Comes a time when you're driftin'
Comes a time when you settle down
Comes a light, feelings liftin'
Lift that baby right up off the ground
Oh, this old world keeps spinnin' 'round
It's a wonder, tall trees ain't layin' down
There comes a time
You and I, we were captured
We took our souls and we flew away
We were right, we were giving
That's how we kept what we gave away
Oh, this old world keeps spinnin' 'round
It's a wonder, tall trees ain't layin' down
There comes a time
Oh, this old world keeps spinnin' 'round
It's a wonder, tall trees ain't layin' down
There comes a time
There comes a time
Comes a time
Comes a time
Starting from 1957 and walking, newborn and bemused born white into a poor working family of one man and one woman both educated in the Depression with 2 years of college, a father from a large Polish family and a mother from a large Kentucky one. I, an only love child of older people whose kin were far away and whose friends were few, blameless but born into the USA of Eisenhower and the Silent American, of Alden Pyle and H-bombs, of JFK “Transfigured” and LBJ the new Caligula, on and on and on. Autodidact whose harsh teacher said read what you wish is the whole of the law BUT remember what you can. Live it, use it, weave it, make it yours. And so I did. Sort of. Half remember to remember. Music is recalled. Music lived. Poetry not as much. Characters in novels rarely. All abstractions in a way. Depending so much on our receptiveness to the new.
Still I read, and I took the other road that goes hie up the hill and into the dark murky woods of this land and your land to pick a city to live in where the interesting people dwell. I made my myth of the Californian. I am still here after 60 years.
And now all I “studied” in my own way is my ark. I did not study how to make money. I was an idealist and a realist and afflicted with something like Didion had in Slouching Towards Bethlehem where nothing I wrote or thought touched the hem of the Zen master’s robe and in rage nothing really was wrote or thought. Until it was.
After Covid everything made sense. Lingering Sanity was strong. I saw my illusions. And not displeased realized Thoreau at Walden had different ideas of life’s illusions as did Henry Miller. As do all. Then comes Berdyaev who is an autodidact as well. And he says the Great Myth of Man is what we must reverence. The mystery of the God-Man. I do not know of course if Berdyaev was aware that Eastern Christianity once held tremendous prestige in T’Ang China. Nor do I know if he knew that Mahayana arose from Theravadan encounters with Eastern Christianity.
In any case the Great MYTH. Myth is not fiction. The mind works by metaphor. Humans work by love.
And after 500 years where Columbus dominates thought as MYTH there are Myth holders who see new lands to conquer and colonize and plunder-the body of man being but one, soul and anything really are others.
99 Year Blues is my exploration and unfolding of this idea. If you enjoy Lingering Sanity as a kind of improv jazz 99 Year Blues hopes to go to the next rung. Please subscribe once I put up the link. For now enjoy as I build. I think next week I will offer the donation option. Tonight I return to the Hospital for my wife being sent to Redwood City for brain surgery. I ride in the transport vehicle. Her daughter will meet us and spend the night in her room as only ONE guest permitted. If as I expect this is after the last train home I am to enjoy the ambience all night, all morning, until she emerges from anesthesia. Then, for a few hours longer than I would like rotating the guest status I grab a train home. Car free ain’t optimal in these times. I used to go to see the Dead at the Greek in my youth and crash in my car.
It is Myself, Terror, It is Myself-Cesaire
Stranded dried up dreams flush with the muzzles of rivers create
formidable piles of mute bones
the too swift hopes crawl scrupulously
like tamed snakes
one does not leave one never leaves
as for me I have halted, faithful, on the island
standing like Prester John slightly sideways to the sea
and sculptured at snout level by waves and bird droppings
things things it is to you that I give
my crazed violent face ripped open in the whirlpool’s depths
my face tender with fragile coves where lymphs are warming
it is myself terror it is myself
the brother of this volcano which certain without saying a word
ruminates an indefinable something that is sure
and passage as well for birds of the wind
which often stop to sleep for a season
it is thyself sweetness it is thyself
run through by the eternal sword
and the entire day advancing
branded with the red-hot iron of foundered things
and of recollected sun
Moot. Your thought poured into your trade. My thought vagabond and indolently indifferent expecting "premature death" at any time. And I have to say premature death for 20 years destroyed any interest in Wordsworth whatsoever. The sentiment I found offensive! Do we all not die? I am 100 now I am ready? In that life hope view thought is turned on it itself. No, we say, we are not. This death too is premature.
Your parentage, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, love of music, philosophy and language
has generated the wonderful person you are today. We are very fond of you in New Zealand and Australia. Thanks to Richard Seager for suggesting to some of us to read you.
Somehow, you resonant or reverberate with our vibration. Why, or how, could be the mystery that only you could solve. We do like reading what you have to say, although for someone like me it can at times, be a rather complex deep dive.
Allan, always clearly understands where you are coming from. Also, I must add, there are many women who would dearly love to be married to such a devoted husband as you are.