Writing for Sanity's Sake

My dream was that a hole appeared in the center of my bed, and I fell through….no…rather I was sucked into the hole and went down, down and down. Ever decreasing in size as I free fell through layers of reality, and universes of knowledge.

During that time, I learned everything there was to know, and forgot it all. Over and over again.

I went “splat” as I finally hit the “bottom” after plunging at high speed for what seemed to be an eternity

“Am I at the end?” I asked

“Yes” answered a tiny, almost imperceptible voice

“…but you’re also at the beginning” it boomed deafeningly.

And I woke up.

As much as I enjoy my morning forays through the neighborhood, my preference would be to walk in the woods…or along a path like the one in Ringgold which winds through the woods and alongside South Chickamauga creek. Some of my most cherished memories from my childhood are of the long, solitary walks I took in the woods around my Grandparent’s house.

I would go up behind their house one day, and hike the old logging roads that were long abandoned. You could smell the sweet rot of the stumps left behind, and hear the deer walking through the hardwoods just barely rustling a few leaves as they crept by. The squirrels, angry at my intrusion, would bark their shrill call at me wanting nothing more than for me to leave them and their peaceful existence.

I could go across the creek the next day and go beside my great Uncle Larks house and climb one of the trails up the side of Johnny mountain as far as I dared to go. There were rugged rocks on that mountain and I never made it to the very top. I come back down and roll up my pants legs and put my bare feet in the creek that ran in front of Grandpa’s house. Those were good days, and I had a lot of them. I’d always lallygag along, looking for arrowheads, or other interesting rocks, stopping often to sit on a log and just listen to the sounds around me.

I wondered as I walked this morning, how much longer I’ll be able to do it. I wondered at my age, what things do I really want?

I’d like to see another Winter’s snow, and be able to frolic around in it with my grandkids. I’d like to see another warm March day with the daffodils peeking their yellow heads out of the ground. I’d love to have another tomato sandwich from a vine that I grew, with Mayo and crispy bacon. Another Fall day, with golden and yellow leaves covering the mountainside. I’d like to see as many of those as I can. I’d really love to know that my grandchildren and their children will have a chance to enjoy the same things at some point in the future after I’m just a memory.

I wish that people would realize very soon that this Mother Earth we live on is not an inexhaustible resource. She is a very finite entity which is quickly being used up by the billions of humans who inhabit her. Used up and abused by those who value money over any other thing. By people who are not willing to forego a little convenience in order to give our descendants a chance at a life in the natural world. People who’s idea of nature is drinking some “Natural spring water”

I really hope humanity can produce some real heroes in the near future. I hope they can produce some leaders who care more about people, than about lining their pockets with “dirty money”. Maybe that’s a pipe dream. Maybe it’s never going to happen, knowing human nature. Maybe, just maybe it will though.

I’m going back out in the morning if I can, and every time I can…to chronicle what we have now. Photos may be all the future residents of this world may have one day to remember what “used to be”.

Of all the qualities which set human beings apart from the rest of humanity, there is our voice. It was this means of communication which allowed us to move beyond other species and become social animals.

Our voice allowed our ancestors to pass on instructions on how to do critical things to survive. We began to live less off of instinct and more off of experiences passed down from generation to generation. Language came long, long before the ability to write and so most knowledge was passed down by oral tradition. Since early man tended to live in familial situations, with tight family ties, language probably varied a lot, and then as families stretched out and became tribes the group adopted the most useable language form available to communicate within the entire group.

But, the anthropological aspect is not where I want to concentrate. It’s the spiritual and mystical aspect of the voice to which I wish to “speak”

I’ve had so many wonderful and unique voices which have inhabited the echoes of my mind. My Dad’s laugh…I can never get it far from my immediate memory. He laughed a lot and at a lot of things. He gave me a lot of advice with that voice. I took some of it, and some I wish I had taken. His voice was stilled in 2010.

My Grandfather Jervis’s voice. My voice is a mixture of his voice and my Dad’s, leaning more heavily towards his. He could sing from bass to tenor and I inherited a bit of that. I used to sit around in his living room and listen to him sing his “scales” “Do..do..do……do, ray, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do..do..do..” I got up in front of the congregation where my Grandpa was song leader when I was four years old and waved my hands around like I was conducting the choir. Nobody laughed or made fun of me. I was really proud of myself and I remember it so well. My Grandfather’s voice was stilled in 1991.

