Happy Friday, folks!
If you’re a plant, you’re delighted. If you’re a bee, you’re annoyed. If you’re a cricket, you’re cautiously drying the ol’ violin and giving a chirp here and there.
It’s been raining for years, but is showing signs of clearing. I stood by the horse’s water trough this morning, watching the hose, waiting as the cool well water replaced the green mosquito kool aid. The mountain slept in, dozing under formless bright gray clouds.
It looked like I had erased the upper half of the scene in Photoshop, blending Friday into the bright monotone color of…Nothing.
Static. Mental static. TV static. Stasis. Stasis doesn’t exist. (At least not for me.)
Coincidences, mysteries, galaxies, all swirling unseen behind the bright Nothing. There’s a zing and a zip. They’re present. My mind relaxes a psi or two.
I don’t know how it all works. (Isn’t that comforting?)
I’ve got a cool story for you.
A Rainy Night
I’ve never been to an open mic of my own volition.
I used to be so competitive with music, so driven, so twisted around the axle of needing to sharpen. Any gig was a stepping stone to in an endless road to validation, and I resented the moss on the sleepier ones.
(Too bad, because moss is nice.)
And I left work at work. Why go to means to an end for relaxation if you don’t like either?
That path wasn’t for me, and strangely, I moved away from the city into the land of pines and oaks and moss, real and metaphorical.
It was an accident that I wandered in to the book shop on their open mic night. I was there for business reasons, similarly edgy and ambitious and pushy and “can you leave this book sample for your boss please, how might I follow up with him, thank you.”
Yes, I’m on a mission to get the Cities on a Hill book out there. One of these days I’ll learn to slow down and trust.
It’s happening a little bit.
Instead of leaving, I listened to a lady play Hank Williams. Hey, that’s pretty good. I’ll stay for one more. Shelves beckoned. Mill and Chesterton and Emily Dickinson said hello. Warm acoustic tones drifted around the pillars of western philosophy and there, ‘round the corner, a book of fables I had when I was a lad. I forgot about the poor dog who finds his fortune! A girl sang an English folk tune and then played some weird instrument. “What was that?” I asked. “It was so cool.”
“Uh…a concertina.”
“Oh. Nice.”
The dude with the neat guitar told me it’s features. Turns out he’s in a band with the owner of the shop, and in healthcare.
“Hey man, I think you’d dig my new book. I’ll have get you a copy sometime.”
This guitar gentleman was up next, so I sat and watched and…enjoyed. Man, these people were good. And they were nice, the place cozy.
My mind started down the usual track of why do we like music, how might we optimize it, what if I put a set together that…
And then I stopped, and enjoyed.
A train blew by outside the window, past the old station, rain-slicked freight cars rushing into the dusk, bound for points west, unknown.
I’ve been on that train so many times, deafened by the throb of diesel ambition, hurtling to the unattainable Future in metallic ruin, missing the warm pools of light trackside in small towns where people congregate and listen and applaud to things understandable and not.
It was nice to be inside.
Time for the next number.
“Here’s a Chuck Berry song called ‘You Never Can Tell.’”
“It was a teenage wedding, and the old folks wished them well
You could see that Pierre did truly love the mademoiselle
And now the young monsieur and madame have rung the chapel bell
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell”
Miss Golden! Oh, she would request that song all the time when she was alive. I’d rumble my DJ cart to the second floor, lean into her room, and ask what she wanted to hear.
“The one…the one about the old folks wishing them well.”
I’d always play her this song. I wonder if she just liked the beat. I suspect she wishes it were the story of her life. It wasn’t.
She’s Chapter 12 in Cities on a Hill. Here’s an excerpt:
We sat and talked about things little and big.
“Did you ever get married?”
“No” came the reply through a blue cloud of Camels.
“Close?”
A pause
“Well…Mr. Ronald never asked.”
The wind cuts again, bringing me back to the present with a shiver.
There’s Mr. Ronald on this bitter January hillside, inseperable since they were twenty, left behind.” –Cities on a Hill, page 174
The song ended. The rain kept falling, two hundred miles away from those long halls that I used to spin the original. Miss Golden was gone completely, dead as my old life, but tonight, an echo reached across time, and tapped me on the shoulder.
I had to tell him.
“Man, there was a lady I knew once. She was all about that song. I’ll be right back.”
Bolting out into the rain, rummaging through the glovebox, finding one last copy of Cities, pressing it into his hands, dog earing Chapter 12.
“She loved that tune.”
What are the chances? I guess it was meant to be for him to have the book.
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell.