Writing for Sanity's Sake

When you walk to the river, you see the ground beneath you teeming with life. The air you breathe is free to you, and you may gulp it in at your leisure.

And the crows up in the clouds, a hundred at the least, circle around you cawing either their indignation or admiration. Perhaps their acceptance, because they recognize that you are a creature of nature also….

And not it’s master.

Good life, bad life.

I thought about it a lot this past weekend. What determines how we judge whether our lives have been positive or negative?

I finally decided that it all comes down to attitude. Your attitude is what makes the difference in whether you are having a good life, or a bad life. Attitude is either your best friend, or your worst enemy. It’s your greatest asset or your worst liability.

It’s easy to say that we are going to change our attitudes. I have said it many times before, and then after a while, I find myself slowly slipping back into my old habits, and again becoming negative. That old pessimism that has been prevalent in my life starts to creep up on me like a swamp gator sneaking in for the kill. And when it gets close enough…BOOM…it springs.

It’s not easy changing your attitude.

Of course, nobody can stay positive all the time. At least I don’t think that’s possible. I have known some pretty positive people, and even they get down on life every now and then. I think the magic trick is picking yourself up quickly after you do get down. It’s not an easy trick to learn. It’s not built into some people’s genetic makeup, which makes it even harder. One thing which I think helps is to try and surround yourself with people who have positive attitudes.

Or, in my own case, I often find more solace and ability to rebound by doing just the opposite. I get outside and take long walks, a lot of time by myself. On a recent walk I took down by the river, I prowled along the shore like a hermit crab…picking things up and looking at them….simply breathing in the air, and reflecting and rebuilding the neurons in my brain. I could have probably spent the entire day doing it. Weird old guy. It’s not for everybody, but it works for me in the here and now.

As we get older, we have an ever growing bank of memories on which to reflect and remember. I think now looking back down the pipeline of my life that even the bad days were good. I have had some pretty dang bad days. I think we need them. If we have no very bad days we don’t have anything to which to compare the very good days. There has to be contrast, there has to be dark and light, evil and good.

However, I believe I have learned something from all of my days. I hope all of us have.

One thing I really appreciate is having good kids, and I am grateful for the people they have chosen to live their lives with. That’s one of the things I really didn’t think about back when Paula and I were trying to raise our children. I didn’t realize that instead of 3 kids we were going to end up with 6 one of these days. (and some super grandchildren to boot!) It’s a funny thing about how your children and grandchildren can become great friends in the process of living you life, if you will let them.

Back to good life, bad life. Attitude. Is there anyway that anyone knows of to stay more on the track of being on the positive side? I think sometimes I go up and down more than a roller coaster. It would be better to stay up at the top of the hill but I am sure that there are no easy solutions for doing it. It takes work, and it takes consistency. I hope everyone is having success.

One thing that helps me though, is to put my thoughts down on paper…even if it is virtual paper. At least I can kind of keep up with that way. I think that’s probably the biggest thing I like about this “social media” experience. There’s a bunch of things which have developed which I don’t care for, but as a friend was telling me the other day, he thinks the good outweighs the bad. I guess time will tell on that account.

In all the Universe there are probably no other beings like we humans. I know that science has found there are many Earth like planets out there, but Earth like is not Earth.

When you think about the fact that we alone may be the only intelligent life in the cosmos it is a daunting thought. I realize that many people don’t believe we are “alone” in the Universe, but so far there is no proof to the contrary…Star Wars and Star Trek notwithstanding.

It leads me to think that humanity has a huge responsibility. We have an obligation to find a way forward to peace. We have almost a sacred trust to preserve our species.

There is either meaning to life, or not. We can believe that this tiny sand grain sanctuary of living things in the huge beach which is the Universe, is just an accident comprised of some chemicals and some warm water and sunshine, or we can believe there is meaning.

I believe there is meaning, perhaps the ultimate meaning in our existence.

Until I see some alien spaceship come flying in, or see a spiritual manifestation telling me differently, I am going to assume our meaning and our purpose is to settle our earthly differences and then “go boldly where no man (or woman) has gone before”.

Go boldly and discover the truth.

