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PostPosted: Tue Dec 13, 2005 10:33 am
  

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I was sitting in the sun, meditating on the world, thinking about the early Spaniards who had sunned themselves on that very spot 400 hundred years ago. I heard somebody say “its interesting how the Puerto Ricans come in every shade from nearly white to colored.” So I piped up and said, “Spanish to African, that what you mean?” They looked at me quizzically, so I continued, “They don’t have many indigenous folk left, they just didn’t make good slaves, they wouldn’t work so hard and they were always getting the whiteman’s fevers.” I think I was intruding at that point, but I didn’t care, so I proceeded on with a little more info, I said, “You know there was some interaction with the indigenous and the African that the Spaniards did not know. Apparently, there was a plant in the wild here that when young girls laden with fruit chew the stems, why they abort. Imagine that, the decision to eliminate the future, to end generations of survival, so your offspring won’t be born in captivity as the property of something so primitive as man. Many chose that path, and for generations it was an option for the “colored” and the master didn’t know. I wonder how many masters had fruit they would have aborted had they only been told?”

They left as I called a “colored” girl over and asked her to fetch me another expensive fruity rum drink, por favor. Then I let my mind get lost in the Leaves of Grass while my body got lost in the warmth of the sun and the cool ocean breeze. Those business trips to San Juan suck! I was listening to the words in my head: “I believe a leaf of grass is the journey work of the stars, and the pismire is equally perfect and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren. And the tree toad is chef-d’oevre for the highest. And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven. And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery. And a cow crunching with depressed head surpasses any statue. And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels”. As the words flowed through my head I got up and walked to the pier suspended up above the surf and felt the power of the ocean pounding in and saw the little rock crabs scrambling for the pools left in the depressions in the rocks filled with the salty sea brine. I pulled a bread roll from my pocket for just this occasion and threw bits into the water below and watched the small fish, it seemed thousands in the eddy’s swirling below, I watched them fighting for the bread in the great cosmic struggle. They were colored greens and blues and yellows and they were fast and lean in the tides. It was about this time I heard the words of Whitman in my head, “Long I was hugg’d close—long and long, Immense have been the preparations for me. Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me. Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me.

(I was listening to the Fred Hersch Ensemble who put Walt Whitman to music, it made me dream strange dreams).

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by PSBeaty on Dec 13, 2005 ---</FONT></center>


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 14, 2005 1:03 am
  

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I was a thinkin’ of generations guided me as old Whitman says? I can’t imagine the physical strength of those that lived before the modern era (I guess a modern era is a relative term). What my great grandmother must have seen when she looked out on the fields and burned in the summer sun and froze in the winter cold. I only know of one story about my great grandmother Sims. Back in 1906, she was dealing with her fifth pregnancy in five years in a land that was hostile to all but Indians and snakes. I remember hearing stories how on the hot summer days the snakes were everywhere and sometimes they would get up under the beds or in the chest of drawers. Well the story goes she was pregnant and it was hot and, I am guessing, she might have been a bit malnourished and weak from five straight years of bearing an Okie litter. The time it finally came and the young woman, not quite twenty five, faced another child birth. I don’t know the thoughts or what she felt, I can not imagine. The child was difficult and when it came it was stillborn. So the story goes, she sat in that house four about two weeks and stared out the window. She looked at the four babies around her, bit her lip, and hid the pain. One day, she got up, walked down the porch steps and sat in the shade of an oak tree in the front yard. I imagine the world was spinning as a maelstrom and her extremities numbed and her heart said no and she fell to the ground. It was most likely a Staphylococcus species that colonized her womb and blossomed in the springtime. Now she was gone, there wasn’t nothin’ more she could give.

