Smitty

I dreamed that dad, mom, brother Greg, nephew Noah and a couple of strangers were all squeezed in my car driving across the country. Dad and mom were only coming part of the way, I was supposed to drop them at different airports so they could go back to where they came from. Noah had been driving all night, the rest of us had fallen asleep. When I woke up, I realized he'd missed a turn off. We were supposed to head east but we were still heading north. I had him pull over at a ramshackle diner where we found a cool, shady parking lot out back. Mom was sitting in the back seat and I was really glad we found shade for her. I took out my paper map and went inside to ask for directions. I tried to ask the folks in the kitchen but they were closed off behind a wall with a tiny service window and they wouldn’t come to the counter. I tried to ask a guy whose extended family was sitting across several tables but I couldn't make him understand the map. I went back outside and tried to unfold the map on the hood of the car but it wouldn't open to the right section. It was a jumble. Dad was standing by me trying to help, trying to tell me which way to go, but I kept fumbling with the msp. It didn't show the whole route, just part of it, and I couldn't unfold it to the section I needed. Smitty kept trying to take the map and show me something but I insisted that I knew the way. I had planned the route and we were going to go the way I had planned. He wasn't fighting me, but he kept debating my decision. This was something he did a lot I my life. he would take an oppositional point of view, play devil's advocate. It infuriated me and we'd end up fighting. in the dream, I refused to listen to him. I told everyone to get back in the car, I would drive. We were heading back out onto the freeway when I woke up. What's that you say? Lingering control issues left over from childhood? Whatever are you talking about? i refused to listen to him for my entire adult life, from my early teens to his death. There was a lot more I could have learned from him but we wete both so defensive, so fucked up. He swung wildly between being deeply proud of me and profoundly disappointed in me. One day he would be fighting like a wildcat to control me, the next he would be oblivious, absent, He shut me out because I wasn't what he wanted me to be. I was too fat, too loud, tpo opinionated, too much like him. The swings were too much for me. i got out of there and didn't look.back. but oh, I wish he could have gotten some help. I wish he could have found some peace and shared it with me I woke up with a sore neck from clenching my jaw so hard.

Funeral Songs

The ever-expanding list of songs to be played at my funeral Coyote, Joni Mitchell Clouds. Joni Mitchell Sisters of Mercy, Leonard Cohen To Lay Me Down, Jerry Garcia The Wheel, Jerry Garcia Mood Indigo, Duke Ellington Many Rivers to Cross, Jimmy Cliff What'll I Do, Harry Nilson St James Infirmary Blues, Jelly Roll.Morton Nuages, Djamgo Reinhardt Minor Swung - Django Reinhardt Gymnopedia, Eric Satie Im Coming Home, Staple Singers By the Rivers of Babylon, Bob Marley Redemption Song, Bob Marley Peace Like a River, Paul Simon Slip Slidin Away. Paul Simon Candles in the Rain, Melanie She, Graham Parsons Tapestry, Carol King Elvis Presley Blues. Gillian Welch Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain, Willie Nelson Angel From Monthomery - Bonnie Raitt version All Things Must Pass - George Harrison Hide Your Love Away - Beatles

Life in the Wilderness

"There's the idea of the wilderness, and then there's the unglamorous labor of it, the never-ending grind of securing firewood; bringing in groceries over absurd distances; tending the vegetable garden and maintaining the fences that keep the deer from eating all the vegetables; repairing the generator; remembering to get gas for the generator; composting; running out of water in the summertime; never having enough money because job opportunities in the wilderness are limited; managing the seething resentment of your child, who doesn't understand your love of the wilderness and asks every week why you can't live in a normal place that is not wilderness; etc." Emily St John Mandel Check, check, check

Harmonic

I was blessed to grow up immersed in musical harmony. My mother and all nine of her siblings sang beautifully. No family gathering was complete without a couple of hymns sung round the piano in 4 part harmony. My cousin, the family proto-hippie, had an impressive record collection. I use to sneak into his room and wear out his copy of Buffalo Springfield Retrospective. He introduced me to The Byrds, which led me to Crosby, Stills & Nash (and eventually Young.) Those tight, twisting California harmonies felt like family to me. They felt like home. David Crosby talked about how hard it is to sing the middle part, to hold your note and resist the pull from two different directions. I's the place where the magic happens. When harmonybis just right, the infinite overtones open, an experience I've had exactly once and will never forget. It sounds like two mirrors facing each other infinitely reflecting back onto each other. There is no end. Everything is energy. Energy is vibration. When vibration is aligned, it creates harmony. It is the closest I've come to God.

