more normal than not

I might have been 12 years old when my neighbor gave me 3 random 45s that his father was getting rid of.

It would have been right after we moved to Georgia….and it seems like I remember turning 13 that first year….so I might have still been 12 years old.

This song was one of the 3 singles that I was given.

I think that one was “Court of the Crimson King” by King Crimson….and I can’t remember the other one.

I put this on my little record player…and was transported.

I was informed….I was influence….I was transfixed.

“BE BLACK, BABY, BE BLACK!”

Grady Tate!! A cool singing drummer….

That was something I never heard sitting around the table eating lefse.

That wasn’t a sentiment that made any sense in a Norwegian household.

Anyway, this song became the subject of much internal reflection.

“You’re walking down the street and everyone you meet is going to step to the side and stare… cause you’re feeling good and you know you should because there’s black cats everywhere!”

I’m quoting that from memory.

All these years later, I’m quoting that funk song from memory.

I didn’t know how that would feel….to see everyone “step to the side and stare”.

I am a little white man.

That song was so cool.

Of course, it could have gone the other way(s)….I did have 3 singles now, you know?

I could have obsessed over the cool King Crimson song….and spent all my time waiting for the Fire Witch to come back to the Court of the Crimson King.

It could have all gone down like that….instead of me fantasizing about strutting around going “hoo, hoo…” and imagining altering my pigmentation for the sake of being a little bit “cooler”.

It could have gone so many different ways.

This is the guy who wrote “Be Black, Baby”….Eric Kaz.

Who woulda thunk it.

The best time to jump is when your mind is empty of what jumping means.

Another morning of bleary eyed wondering….and an empty mind.

Or maybe it’s a mind that’s so full of swirling thought that I don’t know what tidbit to grab onto and just write about?

I’ve heard “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything”.

Maybe I should leave out the “nice” part and just keep my mouth closed….period.

Oh, what the heck.

I do what I want.

Shawn Colvin is a pretty great writer….good tunes….good consistently good tunes…but I bet she has moments where she looks down at her guitar….then back up at the page and the pencil….and wonders just what the heck she’s doing.

She’s probably a good editor.

She doesn’t broadcast those moments of indecision and uncertainty.

It all keeps circling back to what M.I. said his father told him…..”just DO SOMETHING…even if it turns out to be WRONG”.

Just put the wheels in motion and get the car pointed somewhere….maybe turn left on the map and stop when you see the ocean on the other side.

Just do something.

If you can’t focus and be directed….just go off willy nilly and “do something”.

Maybe that’s not such a good idea….but a moving target is hard to hit and it would give the appearance of achievement….

It might even make people sit up and think, “Why….that guy is a real GO GETTER”.

It shouldn’t make any difference in the short-term if they don’t know what you’re aiming at.

Just DO.

The “zen of frantic activitiy”.

Frantic activity…that’s pretty weird.

What the heck? Too much caffeine and a little time are a potentially dangerous pairing.

I guess that when you get down to it, you really do “make your own bed”….unless you’re a real slob and never make the bed….whatever, you lay down on that mattress at the end of the day and sleep….and then get up the next morning and do it all again.

Over and over.

And if all you have going is trying to get to McDonalds on Tuesday for a cheap hamburger….there’s not going to be much that’s really interesting to talk about at the end of the day.

There are goals out there that everyone can accept…quests….mysterious journeys that are worthier than a need to get a cheap hamburger.

Big roads and movement….spinning wheels that actually take us somewhere…time that works for us….efforts that connect and unify and enliven.

And the only thing that defines anything is how we perceive it.

That’s the only real power that we have….our perception.

Too much caffeine and a swirling mind….goofy stuff.

We make our lives as good as we know how.

I’d like to think that I could figure out how to make our lives even “MO’ BETTAH”.

Even Mo’Bettah.

I enjoy this guy’s videos on YouTube.

Here’s a simple way to break a big task into little tasks before…it becomes a big task.

It’s a good way to look at something that I have a problem with.

I can be kind of a slob.

And, on the other hand, if you put one thing away wrong….it becomes a bottleneck that all of the other logs get to jam up against until you can’t even reach the one thing that might have ended up in the proper place if I’d taken a minute to DO IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME.

Like I said….I could save a lot of time later if I was willing to spend a little bit of time to put things away correctly the first time.

I don’t know what the game was.

I’m not sure what I was up to.

I used to like to take the gas gauge all the way down to “E” and then past….all the way down, like the vapors would protect me or something….like I was invincible and that my cheapness would have no consequences.

I wonder why I did that?

This was when gas was cheap and wages were low, too.

The thing about it all was that my weird habit carried over into my marriage.

I actually ran out of gas when Jenny and I were first married….down in Atlanta.

That shows a definite inability to plan ahead.

That’s pretty strange that I’d let it go so far.

I guess that old habits die hard.

It was a game….something I did whether I had the money for gas or not.

I think I thought that if I didn’t spend the money on gas that I could buy another book or cassette tape or…if I found a great deal, another guitar.

I didn’t need that stuff…I needed to put gas in the car so I wouldn’t have to make a hard walk with my young wife.

You don’t treat your wife like that.

It’s all pretty goofy.

There is something seductive about watching that gas needle dip lower and lower while you drive farther and farther away from the pump.

There’s something seductive about thinking that, even though the signs say otherwise, you are going to be the one who beats the odds…that you will be the solitary astronaut who makes it back to earth on nothing but vapors.

Of course, your passengers don’t share your enthusiasm for a weird adventure like that.

They just want to get back home without having to take a walk to rescue the situation.

I have a light that comes on when the gas gets low now.

It came on yesterday during the mail route, and I fell into the old habit pretty easily of wondering if I could make it through the rest of the route and then back to the PO in Saluda and then back up to Ingles to buy some cheap gas.

I think that I might have wondered if I could make it if I coasted down the biggest hills and didn’t accelerate too hard anywhere.

Then I stopped flying towards the sun…before my wax wings melted….and stopped and filled up the tank at the gas station that I was only a mile away from.

I stopped playing my weird “empty tank game”….and bought some gas.

I guess that maybe there’s not really any such thing as being “the one who beat the odds”.

You don’t beat the odds, really. You pay.

You might get good at hiding that the tank is empty….and if you never tell anyone else about your sick, twisted little game….your petrol russian roulette….no one will ever be the wiser until you have to make up an excuse when they ask why you’re walking…but….

you don’t “beat the odds”.

Somebody’s going to pay when you screw around with an empty tank….and think that you can just keep driving like nothing can touch you.

You need to get a bike.

“Running on Empty” Jackson Browne

Listen to the intro to this….Chad and Jeremy….and, later….Pete Best.

Man.

The MC’s description of the duo Batdorf and Rodney is a good one.

This was a good group.