Whiskey Wings

Whiskey wings lead to cold, hard falls. It's axiomatic.

A Short Rant. Indulge Me.

(note: this is all out of season, copied from an earlier blog of mine around Christmastime a year ago. I just re-read it and liked what I said.)

I heard a snippet of the 'Focus On The Family' radio broadcast this afternoon. Now, I have some respect for Dr. James Dobson. I think he's a good man and a solid authority on parenting. That said, I had to cringe a bit when I heard him recounting an experience he had recently at a department store. Best I could figure, a cashier had the temerity to wish him 'Happy Holidays' when he completed his purchases and I suppose it got his righteous indignation going. According to him, he replied with something like, 'Isn't there a better way to say that? How about Merry Christmas?' Okay. I'm not unaware of the frustrations my fellow believers feel as we watch the apparent marginalization of Christianity in society. It's easy to be aggravated at the climate of political correctness that makes it unfashionable to speak frankly about traditional viewpoints. That's all easily understandable. But let's look at Dr. Dobson's approach...was even a gentle upbraiding of a Lord & Taylor's cashier appropriate? Perhaps the young lady was Jewish. Perhaps she was agnostic, atheist, wiccan, or simply abiding by company policy. What Dr. Dobson seems to be missing is that the world doesn't owe him a 'Merry Christmas'. I'd remind him of our Lord's words in John 15:18...'If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.' This is indicative of the big, overarching problem in the mindset of many believers in this age and in this country. There's no question that a great many of our neighbors who are not Christians look at us as political bullies and crass, insensitive busybodies who just want to be all up in everyone's business. And I tend to agree with them. Look...I doubt anyone is going to ever going to be brought closer to the saving grace and love of Christ by our ham-fisted attempts to hammer this country into the shape that's pleasing to our own morality. It seems to me that the cause of God's kingdom would be better served if we would all tread more lightly and tend to our own spiritual gardens.

Here's what that looks like to me:
> if you don't believe in abortion, don't get one.
> if you don't believe in same-sex marriage, don't marry anyone the same sex as you.
> if you're troubled by Christ being marginalized around Christmastime, then keep Him in the center of your life....see how that might work? Live the life. Walk the walk. Teach your children and love your neighbors and spend less time wringing your hands that unbelievers don't share your moral compass. Remember, brothers and sisters, what James wrote at the end of chapter one of his wonderful letter: 'Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.'

Dreams, Lately

Flummoxed

Hands down, the strangest dream I've had in recent memory happened about a week ago...and like most of my dreams it didn't have much shelf life and my rendering of it here will be a faint shadow of its actual splendor.

What I remember is this: I was in some rural mountain region which I'd judge to be to our west by the landscape...some tall timber, but sparse ground cover over rocky, sandy soil. One of those high prairies near where the vegetation changes as the elevation tilts up the sides of a mountain range. I was visiting a family or group of people who had built a huge, rambling cabin-shelter high on a plateau. The structure seemed to stretch along a ridge in a series of interconnected rooms all in a row and they all had some kind of 'lookout' aspect to them: a platform that either gave out onto the roof and equipped with a mounted scope or binoculars, or some kind of similar device positioned at a window. At the center of most of the rooms was a sitting or reclining construct made of rough materials like rawhide strips and ripcut wood slats, but all ingeniously crafted and most suspended from the rafters of the room by ropes or from the floor by posts. I got the impression that whoever owned the place was enlisting my help to witness some border dispute or other...I spent a lot of time looking through the scopes and binoculars in all directions...and also to talk about some dangerous wildlife. Wolves or bears, I'd guess. Suddenly everything fell away except for the sense that I'd been involved in some 'encounter' with a woman related to the household...we were alone in the rambling building, taking advantage of one (or more) of the clever suspended pieces of primitive furniture. Just as suddenly, that woman and I were outdoors at the edge of a hard winter wilderness...I felt (analyzing the dream later) that we had been banished from the house on account of our tryst in the building and put out in the wild to find our way to civilization. We were intent on doing something to make sure we weren't caught out by a coming storm that was going to cause landslides and fill the mountainsides with trees and debris. In a short span of time, we had avoided both some wolves and some strange mountainfolk who were trying to rob us. Soon we were hurtling down a canyon that had been turned into a churning rapid by the cold sleet and rain. We had managed to fashion or find some kind of craft like a small boat...but I woke up before we had reached safety. We were dodging huge trees and bolders when I snapped upright, wondering where the hell I was. Who was she? Why was her family so angry about her encounter with me, or vice versa?

Raptor

I think it was the day before yesterday that I pointed my vehicle south down a rural Kentucky highway. I rounded a curve with a newly-mowed hayfield on my right and a sloping, hilly vista on my left that drops away toward the Pallisades, those steep, striking cliffs with the lazy Kentucky River at their feet. A red-tailed hawk was beating the air with his wings, looking for purchase on an updraft that would help him clear the highway. He flew directly in front of me for a short distance and I saw that he held a snake in his right talon. Suddenly he made a move to go more vertical; the stall brought him close enough to my car that he got rattled and dropped his feast. The snake spun down toward me, describing first a 'C' and then a question mark in the air before I passed underneath. It thumped onto my roof, slid backward, and dropped onto the yellow centerline behind me. I glanced at it in my side mirror. I reckon crows deserve to eat, same as hawks.

