TELL ME WHAT

"Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"

THE SUMMER DAY, MARY OLIVER

ONE SOURCE OF BAD INFORMATION

image~  another Helen Levitt

ONE SOURCE OF BAD INFORMATION
There's a boy in you about three
Years old who hasn't learned a thing for thirty
Thousand years. Sometimes it's a girl.

This child has to make up its mind
How to save you from death. He said things like:
"Stay home. Avoid elevators. Eat only elk."

You live with this child, but you don't know it.
You're in the office, yes, but live with this boy
At night. He's uninformed, but he does want

To save your life. And he has. Because of this boy
You survived a lot. He's got six big ideas.
Five don't work. Right now he's repeating them to you.
- Robert Bly

“To myself”

image~Helen Levitt

"Even when I forget you
I go on looking for you
I believe I would know you
I keep remembering you
sometimes long ago but then
other times I am sure you
were here a moment before
and the air is still alive
around where you were and I
think then I can recognize
you who are always the same
who pretend to be time but
you are not time and who speak
in the words but you are not
what they say you who are not
lost when I do not find you"
W. S. Merwin,
“To myself”

THE GOING GOING GONE

"We chase after ghosts and spirits and are left holding only memories and dreams. It's not that we want what we can't have; it's that we've held all we could want and then had to watch it slip away."
 - Charles de Lint

"WE COULD MAKE EACH OTHER HAPPY"

NILLSON SCHMILLSON

THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION

I did a post a while back about the Gratitude Prayer:
“My gratitude speaks when I care and share the NA way that no addict seeking recovery need ever die from the horrors of addiction”

I talked some about Stan, and the Eternity Medallion.
It makes me think of the movie “The Shawshank Redemption”
In it, Morgan Freeman plays a convict named Red doing a life sentence. Every year he comes up for parole, and every year they ask him “Do you feel you've been rehabilitated? “
And every year he tells them “Oh yes, I’ve learned my lesson. I’m no longer a danger to anyone. I’m a changed man” and every year they turn him down.
Finally after 40 years and they bring Red in, and he’s tired of playing this game, and it goes like this…

"Have you been rehabilitated?"

“Rehabilitated? Well, now let me see. You know, I don't have any idea what that means.”

“Well, it means that you're ready to rejoin society...”

“I know what *you* think it means, sonny. To me it's just a made up word. A politician's word, so young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie, and have a job. What do you really want to know? Am I sorry for what I did?

“Well, are you?”

"There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here, or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone and this old man is all that's left. I got to live with that. Rehabilitated? It's just a bullshit word. So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don't give a shit."

So they let Red go.

And he goes, and he gets a job sacking groceries in a grocery store, which was the same job as Brooks, another con they let out had had.
But ol’ Brooks, he didn’t fit in outside the prison walls, and one night he carves his name into the wooden header in his apartment, puts a rope around his neck and kicks the chair out from under himself.

And now Red is working that same job, living in that same apartment, and one day he asks the boss if he can go to the bathroom, and his boss looks at him like he’s nuts and says “You don’t have to ask me that, just go!”
And so now Red feels all out of place, and wonders if he’s cut out for life on the outside, and in the movie he takes off his bagger's apron, leaves the store, and as he walks down the street there is Morgan Freeman's great narrative voice as Red talks to himself.
He says:
“There's a harsh truth to face. No way I'm gonna make it on the outside. All I do anymore is think of ways to break my parole, so maybe they'd send me back. Terrible thing, to live in fear. Brooks Hatlen knew it. Knew it all too well. All I want is to be back where things make sense.”

As he says this, he stops in front of a pawn shop window where there is a pistol.
And you expect Red to go into the pawn shop, buy the pistol, and find a way back into the life that he knew.
But that’s not what he does. He comes out with a scout compass, and for me to try to tell you what he does with the compass would turn this post into a Stephen King book. So if you have a chance to see the movie, I do recommend.

But it makes me think of the NA program, and how I have a choice today and with that choice is some hope that I can be whoever I want to be, no longer trapped under the control of a drug or a system. That no addict seeking recovery need ever die...literally or figuratively.

It also reminds me that the only way to keep from returning to active addiction is not to take that first drug.

THE BOSTON CRAB

HAPPY MONDAY!
If you like what you're doing, it wouldn't be work.

Great moves in Wrestling-- The Boston Crab

"This typically starts with the opponent on his (her) back, and the wrestler standing and facing him (her). The wrestler hooks each of the opponent's legs in one of his arms, and then turns the opponent face-down, stepping over him (her...haha) in the process."

