Vignettes:02172014

Vignettes:02172014

Was a labor of love among friends, Wednesday open-mic night. The sharp glow of Wired-Up Coffeehouse at the Butterfield Strip Shopping Center at Butterfield Hill along the old Butterfield Trail.

The consensus master of the mike and amp, one of us.  From the swampy depths far south of here, to coffeehouse legend;  at least in Fayetteville and Tahlequah, his favorite haunts:  Fayetteville Wednesday; Tahlequah Thursday.  Was a life lived with words, letters, friends who lived for language and for live performances.  The moment captured by memory, these eyes and ears remember; for the love of the small crowds gathered each week during the school terms;  spent his days preparing his rhymes.

Tap the mike, hear it, feel the amp bite back.  The rhythm of his composition, the dim limelight brightened each night he took the stage.  The adventure, the violence of his outdoor life, brought to the strip mall stage, a night with the Lord of the Dimmest Limelight, never a candidate to tour the coffeehouses of North America.  Home was down yonder, far away, a world away, as far as he could remember.  This stage was enough.

Escaped from sturdy structures, gathered round the campfire on a weekend of biking national forest trails. Some with tents, others sleeping under the stars near the flames.  A screech, a near miss; nearly stepped on the creature, a smaller remnant of the Titanic age reptiles roaming the earth disappearing in yore.  An unfortunate rattlesnake offering up for sacrifice under the moon and stars by the flickering campfire. A shovel, the sound of metal striking rock and hard-soiled earth,  the job complete. Head severed, fangs no longer attached to a body, dinner plans have changed.

Giant Lodge Dutch oven, covered with a prepared crust, a top crust and filling in reserve,  awaiting the skewered chickens to brown for chicken pot pie now to be accompanied by the latest moonlit sacrifice. Head buried in the Ozark soil, skin on ice for a belt and hatband, muscled  cleaned carcass chopped for easy cooking on skewers, a dish of Rattlesnake Pie, the most memorable of horrible poems the master of the mike recites for his cheering handfuls of acquaintance at Wired-Up.   

The Willing Victim completes the circle, a world under darkness, uncovering the unrevealed.  For the love of the story, for the need to tell his story: Wednesday Night open-mic. Wednesday nights across the country in a college town near you or the big city or suburbs in places far from these rocky hills.  The stories flow, the rhymes inspire his spirit, eyes shut their last a few years ago. His story lives, the need for words, for tones, for rhythms, for love endures.

Everyone at that campfire on the famous night of sacrifice remember the time they ate Rattlesnake Pie, in the Ozarks, full moon and stars shining brightly. The Lesser Light shines its solar reflection fully on this group, a night emblazoned on their spirits.  An idiot drunken festival of campfire light frozen for future revelers. Memory marker unlike any other.

 Camera-phone videos and the occasional camcorder recorded the open-mic  Moment  for posterity, the story lights the fire, the ancient remnant of Titanic earth age recites the utterance of the eternal zephyrs.  Never ceasing,  contained in the earth vacuum, in motion.  As ancient as the Guest of the campfire. The Serpent slithers no more upon its belly; the winds continue their paths, partaking of earth supper.  The poems endure with this crowd of live performance junkies, awaiting the next great Moment.  I was there, the common tale of those who remember the night and the legendary recollection of the Dimmest Limelight, Wired-Up, a casual coffeehouse.  Memories of the Day.  Alive, expressing a small contribution  to the Whole, never again.  Spoken Word has faded, disappeared in these parts.  Word is expressed with music (if you can hear them). Poverty blankets, comfort,  for the naturally rebellious and unsettled.  Making sense of this world the way he best knew how; a life cut far too short.  Crowds at the coffeehouse can see his picture, mike in hand  in the obscure corner, set beside art of a local, hanging for years gathering dust. Poetry slammers don't forget the legends.  Rattlesnake Pie.  Everyone's  heard that one.  Slithering magic remains.

Milestone moments

On milestone days, such as today, January 1, 2014, I often think of home. According to Augustine, past, present, and future time are all understood through the grounding of perception in the present.  Without the present, there can be no valid memory of the past.  Present circumstances are a prism which cannot be circumvented.  The geography of childhood memory is the imprint which will ever follow the mind's and the body's path through the world of "coming-to-be" and "passing away".  I was raised in a geography of Crowley's Ridge: Forests, water, and clearings where bean fields, cotton fields, and occasionally milo were grown en masse in large-scale farming operations whose crops were dictated by financial interests outside the Delta region. 

