn. It came into my possession in De Queen, Arkansas just a couple days before. Not so much on a whim as it was on a schedule. For many years the idea of playing a fiddle had floated in my subconscious, surfacing only momentarily from time to time, and now it had manifested. Well, the instrument at least.
After I bought the violin, I drove straight on to the Gulf of Mexico, expecting a much needed healing of big water and salt air. What came first, however, was Port Arthur, Texas. Oil refineries, swampland, alligators. Rain. Lots of rain. And a large, probably endangered species, bird on a wildlife preserve swept up and into the grill of my truck, thudding dead in the road. This was turning out to be just what the cards had foreseen - disastrous.
So I drove on, and when the road ended in a ferry with only one spot left, I drove on and filled it. Crossing the water, I crossed the border from what was ailing me to the healing power of Gulf waters at Galveston. The following day I found a nearly deserted beach where I opened the tailgate of my truck at water's edge and tried some more to play my violin. Soon enough I gave over and got in the waves. What cares can you have when you're playing with pelicans and fish that spurt up out of the water like popcorn? And dolphins!
Movement through time. Moments. Maybe they just arrive. Maybe you force their hand. Electron excitation. They say the electron eventually loses the energetic charge that made it jump to its higher orbit and finds its way back into its original shell.
At some point the world may shift. You won't feel it coming, and you won't be able to look back on the moment that it shifted and say you felt it moving. It just takes a little hop, like in the Rocky Horror song, and there you are. In something not entirely unfamiliar, but certainly shifted. And it's there that you realize you will never end. You will just keep shifting. And you will go on and on and on and on and on. And that realization is immediately both maddening and sorrowful. And then you accept it. Same as the steps in the grieving process. The compensation for this realization is that this shifted dimension is one of heightened awareness, synchronicities, and ephemeral eureka moments of understanding. And so, with your new eyes, you travel with a sense of adventure and wonder.
Except for the times when you slip back into your pre-revelation state of third-dimensionally limited reality. And then you vibrate with the same frequency as the world around you, and so you interact with it according to its rules and seem like an 'ordinary' human creature...dull, slow, frustrated, ignorant and tired. Maybe moreso than you were before you experienced the shift.
And when you get stuck there, you take a drive to Texas.
-------
And that's the last chapter of my story before I got stuck in time again.
Wash your hands. Don't touch your face. It's not over.
And bless John Prine. He left us treasures.
Thursday, April 16, 2020
John Prine, you wrote my life - day 14
UPDATE: Sad news: John died April 7 of covid-19.
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of Johnand in hopes that he recovers fully from covid-19 and is released from the hospital soon, I'm going to post here one chapter a day from that writing, along with a YouTube clip of John singing the song that inspired it (as long as a YouTube clip exists of it).
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
Now I ain't seen no saucers 'cept the ones upon the shelf
And if I ever see one I'll keep it to myself
For if there's life out there somewhere beyond this life on earth
Then Linda must have gone out there and got her money's worth
Oh My stars! My Linda's gone to Mars
Well I wish she wouldn't leave me here alone
Oh My stars! My Linda's gone to Mars
I wonder if she'll bring me something home
"Well f&#k! (Pardonez moi.)" That's how my email to several contacts started. I finally learned that if the computer eats something or doesn't get something sent just the way I thought I had intended, I should just go with the computer. Divnity operates even at the computer level - and maybe especially there.
So, to continue my email....
"Okay, I defer to the ghost in the computer - just finished a message related to this site and it poof!ed. I don't know where it went.
So check out the site anyway (http://www.probablefuture.com/p558.htm [4/16/20: this site no longer exists]), because there's a different take on remote viewing - it's a little long, but for anyone who has been involved in techincal remote viewing or trained according to protocols originated by military intelligence, there are some interesting alternative points.
Let me know what you think. (I could be way behind the times here, as I'm not really that well-read on the subject. I know some about it, know some of the techniques, have seen some of the courses offered - but my own experiences are personal, spontaneous and without training.)
There's one thing in particular I still have a problem with, and that is, even if you remote view from the theta state - or whatever state permits one to access universal mind, I think there's every likelihood that you will tap into a concurrent alternate reality (as borne out in terms of quantum physics) - and since that can be virtually identical to the one you are currently focused in, you will not necessarily be viewing something that will in fact prove out to be occurring in this particular timeline.
Another comment made on this page is that everybody wants to remember being someone, while nobody wants to remember being everybody. In my own experience, however, that is precisely what is happening to me - I remember and view so many somebodies that I think my viewing is suspect. (In fact, I just read Dolores Cannon's "Legacy from the Stars", and with the exception of one chapter, I could have provided points of the same information as was accessed by each one of her client/subjects. How could that be unless by some bizarre coincidence, I am 'connected' to every one of her subjects, or - more likely - we are all able to access the same information, and they just focus on one or two other 'selves' while I jump all over the god-blessed universe.) I have enough strange experiences and 'trips' that it seems most plausible to me at this juncture that I AM in fact everybody. So there. Of particular note is that time in October 2001, that I went AWOL from this reality and was taken head-on to a space where I was the only being in existence, and everything else in this world (including all of you) was a construct of my mind. It took me a while to shake that - but I went to work immediately to restore my illusion of me-ness, because that other space was terribly uncomfortable.
One part of me is intent upon taking me to and beyond that door between separateness and pea soup, and another part is very adept at slamming the door when I get there. So the best those two parts can come up with for now seems to be forays to certain windows. I don't think this sneak-attack-on-the-ego approach is going to work out - I think we're going to have to convince the ego that it's okay to let me leave the house. Perhaps I'm going to have to quit wishing to be done with this life in order to convince the ego to let me go so it will feel comfortable that I'll come back, huh? If that's the case, we're going to have to do some serious negotiating."
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of John
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
John Prine, You Wrote My Life
a life unstuck in time (to borrow a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr),
so this story can go on and on in dis-order, added to at any time the whim (or need) arises
Chapter 14
Linda Goes to Mars©
---German Afternoons
Now I ain't seen no saucers 'cept the ones upon the shelf
And if I ever see one I'll keep it to myself
For if there's life out there somewhere beyond this life on earth
Then Linda must have gone out there and got her money's worth
Oh My stars! My Linda's gone to Mars
Well I wish she wouldn't leave me here alone
Oh My stars! My Linda's gone to Mars
I wonder if she'll bring me something home
"Well f&#k! (Pardonez moi.)" That's how my email to several contacts started. I finally learned that if the computer eats something or doesn't get something sent just the way I thought I had intended, I should just go with the computer. Divnity operates even at the computer level - and maybe especially there.
So, to continue my email....
"Okay, I defer to the ghost in the computer - just finished a message related to this site and it poof!ed. I don't know where it went.
So check out the site anyway (http://www.probablefuture.com/p558.htm [4/16/20: this site no longer exists]), because there's a different take on remote viewing - it's a little long, but for anyone who has been involved in techincal remote viewing or trained according to protocols originated by military intelligence, there are some interesting alternative points.
Let me know what you think. (I could be way behind the times here, as I'm not really that well-read on the subject. I know some about it, know some of the techniques, have seen some of the courses offered - but my own experiences are personal, spontaneous and without training.)
There's one thing in particular I still have a problem with, and that is, even if you remote view from the theta state - or whatever state permits one to access universal mind, I think there's every likelihood that you will tap into a concurrent alternate reality (as borne out in terms of quantum physics) - and since that can be virtually identical to the one you are currently focused in, you will not necessarily be viewing something that will in fact prove out to be occurring in this particular timeline.
Another comment made on this page is that everybody wants to remember being someone, while nobody wants to remember being everybody. In my own experience, however, that is precisely what is happening to me - I remember and view so many somebodies that I think my viewing is suspect. (In fact, I just read Dolores Cannon's "Legacy from the Stars", and with the exception of one chapter, I could have provided points of the same information as was accessed by each one of her client/subjects. How could that be unless by some bizarre coincidence, I am 'connected' to every one of her subjects, or - more likely - we are all able to access the same information, and they just focus on one or two other 'selves' while I jump all over the god-blessed universe.) I have enough strange experiences and 'trips' that it seems most plausible to me at this juncture that I AM in fact everybody. So there. Of particular note is that time in October 2001, that I went AWOL from this reality and was taken head-on to a space where I was the only being in existence, and everything else in this world (including all of you) was a construct of my mind. It took me a while to shake that - but I went to work immediately to restore my illusion of me-ness, because that other space was terribly uncomfortable.
One part of me is intent upon taking me to and beyond that door between separateness and pea soup, and another part is very adept at slamming the door when I get there. So the best those two parts can come up with for now seems to be forays to certain windows. I don't think this sneak-attack-on-the-ego approach is going to work out - I think we're going to have to convince the ego that it's okay to let me leave the house. Perhaps I'm going to have to quit wishing to be done with this life in order to convince the ego to let me go so it will feel comfortable that I'll come back, huh? If that's the case, we're going to have to do some serious negotiating."
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
John Prine, you wrote my life - day 13
UPDATE: Sad news: John died April 7 of covid-19.
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of Johnand in hopes that he recovers fully from covid-19 and is released from the hospital soon, I'm going to post here one chapter a day from that writing, along with a YouTube clip of John singing the song that inspired it (as long as a YouTube clip exists of it).
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
We were born too late, died to soon
Anxiety's a terrible crime
If you don't come now, don't come at all
'Cause it's a crooked piece of time.
It's a crooked piece of time that we live in
A crooked piece of time
All in all and all in all
It's a crooked piece of time.
"Well, you couldn't be more alienated," my first husband recently said to me incredulously when I suggested I thought I was right where I need to be. I thought that was a pretty interesting observation considering his own life, but I didn't argue, because I can still recognize important clues when I hear them.
He's not exactly right, of course, because I could be more alienated. And I expect to be. The thing of it is, I need to find what's in my own personal Area 51. That's a burning need, and a seemingly urgent one. I don't mind that the quest alienates me. I hate it that it sometimes causes others pain. And alienation actually seems to ameliorate that condition. Of course, it could just be that it hides the view. If I don't see it, it isn't there. Just like the homeless that are banned from your downtown area.
A woman I used to work with once complained about consumerism, saying that we have our needs confused with our wants. In my view, the difference between the two is only in degree. They're the same thing. I need what I want. That's how it works. If your body is dehydrated, the result is that you will want a drink.
