Perplexing Planning

The Republicans would have us believe that their vision for America is the right one, that they are carefully planning our return to greatness as a nation. Planning. Hmm. So, they planned their convention to be in South Florida smack dab in the worst part of hurricane season? Yep. That’s some planning.

And the Democrat’s convention will be in Charlotte, which is also potentially, but somewhat less so, in the teeth of the same season. Again, we have some planning issues. I guess I just don’t understand the thought process here. Maybe I’m being unfair and un-American. We should never kowtow to Nature. That would be cowardly.

Both of these political parties are so busy telling us what they think we want to hear that they have, perhaps, lost their grip on reality. I sincerely hope that the tens-of-thousands of people who will show up in these cities will have safe events.


Ah, reality. Perhaps we should encourage that our candidates, whoever they might be, pay attention to it and not generate more foggy rhetoric designed to make the other side look bad. It kind of reminds me of a knife fight aboard an inflatable life raft in really deep water.

Full Denim Jacket

I recently had lunch with a dear friend. It’s a bi-weekly get together and the talk ranges all over the spectrum of two minds who revel in critical thinking and getting it right. We dabble in physics, technology, sports, literature, life in general, and even politics. We’re both of a mind that politics should be for the people, so there’s lots of common ground. I don’t like talking politics, really, because I don’t really know who I am politically. I guess I’m an Eisenhower republican. At least, I’m comfortable saying that. It is vastly vague, but my friends on both the left and right nod as if they understand what I’m saying. I’m not sure I do, exactly, but I find the label fits me like good boots.

But that’s not what this is about. This is about loss. I wrote a couple weeks ago about it from a very personal place and I guess I’m not done. Some would call the loss I experienced that lunch day as trivial and perhaps it was, but it still broke my heart.

I’ve ridden motorcycles for most of my life, save for a decade, or so, when my kids were young. Fifteen years ago my lovely bride and I bought a Harley and have been grateful ever since. Friends and I have ridden all over Western North America during these last fifteen years and I will jump on and go at the falling of a chapeau. My summer riding jacket was new when I got the bike. It’s a standard Levi jacket, no big deal, but it has traveled with me for sixty-five thousand miles and is now held together with new denim in places, a lot of leather patches, and miles of memories.

I wore the tattered thing into the restaurant and hung it on a peg like a badge of honor. I’m proud of it. It’s been maintained when it could have been just thrown away and replaced. It’s like my own personal flag, much like the “freak flag” David Crosby sang about back in the Seventies. After lunch, I carried it out because I knew the heat of the day had crept in, as promised by the weather guys, and I knew I wasn’t going to wear it on the way back to work. I folded it carefully and put it in my port-side saddle bag. I threw a leg over and remembered that I’d locked the ignition and the keys were in the jacket pocket. Shit O. Deer. (Thank you David James Duncan.) So I got off and rummaged in the bag, pulled out the jacket, and got the keys. I felt a little hurried because lunch had gone on for a while and the sooner I could get back to work, the sooner I could finish my time and head home. I did not refold the jacket as carefully as I had. I just kind of wadded it up and stuffed it in there. The lid of the bag was hard to close and I knew there was quite a bit of strain on both the hinge and the latch. No matter. It would hold.

I finished the work day and headed home. I took the freeway, I-5 north, because I had a stop to make on the way and that was the most direct route. Heading up that hill to Portland, I can blow some of the carbon out and my bike does love a good snort. I can only guess what happened because I never saw it. I’d come up behind a big chip truck who was following two idiots. I dropped a gear and grabbed a big handful. My beautiful black machine flexed and took off like a big tractor shot from a cannon. Exhilaration. I pulled back into the center lane, eased off and settled into the last climb that defines the northern-most lip of the Willamette Valley. Suddenly, there was a mid-sized green car next to me with a pretty girl leaning out the window.

“Your bag is open,” she hollered. I reached behind me and, sure enough, it was. I snapped it shut, gave her a thumbs up and shouted “Thanks!”

Then, there was another car along side with the driver doing a charade that looked like he was pulling a coat around him. I waved and nodded as it dawned on me that he was probably talking about my jacket. Aw jeez.

There was no place to pull over. A truck lane yawned, but that was no good. Traffic was bunched and the next exit was two miles up the road. I decided it best to live through the ordeal and get off there. Sure enough, when I was able to stop, my beloved jacket was long gone. Grimly, I found my way to I-5 south and roared back to retrace my path. I did that twice, a seven-mile loop each time. Nothing. No jacket to be seen. Sick at heart, I rode home and sat with my chin in my hand, grieving. It was just a dumb old tattered Levi jacket I kept telling myself. All things must pass. The feelings brought my mom and dad back into focus and I just felt sad and lost. Enter Philosophy. I vowed to go check again on my way to work in the morning, which I did with the same result.