The sloughs, creeks, canals, oxbow lakes, man-made lakes, the St. Francis National Forest, Big Creek, the St. Francis, L'Anguille, Mississippi, and the Arkansas rivers created by millennia of plate tectonics, ice melt, weathering, and natural decay and fossilization.  De Soto's chroniclers of his years-long entrada through the southeastern and middle southern regions of North America,  claim the region was the most populous they had encountered.  Waves of death and migration left the region a veritable wilderness after European contact, possibly hastened by unbearable drought conditions of the time.  I arrived to the landscape roughly 150 years since European and later African peoples began shaping the land as it appears today.  Much of Phillips County was too difficult a place to cut all the timber and replace it with fields of row-crops until well into the 20th century, though the region had its share of feudal plantations prior to the Civil War. 

My young mind was shaped by the world immediately surrounding me like any human undergoing cognitive development.  It is inescapable.  I remember every step of some of my long walks through the forest on Crowley's Ridge;  today I would describe the walk as a hike (hardly a word I would have used until I moved to the Ozarks nearly 20 years ago).  I look forward, on these milestone days, to remembering my past, the past unworthy of those gathering the story of our version of collective memory.  My anonymous past combined with the ocean of human conscious, however, is certainly worthy of remembrance and analysis.  A lot of ghosts in the Arkansas Delta for a wannabe medium to discern.  These lands are filled with the ghosts of the instant, the present of these people who have come and gone.  My view of the world is tightly linked to my instant, just as it must have been for ancient humans.  Their present remains in shadow and any medium worth his/her salt cannot possibly miss these remains of lives occupying the land prior to European conquest of the continent and settlement of their own peoples and those from Africa, beginning the depopulation of native peoples on North America.  Interesting to see bits and pieces of tv shows with a medium communicating with the auras or ghosts in buildings or on grounds that certainly were known to have been inhabited and shaped by humans millennia ago, but usually no contact.  Perhaps the ghosts of our conscious minds flicker and fade just as the physical body dies and decays. 

Every day is an opportunity to learn;  perhaps the most important lesson I learned from my youthful geography.  William Least Heat-Moon in Prairyerth included a passage from Joseph Brodsky's "Strophes"(1978), "Geography blended with time equals destiny." The sentiment seems to apply to the Flint Hills as it does to the Delta hardwood riverine region. In the woods behind my childhood home, the remains of squatters camps dot the hills. Tobacco cans, the metal guts of mattresses, surviving planks of wood and the headstones along the ruts on the crest of the hill provide evidence of the movement and settlement of people in this area in more recent times. The cans looked like WW II era advertisement and packaging.  Not sure.  My wish is for everyone to reacquaint with the past present of childhood and remember the home county as we saw it then at least for the briefest instant. Pay attention to the little things in your field of perception.  Might be surprised what you stumble over.  Have a great 2014!  We all deserve it. 

Vignettes 0406'13

Vignettes

0406'13

Everybody calls me Lucky,
playin' cards, shootin' pool, hittin' the baseball,
they say I'm lucky, I believe 'em.
Known him for a while, never heard this name,
called him Lucky, just as he liked.

No way of divining the future,
to avoid the inevitable,
Lucky died in the flames of his home one early morning,
his home consumed, smoke billowing darkness,
awakened his entire family urging them out the door.

Lucky never made it out,
succumbing to the smoke, dropped out of sight,
too late to save Lucky, flames pushed his family back out the door,
his moment had arrived, he had been tested in the flames,
more than Lucky, he was Courage.

The Moment, clear of mind, fixated,
save the family, get them to safety,
his luck had run out, his family alive,
their savior, sacrificed,
easy to judge him unlucky.

Dead before his teens, his calling early,
his good work, permanent,
he believed he was lucky,
no doubt in my mind,
he was lucky, his family saved to complete their lives.

It was his time,
it was not theirs,
the impure good, undaunted,
spares and steals.

BB

Vignettes: 331'13

Vignettes

331'13

Resurrection Day

The day of triumph, our Savior immolated, descending to the underworld,

retrieving the keys, muting the sting of death, risen again.

