The Soundtrack of One Life out of 108 Billion: Entry 3: "Monkberry Moon Delight" by Paul McCartney (Nonsense Poetry, Writing and the Creative Process)

It's nineteen-seventy-something.  I'm in second grade, and I've ditched Lynn, my girlfriend, somewhere over by the POD, an octagonal lunchroom separate from the school.  We're playing kissing tag, and it's not that I'm so stupid that I don't know that the purpose of kissing tag is to get caught, it's that her cousin, Lucinda, is more into pinching, and she's very good at it.  So, I've split the scene.

It's warm and snow melting off the comparatively hot pavement creates steam that rises in thin clouds about waste high, and they are golden glorious in the noontime sun.  I've got spring fever and am feeling freaking high. I bellow out Paul McCartney's "Monkberry Moon Delight."  I don't have a clue what it's about, but I love the feel of the words on the end of my tongue:

So I sat in the attic, a piano up my nose,
And the wind played a dreadful cantata.
Sore was I from a crack of an enemy's hose
And the horrible sound of tomato.

Ketchup,
Soup and puree,
Don't get left behind.
Ketchup,
Soup and puree,
Don't get left behind.

I never did figure out the exact meaning of the song.  As I grew older, it seemed to me it might have been inspired by B-grade monster movies, but it also seemed a finger to expectations--artistic, social, political and otherwise, Paul McCartney saying I'll be who I please and do what I please.  It felt very revolutionary to me, and I loved its pure celebration of the sound of language.

Whenever, I'd get upset in high school or early years of college, I'd just fling words down on the page and play with them, make slightly irreverent, irrelevant nonsense out of them, like this:

 More Talk

... Instead I gnarl on a bark stick,
pour on the cats
and say,
"Gee this is very good,
this is very meaty for a stick of wood."

The termites tingle as they slide down my throat.
What would I do for a feast on fat goat?
I'd slit my mother's own throat!

I definitely had nothing against my mom.  I just had something against propriety.  I still do.  I just fight the impulse more.  I'm not so sure that's good.  I think real reverence comes about when you're at least a little open to irreverence.  Paul McCartney could write "Let It Be" and be sincere because he could also write "Monkberry Moon Delight."  If he sat around always trying to write lofty songs, they'd have the impact of Hallmark Cards or the music of Air Supply.

So, to quote Paul--sort of--if you want to write well, leave your cats to Billy Budapest and let your piano be boldly outspoken.

A Grand Dog Has Passed Away: The Majesty of an Abandoned Rez Mutt

Darth at Dry Creek, 2015

A grand dog passed away Friday, July 10, 2015.  A mutt.  A rez dog.  She showed up one cold winter when we lived at 6800 feet above sea level on the high, forested Fort Defiance plateau of the Navajo Nation.  I went out one snowy morning to feed our dog, Scooby, and found this straggly white dog with dalmatian spots shivering under our old Datsun Maxima wagon which was out of commission. That was probably 2005. She would have nothing to do with me and cowered back further when I attempted to place food under the car, but she ate once I went back inside.

Her life under the Maxima continued for another four months much the same, except over time, she started to meet us at the end of the driveway when we walked home from the school where Marci and I worked. She still would have nothing to with us, but she would wave repeatedly with her left paw and wag her tail. Then, as we were almost close enough to pet her, she would run off to the safety of the car again.

At some point, we named her.  Everest named her.  She had breathing difficulties and sounded like Darth Vader.  Nobody else wanted to name her that as she was, well, a she.  But Everest was little and said Darth really cute, so he got his way.

Darth still looking as wild as when she showed up, although now in much better health.

One June, we were getting ready to come to Dry Creek for the Summer.  We planned on bringing our other dog, a puppy named Freckles that we got from a neighbor when Scooby died.  However, Darth still would not let us approach her.  She was still as wild as she looked, so we planned on leaving her and having a neighbor feed her.  At the last moment, right when the van was packed, I decided to try and get her in.  I don't remember how--but somehow I did it.  The family wasn't all for it as she was still pretty sick looking and had breathing difficulties.  None the less she was in.  She quickly adjusted during the eight hour ride, and by our first restroom stop, she was tame enough that she'd hop back in the van by herself.

Even after she'd been tamed, her coat remained wild.  She also had respiratory problems for another three years. 

After that summer, she was clearly ours.  She remained an outside dog, so we purchased a dog house for her for the winter.  But, she traveled with us on our frequent trips between our winter home and Dry Creek, and went camping with us several times as well.

Still an outside dog, she became a part of the family.

Over time, she worked her way into becoming an inside dog, which is when her health began to improve drastically.  The breathing difficulties she was named for disappeared and her coat became soft and smooth.

