How High the Moon

I heard it, coming from behind the Abernathy Building. I heard tonight what Dean heard, sitting in that club, listening to Slim Gaillard croon/chant “How High the Moon”. The highway is for gamblers and Dean was the “Yes” saying gambler prophet of the madness, the groove I grew through. But then, when Slim went on about potato salad, I knew what Dean heard, that source of the “Yes, Yes, Yes”.

Forget the dead you left, the living is in the breath as much as in the words. The holy covering is the howling at the moon, the crooning at the shapely temptress at the Casbah. I saw the moon come down tonight, crashing through the western storm like a rose slashing through the skeleton of Omar Khayam, like a flash from the prophet blowing the pneuma of God through the impending darkness of a city gone bad; a soul destined for Hell but somehow blown by the breath back for redemption.

Now is the time of redeeming, trading in that old piece of tattered paper that has no value, that coupon I kept for so long, the one with no date on it. Bring in that piece of worthless shit and suddenly find that it has huge count and a worth beyond measure. Somehow, the cherished scrap means more when you trade it in, when you give it back. It’s not the same. Things have changed.
Yeah, old Slim Gaillard raving into the microphone brought Dean into a new year, a new age beyond value. I heard the rave continue, the redemption of the word, the original Holy Goof breathed on the prophet, long before the train tracks took him away. It was the Slim of ’48 and the Adonis of Denver and the word was still fresh. The breath of the spirit was strong, as strong as it is now.

The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death

Seems the chickens are finally coming home to roost. The long-dark night of the soul is finally at it's darkest and the cold soul-searing breath of death seems almost imminent.

"This is the story of America. Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do. So what if a bunch of men talk in loud voices and drink the night? " OTR, Part 1, Chapter 10, page 68.

Supposed to do? What are we supposed to do? I am alive in exile, alone in the crowd of the late afternoon laundromat. My clothes are in the final spin, the final spin.

Walking alone is sometimes what I've perferred, but not any more. As comfortable as I am with myself, I yearn for the presence of the other, the one I've forsaken. She's the one I've loved, and yet have forsaken. Thinking backwards, I craved freedom. I searched for the moment of release and the chance to be liberated from this soul-less situation I've made for myself.

But now here I am on the brink of release, about to be set free after my 22 year sentence, and what do I want?

I want to make peace. I want to revel in the past but dance hysterically into the future with the woman I love with all my might. What has changed? Not a lot, but everything at the same time. I want to live and eventually die in the arms of that woman I really do love.

My best intentions are what have gotten me here, those notions of doing what I think I'm supposed to do. Hell, my best intentions are the ones that continually get me in trouble. Frankly, I'm tired of being in charge. I've done and seen all those things (well, most of them) that we want our children to never even consider. I've been obnoxious. I've been unconscious. I've been so weird it would have killed a norrmal man. I've been all kinds of things that are hard to spell.

Right now, baby, I'm done. The old hymn isn't "I surrender 10%". No, sweetie, I surrender all.


My friend, the Presbyterian monk/pig, wanders with his rucksack into the fiction and fables of a life loved and remembered, and here I sit waiting for the dryer to scream at me to take my bloody clothes out and fold them. A quiet life is good but a sad life ain't nothing but sad.

An Old Day Now

I have sea scallops for dinner tonight. They are good. I was an impulse buyer at the grocery store today. A young fella was giving samples back by the seafood counter. People, for some reason I don't comprehend, tend to avoid the seafood counter.

Anyways, the young man asked me if I wanted to try one and I said "Sure".

So here I sit, eating 2 pounds of scallops, praying to the Almighty that I don't get a flare-up of gout after this.

My imagination has taken me in way too many directions in the last few weeks. I have entertained seriously a re-living of my past, hoping and praying that my past was somehow going to bring me some peace and take me to where I needed to be. Somehow, it did.

I realized that what I knew all along was right. I saw that the past was a wonderful place to be but not where I was. I saw faces of people I've loved and lost right along side people I've despised and wished gone. Alas, some are dead. Right now I miss even the ones that I despised and wished gone.

But I digress. The past, buddy. The past...

