The produce man speaks...

This Tuesday had all the makings of a Monday. I walked into the grocery before the 180 degree hour of six and was greeted by the sounds of new country music. My friend in produce, Tom, was fumbling with a cart full of bananas and tuning out the world. I decided to sing along to the Larsen Blaine song by his side, delivering those ridiculous lines... "I don't know what she said, but i sure like the way that she said it...!" A carefully crafted song about a gringo in some Mexican beach resort hotel and his eyecandy maid. True love...

What is it about the talk of "senoritas" and "crossing the border" that country is so latched to? I understand the relation to cowboys and rugged terrain, but this latest draw for margaritas and pina coladas and brown-skinned mamas, what's that? And remember, the vast majority of country music listeners are Republican bigots who probably are all in for building a three-thousand mile border fence, but love a competitive minimum wage. And Acapulco, Cancun, the street boys of Juaraz and Mexicali and Tecate, fuck it man! "Bring me two pina coladas, i need one for each hand (Garth Brooks)" and "Senorita Margarita i'm as lonesome as a man can be (Tim McGraw) or "Some beach, somewhere there's nowhere to go, when you've got all day to get there. There's cold margaritas and hot senoritas... (Blake Shelton)" It sells for a reason...

Tom wasn't feeling it, a little surprised that i knew the song so well. He leaned toward me and asked in confidence, "You know why we listen to this shit everyday?" He didn't seem to mind my closet love for new country. "It's cos everybody in here is divorced and pissed off. I know... cos i did the same thing. There's something about this cheap music..." he trailed off. Quite a thought for the hour. I thanked him and got to work.

It struck me that right about the time i started listening to country music two things had happened. The first, i'd split with my first love and wasn't feeling terribly happy about life. And the second was my car attenae broke. That left me with only AM radio, which further narrowed the choices to Rush Limbaugh, NPR, oldies, circus tuba music (from across the border), and good ol' new country music. Perhaps a tape deck would have solved this tough decision.

I was driving down to Portland, Oregon in 1999 with that country music playing. I'd recently had that separation i mentioned and was feeling in loose ends. And on came an old favorite song by Mark Willis, Wish you were here. It's about this fella that has to catch a plane. He says goodbye to his baby and buys a postcard with a picture of paradise on the front, it just reads heaven. Then he gets on the plane and WHABAM! Of course, the whole thing goes down. But, wouldn't you know it. He writes her from heaven and she finds this postcard, "That just said Heaven with a picture of the ocean and the beach... and the simple words he wrote her, said he loved her and they told her, how he'd love her if his arms would reach..."

And it was too much for me. Sentimentality knows no bounds to appropriate outburst. I sang for a little while to this cheezy song and kept pushing the car forward, but i finally had to pull over. The emotional vehicular breakdown. Maybe Tom's right; broken love makes a maudlin person, susceptible to the insipid tastes of new country music. Sometimes you gotta dumb down to feel it.

Wordless wisdom from G-D...

Oh yes, the day has come. Blitz Day, Black Friday, or also known as the day after Thanksgiving. A day for sexually-depraved, discontent, soccer moms to punch it out on the consumer beat. A day filled with belated DUIs; which reminds me i'm still drunk, and now on the timeclock.

Last night i got thoroughly tossed with a kind bottle of Bogle to warm me up at noon. Downhill, gravity, exceptional slow motion. Nearing a full turn of the clock, i attempted an exit homeward. Nearing the truck i got dropped by two friends. Placed roughly in a snowbank kicking and screaming while the keys were removed from the ignition. Coup de Morale. Morality by force. So i returned indoors and played tremendously sober, winning cribbage which was terribly convincing.

