Last night of grandwhelping tonight. When I was a younger and prone to certain vanities and symbols, I wore three rings and then later just the two. The first to go was a wedding ring; I don’t recall when I stopped wearing the other two. One was a silver dolphin swallowing her own tail the other was a silver setting for an obsidian and quartz ying/yang. All cycle of life stuff (huh, I just edited the word shit out, exchanged it with stuff. I should do that more often. A buddy of mine got a Dear John letter in boot camp, I said “Man, that’s some tough shit” I meant “That’s difficult stuff” it’s a pretty big distinction.).
I’m sort of there again. The grandwhelp leaving and my father leaving; going separate directions. Perhaps that’s morbid, but it’s true; for all practical purposes my dad is in hospice they just aren’t calling it hospice. I mean he’s not dying of anything specific, it won’t make him any less dead. The boy is going home. I sure hope where he’s from is in better shape than where I’m from. It will be interesting to hear in a few years what my daughter states as her reason for coming here and staying as long as she did. I hope that conversation happens somewhere else.
One of the more interesting Work Projects of the FD Roosevelt Administration was to first off build the Bonneville dam for hydro-electricity and secondly commission 40 songs from Woody Guthrie to tell about it. I still don’t get how the right wing fringe can demonize FDR. If I were trying to demonize socialism I wouldn’t chose examples that worked. Oh. Sorry. Just had the Columbia on my mind.
I miss my son too. And Granddaughter. Probably not as much as I’d miss looking in the mirror to shave though.
“What happened to you?”
“I shot myself shaving.”
Oh, there’s a good example up there of why I’ve given up editing. And Granddaughter is a perfectly good sentence no matter what bug crawled up Strunk and Whites respective asses. Unless you are trying to impress some teacher with the notion that you done learnt the American language, the real acid test, both written and spoken, did it convey the intended meaning? There’s a reason why normative human development has a kid speaking the language for at least three years before we start fucking em up with the written language. It takes the better part of twelve years of mandatory lessons in the language you speak fluently to satisfy the taxpayers that you done got edumacated. Then, if you want to write stories and shit, it takes a long time to unlearn all that stuff. I stand corrected, if you want to write readable stories you need to unlearn most of that stuff or, you know, spend a few more years learning it better. Learning how to tolerate alcohol helps a lot too.
Just the right amount of alcohol and a harmonica can speed along the unlearning process, so can shooting yourself shaving but it’s imprecise.
Oh, yeah, cycle of life. I don’t really remember why it was important to wear that stuff on my hands. It’s a bit like painting over a skylight with a picture of the sky. I mean it’s not like my remarking on it affected anything. Among the things I don’t talk about is a big old what the hell regarding the birth part of that cycle.
I was going to post a song to go with this entry. Youtube these days has just about everything you might want, but, to get there, it takes a lot of stuff you don’t want. After the third very earnest amateur video I decided I didn’t want the song that bad. Two of the three sounded just fine, it was the pained expression of web cam selfie, leaning from a computer desk chair, capo three frets up and singing with the eyebrows … Yeah I didn’t know how to end that sentence. Ellipses are bad mojo.
There was another song I was going to post but it reminded me that my ex-wife the shiksa, (ok, they are both shiksas, and, apparently, are now both blonde. Neither one of them is blonde. Is it the statistical improbability that lures some folks to that hair color? I was born with it and am happy it darkened. That trait was passed on to my son and grandson, though his hair hasn’t darkened yet.) shit. I was reminded that my ex-wife, the second one, a shiksa, had the final verse translated into Hebrew and tattooed around her ankle. There was more going on there than warrants discussion; she remarked how original that was. Yeah, anyone orthodox enough to speak Hebrew (notice how many Christians don’t speak Latin?) is orthodox enough not to desecrate their body; that’s why you don’t see many Hebrew tattoos.
The line:
If you don’t believe there’s a price for this sweet paradise just remind me to show you the scars.
I don’t speak Hebrew. I also don’t have any tattoos, and, nothing against tats, the irony of scarring one’s body to remark on scars is, well, in the words of one of the Pennsylvania Ave Bush’s, ironical. Mostly if I were to get a tat I think I’d prefer knowing for certain that the funny talking language didn’t say “Occidental bastard” (if a Chinese symbol) or “Oy, goyishe, whatcha gonna do?” in, you know, Sumerian.
I’m glad I had a ring and didn’t get a tattoo of a dolphin swallowing her tail or, praise merciful mercy, a ying yang. I almost went for a falcon tattoo once but the artist, I don’t know, all his birds of prey looked exactly the same. If he had a flacon that looked like a falcon instead of a smaller eagle, specifically a smaller bald eagle, I might have been drunk enough. I have a feeling tats aren’t really about art at all.
Both of my kids have multiple tattoos’ at least one of which cannot be covered up, well, I guess they could but it’d be awfully damn conspicuous. For some folks I think it’s the permanence, for some it’s the needle, for some the assertion. I guess for some it’s the art. I don’t know, one of the exs loved those reality shows like LA ink, and in between the bickering and business shit, the patron would tell why they wanted a certain tattoo. Every once in a while you could tell that what they wanted was to be on TV, but mostly the reason was profound, I think someone involved in the production knew that’s how you hold an audience for yet another god damned reality show. Truth is the artists on those shows really are artists, and so, regardless of intent, you get inked by an artist you wear art.
It’s my humble opinion, but if the intent is to express your own creative side by wearing someone else’s art, you might be trying too hard. Huh, how’d I get here? Oh, yeah, shiksas, tattoos, remind me to show you the scars. Problem with that tattoo is no back up harmony. That and it might just say “Dumbass shiksa your roots are showing”. Um, and no offense, but neither Dylan nor Sunny really paid dues to any sweet paradise. That’s the thing about songs, it takes being a songwriter to make em, but they aren’t for songwriters. Dylan didn’t actually work on Maggie’s farm, for instance, and Sunny didn’t pay a price, or not in the way the lyric intended. I like them both better on the back side of a guitar than on the front side.
In the movies musicians always seem to just pop out into the world in the middle of some event they are going to write a song about and then there are crowds cheering and panties flying. There’s a whole lot of anti-social time in little rooms playing the same chord change over and over until it sounds like you’ve always known how to. Steven King (get your hackles back down, I haven’t come to praise or bury him) wrote a bunch of novels and had a band. That’s a whole lot of time alone in a room.
Shit, I’m just rambling now.
I shot myself shaving. Heh. Morbid but funny.
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