RED BLUFF

Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Thanksgiving + 2 days - 

“Hey, it’s the weekend; let’s do something, go somewhere.”

“OK, what sounds good?”

“There’s a place up in Mississippi a couple of hours, they call it Mississippi’s Grand Canyon.”

“So, Mississippi has a big hole in the ground?”

“Yea, Red Bluff is up on the Pearl River above Columbia. 

So we jump off mid-morning with a general idea where we are going, GPS set for Columbia, MS. Northbound on I-55, just across the Mississippi line we get the word to exit and head northeast. The road goes two-lane with deep ditches on either side and no shoulder to speak of. Within a few minutes we’re immersed in rural, south Mississippi. The road is curvy-winding, goes through a couple of paint peeling, ’Fried Green Tomatoes’ towns. We discovered unmarked hairpin turns and played chicken with old trucks that wanted their half of the road to come out of the middle. 

In Columbia, we wandered around looking for a place to eat but the streets took weird angles and loops with no particular pattern, maybe game trails from the 17th Century; stopped at a boutique/restaurant but they were redecorating instead of cooking. Since the tornado, a lady told us, nobody knows where to find good food. A man walked in and shared, “Go east on this street and turn right at every light until you come to Walmart and you’ll find a Mexican place in the parking lot.” We did and we did. The food was overpriced, more like a TV dinner but it was filling and we didn’t complain. 

Red Bluff is on state road 578, about 10 miles north. We missed a turn and ended up on hwy 13; took 8 or 10 miles to figure it out and had to back track. By the time we got to Red Bluff the sun was getting low. Mississippi’s grand canyon has not been developed, obviously private property except for the right of way. Some of the road along the edge has eroded and caved into the 200 ft. deep network of gullies and sloughs. The canyon/gully was concealed behind a thick woods. At the south end there was a great, steel barrier that stopped everything but pedestrian traffic and a new section of highway veered off around the woods. A mile later the old road emerged again from the trees. Several houses were on that road and you could drive all the way back to another old barrier, on the edge where blacktop was falling into the gorge. We parked next to other cars, next to the no trespassing/keep out signs and began to walk. Trees that had been growing along the top had oozed down and are now growing at the bottom. We peered over the edge and across the chasm, took photos and walked the feature end to end. What was left of the old asphalt road was in good condition; reflectors imbedded in the center and painted lines indicated that the cave-in was recent. 

Evidently it’s a popular place to camp, and to party. At a high point on the rim, if you will, someone had pitched a tent and there were ashes from a fire. All down the steep wall below, trash and junk had been dispatched. With a little imagination it might have been mistaken for modern art. The power line had run on the eroded side of the road and where it had been rerouted back across, people had started another art display; sneakers tied together in pairs, thrown up and hanging on the wire. It reminded me of a night-spot on the Florida/Alabama border, on the beach, where women threw their brassieres up and over several ropes stretched tight above the stage. I suspect some of those brassieres came from some red neck’s mother’s underwear drawer but the message is simple and straight forward. Flora-Bama is a rowdy place, home to an annual festival that satisfies the same need in song writers that Sturgis, SD does for bikers. I bet a lot to the same bikers do both festivals. 

Understand that I just returned from spending eight days and nights in the real-deal Grand Canyon, in Arizona, a mile deep and ten miles across, 260 miles long. Red Bluff is no grand canyon but it is certainly a geological anomaly. On a high point above the Pearl River, some exotic combination of gravity and ground water caused a hillside to begin slipping toward the river. Erosion works. If I were younger and had more time it would have been a hoot to climb down and explore but I satisfied myself looking and taking photos. It was worth the time and drive up; I’m glad we did it. Where else but in Mississippi would you find such a display of nature’s handiwork on the same page with white-trash trash and lewd, redneck graffiti painted on the old blacktop? It was after dark when we got back to Baton Rouge, to a bowl of ice cream and the last half of a football game. 

“Hey, what’s on for tomorrow? You want to drive down the coast, take photos in the salt marsh, maybe antique shopping on the way back?”

“. . . . . . . . . . . . .”

“What do you think about sleeping late and just hanging out?”

“Yea, I think that will do.”