LIFE

I got to thinking. What is happiness, what is satisfaction as it applies to out life here on Earth? What does it mean? How do we get it?

God it seems so very impossible sometimes, especially in this day and age of division and subtraction.

And then, I thought some more……and I dreamed, and had an epiphany of sorts…along with some very strange and sinister nightmares. But I thought first of the epiphany…..

If I have ever done or said a kind word to someone when they needed it, then I am satisfied.

If I have ever given good advice to my children, whether by pure accident, as would be the case most of the time or by chance of experience then I am satisfied.

If I have ever kissed my wife, and she was persuaded that she had married the right man, then I am satisfied.

If I have ever sung a song that brought out an honest emotion, or written a word that sparked a thought in someone’s mind, then I am happy.

If I have ever fed a hungry animal, whether is was a bird, cat, dog, squirrel, or any other living thing that God has created, then I am satisfied.

If I have ever thought a thought that was pure enough for God to appreciate, then I am very happy.

If I have ever cooked food for loved ones, or strangers that they enjoyed or that made them happy, then I am satisfied.

If I ever told a joke that got an HONEST laugh, then I am happy.

I have seen the Ocean on both sides of this wonderful country and walked in the sands and didn’t do it for the first time until I was 16 years old. It was so wonderful, I was so happy. And I have that same thrill and feeling now, everytime I look out over the ocean….

I have stood besides ruins of a culture in Greece which was over 2500 years old, and I was happy.

I have touched the skin and felt the warmth of every person who I have loved the most on this Earth, and I am so satisfied.

I have eaten my Grandmother’s suppers, and have been filled and fulfilled.

I have listened to my Grandfather play the banjo and sing, and it made me happy and it made me part of who I am today.

I have found many an arrowhead in the fields of my youth, and thought about the people who once populated this land, and was genuinely sorry for what they had to go through, and I was saddened.

I have seen a Golden Eagle in flight. It was a dream come true.

I have listened to the Beatles, Elvis, Mahalia Jackson, Percy Faith, Perry Como, Rod Stewart, Johnny Mathis, The Blues Brothers, The Righteous Brothers, Ray Boltz, Bing Crosby, Sinatra, Dean Martin, Laura Fabian, Eva Cassidy, Judy Garland, Jerry Lee Lewis, Clint Black, The Everly Brothers, and on and on.

I listened to Leonard Cohen sing “Hallelujah” last night on youtube, and watched Prince play the most awesome guitar solo ever on George Harrison’s “While my Guitar Gently Weeps” and I was happy. God…I love music so much. I will miss it one of these days, or it will miss me….

I have watched Meteors pour from the sky at such a rate that no one could have counted them. It was a once in a lifetime thrill.

I have seen an eclipse of the Sun and the Moon, and have seen a Comet in the Eastern sky during the early morning.

I have caught the tears of my children and tasted them. I have touched them when their skin was so soft and delicate that my whiskers made little red spots. Now I do it with my Grandchildren….and it has made me so happy.

I have played my guitar in my younger days until my hands cramped and my fingers bled, and oh what a catharsis it has been for me. Bless the person who invented it.

I have eaten wild onions and smoked rabbit tobacco. I hated them both but it was a matter of pride.

I have given money to many a homeless person, and have never told a soul (until now)

I have been in the middle of Storms of Nature and Storms of life that I did not think I would ever survive, but I did. And I am satisfied I passed the fire of that forge.

And the list could go on and on forever.

I have loved this life, and the souls of the people that our creator has chose to populate the bodies of the ones I love. I love it still every day. I want it still every day. I am afraid of it still every day. I never want it to end, but I know it well. I lay in bed at night and imagine it and dread it, but at the same time I know that it will bring peace and not torment.

I have witnessed things every day that I could not have imagined when I was a child. I witness them now every day, and I am in awe and wonder at what has come to pass.

I have seen the wonderful side of mankind first hand, but have seen his terrible wrath firsthand also, not as much as many…but enough for me to know I don’t want to see more, and I don’t want others to have to experience the awful red anvil of war and famine and death.

