Why I'm Not Writing

Grits

I don't care who you are.  Read the directions when you cook grits.

Your Backhand

Never try to hit it like you used to hit it.  Hit it the way you do now.  

Joke of the Day

I get a joke of the day on my Google home page.  I needed a laugh today.  

Children's books that didn't make it:

1)  Accidents Happen: The Story of You

2) The Little Sissy Wimp Who Snitched

3) Some Kittens Can Fly

4) You Can Paint Anywhere!

5) Where Would You Like to Be Buried?

6) Bad Katy and the Mom Who Stopped Loving Her 

7)The Attention Deficit

The Dhammapada

Conquer the angry man by love. Conquer the ill-natured man by goodness. Conquer the miser with generosity. Conquer the liar with truth.

Lullaby of the Week goes to:

“If only, if only, the woodpecker sighs, / The bark on the tree was as soft as the skies. / The wolf waits below, hungry and lonely, / And cries to the moon, / if only, if only.”

A Simple Reminder

He is able who thinks he is able.

--Buddha

Easter Meditation

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

--Buddha

104.3

I have some time to myself while R.L. sleeps.  He got sick yesterday at daycare, and they sent him home early.  His temp was 103.  When I picked him up, his whole body was burning up.  It's our first experience with a really high fever.  

Doc encouraged us to look at the fever as a good thing.  It means that his immune system is actively fighting a virus, and the fever tells the white blood cells to work harder and makes their work more efficient.  Before we left, he advised us to resist treating the fever with any medication.  Instead, he said to monitor him closely and watch for drastic changes in behavior or symptoms. 

Last night when his temp hit 104.3, I couldn't stop myself.  Gave him a dose of baby Tylenol, and it brought it down to 102.  He's been resting pretty peacefully, and hasn't complained too much.  I can tell he feels terrible, but he's been so sweet.  

So I disobeyed the doctor's orders.  Not sure what to think about that.  All I know is it never gets stale, and I love that boy more than I ever knew I was capable of Loving. 

Horse Whisperer

S.T.C.

Every school year, I look to the spring and the Romantic poets for academic, professional, and spiritual rejuvenation.  I bounce around the room and sing lessons about rainbows and the revolutionary spirit, moon phases and intuition, Nature and non-conformity--wild flowers that grow in the cracks of the sidewalk.  I urge my students (and remind myself) to listen to the morning, to ignore the commercials, to talk to themselves while they walk somewhere they would normally drive.  We examine the works and the lives of the big 5:  Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats.  Samuel Taylor Coleridge is my favorite.

But this year, I've started to turn on my old friend.  I don't so much get it anymore.  Maybe cause I'm a father?  Maybe cause I'm getting older?  Coleridge (crazy crazy) is just not as much fun as he used to be.

from "Dejection: An Ode"

There was a time when, though my path was rough,
This joy within me dallied with distress,
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness:
For hope grew round me, like the twining vine,
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.
But now afflictions bow me down to earth:
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth;
But oh! each visitation
Suspends what Nature gave me at my birth,
My shaping spirit of Imagination.
For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient, all I can;
And haply by abstruse research to steal
From my own nature all the natural man - 
This was my sole resource, my only plan:
Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.

I love the man, and I hate him too.  He probably wouldn't have had it any other way.  

from "Here is a Lesson in Creative Writing"

by Kurt Vonnegut

"FIRST RULE:  Do not use semicolons.  They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing.  All they do is show you've been to college."

The world is too much with us

by William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not.--Great God!  I'd rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on the this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Advice to My Son

by Peter Meinke

The trick is, to live your days

as if each one may be your last

(for they go fast, and young men lose their lives

in strange and unimaginable ways)

but at the same time, plan long range

(for they go slow: if you survive

the shattered windshield and the bursting shell

you will arrive

at our approximation here below

of heaven or hell).

To be specific, between the peony and the rose

plant squash and spinach, turnips and tomatoes;

beauty is nectar

and nectar, in a desert, saves--

but the stomach craves a stronger sustenance

than the honied vine.

