Too many ants in the ant farm, not enough love to go 'round. Me? I'm saving boxtops and green stamps, trying hard to believe in the goodness of something.
There was a time when it was all soul music. Phil, as you will recall, had been cheated. He had been mistreated. They sang like angels. They fought like dogs.
Loss is cumulative, it seems, and joy is one knock-knock joke at a time. I'd give myself to the ghost of rock'n'roll but I was promised to a hopeless cause.
It's all about making the love stay when you get right down to it. You grab one of those beautiful soap bubbles and it's gone. There's not even a flat bubble left. It's just gone. You put a couple of those lightning bugs in a jelly jar. Light grows fainter. No matter how many holes you've punched in the lid, the delicate little bodies are lifeless by morning.
Rock'n'roll made the love stay. For awhile. A long time.
My insignificance is a source of delight for me. I'm aware that I would never have made a very good famous person. Neither do most famous people. We all love a scandal, don't we? The fall of the mighty is exciting in the same way as a NASCAR debacle on the six o'clock news.
If you want ghosts to visit, all you have to do is believe. I should say that's the first thing you have to do. When I was a kid I believed in ghosts. That's what kids do. I was afraid of them. Not terrified, probably because of Casper, but uneasy about their presence.
By the time that I pretended to be a grownup for four or five decades I had dismissed the concept. You know, kinda' like when you quit playing in the rain and licking the spoon with the cookie batter.
Recently, and that now means ten minutes or twenty years ago, it occurred to me that ghosts exist in our imagination. That, sweet friends, is entirely different from me telling you that ghosts don't exist. Lots of things exist in our imagination. Let's start with love.
Those guys in the lab coats can talk about dopamine and serotonin till the cows come home but they can't make love in the laboratory. Oh, they can fuck each other silly but you know what I mean.
Love certainly exists. Most of us can agree on that. It's my favorite. In fact, believing in it is the only requirement for seeing it. You can't make it happen and you can't bottle it. Well, there were those ads in men's adventure magazines for "Spanish fly" when I was in the sixth grade but there were ads for "sea monkeys," too. I mean you mailed the money and you got something but it wasn't really love and it wasn't really a monkey.
The best thing is that you can always give the love away. Makes folks happy. Animals, too. Hokey as it is, you'll never run out.
Look here- I've run off on a tangent. Imagine that!
My pal, Ed Brown, visited in my dream last night. He was as real as could be. He walked through walls, too. I suppose I dreamed about love and ghosts.
Oh for the days when my mind played something that jumped in 4/4 time and hurricanes were rare. These are certainly not the best of times, are they? I don't know anyone who's very happy about a new interest in politics.
We all have our own idea about when things began to crumble. Dose it matter?
American exceptionalism? Remember that?
Let's argue about civil war statues for awhile as one of our colonies goes another day without drinking water.
Does anybody any longer doubt that this guy will go to war with North Korea, or Venezuela or Nambia, if indictments seem inevitable?
Ah, the illusion of being in control. All my life I've heard that history repeats itself. I've used the line in songs. I like the sound of it. Now, as I read over the correspondence between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, one thought sticks in my mind:
If one bunch wants war and the other wants peace, war wins.
Yeah, rock always breaks scissors. Paper always covers rock. Scissors always cut paper. They're not likely to give me a Nobel Peace Prize for figuring this out. I'll have to settle for a broken heart.
You don't ever quit fighting, though. You don't ever quit loving.
This hate, this division- it all seems so biblical this time around, doesn't it? Complete with better villains than the most expensive Batman epic. I mean who does the makeup for Trump? What genius at central casting found Mnuchin? How about Beauregard? Dang.
Natasha in stilettos. Nazis with torches. Russians everywhere you look.
War? Seems to me that the generals are out to take over for the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB. Only problem is that the business model seems to be based on the Washington Generals instead of the Harlem Globetrotters. Probably has something to do with the name, huh? Washington Generals- cute!
This isn't meant to be a political rant. All the lunatics have bombs and there is nothing that makes sense about handing out flowers to "very fine people" in Dodge Chargers.
I have frequently mused here about how I wish that I believed in heaven. I wish I believed in hell, too.
When the rough get going, I go home. Sometimes I wonder just how easy I am to forget. I miss kids from my third grade class. Oh, I'm not nostalgic. They're all the good old days.
The very idea that we're bossed around by men who threaten each other and us with atomic bombs amuses me in some perverse fashion. Man's arrogance has always fascinated me. This level of hubris changes everything. Has anyone shown these bozos photographs of themselves. Slapstick heaven would be watching Donald J. and Mr. Jong-un chase each other through the House of Mirrors.
In other news my dog has figured out that walking is a waste of time when you have a perfectly fine automobile at your disposal. Jamaica won't go for our regular walk until we go for a ride around the neighborhood. She wants the radio up loud. The air conditioner, too. She seems to like it best if Hank Williams or Wynonie Harris sing. Loud. She's not happy if I try to cut short the regular route.