Haiku

The smoke cleared briefly Overhead the geese honking August is over

Impeachment

 This is how the Trump Administration ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

Take heart friends. It may feel like we are right back where we started, but you can"t walk through the same river twice. The needle has moved, infintessmally perhaps, but movement all the same. 57 senators voted to convict. Those who voted to acquit cloaked themselves in the fig leaf of a technicality. There was no full-throated defense of the man, his supporters are scrambling to distance themselves. Their Big Lie is crumbling under the weight of its own absurdity. They are superfluous now, their power spent on this circus clown and his horror show. Show's over folks.

We must never forget this moment and we must be ever vigilant to prevent it from happening again, but it is time to move on. Quit feeding this troll. The most powerful punishment we can inflict on him and his minions is to withdraw our gaze. Don't grant him the attention he craves. Let him strut and fret in obscurity, haunting the halls of Mar a Lago like the Ghost of Insurrection Past. Leave him to the prosecutors and bankers and tax agents. We have more important work ahead.

We have a chance to do something truly transformative this year. We can make substantive change if we have the courage and the will, but this is our one shot. If  Democratic lawmakers balk like they usually do, voters will turn away in disgust. This is my generation's FDR moment and we won't get another one. Let's focus our attention on things that matter: racial and social justice, economic reform, environmental protection, comprehensive health care for all. Let's make this moment count.

And so ends 4 years of chaos. Good riddance. In the words of the brilliant Julie Dubiner, fuck off Nazis. Crawl back into the dustbin of history where you belong. We have bigger fish to fry.

Prediction

 

  

This is what I got; 

Dear me and my family down south says that I am not going to be for Halloween this year of death stalks the land and our future hangs in the balance of the world comes to an end of the lake but not on the public end or in the campground of the Dead 

I need therapy.

Lear

 

The tragedy of Lear is that he was a once great and noble King whose fall into dotage is both heartbreaking and universal. There has never been anything great or noble about Trump and there is nothing heartbreaking about his fall. He's a two bit huckster with just enough patter to mesmerize the rubes while he picks their pockets. He doesn't move us to Aristotelian pathos, he enduces nausea. May he wander lost and raving on the ash heap of history.

Solstice

 I am doing everything in my power

To attract the help and resources I need

to fulfill my aim.

My aim is peace.

After this long year of fear, isolation, depression, helplessness, hopelessness, I will act in my best interest.  I will take care of myself. 

The End

 All of these sad, sick, Nazi sympathizing Trump supporters are flailing in their failure. They have been returned to the dustbin of history where they so richly belong. In a few years, finding grandpa's MAGA hat in the closet will be akin to finding his Klan hood or Swastika.  Your grandchildren find you abhorrent. Go back to your caves and your paranoid, racist fantasies. The adults are talking now.

Walking at Night

 Walking at Night

Louise Gluck

Now that she is old,

the young men don’t approach her

so the nights are free,

the streets at dusk that were so dangerous

have become as safe as the meadow.

By midnight, the town’s quiet.

Moonlight reflects off the stone walls;

on the pavement, you can hear the nervous sounds

of the men rushing home to their wives and mothers; this late,

the doors are locked, the windows darkened.

When they pass, they don’t notice her.

She’s like a dry blade of grass in a field of grasses.

So her eyes that used never to leave the ground

are free now to go where they like.

When she’s tired of the streets, in good weather she walks

in the fields where the town ends.

Sometimes, in summer, she goes as far as the river.

The young people used to gather not far from here

but now the river’s grown shallow from lack of rain, so

the bank’s deserted—

There were picnics then.