When there is no real alternative, we all seem to shrug and do whatever we can to deal with loss. We have choices. We can let loss overwhelm us or we can press on. It was a microcosm of what I’d gone through with losing my folks. Not as profound, certainly, but loss is loss and it’s weight was substantial. I’m sure the loss of my folks piggy-backed right aboard with this new setback and added some extra weight. I gave thanks for the pleasure the jacket had given me and more thanks for the memories I would always have from wearing it through heat and cold and dust and torrential wet. I found some comfort there.

I made it through the day and wearily threw my leg over for the ride home. I decided to take the freeway again. What the heck. I just putted up in the slow lane at about fifty-five scanning the breakdown strip. And there it was, twenty-four hours later, crumpled in a blue heap by the side of the road. All the rally pins were gone, broken and scattered by thousands of cars and trucks. The safety-pin-and-beads American flag was twisted and crushed beyond recognition, but the jacket was there and whole and fixable. I yelled “Thank you!” all the way home and even after I got there. It was a blessed feeling and lifted my heart to a lightness that made me downright giddy. Happy? Oh my, yes.

What I can take away from this, and you can too, is to keep trying, even after your rational mind gives up. Yeah, it’s just a dumb old jacket, but tell my heart that. There is a lesson here that I will be sorting out for a long time to come.

This'n That

This year is shaping up to be quite a year of transition (see previous post). My family has moved from taking care of my mom and dad to taking care of our house, which has been marginally maintained by yours truly. The yard is a disaster. The structure itself is solid, but we’re taking steps this summer and fall to be more proactive on drainage issues and will have concrete work done to accommodate that and to get ready for turning the carport into an actual garage. A garage will be very cool, but to accomplish that we will have to build a new shop. This will be problematic. It is certainly solvable, but won’t come without pain, both financial and physical. My tendons, ligaments, joints, and what little is left of my muscle mass are to be sorely tested, with emphasis on the sorely.

As usual, the issue is time. Making the time to get done what we need to get done is a challenge. Everybody I’ve talked to about how quickly 2012 is going agrees that it is a NASCAR year. The hammer is down and it is flying by. In NASCAR, the COT (Car of Tomorrow) is now the COP (Car of the Present) and they mostly go hard left (hard to imagine with some of the cops I know). If you talk to people on the left they are worried that we could lose our way and turn too hard to the right. If you talk to people on the right, they’re hopeful that we get onto a road course and have to turn to the right. But no matter which way the turns go, we are definitely clipping along at breakneck speed.

My generation is, pretty much, in power (see plutocratic oligarchy). I am older than the current President. I’m confident that this trend will continue. The last two guys are Boomers, just like me, but I’m not sure I have a whole lot in common with either of them. The life that has formed my basic philosophy has been conducted much differently. I’m not exactly devoid of ambition, but my ambitions are completely different from those of Mr. Obama and Mr. Bush. You could argue that mine are more selfish, that I simply want to live my life simply, with as little interference as possible. I never aspired to “public service,” which is a euphemism for politics. Some public servants would label me Joe Six-Pack, but I prefer to call myself Joe Keg. That has nothing to do with philosophy and everything to do with my abdomen.

The Media tells me that this is a crucial election year. Yeah? Well, so were the rest of them and we’re still trying to figure out how to balance this handbasket to hell. I don’t need to expound on multinational corporations and big banking or any of that stuff. You can’t swing a dangling participle without smacking into countless blogs opining about who’s evil, who’s shining with brightness, or who’s just plain stupid. Things get downright gooey when I ask myself: what are my choices? We have lots of sound bites, lots of pontification, and lots of people sincerely telling us how we should vote. I keep looking for leadership. I am still looking.

