The energy in the vacuous atmosphere is cosmic spit dots, splashing and zapping around Zemirah, pulling and splitting cells into Adam’s temptations. It crept into her vortex like an unwanted salesman beating down the door confusing her treasured peace of mind with too much information. She tried to ignore it asking herself could you leave it where it began or is the real question is, will you leave it behind?”
Zemirah had a full bowl of apples on her wooden farm table inviting her to a light breakfast. She plucked one, in particular, polished it on her shirt till it shined like Christmas then took a crisp bite of crunch -a-luscious, chewing it slowly to express the succulent juice to the far reaches of her tongue.
She looked up and saw through her window perched ever so nimbly on a thin branch was a red cardinal with its beak open beckoning her to listen. Karuna, Karuna he sang as Zemirah stood still hardly breathing so as not to scare him into a feathered fly away.
The breeze waved the Little Pretty Woman Orienpets to dance along to the melody. It is like that to find that just stopping to look around and within will bring one home. The cells of her body began to awaken, polishing each one in a river of oneness throughout her being into a softer harmony. She was carried away uplifted in the auspicious altered state of reverie and began to sing along.
Dedicated to Babe, who without his presence in my life, I would not have known how to “Trip the Light Fantastic, nor, “Dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free.”
A Glittersmith is one of those people that you meet, who offer much in the way of adventure, explores undiscovered spaces with joyous abandon, and unpredictability sit on the edge of your seat for the whole ride. They are-a fan-my-brow fabulous person who walks with angels and magnificent misfits; yes that is a Glittersmith. I have only met a few that had that kind of influence on me, where I was swept up into their personality of their childlike spirit – followed willingly in their shinning smiles, and quirky ways like a child follows a butterfly as far as she can until it flies to high to see.
I met Paul Smith in 1969, three months after I graduated from high school, and moved to San Francisco. If there had been a soundtrack playing at the moment as he walked in the door, it would be this.
These Foolish Things ~ by Billie Holiday
A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces
An airline ticket to romantic places
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things remind me of you
A tinkling piano in the next apartment
Those stumbling words that told you what my heart meant
A fair ground’s painted swings
These foolish things remind me of you
You came, you saw and you conquered me
When you did that to me
I knew somehow this had to be
The winds of March that make my heart a dancer
A telephone that rings, but who’s to answer?
Oh, how the ghost of you clings
These foolish things remind me of you
The scent of smoldering leaves, the wail of steamers
Two lovers on the street who walk like dreamers
Oh, how the ghost of you clings
These foolish things remind me of you
How strange how sweet to find you still
These things are dear to me
They seem to bring you so near to me
The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations
Silk stockings thrown aside, dance invitations
Oh, how the ghost of you clings – These foolish things remind me of you
It was one of those captivating, soul kindling moments. I was sitting at the kitchen table at the sisters Leslie and Liza’s house, when their dog Nutritious began to bark. I never knew why they named him that, maybe because he was a healthy German Sheppard, but knowing Leslie, she probably like the syllables all strung out in a sharp set of three when she called his name, Nu-tri-tous.
Outside the door, climbing to the second story, I heard a booming theatrical voice.
“Nutritious! I hear you boy, is that you! It’s me, you remember me.” The sisters looked at each back and forth at each other, trying to recall the voice. “That’s that older guy we met in the park when we took Nutritious for a walk,” said Leslie. “Oh yeah, I remember,” Liza said, and went to open the door.” In came this guy in his late thirties, put his hand out for Nutritious to sniff, and patted him briskly on the head. “You are a good boy, Nutritious, you remember me, don’t ya boy; yeah we played Frisbee in the park.”
“Hi, Paul, it’s been awhile since we saw you, we only met you once in the park, and how did you know where we lived?” Liza asked, rather blown away he was standing in their apartment.
“My friend Bob, told me he dropped you off somewhere on this block. I just walked up to this door and opened it, thinking it might be yours. When I heard Nutritious barking, I knew it was the right one,” Paul said, quite proud of his navigational sixth sense.
“Come in and have a seat, I’ll make some coffee,” Liza told him. She led the way down the long hall that ran through the duplex. Paul followed and stopped for a moment. When our eyes met, I smiled as he came into the kitchen, and sat across from me.
“You look like an angel,” he said.
“What?” I’m just Laura, not an angel, but thanks.” I laughed, a little embarrassed by his forthright – no holds bar remark. He was clearly one of those people that said the first thing that comes to mind without a filter.
“No really, you are glowing,” he said.
“Hmm, must have been something I ate,” I said, trying my best to shift the focus with humor away from me. He laughed; the sisters laughed, and the three of them began to catch up from where they had left off, which was 3 months ago.
Leslie was a radiant beauty with long blonde hair, and turquoise eyes, flipped her hair off her shoulder, and said. “The last time I saw you, you were going back to Redondo Beach to be in a play or something?”
“Yes, the Community Theater to do Kismet with my friends Bob and Charlene. You have a good memory. Yeah, man, we wrapped that play up last week, and I thought I just come to the city to see you two again. My sister lives over in South San Francisco, so I’m visiting my nieces and nephews too,” he said in the friendliest of manner, as if he had known them for years.