The boys and girls eventually paired off;

after awhile, they made their way into the woods

where it’s always twilight—

The woods would be empty now—

the naked bodies have found other places to hide.

In the river, there’s just enough water for the night sky

to make patterns against the gray stones. The moon’s bright,

one stone among many others. And the wind rises;

it blows the small trees that grow at the river’s edge.

When you look at a body you see a history.

Once that body isn’t seen anymore,

the story it tried to tell gets lost—

On nights like this, she’ll walk as far as the bridge

before she turns back.

Everything still smells of summer.

And her body begins to seem again the body she had as a young

      woman,

glistening under the light summer clothing.

the politics of mom

My mother did not shop in thrift stores. She didn't even like to go to K Mart. My mom grew up in real poverty, not enough to eat poverty, cold all winter long poverty. She grew up wearing ragged hand me downs and worn out shoes. She picked cotton for other farmers to earn money for school clothes because her daddy sure wasn't going to pay her for picking cotton at home. When she escaped, she did not look back. She left poverty behind and worked herself to the bone to make sure I didn't know what real poverty was. Money was often tight. Some weeks we ate roast beef,  other weeks we ate beans and hammocks, but we never went hungry,  ever. My mom wore genteel office lady clothes that she bought from JC Penny's. As someone who grew up dirty, cold, and aching, she loved a hot bath better than anything in the world.  She was not flamboyant and didn't want to be the center of attention, but she was funny as hell and could make everyone around her laugh. She was kind in a way that people still remember 15 years after her death. 

In 1968 she voted for LBJ and my dad voted for Nixon.  I was shocked when she told me. I thought wives had to vote the same as their husbands. She quickly disabused me of that notion. She was humble but fiercely independent. No one was going to tell her what to think. She was the only pro-choice southern Baptist I ever knew.

She would have found the current president repellent. 

 And so my witches, what shall we do for Halloween this year? How do we celebrate the high holy Days of the Dead in this year of of death? 

You likely know all this, but it bears repeating.

October 31, Halloween or Samhain, the witches' New Years Eve, when we get on our brooms and fly.  My wedding anniverary.

November 1, All Saints in the Catholic tradition, the celebration of the holy ones, the anointed ones, the bodhisattvas. 

November 2, All Souls, Dia de los Muertos, the day we visit with our beloved departed and feed them wine and sugar skulls. 

November 3, Election day. 

Talk about a powerful conjunction. 

Late stage capitalism has conspired to drain all reverence and mystery from our high holy days. Halloween has been commodified. Super Stores are filled with cheap wigs made by slave laborer. Costco is lined with shipping pallets full of candy but I haven't had a trick-or-treater in years. Who takes time to greet the ancestors, much less feed them? Young people hit the bars and drink till they puke, old folks turn off the lights and go to bed early. Only a very few set up altars to the ones who have crossed over. Very few of us spend time contemplating our own mortality. 

Too many have crossed over in isolation and panic this year. It is not the right time to hit the bars in a sexy kitty costume. Trust me, I have spent more than one Halloween engaged in epic debauchery, I have no problem with a sexy kitty costume. But, it won't do this year, not when death stalks the land and our future hangs in the balance. It won't do.

So, I ask you again: what shall we do for Halloween this year? 

In my mind, I see women in black lining the main street of my town. I hear a great wailing and gnashing of teeth. I join my voice with their's and cry out against the darkness. We wail for the needless, preventable death and suffering, we rage at the crimes against humanity. We howl over the theft of our future committed by the elite few against the vast masses. And as our voices lift and surge, I feel a cone of power spiraling around and upward. I am become light shining up and out, light shining in the darkness.

This is what we must do, my witches. We must shine more brightly than we have ever shone before. We must light the way for our beloved departed. We must drive out the darkness.

Cutting Loose
William Stafford


Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason,
you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing
a world
where you go where you want to.
Arbitrary, a sound comes, a
reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that
sound
will tell you where it is and you
can slide your way past
trouble.
Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path—but that’s
when
you get going best, glad to be lost,
learning how real it is
here
on earth, again and again.