That same woman said that, if the research is true stating that there is a bonding chemical which is produced during sex, and women produce two times more of it than men, it does not necessarily follow (as the same research claims) that the production of said bonding chemical answers the question why women are more likely to be sexually monogamous or "faithful", but rather, it could simply mean that a woman has to produce twice as much, or she'd never stay with the idiot.
What I like about that observation, other than the obvious, is that it's a clear example of finding the alternative explanation, and not simply settling for the one presented to you.
What disturbs me about that statement arises from the not-so-obvious reason I like it: Can I go on infinitely finding infinite alternative explanations to any question? And the answer, I think, is a most definitive YES! So why in the name of all that's holy do I continue to even ask any questions? What am I looking for?!
I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing stable in existence - nothing that can be called "true". And, I suppose that leads me not-so-gracefully into the quantum world, which must be the home of the fourth dimension - which is supposed to be the dimension of time, or, "imaginary space", as the theoretical physicists call it. Time is imaginary space. That ought to keep simple minds busy for a while. Well, long enough to decide they'd rather go back to abusing their children than to think about it at all.
This world is actually a virtual world, according to quantum physics. And according to me, as well. It's absolutely clear to me that we are players in a game - or movie if you prefer and are not particularly fond of games. The only problem with that is that in a movie, you can't break the rules, and in a game, that possibility does exist. In a movie, you can refuse to follow the script, but you will just be replaced by a more submissive actor. You will still be an actor, you'll just be an out of work actor.
So it is with the game. It goes on and the players in it as well. Therefore, the rule I am needing to break (all, right, wanting to break, if it suits you better), is the first one: Once you are in the game, you cannot get out until the game is over. And that is not about a personal or individual death. That is about the entire game. Similarly to being an out-of-work-actor, when a pawn is taken off the board, it is not really out of the game. Its presence in the game is simply represented by its absence on the board. The pawn does not go back in the box until the game is over. So rule number one says you don't get out of the game. The better you understand the rules, and the more enthusiasm you have for the game, I suppose, the easier it is to play. And, if you learn nothing else, you learn that being the king on the board simply means you are forced to play till the bitter end. At least the snatched-off pawn can sit on the side and take a nap.
And this game, though many are saying is in end game mode, and I agree, seems to me to be dangerously threatening to be at stalemate. Which means that the board is about to be reset, and the game will go on.
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of John
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
John Prine, You Wrote My Life
a life unstuck in time (to borrow a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr),
so this story can go on and on in dis-order, added to at any time the whim (or need) arises
Chapter 13
Crooked Piece of Time©
---Bruised Orange
We were born too late, died to soon
Anxiety's a terrible crime
If you don't come now, don't come at all
'Cause it's a crooked piece of time.
It's a crooked piece of time that we live in
A crooked piece of time
All in all and all in all
It's a crooked piece of time.
"Well, you couldn't be more alienated," my first husband recently said to me incredulously when I suggested I thought I was right where I need to be. I thought that was a pretty interesting observation considering his own life, but I didn't argue, because I can still recognize important clues when I hear them.
He's not exactly right, of course, because I could be more alienated. And I expect to be. The thing of it is, I need to find what's in my own personal Area 51. That's a burning need, and a seemingly urgent one. I don't mind that the quest alienates me. I hate it that it sometimes causes others pain. And alienation actually seems to ameliorate that condition. Of course, it could just be that it hides the view. If I don't see it, it isn't there. Just like the homeless that are banned from your downtown area.
A woman I used to work with once complained about consumerism, saying that we have our needs confused with our wants. In my view, the difference between the two is only in degree. They're the same thing. I need what I want. That's how it works. If your body is dehydrated, the result is that you will want a drink.
That same woman said that, if the research is true stating that there is a bonding chemical which is produced during sex, and women produce two times more of it than men, it does not necessarily follow (as the same research claims) that the production of said bonding chemical answers the question why women are more likely to be sexually monogamous or "faithful", but rather, it could simply mean that a woman has to produce twice as much, or she'd never stay with the idiot.
What I like about that observation, other than the obvious, is that it's a clear example of finding the alternative explanation, and not simply settling for the one presented to you.
What disturbs me about that statement arises from the not-so-obvious reason I like it: Can I go on infinitely finding infinite alternative explanations to any question? And the answer, I think, is a most definitive YES! So why in the name of all that's holy do I continue to even ask any questions? What am I looking for?!
I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing stable in existence - nothing that can be called "true". And, I suppose that leads me not-so-gracefully into the quantum world, which must be the home of the fourth dimension - which is supposed to be the dimension of time, or, "imaginary space", as the theoretical physicists call it. Time is imaginary space. That ought to keep simple minds busy for a while. Well, long enough to decide they'd rather go back to abusing their children than to think about it at all.
This world is actually a virtual world, according to quantum physics. And according to me, as well. It's absolutely clear to me that we are players in a game - or movie if you prefer and are not particularly fond of games. The only problem with that is that in a movie, you can't break the rules, and in a game, that possibility does exist. In a movie, you can refuse to follow the script, but you will just be replaced by a more submissive actor. You will still be an actor, you'll just be an out of work actor.
So it is with the game. It goes on and the players in it as well. Therefore, the rule I am needing to break (all, right, wanting to break, if it suits you better), is the first one: Once you are in the game, you cannot get out until the game is over. And that is not about a personal or individual death. That is about the entire game. Similarly to being an out-of-work-actor, when a pawn is taken off the board, it is not really out of the game. Its presence in the game is simply represented by its absence on the board. The pawn does not go back in the box until the game is over. So rule number one says you don't get out of the game. The better you understand the rules, and the more enthusiasm you have for the game, I suppose, the easier it is to play. And, if you learn nothing else, you learn that being the king on the board simply means you are forced to play till the bitter end. At least the snatched-off pawn can sit on the side and take a nap.
And this game, though many are saying is in end game mode, and I agree, seems to me to be dangerously threatening to be at stalemate. Which means that the board is about to be reset, and the game will go on.
What's in my own personal Area 51? I think, the way out. I hope.
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
John Prine , you wrote my life - day 12
UPDATE: Sad news: John died April 7 of covid-19.
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of Johnand in hopes that he recovers fully from covid-19 and is released from the hospital soon, I'm going to post here one chapter a day from that writing, along with a YouTube clip of John singing the song that inspired it (as long as a YouTube clip exists of it).
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
[Note: I seem to have used this song twice.]
The white meat is on the run
And the dark meat is far too done
And the milkman left me a note yesterday
Get out of this town by noon
You're coming on way too soon
And besides that
We never liked you any way
"You will not tell anyone you love them. You will talk only about acceptable subjects such as the weather." I swear that's exactly what he said. My "boss". After two co-workers got together and decided the best way to be rid of me was to bring sexual harassment charges against me. Blind-sided. Now I know what that means. It happened to me once before, in graduate school, but that was on the softball field and I was standing a little too directly over first base, apparently, when the runner came through - some beefy guy from a real softball team, with legs like tree trunks. I was concentrating on catching that bee-lining ball the shortstop had just thrown, and I really didn't even see the runner. Felt him though. Seemed like I hit the ground the same time the ball hit my glove, but it must have been a split second after. It did seem like the umpire should have called the runner out, but maybe my feet were in the air when I caught the ball. Anyway, I got up from both incidents a little more enlightened.
I guess my co-workers knew that my recitation of a recent medical journal article stating that the average man has an average of eleven erections per day could be counted on to offend the boss - a born-again fundamentalist, ex-catholic. And since I had been schooling their underlings on which of their "management" approaches were actually illegal, they were determined to see me fired. They didn't succeed, but I got an extra dose of boss Tom in the bargain.
"You will come in to the office every morning and greet your co-workers with a friendly hello. You will make them feel comfortable in your presence. You will not walk out of the room when they come into it. You will not wear sleeveless shirts. You will behave according to the mores of the community in which you live." He had quite a list for me, which I respectfully declined to follow. It wasn't until I mentioned that I was consulting with an attorney that they all backed down. Though I usually bemoan the existence of attorneys, it does seem that they have their uses.
Those three men were all righteous "God-fearing Christians." They knew a sinner when they met one - a scarlet woman - and they knew how to deal with her. In the end, though, I kept my position. The devout Catholic who was to be the one to bring charges against me became a defendant in a real case of sexual harassment at work; the supervisor who helped him and taught him how to get away with illegal treatment of underlings, and who kept a plaque on his desk that said, "Whatsoever the Lord asketh of you, do it", was surprised by the onset of an incurable and rapidly growing cancer and died shortly after retiring early to take trips with his wife; and the boss was called by God, so he said, to a new job in Maine - on the coast as he so proudly pointed out on the map: "Out here on this finger of land." I wonder he never realized what he'd just said - God gave him the finger.
Hmmmmm fellas, maybe God's got a sense of fair play after all.
Hold on. Just a minute. I think this was a different story.....
........
Oh, yes, here we are.....
........
"We don't really have any more room. We're overcrowded as it is. But the principal from your former school called me personally and asked me to make room for you."
Those remarks from the principal at the high school I had just transferred to might have been complimentary in some way under some other circumstances. But the fact was, the principal from my former school was doing all he could to make sure I was removed from his territory. My crime was to have an African-American boy (we called them black in those days) as my best friend. I'd been too ignorant of the reality of social Christianity to realize that, although the fundamentalist church in which I was being raised claimed to adhere to the principles taught by their man Jesus, which should in theory have included love and acceptance of all races (although I admit I am unable to point out any gospel actually directing such a stance), in practice the good folk adhered to a somewhat different code. Oh sure, I was 16 years old, but I had managed to be rather isolated all that time...okay, call a spade a spade - I lived in my own world, which often had (still has) nothing to do with the place the rest of you folks live.
So, while my sister and brother remained at the former high school, I got shuttled off to another one, in another town, 45 miles away. I never thought to ask what fallout they incurred from my incredible faux pas. They really had never been inclined to accept my presence in their world, nor to make any attempt to visit mine, so perhaps I just assumed they were completely separated from anything I did that might soil their arena.
Maybe I was just too remote or too thoughtless. Some things get so far away that they seem to belong to someone else. Looking back, most of my life does seem to be a movie about someone else. Perhaps it was. Perhaps it is still.