I'm just about through with the scallops. I had some cracker bread with them and a little bit of some kind of Irish beer. I think I overdid the pepper seeds on the scallops though. No matter, I'll have another beer.

I was blue this afternoon, more than I've been in a long time. I realized how much people count on us, even when we aren't there to support them. I saw a face of sadness I never expected to see, looking at me for the last light, the last flicker of a flame near gone. I felt the blues in my heart as I drove the other direction, into the black clouds of real life. The soothing rain fell on me as I drove. It washed nothing away, just cooled the heat.

Where do you go when you feel like there's nowhere left to go? Is that the end or, maybe, a new beginning?

I don't know. If I knew the way, I would take you home.

He Was A Friend Of Mine

No, He still is.

Photo by J.R. Breuer

My friend Paul Breuer died this past Sunday morning. He has been sick for a while, but died rather suddenly. He knew he was dying but didn't really know what from. I will miss him a lot.

Paul came from the midwest, like me, and ended up in Arizona for the rest of his life. He was a gracious and gregarious man. He fixed cars for a living and shot people in the streets of Tombstone for fun. He was an actor and a clown of sorts. He was a husband, father, grandfather and friend.

Paul was the kind of guy that, when you go to his funeral you can't be certain who will show up. He walked with bikers and hippies. He stood tall with civic leaders. He knew the down-side of life, but lived for the betterment of the people around him. His acting, in films and on the streets of Tombstone, were for the benefit of charities for children. He did it all for fun, but he did it all out of love. He was a gunfighter, preacher, local character. None and all were him at the same time.

For personal reasons, I knew him well. We'd see each other very irregularly, even though we lived only a few miles away, but whenever we were together, it was like the last time was just yesterday. He knew me and I knew him like very few people can say that they do. He was rough around the edges, but he was a perfect man.

I saw his wife, J.R., the morning before he died. She said he was feeling poorly, but they were OK.

All I wish is that I could have seen him that one last time and laughed about how my beard would never equal his. Believe me, I tried, but he was always the king.

He still is.

Essence of the Age

"Don't punish me brutality,

talk to me so you can see

what's goin' on..."
-Marvin Gaye "What's Going On" 1971

What is the spirit of the times we live in? What are the defining moments of this age? I know. It's hard to tell. Generalizations are difficult but they work well as tools, as unofficial measuring sticks of the paradigms we hold to.

Times past, we had religion or science or the need to explore or the need to investigate. In the recent past it was attempts to free our troubled minds, spiritually or chemically, to stop feeling the madness, to stop feeling the pain. We had goals, good or bad, but we had a defining direction.

Starting from the late 1800's, we had the age of Neitzche, we witnessed the breakdown of thoughtless religiosity and ignorance. We wanted to be better people, intellectually and, I believe, morally. From there, we segued into the age of Freud and clinical attempts at explaining how our weird little psyches work. At the same time we had the parallel age of Einstein, the making sense of the physical world we seemed destined to eternally inhabit. The last half of the American century was one of cold war paranoia but the greatest era of exploration since the British ruled the seas. Kids and inquiring adults read Huxley and Kesey, Malcom X and Gandhi, Kerouac and Wolfe. We were a nation of astronauts and pranksters and freaks, all yearning to be free.

But what are we today? Have we succumbed to the brutality that Marvin Gaye lamented in his song? We destroy our enemies as we always have, but we brutalize our children as well, children killing parents in retaliation.Even our children's play shows it. When boys used to play "war" they tended to take prisoners. Now they just die, unless it's in a video game and they have earned enough extra lives to finish the game.

We insult and degrade each other regularly. I'm not talking about the occasional bad joke or mis-used word. No. We insult and degrade each other because we disagree. We terrorize, slaughtering innocents and guilty along the way, with virtually no discrimination. Regard for life does not exist as it once did, as it should. I'm beginning to suspect we have no spirit of this age, no zeitgeist. We wander thoughtlessly as well as aimlessly, but always cruelly.

"Mother, mother

There's too many of you crying

Brother, brother, brother

There's far too many of you dying

You know we've got to find a way

To bring some lovin' here today"