Summer's is gone but the heat hasn't died down. At least the nights are cool and the quality of the light has changed. Darker blues, deeper shadows. Twilight creeps out from under the trees a little earlier with each passing day, spreading across the evening "like a patient etherized upon a table."
Fires rage just to the south. Weed California is burning tonight. We watch columns of smoke rise and spread like a contagion, wondering if, when, wild fire will crest the ridge and drop down into our valley.
I came out of Jimmy Giancarlo's memorial service tonight to find a mercifully, if briefly, blue sky. Appropriate. Dear Jimmy was a man with a blue sky disposition. He maintained the highest artistic standards without ever being negative or dismissive or harshly critical. He had a way of getting what he wanted by validating others. In all our interactions, from the artistic to the mundane, he never made me feel "less than." He lifted up everyone around him. I aspire to his example. I wish all of my collaborators were as inclusive, inspiring, affirming, committed, generous.
Another good man gone, while evil seems to live forever. And then there are those who inhabit that gray space between good and evil, the ones who cause me so much confusion and pain. People like me.
I grow old, I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
I had a dream about a woman I know, one of those people who leave me feeling "less than." She talks incessantly about her family, her job, her travels, her beliefs, her life, her friends; in short, about herself. Her sense of entitlement is profound, she denies herself nothing. She brings out the Little Red Hen in me: who is going to pick the wheat and grind the grain and bake the bread while Ducky Lucky is touring Europe? In my dream she was talking, talking, talking about herself until I couldn't take it any more and screamed "Will you SHUT THE FUCK UP!!" It shocked me awake.
Why don't I say something similar (if not quite so hostile) in the waking world? Because, I don't see how it would change anything for the better. The reality is, I'm jealous of her. She grew up wealthy and lives her life in the certainty that she deserves whatever she wants. I grew up poor and live my life in the fear that I deserve nothing.
If I had no fear, what would I do?
Maybe I would quit my job and hit the road, visit places just because they interest me, write about any damn thing that crosses my mind, play music on corners and at street fairs, talk to strangers, cross against the light; you know, break the rules. I have a little money, a credit card, a house I could sell. I have skills.
It ain't gonna happen, at least not yet. I've been homeless and broke. I'm not going back.
I traded freedom for security because I couldn't figure out how to have both. I went to school, got a job and never looked back. For decades now, I have walked the endless treadmill of day after working day, playing by the rules, paying my bills, avoiding extraordinary risk, forgoing extraordinary reward. I've been good, Lord. I've done my penance for my wicked, misspent youth.
Is it too late for me to dive back into the unknown?
Do I dare disturb the universe?
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