The Great Divide: 1963

          “Now I’ll never dance with another, since I saw her standing there.”

That’s one scenario. Here’s another:

“I’m tryin' to make some girl, who tells me

baby, better come back maybe next week.

Can't you see I'm on a losing streak."

In 1963, we got divided. Clueless baby boomer guys, turning teen, chose one popsong fantasy or the other:

The steady girlfriend or the one night stand. 

John, Paul, George and Ringo offered a dream about finding true love, fidelity and a life-mate at a dance event.

On the other end, the Stones offered a chronic complaint about the frustrations of trying to score a one-night-stand.

Very early on, I made my choice.

Perhaps that’s one reason why I’ve been married to the same woman for 42 years. Thank God for that. 

But that’s the fast-forward. Let’s run the tape back to 1963. 

There I am, twelve years old, laying in bed in my dark bedroom, my ear tuned to the  transistor radio. Suddenly I am hearing a sound that I had never heard before: 

“Well, she was seventeen; you know what I mean . . .”

Later, in 1979, when I met my life-mate, that fantasy was fulfilled:

Now I’ll never whoopee with another, since I saw her standing there. 42 years and counting. It's been a great ride. We got a ticket to ride in 1979. There's a lot to be said for true love and fidelity. What I've said here is, metaphorically, but one sand grain on the beaches of marital bliss.

 As for the the other baby boomers . . . oh, there were many who took the Stones’ path of wandering around this non-virtual world looking for one-night stands or instant gratification or tooktic fantasies. Good luck with that, guys. May you find the satisfaction that you and Mik were looking for.

And (as Johnny Carson used to say) “May the bird of paradise fly up your nose.”

King of Soul

The Broken Hallelujahs

So Leonard went out from this world with a broken hallelu-

Jah.

I remember Maureen telling me, back in the day,

1969

If you’re feeling down and you want some

inspiration about it go hear Leonard

cuz Leonard Cohen is down!

That’s what she said.

She knew. Maureen knew. 

That was back in the day, a lifetime ago.

We called her Mike. From New York City, she was, or Brooklyn or

somewhere up there. Mike was rough around the edges

with her yankee speech and grubby blue jeans.

How she came to

our deep south campus

I’ll never know.

But Mike knew about Leonard Cohen.

One night we went to a movie, a doc about 

Nixon and it was very disturbing at the time. 

I was coming down from some windowpane

and I remember we parted ways, walking out of the

theater and she said:

Don’t do anything rash.

I don’t know why, but anyway I didn’t 

do anything rash.

Not ever, really.

I was a pretty good guy

I mean I had my troubles, like anybody, but

I was never really down like Mike had said Leonard was:

a Master of down, he was

if that’s your cup of tea.

Selah.

I never saw Mike again, after college.

but now it turns out that

Leonard made his egress from this world and he goes out

with everybody singing his hallelujah song.

the broken hallelujah

lament:

a great song really.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrLk4vdY28Q

I don’t know why, except 

it rings True

with his minor fall and the major lift,

a very tender hallelujah

broken

so saith Leonard

a very broken hallelujah.

Life, that is.

I wept.

But my exclamation 

with the minor fall and the major

Lift

turns out differently

as I will grab the nail-scarred hand

of a broken man:

hallelujah of a different kind. 

Photon Phil's Perpetual Saga

 On Thursday afternoon, Big Photon Phil, a member of the Solar Electromagnetons Energy team, traveled 93 million miles through the void of space in about 8 minutes with his buddies. Phil and his teammates hit the stratosphere traveling at a pretty good clip, the speed of light, and merrily radiated their way through the atmosphere, waving at everyone as they went along catching all the lights just right, until they finally managed a safe landing on a slab of freeway for a pit stop and a bite to eat. Old Mother Earth, sitting in an oily-looking worn-out toll booth, reached out her hand and collected the dollar that Photon Phil stuck out the window of his supercharged-quantum-leap, wavelength-jumpin’ mean-lean-running machine.

 She handed him some infrared pennies for change.

“Thank you. Have a nice day.” She raised the bar; the green light went on. Photon Phil hightailed it back skyward for the return trip. 

But about ten miles out he started feeling a little sleepy, and he heard a lilting little tropospherical blues song that was kinda lulling him to sleep. So Phil stopped and hung out for awhile, but then decided well this just wasn’t happenin’ so maybe he’d just drift back down to Earth and check the place out, maybe even stay for awhile, and see if he could stir up a little heat or sump’n.

 When he finally landed the second time, he was in a parking lot in Urdor. He whipped out his cell phone, gave his buddy Pete a call.

            “Hey breaker one nine good buddy. Where ya at?”

            “Punxtatawny. Looks like a nice place. I could get into it. I think I’ll hang out for awhile, maybe six weeks or so…see if things warm it up a bit.”