Therefore, marry a pretty girl

after seeing her mother;

speak truth to one man,

work with another;

and always serve bread with your wine.

But, son,

always serve wine.

Jerusalem

by William Blake

AND did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England's mountains green?

And was the holy Lamb of God

On England's pleasant pastures seen?

 

And did the Countenance Divine

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here

Among these dark Satanic Mills?

 

Bring me my bow of burning gold!

Bring me my arrows of desire!

Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!

Bring me my chariot of fire!

 

I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England's green and pleasant land.

Thirsty Bears

I was in the back with the luggage, leafing through the jagged terrain of Waterton Lakes Park, Alberta while they drove.  Up ahead, there was a marvelous castle built on the mountainside facing south over the lakes into the lower forty-eight.  

“Let’s stop in real quick and take a look around.”

 “Looks interesting.”

 “I want some guacamole.”

The Prince of Whales Lodge was an architectural triumph.  As we entered the lobby, a delicate and defiant mosaic of guitar plucking and slapping echoed off the lofted ceilings. A glass wall opposite the entrance exhibiting a vista deep down the spine of the Rocky Mountains into virgin wild land was the only mortal concept that could have survived next to her voice.  I thought I saw Baja California.  

We hovered across the room to the couch where she hunched over her ebony, acoustic Martin and dropped into the cushy sofa right next to her.   I forgot the view through the black side of my eyelids. 

When she finished, they opened.  Then she got up and stuck the guitar in its case and started for the door.  I was paralyzed. 

Jay skipped across in front of her causing her to studderstep by.  “Hey now?"  Head down she swept around him and continued for the door.  Her midnight hair swooshed around and masked her brown visage.  So he wheeled around and jumped in front of her again.  “Hey, wait.  I’m sorry, stupid, American—hey!”  He bent under her, looking up, and actually brushed her hair back with both hands rather delicately and held her by the elbows.

“Excuse me!”  She reared up and slugged him on the arm.

“Could you just hold on one second?  Slow down.”

“You slow down you freak,” but she couldn’t help smiling.  She brushed him aside and started out the carved double doors.

“We’ll be at the campground down on the lake tonight!  Come see us, if.”  And she was gone.  The heavy doors shut with a whump.  I thought I caught a whiff of sage.

We nosed around the lodge for a while.  It was spectacular.  But we liked being outside.  The guy at the desk told us that her name was Rose and she worked summers in the park leading nature walks and guiding trail rides on horseback.  Some evenings she played for tips in the lobby. 

At the campsite we started fighting over her.  “Would you care to make a wager?  And shake on it like a gentleman, Mr. Falls?”  Will asked. 

We were rolling out our groundpads and sleeping bags.  Jay clanked around outside the tent whipping up some grits for dinner while we finished setting up camp.  

“It's over.”

“You really think it’s over?”            

Jay flew horizontal through the open flap and caught me reaching up to secure the tent attic, caught me in the ribs with his shoulder like one of The Flying Zamboni’s, ramming me into the tent wall.  The tent flipped up on its side, ripping up the stakes he had just hammered in.

“Dusty Rhodes, The American Dream!  Off the ropes,” he was flying around the tent, “CLOTHESLINE!  ELBOW!  BELLY TO BELLY SUFLEX!”

I flipped backwards in his bear hug slamming into the mat and jumped up to my knees disoriented but in full character as Rick Flair, held up four fingers, fluffed my hair, “Whoooooo!” caught him with a chop across his wooly chest and got him in the figure four.

He was writhing around when Will came out of nowhere, “Oh no!  Not the metal chair!” and he clocked me in the face with his heavy feather pillow, jolting me enough for Dusty to break loose.

“Ladies and gentlemen!  Tonight’s main event, The Three’s a Crowd, I Surrender All, Last Man Standing, Tent-cage of Death-Match between The Flying Bull, Manny Ramiraz, Rick Flair, and The American Dream, Dusty Rhodes!  Hold on to your hats!  It’s going to be a wild one!”