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of John
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
[Note: I seem to have used this song twice.]
John Prine, You Wrote My Life
a life unstuck in time (to borrow a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr),
so this story can go on and on in dis-order, added to at any time the whim (or need) arises
Chapter 12
Sweet Revenge© (Part 2)
---Sweet Revenge
The white meat is on the run
And the dark meat is far too done
And the milkman left me a note yesterday
Get out of this town by noon
You're coming on way too soon
And besides that
We never liked you any way
"You will not tell anyone you love them. You will talk only about acceptable subjects such as the weather." I swear that's exactly what he said. My "boss". After two co-workers got together and decided the best way to be rid of me was to bring sexual harassment charges against me. Blind-sided. Now I know what that means. It happened to me once before, in graduate school, but that was on the softball field and I was standing a little too directly over first base, apparently, when the runner came through - some beefy guy from a real softball team, with legs like tree trunks. I was concentrating on catching that bee-lining ball the shortstop had just thrown, and I really didn't even see the runner. Felt him though. Seemed like I hit the ground the same time the ball hit my glove, but it must have been a split second after. It did seem like the umpire should have called the runner out, but maybe my feet were in the air when I caught the ball. Anyway, I got up from both incidents a little more enlightened.
I guess my co-workers knew that my recitation of a recent medical journal article stating that the average man has an average of eleven erections per day could be counted on to offend the boss - a born-again fundamentalist, ex-catholic. And since I had been schooling their underlings on which of their "management" approaches were actually illegal, they were determined to see me fired. They didn't succeed, but I got an extra dose of boss Tom in the bargain.
"You will come in to the office every morning and greet your co-workers with a friendly hello. You will make them feel comfortable in your presence. You will not walk out of the room when they come into it. You will not wear sleeveless shirts. You will behave according to the mores of the community in which you live." He had quite a list for me, which I respectfully declined to follow. It wasn't until I mentioned that I was consulting with an attorney that they all backed down. Though I usually bemoan the existence of attorneys, it does seem that they have their uses.
Those three men were all righteous "God-fearing Christians." They knew a sinner when they met one - a scarlet woman - and they knew how to deal with her. In the end, though, I kept my position. The devout Catholic who was to be the one to bring charges against me became a defendant in a real case of sexual harassment at work; the supervisor who helped him and taught him how to get away with illegal treatment of underlings, and who kept a plaque on his desk that said, "Whatsoever the Lord asketh of you, do it", was surprised by the onset of an incurable and rapidly growing cancer and died shortly after retiring early to take trips with his wife; and the boss was called by God, so he said, to a new job in Maine - on the coast as he so proudly pointed out on the map: "Out here on this finger of land." I wonder he never realized what he'd just said - God gave him the finger.
Hmmmmm fellas, maybe God's got a sense of fair play after all.
Hold on. Just a minute. I think this was a different story.....
........
Oh, yes, here we are.....
........
"We don't really have any more room. We're overcrowded as it is. But the principal from your former school called me personally and asked me to make room for you."
Those remarks from the principal at the high school I had just transferred to might have been complimentary in some way under some other circumstances. But the fact was, the principal from my former school was doing all he could to make sure I was removed from his territory. My crime was to have an African-American boy (we called them black in those days) as my best friend. I'd been too ignorant of the reality of social Christianity to realize that, although the fundamentalist church in which I was being raised claimed to adhere to the principles taught by their man Jesus, which should in theory have included love and acceptance of all races (although I admit I am unable to point out any gospel actually directing such a stance), in practice the good folk adhered to a somewhat different code. Oh sure, I was 16 years old, but I had managed to be rather isolated all that time...okay, call a spade a spade - I lived in my own world, which often had (still has) nothing to do with the place the rest of you folks live.
So, while my sister and brother remained at the former high school, I got shuttled off to another one, in another town, 45 miles away. I never thought to ask what fallout they incurred from my incredible faux pas. They really had never been inclined to accept my presence in their world, nor to make any attempt to visit mine, so perhaps I just assumed they were completely separated from anything I did that might soil their arena.
Maybe I was just too remote or too thoughtless. Some things get so far away that they seem to belong to someone else. Looking back, most of my life does seem to be a movie about someone else. Perhaps it was. Perhaps it is still.
Monday, April 13, 2020
John Prine, you wrote my life - day 11
UPDATE: Sad news: John died April 7 of covid-19.
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of Johnand in hopes that he recovers fully from covid-19 and is released from the hospital soon, I'm going to post here one chapter a day from that writing, along with a YouTube clip of John singing the song that inspired it (as long as a YouTube clip exists of it).
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
Now the harbor's on fire
With the dreams and desires
Of a thousand young poets
Who failed 'cause they tried
For a rhyme without reason
Floats down to the bottom
Where the scavengers eat it
Washed in with the tide
"You are going to write a book." That's what she said. And I didn't even let her get the sentence finished before I was shaking my head.
I'd started and stopped several times already, and I knew I didn't have it in me. Sometimes I'd think, maybe it's time to write that book. If you don't try, you won't know. But that's not what was stopping me. The problem was, if you do try, you will know.
It seems like it must be important how I got where I am. At least I think about it sometimes. Like the times I've spent soaking in the tub.
Soaking in a hot bath really is overrated. It feels good for about two-and-a-half minutes, and then it's just hot. My grandmother used to send me to the tub at night insisting that it would make me feel clean and good for bedtime. But it was always a little scary to me. Her bathroom was an add-on to an old farmhouse - kind of a porch that felt quite separated from the rest of the house. It was always closed off by the door that led to it, and at night it seemed almost like it was in another building altogether - far away from anyone who would hear me if I needed them. It was the mid-zone between the bad man world outside and the safe home inside. Between, and unsettling.
That border world exists in reality. I found it again a few years ago. Aboriginals and shamans have long known about one borderland that lies between our waking reality and our dream reality. Modern Western civilized man only accepts the one as reality and discounts the other two. Limited vision. In the late 20th Century, however, that vision is slowly being expanded.
"Sorcerers believe that until the very moment of the spirit's descent, any of us could walk away from the spirit; but not afterwards." So says Carlos Castaneda's don Juan Matus. And a North American Elder named Leon Shenandoah says, "There are no coincidences. Only paths. Only one path. Got to follow it even if you can't see it. Only path you got."
When my path led me into the borderland, I had no idea what a difficult place it is to navigate. Nor did I know that don Juan was right. Some times I would simply have to write things down to get them out of my head and my heart and move on. As though thoughts were sticking places in the borderland, and until you were able to fully express them, you were bound to them. So I have a series of scribblings that act as mementos of various places I've visited in the borderland. Snapshots of my journey. Such as:
August 14, 2000:
Every step I take leads me further and further away from anything resembling solid ground.
Sometimes I stand still. Out of fear I guess. And yet sometimes I think it's because construction on the bridge that leads across the chasm is slow, and the space for my next footstep has not been made. In those times, a great weight settles in my chest and the sounds rising from my heart get trapped and bound within my throat.
I feel like if I'm not walking, I become stuck, bound in embalmers cloth, crying in the desert. But the tears are unable to release the songs trapped in the tunnel of my throat, knowing the sound they make is only a song if they get out.
Fortunately, very early into my immersion into the borderland, there was a moment of realization that all is perfection as it exists in every moment, whether that moment be subjectively experienced as good or bad. And during that moment of realization, all desire or need to struggle in life fell away.
Now a realization is, after all, a real-ization. So the question arose: Why can't spirit, which gave me that realization, sustain it for me, or give it to me constantly? And the answer came: Because in that state of rest, the world that we experience would not exist. This world requires waves to and fro, positive and negative - vibrations - in order to exist.
In other dimensions, the larger part of me must care to maintain this world. But the me that I am here doesn't care and would prefer a state of oblivion over the state of this existence. In the blink of an eye, on some days with no thought at all, I would end the world. End the game. And maybe never create a new one.
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of John
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
John Prine, You Wrote My Life
a life unstuck in time (to borrow a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr),
so this story can go on and on in dis-order, added to at any time the whim (or need) arises
Chapter 11
He Was in Heaven Before He Died©
---Common Sense
Now the harbor's on fire
With the dreams and desires
Of a thousand young poets
Who failed 'cause they tried
For a rhyme without reason
Floats down to the bottom
Where the scavengers eat it
Washed in with the tide
"You are going to write a book." That's what she said. And I didn't even let her get the sentence finished before I was shaking my head.
I'd started and stopped several times already, and I knew I didn't have it in me. Sometimes I'd think, maybe it's time to write that book. If you don't try, you won't know. But that's not what was stopping me. The problem was, if you do try, you will know.
It seems like it must be important how I got where I am. At least I think about it sometimes. Like the times I've spent soaking in the tub.
Soaking in a hot bath really is overrated. It feels good for about two-and-a-half minutes, and then it's just hot. My grandmother used to send me to the tub at night insisting that it would make me feel clean and good for bedtime. But it was always a little scary to me. Her bathroom was an add-on to an old farmhouse - kind of a porch that felt quite separated from the rest of the house. It was always closed off by the door that led to it, and at night it seemed almost like it was in another building altogether - far away from anyone who would hear me if I needed them. It was the mid-zone between the bad man world outside and the safe home inside. Between, and unsettling.
That border world exists in reality. I found it again a few years ago. Aboriginals and shamans have long known about one borderland that lies between our waking reality and our dream reality. Modern Western civilized man only accepts the one as reality and discounts the other two. Limited vision. In the late 20th Century, however, that vision is slowly being expanded.
"Sorcerers believe that until the very moment of the spirit's descent, any of us could walk away from the spirit; but not afterwards." So says Carlos Castaneda's don Juan Matus. And a North American Elder named Leon Shenandoah says, "There are no coincidences. Only paths. Only one path. Got to follow it even if you can't see it. Only path you got."
When my path led me into the borderland, I had no idea what a difficult place it is to navigate. Nor did I know that don Juan was right. Some times I would simply have to write things down to get them out of my head and my heart and move on. As though thoughts were sticking places in the borderland, and until you were able to fully express them, you were bound to them. So I have a series of scribblings that act as mementos of various places I've visited in the borderland. Snapshots of my journey. Such as:
August 14, 2000:
Every step I take leads me further and further away from anything resembling solid ground.