But strangely, I understand these things are also is a part of life we must know in order to appreciate the blooming of the delicate flowers of spring, and the birth of a child.

I have cried many tears, and I have asked for forgiveness for the sins I have committed. But there are those that won’t or can’t.

I don’t know what will happen on the day I leave this earth. There are not many who will know or care.

But if it is today, or in 25 years…I am happy, I am satisfied, and I am content.

In the bad dream I had last night, I had just awoken from being knocked down, or knocked out. I had a rag or some kind of headband around my head, and blood was dripping down into my eyes. I was walking….through I neighborhood I knew, but not one that I know.

My left leg was stiff, and I was limping badly. I had a walking stick and was leaning heavily upon it. The air was smokey and dank. Heavy with moisture of some type. Not rain though…something chemical and harmful.

I could see the buildings in the area, and they looked terrible. They didn’t looked like they had been blown up. They looked extremely old. They looked like they had just been standing there “disintegrating” over a long period of time. The sun was trying to break through the smoke, and it looked huge and orange in color.

As I limped very slowly down the hill, towards a valley with a lot of old, tall and dead trees, I saw a huge covey of birds rise up out of the center of that black forest. At first I thought they were blackbirds, but as they came closer, I could hear the “caw, caw” of their rough call, and knew they were crows. My nemesis. Crows.

I thought: “they have been following me for years, and now they are here to kill me”

As they flew closer, I raised the walking stick up into the air and discovered that it had turned into a shotgun! I began to shoot..and shoot…and shoot…

Then…I woke up…

The sun’s fixing to set on another day. I sit here and listen to the sounds of life all around me in this little community. The dogs are barking. The little kids are outside riding their bikes and running around and playing. It’s a Sunday afternoon in the South. I know that there was a country group that had a song about that one time…think it was “Shenandoah” At any rate, I thought at first these things were irritating me. But then, I figured out…I love them because they are indicative of the fact that I am still alive.

I walked the streets twice today, once with two of my children and two of my grandchildren and once with my wife. The sun was shining the second time, when Paula and I were walking but it was windy. I saw a big “dust devil” form right before my eyes, like a mini tornado…tearing up the back alley at my house. It was remarkable and beautiful.

This world that God has put us in, in whatever manner you want to believe it was done…I don’t really care, but this world is a beauty. Most of us, like me, who have lived a good and relatively tragedy free life don’t always appreciate it enough…but on this Sunday afternoon I really do.

I start off walking towards the river. It has always been there. I don’t know how many centuries it has flowed its current course, but likely it has been many. The center of the little town grew up around it’s flood plain, copying the footprints of the Cherokee who lived here and the mound builders who preceded them.

More than likely, even older Paleolithic people inhabited this area over 10,000 years ago as exhibited by Russell Cave in Alabama and the artifacts found there. I think there may have even been some Clovis points found in this area.

I like the spirituality of the land and its lay. This area is one of the most Geologically stable and least changed in this country. Things are much as they were in terms of the land for these past many centuries now. I feel this as I walk.

I imagine a time when the rivers were filled with gar and sturgeon, and even occasionally a bison would wander this far south. When bear, puma and wolf roamed here. When huge trees grew uncut and blocked off the sunlight to the forest floors. I wonder at how the progress of mankind has shaped those bygone days into what I now see on my walks.

Oh I can imagine that life was extremely harsh for humanity in those years. A day was filled with the immediate needs for survival. Food and shelter…clothing. But by and by things got better. There was agriculture, There were the beginnings of government amongst the red man. Especially advanced with the Iroquois nation. What might have developed from these beginnings I often wonder?

I have read in history where the natives of this country were of much more robust and good health than the first Europeans who came here. They were just not resistant to the diseases which came with the white man and between measles, smallpox, and other contagious sicknesses 8 out of 10 of them perished within the first 100 years of contact. The rest were swept aside like dust on a clapboard floor.

Sometimes now as I walk along the bank of the Chattooga river I hear faint voices on the wind whispering “Why, why?” For that question I have no answer.

Melancholy creeps in on me all too quietly and quickly lately. Nostalgia claims me at the strangest times and places. Tears flow as easily as does laughter.