By the time it was over, we all lay exhausted and panting and laughing hysterically, wrapped in a tangled mass of rainfly, broken poles, and guy lines.  The teapot on the stove was at full whistle when a pair of women’s boots stepped in our field of view.  She looked down over us shaking her head.

Jay sprang to his feet sending Will and me into a deathroll out of the tangled mass and into the dirt.  His hair was standing all up everywhere.

“Some folks that work here in the resort are having a little get together tonight at the stables.  A bonfire.  Go take hot showers and lather up a few times and meet us at The Thirsty Bear at nine.  I’ll introduce you to some good people.”     

Canyonlands National Park, Utah

Saturday 3/22/97—Chesler Park 1

Newberry’s twinpod or Physaria newberryi (yellow flower)

Locoweed or Astragalus mollissimus (purple flower)

Rufous-sided Towhee (laughing canyon bird)

Canyon Wren

“Gnarly” Juniper or Juniperus osteosperma

Prickly Pear or Optrantia polyacantha

Indian Paintbrush (red flower)

Smooth Scouring Rush or Equisetum laevigatum (horsetails—later to be known as “Mankilla, tryin’ to kill a man”)

Box Elder or Acer negundo

Single Leaf Ash or Fraxinus anomala

Fishhook Cactus or Sclerocactus whipplei

Fourwing Saltbush

Peppergrass

Big Sagebush

Tumbleweed

Cheatgrass

Blackbrush

Cryptogam Crust

Lizard dude

           And we’re tracking a cougar.

Dolor

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplicaton of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces. 

Theodore Roethke 

The Wanderer

My good old friend and songwriting partner Matt Corbin is working on a new music video project called The Wanderer.  The production utilizes a sort of "one shot, one kill" approach.  All of the original music is recorded and video-taped live as he roams city streets, malls, barbershops, and truckstops around Columbia, SC.  

Pretty interesting concept.  Check it out.

#7 Mickey Mantle

Mickey Mantle is Big J's all-time favorite ballplayer.  When he was growing up in Columbia, a young boy, there weren't any professional baseball teams west of Chicago and St. Louis, and there were none at all in the South.  Papa, Perky, Big J, and Uncle L didn't get their first TV until about 1953 or 1954.  That was while they lived on Denny Road in Columbia.  Big J said, "Believe it or not there was only one televised game a week, creatively called The Game of the Week by CBS."  Papa and Big J started watching the game together, and since the Yankees were the dominant team in the land, the televised game usually turned out to be the Yankees versus whoever they were playing that day.  They watched Mantle, Maris, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, their home-state boy Bobby Richardson from Sumter, and manager Casey Stengel every time they were on TV.  

Big J wrote about some of the highlights of the new, televised games:  

The broadcasters for The Game of the Week were Pee Wee Reese and Dizzy Dean.  Often when the game was slow (or truth be told, most of the time), by the late innings, Old Diz had drunk one-too-many Falstaffs.  One time, the TV camera panned over into the right field bleachers where the crowd was sparse and showed a young man and young woman really going to it.  Dizzy's all-time great Falstaff-inspired line was, 'Ah, look out yonda in the bleachers.  A couple of youngsters having fun out at the old ballpark this afternoon.  It appears as if he's kissing her on the strikes, and she's kissing him on the balls.'  There was a blacked-out silence for two or three minutes while the booth got their composure back.

The summer after Big J's high school graduation, Papa won a trip to the Provident national convention in New York City for selling a lot of insurance.  He took the whole family along.  They stayed in a big, fancy hotel.  The popular band, The Herman Hermits, was staying in the same hotel so there were screaming groupie girls running around everywhere.  They took a Gray Line boat tour that week up the East River, under the Brooklyn Bridge, turned onto the Harlem River going north, came out on the Hudson, and followed the whole western length of Manhattan going south back down to The Battery.  The 1964 New York World's Fair was also going on at the same time at Flushing Meadows in Queens.  The family spent a whole day there.  

