I woke up this morning as bereft of blog ideas as usual.
Nobody “woke up laughing” last night….and I was more blurry headed than usual…so when I started looking around for inspiration/deflection/diversion, I found this video on YouTube.
Man….falling from the sky.
That’s depressing.
I better change tracks….
How about this show?
I’ve never heard of this show.
What’s it about?
Alaska?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgPkAJu4Ga0
I think it’s about guns.
Holy smokes.
Reality is so much “realer” when it’s on TV.
I’m kidding.
One thing that I can say for this show is that it’s probably some of the best “acting real” acting that I’ve seen on a reality show.
I’m kidding.
How about this show?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAbx62E_YMc
Dang.
That’s about a completely different kind of “mountain men”.
How about that?
Different “mountain men”.
That’s what it’s all about….drinking coffee and posting weirdness.
And there’s a lot of weirdness out there in the world.
If I jump on this “weirdness topic”, I’ll never run out of things to write about.
I don’t think that there’s enough coffee in the world to make this stuff very interesting.
I woke up this morning to the sound of raucous laughter.
Sparrow must have been having a good dream because she was laughing her head off.
When a little baby is sleeping 10 inches from your head, it’s not hard to wake up when she starts laughing like that.
When I got up a couple of minutes later, Jenny was awake, too….and I mentioned to her on my way out of the room that Sparrow had woken up laughing.
“She’s been up for an hour.”
Lately, it’s been a measurement not of how well we slept….but of “how badly” we didn’t sleep.
When it’s only a little bit bad, it’s a victory.
Some nights are good…some….different from good.
I remember how terrifying it was when our two older children were little and they both slept through the night for the first time.
I think that Jenny and I thought that something must have happened….but it was just the new people sleeping like people should sleep.
You should mind your own business when you’re sleeping.
Sleeping should not be an interactive exercise.
I was thinking about Sparrow waking up laughing….or “not waking up laughing”.
When I sleep through some of this stuff, I can put my own kind of spin on things.
There’s more romance in thinking that the baby woke up laughing than in knowing that she’s been up for an hour ….screwing around and causing a commotion.
If I think about it, though, there’s not much difference in effect if I’m awake when Sparrow wakes up laughing….or if Sparrow wakes me up laughing.
Waking up to that little voice….finding so much humor in some private joke…..laughing….laughing….laughing.
That’s a good thing.
Now….it’s wonderful to sleep. It’s necessary.
It’s the thing that frames our days.
It makes it possible to go on….to make our way through the hours ahead of us.
But if I could bottle up these laughter filled, sleepless nights….if I had the foresight to do it….I’d have a pantry full of laughter filled bottles.
I have a feeling that there are going to be some quiet nights somewhere in our future.
It’s good to sleep.
I wish that I could stay awake and really take all of this in, though.
I wish I could stay awake and notice it all….and not be a cranky SOB in the morning.
How do you do that?
Sparrow didn’t wake up laughing this morning….but that’s the way I remember it.
Nate looked at me the other morning like he was studying something, and then he said, “you’re all alone”.
I asked him what he meant and he told me “you’re all alone because both your parents are dead”.
Good grief.
That’s something that we must have talked about at some point.
I don’t really remember.
I think that he’d asked how long my parents had been gone.
It’s funny the things these “little guys” are thinking about. I think they go a lot deeper with their thoughts than we give them credit for.
Alone.
Alone? Nah….
Not really alone….never alone.
When you have a 5-year-old around who can point out that you’re “alone”, you’re not really ever alone.
I guess that maybe, in some regards at least, we’re all alone, though.
Nothing to get depressed about…..change and loss are guarantees in this life. Knowing that should make us pay closer attention to how we treat each other when we still have each other….but I know that’s kind of hard.
Life gets busy.
We don’t want to intrude.
You know….I’m sitting here at 5:38 in the morning….listening to Jose Gonzalez on Spotify….typing…typing….drinking coffee…..enjoying the quiet….and, you know?