Our hope in Christendom with that event above others in the New Testament,

merging with the immutable,

to have and love our Being,

our need for conscious never extinguished.

Crowley's Ridge, above Maple Hill Cemetery, Helena,

early morning, awaiting sunrise.

Facing east, overlooking the Great River,

Easter morning in the 80s, the sun bursts over the horizon as many mornings for millennia,

our hope rekindled in the moment sacrifice became triumph.

My mom's family just below, we hope for their sake,

we believe for our sake.

Here they rest, along the Mississippi River,

muggy, dying place grasping frantically for its past.

Resurrection morning peaks above, will be a nice day,

fried chicken and ham, what else?

Buffet-style, most of mom's family will gather,

the ones living close by.

Life's blessings extended beyond death,

hope.

BB

 

Vignettes: 330'13

Vignettes

330'13

Never easy to take a phone call you know is unordinary,

my father on the phone, his eldest brother had died after a lengthy illness.

Siblings surviving childhood numbered 9 when I was younger,

5 survive today.

This brother, loved by his wife of decades, his three sons, a daughter, his numerous grandchildren,

his Navy service photo on their social media from long ago.

Always, for survivors, the future present comes to mind, in the morning, Easter Sunday, Resurrection Day,

mortality on display really close to home, the siblings all destined to dust.

We have our hope, our avior, enduring death and rising again the keys procured to the underworld.

Imperfect, fatally flawed Beings,

our perception aware of forever,

first drawing breath as the body begins to decay, the instant miracle: life-death complex.

Circular for our species, others long ago vanished now officially totally out of the race.

Lungs begin the fight for every breath,

decidedly built to fail at some point, motion ceases.

Reason hard-wired to admit perfection in some sphere,

chimera.

Uncertainty breeds fear, the example of others meeting their doom,

no circumventing that moment.

Trivial things provide a respite for the unconscious mind or else quiets the concerns with noise,

the joys of activity.

One day, it will be my turn to mourn and to be mourned,

dread.

A polished radio voice, our uncle lived near the Tennessee River, not far from Shiloh NMP,

 had once lived near the Arkansas River in central Arkansas, and other places.

He will be buried in a place of honor in Mississippi, the home state of his father,

loved and missed, awaiting the appointed Resurrection Day gathering of saints.

He will rest with the hope that sustained his idle-mind moments,

pondering this present.

BB

Vignettes: 329'13

Vignettes

 

329'13

Good Friday sound check

a little late tonight, a front house party with Earl and them.

Can see and hear them the time or two the door to the back opened

no admittance while they prepare, the band.

A good night to rock and remember

the songs of the formative years.

McMurtry remembers Middle Earth as I remember it

flyover, crossroads between coasts.

The aged red bricks of George's

75 plus years of experience, standing sentinel

to the changes to this corner.

Frisco depot across the street, long past its usefulness

its form endures the death of its function.

The line is Ar Mo today, lays a good bass line for the performers as it passes.

Down the hill from the university,

Dickson has sizzled lately, though, it literally sizzled by

McCulloch's order in the dark days of war.

Passing armies, brigands, outlaws, westward trekkers, native peoples driven from home

driving true natives from these their homelands.

Trails, homesteads, hideouts, gristmills

industry, agrarians, pastorals, handiwork,

loggers, bankers, railroaders, charlatan curers, drummers.

 

Good Friday on Dickson, a good crowd for a holiday weekend

McMurtry's band is in good form

rather sparse crowd, not complaining.

A great night for live music a treat after the storms of the morning postponed sunrise,

turned into a pleasant spring day.

Few are from here, come from somewhere far away

McMurtry sings about our home like no other,

this ain't Levelland, but you can see it from here.

Life and death at a crossroads bar,

the future's present and past,

it's all alive here.

The street that could easily have died from neglect and blight

the heart of culture in the second cultural capital of Arkansas.

The many faces of Dickson: war on the east end, wars ravages for its entirety 150 years ago,

Colleges west and east ends,

warehouses, private houses, drug stores, churches, graveyard tucked behind,

restaurants, a courthouse, frat house, Old Main, a sampling of life in toto.

Has been a great year of entertainment at George's,

nice to have great touring bands so close to home share their music here.