The city had constructed a brand new stadium on the fairgrounds, Shea Stadium, which was the first of the monstrous, multi-purpose, cookie-cutter stadiums built for football and baseball, concerts and other entertainment events.  There happened to be a game that day between the new New York Mets and the San Francisco Giants.  Many New Yorkers were still bitter because the Giants had moved to the West Coast from New York along with the Brooklyn Dodgers.  It was practically a home game for the visiting Giants.  That day, Papa, Perky, Big J, and Uncle L sat in the third deck of the new stadium and watched Gaylord Perry, a country boy from North Carolina, pitch for the visiting Giants.  It was a muggy summer day and Perry was soaked by the end of the first inning, sweat streaming off of his chin.   Willie Mays hit the game winning home run for the Giants, and the crowd went went wild.      

   

There is something that I want for you to know about Big J and me, and I want for you to understand it plainly.  We were both born and raised in the Deep South, not only physically, but also ideologically.  Our childhoods were very different from yours.  South Carolina has never been a friendly place for black folks.  Your ancestors were slave owners.  We have family documents officially freeing the slaves years after Lincoln's "Emancipation Proclamation."  Schools and busses and restaurants and water fountains were segregated while Big J was growing up.  When he was a boy, he said it was common for pranksters to ride through "Niggertown" in their cars throwing rotten apples at people in their yards.  While I was a boy in Camden, I went to an integrated school, but there was a deep divide between whites and blacks.  Train tracks literally cut Camden into two distinct communities.  South of the tracks, there was extreme poverty.  As I grew older and started to drive, I would secretly explore streets most whites never dared to drive.  Sad images are stuck in my mind of dilapidated shanties, weathered and oppressed men and women sitting on their porches in the severe heat of summer afternoons.  North of the tracks, there were beautiful, shady, oak-lined avenues, horse-drawn carriages in the streets, marvelous marble-columned colonial houses with four-foot high slave entrances in the back--dark tunnels that led into the kitchens.  I heard racist jokes on a regular basis.  I laughed at them.  I even learned to tell them by the time I was 13 or 14.  I used the "N word" on a regular basis for a few years, and I believed that I was part of a superior race of human beings.  I only tell you this because I want for you to know.  I want you to know how far we have come.  You see it now.  People can change, R.L.

Sometimes when Big J talks about Mickey Mantle now, there is a tinge of regret in his voice--just sometimes.  Now, when he speaks of Mantle, he often points out that one of the biggest baseball questions of the day was whether Mantle or Mays was the better player of the era.  According to the numbers, it's obvious that Mays was the better of the two, but many whites at the time couldn't see past the contrasting colors of their skins.  Mantle was a good ol' country boy from Oklahoma with a million dollar smile.  He appeared to be the All-American kid.  The TV camera loved him.  But Mays was another black boy, born into a working class family in Alabama, trying to break into the white man's world.  A lot of people resented Mays and lauded Mantle as a heroic baseball god.  Period.  No matter that Mantle was a womanizing alcoholic in real life who showed up to as many games hung over or drunk throughout his career as he did sober.  I would not understand this side of the Mantle vs. Mays question if Big J had not explained it to me, and I am grateful to him for being so reverend in his honesty about the subject matter.  His anomalous transformation from a typical, racist South Carolina boy to the all-inclusive, accepting, and loving man that he is today is heartening.  

Regardless of all that ugly stuff, Mickey Mantle was a fabulous ballplayer.  There's no telling what he might have done if he hadn't torn up his knee in a stupid drain grate out in center field at Yankee Stadium during the 1951 World Series. 

#7 Mickey Mantle.  5-11.  198.  Throws right.  Switch hitter.  Outfield.  Hall of Fame.  536 career HR's.  Mantle was the greatest switch hitter ever.  A real legend of the diamond.