Loss and some kinds of change ARE something to get depressed about.
You can’t put a spin on it all that takes that completely away.
It IS something to get depressed about.
I miss my parents.
What else is new?
I miss them.
So….it’s something to get depressed about.
Now….staying depressed is a completely different thing.
“Staying depressed” is something that, thankfully, I don’t really have a whole lot of experience with.
Somehow, I think that I’d have to work at staying depressed.
Maybe not….maybe it would come naturally.
Maybe it’s kind of glamorous and expected in the “artistic lifestyle” I might have pursued at some point to feel so deeply and to pursue sadness and depression as some kind of expected “romantic ideal”….like “look at me! Look how deeply I can FEEL!!”… maybe that’s expected.
It’s crazy to pursue something so negative.
And the negative builds on itself, too.
That’s OK….the positive builds on itself, too.
The positive also builds on itself.
So Nate comes up to me and tells me, “You’re ALONE.”
I should have told him, “Well….so are you.”
“Everybody’s alone.”
I should have told him that maybe we could be alone TOGETHER.
That would have been a snappy retort to give a 5-year-old making a pithy observation.
You don’t tell a 5-year-old that he’s alone, though.
What’s the point of that?
I’d be a “bad daddy” if I started doing stuff like telling my child that he’s alone in the world.
I’m not talking about my bedtime. My bedtime is easy. When I get to go to sleep, I don’t fight it.
I relish getting to go to sleep.
I fall asleep on the couch….but I’m not really supposed to fall asleep on the couch.
I need to stay up until I get to lay down in my bed.
But this really isn’t about me.
But ….kind of.
I went in with Nate the other night to put him to bed…..and when we got to his room (it’s a short walk….our house is small. I shouldn’t make it sound like it was a journey. It’s not.) …..when we got to his room, Big Teddy was in his bed….waiting for him.
“Where’s Little Teddy?”
Me: “What do you mean ‘Where’s Little Teddy? He should be in your bed. Where’d you put him?!”
This was a moment of panic for me….something hard can turn bad pretty quickly if things aren’t lined up right.
“I don’t KNOW!!! I DON’T KNOW!! WHERE’S LITTLE TEDDY?!!! I NEEEEEEEEEEED HIM!! ”
So….we started looking for Little Teddy.
Living room….kitchen…..under Nate’s bed.
While I was looking under the bed, I heard Nate padding towards our bedroom.
By the time I popped up and quietly ran after him, he had the door open to the room where Jenny was putting Sparrow to sleep.
I knew that if I tried to stop him at this point, things would escalate and get pretty loud pretty quick.
“I can’t find Little Teddy.”
“Well, you’re going to have to look for him yourself. Don’t wake Sparrow up. Close the door….close the door….”
I got him away from the door and we went back to his room….without Little Teddy.
“Maybe Teddy is out in the car?!! MAYBE HE’S IN THE CAR!! YOU NEEEEEEED TO CHECK THE CAR!!! CHECK THE CAR FOR TEDDY!!!”
“I’m not checking the car. You’ll need to sleep without Little Teddy tonight. We’ll find him tomorrow.”
Of course, this escalated things.
Logic and calm explanation doesn’t quiet things down all the time.
“TEDDY!!!!! I NEED TEDDY!!! WHERE’S TEDDY?!!! FIND HIM…..FIND HIM…..FIND TEDDY!!!”
IT WAS TIME FOR BED!!! So I picked Nate up…..yelling and kicking….and set him down in his bed….and….
he laid down and got quiet.
I’d won!!! Little Teddy was nowhere to be found….but I’d asserted my will and laid Nate down and he recognized that I was the boss and WHAT I SAID WAS THE WAY IT WAS GOING TO BE!!!
I HAD WON AS A PARENT!!
I WAS THE ALPHA!!!
I was basking in my victory when I heard Nate say, “Here he is!!”