“I love the theater! You are an actor then?” I asked him, keenly interested in anything he might have to say. He was charismatic in a spunky, full of life – envibing way; with a garland of the soul kind of laugh that peeled through the apartment in staccato jazz rhythm. It was infectious; I found myself laughing too, for no reason other than the joy of meeting a uniquely interesting person.
“Well, recently I am, since I got out of prison.” He added the prison, as if it was nothing; it could have been the words military, college or circus. He began rolling a Bugler cigarette, quite expertly as he went on talking. “I was in San Quentin for a parole violation, and while I was there, I got involved in an acting group. I loved it! Fuck, yeah, it was so much better than getting high, and doing all that crazy shit I use to do, that I just stuck with it when I got out. My friends Bob and Charlene invited me to audition for Kismet and I got the part of the genie.”
“Prison, eh?” I was totally curious now; he didn’t seem like the criminal type. “What were you originally in for?”
“I use to be really wild. I partied, and took all kinds of drugs. I was always getting stopped and searched so I already had a bad reputation around the town. I didn’t have much money one night to buy some drugs so one night, when I was already fucked up; I broke into a drugstore through the sky light. Well I found a couple of bottles of Seconals, and put them in my pocket. I’m not greedy, just wanted a few to have, and then I noticed that there was an old fashion ice cream counter in there. I went over and made myself the biggest chocolate sundae, with bananas, cherries, and nuts – whip cream all over the top; man it was fucking delicious! I was sitting on the floor behind the counter when the police came, and hauled me off to jail for breaking, and entering, robbery of drugs and eating their ice cream. He laughed out loud. That catchy laugh was bounced around us ladies like a ball, getting louder and sillier by the second.
“They sent you to San Quentin for that?” I asked him.
“Well, no I had been in other places on, and off since I was in my 20’s, mostly for drugs, parole violations, like going to Mexico. Once you’re in the California system, it’s hard to get out. When I was sixteen, I ran away from home. That was the first bust. My dad thought it would straighten me out to be in a reformatory. Those places are awful for kids, so I ran away from there. Well, parents couldn’t get back their kids once they were served with time, so rather than turn me in, my folks dyed my hair, and sent me off to Pennsylvania to live my Aunt. They put me in a car with a friend of my dads who he’d met as a sign painter at Universal studios; a kind of Sheikh of sorts.”
“A Sheik?” I asked, this story getting better by the minute.
“Yeah, that’s what my dad called him, the Sheik, because he always wore a turban. Well anyway, they dyed my hair black so I would look like his son. We rode all the way in his 1935 Lincoln K, and since he had an accent and I didn’t, I wasn’t allowed to speak in public for being found out. He just told them I was deaf and dumb if anyone tried to talk to me.”
“That is far out.” My mind was filled with the image of this scrawny fair complected kid stained in shoe polish, just riding around with an East Indian man across country in a big Lincoln.
“Yeah people thought we were royalty or something weird. It was all right until we went through Texas on a hot day, and the dye started dripping down my face. I had all these black streaks down my cheeks and shit, and they just thought the Sheik was some kind of pervert, and stayed clear of us,” Paul laughed. “It was awful. I was wierded out by the whole trip. But, I’ve been pretty weird since I was born, always restless, running away and reckless shit. My mother said when I was three, she was giving me a bath,for just a split moment, turned around for something, and I jumped out of the bath tub, and started running down the street bare bold naked.”
I pictured him running full out, arms wide out, scurrying like a wild goose down the sidewalk, free as a natural born citizen of the coolocracy; honking to his own tune in blue note jazz; yeah this guy was born to run.
“It was pretty funny I’m told, my mom went running down the sidewalk yelling my full name… Paul Richard Smith, you come back! I stayed with my Aunt for around six months until I turned seventeen, then I joined the Navy… spent some time in Okinawa. I don’t talk much about that. It was pretty boring but I got these great tattoos.” Paul said, lifting up his shirt to show us his two bluebirds on his chest. He rolled up his sleeve revealing a hula dancer that had turned into a freakish woman with drooping eyes, and a shedding grass skirt; her Lai was melded together, looking more like an iron necklace than flowers.
“What do the bluebirds represent?” I asked him, genuinely interested.
“If you see a bluebird, it means you are close to land, in the Navy they can also mean if you are shipwrecked you would definitely be rescued, or some shit like that,” he laughed.
I took in this poetic metaphor as if I had traced his soul within my own to mean that all his life he had been running, running not away, but running with his own spirit to an undetermined place in the world, seeking a refuge of belonging with someone he was destined to meet. He was out on his own island of bodacious bizarre, fresh as a clap of thunder, wild as loose feather in a fourth of July parade, rules and regulations baited him into rebellion, and no man or any woman was greater or lesser than he.
I said nothing. I knew him. I knew that life can cause one to move in directions that may be wrong, too man wrong turns but seeks to touch that which ferociously breathes in oxygen to keep its own fire alive.