            “Awesome, dude! Yeah, well, it looks like I’m in Urdor, just outside of DC…think I’ll have a look around this parking lot. Yo! Totally cool! Ya oughta see these wheels, man. Well, take it easy, Pete. I’ll catch ya on the flip-flop.”

            “Roger that, Phil. Over and out.”

            Phil slipped the phone back into his BTU light-saber-valence pouch and started radiating the concrete. He felt right at home, very comfortable. It had been a long ride. He started to sink into a deep sleep.

            People walking through the parking lot saw him, but they hadn’t noticed.

            In fact, Frank Smith stepped right on Phil while he was pressing the remote to open the rental car.

This atmospheric episode, excerpt from chapter 18 of  2007 novel,  brought to you courtesy of 

Glass half-Full

Book Stores

 Oh, yeah, yeah, I could prattle on about the Brattle bookstore at Boston Common or the Harvard book store ‘cross the river.

Or I could travel cross-country dropping books all along the way in all the little bookstores, making notional purchases and leaving incidental gifts at the various airport Hudsons. Maybe I’d land, cross-continent, then hoof it from SFO to downtown and the Alexander bookshop or the  Bird &Beckett . . . in the city by the bay where, like Tony Bennett, I left my heart, back in ’71 I think it was.

Maybe we’d traipse across the Golden Gate to Sausalito and then tip a few at Tiburon, buy a book or two at the Corner. Then maybe I’d scuttle up to Seattle for coffee at  Pike Place Starbucks, the one and only original. Perhaps I’d take a second chance at that Pikey bookstore, ‘though it shall remain nameless, where I was asked to leave because of my Amazon imprint, which is to say, those infamous KDP connections that allow the little guy like me to do his own thing cuz Random and Schuster and all those other big guys are too busy making money to mess with the little authors like me. Yeah I say unto thee I am the so-called starving artist, like Faulkner was for a while or James Joyce with his stream of conscientiousness, not to mention that Hunter T reporter guy with his fear and loathing in Los Alamos or somewhere out there in the desert. I know one thing I’m glad I didn’t slip into that Kerouac on the road alky routine.

Anyway,  by ’n buy, I managed to make a little money along the way in my 71 years and catch my wife who presented me with three kids, now all grownup. Not too bad for life in the 20-21st century.

But I digress. 

Maybe I’d just hit the eastward road again or the skyways, scuttle back down south, check out the Heritage at Charlotte airport,  or the Park Road Shopping Center bookstore, or maybe the Last Word in Charlotte. Perhaps I’d road-trip it down to Charleston and find a tome or two at the Blue Bicycle. Then I’d scoot up to Chapel Hill and check out the Franklin Street bookstore and that one in Durham but I can’t remember the name of it . . . and then there’s  the Scuppernong shop in Greensboro where I'd buy a book and  sip a brew. It’s just down the street from the Woolworth’s where those four NCA&T students conducted the first segregation-bustin’ lunch counter dine-in back in ’60.

Perhaps I’d scoot over to Salisbury, say hello at the South Main Books, then visit the Railroad Museum at nearby Spencer NC. 

Then  I’d perhaps conclude the journey, traipsing back up the Boone trail for a tome or two at the Foggy Pine, and maybe in my dreams at the formerly famous Black Bear,  even stopping along the way at the Barnes & Noble in Winston-Salem— dare I mention it— . I sho’nuff wouldn’t hold it against ‘em cuz in this life you gotta take the big with the small and the bad with the good . . . to a point, anyway.

And I told him that!

 

  Glass half-Full

Never Again!

 So. . . sitting in a Boston café

I had a thought about KAFÁ:

Keep America Free Again

because I had just seen a message

about men who died long ago:

To whit:

To the men of Boston

who died for their country

on land and sea in the war

which kept the union whole

destroyed slavery

and maintained the Constitution.

The grateful city

has built this monument

that their example may speak

to coming generations.

 

So, as mentioned in those last two lines,

their example did indeed speak

to my generation

and to me.

It reminded me of a very old song

that the slaves used to sing

which I included

in King of Soul,

my fourth novel,

to whit:

Oh, Freedom, Oh, Freedom,

Oh, Freedom over me.

And before I’ll be a slave

I’ll be buried in my grave

And go home to my Lord and be free.

 

So, it is known now that

the prayer of 19th-century slaves

was answered

when the men of Boston

and other men of our USA

went down south

where I come from

and put an end to slavery.

Keep America Free Again.

Never Forget.

Selah

King of Soul

Interstate Highways Upgrade

 While the former president perpetuates his attempt to evade the Law . . . and while the MarALago guy continues his campaign to replace our nation’s Rule of Law with  his own mob-driven dictatorship . . .

 The President who replaced him is working with Congress to convert our national transportation network to 21st-century standards of clean technology. Joe Biden’s hope is entirely consistent with the intentions of our 34th President, when Dwight Eisenhower mustered American productivity into building our interstate highways.

This is progress.