It wasn’t exactly like this…but most of the radios that I had looked kind of like this.
I didn’t have a set or even a single earphone or headphone….but I had a pillow….and at night, I’d put this radio under it….and turn the sound down low….and listen.
As I write this, I’m listening to Bill Morrissey on Spotify.
Now, I listen to what I want….when I want.
It’s easy.
It’s immediate.
But I remember what a thrill it was to hear a song that I’d been waiting to hear when I had my radio under my pillow.
It was a thrill to listen to music when I was supposed to be asleep.
Clandestine delayed gratification.
That was good training to figure out how to be patient and sneaky.
I like being able to listen to anything….at anytime, though.
There was something kind of goofy and intimate….and, I have a feeling, kind of universal…about hiding a little radio under your pillow when you were supposed to be sleeping.
I heard this song by a songwriter that I’ve enjoyed for years the other day.
” Don’t Judge a Life (by its end)” John Gorka
Here’s some live John Gorka that I found….
The songwriter who wrote the first song that John Gorka sings in this video was Bill Morrissey.
Bill Morrissey died in a motel room in Georgia a while back while on tour.
He was making his way back up North after playing a couple of gigs.
John Gorka and Bill Morrissey were friends.
“Don’t Judge a Life” is for Bill Morrissey.
Here’s a link to an article about Bill Morrissey that was written by David Hoekstra that appeared in a blog he writes for the Chicago Sun-Times.
Here’s a bit of the article….
His 1990 record “Standing Eight” (Rounder Records) got it’s title from a boxing count that permits a referee to call a knockdown on a spent fighter who has yet to hit the canvas.
“I just like the idea of a guy taking a beating and not going down,” Morrissey told me in 1990. He said a lot of characters in that batch of songs were cut from that cloth. There was a truck driver carting toxic waste through the New Hampshire backroad, hard times on the Canadian Pacific line and the brittle rebound from a busted marriage–his own, which caught him off guard.
I loved that John Gorka song…..and I’ve always enjoyed Bill Morrissey’s music.
Even if you knew that it was “Leonard Nimoy” singing….you couldn’t help but think, “Hey….listen to this Spock song that I found!”
I worked at a little radio station….or in the basement of the chapel….however you want to look at it….when I was going to college in Newberry, SC.
We had a bunch of old LP’s at the station….and luckily, one of them had this song on it.
“highly illogical” Leonard Nimoy
It’s kind of funny that we had this album in the collection.
I don’t think that I’ve ever seen the album again.
We used to play this song pretty often, too. It doesn’t have anything to do with Spock Leonard Nimoy…but I didn’t know if I’d ever get a chance to use it on the blog….so here it is.
Up between 4:30 and 5….roll out of bed as quietly as possible so that I don’t wake anyone up…turn on the computer so it can boot up while I’m in the kitchen….pad downstairs past the other bedrooms…..again, as quietly as possible so that I don’t wake anyone up….feed the cat …..lay out my vitamins….get half a coffee cup of juice…put on the water for coffee….take my vitamins….rinse out the cup….put some half & half in my cup….pour the boiling water into the french press…..and take it all upstairs to quietly do what ever it is I do in the morning.
And then……sit at my desk and write this blog and listen to music on Spotify.
That’s what I do.
Sometimes I rail against this consistency that I set in motion.
We have some unused passports that need to be warmed up.
I need to get some stamps on those empty pages.
But….I do the same thing every quiet chunk of morning that I can ease into.
I like it when it’s quiet for a moment.
I was thinking about that low-level “quiet desperation” that I notice sometimes….that nagging sense of dissatisfaction…..wanderlust….need for speed….for movement….for something fresh and unexpected.
I feed that….and I shouldn’t.
If I’m going to do something, I need to just do it.
Just like a shoe….just do it.
Just do it….and if I’m only planning to do something, don’t cripple myself with thoughts of how boring things are and how much I wish things were different.
