After seven months of tumbling down the Covid ‘Rabbit Hole’, every day presents its own set of bizarre coincidences. Like with Alice, when it all begins to feel ‘real’, something upsets the cart and the tumbling resumes. The virus alone should be enough to make people take stock, rethink what is important and what can wait. One would remember that a common threat like World War II allowed people to set aside their competing interests and collaborate. But with today’s paranoia we get the opposite. Instead of joining forces the pandemic is adding fuel to the angst between zombie-like political partisans.
On the up-side; I woke up still not dead again today. That is the title and hook line from a Willie Nelson song from five or six years ago. I’ve mentioned it before in this journal. Still, the clever word play and its affirmation of life, it is good medicine for this old man. It goes on to complete the rhyme; “. . . the internet said I had passed away.” Watching Willie age over the years, I can only appreciate his sense of living in the moment and a profound understanding that life is short, live now.
My house is half a mile from the interstate but there is a far reaching gully that funnels road noise all the way up the swale and through my yard. In the dark, with the bedroom window open I can hear the traffic and get a sense of how late it is. On weekends, there is a local motorcycle jockey who waits until the wee-hours to race the highway; must be young and fearless. Certainly not fat old pony tail dudes on Harleys, the sound is unmistakably, crotch-rocket. From the tight pitch, high rpm’s I can extrapolate instinctively; over 100 mph. Every weekend, several runs each night; who they are racing, I don’t know. But it wakes me up and I remember what it felt like to go fast on a motorcycle. Excitement overrides every other brain function and danger only heightens the rush.
A boyhood friend, we were neighbors as kids, he died of cancer in 2011. At his funeral I noticed an unusual memorial nearby. It was a large, engraved granite slab, mounted on its edge with several identical grave stones arranged in front of it. Checking closer, the slab identified with a local bar and motorcycle club, paying tribute to their lifestyle. Each of the matching granite grave stones were simple with a Harley Davidson logo, a cavileer quote, a name and the span of each life. How they died was not revealed but in every case, they all died young. If I were to revisit Owen’s grave and check the Harley Davidson collection, there might very well be more recent plantings. They cross my mind in the wee hours when the scream of high rpm’s snake up the gully and in my window: and if falling back to sleep is easy it could be Willie’s and my shared observation; “But if I died I wasn’t dead to stay; and I woke up still not dead again today.”
As I approach the end of each article my nature is to create closure, falling back on something rational, something I think everyone should know. But I resist that temptation today. Most of what I think to be interesting and important would not raise an eyebrow of someone still plotting life’s maze. There was a time I wondered what my grandfather thought, what he believed. But had I asked, one of us would dismiss the other, that his blade had lost its edge or that my shooter was unloaded. But my musical backstory has a long play list and I drink from that well. I pick the song, I listen for as long as it meets my need. I would love to engage with him now, me at 81 and he at 132. We wold disagree on how women and people of color should be treated. But we would find a common ground with the music and the stories there in. “You can’t believe a word that people say, and I woke up still not dead again today.”
No comments:
Post a Comment