Within an hour i earned my keyring back. Heading out for the second time into the thirteen degree frigid night, i made it just beyond the driveway. Back wheel spinning, back wheel set; the e-brake locked, shoes frozen solid about the axle. Burning rubber on ice i managed to reverse back into the drive and shared a good curse with myself. Returning indoors yet again my numb fingers curled in the anti-form of a steering wheel. I fumbled with a bottle and sat down. Sometimes we can't turn away from drunkenness... we must face it, forget about tomorrow's work, and play another game of cards.


That's my bike on our porch. Mount Edgecumbe back there in the sunset... ten degrees and windless.

A picture and a thought.

At home I caught myself facing the jars and cans in the cupboard. This besetting behavior was unconscious and troubling. Work has followed me home like a poor, hungry kitten. I was listening to what perhaps is my favorite song, "My Way," Frank Sinatra. I remember reading something Ol' Blue Eyes said once, "Don't get even, get mad..." I wonder what he meant by that.
For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows and did it my way.
-My Way

A letter to M.

I would like to dedicate this entry to Margie, my West Coast correspondent reporting the fair pulls and beautiful travesties of San Francisco Bay...

M. the weather is something to admire. We're all watching it with our hands around shovel handles, gloved and hooded and booted. All natural color has vanished but the coniferous green (is white a color?... and black, the absence of color?) wandering up the hillsides, and the occasional gap from gray overcast to incandescent blue, shortwithstanding.

All this water around us in the form of ice and snow, and yet it's bone dry. And you're right M., dry snow is slippery... i found that out this morning with a mug of coffee walking my bike down the hill. One slip on a right step and i was sliding textbook baseball style with one knee bent, foot below the other knee (i would've been safe). It was gallant and sacrificial the way i protected the coffee and surrendered to the snow. Not a drop spilled and my bike still by my side after taking ten feet on my bum. I managed a wobbly ride all the way to work without another fall... you would've been proud, i know.

Maybe i'm looking for reasons, but it's more than definite now... this temporary state of working for Pepsi-Cola. Something magnetic about me and absurd situations; spontaneity and the least-likely have become dear companions of mine. I've always figured that the more ridiculous my current placement (vocation, location, situation...), the more simply i'll become indifferent and objective, hence more apt and adept to deal. But this is a new one, new limits are being set.

It began yesterday, the realization that absurdity may have an accumulative effect on the relatively sensitive individual. I was hauling some storage carts through a frozen parking lot, puffing clouds of breath and trying not to slip on my face. A man shouted to me and approached, asked me if i was the Pepsi Guy. Well, you know, shit... a celebrity. He wanted to request the return of 12-pack Diet Mountain Dew to his chosen grocer. I've heard this request everyday for weeks now, unbelievable firstly that people imbibe of this ungodly shit. And secondly, it's outrageous the response, and in a few cases~ fury, people have managed to this given situation. Consumers have banded together and complained on a daily basis at every grocery, multiply, since the obscure product disappeared from the shelf. Imagine if we could get this societal response in a real situation, you know... one that mattered. Like perhaps an unnecessary war, education, or global climate change.

So i stopped in my tracks as the wind kicked up rooftop snow and blew it across the lot. As the man carried on a one-person conversation about sodapop, and the lack of his favorite flavor, i tried to make some sense of my coat zipper. The damn thing was broken and i was beginning to freeze. I looked up into this man's overly-attentive eyes and explained to him that, yes, i know. And, yes, i'll take care of it when i can. Fifty cases are due in on the barge from Seattle, i said. And for now, could he go drink something else... He smiled, a deeply discomfiting thing for me, and leaned closer to touch my jacket. "You know," he said, "i can fix zippers." Jesus, a real celebrity.

So that was the first thing M.. Remember Bob Packwood? Well, i felt like his secretary. The second thing was listening to my co-worker, who normally only converses about his exercise routine or getting his sales up, talk about the Duh Vinci Code, which he rented last night. I asked him if he ever read the book and he replied, "I haven't read a book in years." I thought, huh, that's great. Then later on today, without even prodding, another person told me the same thing. We were at the office talking about getting the hell home and away from work. I audibly imagined myself in the bath with a book and mused, wouldn't that be nice? She answered, "Oh, i don't read." What? What do you people do?