It was getting late, and I felt I might be intruding on their own reunion so I went next door, where I slept on Hal and Sherry’s porch. It wasn’t too long after I had settled in to my bunk cot in the 4 x 6 foot room and started reading my Bible. I was reading the passage where Jesus raised the young girl from the dead. “Talitha cumi”, which means damsel, arise, when Paul knocked on the door.
“I was wondering if you had any rolling papers and might want to smoke a joint? I’ve got some pretty good weed,” he said with his eyes twinkling like a sprite.
“I don’t smoke pot. I am already pretty trippy on my own and it just messes me up,” I told him truthfully. It was the 60’s, and all my friends did drugs of some kind or another. I was accustomed to the curiousness’ of this procurement to not indulge as they did. My choice was born out of reason mostly. Why spend money on drugs, when one barely has food? Why put something into your body that might affect your future children’s well being? Why start some-thing that might cause so much hardship in a relationship as it had done in my family with alcohol? It didn’t make sense to me. But most of all, why seek spirituality through any other way than simply living ones’ life as joyfully as possible? I think I came into this life all ready up for doing just that.
“I see you are reading the Bible, those back pages don’t have anything on them, and maybe I could use one of those?” he said as a utilitarian answer to needing papers.
“I think that would be kind of sacrilegious don’t you?” I told him then laughed.
“I don’t think God will mind.” Paul said, there aren’t any words on that page.
I thought about it, and decided that I since I had little to offer to this new friend since I was living on a tiny back porch, pan-handled, and sold underground newspapers to eat in China town for 3.00, why not share? I tore half the back page out and handed it to him.
“Thanks, God will put a star in your crown for that.” he said genuinely appreciative.
“You really are a pretty good actor, aren’t you?” I observed with a keen sense of character that I had developed over my short years of just watching people. “You have a smooth way of convincing people of things they wouldn’t normally do.”
“I can usually find a way round things, it’s how I survived all these years.” He inhaled the doobie and blew a smoke ring. “See it’s a halo.”
“That’s what happens when you smoke the Bible,” I said dryly. “So where do you go from here Paul Smith? Do you have plans for the rest of your life?”
“I don’t know, I’ll get a job, maybe as a screen painter here in the city. I have a trade. I learned some things in prison. I was an assistant to the prison’s coroner for awhile too. That was far out. He was this old Italian Doctor, real nice man with a thick accent. One time we were dissecting a body and I had my thumb on one of his main arteries, and felt it beating. I told him that I thought the guy was still alive, I can hear his heart beating. He picked up a scalpel and wacked the artery off and threw the heart in a pan, announced … “The heart, she beat no more.” I was horrified! Fuck, it scared the shit out of me! Then he told me I was just feeling my heart beat as I was pressing on the artery. That was to weird for me. Shortly after that I took up learning how to screen paint in the prison shop.”
Paul had a fulminating way of speaking that cursed for exclamation points, hummed in between sentences like a motor waiting to take off, and laughed out whole paragraphs. It was fascinating to watch him speak, it was as if his hands were separate thoughts that led his stories, always a beat in front of what he going to say next. His head would shake a little from side to side first when something mischievous, or saucy was about to be said, with a twinkling look of, look-what-the-cat- brought-in smile. If one was laughing, he’d chime in with his staccato laugh, milking it for as long as you both could go.
“So what’s your plan, Laura? I guess you’re working right?” he asked.
“I just got here, I’m looking for a job, but no one seems to be hiring anyone like me without experience. I’d like to get off this porch and find a place of my own soon, I don’t like being dependent on the “kindness of strangers.” Something will turn up soon, as sure as there is a heaven.” I smiled certain of that. Paul gave me a fatherly pat on the head.
“Oh, I’m sure it will, there’s always room for a beginner somewhere. Hey look, it stopped raining!” he jumped up in the air exuberantly, giggling like a kid, running out to the back balcony outside the porch door. I followed him to the railing where we both stood in wondrous rapture of the double rainbow that appeared in the sky over the south end of San Francisco. “That’s good luck you know, double rainbows are magical,” he said. It was more than that to me; it was a sign.
A funny thing happens when the pieces fall in place, everything gets clear, and the air is elevated into a rhythmic swirl of awesomeness. Paul inhaled the last of his joint, carefully snubbing out the end to put in baggie for later.
“Well it’s been nice talking to you, I’d better get back to my sister’s house, my nieces and nephews are going to want to say goodnight to me before they go to bed.” This ex con had a heart it seemed, one that was longing for a more domestic life style.
“Goodbye Paul Smith, I hope to see you again, it’s been nice talking to you,” I sincerely told him.
My new independence from my own family had left me with a little lonesomeness that was born out of fledgling wings. It’s not uncommon, everyone goes through this phase, but a world of strangers can hardened the edges if one isn’t careful to find friendship with the arabesque beautiful ones along the glitter highway. I shook his hand goodbye, and noticed a star and a crescent moon burned off, the ink faintly visible in the shape. When I was in school, I signed my named in lower case letters with a star and a crescent after my name. It was the same spacing, the same direction of the moon and I couldn’t help wonder at the coincidence of meeting this man, called Paul Smith.
