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 the 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 asking a guy whose extended family was sitting at 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 map. The map didn't show the whole route, just part, 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 on it, but he kept debating my decision. this was something he did a lot, take an oppositional point of view, play devil's advocate. it infuriated me and we'd end up fighting. I refused to listen to him, told everyone to.get back in the car, I would drive. We were heading back out in the Freeway when I woke up. 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 i could have learned from him but he was so confrontational, so fucked up. He Swung wildly between being deeply proud of me and profoundly disappointed. One day he would be fighting like a wildcat to control me, the next he would be oblivious, absent, deliberately shutting me out because I wasn't what he wanted me to be..I was too fat, too loud, ro opinionated, too much like him. the wild swings were too much for me. i had to get out of there. i didn't look.back. but oh, I wish he had gotten some help, gotten a break. I wish he could have found some peace so he could have 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 

A list of traumas

Trauma #1: I was delivered from the womb violently and injured in the process.. It was a perfectly normal deliver going at a normal pace until some sick sadist of an OB GYN rammed steel forceps up into my poor mother, clamped them on my head and dragged me out. My head was marked and misshapen in the process. I've always been uneven - one bad eye, only good with one hand, crooked teeth.  I think it is at least partially due to the fact that I was attacked and at the moment of birth and slightly brain damaged. I have some CTE.

Trauma #2: my father got into a fight with some guys on my way home from the hospital and got thrown in jail.  My mom brought me back to their studio apartment in Long Beach by herself, probably on the Red Car. I wouldn't stop screaming,  she couldn't stop crying. She had been trying to get me to nurse but it wasn't working.  She called her best friend in hysterics.  My "Aunt" Lola came straight away, brought bottles and formula, got me settle down. Got my mom settled down and sent her husband to bail Smitty out of jail.  There is a special place in heaven for that woman.

That was, what? Day 3? 4

By the time I was 3, my father had broken his back in a construction accident, long before there was workers comp. My mom went to work cleaning in a factory while he healed. Then she slipped on a wet floor and cracked her tailbone.  She also went on to have two more children, moved several times to keep ahead of the bills, and suffer through serious health issues. 

We moved to Bloomington California to be near my mom's sister when I was about 4 years old. It was a rough neighborhood. Our next door neighbor was a member of the original Hells Angels. The Angels originally formed in San Bernadino and this guy was a member. One night, he started beating his girlfriend with a chain on the street. She ran to our door and tried to get in but my mom locked her out. He almost beat her to death in our front yard. 

My dad went to prison before I was born. My mom made him join Alcoholics Anonymous when he got out. He sponsored other ex-cons in AA and occasionally let them crash at our house. I barely remember this, but I do remember liking the people my dad brought to the house.

My dad and his brother got into a wildly violent fistfight in our house one night. My mom took my brother and I into the closet to hide. I could hear thumps and yelling and things breaking through the walls. 

My parents fought like tigers.

I walked up behind a guy pitching horseshoes, got hit in the heal and knocked out cols.

I had my tonsils out and spent 2 nights in the hospital. 

We moved at least a half dozen times. 

All this happened before I was in kindergarten. I'm sure there was more. Mom died before she got a chance to tell the whole story.  I wish I had asked her sooner. I had just sent my youngest child off to college when she died and could finally pay her the attention she deserved but never expected. I didn't get a chance to give it to her.

Harmonic

  I was blessed to grow up immersed in musical harmony.  My mother and all 9 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'd 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  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. If you can pull it off, it's the place where the magic happens. When it's just right, the infinite overtones open, an experience I've had exactly once and will never forget. Everything is energy. Energy is vibration. When vibration is perfectly aligned, it creates perfect harmony, which is the closest I've come to God. Im grateful to people like David Crosby who taught me how to hear it.

Haiku

 The smoke cleared briefly

Overhead the geese honking

August is over

Change

 The only lasting truth

Is Change.

∞ = Δ

Why am I doing what I’m doing?  To make my tiny corner of the universe a better place.  The world changed and I’m rolling with those changes, adapting as quickly as I can before my species become extinct.

I am in the place where I make my stand.

I am not who I thought I would be, not yet, but I’m not done trying. I seek wisdom, grace, healing, peace. My intention is to walk lightly on this planet. I seek to preserve my little corner. I seek the courage to share what I have with trust and compassion. I accept that I have no control over anything or anyone but my own body, heart, and head.

I am doing what I am doing because I still can.