Nature Abhors A Vacuum

Pondered-Out

In the interest of truth in labeling, I should mention that I'm only vaguely aware of what that 'subject' heading has to do with what's on my mind today...but if I had to try to connect the dots, I'd say that I've just been thinking a lot about how when something or someone leaves my life, there's always something to mark the displacement. A lot of things and some people disappear with only the smallest effect: there's a momentary swirling of the waters, perhaps a small eddy in the wake, and the space is filled with either forgetfulness or the awareness of something or someone new. Often, though, it's not so simple. When a person, place, or thing is rooted deeply inside me and then is gone, there's an entire suite of cataclysms that gets set into motion. Whether the vacancy is slow and measured, a careful drawing-out intended to cause the least disturbance, or it happens suddenly with the whipcrack-snap of a heart or two breaking, everything in my life gets rearranged. There's some unavoidable geometry at work that ties the magnitude of the shuffle to my love of the Cherished Thing Lost. Sidebar: I read this little snippet near the end of a short story by Poppy Z. Brite, the strange and beautiful New Orleans writer of gothic fiction whose shoelaces Ann Rice is not fit to tie: 'You hold on to what you have; you do not give it up easily, even when you know it is poisoning you.' I'm looking around at the aftermath of some self-induced upheaval. I don't think I've ever cast out any of my own demons, but I do think every now and again I've opened my eyes certain mornings with a terrible clarity and known that whatever spun-sugar shrine I'd constructed around someone or something had melted away. Hateful and blessed, those certain mornings move me ahead and through my life. I don't like them but without them I'd still be in love with the first girl I ever cried over, back in the third grade. (Her name was Kathy Leaf...and Kathy, wherever you are, I hope you're well and happy, and I'll always remember.) That phrase in my subject line is an axiom of this physical world and I'm convinced that for most of us, our hearts are bound by it as well. Emptiness isn't a tenable state for us...even though sometimes, it sounds like it would be a gift. Instead, we're tied to the laws of the vacuum; when something gets removed, something else rushes in to fill the void. Tears and alcohol; blood and water; pain and mistakes and hard lessons learned.

Desert Island, Top Ten, All-Time Most Memorable...

Decisive

"What came first? The music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns or watching violent videos...that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands, of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery, and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"
-- Rob Gordon (John Cusack) in "High Fidelity"

Someone recently asked me to list my 'Desert Island' songs...I interpret that as the songs that I couldn't live the rest of my life without hearing again. Another spin on it is to think of ten songs that, were I actually Stranded On A Desert Island (I have no boat, but somehow, I have a solar-powered CD player?) I could listen to over and over, ad infinitum. Perhaps there would be something in the synergy of those ten songs that would either stave off insanity, or somehow mercifully hasten it. So, with that in mind, let's get it started. (I'm putting these in a playlist-order, but please don't infer that I like #1 more than #10.)

1) 100 Games Of Solitaire, by Concrete Blonde
This song is here and in position number one because I've been in love with it since the very first time I heard it. An awesome display of crunch & slide guitar, and while Johnette Napolitano's incredible voice is mostly held in breathless check here, her diamond-hard attitude is right up front. Instant classic. Plus, no thinking person could resist the lines: 'I got a hundred miles of desert / Got a head of fresh air / And I know a hundred games of solitaire.'

2) Ball And Chain, by Social Distortion
I knew I'd want to have these guys around; picking a song of theirs was tough because there's so much to choose from. This one is a great example of their rockabilly propers but it also has the hopeless lyrical misery that we've all come to expect from Social Dee.

3) Maybe Angels, by Sheryl Crow
I've always loved this song...kind of like having all the best episodes of the X-Files distilled into one slinky little rock song. And it's just enough fun to keep me from stabbing myself with a sharpened palm frond after listening to Social Distortion.

4) Big Shot, by White Animals
The sad thing here is that only a handful of us in this world have ever gotten to hear this song. Kevin, Steve, Rich, and Ray...the White Animals, from Nashville, Tennessee...served up some of the best live rock and roll I've ever had the pleasure to witness.

5) Angel, Won't You Call Me, by The Decemberists
I had to have this band, and again, the dilema was choosing one song. I went with the first song that I ever heard by them and I think it's still my favorite. 'I've been so unbridled...'

6) When The Day Is Short, by Martha Wainwright
This is another song that I fell in love with instantly and have not been able to get enough of, hundreds of listenings later. I will go home with whoever is sure...are you sure?

7) Lakes Of Ponchartrain, by The Be Good Tanyas
I'll forever be thankful that I was introduced to this song and these voices. It's a stellar bit of songwriting and a powerful performance. It still raises the hair on the back of my neck to listen to it.