Chapter 2 ~Saved by a Cricket
Life leads us away from each other and then back again when the time is right. Paul picked up his back pack and turned to me.
“Well the stars are coming out; I better get back to South San Francisco to my sisters, so she won’t worry. I hope to see you around angel lady, nice meeting you.”
“Nice meeting you too, yeah, come back again.” I told him, hoping he really would; he was such a curious character that I wanted to hear more of his stories.
It was my vocation just to be and see what happened. I was traveling the streets of San Francisco, checking out stores and restaurants for jobs, writing and observing. I stopped on Market Street, revived from my earnest search for employment fresh as the yellow and white daffodils that bloomed in the gypsy garden carts on my way to Union Square.
How sweet is the bustle of 18 years of age? How new and fascinating the faces were to me, however weathered or broken. Their working days gone, old men, well beyond their present age, some sat in Union Square waiting for a hand out to buy another bottle of wine. Above the lonely din hovered one man in particular sitting alone on the stone casement, a distinguished looking man in his mid 50’s, though his clothes were ragged his stature still clung on to something upright. I immediately felt a great sadness from him that needed attention, so I sat beside him.
“It’s a nice day, are you enjoying the music?” I asked him as the Jazz band began to play.
“I am, I’m hungry though, can you spare some change?” He asked seeing me as a golden opportunity to beg. I passed over his question as if he hadn’t asked at all.
“My name is Laura, what is yours?”
“My name is Anthony,” he said, surprised that I would even care. I felt he had once been someone special; he still carried himself well and spoke with an air of intellect, which only those educated in the art of conversation can facilitate.
“I bet you once had a job, what did you do for a living?” I asked.
“You mean before I came to this disarrayed lifestyle of wine and begging?” He said sardonically about himself then went on in a kind of euphoria with a sudden clarity that even surprised him.
“Once I worked for Disney when I was twenty. I was a cell painter … I painted the bluebirds and the haunted trees.” His eyes wept silently, streaming in sea turtles tears of a life laid ruin in the wake of temperance lost. “I was married and had two children but they left me long ago,” his voice trailing off into a heavyweight of irrepressible remorse.
Around the corners of his mouth were hints of a smile that he must have used many times over once. I thought about how he was the one of the first who made branches move with wicked unrepentant grasps, tear at snow white as she ran fearfully through the forest. I saw twittering birds that flew all around in the balance of sweet air; the sun shining up to him as he painted in the cells with liquid promise. His eyes must have been glimmering with enthusiasm as he blended the colors, knowing that many children, years from now would see what he created. His life was all ahead of him, dancing with the pictures that once filled his life with tumescent joy but now his only hope was to quit drinking.
“There is always hope. There are shelters and programs in the mission where they can help you find a new beginning.” I told him.
“Yes I stay at one but it is not enough for me. I am just getting by, waiting for release; something to live for again,” he replied.
“How about giving it to a higher power, get a sponsor and the rest will come along, it’s up to you.” I patted his shoulder and gave him ten dollars. “Use this for food please, get something to eat, not another bottle of wine, just one meal.”
“Thank you.” He wiped away another huge tear that streamed in a river from his eye to his chin, then he looked into the blue sky as if he were reading his life up there, searching for a cloud just to take him home.
I was just about to leave when a lively jazz band of street musicians began to play ‘When You Wish upon a Star’. We sat peacefully together in a happier place as I sang along. “It makes no difference who you are.” I inwardly thought about how we all encounter a forest that either lurks to snag us with its scraggly pointed branches, or chose to be wondrously courted with loving welcome in a cricket’s song, ever allowing the stream of constant light to flow through us as we paint our cells in to make a story that is cherished. We sat quietly for a moment in the serendipity of our encounter. I saw him as he truly is inside and sang along with the song.
“If your heart is in your dream
No request is too extreme
When you wish upon a star
As dreamers do
Fate is kind
She brings to those who love
The sweet fulfillment of their secret longing
I hugged him good bye, looked up at the sunlit sky, hopefully wishing on a unseen star for Anthony, and that he would hear Ol’ Jiminy Cricket singing for him, and maybe, just maybe… like a bolt out of the blue, fate would step in and see him through, because; “When you wish upon a star, it makes no difference who you are, anything your heart desires will come to you.”
Chapter 3 ~The Heart Wonders
I moved out of the sister’s porch a few weeks later, having had enough of shared space and handouts. Met up and moved in with a new boyfriend, who was a runaway with fake ID. He’d been on the streets since he was thirteen. Wes, if that was his real name, had well honed street skills for a kid. I spent a month with him in North Beach in a ratty hippie hotel just to get out of the sisters porch. We were still selling papers, pan handling and getting free meals at Morries Dinner because Wes washed dishes there.
One day after one of his New York Style hamburgers, I was heading back to my hotel room in North Beach, and passed a short round woman with shoulder length sandy brown hair. She walked by me and slowed down, then turned and called out to me.