I was a kid in the 1950’s when General Dwight D. Eisenhower, having led our Allied military victory over the nazi/fascist/hirohito dictators, was summoned by We the People to use his unprecedented leadership skills as our President.  

Congress passed the Federal Highway Act of 1956, which initiated a state-of-the art automotive pathway to carry out national automotive exports to 20-century progress levels.

Chances are, you and your family have experienced the benefits of our Interstate Highway System. 

And now, Congress and President Biden will be taking that progressive surge of American infrastructure to the next level—21st-century standards of energy efficiency and—pardon my french—“green” technology. I put "green" in quotes because I'm a Republican, and in that party, "green" is considered a bad word. 

Be that as it may, our nation must move forward, regardless of what trumpian insurrectionists are doing to tear apart the Republican party and our American Republic.

Because we really are—hate to break it to ya, bubby— filling our formerly pristine atmosphere with carbon that was for billions of years entrapped in earthen soil and rock geology.

Now that we’ve been pumping carbon into air for a hundred years it is high time we start cleaning up the mess. If you're a trumpian climate denier, just take your ball and go home; find some spilt milk to cry over.

We've got work to do.

Now our US infrastructure, partnered with American business,  is preparing to to take automotive transportation to the next level of nationally appropriate technology, also known as sustainability. 

Our President and Congress--leading our entire nation-- can do this. In so doing, our leaders will enable Americans to prolong automotive independence into 21st-century standards of environmental interdependence.

This is a far better thing we do—far better than prolonging the former president’s destructive attempts to abscond our US.gov.

Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of our country.

Glass half-Full

Browning of the Green?

 Listen to Song: Deep Green

Deep green on the sea

deep green on the ocean

Deep green on the mountains

Through the morning mist I see

and over the wide plains

a ringing, vibrating harmony.

I hear the green

the waves of moving light and sound

muffled in their confusion

between the soldiers of the city

and the soldiers of the forest.

Old rocks are broken stones

faraway on mountains 

and on shores yet unknown.

Thundering surf, powering waves

beating hearts and minds

throbbing the rhythm of life.

Towering buildings over cracks in sidewalks

autos in exhaust fumes

buses with their signs

faces that hold relics of faraway minds

and visions that rustle

at the stirring of midnight and noon

Oak trees, like dreams

with their wide wide occupation of space and time.

Like these mountains

 and like the sea

Oh where is time where is time for me

Where is is liberty

my guarantee of sovereignty?   

Oh . . . 

My father in the sky has forgotten

My mother on the earth has abandoned me

My children in the forest have abandoned me

or have I abandoned them?

Traffic consumes me

Confusion assumes me

and I rise like mist above the crowded valleys’

spatial dis-harmony

asking for redemption having no plan

but to spin a melody out of the stars

and pray for rain to wash away our tears.

May God help us keep our 

Deep Green.

Glass half-Full

An Unfixable Problem

 The problem we are having now goes much deeper than Jan6 destructions and Uvalde eruptions. It goes deeper than red v blue, more pervasive than progressives v conservatives, farther into the depths of human experience and history than the haves and the havenots.

Now we are seeing a fundamental parting of ways between two different people groups, two separate, as it were . . . tribes. 

In the original tribe, which goes back to the dawn of human experience, gender identity begins at birth and generally follows a fairly predictable path, according to the person’s family identity, cultural heritage, and of course, whatever is between their legs.

In the revisionist tribe, gender is malleable and self-determined.

In the classic tribe, gender is manifested in each man and woman, at birth.

This fundamental parting of life-identities is at the heart and soul of all other public issues, most especially those decisions about what children are taught in schools.

What children are being taught in public schools about sexual identity is the most divisive controversy in all of history.

This is a cleavage that will not be joined by governments, courts, nor sensitivity sessions, except for possibly resolving a territorial issue every now and then. 

Our very limited reconciliatory efforts will all arrive at the same choice: You go your way and We’ll go our way. But don’t mess with our kids.

Any peacemaking between these two camps can be resolved by only one grand fix: Separation, separation of territories, separation of value-systems, religions, churches. 

Most important of all is: separation of schools. Along with that scenario we’ll probably find separation of neighborhoods. We may even see separation of states, with each state establishing, by legislation, policies to govern sexual identities. 

Red and Blue may have something to with this, but those hues are not the definitive factor.

Progressives establish their cities/communities of blendable sexual identities and practices. The monkeys among them may pox themselves into quarantine quarters.

Traditionals establish their towns and suburbs of men, women, boys and girls.

Primary and Secondary schools will teach according to the prevailing worldview in each community.

And never again shall the ‘twain meet, except maybe passing by on the street, but more likely on the highway. Perhaps you’ll them by their license plates and identity decals.

The way things are going, this scenario is the probable destiny of our United States of America . . . It’s been nice knowin’ ya, nice while it lasted. We had a long run together, but 21st-century changes were just too much for the sex-traffic to bear.  

See ya ‘round. Wave as you go bi.

Glass Chimera