I'm Younger Than That Now...

Busting my buns to get some work done before taking three days of vacation (the first vacation I've had since I can remember) the best rock and roll song ever comes on to describe the reality I am feeling right now in my life.

I've spent many many years being sincere, angry, urgent, right, wrong, smart, stupid, efficient, inefficient, capable, less than capable, and always very very CLEAR...

Well... That's not how I'm feeling right now.
Right now I'm feeling like I need to find my soul.

-------

Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rollin' high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
"We'll meet on edges, soon," said I
Proud 'neath heated brow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
"Rip down all hate," I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull. I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Girls' faces formed the forward path
From phony jealousy
To memorizing politics
Of ancient history
Flung down by corpse evangelists
Unthought of, though, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

A self-ordained professor's tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
"Equality," I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not that I'd become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My pathway led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

-My Back Pages - Bob Dylan

Copyright © 1964; renewed 1992 Special Rider Music


Thanks Karen... see ya'll on the other side of the Sierra

The Kid's Alright

So... over the last two weekends (since I wrote about the necessity of waiting) I have had wonderful, engaging, heart-filled weekends and frankly it's more than I was really prepared for.

On Labor Day Weekend I spent time Friday with a relatively new friend, sitting by the water, listening to music, resting and being easy, and I spent Sunday in Oakland listening to jazz, blues, and Lucinda Williams (that's Lucinda on the left there, from a picture on a new single) and having an exceptionally good time on my own.

The week following was a nightmare (of which I wrote last Friday) and that reality had a way of bringing my feet back to ground, only to - come Friday night - have myself whisking away onto the dance floor with aforementioned "new friend" to a Tom Petty tune in the midst of what felt like a weird channeling of a Sahuarita High School dance (there's a story in THERE somewhere, but it will have to wait for another blog) and into a whirlwind weekend that has left me shaking my head and going "What was that!?"

So here I am on Tuesday morning, struggling with multiple deadlines, facing into a mountain of work, looking for the way to turn that work into a life and basically basking in a state of stupid bliss.

While I was gearing up to hear Lucinda on Labor Day Weekend, I bought Are You Alright off of iTunes and it has been playing in my head ever since.

In answer to the questions of the chorus... No... Yes... Yes... Yes Yes Yes... YES!!!!!!!!!

Help Mr. Wizard I don't want to be a Geek anymore!!!

Say it with me now... "Trissle, Trassle, Trossle, Trom... Time for this one to come home."


[Side note: A lot of references to Tooter Turtle on the web use the letter D instead of T for the above incantation, but I think they're wrong. The alliteration is much better with T, hooking into the second phrase accents on Time... This... and To... not to mention Tooter Turtle]


Okay... by invoking Tooter Turtle's manic cry for rescue (let alone my little literary analysis) I have clearly cemented the geek nature of my being, but then that is in fact the point.

I have had a week (really two weeks) from hell... buried in a cybernetic miasma of other people's design realities and desires for bad art that pretends like they have quality product. I feel like my soul has been sucked out of me through my fingers and the proclamation I made a dozen years ago that "I do not want to be doing websites in 5 years" has finally brought me to the absolute burnout point.

In "Confessions of a Guilty Bystander" (41 years ago) Thomas Merton wrote, "It is precisely the illusion that mechanical progress means human improvement that alienates us from our own being and our own reality. It is precisely because we are convinced that our life, as such, is better if we have a better car, a better TV set, better toothpaste, etc., that we condemn and destroy our own reality and the reality of our natural resources. Technology was made for (hu)man(s) not (hu)man(s) for technology. In losing touch with being and thus with God, we have fallen into a senseless idolatry of production and consumption for their own sakes, We have renounced the act of being and plunged ourselves into process for its own sake We no longer know how to live, and because we cannot accept life in its reality, life ceases to be a joy and becomes an affliction. And we even go so far as to blame God for it! The evil in the world is all of our own making, and it proceeds entirely from our ruthless, senseless, wasteful, destructive, and SUICIDAL neglect of our own being."


That's it... I'm done.

I once did an interview with Sam Keen in which he invoked a quote from one of his teachers (and one of my heros) Howard Thurman. Keen said that Thurman told him, "There are two questions one must ask in life, 'Where am I going?' and 'Who will go with me?' and if you get them in the wrong order you will be in for a world of trouble."


I have asked these questions - almost always in the wrong order - my whole life.


Time to ask again... Time to turn the page.

Waiting as a Way of Life

After sitting meditation this morning I picked up the small labyrinth model that my daughter gave me a couple of years ago and was moving mentally through it as I have done almost every day for the last two years. Halfway through the exercise it struck me, as I entered the center and stayed for just a moment before heading back out, that a large part of the discipline of the Labyrinth is STAYING at the center long enough to hear the Word.

