The passing of seasons

 I always thought it would be easier to live after the cats were gone. We were always saying that we were not going to do it again. Very smugly taking beautiful things for granted. Even Donna said, we just did not understand how exceptional they were. Lava's final cries in pain were of death itself, I just know it, and they were the most harrowing sound I have ever heard. It tears me to the core.  Doctor House was right though, there is no dignity in dying, we all do it alone and it's ugly and horrifically terrible. The only thing we can do is live with dignity. 

Our daily numbness makes us not even do that so well. And in Goodbye, Farewell, Amen, there were light points and deep ones too. Even in hardship, we can take the good for granted. Hardship, well yes, it can have lasting effects. And that is on a chemical level. I heard a summary of societal decade disintegration. I know this all means something yet I am losing the drive to put the idea into a summary. Everything is a mad rush to stay steps ahead of the predator. My elaborate propane system, combat finance strategies, racing the first snowfall, and of course,  paying my rent every day in the tower of song. 

Sadness always brings words. I love words but I do not like the sadness that they ride in on. I think John Lennon said it best in the song I know from 1973. "The years pass by so quickly, one thing I've understood, is I'm only learning to tell the tree from wood." It's like that, you travel so far, only to realize that just maybe you are only just beginning to learn something. What a raw deal that is! Inside fueling the engines there is the rage in the cage, so carefully accessed just like an internal combustion engine. Gives a whole new meaning to Joe Walsh's words "I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime." 

Taking things for granted is like Paul Simon's Slip Slidin' Away. "He said a bad day is one in which I lay in bed and think about things that might have been." And so many ways, that burning of seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years. I know what that regret will be. So here it is Wednesday. Before the Nights in White Satin and before the Late Lament, can you change what "bedsitter people" will think of? Can you change just a little of this? As I saw with Lava in these last lonely cries, the Late Lament does not take its time, it is not a time of peaceful reflection. It is like being hit by a car. The moments after being so awful and so lonely. Rose Tyler figured it out she could not save her dad, all she could do was make him feel just a little less alone when the moment came. That's all. 

Some days you hit that coffee mark perfectly and other days you think you did but you did not. Harry Callahan asked a detective as he arrived at the diner back in 1984 if coffee could determine a day's worth. 

In all the reflection one can have, there really is only one relevant question, and that is: where do we go from here? Knowing all we know is the total sum of wisdom. What do we do next? Do it now, make it count. In reflection, but looking to draw wisdom from scraped knees and massive falls, I think I might pick an album out each day. It could lead to things to write about. To take my boys sometime in the future on a trip with me to decades before they were even born. "The world's gone crazy nobody gives a damn anymore and they're breaking off relationships and leaving on sailing ships for far and distant shores. For them, it's all over, but I'm going to stay. I wouldn't leave anyway, I know that someday, we'll find a way, we'll be okay." Those words from Ray Davies in 1978 on the Sleepwalker album.  Why did I mention it?  It has been playing in my head since 3:30 this morning.   I totally hear the rain on the rooftop. It has the sounds of autumn to it. If last year has taught me anything, I have learned that you cannot predict what the coming fall and Winter hold. I remember how Rosilee loved my 1982 piece "The Orange Leaf." She saw the words how I intended them to be seen.  They were so profound to her, with the impact of war.  I sent it to Yankee Magazine back then, and they responded with static.  As deep as I thought they might be, of course, they were not.  If you are deep, if you hear the words for what they really are, you know, they must be respected.  

When you're down and low...

 I woke up Monday to learn that my friend Jim McLean died of COVID-19. Jim was a friend from the early 80s when I used to camp at lone Oak campgrounds in East Canaan Connecticut. I was close friends with his sister and he was close friends with my cousin Gary. His poor family is now having to carry on without him. Damn these people who have politicized a vaccine!  It’s been a hard week. 

On Wednesday, we had to put our Bogey down. I just can’t believe he is gone. I hate this. He was so much more than a pet to our family. I need downtime now. Before the frenzied race to winter begins in the fall. 