Once inside, she quickly learned to love the luxuries of domesticated life.
Her health improved drastically and her breathing disorder went away.

I learned over time, that although I couldn't train her by scolding or yelling at her (I think she had been abused, and she'd just freak out and go into some weird, submissive panic), she responded very quickly to praise.  Using praise, I could quickly train her to do things that even went against her wild instincts.  For example, what we love best about Dry Creek is viewing the wildlife.  You would think having a wolf-like dog would make that difficult, but she didn't.  I easily trained her not to chase turkey or deer.  Although we regularly have mother wild turkeys crossing in front of our house trailed by eight to twelve babies, she only went after the chicks twice.  Occasionally, she would want to chase the deer, but all I had to do was look at her, and she'd come to my side and calmly watch, wagging her tail.

I know without question, she would have given her life to save us had it ever been necessary.  She truly was an amazing dog.

Darth on a family outing the day after Thanksgiving

We have buried her at Dry Creek and planted a Colorado Spruce.  May it someday be as noble as the Rez mutt it memorializes.  No pure bread could ever be so grand.

Garden Jounal: Moments Seep In During Simple Tasks

Blue flax, gaillardia, California poppy and irises by the pond.

For the past year, it seems I’m always waiting to heal, and doing what I can in the meantime.  It’s no way to garden, but I’ve had enough good days that I’ve been able to do a little weeding and some minor planting.  My brother Lloyd has been a big help, mowing fields and trimming trees—the heavy work that I can’t do.  Marci has helped out with watering when I couldn’t.  It’s not the garden I dreamed of by now, but there are patches of color and wildlife abounds.  Dragon flies hover over my pond; mother wild turkeys wander across the field, a trail of tiny babies behind; the chickens rush out of their coop, anxiously fanning out, greedily pecking at grasshoppers that scurry before them.

We too carry on: the daily watering, cutting flowers for the house, collecting chicken eggs, tinkering with pumps on the fountains, transplanting seedlings, shooing a momma turkey and her babies out of a new flower bed, cutting fresh mint for the rabbit... These are the moments of simple tasks when a fleck of sunlight, a jeweled hummingbird, or the sound of dripping water seep into the soul.



California poppies

The chickens head out hunting grasshoppers.



Marci heads back to the house with flowers from the cutting garden.

Sunlit two-tier fountain on my wall of flower buckets. 

 

 

 





The Soundtrack of One Life out of 108 Billion: Entry 2: On Top of the World with Men Without Mouths (Carpenters, CBS Radio Mystery Theater)

There are a couple of deep, spring memories from Cache Valley.  The first: I stand on the bridge over Spring Creek.  The water is high, almost ready to creep over the road. It's swift, but glassy.  Black stemmed willows arch over.  They reflect, bend, break, bleed into blue sky in the creek below.

"On Top of the World" by the Carpenters plays in my head. I sing along.   I am seven, maybe eight.

A pipe runs under the road, carrying Spring Creek from one side to the other.  With the water so high, it is invisible.  A large whirlpool twists and turns, bending light, torturing the reflected world, occasionally sucking down a passing twig into the unseen.  I stand there and watch and sing.

I move on.  The creek is so high the fields are under water.  A vast shallow lake stretches east towards the Logan Mountains, great trees turned upside down in the reflection.

Everything is submerged except the lane, the house of the elderly couple we lease the ranch from, the milk barn, and the great concrete bull barn where our apartment is.

The next: I play with my race car set in the hay loft above the bulls.  It is an enormous space with two bunkhouses.  I keep my stuffed animals on a bed in one. Mice have moved into my mother tiger.

Out in the hay loft is my play area among a few scattered bales of hay: a Matchbox City carrying case, electronic car park, an electric crane, and race car set between mesas of hay.




There must be a radio too, for I've turned on the CBS Radio Mystery Theater.  Why I listen to it up here, I don't know.  We usually gather in the the living room around the new quadraphonic stereo.

I wish I hadn't.  I have never pictured men without mouths before. My mind won't let it go no matter how many times I sing the Budweiser jingle--and here's to you, the king of beers is coming through--to make it go away.

I creep down the tight spiral staircase to the saddle room, very dark below.

Lean Into the Past with Found Objects: Remants of Time Add Weight and Depth to a Garden

Cities are moving people

Who just forgot their lives.

--Cy Curnin of The Fixx

Old farm houses like this one, which I pass daily on my way to work, inform my garden.