I am good with the part of the symboliic journey that puts me on the road - that keeps me on the road - and I can let stuff go along the way in and ponder what I want to bring out, but I continue to remain rather uncomfortable with the part where I am supposed to WAIT at the center.

The last two years have been for me a constant dropping away of the extraneous b.s. of the first half of my life. At each step along the way, each turning around at a corner, each doubling back of the trail, I again think, "now... this is it. I've done all the work. It's time to move on." What I find, however, is that no, unfortunately there is more work to be done.

Perhaps that's part of the difficulty of facing into the problem of New Orleans. I, for one, want everything fixed NOW. Actually, I want it all fixed a year ago. But there are still things for us to learn, and there are still things for us to do. There are still messages that The God/Goddess wants us to hear. It feels to me that I have been missing this huge lesson of the Labyrinth experience because I have forgotten (or avoided) the waiting part.

It's not for nothing that Moses was not called by God until he was over 80 (McSweeney's, by the way, just published a FIRST novel by an author of age 90, so don't go figuring that the Moses phenomenon has passed).

It's not for nothing that the Israelites had to wait in the desert for 40 years or that the Babylonian Exile lasted for something like 70.

Perhaps it's not for nothing (besides governmental ineptitude and graft that is) that the New Orleans Diaspora seemingly continues forever. Is it possible that there is something waiting here for us to learn?

There is a message for us at the center of the Labyrinth but to hear it we have to enter that center through a slow and winding path, letting go of our overwrought personnas and our excess baggage along the way. Once there, right when we're damned ready to go dashing back with the message (like Phidippides on the plains of Marathon) we find that no... we must wait instead. We must take a breath, sit, loosen our muscles, our hearts, and our minds and listen for the Word made Flesh.

I don't know how long it will take. All I know is that for me... well, I'm not yet done with waiting.

The Call Inside The Silence

I've been struggling for the last five days with how and what to write about my birthday (both the party that I threw and the event itself) while at the same time facing into a sort of low grade depression, leading into and out of the second anniversary of Katrina, that I hadn't even really noticed until this morning. For five days I've come to the computer to write my thoughts and feelings and for five days the page has remained blank.

Some of this comes from the inexorable driving force of SILENCE that confronts me at this time and in the face of these realities. My good friend E sent me a wonderful book of Thomas Merton selections on writing and while it has been a great inspiration and comfort over the last few days, it has had the intriguing effect of deepening the silence I was already experiencing, leading me into a labyrinth of memories, dreams, and reflections from which I can't seem to extricate myself, and from which I am not fully sure I want to be extricated. There is a sort of dull pain that I experience in this silence, but there is also a sense of coming hope, a faltering stumbling undifferentiated something that I can't see quite yet, but that I know is out there and that I think is friendly and does not mean me harm... I hope.

In the just over two weeks since I thundered out of New Orleans on a wing and a prayer in a desperate search for computer resources I have felt more than a little bit lost, a great deal disconnected, thoroughly frustrated, and clearly (though mostly subconsciously) depressed. That flight, for me, was a retreat, a collapse, and a semi-final resignation from all that I have been struggling to maintain since the Sunday afternoon two years ago when I rode with Roxanne across the bridge to Slidell and on to Mississippi.Unknown to me at the time, that flight was a final capitualtion to the forces set in motion by the storm, a reluctant acceptance of the inexorable power of the events, now two years old, that put the ending stamp on the life and love I had imagined; a life and love I had lived for 17 years and the hope of new life and love in The Land of Dreams.

Yesterday's anniversary was the final nail in that coffin. For the rest of my life the last week of August will be forever tied to four events: my birthday, my mother's birthday, The Thing (as Chris Rose calls it) and its annihilation of my dream of New Orleans, and the final swan song of my relationship to Wendy MacCall. I doubt if I will ever be rid of those memories, but I think that yesterday was the beginning of a healthy grief. A grief I needed to feel . A grief that will finally be the gateway to a new life.

Yesterday, as part of the Katrina anniversary memorial events, The Monette Trumpet Corporation presented "The Elysian Trumpet" to New Orleans' cultural representative, trumpeter Irvin Mayfield, as a symbol of remembrance of the people lost in the storm (including Irvin's father) and of the hope of renewal to come.

As a trumpet player myself, just having a look at this 24K gold plated instrument is enough to bring tears of hope and joy to my eyes. I can imagine the clear, crisp tone, and the muted low growl. I can hear it playing When The Saints Go Marhing In, and St. James' Infirmary. I hear it ring out to say that all is not lost... not by a long shot.

We are called to hope, to joy, to life coming around again and again and again. I believe in that. I believe it for New Orleans. I believe it for our country. I believe it for you. I believe it for me.

Sooner or later... one of these days... It really is gonna be okay.