I outlived my beauty, outlived my youth

Chased my illusions but only caught truth,

Looking back is a trap, regret is a curse 

I could have done better but it could have been worse

My little troubles are no tragedy

And they can be blamed on nobody but me

Blame the voice in my head that always said no
Blame the fear that said stop when I wanted to go

New Year, Old Year

For some reason, I thought 2018 was an uneventful year. I was wrong. 

Some highlights

• 2018 marked the first time in more than 20 years I didn’t work for the Shakespeare Festival, ending a relationship that began in 1974. My heart is broken but mending.  No regrets Coyote.
• Submitted more than 30 job applications and went on at least 10 interviews.
• Started a new job in an entirely new industry and haven’t fucked it up totally yet.
• Evacuated my home in front of a wild fire.
• Worked with my friend and nutrition coach Pam Christy for several months.  Made a lot of progress and then back slid, as is my pattern.  I’m back at it again with new tools to help me achieve my health goals.
• Started taking spin class at the Y with my old pal Jean Taylor.  I love it. It kicks my ass in a good way.
• Nursed my pup through a broken leg. We will reach the end of our 12 week journey soon.
• Accepted the donation of a 15 foot tall statue.  We have a giant erection in our future friends.
• Played lots of shows with the Serenaders, including my favorite Green Show ever.  Little kids got up on stage and danced with us. it was heaven.
• Resisted the reactionary in the White House by writing, marching, singing, speaking out. We progressives must get past our petty differences and work together to defeat the maniac and his minions.
• Canceled the Camp Out for the first time. My apologies campers. May we gather again in 2019.

Going Gentle

I dreamed I was directing a production of a Neil Simon play, not sure which one. One of my coworkers from the Fire Department was involved in the production. Like me, she's a half-time admin assistant and also like me she comes from a Nor Cal alternative/hippie background. We haven’t gone too deeply into the details, but it’s clear that we have more in common with each other than with the other women in the office. In the dream play, I was directing two actors from OSF and Kristin, the woman from the office. I wasn't supposed to be directing, I knew that the project “belonged” to Kristin, but I couldn’t stop myself from stepping up and taking charge. I had that strong feeling of being the resident expert, the person who knew more and was most capable, so I stepped in and went to work.

The stage manager/director motif is a reoccurring theme in my dreams. Usually, the dream theatrical enterprise is in total chaos and I’m responsible for picking up the pieces. I often have to go onstage for missing actors, even though I don’t know the lines. These dreams are usually anxiety-filled, but this latest one was not. Every time I started to feel the anxiety creep up, I would remember that it was not my project, it belonged to Kristin. I was just along for the ride. I wasn't invested in the same way.

This is not unlike my job at the Fire Department; well, except the part where I know more than the people around me. I am definitely the least knowledgeable person in that room. But it's true that I'm not invested there in the same way I was at OSF. I take the work seriously, but I don’t live in a constant state of anxiety like I did at the art factory. I can very much leave this job behind when I go home.

The art factory trauma is slowly starting to fade. In truth, Art with a capital A is fading too, receding in life’s rear view mirror. OSF is over for me, thus ending an artistic relationship that began in 1974. I'll write about it some day. Hamfist is long gone, much to my sorrow. Bathtub Gin is on its last legs. We are scheduled to play a New Year’s Eve show and it will be my last. I haven’t told them yet, but my mind is made up. The band had to break in yet another drummer and bass player this fall. They're lovely people and good musicians, but I can't get excited.  This band has been through so many drummers and bass players, I don't think I have it in me to train another rhythm section.

The truth is, I can't get over losing Jesse on the bass and vocals. He is the kind of musician who can hold his own in any circle.  He is rock steady, swings like a pendulum, and really feels the music, which makes his collaborators feel it too. It's a rare pleasure and hard to describe, but musicians know what I'm talking about. Playing with Jesse took so much weight off my shoulders. I could depend on him onstage and off, which freed me to PLAY– not just play notes, but play like a child, playing a game, play with abandon. He made playing fun. Now playing is work. I’m in a constant state of alert, banging out tempos, trying to keep everyone on the beat, signaling stops and starts. I can’t let go and melt into the music.