The Law

     Hmm…I’ve gone from weekly to bi-weekly to monthly to yearly and now to bi-yearly. Clearly, this blogging has fallen off of my radar. I did manage to finish a novel and am deep into the search for an agent, which has been frustrating because I have yet to find one who wants to read my manuscript. But I am nothing, if not stubborn.
     I lost both of my parents this year. Well, they’re not really lost. I know exactly where they are. They are together. My dad died on May 4 and my mom followed on June 28. They were married for seventy-two years. That’s a heck of an accomplishment. There are probably lots of things I could say about our family dynamics and what they meant to me, but I think I’ll stop right here. That stuff will percolate for the rest of my life and might, or might not, exteriorize as I manipulate a keyboard or a pen to express myself. I’m pretty sure it’s already shown itself in the air around my guitar. I’m thinking of the metaphor in Mark Knopfler’s Heavy Fuel. 
     We boomers are at the stage in life when this kind of thing is inevitable. Parents pass and gallstones do too. So do friends, gasses, and friend’s gasses. Passing is what we all do, eventually, even planets. But energy is indestructible. What energy does, ultimately, is change from one form to another. It’s not just a good idea, it’s The Law. We can derive from that whatever comfort we can. The energy in my mother’s eyes when we shared a laugh and, when I’d ask him if he wanted anything, in my father’s voice when he said “a smile.” That energy is still around. It is part of something, most assuredly me, and who knows? Maybe it’s in the wiggle of a new puppy or the lusty cry of a healthy newborn or in the eyes and hearts of a people who are staring down an oppressor. It’s somewhere. That’s not just a good idea, it’s The Law.

A year? What happened?

Yikes. It’s been a year and 12 days since I last posted here. As I attempt to figure that out I can’t come up with a reason. I’ve been writing in fits and spurts, finished a poem, a couple of songs, have been performing (not as much as in the past—see the previous blog entry). Here it is September 16, in the year of our lard 2010. This has been the fastest year on record for me. When I realized that a year had passed since the last blog bit, I was stunned. I remember the night I went through what I wrote about like it was yesterday. And perhaps it was. Time is such a strange invention. It’s like color in that if there is no brain to perceive it, it really doesn’t exist.

This is shaping up to be a very interesting mid-term election year. The Nut Job party is making news. Apparently, people are jumping on the “Masturbation is a Sin” bandwagon. New York will probably ban smoking in Times Square, Central Park, and all the heavily-used public outside areas. I’m just a little confused about that. I quit smoking cigarettes nearly five years ago, but have no beef with people that are still addicted. That’s their business. I just don’t get the ban on smoking outside. Second hand smoke is dangerous, says the Mayor and his council. Say what? Outside? I thought this was a free country. But then I realize that masturbating in public is illegal. I guess smoking is a sin as well. And the Nut Jobs continue, so maybe it is still a free country. It's just getting really weird and I don't mean that in a good Portland way.

Here in Portland it’s raining. “Oh surprise,” you say. I’ve heard a lot of people complaining that we didn’t have a summer this year. Poppycock, I say. We’ve had a lovely summer. It just never showed up until mid-July. We had a few days in the 90s and two, I think, days where it cracked 100. This is the second rainy week we’ve had since July. I think that’s pretty darn good. Maybe people are whining because everything has gone by at such a breakneck pace.

My parents arrive today for a visit. My mom will be 90 in November and my dad turned 93 last month. It will be great to have them here. This trip is part of my mom’s “bucket list,” something she wanted to do “one more time.” She wanted to come to Oregon and see all of the friends we have here. It’s been great helping to make this happen. There are also mystery guests who have come from as far away as Connecticut and Texas to see her. She will be very surprised and pleased, I think. For this event we also went out and got a big-screen HD-capable TV so my dad would have something to do. I’ll get him out to the Flight Museum in McMinnville on one of the days they’re here. He hasn’t seen the space side yet and I’ve only seen it once, so that will be a treat.

A year? Wow. I’ve been quite the slacker. I’m hopeful that I can step it up a little. Check back next week and see if I’m still awake.

Letting Go of Barnyard Flotsam

What the hell happened? It’s not supposed to be September already. Is it? Didn’t I just put up that last blog unit last week? Wow. If time keeps accelerating for me like it has been and global warming keeps pace, we’ll be under water by the end of the year. Maybe it has something to do with Relativity. Perspective is everything. Am I on the train, or am I watching it go by?

On Sunday I decided to let go of a lifelong fantasy. I declared that I will no longer strive to become a famous musician, that I will no longer spend time working on a “career” in music. I declared it to be a “stupid” fantasy and went to bed curled up in the fetal position.

I always knew I would be a famous musician. I always had a deep faith that it would come to pass. If I just stayed true to the craft and the art of it, things would magically conspire to call an audience and a following to my door. I’d known this since I was four years old. There were times it would seem assured. Intellectually, I recognized the folly of such a fantasy, but I stayed true to it nonetheless. It felt exactly right. It was who I wanted to be. It was who I was going to be. It was who I was.

But you know what? It was complete horseshit. Reality bites. I am not nearly as competent as I pretended to be and needed to be. I’m not even half the player I want to be. I’ve been playing the guitar for forty-seven years, but did I ever really work at it? I’d like to think I did, but if I’d worked harder, I’d be a more accomplished player. This whole aspect of my life needed a good bath and a solid dose of humility. I’d been seduced by the fantasy of it for so long that I was, literally, living in a fantasy world, which, no matter how you slice it, is not a good thing. As Sharon Olds so elegantly said in one of her poems: “I wanted to be some one.” It skewed my entire self image and put me in a house of mirrors where each reflection became farther from the truth of What Is.

