Time out of Mind

Consider, if you will, three men of equal age and time . As much as we think we don't change, we most certainly do. All but the last man, er, pig.

First look is at the curly headed genius behind the whole concept of a wall of sound.

Hey, kids, it's Phil Spector

Then there's this guy. Kinda looks like someone's Uncle Stan. Well, he is. He lives in Queensland, Australia and makes jewelry. Pondering Pig or Foghorn will recognize him from, maybe, the Palo Alto Acid Test. This is Augustus Owsley Stanley III. I guess Dragnet was wrong about what Acid will do to you.

Then there's this last guy. Same boyish twinkle in that ever-pondering eye. Been to Owsley-land. Seen all Spector's bands. Still haven't found what he's looking for, but he's seemingly happier than ever.

Unless, of course, he's playing Edith Piaf songs. Note the exuberance and near-terror in this old duffer's face. Maybe it was the egg-salad sandwich.

Well, now this is much better. There's that boyish twinkle. Yeah, both of them.

The Bus to Never-Ever Land

Well, see. It goes like this... Gentry enjoys dinner . He uses the hat as some sort of shill, a kinda cover for something. God only can answer what.

I have ended up in exile, in a cyclone of my own creation, a symbol of my own intrusions in the life of too many people. They are pissed at me but, yet, they don't begrudge my presence. They love me and allow me the place to screw up. They stand next to me when I give up and cry my eyes out. They love me no matter what.

Escapin' through the lily fields
I came across an empty space
It trembled and exploded
Left a bus stop in its place
The bus came by and I got on
That's when it all began
There was cowboy Neal
At the wheel
Of a bus to never-ever land

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.