Listen to me bitch about playing music; what a spoiled brat. But, the joy is gone and that's the truth. It's the end of my Art and it's breaking my heart. 

It has been a hard year. My 50s are going out with a whimper, will my 60s come in with a bang? Shall I rage, rage against the dying of the light?

A Tedious Brief Scene of Tragical Mirth

Joe texted out of the blue on Tuesday and asked if I wanted to go to the John Prine's Birthday open mic at the Wild Goose. Hell yes says I, and we agreed to meet at his place. 

I know how much Sequoia misses playing music and hey, John Prine, so I told him about it and he said he wanted to come. I suggested we play Oughta Name a Drink After You and Chain of Sorrow. We've been playing those songs for decades and I figured we couldn’t fuck up too bad. Plus, I was sure someone else would play Fish & Whistle before we got a chance.

I dropped in at Joe's and we chatted for a bit then went to the Goose. The place was packed. There was no place to sit and the opening act played for more than an hour so Joe bailed.  I might have bailed too but Sequoia wanted to play, so we waited it out. 

As we were standing by the back door waiting to go on, a guy walked in who looked vaguely familiar, but I didn't give it much thought.

Finally we went up. I played the accordion and sang harmony which always charms people. It wasn’t our best outing ever, but it was at the Goose on a Tuesday night, people were drunk, who cares?  

I do, but that's another story.

We got a big ovation and people told us we were great, etc. I perform often enough now to take those kinds of compliments with a grain of salt. Mostly people are charmed by the accordion, not the music. By then it was past Sequoia’s bedtime and he left right after we played, but I decided to hang out.

The guy who looked vaguely familiar started chatting with me, told me we were terrific, we should do a few more songs, etc. I was gracious but skeptical. He said he loves accordions and mentioned he plays banjo. We both told banjo player jokes and talked shop a bit. I thought he must be a local musician and finally said, "You look so familiar to me, are you in a band?" He said, "Yeah, I play in a band called Devil Makes Three. We played here once many years ago."

I was standing in the fucking Wild Goose on a Tuesday night chatting up Pete Bernhardt.

I kept my cool, told him I'd missed them at Wild Goose but had seen them at Stillwater just up the street. He remembered that show and asked what happened to the people who ran that place. We talked about how Maria Kelly had been dumped by JPR. It was all very casual and relaxed. He went to stand in line at the bar. I hung out hoping he would come back, but his friends had gotten a booth and he sat down with them.

At that point I got inside my head, like I do. I was too intimidated to insert myself into their group and was overwhelmed by the whole scene. I looked in my car for a Bathtub Gin Serenaders CD to give him, but didn't have one so, coward that I am, I left. I know, I know, golden opportunity squandered; story of my life.

It was like something out of a fantasy, or maybe a nightmare.  If it had been a fantasy, I would have scripted a different ending.  The moral of the story is, I care far too much about what people think. It is my tragic flaw.

Rich Man

Back in the early aughts, I once held in my trembling hand a paper check from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation for 1.5  million dollars. Yup, $1,500,000, "One Million Five Hundred Thousand and 00/00," as it was written on the check. It came by U.S. Post in a Number 10 envelope with a first class stamp, they didnt even bother to send it by registered mail. As I held that insubstantial slip of paper, I realized it represented more money than I would earn in my entire life.

When I worked at OSF, Paul Allen came through the Development Office every few years. I was never introduced and rarely laid eyes on him, but I got to meet his dog. My friend Sharon stepped in as a last-minute replacement dog sitter while Allen attended a play. I don't remember what kind of dog it was, but I do remember it wore a Burberry collar.

Allen wasn't a "modest" billionaire. He didn't give all his money to high-minded causes like Gates and he didn't live in a suburban home like Buffet.  He bought sports teams, arenas, a freaking space ship. He gave billions to an oddly eclectic array of arts and science organizations. He built an entire museum dedicated to Jimi Hendrix.  He once took his 400 foot yacht cruising in Russia and gave his guests Faberge eggs as parting gifts. (This according to Peter Thomas, who had a nose for those kinds of details.) I guess what I'm trying to say is, the guy knew how to spend money. He was not trying to take it with him.