8) Back In The High Life Again, by Warren Zevon
I wouldn't want to never hear Warren's gravel-and-gin-soaked warble again. This acoustic rendering from 'Life'll Kill Ya' is really special.

9) Till I See You Again, by Kevin Welch AND Wild And Blue, by John Anderson
I'm cheating here but both of these great country songs combined only weigh in at about five minutes, less than the bulk of 'Ball And Chain' alone, so I'm going to cram them into one track. 'Till I See You' somehow manages to be heavy and breezy at the same time and has one of my all-time favorite guitar leads by the great Mike Henderson. Kids, don't try this at home. And 'Wild And Blue' is about as perfect an application as I can imagine of two of the greatest voices ever: John Anderson and Emmylou Harris.

10) I Lost It, by Lucinda Williams
Lucinda Williams' songwriting is just too good to pass up. I love this testimony to loss, regret, and resignation.

Well...that was a draining experience. I realize there are a lot of songs missing from this list that probably have a deeper impact on me than some of these, but that don't belong here simply because they are too painful, or too personal, or too perfect. Six months from now, my list would very likely be different. My life is what they call in espionage techno-thrillerspeak 'a fluid situation'. Besides, there are basketfuls of variables to be considered with this whole 'Desert Island' scenario. Am I stranded alone, or with someone? Is the someone likely to get testy, having to listen to the soundtrack of my life over and over? Will he (or she) break my solar-powered CD player while I sleep? I'm going to have a margarita and think about it.

A True Ghost Story

Whistling Past.

I know, because it happened to me. Let me preface this recollection by pointing out that I'm a bit of a skeptic when it comes to 'phenomena.' While I'm firmly convinced that there's a spiritual realm that touches the physical one and that we're all created to be aware of that, I'm not in a hurry to subscribe to the notion that there are unquiet shades of the departed lurking around ready to freak the holy hell out of us. That said, I got the holy hell freaked right on out of me one autumn afternoon in 1992. I was living in an extremely rural part of western Tennessee, near the small community of Olive Hill, just a few miles inside the Hardin County line. The road that fronted my farm descended off the ridgetop from Highway 64; patchy blacktop lasted about a mile into 'the holler' and then gave way to about sixteen miles of dirt and gravel cutting through rich bottomland between Indian Creek and Dry Creek. About a quarter mile from my driveway was an old logging road that had been improved by some unknown landowner far at the top of the ridge behind my property and for a short distance, the woods at the very back of my thirty-nine acres ran along bordered by that road. I was in the habit of riding my mountain bike up that slope occasionally and then turning at the top for a very fast and jittery slalom down the clay-and-chert surface, ending with a sharp right turn adjacent to a little Mennonite church that sat just off the main road. One particular day, around this time of the season and thirteen years ago, I was just beginning to toil up that road with the little church on my right and an old fencerow with a monstrous stand of blackberry bramble overgrowing it on my left. Very suddenly, I heard (or thought I did) a single word spoken: it was a name, and I thought I understood it to be 'McEachern'...I knew a family by that name back in south Georgia...but there was no one anywhere around, and in any case, the voice I heard was soft and conversational, not shouted as if I had overheard it from a distance. I can't explain exactly why but I felt compelled to stop my bike and pull off the side of the logging road for a moment. I was very uneasy and looked off into the woods, wondering if there was someone just off the road in the thick stands of maple, oak, and hickory that grew heavy up in those hollers. I didn't see anyone. I did see something I'd never noticed before: about twenty feet into the woods, an old and unkempt collection of headstones, partially enclosed by a rusty knee-high ironwork fence. As it happens, I'm fascinated by old cemetaries and I didn't waste any time hopping over the little barrier and wandering slowly among the old, worn markers, my experience of just a moment before dismissed as nothing and fading away. Most of the headstones were too worn for any words to be made out, with just a few mossy, curved indentions to suggest that once upon a time, someone marked someone's passing with these little monuments. There were two headstones near the corner of the little plot farthest from the logging road that seemed to be in better shape than the rest...even in the shade I could see from several paces away that there was legible writing on both. When I knelt beside the first one, I felt as if the ground tilted sharply underneath me and my hands tingled and grew damp. There, in a smart and stylish serif lettering was a single word...a name. McLern. When I repeated it out loud, I knew straightaway that was the name I had heard in my head at the bottom of the hill. I had never encountered that name before and haven't encountered it since, except in my memory of that day. Two McLern brothers lie under those two headstones in that little cemetary in Hardin County, Tennessee. I don't remember the name of the brother farthest from the road, but James was the man's name whose grave I knelt beside first. If memory serves he was born in 1814 and died in 1878. His two daughters penned this poem and had it engraved on his marker: 'Rest, dear father, our steps wake thee not Here by thy grave, a consecrated spot Sweet be thy slumber in the narrow cell And soft thy pillow; father, farewell.' Did something of James' spirit remain, strong and willful enough to speak his name into my consciousness that day? I only know that having heard his name, I'll never forget him.