“Hey!” I turned and said, “Hello.” She approached me with a smile and went on to say, “Do you need some clothes?” I was taken aback, as I had been waiting on a box from home with some of my better clothes that Mom was sending and they hadn’t arrived yet. “Yes, I do. I want to find a job, but I don’t have anything that looks nice enough for an interview.” The woman had a sweet kind of Brooklyn accent, which tried to be boisterous but really came off more exuberant than brassy.
“My name is Katy, I’m a seamstress, and have a shop with all sorts of clothes that I collected shoes too, why don’t you come over and see if there is anything you would like.” She quickly added, I’m not a weirdo or anything, I just want to give you some clothes.”
“I do need some clothes, and you really mean it don’t you?” I had to ask, just so I could check out her vibe one more time. It rang true.
“Oh yeah, I am sure you can find something to wear. It’s just up the street.” I followed her up the block and we came to a shop that was in a basement. She unlocked the green door and we walked down the stairs into a room filled with clothes, shoes and material. Her sewing table was spread out with a party gown she was working on. “I do mending and alterations too,” she said.
“This is for a fancy debutante type who lives on Nob Hill.” She laughed like a flock of songbirds in the morning, loud and twittery. “Go look around and see if there is something you like that fits.”
There was shelf after shelf with racks from floor to the ceiling, all sizes, and all styles, some new and some used. “I pick things up at the Salvation Army or Goodwill if I like the piece or the pattern and sometimes redesign a new outfit out of the old, and sometimes I just get things for people that might need something to wear, like you!” She grabbed a sweet empire dress with tiny blue flowers on a chocolate brown background made of manufactured silk. It was lovely, delicate and tasteful with long sleeves that belled slightly at the wrist and handed it to me. “This looks like it will fit.” She loaded my arms up with skirts and blouses and found some leather flats and sandals for me. I was overwhelmed with her generosity. “This is to much, I won’t be able to pay you for all this.”
“Pay me? Oh no my dear, this is for free.”
“Thank you, but I want to repay you.” I told her folding the clothes into a paper bag she’d gotten out for me to put them in.
“Just think of this as a day that God spoke and someday return the favor to someone else in need. The Bible says that if you cast your bread upon the waters, it will come back to you. I say, If you cast your bread upon the waters, it will come back stuffed duck.” Katy led the way back up the stairs to let me out and gave me a huge bear hug goodbye. “Take care dear and good luck finding that job.”
“Thank you Katy, this is really a welcomed turn in my life; I appreciate your kindness and will never forget it.”
I didn’t just walk home, I floated, and it was like I was in a bubble filled with friendship and human kindness. It was an emotion new to me, coming from a complete stranger.
I got a job at Indian Imports, hired by a lovely man in a white suit named George. It was the perfect for me, as I was surrounded by silks, tapestries, beaded bags, and exotic jewelry. There were wind up toys that magically brought laughter to everyone that played with them as the whirred and chimed, danced and played music. Luxurious rugs of rich colors wafted with an organic hemp scent greeted me as I walked upstairs every morning to tidy the toys, baskets, and far eastern oddities on their shelves. It became my true living room, the home of my longing and refuge. To be surrounded by beautiful things is uplifting, even when one doesn’t own them. I could admire their beauty and daydream of the exotic hands that fashioned them into being from so faraway. Indian Imports was one of the first American business’s that bought from independent artisans abroad to help better their economic standing and provide a living for their families.
Wes and I went separate ways, and I left the North Beach Hippie Hotel and moved into what we called back then a Wino Hotel off of Market called The Jessie. It was run down but functional, with clean sheets, and a measure of decent people who were just down on their luck either by happenstance or demise. I saw an opportunity for peaceful coexistence with myself and these strangers that I was surrounded with. We were loners, all eking out a measure survival in the Jessie Hotel that was owned and tended to by the Sikhs.
The fundamental beliefs of Sikhism, articulated in the sacred scripture Guru Granth Sahib, include faith and meditation on the name of the one creator, unity and equality of all humankind, engaging in selfless service, striving for social justice for the benefit and prosperity of all, and honest conduct and livelihood while living a householder’s life. Sikhism emphasizes simran (meditation on the words of the Guru Granth Sahib), that can be expressed musically through Kirtan or internally through Nam Japo as a means to feel God’s presence, and to have control over the “Five Thieves” (lust, rage, greed, attachment and conceit). Hand in hand, secular life is considered to be intertwined with the spiritual life. Sikhs also reject claims that any particular religious tradition has a monopoly on absolute truth.
I liked living in the Sikhs hotel. The air of sandalwood, and ethereal flutters of India filled me with an exotic peacefulness when I entered the lobby where incense was always burning. My body melted off the frantic and disconnected rhythms of the city streets as I inhaled the sandalwood and was greeted with their smiles. The rooms were nine dollars a week. Yep, I said that right. I believe that they were offering a safe refuge for us poor folks, a kind of ashram more than running a successful money making business.