Tuesday. I really did not sleep last night. Tormented by the thoughts of Jim’s beautiful family having to move on without him.

There appears to be an obstruction in my ability to write on this trip. It came so easily when we were at Killington. I dare say that some of the paragraphs written were some of the best stuff I have done. I will be patient though as I think it will happen. Until then I just sittin'
waiting for the bus all day. So many sounds, mowing way off in the distance, wind rustling, tarps blowing, crows crawling, chickadees, water sounds, eggs boiling, noises from the camper.

It is now Wednesday, September 1st. Good morning. Sour Girl by Stone Temple pilots from 2000 is in my head. It was a song written about someone name Jeanette Jania. Another long night with hardly any sleep. Soon we will be out and everything down for the winter beyond the sound of the river there is the subtle undercurrent that the diabolical forces of winter await. 

September 1, they now begin stepping this way.  Don't you dare say that it cannot happen even now?  I have had seen snow very early in the season in my life. The earliest I have ever seen it was on September 11, 1979. 4 inches fell in Bristol Connecticut that day.

The coffee now officially begins to perk. The sound and the smells of coffee perking in a true percolator, on an open flame, are some of the finest interactions with our senses there can ever be. Decades ago everyone knew how to make coffee correctly (passive-aggressive dig intended I guess).  Around 75ish, a few people had automatic drip coffee makers or Mr. Coffees as they were referred to back then. But they were a joke. Lukewarm, weak, and plasticky. A disgusting assault compared to that stovetop bliss they left behind.   

So I started reading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. I must say that I am severely impressed with Mr. BourdAin’s stark honesty to admit the things that everyone else is too internally shocked. The honesty makes the rooms take on an almost holographic materialization. 

At times I wish I could go back to 1982 and kick myself right in the rear end. I’d like to believe that all of this literary regurgitation somehow is blog-worthy at some point. Isn’t that right Mr. Terry Ward? When I think of the hours that I spent reading Terry’s bleeding heart hemorrhaging off of computer dot matrix tractor paper by the light of a kerosene lamp in the cabin in East Alstead!  Wow!  My dad too was finding an interest in this person that was doing the same job as him and making a little bread on the side by sharing his hippie generation manifesto. As the pages rolled out of the printer, Terry found and then lost love much to our own discomfort as readers. But we stuck with you, Terry. Something about you was so maverick, that eventually, you graduated to a blog. The Internet bringing forward so many others just like you. There in Langdon New Hampshire, a tragic star was born or perhaps fell off the back of a truck. 

Nevertheless, we loved you, Terry, in all your whiny self lamentations. Why? Because somewhere in you, each of us saw ourselves. You, who did not worry about how embarrassing it was to bear your naked soul to strangers. We were thinking it, but we were too scared to say it. LinkedIn says that Terry Ward has published Notes from the Dump for 34 years and 11 months now. Yes, that is November 1986 through the present day. Terry is listed as going to the high school of Hard Knocks High 1957 through 1962. Terry is a reminder that we can all bring something new to the world yes anyone can, even you.

Got to pay your dues if you’re gonna sing the blues and you know it don’t come easy....

Still really bombing on this blogging thing, and why? I kinda sort used to write, to quote Todd Rundgren, “so like the Naz used to do like heavy rock, then suddenly a light pretty ballad.” Yeah, so me and everyone else. Big deal right? So, yes, suffering complications, by which I mean I suck. Ok so getting over it here. Let’s use the blog for practical reasons, and then maybe, just maybe something really amazing might just happen.

So, what’s practical? How about the fact that I have now cooked so many spectacular dishes but have failed to properly catalogue them. After a while I forget that I did try something or maybe I remember  that I cooked it, but cannot remember how. It is time to show, explain and tell it’s story.  January charging at me with ferocious speed and power. Staring down the barrel of another
 winter, what else should I do, but make it memorable.