When I put the seashell to my ear, of course, I hear the ocean. When I look into Jamaica's eyes I see the universe. When it gets quiet enough I feel all the love in the world in my heart. All there's ever been, all there ever will be. It's like water. It just circulates and recirculates. That water from the mineral spring that ended up in your Topo Chico went through Nefertiti and Rasputin while you were still stardust in diapers. Yeah- we're drinking the urine of the gods and the riffraff.
If you think that this is all about you, you're right. I have tried desperately not to bother you with my drivel and I have failed.
The love, though- what about the love? It's never wasted. You don't need to conserve it. Tip well.
Give us peace on earth and end this dreadful, dreadful war.
Living long has its benefits. Besides the obvious. The beauty of despair is subtle. Memories of a broken heart are bittersweet- to be savored.
Honestly, without unrequited love what would I have written about?
Oh, a few people hack up another few. That's just history, bad TV and an overactive, underdeveloped imagination. Rock'n'roll, of course. That's always on my mind. In my heart.
Mostly, though, I obsess and I write about love-gone-wrong.
"Write what you know," they tell you. "Write what you know."
As social animals we evolve along two distinct lines. As some kind of primeval ooze our needs were low. By the time that we were primarily prey we began to develop aggressive genes to keep from being eaten out of existence. To thrive we began simultaneously to develop loving genes so that we could cooperate and live in groups.
First thing you know a couple billion years slip by.
Voila!
Cowboys and Indians. Sunni and Shiite. Republicans and Democrats.
You don't need to be a scientist to see that the aggressive team is winning. At the peril of our existence. Maybe the planet.
That's nothing new. We've been working at putting ourselves out of business since we climbed down from trees. Now, though, nuclear weapons are in the hands of lunatics. Mean lunatics.
Oh, they're out of fashion. A smart tyrant would wage cyber war on his enemy. Our tyrants aren't smart. Sadly, they're out of fashion, too. Little hands, big bombs.
Our team needs to step up the love game pretty quickly.
The birth certificate says Birmingham but I was born in love. I never planned to grow old. Truth be told I never planned on growing up. Can't say that I much care for adults. Now that there's nobody to tell me to go to bed I like to go to bed by nine o'clock.
If you have a fire in your soul from the beginning, you're doomed to a certain life. You don't dare mix with the other ones with that fire- you'll burn everything down. If you put on a bridle to go a little straighter, you'll eventually gnaw right through it. One way or the other folks around you get singed.
By definition I suppose I'm just lazy. This living just wears me out and I don't have energy left for accomplishment. Don't pay much attention to me but keep an eye on me.
Give us peace on earth and end this dreadful, dreadful war.
Anarchists were bad guys as I was growing up. I'm an anarchist. I don't hurt anybody. I don't even speed. No one in Washington, D.C. or Tallahassee has any interest in my well being and they have made that very clear.
Oh, I've no interest in overthrowing any government. I've pinned my hopes on leaders before. They killed them.
My anarchist ways extend beyond the government. I'm a musical anarchist. I had dinner one evening with Lucinda Williams right after the Americana Music Association was launched. As a charter member, I was elated. Finally a club for me. These were "my people."
Lucinda was not so excited.
"What if you were British?" she asked.
I might as well have been. When they started their own chart my CD's always broke into their top ten. It didn't take long to notice that I was never invited to work any of their events. It didn't take much longer to figure out that these were just folks trying to take the power away from the old bunch.
Now I'm not complaining here although I know it seems like that's all I'm doing. I like it out here. I'm an anarchist and I'm proud of it. I'm not a bad guy.
Squirrels don't go to the office. Whales don't retire. Giraffes don't worry about what to wear. I no longer fall for the "fact" that we're above the other animals, that we work based on some noble ideal and that our occupation defines our existence, our identity.
Squirrels do work of course. They build nests for their families and put away enough acorns to get through the winter. They spend most of their time chasing their pals 'round and 'round trees. Dodging Toyotas. Mating. To coin a term, squirreling.
Friends of mine spend a third of their time at some endeavor that they hate in order to pay for an automobile to get them there. They complain about the boss or, if they happen to be the boss, complain about their underlings.
Marketing and peer pressure combine to convince them to spend money on clothes, not to cover their horrible nakedness or to keep warm, but to make them look like all the others. They like to spend some more on scents so that they will smell like the others and jewelry to make it appear that they have more money than the others. Jewelry just like the others wear.
Most of them work hard to pay for houses that they can't afford so that they will be in school districts that enhance the offsprings' ability to continue all this.
I could go on. And on. I won't. I've got a day of squirreling ahead of me.
This sounds smug, I know. Just keep in mind my big hero, Lincoln Perry. If you know him at all you remember him by his stage name, Stepin Fetchit. In the '30's and early '40's he made millions playing the supreme shuffling stereotypical negro.
When pressed about the dignity of his endeavor he explained,
"Like Chaplin, I played the part of a simple, sincere, honest and lovable character who won sympathy from an audience by being tolerant of those who hurt him so that he could be close to those he loved."
Well, sir, I've just trick or treated with all the neighborhood kids. I'm full and I'm exhilarated. I believe I'll eat what I want, when I want, from now on. I suppose that's nothing new. What this culture considers growing up has never much appealed to me.
Don't have thanksgiving plans yet. I'm certainly thankful, though. If it turns out to be me and Jamaica here at the house it will all be the kids' table. I'll tell you that. We'll both be Indians, too. I don't are much for pilgrims.