Sunday evening Laura and I went to see the Freak Mountain Ramblers and had a blast. They had fun and, therefore, the room did too. Even today it makes me happy just to think about sitting there awash in Happy Feet Music. They are, when I’m in their “room,” my favorite musical ensemble, maybe ever. I love the fact that they can pull it all off, from Jug-band music to Western Swing, to Rock’n Roll, to well, let’s just call it “Modern Jazz.” It is Americana at its absolute best. We are so lucky to live in Portland. It is an undeniably stellar musical town.

So, we’re on the way home and I’m bubbling on about wishing I could just get up in the morning and plug myself into my studio (which doesn’t exist) and work on songs and stuff. Laura asked a very simple question about where the songs would sell and I immediately became defensive and then IT hit me like a ton of copyright forms. It was all crap. My whole notion of what I was going to do someday was a load of malarkey. It was based on a complete fallacy. I had this moment of brilliant clarity, an epiphany of stunning proportion. Poor Laura thought I was mad at her. It had nothing at all to do with her, it was me finally realizing, seeing it without my little rosy haze, that the fantasy I’d held about myself and my place in the musical pantheon I’d created in my mind, was just egregiously wrong. I was absolutely devastated. I had no idea who I was and I was angry with myself for allowing such a twisted vision to become something I’d accepted as a reality.

I have no idea how this will all shake out as things settle. I have let the fantasy go and accepted What Is. Now, What Is, is pretty darn okay, if you ask me. I am a relentlessly adequate guitarist and I will continue my lifelong aspiration to learn as much about playing it as I possibly can. I will embrace the ukulele and, by golly, learn to play “Little Wing” on it (probably on a baritone). I will continue to play out and sing and make people happy with my versions of music, my own and other songwriters. I will do this with an undying love of it, but I will NOT be concerned with anything at all about the “career” side of it. That is dead and gone. I do not require that carrot-on-a-stick to keep me going (donut on a stick?). Good riddance, I say. I had my fifteen minutes of fame a long long time ago and I sure don’t need the ego feed. Mine’s big enough already. I will just sustain myself with the best music I can make. If you happen to hear it someday, I hope you like it.

Productive, Profound, and Profane

There’s just something memorable about the men in an audience singing, with gusto, “my vagina is eight miles wide, absolutely everyone can come inside …” Sure, it’s probably the most memorable song in Storm Large’s tour-de-force “Crazy Enough,” but it’s definitely not the only highlight. She is a special niche artist, what I would call a superstar, who has taken the sting of “not fitting in” to the heart-on-her-sleeve absolutely open-faced Storm sandwich method of method acting. I found her performance riveting, beautiful, joyous, immeasurably sad, and get-the-dictionary-out-for-every-adjective smart. Her mind is mercurial and her on-board editor is a tad slow. That makes for great theater. The more people who experience “Crazy Enough,” the better. It is literature. It shines a very bright light on what it means to be a human being. Here I am. Here we are. Deal with it. The show runs in Portland, at Portland Center Stage, through August 16. After it closes, I really hope it finds it’s way to DVD and makes Storm Large a household name (and a couple tons of money). The world can certainly use a big dose of her. She could make both Richard Pryor and George Carlin blush, but I see that as a good thing. Hello. Deal with it. Let’s start THINKING about what it means to be human. Let’s get rid of a lot of the bullshit that has been slathered on the experience like some kind of weird concrete glue. The potential we share as humans has never needed such a boost as it does now. Let’s smash the dogma with our kharma.

In other news, the golfing world is entirely unaware that I am actually receiving instruction in this ancient craft. This is probably a good thing because if golfers knew that I was aggressively focused on continuing my relationship with the game, they might hurt themselves. At the very least, they might succumb to despair and slit their egos. Heaven forbid! But yes, it’s true. I have decided that I need to stop whining about being a lousy golfer and move on up to relentlessly mediocre. I take so much pleasure from the few good shots that I hit that I fear I have become a tad greedy and want to experience that joy more often. Maybe I can even get to the point where I have to use my other hand to count my good shots. That would be stellar and an improvement, certainly.

I am also taking up the ukulele. Jake Shimabukuro (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puSkP3uym5k) I’ll never be, but there is just too much fun to be had with this much-maligned little instrument.

Stay tuned. I’ll check in here with more wry observance in the near future. I’m kind of on a roll with my writing and this is a nice voice to relax into sometimes.