I know more stories of WP, but none of them are very good. There is the fact that when he found her he was silent and cold. The body went to Nixon Oklahoma and was buried in a place where I would chase lizards and wonder about Indian graves in sixty years. There was a week, time passing, and the maelstrom had found a new home in WP’s head. I would assume he drank and drank hard before he finally lost control. One day he hitched a wagon loaded all that was of value from his young wife’s life including the kids, my grandmother Mom mom on board, took them to the Sullivan house down by Nixon, and left them at the door. The memories are sad. I remember when I heard this story clear as yesterdays tomorrow. I was sitting in the living room of the house on SW50 between Western and Walker in the Knob Hill section of OKC. Mom mom had produced a big box of old pictures, pictures of her and Aunt Jessie dressed as flappers in the twenties. Pictures of Pop in his Model T with a shotgun across his lap, the old Blue dog beside him with his head resting on cross paws and a pretty young thing in the passenger seat (Mom mom was quite annoyed when I asked her name and that picture disappeared from existence, I loved that photo). Then I came upon a picture, a picture from around 1910, of a man still young in years. He was sitting in a wicker chair, kinda leaning back, with what looked to be surplus army boots and canvas paints and a denim shirt. Sadness was in the eyes and grimacing forced smile/smirk on his face, in his hand a pint of whisky held to his lips. I heard Mom mom behind me growling in an unforgiving tone, “There he is, practicing his profession!”

The picture was taken probably about the time he decided to complete his transformation. I can’t imagine what went through his mind, but there is no doubt he didn’t have the strength to carry on and so he transformed himself into a traveling man. I heard stories of his riding the rails to Denver or down into to Texas or maybe even east into Alabama where some family remained. When Gertie, his oldest, got older, so the story goes, he would show up at her door when the winter set in. She would care for him as best she could and he would see his offspring. I can’t remember Mom mom ever saying a good thing about him. I was always amazed how long he lived, maybe the bottle is nutritious after all, but he lived until he was in his 70’s. The story goes that when my brother Dennis was just a small boy (1957) they took him and Mike down to the cheap hotels of OKC and pointed out their great grandfather WP, just one of them old men leaning against the wall. I guess he died and as they say, nobody cried. They hauled his carcass down to Dibble Oklahoma (I never knew why Dibble) and threw it in hole. Nobody ever took me to see his grave and there were never any shovels and rakes to repair the seepage. But that picture is framed and I have it down stairs and I look in those eyes and I wonder what part of him is in me.

(should I shut up or keep wondering aloud?)


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 14, 2005 3:10 am
  

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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by PSBeaty:


(should I shut up or keep wondering aloud?)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I think keep on keepin' on...


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 14, 2005 10:45 pm
  

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I am a honky tonk man! That is a fact. I love the look, feel and smell of a Honky Tonk. From the Diamond Ballroom to the Twilight Club to the Dew Drop Inn. I was thinkin' of great Honky Tonk Lines:

Here's a couple I like:

Everybody got'em some kind a past now
Here comes that old snake in the grass,

or

You sure look fine tonight
In the Beer sign Light

or

I could buy me a house at Horseshoe Bay
with the money that i let slip away

or

I got over drinkin romalar and sniffin airplane glue
But I never quite got over losin' you

or

because her hair is the color of the black black diesel smoke
her skin is as white as the white lines on the road
and when I leave this town I got one thing on my mind
I'm goin' to Oklahoma and make that truck queen mine

I am just crazy about Honky Tonks!


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 14, 2005 11:55 pm
  

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and one more I got to add:

no more does the moon above
shine down on a man in love

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by PSBeaty on Dec 14, 2005 ---</FONT></center>


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PostPosted: Thu Dec 15, 2005 4:03 pm
  

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This whole thread reminds me that we used to talk about cerebral flatulence on these boards alot in the old days!<img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/smile.gif" width=15 height=15>


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PostPosted: Fri Dec 16, 2005 12:06 am
  

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I am still feeling lost in lyrics here

lets see a honky tonk song with a topical theme, wait wait don't tell me, I got it!