Sometimes I stand still. Out of fear I guess. And yet sometimes I think it's because construction on the bridge that leads across the chasm is slow, and the space for my next footstep has not been made. In those times, a great weight settles in my chest and the sounds rising from my heart get trapped and bound within my throat.
I feel like if I'm not walking, I become stuck, bound in embalmers cloth, crying in the desert. But the tears are unable to release the songs trapped in the tunnel of my throat, knowing the sound they make is only a song if they get out.
Fortunately, very early into my immersion into the borderland, there was a moment of realization that all is perfection as it exists in every moment, whether that moment be subjectively experienced as good or bad. And during that moment of realization, all desire or need to struggle in life fell away.
Now a realization is, after all, a real-ization. So the question arose: Why can't spirit, which gave me that realization, sustain it for me, or give it to me constantly? And the answer came: Because in that state of rest, the world that we experience would not exist. This world requires waves to and fro, positive and negative - vibrations - in order to exist.
In other dimensions, the larger part of me must care to maintain this world. But the me that I am here doesn't care and would prefer a state of oblivion over the state of this existence. In the blink of an eye, on some days with no thought at all, I would end the world. End the game. And maybe never create a new one.
Sunday, April 12, 2020
John Prine, you wrote my life - day 10
UPDATE: Sad news: John died April 7 of covid-19.
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of Johnand in hopes that he recovers fully from covid-19 and is released from the hospital soon, I'm going to post here one chapter a day from that writing, along with a YouTube clip of John singing the song that inspired it (as long as a YouTube clip exists of it).
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
I believe that a thought has just gotten caught
In a place where words can't surround it
It concerns the years past and the shadows they cast
And my path as I walk around it
"I have a body," my two-year-old guru offered for another lesson in dimensional reality, as she threw both arms out wide after pulling off her clothes.
All my lessons are taught by such gurus. Those that haven't been sufficiently molded into a specific culture are the best suited humans to explain this dimension to me. Understanding it is best done by simply observing.
The patterns of the universe are everywhere. Specific outcomes are merely unimportant details. There are infinite manifestations of any given pattern. When I'm bogged down by a particular question, the answer is often found in the observation of patterns.
Why does life seem so hard sometimes? Why does movement seem impossible? Or, if I am moving, how can I really know which way I'm going? Does the road actually go anywhere? Some folks seem to be blessed by the absence of questions. And some seem to rely on a book of answers handed down to them from those who went before - somebody else's answers.
An old friend once said to me, "I hope you're not looking for answers, because there aren't any." I agree. That's true. And the converse is also true. There are infinite answers. Pick whichever one suits you, and change it when it doesn't.
On my periodic walk in the woods where the guru of rocks, plants and animals always waits, today I learned how to know which way I'm going. If it's difficult, tiring, strenuous, then the direction is upward.
At the bottom of the bluff, exquisite tiny red mushrooms are growing on decaying twigs. Only very close inspection on a slow walk could reveal these beauties. A close view is all that's afforded, however, because the trees and brushy undergrowth limit the range of vision. Only a steep climb to the top of the bluff opens a view of miles of wooded land and a broad blue sky.
There is no moral judgment to be made about the position of the view - micro or macro. Moving upward or downward are of the same value. They each provide a unique view, as do all stops along the way. It's only a choice. But now, I know how to tell which direction I'm heading.
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of John
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
John Prine, You Wrote My Life
a life unstuck in time (to borrow a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr),
so this story can go on and on in dis-order, added to at any time the whim (or need) arises
Chapter 10
Third Of July©
---The Missing Years
I believe that a thought has just gotten caught
In a place where words can't surround it
It concerns the years past and the shadows they cast
And my path as I walk around it
"I have a body," my two-year-old guru offered for another lesson in dimensional reality, as she threw both arms out wide after pulling off her clothes.
All my lessons are taught by such gurus. Those that haven't been sufficiently molded into a specific culture are the best suited humans to explain this dimension to me. Understanding it is best done by simply observing.
The patterns of the universe are everywhere. Specific outcomes are merely unimportant details. There are infinite manifestations of any given pattern. When I'm bogged down by a particular question, the answer is often found in the observation of patterns.
Why does life seem so hard sometimes? Why does movement seem impossible? Or, if I am moving, how can I really know which way I'm going? Does the road actually go anywhere? Some folks seem to be blessed by the absence of questions. And some seem to rely on a book of answers handed down to them from those who went before - somebody else's answers.
An old friend once said to me, "I hope you're not looking for answers, because there aren't any." I agree. That's true. And the converse is also true. There are infinite answers. Pick whichever one suits you, and change it when it doesn't.
On my periodic walk in the woods where the guru of rocks, plants and animals always waits, today I learned how to know which way I'm going. If it's difficult, tiring, strenuous, then the direction is upward.
At the bottom of the bluff, exquisite tiny red mushrooms are growing on decaying twigs. Only very close inspection on a slow walk could reveal these beauties. A close view is all that's afforded, however, because the trees and brushy undergrowth limit the range of vision. Only a steep climb to the top of the bluff opens a view of miles of wooded land and a broad blue sky.
There is no moral judgment to be made about the position of the view - micro or macro. Moving upward or downward are of the same value. They each provide a unique view, as do all stops along the way. It's only a choice. But now, I know how to tell which direction I'm heading.
I guess I still don't know if the road actually goes anywhere. Perhaps it only ends. And perhaps that's an answer in a future walk.
Saturday, April 11, 2020
John Prine, you wrote my life - day 9
UPDATE: Sad news: John died April 7 of covid-19.
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of Johnand in hopes that he recovers fully from covid-19 and is released from the hospital soon, I'm going to post here one chapter a day from that writing, along with a YouTube clip of John singing the song that inspired it (as long as a YouTube clip exists of it).
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
Night has fallen, I've said the things I did
The only baby sleeping is when I was a kid
Do you remember when you were my friend?
That's the way I'd like things
Just like way back then
"January 15, 1979."
That's all she ever had to say. It was code for: none of this would be happening if not for the fateful day I first walked through that door. The saying goes that people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Luckily for me, Bean came into mine for a lifetime when she showed up for employment at the San Francisco law firm where I was working.
Bean actually was her given name - we gave it to her, since she didn't have a middle name. Sheila Bean had a certain ring to it, so we engaged it. It didn't take any time for the two of us to become friends. In many ways, we were opposites, but maybe that's what helped us fit together. I managed to push her sensitivities to the border of outrage from time to time, but whether she knew it or not, it was always unintentional. It was just that being around her brought out a certain boldness in me that otherwise lay dormant.
We did find a common sense of outrage in our workplace, however. Working for attorneys without being outraged takes a certain amount of indifference to decency. Or maybe just a different sense of morality than Bean and I shared. We got a door slammed in our faces one day for squealing out loud. We couldn't help it. It was an automatic reaction upon overhearing one of the attorneys telling his trial witness over the phone, "We're not interested in the truth here." And we got brushed aside for complaining that one of the secretaries only created more work for us because, as she herself had whined, "This is too hard. I'm not used to using my brain." We didn't think she had one.
But most of the time, we had fun. And we became friends outside of work. She was from Camden, New Jersey - "a slum across the river from South Philly," as she described her home town. As far from the midwestern farm I came from as you could get. Two unlikely backgrounds for such comraderie. And I give the credit to her. She was, and is, the most tolerant, sharing person I've ever known. No jealousies, no pettiness. And how she ever put up with me all those years, I'll never know. But I'll always be thankful.
Sheila was softspoken and considerate to a fault, while I was always coming a bit unglued around the edges, and sometimes in the middle. I've always been unwilling to conform, or be quiet when I felt the urge to shout or rage about one or another of the world's injustices. She was calm. I was crazy.
But then, mine wasn't the mouth from which sprang, "Like my grandmother always said, there's two things in this world I like hard, and one of them is ice cream," now was it?
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of John
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
John Prine, You Wrote My Life
a life unstuck in time (to borrow a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr),
so this story can go on and on in dis-order, added to at any time the whim (or need) arises
Chapter 9
Way Back Then©
---The Missing Years
Night has fallen, I've said the things I did
The only baby sleeping is when I was a kid
Do you remember when you were my friend?
That's the way I'd like things
Just like way back then
"January 15, 1979."
That's all she ever had to say. It was code for: none of this would be happening if not for the fateful day I first walked through that door. The saying goes that people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Luckily for me, Bean came into mine for a lifetime when she showed up for employment at the San Francisco law firm where I was working.
Bean actually was her given name - we gave it to her, since she didn't have a middle name. Sheila Bean had a certain ring to it, so we engaged it. It didn't take any time for the two of us to become friends. In many ways, we were opposites, but maybe that's what helped us fit together. I managed to push her sensitivities to the border of outrage from time to time, but whether she knew it or not, it was always unintentional. It was just that being around her brought out a certain boldness in me that otherwise lay dormant.
We did find a common sense of outrage in our workplace, however. Working for attorneys without being outraged takes a certain amount of indifference to decency. Or maybe just a different sense of morality than Bean and I shared. We got a door slammed in our faces one day for squealing out loud. We couldn't help it. It was an automatic reaction upon overhearing one of the attorneys telling his trial witness over the phone, "We're not interested in the truth here." And we got brushed aside for complaining that one of the secretaries only created more work for us because, as she herself had whined, "This is too hard. I'm not used to using my brain." We didn't think she had one.
But most of the time, we had fun. And we became friends outside of work. She was from Camden, New Jersey - "a slum across the river from South Philly," as she described her home town. As far from the midwestern farm I came from as you could get. Two unlikely backgrounds for such comraderie. And I give the credit to her. She was, and is, the most tolerant, sharing person I've ever known. No jealousies, no pettiness. And how she ever put up with me all those years, I'll never know. But I'll always be thankful.
Sheila was softspoken and considerate to a fault, while I was always coming a bit unglued around the edges, and sometimes in the middle. I've always been unwilling to conform, or be quiet when I felt the urge to shout or rage about one or another of the world's injustices. She was calm. I was crazy.
But then, mine wasn't the mouth from which sprang, "Like my grandmother always said, there's two things in this world I like hard, and one of them is ice cream," now was it?