American music, self-examining, pragmatic levity in the sound-byte age,

music expresses idea like no other medium.

It is far too late or early in this case to spend more time in reflection,

sleep is the prescribed remedy for a racing mind.

Ryan Bingham is the next George's experience for me, unless I attend the Blues shows next weekend,

not sure, but a strong possibility. 

Have never liked the Blues scene here, spoiled by Helena's past,

took me time to embrace culture of my hometown,

much easier to be critical from afar,

sad to see it suffer impoverished, nearly forgotten.

Glad to be in Fayetteville.

BB

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kansas fun

My last opportunity to travel long distances has come and gone. So sad not to be able to travel full time, but life intervenes. This trip to the Plains had a solemn duty in mind, which could easily have led to an embarrassing arrest. My wife's father died in 2002, but his dog, Troubles, a Boston terrier, lived another 9 years, before Mrs. _____ had the dog put down. My wife's sister wanted to bury Troubles' ashes above her father's plot. Oh what fun! A graveyard within sight of some busy roads of Marysville, KS, an old crossroads in the northern part of the state isn't the best place to take a shovel if you aren't the gravedigger. My wife's sister was having trouble breaking the drought-parched earth, so I had to dig the hole in our gray activity, but the Tuesday Morning urn had an ample resting place for the ashes of Troubles, back with the human he loved so much.




We survived the incident with no trouble from an angry sexton wondering why three folks in broad daylight were digging a hole in a graveyard. The final touch for the solemn occasion was to glue a Boston terrier figurine on Doc's part of the headstone he'll share with Mrs. _____ when her time comes. Not sure how she'll react to a plastic figurine on her headstone. She still knows people in the hometown who would report the fact. She'll get over it; these are her children's works. Our trip for that day would lead us to another Pony Express station, a reproduction of Rock Creek Station (Pawnee), near Fairbury, NE, where Bill Hickock committed a possible murder in his younger years over the purchase of the station. On our way, we passed Wamego and were trapped into taking a tour of the Old Dutch Mill displays. Too bad the Oz Museum wasn't open that day.



The western phase of the October trip this year took us through Lyons, Great Bend, and on to Hays for a couple of days. The Cornado-Quivira Museum in Lyons tells the story of the Santa Fe Trail and the Coronado entrada, which coincided with Hernando de Soto's entrada from Florida, passing through Arkansas encountering important Mississippi River villages Pacaha (Wapanocca?), Casqui (Parkin?), Aquixo (Horseshoe Lake?), and Quizquiz (Walls, MS?). Both parties wound up in Texas encountering Caddo tribes. The Quivira lived at Lyons in the 16th century and are a Caddoan tribe encountering Coronado who followed the rudimentary Santa Fe Trail, a migration route into the late 19th century. The museum had an excellent selection of books on the period and selections on more recent history of the region. Was a pleasure to compare notes on the expeditions of 1500s by the ruthless Spaniards. It was the true beginning of the end for native cultures in North America. Disease from Europeans and warfare with Europeans would last another 400 years until their virtual extinction.



The next town was Great Bend, passing by Ft. Zarah, named after Maj. Gen. Samuel Curtis' son who was killed at Baxter Springs, KS by Quantrill's guerrillas as part of Maj. Gen. Blunt's fateful trip from Ft. Scott to Ft. Smith. Curtis lead an expedition along the Santa Fe Trail after the native uprising of 1864 across the Kansas plains and founded this dugout fort. Had a great stop at a coffee shop in town and I suppose we were in the "office" of a very busy community activist. She bought a cup for a fellow who happened by and was a bank officer who supported an event she organized. Every town requires such people. Maybe I should have bought her a cup of coffee for her work to better her community. It was a good visit, but we reserved a room in Hays and continued the lengthy trip from Emporia, where we'd stayed for a couple of nights.



Hays is in the Smoky Hill River valley and was home to Ft. Hays in Frontier days. It was a good visit, then we visited the Sternberg Museum, where the famous "fish-within-a-fish" fossil is displayed. The museum explains the natural history of this part of Kansas, which was the floor of a shallow sea millennia ago. We would not be able to go as far west as hoped on this trip, the Fick Fossil Museum is in Oakley, not too far from Colorado. I wanted to visit Colby and Goodland as well as Pueblo ruins to the south and the Ft. Wallace site. Till next time.