Good on him, says I. It was his money, who am I to tell him how to spend it? He didn't inherit his wealth, he didn't steal it or conjure it out of some hedge fund. He made his money the old fashioned way, by building and selling a good product. He built something extraordinary and people lined up to buy it. We didn't even know what it was and we sure didn't think we needed it, but now we can't live without it. And that, my friends, is the American dream.

And yet, there is something about that much wealth concentrated in one man's hands that makes me queasy.  Sure, Paul Allen built an outstanding product; so what?  Are products our greatest good, our highest value? Are they the metric by which we measure a woman or a man? By some accounts, Allen's product wasnt even the best of its kind, but he marketed it brilliantly while ruthlessly monopolizing an emerging industry. In return, capitalism honored him with its highest accolade: lots and lots of money. I'm not assigning blame to Allen. The man didn't create our system of predatory capitalism, he just played the game particularly well.

And so it goes. Good night sweet Prince. May your passing mark the end of an era.

BMOC

Yeah, I knew Brett Kavanaugh in high school. We all knew this guy in high school.  He was the class president, the quarterback of the football team, the captain of the debate squad. He wore a letterman jacket and spent a lot of time and money on his hair.  We called them jocks and "soshies" (short for social), and they occupied the farthest end of the social hierarchy from the freaks I ran with. We even had a name for them: BMOC, Big Man On Campus. These boys strode the halls like they owned the school because they did. They stood in judgement of all who inhabited their world. They decreed who belonged and who didn't.

They called us faggot, dyke, whore, pig. They threw things at us as we walked by. They tripped some kid in the cafeteria and screamed with laughter when he landed hard and his tray went flying.  That laughter, like the baying of rabid coyotes, it still rings in my ears. They didn’t fuck with me as much as the quieter kids, I was too big, too loud, too angry to qualify as an easy mark. But, they would murmur among themselves and hoot their hideous laughter as I walked by. I didn't need to hear their words to know what they were saying.

When they got drunk, watch out; that's when things turned really ugly. Weekend keggers at someone's house, the parents out of town, classic rock blasting on the stereo, some girl puking in the bushes. Wasted frat boys making themselves as big as possible, generating as much noise as possible, howling giant primates careening through an over-sized suburban home like coked up rats pinballing off the walls of a maze.

We were drunk too, we girls. We drank Boones Farm Wine or Jack and Coke until we didn’t know any better, or at least didn’t care. Girls like me, we were so desperate for male attention, so hungry for their approval. Male attention was how we measured our worth and it was the only marker that mattered.  If you were pretty, rich, graceful, if you had a certain quality, it was easy to attract a lot of male attention. From what I hear, that kind of attention carried its own costs, but at least you were on the inside and at the top. For the rest of us, for girls like me, male attention was harder to obtain, but it was always the most important goal. I sought that attention like a diver seeks oxygen. I needed it.  I catered to male egos, flattered their vanity, relented to their drunken aggression, acquiesced to their clumsy moves. This is their world and that’s how women like me live in it. We mold ourselves to fit. I had to squeeze myself down, shut myself up, make myself sweeter, lighter, less intimidating. Liquor did the trick. I drank until I felt like I was seen, heard, valued, because desire equaled value. I drank until I found myself in some dark bedroom or cramped back seat with a sloppy, out-of-control animal who had never heard the word “no” in his life. It was not in his lexicon. It didn’t apply to him.    

I don’t apologize. I was just trying to survive the only way I knew how.  Sometimes I felt powerful. Sometimes I felt beautiful.  But, mostly I just felt used. 

Yeah, I knew Brett Kavanaugh in high school. Not him, but dozens just like him. We all did. When I think of that entitled, self-satisfied, racist, misogynistic, elitist frat boy on the Supreme Court of the United States of America, it makes me literally sick.