bouzouki

I am a child of the desert
February 3, 2012 | 10:24 pm

Looking in the mirror, he noticed the wrinkles around his eyes, reminding him of a river journey with a friend, laughing for days and seeing white wrinkles amid the tan lines. Today, my face is tan and rounded somewhat, perhaps from the beard, going gray around the edges. There is that combination of youth and age that defies our usual indication of time in a body. A smile is often present and there is something about brown eyes that can tighten into a focus when speaking directly to someone. My niece was at a family reunion that I did not attend and she told me my grandmother’s last name meant bent willow, which I find interesting. There is a northern European look about me, heavy set and I think short, or stout might fit. Am I pleasant to look at? Only when I am fun to be around. But my portrait is not that, it is in my song: I’m a child of the desert, hot burning sand And a friend to the buzzard circling the bleaching bones of a man I spent my contemplation under a pinyon tree And a nut fell down and hit me and that’s what [...]

It would be hard to say what I write
February 3, 2012 | 9:11 am

It is night here. I had a dream that I was listening to music at a concert and the music finished. It had been instrumental music with drums and percussion and other sounds that I can’t remember. A musician spoke, saying the concert was over and that he had not said much with words because the music spoke for them. It has been over an hour since that experience and I am awake, still. My mind is overactive, running through a range of thoughts that I can usually avoid in daylight. i think about being unemployed until I can “officially” retire. I think about my part in what we have done to our environment and our world. I think of the worry and fear that permeates our existence, and how much of that is our own doing, our own actions, that we followed so easily. I think of the anger and rage that I see in so many places in the different media, and how easy it is to step into that state of mind. I think that Loving Kindness is a means to overcome all that I find to be negative in my world. In my dreams, I have [...]

Believing in the Impossible
November 8, 2011 | 5:42 pm

I have been thinking about how I sense things, from that previous post, and I remembered that I have this crazy belief in synchronicity. I believe that there is a connection between us all. There is not necessarily a causal event that makes the connection, but my associations with others is often a chance encounter, and that chance is not exactly chance, but more a way of interacting with others, when we need to see them. It seems to work best when I have no special agenda, but I do have reason to be in contact. I accept this as a natural concurrence, between people that need to come together. Sometimes I wonder how it happens, but most of the time, I just accept it as it happens. I needed to speak to a person, and I saw him this morning. He asked me if I wanted what he had to give, which I did. A natural occurrence, but I have not seen him for months, and certainly not in a public setting, which neither of us could have assumed the other would be there. Think of this as a way for like minded people to meet. think of the [...]

The town of my memories
August 18, 2011 | 12:05 pm

I met a woman a few days ago, the daughter of my first grade teacher. She is a few years older than me. We grew up in a company town that was fifty miles from pavement, in one direction, and slowly the road became paved in the town and onward six to ten miles a year. This is an isolated place, and although there are many that lived in the town, most only lived there for two years, or four years. She and I shared a bit of memories, plus a promise to meet again and talk some more. My Kindergarden year, the principal was Native American, the Navaho families would come to the general store on the weekend and buy food and goods, wearing silver and turquoise necklaces and bracelets, the women wearing colorful skirts, the men with silver belt buckles and cowboy hats. During my elementary school years, I heard predictions of a future presented as fact, in which we would have unlimited energy at such a low cost as to be virtually free, with flying cars, and unlimited wealth. How easy to believe, as a child. Why did it not occur? In the 1950′s,in a company town, [...]

random thoughts about house prices
July 6, 2011 | 9:26 pm

It is easy to respond in conversation. Words are spoken, mind engages, and responds. That has been my world in this blog. Now I find me trying to create the beginning of the conversation. it was easy with meeting the man that lives a few houses down the street. Our first conversation was about his four dogs loose in my yard. I asked him to do something about them being loose and his response was that he would kill them if I wanted. A great way to initiate a conversation. I had to tell him four or five times, “just keep your dogs in your yard.” I haven’t spoken to him for three or four years. He has a puppy that was loose and came over to my house. We were cordial, talking about the neighborhood, the traffic on the road, and the fact that his neighbor wants to sell his house for $325,000, and it is on a railroad tie foundation. We live in a strange world where some people are out of work, houses are foreclosed, debts are unpaid, and yet there are optimists that are trying to act like nothing happened in 2008. The value of houses [...]