Their white clothes and turbans elevated the atmosphere in the once elegant but now dingy hotel; their peaceful smiles tinged the room in a blue aura. I passed the woman in white, wife to one of the Sikhs with her long ebony hair wrapped up high on her head carrying linens through the antiquated hall on my floor. She nods and smiles openly with recognition of me in a manner that warms my being with belonging. I opened the door to my room where the welcoming site of fresh linens on the bed lay neatly folded for me to change. She has done much more than changed the linens; for there is white light and friendliness left in the room so precisely that I can almost hear temple bells.
I sat in the old rocking chair that I positioned in front of my open window. The curtains billow gently in the breeze like spirits. I rock with their rhythm, slowly breathing in the late evening ambiance of the city. I want to tell the story; this microcosm in the poorest part of town is a movie of real people in the throes of their lifetimes all seeking shelter together in an old hotel. We huddled misfits in emotional splashdown whose days are numbered by a boom of developers moving into the area, are buying up old buildings to be torn down and their dusty pasts transformed into a twentieth century livelihood leaving us all to where, we do not know. These old hotels are a refuge from the streets, at 9.00 dollars a week; we can have a home and a bed, a measure of respectability and shelter from the storms that were inked on the parchments of our hearts.
Just across the street from me is a new office building being built that dwarfs us in its futuristic structure, making me feel that the Jessie is an apparition more so from another time, a portal of a past that we are moving through and the Sikhs are the gate keepers that are easing us all into its transition.
I close the window as it is getting late and crawl into my bed with the squeaky springs, look up to the ceiling medallion that holds the old pendant Edison bulbs. This was once an elegant room with flowered wallpaper that was a radiant blend of vibrant colors and flourished with gold motifs, which now are faded and slightly torn like an old scrapbook. I wonder what kind of people slept here and what adventures they were on.
My neighbors are men mostly, they are poor, alienated, and down on their luck. One morning as I was leaving for work, a drunk sloppily propositioned me. I told him I wasn’t interested and humored him by saying that he might have more luck down in the mission district. He was about to grab my arm when another man came out of his room dressed in an old navy tweed sports jacket, a white shirt with an ascot. He looked like a foreign language professor, or perhaps a literature professor in his early thirties; he was most dapper in a destitute kind of way. In a loud, aristocratic voice, booming out from down the hall, announced in no uncertain terms. “Unhand her good fellow!” The drunk turned in much amazement as did I at the turn of century vocabulary. “I said, let her go, just because we have little money or position in life doesn’t mean we can’t have dignity and respect for others.” The man became ashamed, mumbling I’m sorry, and went off staggering down the hall.
“Thank you, you are a true gentleman,” I said earnestly.
“You are welcome, dear lady; I hope your day is met with better encounters.” He walked down to his room and I never saw him again.
The Gaia Goddess embodies the depths of her femininity, her limitless source of creativity, compassion is her strength. The Divine Feminine is coming into harmony, emerging from the darkness, reclaiming her power. She will no longer be silenced or dehumanized. Her powers of empathy and intuition are being awakened as we integrate the masculine and feminine into our being, in balance once again. The goddess will no longer be suppressed, manipulated, and made inferior to the patriarchal system. She will awaken to her sensual, erotic power, with no fear of the depth of her emotions and passions.
She is the future, the compassionate visionary; creating a beautiful Golden Age on Gaia where we live in enlightened communities that are in harmony with the earth and each other.
There are so many wonderful indie artists out there these days. I could spend, and oftentimes do, peruse the plethora of self published musicians and song writers on soundcloud,bandcamp,YouTube and the wondrous discoveries on radio air play, and spotify are melodiously melded in pure originality. I have dedicated this page to help put out some buzz on the ones I have stumbled on and left a better person for having heard them. The following I have seen at Kings Live Music in Conway.
Randal Shreve at Kings Conway
Barett Baber
Akeem Kemp Band
Jamie Lou and the Hullabaloo
Tyler Kinchen- I Wanna Know LIVE at Kings in Conway
May 21, 2020
Tyler Kinchen & The Right Pieces- “What Must I Do?”
Surely a dream must have a song, this is a classic common tale that we all share.
Why do I love this song? is it because it reminds me of my childhood? Or perhaps speaks of dreams coming true? Yes, all the best of life fulfilled eventually, after the longing, in the sweet sadness of life’s woes and disappointments.
There in the heart of everyone is this universal truth, somewhere we can escape to, someplace where we can live our dreams. It is a common calling that comes with being born. No matter your fortune, good or lack of, there is always something we want to make right, to have or be delivered from. In a world of such diverse contrasts, it is an ignitable presence in all of our lives that resonates at our core and surely seeks a hopeful distraction.
When I was young, the elders spoke of believing in oneself, and if you did that your dreams would come true. I’ve come to believe that as I got older my beliefs were shaken most by those that didn’t embrace this truth; and when my dreams coming true depended on them believing as well, then that was where all my troubles began.
Yes, it is challenging to continue from a center of well being in the midst of chaos, heartache when people let you down. When I finally accepted that people have their own perspectives, their own paths, and the right to them, that I started feeling better. We can not control the behavior of others, we can only be as it is said, “The change we want to see in the world.” There is great peace in knowing this.
Maybe the rainbow is really just our hearts, and minds choosing to be happy just for the fun of it.
Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high
There’s a land that I’ve heard of once in a lullaby.
Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream,
Really do come true.
Someday I’ll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops,
High above the chimney tops,
That’s where you’ll find me.
Somewhere over the rainbow, blue birds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then, oh why can’t I?
If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow
Why, oh why can’t I?
I wasn’t a very quite child by nature. I talked a lot, and thought everyone should listen to me. I thought that it was expected of me to keep the conversation going, or maybe I was a little to precocious to know any better. Fortunately for me I believed in everything I said and felt confident in expressing myself. Oftentimes I emulated the best of my made up characters from my imagination; trying on personalities like hats. I was creating myself from plays, and movies that I admired; I was the song that I wrote on, inventing harmonies for the present moments I found myself in. I always sang. That was who I liked being best of all. Life was a musical, and when it wasn’t, I was bored, detached from who I really was. It was a more than a pastime; it was a state of being.
And all my favorite, invisible friends gathered in the basement just to hear me sing. Looking back on this, I can see all the room aglow with inspiration. Performances were born out of this sweet spot. Incandescent lights appeared calling me to sing to them. I sang with heroic exuberance. In that basement I found my concert space and I was content in knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up. Now to get there was a different matter. All roads carry turning points, filled with lessons if we stay awake and embrace them openly. I was a vast sea of ideas without a map. There were things I saw around me that were illuminated by songs. Patience my dear for the sound is a treasure somewhere in the sands of your timeless soul. If you feel the rhythm then you will find your way.
Halley’s Comet last appeared in the inner Solar System in 1986 and will next appear in mid-2061. Seventy Five years between gigs. Songs travel without time, they are buried in the sand, on the doorsteps of relationships, good and hard times and in dreams. They are found in newspapers and paintings; maybe just a melody that is a wisp of a phrase. They move in and take over, like a hunger or a voice you can’t get out of your head. The nature of a song is in the very breath of Spirit and most times takes up collection from the depths of ones soul.
The heart of a song is in the mist and silence is the only way to catch it as it streaks by. A good song tells a story, it weaves a spell, it tells the truth, it inspires and can change one’s life forever. Some songs are prayers while others are celebrations, and always a song seeks to sing the light fantastic, from it’s own timeless place.
The world moved in a blank sheet of mist over the torn sands and forgotten lands. No one remembered the days of open sky and campfires burning with adventure underneath a desert moon. Except for this one man who had left the cold and sterile domes to find his desert rose.
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Chapter 1 – Old Souls
The world is designated into isolation domes somewhere in the year 3009. Rugged people were increasingly restless in the homogenized civilizations grouped like castrated stallions in domes of crystal and steel. The once adventurous individualists were out of step with the modern world. Only a handful of secret souls, wild and free remained.
Evolution had rounded up the Johnny Cash’s, Belle Starr’s, Sam Houston’s and Mabel Strickland’s. Some say they left the planet for new universe frontiers. For the most part, that was true. But a few decided to stick around earth or come back to rekindle the campfire chats and bust open the deserts and forest once more.
The old museum had been salvaged after the meteor, books and what hadn’t burned, was taken out west of the city and now lay buried in an underground cavern at the far end of the west gate of the dome. There wasn’t much left and little interest over the years in what was. People gathered in pod domes and became self-sufficient. They designed their own atmospheres and shielded themselves from the elements around and above them from then on. Stars were vaguely viewed through glass and exterior landscapes were considered no mans land. The sun was filtered into a dim glaze and there weren’t any gardens as people only ate synthetic foods made in food labs. Water was scarce and rationed though there were many streams and rivers left in the unventured wilderness.
Talk intro (Imagine with me a time, centuries from now when all of people live in huge domes, cold and sterile. Outside in the wilderness once was is a barren desert. The mountains still stand but no one ever visits them anymore. Except for this one man, cos you see one day when he was in the old part of the town he came across this old book when the west was wild open and free and cowboys sang underneath a desert moon. So he went out in search of this great wonderland in search of his own desert rose.
Verse 1 (Male)
Am I just one man alone and left behind? Where is the sight of my own common mind?
Am I a lost hero or something like that? I don’t really know I just got to get back
Somewhere there’s a desert with a single cactus rose
It alone knows why I suppose, Oh maybe it’s calling me, maybe she’s hurting too
Maybe she’ll be waiting after this day is through.
Chorus ( male sings)
Take me down to the river; take me down to the stream,
Lead me on out of this lonesome dream
My heart is field of woe and pain
Dusty sand storms and hot falling rain
Verse 2 (female) talk lead intro to song verse
Well coming from another direction there was a woman looking for the very same thing. She headed out on her horse to the desert.
Verse 2- (female sings)
Why does one give up comfort, why does one give up a home? Why does one get the feeling they just have to roam? Bridle in hand, the moon in my face, cold biscuits wrapped up in pieces of lace.
Talk in short instrumental towards the end (Now as they went traveling down the road somewhere their souls came together and their hearts found each other beneath a desert full moon.)
Verse 3 (Male and female sing together)
I’ve got no business back in steel town. I’ve got no business traveling no man’s ground
But there’s a light in the stars that I‘ve never seen
Like something I should remember, like something I dreamed.