MUCHAS GRACIAS

Sitting here in holiday aftermath, feeling thankful comes easy. I slept late this morning but I can sleep late every morning. I’m well, able to work at a job but haven’t answered the bell in over 14 years. I didn’t get fired or do anything wrong, I just got old and expensive. There were any number of people who wanted my old job who would do it just as well or better, for a lot less pay. Life is good; they have a job now while I have a pension and social security. If I were religious I’d thank God. Truth is, I don’t know who to thank but it really doesn’t matter, Buddha said that even if there is no god at all, prayer is a good thing; it puts good energy into the system, harms no one and uplifts the person praying. God or not, I am blessed. So my unaddressed prayers always begin and end with ‘Muchas Gracias.’ 

We’ve known for weeks what we would eat, anything we wanted. When I noticed that there was no celery for the stuffing, I drove a short, walkable distance to the market and got celery, plus vanilla ice cream to go with the pumpkin pie I bought three days ago. It sounded good in the moment so why not? Leftovers are all in the refrigerator and we’ve helped ourselves to a before-bed snack of pie and ice cream. We have smoked salmon dip that we didn’t get around to; maybe tomorrow, maybe we get to it Saturday. ‘Muchas Gracias.’ 

I’m in Baton Rouge, Louisiana for the holiday so after dinner I pulled out my smart telephone, touched a button and listen to a phone ring, a long day’s drive away, to the north. My family was together, celebrating each other, their good fortune and blessings. They passed the phone around and I got to wish each one a happy holiday; how cool was that? I’ll get back in time to celebrate Hanukkah, Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa and New Year’s; celebrate at every opportunity, that’s a big B Belief. Family and friends are expecting me. ‘Muchas Gracias.’

Moralists and control freaks use this time of year to dramatize what makes us different, to move us in the direction of their choice. They remind us about Free Will and the consequences of our decisions but I don’t buy it. I do believe in the perception of Free Will but whether or not Free Will has its own legs is speculation. I understand that sometimes you have life and sometimes it has you. I know that the decisions we make are limited to the choices at hand and they may only be ‘Really Bad’ and ‘Terrible.’ This life is about finding joy in the moment and every day, especially holidays, are cause to share the good will we find there. ‘Muchas Gracias.’ - And, everybody said, “de nada.”

WEIRD SHIT

My smart-phone alarm went off at 6:30 this morning and of course, it woke me up. I had been dreaming a weird dream, not unlike many that come and go as I sleep, where I was in a parent-teacher conference with a man I knew in the dream, but not in real life. His kid had failed and I was explaining why. He understood, perplexed that he had no influence with the malcontent teenager. The redundant buzz-buzz-buzz-buzz of my alarm interrupted both sleep and dream and I was back in my own world again but I had absolutely no idea where I was. In a minor quandary, I was trapped by the need to know where I was and the urge to get up and turn off the alarm. It seemed like a long time but then I remembered the rain and the unfamiliar bed; I was at Motel 6 in Horn Lake, Mississippi. It all came back and I got up. Sometimes it’s clear and lucid, other times, who knows why, I’m in a fog. But a long hot shower helps and I’m killing time as I have more time today than miles to travel. 

My better half-lady in Louisiana takes all dreams seriously and tries to analyze them all, hers and mine as well. I recall the old poster of an egg, burning to a crisp in a smoking skillet with the tag line, “Your brain on drugs.” I think my dreams are about a hot, empty skillet. Instead of eggs it is shuffling nonessential cards from different decks into a meaningless movie for me to suffer through. Sleep is better than insomnia but the dreaming is like most TV programming, best appreciated unplugged. But something else will require my attention soon as I have five and a half hours to drive today. A late start won’t be of consequence today and I can take my time over eggs and coffee. 

There is one dream that has never dissolved, never melted away in the chamber of nonsense. It remains fresh and clear even though it is really old. I was in high school, several years before I took up sky diving; maybe a precursor or a harbinger of things to come, but I had this dream. I was falling, free falling from high altitude and I could see the ground rushing up. All of a sudden I recognized where I was, where I would land. In junior high we had a barn yard between our barn and the house where we played baseball. We had to clean cow pies off the baselines before we started but it was level and had good grass. Anyway, I was going to land on our impromptu baseball field. It happened so fast, I just leaned back, hooked my foot behind the other knee and slid into second base. I left a trench, like a plow furrow, where I slid from out in right field straight up to the base and I thought I’d be in trouble for sure when my dad got home. I woke up, went to school but I didn’t tell anyone about my dream, they would have teased me about it. The last people in the world you tell your weird shit are your friends. 