I think of my Grandmother sitting on her front porch so many years ago, late in the evening, looking out at Johnny mountain and gently rocking. She would stare out in the distance for a long time, never speaking but gently humming an old tune.

“What are you thinking about Grandma”? I asked

“Nothing much honey, ” she said. “Just some things I wanted to do today I didn’t get done.”

I understand now. But I have done what I have done, with only a few regrets. I have treasured my time in the sun thus far. And I’m not near ready for that rocking chair yet.

Irene, goodnight

Irene, goodnight

Goodnight irene, goodnight irene

I’ll see you in my dreams

These lyrics and Hank William’s “Jambalaya” were the first songs I ever learned. My Dad said I sang them when I was just over two years old. I remember my Dad singing “Irene goodnight” pretty much all my life. For some reason, he would just break into the chorus from time to time…especially when I was a child. I loved the song, and have ever since.

I heard yesterday where Pete Seeger died and in looking at his biography, I saw where his cover of this “Huddy” song ran at number 1 for 13 weeks back in late 1950 which was the year I was born. I never knew that. I know Pete Seeger for all of his other musical achievements during the late 50’s and 60’s. From him and Peter, Paul and Mary…Dylan, and the other early folk groups came my most deep musical influence. I still can do “Puff the Magic Dragon” pretty well on the guitar, and “Turn, Turn, Turn” will always be in my top five songs of all time. I never knew about “Irene” though. I imagine my Dad probably listened to the that song in 1950 and liked the imagery of the lyrics…being in the Navy and away from home.

Thanks Pete Seeger for all you did for music in America and for all you did for the people of America. Thanks Dad for memorizing “Goodnight Irene”

COTTON TOWN

The first thing I remember about Trion, Georgia is the smells of the cotton mill. I was somewhere between two and three years old when Daddy got out of the Navy, and we all moved into a little old house on sixth street, and Mom and Daddy “set up housekeeping”. I’d been living in Blue Ridge with my Mom and Grandparents, and Mom’s little sister who was 11 years old when I was born. Daddy finally got out of the Navy in ‘52, went to Riegel Textile and got a job, rented a house, and moved us in. We were officially Trionites.

But, back to the smell of the mill. I had no complaints as a three year old. I’d been used to smelling the smoke from a wood burning stove, the scents of bacon frying, cornbread baking, biscuits in the oven. I don’t know if I ate any of it, but I was used to olfactory stimulation. The smells of a cotton mill became familiar quickly. There was the slightly musty, but pleasant smell of bales of cotton. They had an earthy odor, accentuated by the pungency of the burlap they were wrapped in. I found out later how huge they were, passing by them sitting out on the open cotton docks like huge marshmallows that had been half way toasted in a fire on the end of a wire coat hanger.

There was that smell which was sort of like the one that occurred when Momma would iron blue jeans with a hot clothes iron. Kind of on the edge of burny, extremely hot cotton having the wrinkles pressed out. Found out later on, it was cloth being sanforized. I never really realized what that process entailed until many years later when I worked in the mill as a supervisor in the denim finishing department where denim was being sanforized. I learned that the cloth was run through this huge machine, wet down first then partially dried, and run under a gigantic rubber belt that was tightly pushed up against a steel roller. This process pre shrunk the denim, which kept it from shrinking once it was made into blue jeans and sold. It ran over a gigantic steam wheel to totally dry it out, and the exhaust fans above it carried that smell that I’d smelled so many years earlier out into the night air.

There was also the briny, and very stinky sulfuric smell of the bright dye runoff coming from the printing department. At the time I was a child, they just dumped that excess dye after they were finished into a little creek that ran under the mill and out into the Chattooga River. I used to stand at the little bridge above where the stream ran when I was little and marvel at how beautiful and colorful that water was. I had no idea it was polluting the river something awful, and killing the fish. Back in the fifties, it wasn’t that big an issue.

So, I played out on the front steps and in the yard on sixth street. In the bright summer sunshine and during the cold of winter with my heavy coat on, making roads in the dirt for my tootsie toy cars, and pretending to drive all over town. All the while smelling the smells of a Southern cotton mill town wafting through the air.