I'M HAVING TROUBLE...

...GETTING COMFORTABLE KISSING A WOMAN WITH A BEARD.

Someone suggested I ask her to shave, but the last time I asked a woman to do that she slapped me.
And that's about all that's going on around here.

THE NEXT HUNDRED YEARS

In addition to losing Townes van Zandt and Hank Williams on New Years days 1997 and 1963 respectively, we also lost the relatively unknown (and elusive) Ted Hawkins on a New Years Day.
Ted preferred his gig as a street performer around Venice Beach and a life of addiction, jail, and restlessness  to recording  and fairly successful European tours.
But in  1994, Geffen Records finally nailed him down long enough to get an album out him. "The Next Hundred Years" brought some success to Hawkins, it was a breakthrough album, but Ted died of a stroke New Years Day, only months after its release.
Its one of those albums that plays great all the way through, and you might find it on the throwaway shelf at Half-Price books.
From Ted's breakthrough album---

DAYS YOU WILL NEVER FORGET

I found this picture over at the Russian website "Dilapidated Page" and posted it to Facebook, wondering what these kids are up to.

Whatever they are going to do, catch fireflies, pollywogs, butterflies or crawdads, maybe play some kind of street hockey, whatever it is, I know that they will do it for hours, losing all sense of time, and they will rememebr it the rest of their lives.

Thinking of this reminds me of my old girlfriend Kristi.
Kristi was from California.
Kristi.
She was 6’1” and a redhead.
We went camping down at Toledo Bend lake. There were some good old boys camped down there, and we went and drank beer with them one night around their huge campfire. One of them produced a frog gig, and told us we could use their boat to go gig some frogs.


This really excited Kristi, she loved frogs. When we went golfing, she would collect little ones and put them under her halter top to where it looked like her nipples were crawling around.

Anyway, we got in the boat, and Kristi held the spotlight, and I had the gig, and we cruised slowly down the bank, and finally her light hit a frog.
“Hold him there Kristi!” and she held that light steady in his eyes, he could not move, and I extended the gig out towards him, and just as I was about to stick him Kristi says:
‘This won’t hurt the frog, will it?”
“Nah, not too much” and I stuck him witht the spring loaded gig.
"SSHHHHHWAPPP!"
Man, that frog started kicking, croaking out a frog scream, and the mud was flying and water splashing, till finally, cross-eyed and bleeding, he expired at the end of the gig.

Kristi was horrified.
We loaded up the gear, drove four hours back to Fort Worth, I dropped her at her house, and I never saw her again.
I'll rememeber it the rest of my life.

She never even returned my calls.

Picture of a spring-loaded frog gig.

CHRISTMAS WITH RIP

AND THE GUITAR  THAT DAVEMOWSGRASS BUILT

WHAT THE WORLD WOULD BE LIKE WITHOUT YOU

Strangest thing happened to me last night. I was watching "Its a Wonderful life", like I do every year and you know the part at the end where George Bailey throws himself in the river?
That’s not the end of the movie!
I've watched that movie  a million times, and like everybody else, cried like a baby at the end. But it wasn't really the end. I was turning it off too soon!

I guess I like it better with the weird new happy ending, with the surprise appearance of  Clarence Osgood, Angel Second Class, who tells George Bailey :
"Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings"

Its pretty close.

 I mean, I always thought it was a pretty good movie, what with George saving his brothers life;  and then he and Mary dancing in the High School gym, and the floor opens up and they fall into the pool; they get married, pop out a couple kids, then George throwing himself off the bridge into that icy water. That's not a bad way to go for a guy that's facing 20 years, is it?

“You’ve been given a great gift, George: A chance to see what the world would be like without you.” 

Clarence Osgood, Angel Second Class

THE BEARD

Yes , I grew a beard during No-Shave November, and it looks so good (in a Brad Pitt kind of way) that I think I'll keep it.

Actually, the girl down at Subway Sandwiches commented last week.
"Who is the guy in the movie that runs around a hotel trying to kill his wife and kid?" she asked.
"The Shining" I say.
"Yeah, but who is the guy?" she asks again.
"Jack Nicholson" I say.
"Yeah" she says "That's who you look like!"