Friday, April 10, 2020
John Prine, you wrote my life - day 8
UPDATE: Sad news: John died April 7 of covid-19.
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of Johnand in hopes that he recovers fully from covid-19 and is released from the hospital soon, I'm going to post here one chapter a day from that writing, along with a YouTube clip of John singing the song that inspired it (as long as a YouTube clip exists of it).
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
I got kicked off Noah's Ark
I turn my cheek to unkind remarks
There was two of everything
But one of me
And when the rains came tumbling down
I held my breath and I stood my ground
And I watched that ship go sailing out to sea
Joani and I had the bright idea that we'd drink the champagne in the office while everyone else was out to lunch. The firey little redhead had finally gotten fed up with her disgusting and inconsiderate boss and quit. This cold, wintry San Francisco day was her last at that job. She'd blown a fuse and said a few choice things that made her last two weeks a bit tense. I think she said something to the effect that she'd rather sniff farts out of theater seats for fifty cents an hour, although those were not her exact words.
My early days of working in downtown San Francisco were a series of one bad job after another. I was getting pretty good at jumping from a frying pan into a fire. This particular job was at a small insurance brokerage - three salesmen, two secretaries, a receptionist, and a part-time accountant, who managed to juggle the books so completely that a three-month audit only drove the IRS agent to tears.
Joani's replacement was a far cry from the lively, fun-loving girl she had been. Mary was like an old hound dog - droopy eyes, hair plastered down on her brow, slow to move and reluctant to work. It was almost unbearable even to look at her. It seemed that she'd expire at any moment.
And the woman was odd. One day the receptionist came back into the office from visiting the ladies' room down the hall, red-faced and flustered. When I asked her what was wrong, she said she'd opened the restroom door to find Mary down on her knees, shoulders to the ground, and bare butt in the air. The explanation was that she had gas, and if she elevated her rear higher than her stomach, it could pass more easily. And the reason her skirt was hiked and her underwear down was in case there was any "substance" that passed along with the gas.
But I digress.
The bosses were bent out of shape about Joani having quit, seeing no fault of their own in the matter, so Joani's last day was not a celebratory one. She and I decided it should be otherwise, however, so I bought a bottle of champagne and brought it up to the office. We were alone for the lunch hour, so we thought we'd pop the cork and toast her freedom from the tyranny and low pay of Ellis & Company.
Neither of us had ever opened a champagne bottle before, and somehow the job fell to me. After struggling a great deal with it, I got the cork out. Way out. It shot to the ceiling, connected with a fluorescent light cover, and careened to East Jesus, or somewhere equally inaccessible, because we never did find it. Where the champagne went was another story, however. It erupted out of that bottle so fast I didn't have time to get it out of the way of my desk. We had typewriters in those days, and I guess it was fortunate I didn't ruin a computer. After I got Joani up off the floor and in control of her laughter enough to help me, we spent the rest of the lunch hour throwing open windows and trying to dry out papers.
We never got time to drink the quarter inch of champagne that remained in the bottle.
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of John
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
John Prine, You Wrote My Life
a life unstuck in time (to borrow a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr),
so this story can go on and on in dis-order, added to at any time the whim (or need) arises
Chapter 8
Sweet Revenge©
---Sweet Revenge
I got kicked off Noah's Ark
I turn my cheek to unkind remarks
There was two of everything
But one of me
And when the rains came tumbling down
I held my breath and I stood my ground
And I watched that ship go sailing out to sea
Joani and I had the bright idea that we'd drink the champagne in the office while everyone else was out to lunch. The firey little redhead had finally gotten fed up with her disgusting and inconsiderate boss and quit. This cold, wintry San Francisco day was her last at that job. She'd blown a fuse and said a few choice things that made her last two weeks a bit tense. I think she said something to the effect that she'd rather sniff farts out of theater seats for fifty cents an hour, although those were not her exact words.
My early days of working in downtown San Francisco were a series of one bad job after another. I was getting pretty good at jumping from a frying pan into a fire. This particular job was at a small insurance brokerage - three salesmen, two secretaries, a receptionist, and a part-time accountant, who managed to juggle the books so completely that a three-month audit only drove the IRS agent to tears.
Joani's replacement was a far cry from the lively, fun-loving girl she had been. Mary was like an old hound dog - droopy eyes, hair plastered down on her brow, slow to move and reluctant to work. It was almost unbearable even to look at her. It seemed that she'd expire at any moment.
And the woman was odd. One day the receptionist came back into the office from visiting the ladies' room down the hall, red-faced and flustered. When I asked her what was wrong, she said she'd opened the restroom door to find Mary down on her knees, shoulders to the ground, and bare butt in the air. The explanation was that she had gas, and if she elevated her rear higher than her stomach, it could pass more easily. And the reason her skirt was hiked and her underwear down was in case there was any "substance" that passed along with the gas.
But I digress.
The bosses were bent out of shape about Joani having quit, seeing no fault of their own in the matter, so Joani's last day was not a celebratory one. She and I decided it should be otherwise, however, so I bought a bottle of champagne and brought it up to the office. We were alone for the lunch hour, so we thought we'd pop the cork and toast her freedom from the tyranny and low pay of Ellis & Company.
Neither of us had ever opened a champagne bottle before, and somehow the job fell to me. After struggling a great deal with it, I got the cork out. Way out. It shot to the ceiling, connected with a fluorescent light cover, and careened to East Jesus, or somewhere equally inaccessible, because we never did find it. Where the champagne went was another story, however. It erupted out of that bottle so fast I didn't have time to get it out of the way of my desk. We had typewriters in those days, and I guess it was fortunate I didn't ruin a computer. After I got Joani up off the floor and in control of her laughter enough to help me, we spent the rest of the lunch hour throwing open windows and trying to dry out papers.
We never got time to drink the quarter inch of champagne that remained in the bottle.
Wednesday, April 8, 2020
John Prine, you wrote my life - day 6
UPDATE: So sad. John Prine died last night.
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of Johnand in hopes that he recovers fully from covid-19 and is released from the hospital soon, I'm going to post here one chapter a day from that writing, along with a YouTube clip of John singing the song that inspired it (as long as a YouTube clip exists of it).
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
She's got the mind of a child
And a body peaking over the hill
Well she would if she could
And she should, but nobody will
She may look like a woman
But she's still some daddy's little girl
And I think that she may be
The oldest baby in the world
"Don't you think you're a bit old for abandonment issues?" I asked myself when I woke up this morning. Everywhere I am, everywhere I've been, is a place where I've been abandoned. Sure, sometimes I've caused it myself - sometimes I have to. Otherwise they'd never go away, and then how could the issue play out? And, of course, sometimes I put that shoe on the other foot, and I do the abandoning. I get to play all the parts. I read somewhere that if you look at your life, you'll find a particular recurring issue that will tell you what you're doing here. I'm investigating abandonment.
When I was 17 years old, I knew I wasn't like other girls. They knew it, too, and sometimes felt it necessary to point it out rather bluntly. So mostly I just lived in my head, and kept the world outside confined to a very small space around me. Looking back, I wish I could have been bold in my uniqueness - the misfit who doesn't feel compelled to conform. But I wasn't. Back then, it always felt like a failure to become a part of the world, a goal whose validity I never thought to question. I hadn't been exposed to any psychology, or better yet, any philosophy. I was just a skinny misfit being raised on a farm in the Bible Belt.
One evening I found myself sitting on a hillside in a park, looking up at the stars. For some moments, time and my daily reality slipped away, and I experienced myself as someone - some thing - from somewhere else in the universe. I didn't know where, I didn't know who. The only thing that was clear was that I had been left here - abandoned - by others of my kind. They had a purpose for it that wasn't made clear - and it was just one stop in the cosmos for me. My fate was to travel every world, perhaps collecting information - perhaps just experiencing it. A cosmic gypsy. And it was made known to me that those who left me were never going to return to pick me up, and I would never get back to wherever they might be, nor would I ever even remember where that was. All memory of who I was and where I came from had been erased. And all I was left with was the knowledge that I would roam the universe alone forever.
It's hard to describe that moment and the knowledge that seemed to beam down from the stars that night. And the overwhelming loneliness - how heavy it made my heart in that brief moment. It happened in a time well before the "New Age" with its cosmic spiritual channelings about "Home", and when talk of alien abductions and life on other planets is common fare. It wasn't a dream, and it didn't feel like a metaphor. It felt absolutely real. More real than the reality I returned to on that grassy hill. No doubt I had to come back to the other reality, because to bear the incredible loneliness of that moment through an entire life probably would have foreshortened it considerably.
Of course life took on its normal proportions again afterward, and I forgot about that night for the most part until many years later. But I never stopped playing the abandonment game. When I die, I'll know it inside out. On this planet.
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of John
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
John Prine, You Wrote My Life
a life unstuck in time (to borrow a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr),
so this story can go on and on in dis-order, added to at any time the whim (or need) arises
Chapter 6
The Oldest Baby in the World©
---Aimless Love
She's got the mind of a child
And a body peaking over the hill
Well she would if she could
And she should, but nobody will
She may look like a woman
But she's still some daddy's little girl
And I think that she may be
The oldest baby in the world
"Don't you think you're a bit old for abandonment issues?" I asked myself when I woke up this morning. Everywhere I am, everywhere I've been, is a place where I've been abandoned. Sure, sometimes I've caused it myself - sometimes I have to. Otherwise they'd never go away, and then how could the issue play out? And, of course, sometimes I put that shoe on the other foot, and I do the abandoning. I get to play all the parts. I read somewhere that if you look at your life, you'll find a particular recurring issue that will tell you what you're doing here. I'm investigating abandonment.
When I was 17 years old, I knew I wasn't like other girls. They knew it, too, and sometimes felt it necessary to point it out rather bluntly. So mostly I just lived in my head, and kept the world outside confined to a very small space around me. Looking back, I wish I could have been bold in my uniqueness - the misfit who doesn't feel compelled to conform. But I wasn't. Back then, it always felt like a failure to become a part of the world, a goal whose validity I never thought to question. I hadn't been exposed to any psychology, or better yet, any philosophy. I was just a skinny misfit being raised on a farm in the Bible Belt.