little bee works the blossom
big bee sucks the honey
darky raise the cotton
whiteman gets the money
(that Bob Wills band, they were cutting edge topical songsters)

and on the money theme that classic honky tonker from the 70's Big shot rich man

I rolled me a reefer
'bout seven foot long
smoke that reefer
got so turned on (turned on)
hocked my tape deck
made the phone call
bought some more reefer
now the money's gone
but I don't want to live
like a big shot rich man
i don't want to live
like a damned old slave
I just want to give
some land to my children
so they won't have to buy my grave

any Fromholtz fans out there, i guess it aint truly a honky tonker but definitely one of the greatest folk songs of the sixties that works in the Honky Tonks I know and love, and that was that old Texas trilogy, i like the talkin' bits that usually don't make the recordings (Mr Lovett, what were you thinkin' rerecording this in that weird key with only half the words, well there is one notable exception is Stevens own Just Playin Along, one of those LP's that hasn't made it to CD yet) I love the part about those folks that never leave Bosque County Texas at all, they stay there, they live there, they die there, and when they do die ...(it goes on but my favorite part is)... the next day they get a big ol' hearse and haul the body down to Copperl there to the Methodist church, or the Baptist church or the Church of Christ, any one of the big three there and it finally comes time to view the body, and the mourners come by and they cry and they cry. But folks when they view a body they got strange things to say, things like; Don't he look natural, or, Looks like he's asleep or The funeral home sure did a fine job didn't they. Tell ya the truth folks, they always look just deader'an hell to me..then it goe into the Mary Martin portion (I love this song) Mary Martin was a school girl just 17 or so, when she married Billy Archer 'bout 14 year ago, Not even out of high school folks said it would not last, when you grow up in the country you grow up mighty fast, and they married in a hurry quick before school got out, folks said, why hell she's pregnant you wait and you'll find out. and it came on a wintry day, one grey November morn, the first of many more to come, a baby boy was born...(The trilogy gets my vote for one of the top ten folk songs ever written)

Let's not forget songs of the 80's, and working with Larry's theme how about the words of wisdom from The Fall, and that great Manchester punk bands' anthem to Generation X (whatever the hell that is)

"The man whose head expanded"

remember that one. The noxious gas just keeps venting all over this thread!

THat reminds me of another one with noxious gas in his head, old Jerry Jeff Walker (who, as I recall, was actually the first true "Country Music Outlaw" to move from Nashville to Austin, granted Willie and Waylin weren't far behind, but that first Jerry Jeff in Austin LP has still not made it out digitally. I love that one. With the first Guy Clark songs on a major release and the Old Beat up Guitar song (I love that line "A ramblin' man has troubles hangin on to what he might own, and somewhere along the highway that guitar fell by the road, then one night in New Mexico, i stumbled into this bar, the angel lay there smilin' on the old beat op guitar (I had a friend who owned an old beat up Roy Smeck Stage Deluxe, cool guitar), but since its a full moon and I am a lunatic I am gonna leave the words to (well as best i can rmember them) to Moonchild, which was sort of my them song during a rather experimental period in my life

I'm a moonchild, have you understand
don't like the day you know I'm a moonlight man
The days are real tight you know controlled by the law
And everybody's workin' just tryin' to get off

I'm like the moon yea, i'll be hangin' out now
high in the sky don't you want to fly
well i come with the night and I go with, go with the morning light

when the moon goes down you know it hides somewhere
prob'ly got all of it's good stash there
takin' some rest you know just a gatherin' some strength
never know what it might or might not bring!

Damn, High School just about killed me. I remember one time my cousin, he was a bit crazy, well he joined the Navy and was stationed in the south pacific on some boat or another. One day, he , well you might say he had a tendency not to think things through so well. He went out on deck, layed out a beach towel, sparked up a doober and began to sun himself. Well, as you can imagine he was determined not to be moral enough to represent the US in uniform and he was summarily discharged, dishonorably I might add. Well, he came home with 5, i mean 5 full 40 CC screw cap tubes of south pacific hash oil. That was enough THC to kill any normal human, so I had to protect him. I went to the shop i worked at, The Batsen Moutain Trading company because we had just obtained a gross of hash oil pipes (those small tube glass things eith the little the little round bowl and whole that just allows a small drop in to be vaporized, consumed properly do you have any idea how long 200 CC of south pacific hash oil will last). Well it was my duty to enlist some friends and help my cousin dispose of that material in a proper and safe manner, which we proceeded to do!

Ah, but I was so much older then
I am younger than that now!