M. i'm a sheep among lambs. Someone spiked the grass, it doesn't chew right. The shepherd's not here; sometimes i wonder if there even is one.
Sincerely, your devout facsimile friend,
J

Be there now.

Today began with a dull howl of wind beyond the door, window, wall. A miniature spindrift of fresh snow on the porch covering the welcome mat and "snow lying deep and even" (Gray) up the steps toward the drive. I shouldered my yellow-fendered bicycle toward the road and peddled on to work. A crisp line delved in snow and the soft crunch as the wheel parted through... And me, menial Moses.

The peace i knew at five o'clock was shortlived as a wind picked up, snow melt to rain, and rain took another elemental leap to hail. The way the sky falls up here in the northern latitudes is something to behold. Weather has a sinewy force and insistence that reminds me of the cloud forests in Central America, awe-striking and temperamental.

I had an epiphany today as i worked my way through the grocery stores, looking up into ultra-violent light of 200 watt bulbs dancing behind lined bottles of juice and soda. I was resetting the order of products on brazen display to the customer quirking alignment to hold as much as possible. It struck me that evolution and maturation of the self is very misguiding by the precept that it's a forward movement, a development in complexity. It's not so; can often even be the opposite, remember the Devolution?

All these years i've been convinced that i was growing more intelligent and acquiring refined skills and no-how. It surprised me; not only was this far from accurate, i found it a brilliant relief. I'm moving sideways and that's okay. It reminded me of a song, as most everything does. Somewhere in the day i'll pick up a tune that plays softly until i recognize its presence. And further in, it makes another connection. Every song has at least two reasons to be remembered. This morning in the clouds i was singing:

two little feet to get me 'cross the mountain
two little feet to carry me away into the woods
two little feet, big mountain, and a
cloud comin' down cloud comin' down cloud comin' down

I hear the voice of the ancient ones
chanting magic words from a different time
well there is no time there is only this rain
there is no time, that's why I missed my plane

John Muir walked away into the mountains
in his old overcoat a crust of bread in his pocket
we have no knowledge and so we have stuff and
stuff with no knowledge is never enough to get you there
it just won't get you there
-Greg Brown

Over the years i've grown bored with trying to be present all the time. I wanna play inside from time to time. If i had to face the sodapop i deliver everyday without a little imaginative wandering, where would i be? Exactly, with the sodapop. I think that's what age has given me... a quick shot of gerry in the arm, less care to my coffee-stained teeth, the ability to drown out the (micro)manager talking in my ear about product display. Ever wonder of the peace of mind to come as the layers are stripped from us? Will we all become storytellers and daydreamers? Is that what lies beneath?

All i know is, that as i stared into the bright mosaic of brightly tempered cans and bottles i was in at least three other places. I was riding a bicycle with the song.
In Seattle asking Manita "What do people think of when they think of Morocco?" And she was telling me, "Tiles, mosaics... we should go."
I was tightly lacing my new white basketball shoes and shooting hoops with my friend Willie, our plan for the evening.
...Then, i wasn't anywhere at all.
And when i came back i felt better. "Stuff with no knowledge is never enough to get you there..." Oh man, i love that line. I had to think about that for a while...


Sunset in Portland, Maine from a favorite spot...

Questionable, yes.

I recently decided to change course and abandon the common authority of advice. The entire process of influence has little to do with the inevitable outcome (and everyone knows it!). People are going to do what they do 95% of the time, regardless of any preceding advice doled on the matter. Unless, that is, the advice coincides with the already entrenched gut feeling of the recipient.