One evening I found myself sitting on a hillside in a park, looking up at the stars. For some moments, time and my daily reality slipped away, and I experienced myself as someone - some thing - from somewhere else in the universe. I didn't know where, I didn't know who. The only thing that was clear was that I had been left here - abandoned - by others of my kind. They had a purpose for it that wasn't made clear - and it was just one stop in the cosmos for me. My fate was to travel every world, perhaps collecting information - perhaps just experiencing it. A cosmic gypsy. And it was made known to me that those who left me were never going to return to pick me up, and I would never get back to wherever they might be, nor would I ever even remember where that was. All memory of who I was and where I came from had been erased. And all I was left with was the knowledge that I would roam the universe alone forever.
It's hard to describe that moment and the knowledge that seemed to beam down from the stars that night. And the overwhelming loneliness - how heavy it made my heart in that brief moment. It happened in a time well before the "New Age" with its cosmic spiritual channelings about "Home", and when talk of alien abductions and life on other planets is common fare. It wasn't a dream, and it didn't feel like a metaphor. It felt absolutely real. More real than the reality I returned to on that grassy hill. No doubt I had to come back to the other reality, because to bear the incredible loneliness of that moment through an entire life probably would have foreshortened it considerably.
Of course life took on its normal proportions again afterward, and I forgot about that night for the most part until many years later. But I never stopped playing the abandonment game. When I die, I'll know it inside out. On this planet.
John Prine left us a treasure trove
So sad today. After surviving two bouts of cancer, John Prine died last night from coronavirus.
John Prine
October 10, 1946 - April 7, 2020
John Prine
October 10, 1946 - April 7, 2020
Tuesday, April 7, 2020
John Prine, you wrote my life - day 5
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of John and in hopes that he recovers fully from covid-19 and is released from the hospital soon, I'm going to post here one chapter a day from that writing, along with a YouTube clip of John singing the song that inspired it (as long as a YouTube clip exists of it).
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
Photographs show the laughs
Recorded in between the bad times
Happy sailors dancing on a sinking ship
Cloudy skies and dead fruit flies
Waving goodbye with tears in my eyes
Well, sure I made it, but ya know it was a hell of a trip
What on Earth are they feeding hogs to make frying bacon smell like aluminum? Should I be eating this stuff? Okay, maybe that was an easy one. But there are lots of easy questions that we never think about our answers to - they're automatic.
Questions are answered for you before you ever have the opportunity to ask them. From the moment of your birth, someone is telling you who you are, and what the world is like. You don't need to ever even formulate a question. They give you a name, tell you who you are and how you look, and describe the world to you, just the way they see it. They even tell you what you see, and then what to think about it. If you ever get around to asking any questions, you've already got an immutable basis to filter your query through. You'll never know what the world really is from your own point of view.
Some of us have a harder time with that than others. And our lives are really not something most people can understand. They think we need to be fixed. Drugged if necessary. We're supposed to be happy, or at least content. At the very least, we're not supposed to make other people uncomfortable by calling into question the validity of their contentment.
I don't think we have to justify or modify our 'abnormal' lives, but the pressure to do so is pretty intense. Still, most of life for most everyone consists of day after day of meaninglessness - or at least unknown meaning. That's why having families and religion are as popular as they are. Something to pretend is a reason. And for those of us who can't quit asking if the reasons are real or good enough, life can simply fluctuate between boredom and extreme depression. For some, it is simply too painful. And death seems preferable. Sometimes, I still think it would be. I tried to go there once. Maybe someday I'll realize that that's the key to the knowledge of the infinite, and I'll try to go there again. But for now, it seems like I have something else to do, and it sometimes seems like that something else is to obtain that knowledge this side of death.
"What Granny did was to get you out of this old room." It's not important who said that to me. People are in our lives for a reason. Not a physical reason - but a spiritual one. I had the thought at one time that my father and brother, who both killed themselves as young men, had been here to bring me to a certain point along the journey and then abandon me in order to provide the catalyst to hurl me fully into the 3rd dimension, behind the veil of forgetfulness - otherwise, I never would have come. Then I began to see it like this: spirit itself is hurled behind the veil, into the "lower" dimensions, and our lives are how it "talks about" that condition - physical manifestations of the acts of spirit. So, my father and brother didn't do anything to lead me anywhere. They, like everyone else here, were manifestations of spirit casting itself down from heaven. And in this fractal, this enactment of it, I was that part of spirit which was cast down. They played the role of God to my Lucifer. The eternal archetypal story, repeated infinitely in infinite ways.
There is a return in all those myths. A resurrection, an ascension, a rebirth. Looking forward to it, if that's the play.
Unfortunately, those questions that we never have the opportunity to answer for ourselves include a description of the archetypal condition. Spirit casting spirit out of heaven? How else are you gonna know what's beyond your walls if you don't cast at least a piece of yourself out? Go. Who will go to the farthest, darkest corners of creation, and tell me what you find there? Come back with the knowledge, and I will be richer in knowledge than I am now. Of course there's the risk. That you'll forget where you came from. Why you left. And you might get lonely. You might miss that part of you left behind. You might feel lost. And in your pain and weariness, you might start to believe you were thrown out.
We're all living the same life. There's only one. With infinite permutations - variations in the script.
In honor of John and in hopes that he recovers fully from covid-19 and is released from the hospital soon, I'm going to post here one chapter a day from that writing, along with a YouTube clip of John singing the song that inspired it (as long as a YouTube clip exists of it).
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
John Prine, You Wrote My Life
a life unstuck in time (to borrow a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr),
so this story can go on and on in dis-order, added to at any time the whim (or need) arises
Chapter 5
Flashback Blues©
---John Prine
Recorded in between the bad times
Happy sailors dancing on a sinking ship
Cloudy skies and dead fruit flies
Waving goodbye with tears in my eyes
Well, sure I made it, but ya know it was a hell of a trip
What on Earth are they feeding hogs to make frying bacon smell like aluminum? Should I be eating this stuff? Okay, maybe that was an easy one. But there are lots of easy questions that we never think about our answers to - they're automatic.
Questions are answered for you before you ever have the opportunity to ask them. From the moment of your birth, someone is telling you who you are, and what the world is like. You don't need to ever even formulate a question. They give you a name, tell you who you are and how you look, and describe the world to you, just the way they see it. They even tell you what you see, and then what to think about it. If you ever get around to asking any questions, you've already got an immutable basis to filter your query through. You'll never know what the world really is from your own point of view.
Some of us have a harder time with that than others. And our lives are really not something most people can understand. They think we need to be fixed. Drugged if necessary. We're supposed to be happy, or at least content. At the very least, we're not supposed to make other people uncomfortable by calling into question the validity of their contentment.
I don't think we have to justify or modify our 'abnormal' lives, but the pressure to do so is pretty intense. Still, most of life for most everyone consists of day after day of meaninglessness - or at least unknown meaning. That's why having families and religion are as popular as they are. Something to pretend is a reason. And for those of us who can't quit asking if the reasons are real or good enough, life can simply fluctuate between boredom and extreme depression. For some, it is simply too painful. And death seems preferable. Sometimes, I still think it would be. I tried to go there once. Maybe someday I'll realize that that's the key to the knowledge of the infinite, and I'll try to go there again. But for now, it seems like I have something else to do, and it sometimes seems like that something else is to obtain that knowledge this side of death.
"What Granny did was to get you out of this old room." It's not important who said that to me. People are in our lives for a reason. Not a physical reason - but a spiritual one. I had the thought at one time that my father and brother, who both killed themselves as young men, had been here to bring me to a certain point along the journey and then abandon me in order to provide the catalyst to hurl me fully into the 3rd dimension, behind the veil of forgetfulness - otherwise, I never would have come. Then I began to see it like this: spirit itself is hurled behind the veil, into the "lower" dimensions, and our lives are how it "talks about" that condition - physical manifestations of the acts of spirit. So, my father and brother didn't do anything to lead me anywhere. They, like everyone else here, were manifestations of spirit casting itself down from heaven. And in this fractal, this enactment of it, I was that part of spirit which was cast down. They played the role of God to my Lucifer. The eternal archetypal story, repeated infinitely in infinite ways.
There is a return in all those myths. A resurrection, an ascension, a rebirth. Looking forward to it, if that's the play.
Unfortunately, those questions that we never have the opportunity to answer for ourselves include a description of the archetypal condition. Spirit casting spirit out of heaven? How else are you gonna know what's beyond your walls if you don't cast at least a piece of yourself out? Go. Who will go to the farthest, darkest corners of creation, and tell me what you find there? Come back with the knowledge, and I will be richer in knowledge than I am now. Of course there's the risk. That you'll forget where you came from. Why you left. And you might get lonely. You might miss that part of you left behind. You might feel lost. And in your pain and weariness, you might start to believe you were thrown out.
We're all living the same life. There's only one. With infinite permutations - variations in the script.
We have to stop judging other people's scripts. And that means we stop trying to fix or change or direct them. We just need to respect them, accept them, and thank them for collecting their information about what's out there in creation. We all go back to the source with our trip mementos. We better start thanking the people whose lives disgust us - thank them for taking that part in the play so we didn't have to. We're all part of the same play. And anything we can do to make another person's part suck a little less makes the whole play suck a little less.
Monday, April 6, 2020
John Prine, you wrote my life - day 4
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of John and in hopes that he recovers fully from covid-19 and is released from the hospital soon, I'm going to post here one chapter a day from that writing, along with a YouTube clip of John singing the song that inspired it (as long as a YouTube clip exists of it).
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
There were spaces between Donald and whatever he said
Strangers had forced him to live in his head
But dreaming just comes natural
Like the first breath from a baby
Like sunshine feeding daisies
Like the love hidden deep in your heart
"Stand in line to get a ticket! Stand in line to ride the ride! Stand in line to get a beer! I'll probably have to stand in line to get kicked out of this f#@king park!"
My friend Randy didn't much enjoy crowds. In fact, he didn't much enjoy any group of people numbering more than five. I don't know what made him go along with us in the first place on that trip to the amusement park. He wasn't very amused. The whole way there, he kept grousing about how I made him go, and kept referring to me as the group's "Social Enforcer".
Our group was a crew of railroad flat neighbors from North Beach in San Francisco. We were all in our late 20's, all single, and all pretty much living by a great deal of grace and very few wits. Normally, Randy wasn't so vitriolic in his discourse. In fact, he rarely spoke in the presence of more than one other person. He told me one time that he just felt so unlike everyone else, and that every time he said something, people looked at him like he was speaking a foreign language - one from another planet. So he just quit talking. I know now what he meant - I feel that way in the presence of most people.