Edited to say I must apologize for the ways of the world and how I responded to them during my years of youthful awkwardness, but I have come to the realization its a part of me and you just can't hide the things that are a part of you! i do not endorse but I am no judge of such activities!

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 3 times, lastly by PSBeaty on Dec 15, 2005 ---</FONT></center>


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PostPosted: Fri Dec 16, 2005 1:23 am
  

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PSB...where do you find the words?

as an incoherent, I grovel at your hem.


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PostPosted: Fri Dec 16, 2005 2:02 am
  

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Red hot memories and ice cold beer...


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PostPosted: Fri Dec 16, 2005 9:58 pm
  

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http://www.gregburns-fineart.com/

This link is to a fellow back home that I new long ago. I have a print from him that was done in the early 70's and he no longer catalogues but it is a pen and ink of the "Woody Guthrie House" that I wrote about visiting in a post called Okemah 1973 long ago. I put the link here because, even though he is from Northside, he grew up in the same OKC I did and he captures it quite well. So, as they say in Tijuana, Check it out!


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PostPosted: Fri Dec 16, 2005 10:51 pm
  

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there be lots of moon children around here!
(hello)
beautiful prints!

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by agnes on Dec 16, 2005 ---</FONT></center>


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2005 12:15 am
  

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A Solstice Meditation: It Just Happened to Me< it is what it is???

As I sit here today these words pour from me, a meditation on the beauty of fall leaves, the softness of a full moon, the brilliance of a morning sunrise, the calm in a summer evening, the sensation of the caress of sensitive skin, the innocence of a child and the vibration in life that challenges our limit to comprehend. My life, an event of grand insignificance, is now a carefully timed world of anxiety, misfortune and unrealized potential in an ongoing struggle of ambitious survival; my first fall from grace has been lost in time with any innocence beyond recall. Time is wasted on meaningless tasks beyond my control in a wasteland of arrogance and indecision that can reach inside of me, grasp my soul and squeeze the life out of me. When asked how am I doing, I answer, “I’m still here!” I am still here, the same genome that forms, sorts, and structures components around the light of life, the fire that dissipates star stuff, into tangible bits of energy that drive reactions beyond equilibrium into the corporeal manifestation of the child that became a man. And so, I look out on the world and think, this world is a series of decisions filled with contradictions, not quite in parallel and not quite not, not necessarily related but extremely interwoven, but not necessarily sound but often with the best of intentions, and typically with a purpose but always subject to interpretation. My ability to communicate with the world around me is just a probability, abstract concepts distributed as ideas, emitted imperfectly to a diverse population of receptors equipped with a network of reference abstractions to aid interpretation and add to a small fraction of the human consciousness. So what is relevance? What justifies or drives attempts at communication? I like to lie on the ground and look to the sky at night, to the stars and the full moon and listen to the sounds of life around me. I like to listen to the rocks, the trees, the streams, the mounds, the stones, the walls, the streets, the doors and the words of all that past before me. I like to hear the sound of laughter and music and stories until dawn. I like to feel friendship when words of expression seem an unnecessary and primitive form of communication. I like to lie next to my lover and look for calmness in her eyes and feel the pounding of her heart as I lay my head upon her breast. I love to smell the warmth of her body,
touch the softness of her skin and taste the excitement of our souls as our blood and muscles respond by creating pressures and sensations that are beyond our control. I love the roundness of form the firmness of muscle, the clenching, the seizing of excitement the release, the submission, in undulating waves, muscles contracting, blood flowing and slowly burning passion fueling my soul. I want to look deep in my lovers eyes and feel her soul and say without words I give to you what I am and have her know and feel the same from me, when there is no world, no form or consciousness of what is shared between us. I like to press against my lover, past inhibitions, once the desire and will to maintain barriers is gone, and all that is left is the touch of her firmness, her strength, as well as the softness of her breasts and belly and it is then my mind and soul can be free of their crude earthly forms.


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2005 12:34 am
  

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I,m sorry, I'm just an Okie fruit loop, Forgive?


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2005 12:45 am
  

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I'm just glad you're a fruit loop floating around in MY cereal bowl!


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2005 12:50 am
  

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Amen, PSB!


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