Pity, no pictures just yet,

THINKING ABOUT ETERNITY SOME KIND OF ECSTASY GOT A HOLD ON ME

Sun's up, uh huh, looks okay
The world survives into another day
And I'm thinking about eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

I had another dream about lions at the door
They weren't half as frightening as they were before
But I'm thinking about eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

Walls windows trees, waves coming through
You be in me and I'll be in you
Together in eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

Up among the firs where it smells so sweet
Or down in the valley where the river used to be
I got my mind on eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

And I'm wondering where the lions are...
I'm wondering where the lions are...

Huge orange flying boat rises off a lake
Thousand-year-old petroglyphs doing a double take
Pointing a finger at eternity
I'm sitting in the middle of this ecstasy

Young men marching, helmets shining in the sun,
Polished as precise like the brain behind the gun
(Should be!) they got me thinking about eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

And I'm wondering where the lions are...
I'm wondering where the lions are...

Freighters on the nod on the surface of the bay
One of these days we're going to sail away,
going to sail into eternity
some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me

And I'm wondering where the lions are...
I'm wondering where the lions are...

BLACK DIAMOND BAY

"I was siting home alone one night in LA
Watching old Cronkite on the seven o'clock news
It seems there was an earthquake that
Left nothing but a Panama hat
And a pair of old Greek shoes
Didn't seem like much was happening
So I turned it off and went to grab another beer
Seems like every time you turn around
There's another hard-luck story that you're gonna hear
And there's really nothing anyone can say
And I never did plan to go anyway
To Black Diamond Bay."

Last lines Bob Dylan's great narrative song about the end of the world.
(CLICK HERE)

"SAVE ONLY PLENTY"

“ Then there is the other kind of Christmas with present piled high, the gifts of guilty parents as bribes because they have nothing else to give. The wrappings are ripped off and the presents thrown down and at the end the child says—”Is that all?” Well, it seems to me that America now is like that second kind of Christmas. Having too many THINGS they spend their hours and money on the couch searching for a soul. A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy and sick. ” 

- John Steinbeck 1959, Letters of Note 

from thisisnthappiness

TEXAS DUST STORM

"There are places not down on any map..."
Moby Dick

Going Home

by Leonard Cohen

I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard
Living in a suit

But he does say what I tell him
Even though it isn’t welcome
He just doesn't have the freedom
To refuse

He will speak these words of wisdom
Like a sage, a man of vision
Though he knows he’s really nothing
But the brief elaboration of a tube

Going home
Without my sorrow
Going home
Sometime tomorrow
Going home
To where it’s better
Than before

Going home
Without my burden
Going home
Behind the curtain
Going home
Without the costume
That I wore

He wants to write a love song
An anthem of forgiving
A manual for living with defeat

A cry above the suffering
A sacrifice recovering
But that isn’t what I want him to complete

I want  him to be  certain
That he doesn’t have a burden
That he doesn’t need a vision
That he only has permission
To do my instant bidding
Which  is to SAY what I have told him
To repeat

Going home
Without my sorrow
Going home
Sometime tomorrow
Going home
To where it’s better
Than before

Going home
Without my burden
Going home
Behind the curtain
Going home
Without the costume
That I wore

I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard
Living in a suit

Handyman Bulletholes

Dear Handyman Bulletholes:

I just paid $86 to have the knob on my stove screwed back on. Granted there was a slight trick to screwing it back on (which was why I couldn't do it myself) but $86? And he had to finagle to get the price that low. Geesh. is this fair?

Stoveless in Memphis

Dear Stoveless:
Back when I was doing tile that kind of thing happened all the time. I'd do some little job and I'd be supposed to charge 80 bucks, and the little old lady would pull out her checkbook.
I'd look at her and note the sparse lifestyle, the 3 crackers in a baggie next to a half cup of tea that served as her lunch, and her cat--the only thing left in the world for her-- dozing on the kitchen counter next to the Social Security check that didnt even cover the mortgage; I'd see the bottles of pills lined up next to her daily Pill Minder; and the pictures of her husband, handsome in the 1935 wedding picture and even more handsome in his navy uniform a few years later; I'd see the picture of a young man in his Vietnam era uniform, who looked a lot like her husband, and another picture of an even younger man in Marine Desert khakies, a boy really, who seemed to oddly favor  her more than the other two men, and next to his picture was an American flag folded into a triangle. 
I'd figure my mileage at 50 miles one way, the two hours on the road and the hour I'd spent at her house, and it would seem to come out to something like 100 bucks.
I'd say "Would 20 bucks be too much?" and I never made any money, because it took ten bucks to get there, and another 10 bucks to get to the next job (if there was one) and now a third of my day was gone... it was pure torture.
I cried myself to sleep every night.
Handyman Bulletholes

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