THERAPUTIC

Albert Einstein once said that he had no particular talent, that he was just incredibly curious. Anytime I find something I can identify with that puts me in the same mode as Einstein I milk it for every drop. Obviously, the passion that drives my wanting to know does not measure up to A.E. but still, it takes me places that expand my world even if but a little bit. In my world, everything I see begs a question; Why this? How does that work? I would wonder why the setting sun glows orange one evening and white-hot, retina burning on the next. How is it that birds can fly and when I left the door open or tracked in dirt, sometimes my mom got mad and other times not; why is that? The school of life provides us with much of our understanding just by being there. A 2 yr-old starts figuring out the why’s and how’s without a lesson plan and the school up the road accelerates the process. In the army, in 1960, I decided I wanted to read better. At the time I was reading at about the 5th grade level, that of most news papers and magazines. I had friends who were taking a speed reading class at the base exchange. They shared with me, some of the exercises they did to read faster and for better comprehension. I was taxed just to identify words as they came, one word at a time. There was no context at the end of a paragraph, only the last word. So I started reading Stars & Stripes, the military news paper; speed reading and re-reading. At the end of an article I quizzed myself on the content, reading it again if need be. Then came magazines and paperback novels, Zane Gray westerns mostly. My reading improved.

In college I re-read everything several times. I improvised a crude shorthand system and took detailed notes. Many classes, I was able to get by without too much reading. But there was still lots of bookwork and I used tricks I learned in the army; read fast and read again, and again. I adopted a strategy where I needed to understand for the sake of knowing and I needed to pass exams. In the latter case, B’s were good enough and a C here or there wasn't worth losing sleep over. There were times when I was writing more than reading. When your philosophy professor and biology professor start correcting your grammar and paragraph structure as well as the object lesson, you start paying attention to syntax. I began to learn my native tongue like I was supposed to in high school. 

By then, my 3rd year, writing to satisfy someone else’s expectations, I found myself sitting in the library, writing down words that came from the voice inside my head. The inner-self had found its voice and I was listening. Writing in self defense does two things. It reinforces the connection between organizing-processing complex thoughts and ideas, and that requires good languare. There is another aspect of writing that one cannot appreciate vicariously. Remembering details that are filed away in long term memory is no simple task. Everything that comes in, as the day wears on, is filed away on a need to know basis. Trivial bits and pieces that don’t figure into the meat of the day may be lost forever. Some days, many days that are not particularly memorable will be filed away so deeply that those memories cannot be retrieved. 

It’s ever so easy to slip into a comfortable mood where you bundle the brain-mind collective into one package. Brain is one thing, like the mother board or logic board in a computer. The mind is the computer full of data, turned on, running, producing an outcome. When you want to remember something but can't recall, it’s because you can’t access that memory, not because it isn’t there. Writing about day to day experiences, feelings, ideas, etc. creates networks and connections in the brain that raises the likelihood of remembering. I remember with detail clarity a day when my firstborn was about 6 months old, I was on my back, holding him up above me, wiggling left and right and he was delighted, giggling and burbling. His mother had him in a pair of red bib pants and a blue pullover. He opened his mouth to laugh and a great string of viscous drool stretched out and down from his lip. As it hung over my face I had time to think about my options. I could change what I was doing and avoid the slobber or I could ignore it and keep playing our little game. We kept on playing. The drool came and went without incident. I wrote about that little vignette in the notes I had begun keeping. I remember the part I wrote about but nothing else about that day or the day before or the day after. 

I don’t know who reads my stuff but whoever pauses here, in my journal or blog, if you are not already listening to that internal voice, the one that will speak if only you listen; if you are not writing down, recording your day to day experiences and ideas then I encourage you to begin. You are never too old to begin; it's not a diary and you don't have to write every day. It doesn’t matter what you believe about your ability or the worth of your experiences. Someday, you will reach back for something and it will either be there on your finger tips or you will come away empty. With age comes the point of diminishing returns; being alone and lonely catches up to us all if we live long enough. We save our money because we will need it some day. No less the treasure trove of story, the simple tale of one day at a time; a simple kiss, a woodpecker drumming, the smell of fresh plowed earth, a string of gooey slobber. 

ILLUSIONS

I remember when life was so full of demands and expectations that I needed another pair of hands and a few more hours in each day. You are so immersed in the process that you simply do what you can, swept along through time and space with all the other, civilized flotsam. But that was then; if you have health and a shred of wealth, if you have people you trust and care about, if they care back, retirement is a sweet spot in an otherwise frantic scramble. The down side is that you’ve grown old in the meantime. The invincibility of youth is necessary for survival; you plunge ahead because the alternative is to die on the vine. You don’t look down, you don’t slow down, nothing is going to stop you because if you fail today you can get up and try again. When you get the message, “It’s time for you to step aside and let someone else push the stone up the hill,” you’re not invincible any more. If you lack any of those four assets; health, wealth, respect and affection, what's left of joy ebbs away on every breath. 