In Randy's case, part of the problem may have been the 18 hits of acid his high school "buddies" slipped into his drink one night. They had to deliver him to his grandmother's where he stayed for two weeks - incoherent. When he came back to "normal", nothing else ever was. It seems like a person's mind can only go so far out before the whole of reality assumes new precepts. A friend of mine said one time that going "outside the box" should make it a little easier to live within the box, once you came back. I don't think that's true at all. It makes it harder. But at least then you know why you're unhappy - you see the smallness of the box.
Before we went to the amusement park, two of the other guys had promised to help move some heavy furniture for another friend of theirs. Randy and I were to go pick them up in a downtown San Francisco neighborhood. Randy didn't have a car, which makes sense in San Francisco, where parking is virtually non-existent and the bus system is fair. I did have one, however - a car I had gotten essentially free from my mother in rural Missouri and driven back to S.F. Not exactly a "city car" - it was a 1974 Ford Thunderbird - the year they made them as big as a tanker (in fact, the folks back in S.F. began to refer to it as "The Tuna Boat" - my boss one time suggested I park it on the street in front of my apartment and rent it out as an extra room). Maneuvering crowded, hilly streets was only half of the problem - the rest was trying to find a place to park the darned thing.
When I pulled up to the apartment where we were to pick up the other guys, there was (typically) no available parking, so we had to just double park on the side of the street and wait. Randy looked over at me and said, "Let me drive around the block to pick up the guys. It'll really surprise Paul." I didn't know why such a simple event should be so surprising, but I agreed, and changed seats with him.
The why became apparent at the first right turn. Handling that big Tuna Boat in downtown San Francisco made Randy's eyes as big as saucers. We rather lurched and halted so much that I finally wise-cracked, "Ranj, how long since your license expired?" His hands were gripping the wheel for all he was worth, and his face showed a kind of exhilarated terror, as he chuckled, "I've never driven before."
In honor of John and in hopes that he recovers fully from covid-19 and is released from the hospital soon, I'm going to post here one chapter a day from that writing, along with a YouTube clip of John singing the song that inspired it (as long as a YouTube clip exists of it).
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
John Prine, You Wrote My Life
a life unstuck in time (to borrow a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr),
so this story can go on and on in dis-order, added to at any time the whim (or need) arises
Chapter 4
Donald & Lydia©
----John Prine
There were spaces between Donald and whatever he said
Strangers had forced him to live in his head
But dreaming just comes natural
Like the first breath from a baby
Like sunshine feeding daisies
Like the love hidden deep in your heart
"Stand in line to get a ticket! Stand in line to ride the ride! Stand in line to get a beer! I'll probably have to stand in line to get kicked out of this f#@king park!"
My friend Randy didn't much enjoy crowds. In fact, he didn't much enjoy any group of people numbering more than five. I don't know what made him go along with us in the first place on that trip to the amusement park. He wasn't very amused. The whole way there, he kept grousing about how I made him go, and kept referring to me as the group's "Social Enforcer".
Our group was a crew of railroad flat neighbors from North Beach in San Francisco. We were all in our late 20's, all single, and all pretty much living by a great deal of grace and very few wits. Normally, Randy wasn't so vitriolic in his discourse. In fact, he rarely spoke in the presence of more than one other person. He told me one time that he just felt so unlike everyone else, and that every time he said something, people looked at him like he was speaking a foreign language - one from another planet. So he just quit talking. I know now what he meant - I feel that way in the presence of most people.
In Randy's case, part of the problem may have been the 18 hits of acid his high school "buddies" slipped into his drink one night. They had to deliver him to his grandmother's where he stayed for two weeks - incoherent. When he came back to "normal", nothing else ever was. It seems like a person's mind can only go so far out before the whole of reality assumes new precepts. A friend of mine said one time that going "outside the box" should make it a little easier to live within the box, once you came back. I don't think that's true at all. It makes it harder. But at least then you know why you're unhappy - you see the smallness of the box.
Before we went to the amusement park, two of the other guys had promised to help move some heavy furniture for another friend of theirs. Randy and I were to go pick them up in a downtown San Francisco neighborhood. Randy didn't have a car, which makes sense in San Francisco, where parking is virtually non-existent and the bus system is fair. I did have one, however - a car I had gotten essentially free from my mother in rural Missouri and driven back to S.F. Not exactly a "city car" - it was a 1974 Ford Thunderbird - the year they made them as big as a tanker (in fact, the folks back in S.F. began to refer to it as "The Tuna Boat" - my boss one time suggested I park it on the street in front of my apartment and rent it out as an extra room). Maneuvering crowded, hilly streets was only half of the problem - the rest was trying to find a place to park the darned thing.
When I pulled up to the apartment where we were to pick up the other guys, there was (typically) no available parking, so we had to just double park on the side of the street and wait. Randy looked over at me and said, "Let me drive around the block to pick up the guys. It'll really surprise Paul." I didn't know why such a simple event should be so surprising, but I agreed, and changed seats with him.
The why became apparent at the first right turn. Handling that big Tuna Boat in downtown San Francisco made Randy's eyes as big as saucers. We rather lurched and halted so much that I finally wise-cracked, "Ranj, how long since your license expired?" His hands were gripping the wheel for all he was worth, and his face showed a kind of exhilarated terror, as he chuckled, "I've never driven before."
Sunday, April 5, 2020
John Prine, you wrote my life - day 3
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of John and in hopes that he recovers fully from covid-19 and is released from the hospital soon, I'm going to post here one chapter a day from that writing, along with a YouTube clip of John singing the song that inspired it (as long as a YouTube clip exists of it).
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
A mocha man in a wigwam sitting on a Reservation
With a big black hole in the belly of his soul
Waiting on an explanation
While the white man sits on his fat can
And takes pictures of the Navajo
Every time he clicks his Kodak pics
He steals a little bit of soul
"I write stuff. Things like: if the world was a ball of dirt, I'd sweep it up and throw it in the garbage. Just stuff. But wouldn't you?"
This was the conversation I'd been looking for since I lost my best friend and lover, and it took on sterling proportions. What is depth without perception?
"Ten years ago I was on my way from Phoenix to New York City and my van broke down here. I met some people."
"What was in New York?" I asked, as I tried to focus my thoughts in an area not so near the ankle he was tattooing. With my leg bent in a position only babies can tolerate without complaint, and needles piercing my flesh, even if he hadn't been bent over his work so as to obscure my view of his art, I probably would have continued the conversation. Not only to circumvent fully registering the pain, but because he was the most interesting peson I had encountered in this town in the five years I'd been here.
"My career. My fortune and fame," Spider responded as though it were a question I didn't already know the answer to.
I'd already ascertained that, besides skin-paintings, he worked in water color, charcoal, pen and ink and oils. And that he was Navajo.
"I went back to Phoenix once to visit some friends," he continued, "and I was sleeping on the floor with a wierd movie playing on their TV. I was half asleep and could hear all these chicken noises coming from the TV. And at the same time, I could hear other wierd chewing and cracking sounds. When I woke up, their cat had brought in a pigeon and was eating it alive right by my head. Feathers were everywhere."
"Have you seen the movie, Gummo?" I asked.
"I own that movie. The greatest thing about it is the opening song." And he began to sing the song about the little rooster going cock-a-doodle-doo. "I stay right in town here. I think that movie took place in Ohio, didn't it?"
"Well," I said, "if you go ten miles anywhere outside of town here, you're in Ohio."
In honor of John and in hopes that he recovers fully from covid-19 and is released from the hospital soon, I'm going to post here one chapter a day from that writing, along with a YouTube clip of John singing the song that inspired it (as long as a YouTube clip exists of it).
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
Chapter 3
Picture Show©
---The Missing Years
A mocha man in a wigwam sitting on a Reservation
With a big black hole in the belly of his soul
Waiting on an explanation
While the white man sits on his fat can
And takes pictures of the Navajo
Every time he clicks his Kodak pics
He steals a little bit of soul
"I write stuff. Things like: if the world was a ball of dirt, I'd sweep it up and throw it in the garbage. Just stuff. But wouldn't you?"
This was the conversation I'd been looking for since I lost my best friend and lover, and it took on sterling proportions. What is depth without perception?
"Ten years ago I was on my way from Phoenix to New York City and my van broke down here. I met some people."
"What was in New York?" I asked, as I tried to focus my thoughts in an area not so near the ankle he was tattooing. With my leg bent in a position only babies can tolerate without complaint, and needles piercing my flesh, even if he hadn't been bent over his work so as to obscure my view of his art, I probably would have continued the conversation. Not only to circumvent fully registering the pain, but because he was the most interesting peson I had encountered in this town in the five years I'd been here.
"My career. My fortune and fame," Spider responded as though it were a question I didn't already know the answer to.
I'd already ascertained that, besides skin-paintings, he worked in water color, charcoal, pen and ink and oils. And that he was Navajo.
"I went back to Phoenix once to visit some friends," he continued, "and I was sleeping on the floor with a wierd movie playing on their TV. I was half asleep and could hear all these chicken noises coming from the TV. And at the same time, I could hear other wierd chewing and cracking sounds. When I woke up, their cat had brought in a pigeon and was eating it alive right by my head. Feathers were everywhere."
"Have you seen the movie, Gummo?" I asked.
"I own that movie. The greatest thing about it is the opening song." And he began to sing the song about the little rooster going cock-a-doodle-doo. "I stay right in town here. I think that movie took place in Ohio, didn't it?"
"Well," I said, "if you go ten miles anywhere outside of town here, you're in Ohio."
"In Gummo," he corrected me.
Saturday, April 4, 2020
John Prine, you wrote my life - day 2
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of John and in hopes that he recovers fully from covid-19 and is released from the hospital soon, I'm going to post here one chapter a day from that writing, along with a YouTube clip of John singing the song that inspired it (as long as a YouTube clip exists of it).
