Pot Luck Days
“What’s not to like about a plank? Doing a job, not yearning for more, just spanning a stretch of open air. Whether inlet or egress, the plank remains indecisive. Are you going in, or out? I approach my life with a similar metric. Will going further in, restrict me? Or open my heart? I’ve always valued being brave. The doors of risk, sift minions, from men & women. Anyone in the armed services, will tell you as much. Or dedicated artists, who’ll put up with things, as needed, to stay true to their mission. If it were not for our convoluted system, which Joni so aptly called the “star maker machinery”, maybe a few more of us could have found each other. People need people. And that funny, ridiculously campy song, has taken its place, lodging in the “annals” of my mind. I’ve loved my friends ten fold, been blinded by their talents, and made too much of all that, in lieu of substance, I admit. Some are controlled by the system, some are comfortably enabled by partners, some appear agoraphobic, while others are so injured by their history, it’s hard to imagine they’ll ever heal in this incarnation. I took a walk, last year, or maybe longer ago, with a retired man. His whole natural life, it seemed, revolved around his demanding flock of sheep, & as we walked them up and down his trails, I reflected upon his hard-nosed business ethic & formidable, local business, now run by his son. I followed him into the wilderness, watched him direct his herd, then later, cook up a delicious fettuccine. I wish I’d felt something more. I felt a lot of respect, but nothing more “sensitive”. There are no guarantees, in life. Chemical or alchemical magic defies the generalized gossip of people who think they know you. I try to imagine myself, riding shotgun on one of these sketchy, 4th class roads. And I can think of times, when I allowed someone else to drive, while I balanced a hot apple pie, on my lap, wearing oven mitts. We must have been going to a gathering, the kind we used to have, just free, and easy, & local, and un-neurotic. I long for that now. My children have had an even harder time, it seems, recalling the casual exchanges, of their youth. The boards, set up between trees, holding pot luck dishes. The messy exchanges as they, and their friends tousled, rolled free of the adults, and went careening in paroxysms of laughter, into pasture, dried cow plops, and thistle, on into the safety, of grass.”