That’s crazy.
That’s crazy nuts to think like that…..
The thing that hit me this morning as I was doing my morning french press habit was that it is such a blessing to have pleasant routines…. that can become a routine.
What a blessing that is!
Like manna from heaven that I haven’t started complaining about yet.
I have these habits….routines….that I follow for the sake of efficiency.
I don’t think it’s because of a lack of imagination or energy….it’s just quiet and pleasant to make my coffee and then sit for a while before everybody gets up.
Sometimes “same” is OK.
It’s OK to find myself living a life where I have the choice to do the same thing every morning.
It’s good to have an income….to have a place to go…something to do….A FAMILY WHO LOVES ME….no matter how monotonous I mistakenly think the “routine” seems sometimes.
When I really dig deep into what’s going on…..I remember that it’s really all my choice.
Sometimes, I see a video or read a book and think something along the lines of “I should be….” or “I wonder why I didn’t….” or “maybe….if…..” .
What I do….is “what I do”…..I don’t think that there’s any confusion there….but I waste a lot of time thinking about the experiences that seem to be on the edge of where I am “right now”.
Mystery and adventure are simple.
What’s that Chinese saying about “exciting times”?
You can make things pretty adventurous pretty quickly if you don’t mind your business.
Things can get weird at the drop of a hat.
It’s not a big journey to peek down over the wall to see the grass on the other side, either….the grass that looks so much greener in the shade of the fence.
I’m not a hard man to fool sometimes.
The grass looks greener when you think that it’s the place to be.
Big secret, huh?
I guess that everybody feels like they might be better suited to doing “something else”.
Maybe that dissatisfaction is what pushes us onto something better…..or anchors us to something that always stays the same?
Sometimes dissatisfaction “pushes us” to something better….sometimes it just takes our legs out from under us.
Sometimes I feel like the dog that pulls the cart.
A horse would be better suited to the job.
But if I keep pulling….and don’t bark too much or go off course chasing squirrels….nobody notices that it’s just a dog pulling that load.
Nobody notices that maybe what I am or what I do should raise any eyebrows.
As long as I keep pulling the load, nobody thinks a second thought about the dog that pulls the cart.
And then there’s the thought that you better get your head screwed on straight and just appreciate the fact that you have a cart to pull.
You better quit complaining and just keep wagging your tail and keep on pulling that load.
“Gratitude” is a lot harder than “whining”.
It’s all a broken record….skipping on into eternity….”what if, what if, what if, what if, what if, what if……what is, what is, what is, what is….”
“What is”……
It’s not so bad to be a dog with a cart to pull.
Here’s a Jonny Lang song that’s pretty good…..a different kind of “grass is greener” situation than what I’m talking about, though…..
Here’s another freakout “Peter’s eyeing that spot down by the river again” video.
No….it’s not like that.
It’s not like that.
I don’t chafe at the harness like that…..I don’t have anything to escape.
I live in a house.
But…..these alternatives sure are interesting.
Tiny houses….houses made of bales of straw….and VANS….converting a van? That’s kind of cool.
Just another kind of hard walled tent….one that you could get away in when the cops start rapping on its side in the middle of the night.
You could drive your whole house away if things started hitting the fan!
How cool is that?
They can’t tax what they can’t find.
And what do they do if you’ve pared it down even farther and everything you own fits in a backpack?
I’ll have to buy another book about that to add to my collection.
I don’t know why…..but I just thought of a guy named Dick Dorworth.
He wrote an article called “Night Driving” that I read in a magazine called “the Mountain Gazette” that a friend gave me a while back…..like 35 years ago or so.
I guess that you could live like a gypsy with a family….but it would be hard on the family.
What a memory that would be for everybody, though.
Don’t worry….I live in a house.
You know….while I’m momentarily remembering something good from a while back…..here’s something good from the present. This guy, Dick Dorworth (!)….check out his site and his blog.