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
John Prine, You Wrote My Life
a life unstuck in time (to borrow a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr),
so this story can go on and on in dis-order, added to at any time the whim (or need) arises
Chapter 2
A Good Time©
---Sweet Revenge
And you know that I could have me a million more friends
And all I'd have to lose is my point of view
But I had no idea what a good time would cost
Till last night when I sat and talked with you
"Hey Meems! You're here! I didn't know if you'd make it in. I told Malone to slow down when we came across the bridge this morning so I could look to see if your socks were in the water."
Frances never would let my depression be a serious subject. I suppose she fought her own too desperately to allow anyone else to remind her. "You've got to toughen up, girl," she always said. And she did her best to be an example.
Picture a petite thirty-something woman standing on barbie doll high-heeled slippers, with long unnaturally permed and bleached hair apparently trapped in an electrical storm, mascara-ed eyelashes, and waving a benson & hedges ultrathin in a short cigarette holder, and you have Frances. She was simply marvelous. One could only marvel. In her flip-flopping barbie doll heels, worn with dress or slacks, she stood all of 5'2". And she was a storm brewing, or raging, or spent...but always a storm.
We worked together in a wild San Francisco law office. I lived on Fisherman's Wharf, and Frances lived across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County.
One day Frances came to work and announced she'd changed her name legally. I wondered who she preferred to be other than Frances, and she replied, "Hell, no. I changed my last name - to Flasshe." Well, it surely did fit. Ms. Flasshe carried with her a carpet bag full of 'necessities', because she rarely went home. Straight from the office to the bar. And from there to who knows where - home with some young guy if he had a body-builder's physique. She never knew where she was going, but she always knew where she'd been. That bag of hers also held a collection of all the matchbooks from all the bars she ever visited. And one time, she even had mementos from a night aboard a Coast Guard cutter in the harbor for the weekend.
Man, she was tough. One day a court clerk called from downtown where Frances' boss was trying a case. She claims the clerk said, "You better get down here, Loofbourrow's trying to hang himself." I don't imagine that's what really transpired, but when he got back to the office, all hell broke loose. Something had been screwed up somewhere, and he was ranting and pacing.
"We could lose our license for this!" he shouted in Frances' face. And drawing her 5'2" presence up closer to his own face, with complete calm, she said, "Not me. They've already taken every license I ever had."
So for a period of time, I was Frances' driver. And more often than not, my adventures turned out to be hollow, rotten, and depressing. I imagine hers were, too, but she just looked at them differently. That's the trick, I suppose...how you view it.
Frances was tough, all right. But inside her was a heart of gold. Last time I saw her, she'd bought her own little house in the East Bay. She had taken in her brother, who needed a place, and an assortment of birds that she treated like babies. One was a little guy she rescued from a breeder who was going to kill it, because it was born without toes on one foot and had a gimpy wing. She just let him roam free in the house - he didn't fly around much, and he hobbled everywhere he went....but he sang real nice.
Friday, April 3, 2020
John Prine, you wrote my life
Years ago, I had a themeless website where I collected and recorded things that interested me. I don't know what became of most of the stuff, but one thing I managed to save was a series of posts I wrote that I titled: "John Prine, You Wrote My Life."
In honor of John and in hopes that he recovers fully from covid-19 and is released from the hospital soon, I'm going to post here one chapter a day from that writing, along with a YouTube clip of John singing the song that inspired it (as long as a YouTube clip exists of it).
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
I used to sleep at the foot of Old Glory
And awake in the dawn's early light
But much to my surprise
When I opened my eyes
I was a victim of the great compromise
"Sometimes - lots of times," I said to him, "I have this bizarre sensation that my life isn't real - that somebody's got a camera rolling. Like I live in a Marx Brothers movie."
"I have that same feeling!"
Jim was a plaintiff's attorney I worked for in San Francisco in the late 70's. I could feel something not quite kosher about his partners, and it felt like he didn't see it at all. He trusted and probably even loved them. On the surface, they made gestures and talked as though they felt the same about him, but my intuition told me otherwise. I didn't trust it. I always thought I must be imagining things because other people didn't see what I saw.
I quit that job, like many others for lawyers in S.F. I don't recall why in particular, but I think it was because there was something nagging at me about the undercurrent there. Something made me tell Jim when I left that I thought he ought to watch his back, but I didn't have anything to validate the feeling. He wished me well, and I left.
A couple years later, Jim's wife slashed her wrists in her bathtub. Their 5-year-old daughter found her. Jim was drinking heavily, and he dropped by my apartment one day for a chat.
"I flew to L.A. last week. I got stuck there at the airport trying to come home. They kicked me off the plane."
"What? I never heard of that," I said. "Why?"
"They said I was too drunk to fly. I know I'd had a couple of drinks, but I didn't think I was being a nuisance or anything. I was just sitting quietly in my seat in the back of the plane, and the stewardess came back and said, 'I'm sorry sir, but we're going to have to ask you to leave the plane.' When I asked why, she said, 'Because you're too drunk to fly', and I said, 'I know, but I'm only riding.' They still made me get off.
"By the way, you were right about my partners. They kicked me out and took all my business."
At the time, it didn't make me trust my intuition. I just happened to be right - a coincidence, as I saw things back then. I was depressed most of the time - in fact, that's probably really why I quit. Cliff P, one of those partners, had suggested my problem was simply that I needed to smoke pot and lighten up. Jim had been good to me, though. I was sorry I couldn't help him and had run away instead. I always ran away when someone seemed to need me emotionally. I couldn't bear it for some reason. I had much too great an emotional need myself. I ran like hell. And I pursued my own emotional needs with singular purpose.
A number of years later, on a visit back to S.F., I stopped in to the then very successful law business and spoke to the senior partner who said, "Jim's back in town. I think he's dried out again. He really is an incredible person. About every 8 years he completely destroys himself and then rises from the ashes."
Jim died a couple years ago. Brain cancer. I was trying to find him about a year too late. One thing I always remember about that job with him was being insulted by one of the junior partners regarding my accent. I didn't always notice I had one, but Jim told me that when he went to live in San Francisco from his origins in Indiana, the first thing he did was to practice losing his accent. He said he knew that he'd have to get rid of it in order to be successful on the West Coast (the Left Coast, my friend calls it). In the end, I guess it didn't matter how he sounded - they screwed him just the same.
In honor of John and in hopes that he recovers fully from covid-19 and is released from the hospital soon, I'm going to post here one chapter a day from that writing, along with a YouTube clip of John singing the song that inspired it (as long as a YouTube clip exists of it).
I have no doubt John's songs have written millions of folks' experiences. These are mine.
John Prine, You Wrote My Life
a life unstuck in time (to borrow a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr),
so this story can go on and on in dis-order, added to at any time the whim (or need) arises
Chapter 1
The Great Compromise©
---Diamond in the Rough
I used to sleep at the foot of Old Glory
And awake in the dawn's early light
But much to my surprise
When I opened my eyes
I was a victim of the great compromise
"Sometimes - lots of times," I said to him, "I have this bizarre sensation that my life isn't real - that somebody's got a camera rolling. Like I live in a Marx Brothers movie."
"I have that same feeling!"
Jim was a plaintiff's attorney I worked for in San Francisco in the late 70's. I could feel something not quite kosher about his partners, and it felt like he didn't see it at all. He trusted and probably even loved them. On the surface, they made gestures and talked as though they felt the same about him, but my intuition told me otherwise. I didn't trust it. I always thought I must be imagining things because other people didn't see what I saw.
I quit that job, like many others for lawyers in S.F. I don't recall why in particular, but I think it was because there was something nagging at me about the undercurrent there. Something made me tell Jim when I left that I thought he ought to watch his back, but I didn't have anything to validate the feeling. He wished me well, and I left.
A couple years later, Jim's wife slashed her wrists in her bathtub. Their 5-year-old daughter found her. Jim was drinking heavily, and he dropped by my apartment one day for a chat.
"I flew to L.A. last week. I got stuck there at the airport trying to come home. They kicked me off the plane."
"What? I never heard of that," I said. "Why?"
"They said I was too drunk to fly. I know I'd had a couple of drinks, but I didn't think I was being a nuisance or anything. I was just sitting quietly in my seat in the back of the plane, and the stewardess came back and said, 'I'm sorry sir, but we're going to have to ask you to leave the plane.' When I asked why, she said, 'Because you're too drunk to fly', and I said, 'I know, but I'm only riding.' They still made me get off.
"By the way, you were right about my partners. They kicked me out and took all my business."
At the time, it didn't make me trust my intuition. I just happened to be right - a coincidence, as I saw things back then. I was depressed most of the time - in fact, that's probably really why I quit. Cliff P, one of those partners, had suggested my problem was simply that I needed to smoke pot and lighten up. Jim had been good to me, though. I was sorry I couldn't help him and had run away instead. I always ran away when someone seemed to need me emotionally. I couldn't bear it for some reason. I had much too great an emotional need myself. I ran like hell. And I pursued my own emotional needs with singular purpose.
A number of years later, on a visit back to S.F., I stopped in to the then very successful law business and spoke to the senior partner who said, "Jim's back in town. I think he's dried out again. He really is an incredible person. About every 8 years he completely destroys himself and then rises from the ashes."
Jim died a couple years ago. Brain cancer. I was trying to find him about a year too late. One thing I always remember about that job with him was being insulted by one of the junior partners regarding my accent. I didn't always notice I had one, but Jim told me that when he went to live in San Francisco from his origins in Indiana, the first thing he did was to practice losing his accent. He said he knew that he'd have to get rid of it in order to be successful on the West Coast (the Left Coast, my friend calls it). In the end, I guess it didn't matter how he sounded - they screwed him just the same.
Sunday, March 29, 2020
Hoping for his recovery
UPDATE 3/30:
On Monday, the singer-songwriter’s wife of 23 years, Fiona Whelan Prine, gave an update about her husband’s condition on Twitter, writing that she has also “recovered from COVID-19” following her own diagnosis earlier this month.“We are humbled by the outpouring of love for me and John and our precious family,” Fiona, 73, wrote. “He is [stable]. Please continue to send your amazing love and prayers. Sing his songs. Stay home and wash hands. John loves you. I love you.”A few hours later, she followed up with a second Tweet elucidating on the first. “I need to clarify what I mean by ‘John is stable.’ That is not the same as improving. There is no cure for COVID-19. He needs our prayers and love — as do the thousands of others who are critically ill. Stay at home. Wash your hands. We love you.”
Friday, February 2, 2018
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