I know, no one wants to hear this. It eliminates many tiresomely delved dilemnas and seeks to debase the foundation of collective intellect and shared experience. But only for a matter of time until that course is set and experienced; because, as human beings we can only see wisdom (good advice) in hindsight. We learn by falling and for some reason we want to keep doing it. Dr. Thompson wrote:

No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. But, if we're fools than so is everyone else and does it matter who says what? In the same way that we analyze a person's record collection or library, we deem merit to like-minded thought. So seek the advice you like. It's not so bad. If one has a question, then chances are (omitting human shells and androids), one has an answer. And due to the instilled terms of self-reliance and personal experience, one wishes to follow their own counsel to hence it leads. But prior to all this, one needs a little confirmation by someone else. That's what friends are for.


The Chipman speaks from Kenora, Ontario

Daydreaming: a memoir...

It's a monday morning before election day... all is a ghost town, not a soul on the streets. I'm working in the produce section of a still grocery; the only sound~ a faint echo of new country wafting down from a hidden speaker. The produce manager, Tom, has his hands busy with cantalope and honey dew. Sleeves rolled past the elbow, an apron tied smartly around his waist, he squeezes and rests each melon in a crate. His mouth is hidden with the pendant gray of a handlebar mustache grown to unfettered perfection.

Every morning before the sun comes up, this man greets me with a question mark to a hi or hello. Many of his comments end with that leaping note of askance. Sometimes i'll say 'Good morning' and he'll answer 'Is it?' A fair point... wishing to rid a little of the rhetorical. It helps the already light mood of our contented hands in menial labor. He has a lot to say and sometimes he does... Most of the time we don't say anything at all.

We are working without a word now... i'm thinking of Sundays field trip to the shooting range and a John Prine song on the radio.
---
You and me, sittin' in the back of my memory.
Like a honey bee, buzzin' round a glass of sweet Chablis
Radio's on, windows rolled up and my mind's rolled down...
Headlights shinin' like silver moons rollin' on the ground

Gonna be a long Monday
Sittin' all alone on a mountain by a river that has no end
Gonna be a long Monday
Stuck like the tick of a clock that's come unwound- again...
---
Hearing it again... bringing fragmented images and feeling. A nostalgia, wistful yet dear of an old love in an old town. Being back again in the simple hands of weekday labor. And a song in my head... and the way i make a song sing to me, to what i'm seeing and feeling. Sometimes my mind gets away, translated in music. And Sunday...

The sun was trying to crest the hill, its halo resting on the silhouetted spires of hemlock and spruce. The ground crunched beneath my feet with frost and spent shells of high-powered rifles. I was no longer in the grocery store.
Have you ever found a place that was impossible to think in? and so you didn't... as simple as that. I was at home in this feeling. Even against odds, on the range...

Lassitude be gone!

There's a television in my house. It stares at the upholstered loveseat sofa and the sofa stares back. It's on now and again for the increasingly frequent movie night (alaskan winter recreation), or for a football game, or occasional channel-surfing and things of that nature. It wouldn't be a novel theory to postulate that most programs the tele has to offer include varieties of sexual inuendo (everything), mixed with fraternity homoeroticism (see: MTV), and un-real life slices of brash interlude (commercials)... though it may be a true one.

Okay, that being said, I'm beginning to wonder why it's not working. All this anvilled quasi-colloquial bullshit geared toward my desire to want(!) and to need(!) any variety of things... should at least occasionally function for its set course. Back to that bit on sexual inuendo and the gross marketing by babes and the like. I can't remember the last time any tele knocked my socks off with some delicious prototype of the female form. And quite frankly it doesn't bother me. What does is the rest of the male populace going gaga over airbrushed toehead wonderwoman flashing a new cellphone ring-tone or the dimwit seduction of a Shania Twain applying a nice, thick layer of Revlon on her mug.

My life has always been heading toward quiet solipsism. Certain things reinforce and complement that aim. And the antidote to this dross is the simple pitch to infatuation and hopefully healthy possession with an unfeigned, gospel being. And that's where i'm going cos real love is sharing a good book with someone that you want to ravage, or a dynamite record, or an opinion on something inessential... yet just that.