A real treat of the trip was visiting Salina, though we pushed on to Abilene for the night to the east. We spent most of the day in Salina after a quick visit to Kanopolis and Ft. Harker and Mushroom Rocks State Park. While in Salina, we witnessed a fuzzy headed, fuzzy bearded fellow in mirrored shades, a likely candidate for being up to no good, driving a white1980s vintage Mustang GT. The shady character was turning onto a busy highway from a side street with a mattress wedged under his car. What on earth could he have done to manage that? It looked more like the boxed springs of a bed. He was skidding his wheels a bit because the bed was lifting his car as he attempted to turn. He made a wide turn onto the highway as folks were trying to pass the mattress which protruded about six feet into the passing lane as he turned. Last I saw of the fuzzy, mirrored shades 70's refugee. But the mattress or boxed springs was in the middle of the road with what appeared to be about 5 quarts of oil saturation when we passed by again. Maybe he removed his oil plug with the massive road obstruction. Not sure what that dude was on to run over a mattress in broad daylight on a quiet side street.



Downtown Salina was a treasure. The century old buildings, the towering grain elevator , Mokas coffee shop, the Stieffel Theatre, the Thursday night art crawl, and the beauty of downtown Salina will certainly earn another visit by my wife and I, perhaps next year. I loved what I saw of this town. The Smoky Hill Museum, around the corner from Cozy Inn, the quirky little burger joint where the slider was born was a fun visit. The Museum had a great selection of books on Kansas history and was a free museum, which is a treasure for the community and I would recommend a visit. On to Abilene for a night's stay. On our way to Abilene, an important terminus of the Chisholm Trail until the rail was spurred to Newton to the south.



Abilene is most famous for the Eisenhower Presidential Library, but I wasn't there for 20th century history just yet. Abilene's Old Cow Town is a joke, much like Dodge City's joke of a "tourist attraction". The treasure of Abilene for this trip was the American Indian Art Center. I've never seen such a selection of books about veritably every tribe in North America. In the least, every region had selections on the shelves. I could have bought at least 50 books in this place and still have a bunch I wish I'd bought. The art and jewelry selections were cool too and my wife bought a decorative piece. I must return there next year, hopefully. Maybe next time I'll visit the Eisenhower Library.



The final weekend of our journey took us to Clay Center, not far from the Nebraska border. From there, we traveled to Concordia to see the National Orphan Train museum, dedicated to remembering the estimated 200,000 children shipped to the Plains and middle America from the east along the train corridors. It was a sad place, but offered the stories of their finest successes. Many of the featured orphans survived a hundred years of life and relatively happy lives. However, the museum didn't avoid the failures, such as the children returned to the benevolence organizations which placed them for ridiculous offenses, such as reaching for a handful of jelly from a cellar, or childless couples who adopt a child, then return the child once they conceive their own offspring. The next day, we visited Manhattan on game day against Mizzou. I always love visiting Aggieville and visited the Dusty Bookshelf, where my wife's father would buy his western fictions. I found a few good books about Nebraska and not a single Kansas Historical Quarterly. I was hoping to score a number of valuable historical periodicals on Kansas history, as I find a good selection of used Arkansas Historical Quarterly periodicals at Dickson Street Bookstore here in Fayetteville. It's always fun to visit Manhattan and game day with some much needed rainfall in the region made for a good day, plus my wife's sister and Bob wanted to try the Cozy Inn slider joint franchised in Manhattan, I suppose. The Salina Cozy Inn didn't mention the location at Aggieville, so more oniony burgers, don't even ask for a cheeseburger, for the week.



The trip back to Fayetteville took us through Emporia, again. We visited my wife's mother before our return. We bought a lot of books and enjoyed the visit to the Flint Hills and the Plains. The only sad commentary was the discovery that Tallgrass Prairie had scrapped their bookstore, although they were building a new visitor center and we were told the new gift shop wouldn't be the bookstore they once had. I love that site, but I'm disappointed. At least Town Crier, a bookstore in downtown Emporia, had some of the selection the Prairie once offered. Much fun. I love this state, as I love every state I have visited over the years. Some states I enjoy more than others, but I always manage to find something good about a place to overcome the shortcomings. Can't wait for my next trip next spring. Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama are likely places for that week of travel.