Old men's laments are as cliche as young lover’s, “I love you.” In either case they move on, like it or not, to the next circumstance. This is not a lament. I just understand that it is my time to remember, to remember the preoccupation and sense of urgency that drives people. It never occurred to me that my grandparents saw themselves in me; it was their time to remember. The illusion that there is plenty of time is ignorance in disguise but it feels natural and normal. When I was 12, I couldn’t imagine being 16. When I was 35, becoming a grandparent never crossed my mind. It never crossed my mind that old lives are as important to the old as young lives are to the young. They had their turn and it's not about them anymore. Like our pets, I remembered when they ran and played, barked at strangers but now all they do is lay on the porch hoping for a benevolent pat on the head. 

The stereotype that 70 is the new 50 takes too much for granted. Many of us do live longer, healthier, better than our predecessors but many do not. Out of sight in senior citizen warehouses or wheelchair bound in a caregiver’s back bedroom, they melt away anonymously. I have lived a charmed life; good fortune is my friend. Every time I fell, it was in a soft place. When doors closed, windows opened. For me to grumble now would be unforgivably narrow and selfish. But my eyes don’t see and my ears don’t hear like they should and when I try to run it comes off as a crude shuffle. I don’t like it but I do understand, it is my time to remember. If I want consolation I can turn to others like myself or to Buddha who said that suffering is life’s common denominator. It implies that if you are passed over in your youth, don’t be surprised when it comes back around. Joseph Campbell, ‘Hero With A Thousand Faces’ said, “We cannot cure the sorrows of the world but we can choose to live in joy.” That’s what I’m trying to do, choose joy over the illusions that cluttered my bumbling, stumbling youth. Khalil Gibran said, “Children live in the world of tomorrow and we can not go there with them. All we can do is peer through their window." So I’ll hang on the sill and watch for as long as there’s light to see by. 

THE SMALLEST ARC

          I’m going to a concert this weekend, a guitar guy of course who writes his own songs but none of them sound anything like the formula driven doo-da’s that come out of Nashville. There doesn’t seem to be any rule for line length or breaks and he tells his songs with only a hint at a melody. He is a musical storyteller and I like that. Way back in another century, Sam Baker was a guitar playing bank examiner from Austin, TX. On a train in Peru, on his way to Machu Picchu a terrorist bomb exploded in the luggage rack over his head. Everyone in his compartment was killed except for Sam. He suffered brain damage, hearing loss, kidney failure, gangrene and after a multitude of surgeries he still shouldn’t have survived but he did. 

I went to YouTube and found an interview he did recently. It touched on his music but centered on the bomb experience and how that had influenced his career. He said the one thing that permeated it all was empathy, the feeling and caring for those suffering and dying around him. “I think before that I was pretty self contained with a narrow view of the world. I never sensed others suffering,” he said. He made the distinction between viewing the world and sensing it, as viewing had some element of choice. Suffering and dying were going on all around him in the intensive care unit of the Peruvian hospital but he couldn't do anything, couldn't move. He had a lot of time to think, a lot of questions to chew on. “How does this lottery work, who lives and who dies?” He said he’d come to peace with living, carrying on for those who died. “It’s not a burden, it’s a gift.” The gift he spoke of is a value, to carry forward, to help others who are struggling. “All of us, everyone, we are living on borrowed time. We’ve all missed tragedy by the smallest fraction, the smallest arc of electricity has saved us, so it’s not just me; it’s not just me.” He felt that his job is to reciprocate that gift in some sort of fair trade, energy and good will for everybody. He had come out from a dark depression to the realization that we are all at the mercy of someone else’s dreams, that today is beautiful and that forgiveness and gratitude are miraculous. “I’m always where I need to be," he said, "and I believe that my will is a handicap.” 

I’ll be in the balcony on Friday night, listening to Baker’s take on what makes the world go round and how people treat each other. I've missed tragedy by the smallest fraction and we’ve struggled on different hooks but our stories have a common thread. The difference is that he tells it so much better than I could. His song, ‘Baseball’ is awesome and I hope for sure it is on his play list.