My Mom and my Grandmother had similar voices…and they were both worriers. I asked my Grandmother on her 100th birthday what she would have done different if she could go back and go it all over again. She simply said “I’d worry about things less, because all the worrying I did never changed nothing” Her voice was stilled in late 1999. I still dream of her quite often, most of the time in the kitchen. She’s always telling me: “I wouldn’t worry about that, Honey” she’ll say. I still worry…I guess I can’t help it, I get it from her and Mom. My dear Momma….she would always say “I love you” and too many times, “I’m sorry” for things which really were not her fault, not anybody’s fault, just fate and fate alone. Mom’s voice was also stilled in 2010.

In late 1999, I was really scared. The specialist had found a lump on my vocal cords and he was pretty sure it was cancer. I went into surgery wondering if I would come out with a voice…..would I come out with a hole in my throat and no voice. Turned out it was a big lump of scar tissue. I came out with my vocal cords, but it took a year a rehabilitation to even get back to regular talking, much less singing. I have had to be very careful since then. Some days are good, some days not so good. At least I still have that mechanism of communication to use with my family, my friends…(although sometimes I bet they wish I would shut up!)

My voice will be stilled one day, as have been the voices of all human beings who ever lived. I hope I have used it correctly…will use it better, and maybe there will be some memorable phrase “hanging in the air” for someone to remember me by.

Blood for oil? Blood for oil, and somebody else’s at that. Look up Shiite versus Sunni, and you’ll see the crux of the problem over there. On 911, 15 of 19 were from the big oil country. Now we’re their protectors?

Big oil. The United States has been bragging for several years now that “America is self sufficient” when it comes to oil, but now we bristle at that 5% that is in jeopardy?

Money and oil, and drill everywhere. Take the restrictions off everything, and let’s pollute the rivers and air again. Smog over LA that chokes the children so badly, they can’t go outside. I remember those days, does anybody else? I remember when the Chattooga River was choked with all kinds of crap. You couldn’t eat a fish out of it, much less canoe in it.

Why is all of this necessary? Are the oil companies not rich enough yet? Is the water and air so clean we need to dirty them up a bit? I don’t understand the logic, does anybody else?

Money….the source of it in our country, who controls it and how, has brought low the highest in power, and elevated to power the lowest in morality. It has been this way for hundreds of years, but has been controlled more so in this country since around 1913.

As you have seen, even since the financial crisis of 2008, who has been served by the laws and policies which were enacted? The people who were in debt, or their creditors? The common man, or the banks and stock sellers?

Everything is out of the control of the people, because the people cannot even vote for the ones who control the money. They are appointees!

In America, very few rise up above the rigged system to become rich. Most spend their lives working for the man, and paying through the nose for the things they need the most. Not the automobiles or the TV’s! The health care, the drugs which are needed to live, the dental care. All are needed to sustain life, and can be withheld as kind of a “blackmail”

Think about it the next time you consider who controls the money, and what they want you to have. If bread and circuses will do (pizza and football) then America will remain what they want.

We never had Kindergarten at our school. We started with the first grade. It was in 1956 for me. Now, I know that date sounds pretty ancient to a lot of people. Not so ancient to others. But, in terms of the way things have changed in the world, it was centuries ago!
Back then, we were still in the old three “R” mode of learning. And, believe me, some of the kid’s in my first grade class wanted absolutely NOTHING to do with them of the first day of class.

I remember two girls in particular whose Mom’s had to drag them kicking and screaming into the classroom! Both of them later became good students, but oh…not on that first day.
Things have changed so much.

Kids start going to school, or pre-school, or pre-preschool so young now, that some of them will NEVER be able to remember when they started to school, like I can. I think that it’s kind of a shame too. Those two girls (It was Sandy and Alma by the way) had both experienced what it was like to be HOME with their Mommas, and to have a “little kid’s” life prior to being rudely awakened one morning and being told they were being taken to this strange new place, full of people they didn’t know and things they weren’t familiar with. They were definitely out of their comfort zone. (So was I, but I didn’t cry. I would have, but as long as I can remember I have had this “thing” about not letting people see me cry. Guess I think it shows “weakness” or something) only by being taken out of our comfort zone could we learn new things, but we didn’t know it at the time, and we sure were not real happy about finding out.

We had these cool metal desks though, that had big old holes in the bottom of them to stuff our books into when we were not using them. That was the other thing too…books! Wow, for the first time in my life somebody gave me a book that didn’t have Scrooge McDuck on it, and said it was MINE. At least for that year anyway. I felt privileged! I took care of my books like they belonged to me. When we had to scrawl our names into them a few weeks later, after we all learned to WRITE our names, I felt bad about defacing that nice new book. It WAS really new, because 1956 was only the second year that the new grammar school had been open, so everything was still in great shape.

I lived in the same town long enough to see that same school go through the metamorphosis of age to the point where it had to be torn down a few years after the river got up and got into it. Both the High School and the Grammar school had been built on a flood plain, because that’s the land which the Mill gave the town to build them on. They knew the land would flood, and that’s why they never had put part of the mill on them. It was good enough for a school though. We had a lot of floods, but the huge 100 year flood that came about 1990 or so I think it was, finished both those schools off.

Anyway, I did feel bad writing in a book. I still feel bad when I see a book that has scribbling and scrawling and writing all in it. Books are sort of sacred things to me, since all the knowledge that mankind has ever been able to accumulate is written down in books. Guess that’s why I like to read them still, and buy and sell them too. Some people get most of their information off of computers and TV now, and don’t bother much with books. That’s ok for them I guess, but I don’t know what I would do in a world without books. Kinda’ glad I will be gone before people totally stop using them.

But, I digress. I think the point I was trying to make was about how kids miss a lot of their childhood nowadays. They are thrust into the world of learning, and really into the adult world itself much too soon. We think of them as little adults from just about the time they can come up with a sentence that makes sense.

“Time for little Tommy to start to School, he just said his first word!”

It’s a little much I think.

Fall is coming.

The days of Summer are numbered. The only thing left in the garden is Okra and a few scraggly tomatoes growing up too high for the bugs to get. The humidity is so bad that when I took my camera from the inside to the outside yesterday, I had to wipe the fog off the lens for twenty minutes before I could take a picture. You can’t walk around the neighborhood without having to wring a quart of sweat out of your T-shirt when you get back. So…I’ll trade the last of the fresh Okra to get rid of the humidity and the bugs.

Perhaps an early frost this year? An early end to the “dog days” of the Summer of 2022? Usually the first frost is very close to my birthday…which is October 21, but I definitely would not mind a good hard, white hoar frost much sooner. I love them. I love the crisp, snapping, hot Apple cider, make a pot of chili days, which start out in the mornings with a white icy ground and ease up into the mid 60’s by afternoon, with a bright warming Autumn sun in the sky.

I love those days. The ones where you wear a sweatshirt but not a coat, and you see the kids out tossing around a football. The ones where the wind kicks up little whirlwinds of red, orange, brown and yellow leaves. The smell of somebody off somewhere in the distance burning a pile of those same dry leaves. The sunsets which are bright and clear with a few streaks of purple… oh how sweet and precious are those days. More valuable to me than piles of gold or diamonds. Especially when they are populated with my loved ones.

I want to be even more aware of the wonderful days of Fall this year. I want to notice how blazing Orange the pumpkins are at Halloween, and how wonderful my wife’s Thanksgiving dressing smells and tastes. And then I want to see the little one’s eyes light up at Christmas when they tear into their gifts. I want to hug my new grandchildren, and smell the fresh newness of their lives. I want to see things through their eyes. Especially the littlest of the group.

I never took the days of Autumn for granted. Even as a child I knew they were something special. The first poem I ever wrote was about the beauty of a special Fall day. The first song I played on my guitar and sang to was “Autumn Leaves” ” ….the falling leaves, drift by my window, the autumn leaves of red and gold…”

And so I hope for an early fall, an idyllic fall, a peaceful fall, a loving fall, a prosperous fall and a memorable fall. Not just for myself, but for all of us who need one right now so very badly. For those of us who have already seen more of them than we will ever see in the years ahead. Seventy two is looming for me in October……

A taste of simplicity, a smell of memory, a sight of loveliness, a sound of familiarity and the feel of hope…for the future of all mankind. An Autumn of change..and not just in the weather.

I wrote this on this day last year, before the pandemic and all of the recent Civil strife. I publish it again, as I find it may still pertain to the times we are in….as well as an addendum. Feel free to scroll by if you want.

The Chosen One

I walked out the back door this morning , looked at the sky with my eyes turned up and thought: “I am the chosen one”

I was chosen to live in the midst of the world’s beauty. But, I am responsible for helping to take care of it.

I was chosen to be the Father of my children and the grandfather to their children. But, I was and am responsible for helping to show them the right way to live. To be caring and empathetic. To be respectful and helpful.

I was chosen to help my neighbors, to love my neighbors. I have had to teach myself not to hate anyone, and it has been and will continue to be difficult. I choose to try and keep on trying, and to pray for forgiveness when I fail.

I was chosen to write about many things, and to record the world around me. I was chosen to share these things…right, wrong, black, white or in shades of gray. It is my calling. It is my obsession and many times it is my curse. It’s been a lifetime path.

I am king of nothing except hope. I am prince of nothing but despair. A harbinger of doom, but a prophet for survival.

I live my days and nights in constant thought about how to change evil to good. I despair sometimes at how great the battle is, and is becoming. Yet I know that it is not totally my responsibility because I am the savior of naught, not even my own fate.

Afterthought:

People are going to believe what they believe. I believe in what I think is right, and it’s vastly different than what many others believe. I don’t believe the path we are currently on will end well, but many do. Even though there’s a vast difference in our beliefs, most will still be here in the short term. I think that neither group can afford to simply write off the other. If that happens we will always be a divided and hostile country. I don’t have the “Golden arrow” answer. What I’m hoping for is that something or someone can prevail in a compromise which relieves some of the ill will from both sides. I respect most opinions, except the extreme and the conspiracy theorists, and hope we can all ride this spaceship we are on a few more years together and hope something paradigm changing happens.

Our most precious commodity, our gift, our one and only most important currency we humans have to spend, is our time. Our minutes are worth more than gold, and our days more than diamonds. All of the physical things we own amount to nothing if we have no time. They will sit until the dust covers them, and eventually will be reclaimed by nature. The time we are allowed here on Earth is all we will ever have. When we die and our time ends, our lives will eventually be as shadows in the memories of those who are left behind.

Our words and actions during our time here, are the only real manifestations of our physical existence here, and how those words and deeds affect other people is our only legacy. We need to think about that before we speak….think about it before we act. What do you want your legacy to be? One of hateful words and actions, or one of empathy and love?

1619-1865 is 246 years. 1865-2019 is 154 years. We have almost a century left until this country has lived as many years without legal slavery as it did with it. That doesn’t even count another 100 years exactly from 1865-1965 when the voting rights act passed. So in reality that’s 346 years.

Spain, and then Mexico…after it won independence, owned much of the Southwestern US from 1521 after the conquest of the Aztecs, until 1848, when the Treaty of Hildalgo was signed, ending the Mexican-American War, which the US had instigated. The US got Texas, Southern California, most of New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado in that treaty. That’s 327 years the SW United States belonged to the “Hispanics” and 171 years that the United States has owned it. All citizens of Mexico got to choose to stay in the new United States, or go back to Mexico. Most of them stayed, creating an instant cross culture between the United States and Mexico, which has persisted since then. That’s a total of 498 years that Spanish speaking people have been in this area, as opposed to only after 1848 that white Americans started to go into these areas to settle. (The Gadsden purchase of 1853 further enlarged New Mexico and Arizona)

It amazes me that in just a very few short years, history in this country has been forsaken for media make believe. The myth of white manifest destiny over the cultural patterns of this country, and the belief that somehow the stain of slavery and repression has been washed as white as snow in a few short years belies the facts which lie in the history of America, if any would take the time to read it. Perhaps it cannot be understood.

Perhaps the trend of purposeful ignorance has taken such deep root that it can never be reversed. It is a shame that we Americans of the last half of the 20th century have been either unwilling or unable to defend the hard won freedoms and openness that our Fathers fought and died for in World War II. We have given them up to Autocracy and Oligarchy with hardly a fight.