Just being me

Happy as something unimportant
and free as a thing unimportant.  

   - Anna Swir, from Happy as a Dog's Tail

Sometimes I find I don't really know how to relax and just be myself in a given moment. I can live in my head, over-thinking and making complexities where they don't need to exist. Memories from a minute ago, an hour ago, a day ago, a month, a lifetime, get re-lived and analyzed, as if I could construct some alternate reality for them if I re-live them enough. I find myself trying to understand life, intimately, rather than live it as it comes. I'm not talking about fatalism or determinism, just the ability to, as the quaint little prayer goes, "accept those things I cannot change and [have] the wisdom to know the difference."

I grow a little stiff with, a little lean with, a little faint with, a little
worn with seeming.
I must need to conquer my mind.
The roses dead because of drought
because whoever lives here cares enough
to let their roses die. I must
need to conquer the notion
anything needs conquering. 

    - Ari Banias, from The Happy

Then, on less frequent occasions (though more and more frequently), I settle into my self, my time, and space (some would no doubt say I am being fully "present") and, like a breath exhaling, I spread out and relax. Is contentment the same thing as happiness? Maybe; probably. I know I'm finding more and more of that now.

To come to things—swift
as a ray of light, or a look.
To live as I write: spare—the way
God asks me—and friends do not. 

   - Marina Tsvetaeva, from I am happy living simply

The musician who goes by the name of Perfume Genius recently wrote a song (Just Like Love):

Sleeve cut just off the shoulder
You are christening the shape
They'll talk
Give them every reason
For child, you walk 

Just Like Love

Of that song, Perfume Genius says, "I saw this Facebook video of a boy, probably around seven, wearing a dress he had fashioned from a blanket, sashaying through his house while his mother applauded and cheered him on. He was so proud. It was such a beautiful thing, but bittersweet because I knew his spirit would change soon, that he’d become self-aware and ashamed, at some level. The song is about how divine he is, then and always — that he was born perfect."

Feeling and being me
Is good as good can be.
I claim my own identity. 

I am as happy as a flower
Perfuming its one hour
With a sweet sense of power. 

   - Katherine Wisner McCluskey, from Wholly Happy

When you are a lifetime of practiced at being what you are not, it takes a while to relax. It does, though, get better.

Today's Playlist:

• Perfume Genius: Just Like Love
• Bill Frisell: Fields of Alfalfa
• Carl Jackson & Merle Haggard: Must You Throw Dirt in My Face
• Calder: 9-Vessel
• Brian Withycombe: My All
• Donavon Frankenreiter: Dance Like Nobody's Watching
• ELO: The Whale
• Bruce Cockburn: Justice

Futuramic

Wednesday morning wanders quietly by, as much passing as present. A sense of forward movement is created by this apex of midweek.

If this is Wednesday, there’s a demo on the green at 11. Took B to his first down at Quonset Point in August. Blue skies. Boston collective provided good grub for all. Long column of denims and flannel shirts. Smell of patchouli made me so wistful, wanted to buy a woodstove, prop my feet up, share a J and a pot of Constant Comment with a friend. Maybe some zucchini bread.  

From Living, by C. D. Wright

Like an old Olds 88 I recently saw at a local car show - life is feeling "futuramic" of late: dynamic and shifting, constant change (and, maybe, growth), new horizons.

My sister woke me very early
that morning and told me
“Get up, you have to come see this
the ocean’s filled with stars” 

   - From Future Memories by Mario Melendez

Speaking of future, my favorite musician/poet has a new album (his 33rd studio album!) coming out this Friday. Bruce Cockburn's Bone On Bone sounds like another gem and, "...touches on many subjects close to Cockburn’s heart, including the poet Al Purdy, life in Trump’s America, and the complexities of personal spirituality."

A poet/songwriter who loves poets:

Pokers in the counting house counting out the bacon
matter's getting darker in the universe they're making
they love the little guy until they get a better offer
with the dollar getting smaller they can fit more in their coffers
and the doings on the corner neither sung nor seen
they're circling the shopping carts at Sherbourne and Queen
I resemble that assembly but I'm not the same
Al Purdy's poems are the name of my game
the winds of fate blow where they will
I'll give you 3 Al Purdy's for a twenty dollar bill 

   - Bruce Cockburn, from 3 Al Purdys  (you can listen to this song here)

Of the song, Cockburn says, "Then I had this vision of a homeless guy who is obsessed with Purdy’s poetry, and he’s ranting it on the street. The song is written in the voice of that character."

And I'm feeling futuramic; that is the voice of my character for, at least, this moving-forward Wednesday.

Ancient and compelling

Monday having been the Labor Day holiday all of yesterday, he comes this morning dressed as Tuesday. The sky has that peculiar orange-tinged brown of coming snow, even though it is already nearly 70 (F)/21 (C) and a little muggy, on its way to a forecast high of 93/34.

It could be Ash Tuesday, from the looks of it, but without pancakes. There is even something not unlike snow gently filtering down around me.

I came out this morning to find my car covered in a dusting of very fine ash, the skies smokey, the light heavily filtered and looking for all the world like it did during the recent solar eclipse, and ash falling ever so lightly from the skies. Today's forecast simply says, "smoke."

The Norse Ridge fire in the Wenatchee National Forest is raging and the winds are bringing its output our direction today. The cremation dust of so many trees swirls around us.

...like the girl
at a bend near the Museum gazebo: she tips
a throe of ashes from a brassy urn,
kneeling, not pious, just there, slanting her head
as if to speak to the passing, do it right,
shrug fine ores into the river—it takes so long
to cast away so little left of kin or friend
to Schuylkill, Delaware, Chesapeake, Atlantic,
someone she knew, walked gardens with, and must have loved. 

   - W. S. Di Piero, from The Ash Bringer

I had Al Stewart's Year of the Cat queued up on my phone this morning, so it proceeded to create an ad hoc playlist built around that song. Nostalgia music, most of which I hadn't heard in many years.

But kissed unconscious between Medicine Bow and Tombstone
He shall love at the precipice brink who would love these mountains.
Whom this land loves shall be a holy wanderer,
The eyes burned slick with distances between
Kennebunkport and Denver, minted of transcience.
For him shall that river run in circles and
The Tetons seismically skipping to their ancient compelling music
Send embassies of young sierras to nibble from his hand.  

   - Thomas McGrath, The Topography of History

Old tunes, if not "ancient compelling music," with which to drive through the ashes of ancient and compelling woods on this rather ad hoc Ash Tuesday start of the work week.

Today's playlist:

• Al Stewart, Year of the Cat
• Little River Band, Reminiscing
• Bread, If
• The Hollies, Long Cool Woman (In A Black Dress)
• Blood, Sweat, & Tears, Spinning Wheel
• Cat Stevens, Wild World