Final Chorus (Male and female sing together)
Take me down to the river; take me down to the stream,
From a developing book; Northern Bell – Laura Botsford
Foot Steps
The day started off simply. In one run together breath I clamored out loud, “I am here what do I do today?” I got up, made my bed, drank my coffee, ate my loving from the oven and went for a walk around a very short block remarking that the trees were all tremendously tall on 3rd Street. Martha Pugh told me that these Oaks were planted for each one of the native sons of the civil war. The civil war! I was breathless. There is a history here that defies present day with lingering pockets of a rich cultural past.
At one time the town was built on Bayou Bartholomew. *1 “Down the bayou from Siemons was a small settlement referred to by steamboat captains and hands referred to as “the port”37 When a post office was established in 1857, the name became Portland. One had to reach it by ferry or ride the steamboat that navigated up and down it bringing supplies to the little towns that dotted its winding lifeline for 2oo miles. *2 Pearl Etheridge Young wrote of crossing the bayou by ferry with her father in the early 1900’s. “The road was now a dark tunnel, grass-grown and arched by the over lapping boughs of the trees…It was early noon when we came to Bayou Bartholomew. A change in the quality of the landscape had become apparent some miles back. The feathery cypress trees sank their stark, flaring trunks into black, stagnant pools…one feature of the landscape set the tone of the whole-a profusion of Spanish moss hanging in cloudy filigree from the boughs above us. (The bayou) had no bridge at this point and it was a watercourse of parts, not to be trifled with. We could not ford it. We drew up looking for signs of life…At last, peering through the trees, we saw a rope stretched between the opposing banks of the bayou and there at our feet, moored against the slippery descent, lay a floating wooden platform…my fathers hello brought no answer. “Everybody down in the bottom field picking cotton,” he said and gave a mighty yodel. The response was long, musical and reverberating… stillness reigned again until the ferryman came, an old Negro with a grizzled head and wiry frame. The mare was coaxed onto the platform and the old man propelled us across by long rhythmic pulls on the rope. It seemed the right way to cross Bayou Bartholomew, the master bayou…in the swamp beyond the stillness deepened and the loneliness was unbroken.” *3 “The site of the town may be found by turning north onto a farm road just east of the bayou bridge on Highway 278 east of Portland. The site is three-fourths of the mile from the highway. A visit to the location may evoke a nostalgic illusion from the past. Sit on the bank of the quiet bayou on a moon lit night. Listen to the steamboat coming. Experience what William Alexander-Percy wrote in Lanterns on the Levee.“There still is no sound in the world so filled with mystery and longing at night of a river blowing for a landing one long, two shorts; one long, two shorts; the sound of a river boat changes inside your heart like a star.”
Leo and I trolled in a little fishing boat down that part of the bayou. He loves the bayou. He tells me that he use to ride his horse along here as a kid with his life long friend since the age of five, Dave Hackett. They would set up a camp, run trot lines and live out their own Davey Crockett dreams. Once they forgot to bring food, and didn’t catch any fish, so they shot a black bird for supper. It was the “toughest meat they ever ate,” he said. I am searching for this mystical portal into the past. It was all that people had written and said about it, haunting, ancient, and removed from contemporary times. The trees and the waters clung to its centuries as to not ever forget the people who once traveled and lived here. Native Americans still echoed down this murky avenue. It was their souls that I felt the most. It was then that I saw a panther, her ebony eyes, stopped and stared into my soul and then slipped invisibly through the Cypress shadows. She hauntingly impressed me with her captivating presence. To this day I never saw her again, but always sense her somewhere near in my spirit. I took her to be a sign from the Grandfathers. I respect the Native Americans that lived here so abundantly at one time. The age of the Indian, the story of the spirit that permeates in the trees and runs in the waters here like life’s blood is always nearby. This bountiful land is pregnant with possibility, but somewhere along the way the sadness of their departure lingers and longs to be remembered with honor. “I hear you Grandfathers,” I say to myself and burn some sage in their memory. After a fire, which was suspected arson, the town of Portland was moved inland. It looks like a run down movie set with a block of buildings facing the still running railroad tracks. The town use to have a lot more going on then it does now. Back in the 1990’s, everyone came downtown on a Saturday night. I can almost still see the old model T’s gathered in a stylish black line, the men all wearing top hats and women politely sipping tiny cokes in long dresses while children run behind in the alley. I am told there was an old hotel, a Chinese laundry, taxidermy, a Portland Drug Store, run by CC Stevens where one could get a soda and prescription. Miss Pearl had a dry goods and ice cream parlor where Gays Grab bag now stands. I feel honored to be living here. It is not often one is lucky enough to reside in a town that was born out of the Louisiana Purchase. I wonder what the ancestors would say about a Yankee girl walking around in their footsteps.
*1, page 16, * 2 pg 17, *3 page 21-22, Excerpts from Beyond Bartholomew-ISBN 0-9444609-22-8 by Rebecca De Armond-Huskey and friends of Portland
poetstreets.com 