June.  Summer time.  A smack-a-fly-dead day.  This valley is me.  This place I know deeply.  I sit in my recliner and stare out the window.  Heavy sunlight glistens off the oaks my brother and I planted 14 years ago.  I have known them since they were six inches tall.  Rye gently sways before them.  My eyes are weighted.  There is depth here.  I lean into this place and it accepts me.  We are not separate.  There was a time when many people had such a connection.  So much of humanity has vacated place.  I don't understand it.  I accept it.  I know what it is like.  I have lived in apartments and have moved when rent increased.  I know that world.  I have sat still on the expressway under an intense sun staring at a glass box office building waiting for the traffic to move.  But it has never been me.  Here is where I have always been--this great western valley with less than two people per square mile.

One of the Oaks Lloyd and I planted 17 years ago viewed through a wine glass that sits in the window.

I think it is important something of our past remains.  Perhaps, we can't all be farmers.  Perhaps we can't all sit on ninety acres and listen to cicadas sing while looking at the world through the stem of a wine glass. Perhaps for most of us, home will be temporary, but we can garden whatever lot or balcony we have intensely, personally, hands stained black by soil.  And we can bring in remnants of time, symbols of a past that wasn't plastic--a rusted wheelbarrow, an old iron bolt, a weathered shingle, a broken cinder block--ghostly messages from a world that wasn't digital.

To me, it seems vital.

An old hay rake that was on the property when my parents purchased it.

A vignette that I set up in the old pig shed.

A recycled mushroom bed from a local mushroom farm that I set on it's side to form a wall.

I built this hanging bucket garden to tie in with the pig shed, the last standing farm building.

Below are some a couple of YouTube videos with great ideas for bringing the past into your garden.

And finally here are a couple of great videos by the Fixx on the collapse of farming communities and man's isolation from the soil.  

The Soundtrack of One Life out of 108 Billion: Entry 1, "Let It Be" by the Beatles (Moments, Memory and Music)

There is something dangerous about tapping into memory and writing about the past.  It's like trying to make use of good spring water.  Anything you do to improve the flow, no matter how careful you are, changes both the spring and stream forever.  Basically, you can only tap a deep memory once and receive pure writing from it.  After that, it's muddied by the mind's desire for theme and structure.

It is what it is.  One of my first memories is walking up a spiral staircase to my brother's bedroom.  I remember the carpet was gray, tight weaved, like industrial carpet, and there was dust along the edges that my mother's fierce vacuuming never reached.  Up above, a room opened up with yellow light, and glorious music spilled down the stairway, swirling around me.

Let It Be.  I was only four.  I've checked the accuracy of the memory with my brother, and the spiral staircase was three or four steps at the very most, and didn't twist at all.  But, I know the moment happened despite the mythic elements of memory and time.  That is probably the moment I became both a hippie and a Christian, which I have remained at heart, at some level or another, throughout my life.  It's so simple, but it says it all:

And when the broken-hearted people
Living in the world agree
There will be an answer, let it be
For though they may be parted
There is still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be

A compassion for the less fortunate, a desire for a universal brotherhood, and a faith in a higher power has always been my center.  Outwardly, I have not lived a large life; but inwardly, I have. When I was younger, that bothered me.  I thought I had things that needed to be said, things that should be heard.  I dreamed of stardom so I could have a large podium from which to speak.  As I've aged, I've realized that is true of everyone.  Each person has much the world should hear, but with 108 billion souls calling earth home at some point, there simply hasn't been enough air time.  We tend to want that--to have impact, to think our life has given others meaning.  Sometimes that is true, sometimes not.  But, what I think now is that we are ultimately here for one reason only--to soften, to open, to let more sorrow in, and by doing so, more light also.

"Let It Be," my first musical memory, is probably my purest, despite the distortions of my young mythic mind. That only makes sense.  We come into this world open and learn to become guarded with time until we learn to let go and open again--if  we learn that at all.

Some do.
Some don't.
Let it be.

A Koan for Our Times (Maya Angelou, Bono, Jimmy Carter, Pema Chodron, Thich Nhat Hanh, Dali Lama, Gandhi, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Bishop Desmond Tutu, and Oprah Winfrey)

The American left generally has high regards these guys: 

Maya Angelou,

Bono,

Jimmy Carter,

Pema Chodron,

Thich Nhat Hanh,

Dalai Lama,

Gandhi,

Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Bishop Desmond Tutu

Oprah Winfrey

 

but denies any force that cannot be measured by science, even though these guys are all driven by spiritual belief.

The American right generally has high regard for this guy-- 

Christ--

 

but generally does not like these guys--Maya Angelou, Bono, Jimmy Carter, Pema Chodron, Thich Nhat Hanh, Dali Lama, Gandhi, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Bishop Desmond Tutu, and Oprah Winfrey--  

who, regardless of their religious affiliations, work to implement His message into daily life.