Friday, January 8, 2010

Blues, for now.

1-3-10, 1:22 am

Boy did it snow. Spent the latter part of this evening breaking up tobacco into an old cigar box, using my cramping thumbs and fingertips to crumble the bitter brown leaf into rollable shake. Also opened a plug of cured tobacco, sealed up in brown paper for almost a year now, maybe longer, that Shea and I prepared with honey and Jim Beam. Mixed both tobaccos together in the cigar box, added an apple core for moistness. Listened to Blood on the Tracks.

Working on a blues song: original idea came from the folkloric habit of carrying buckeyes for luck, and then some apocalyptic hallucination, heat stroke, regarding droughts and ragweed. Now it's turning into some sort of lustful Faust story...

Mad drought, everything is dry and dusty. Skeletons and whistles, hard luck for most of us rural laborers. A burnt July and a burnt August. No grass to cut, the crops get boiled in their own juice, there are no clouds to even ephemerally offer us some shady solace from the sun's cruelty. The man keeps picking up buckeyes, and praying for rain, but still only the ragweed grows. So he goes mad, maybe. Just a little. Those mad-dog days of summer. . . . but that's another story. He goes a little mad and maybe starts eating dust and ragweed, and he wears his buckeyes around his neck, strung like little human skulls. And he sells his soul, maybe. Or just gives up some of it. Wallows in the dust like a mite-covered hen. Chews on ragweed until he shits blood and his skin crawls away. But he gets his wish, and it storms wherever he goes. Can't get away from drizzle and little crackling lightning storms, or from big fat raindrops that fall from giant demon thunderheads with all the rolling basso profondo accompaniment of that devil choir of electric discharge. It rains and rains, and no matter where he wanders, it follows and rains. So in the end he just resigns, accepts his new role as some reluctant and resentful rainman, and thinks about some sexy little thing in some dry little town, and sets off for her. Not without warning, but not hesitant to stop for the lack of candle in her window. You'd better be alone, he says. Cuz I don't wanna be. And I'm bringin' this here rain storm with me. Reckon I'd rather drown wish-fulfilled than burn up and blow away.

This sounds stupid on paper. I'll trust my guts, and my guts want to write a blues song about buckeyes, droughts, ragweed, rainstorms, pacts with the Devil, and sex. Stupid.

I worry that I'm not able to honestly be what I need to be right now, as far as companionship is concerned. No matter my best intentions. Sometimes the timing's so so wrong, and though none are to blame, there will still be guilt and remorse
There's plenty that I don't know.
and resentment and Consequences. For now, I shall sit by, idly content and gracious and guiltfree and live a life inconsequential. No life is without cause/effect for too long, and to expect this would make me a fool. But for now. You know? For. Now. Only I know what this emphasis means, and I have already forgotten. Only I accept the true burden of consequence. But there is a Time and a Place for Everything.

For now, I will not pretend that I am not happy. That's as honest as I can be.

"Come in," she said
"I'll give you shelter from the storm"

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