The Journey

Saturday, January 14

My Calvinistic streak
makes me think
the houseperson in the home
should do the scutwork.
I got behind, what with
Balder and Jennifer's wedding,
Thanksgiving, Christmas, plus
the Hurricane Katrina Evac Couple
Who Came To Dinner For Four Months.
I think they have repatriated themselves,
now that they have a FEMA trailer.
Anyhow, they are from our home defenstrated.
Yesterday, prior to going off on a field trip,
I cleaned the house. It took all day.
But the floors have been mopped
with Murphy's oil soap and hot water.
You can skate on them in your stocking feet.
I feel relieved. So much pressure,
as the Schmenge Brothers say.

Jim Harrison would go for a drive
when he finished a book. To decompress.
Sometimes for thousands of miles.
He'd stop at titty bars off the interstate.
Once he flew to Paris on a magazine assignment
and ate an expensive meal. A gourmet meal,
with several courses and a different wine
with every course. Joe Hollywood.
I used to write poems in a Big Chief tablet
or black and white speckled composition book.
on my way to a job at COPE Center
community behavioral health care center.
Support mental health--or I'll kill you.

I watched the making-of featurette
of Saraband last night, after I screened
the DVD diskette. Ingmar Bergman
was 84 years old. Still spry.
He gave new meaning to the term hands-on.
He would grab actors physically and move
their body parts. Rehearsing a scene.
He would change the marks they were to hit.
Or leave the marks the same but move
the camera. It was dynamic. Fluid.
Interactive. He invited actors to participate.
Did you like that, or would another take
be fun? You tell me, bossman. It's your movie.
I is just the help.. If I wanted to be edited
I would have become a screenwriter.
Novelist is not a collaborative occupation.
The only hands I want to touch my book
are mine.

I took Highway 98 past the junior college
where I used to win CDs on the afternoon
jazz program quiz. I was either a living fossil
or a moldy fig. My knowledge of the lore
was encyclopedic. I could pass the old Downbeat magazine
blindfold test. Now, I can't tell Kenny G from Adam's housecat.
I stopped listening to the radio when WKGC went over to
an all-talk format. Yackety yackety. I do go to hear
Dread Clampitt play at The Red Bar in Grayton Beach.
Yee-haw. Shitkicker chic. I was into country
when Flatt and Scruggs played a 15-minute show
for Martha White weekday evenings just before
the chow hall opened. Before rock-and-roll, or
the Nashville Sound, displaced them. When country
became cool, it was etiolated. Debased. Stage-managed.
Watered-down and tarted-up. Synthetic.

I'd get two tall six-packs of beer
at the Base Cafeteria, on the way home
from work to the barracks. I'd take a shower,
put on civilian clothes, watch Flatt and Scruggs,
then go to the chow hall, to eat. I was on separate rations,
so I had to pay. Later, after the NCO Club voted to include
and A/1C with over-four-years service in its fileld of membership,
I went to the stag bar, in my fatigues, after Flatt and Scruggs,
without a shower, and ate supper there. I was a stone bluegrass fanatic
and didn't know it. After I ate, I'd go back to my dormitory room
and drink beer and read and listen to records on my hi fi set.
Classical music and jazz, mostly. No, I was a polymath. Eclectic.
I liked everything except Top 40 hits and pipi-tease disco.
But that is what my future held, ipso facto, willy-nilly, like it
or leave it, name that tune: dueling horrible music format stations.
Schmaltzy Hick or Angry Rap.. You pays your money
and you makes your choice. Shit used to be blacker and richer.

Last year, Dread Clampitt played in 12 states
and did 250 shows out of town. Their latest CD,
Geaux Juice, sold 1,000 copies in three months.
The first two, Dread Clampitt and Wrack & Ruin,
sold 2,000 and 1,000 copies, respectively.
None of the band members has to work at a day job.
They have time to rehearse, write songs, go into the studio,
and play the regular local gigs that help them hold body and soul together.
They also sell T-shirts, beer coozies, and a pamphlet, Root Doctor, written by
the band historian and stage mother, Balder Saunders' father, Jack Saunders.