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| I fumbled with my keyring tonight. Outside my old home in Oxford, trying to spot the tiger-striped back door key by starlight. So many keys to things that don't belong to me anymore: two for Purple Haze, one for my old van, the trailer, the hitch lock, the old case for my SG. I still have my gaudy Highlander key, appropriately sword-shaped, and the flat bronze of my parents' house.
It's a shaking off of the old locks, casting off chains of forever ago.
But it's still nice to carry the keys, to hear them jingle my pockets like a rich man.
I do feel like a rich man, a keeper of secrets, but no jailer. You can lock stuff up with keys, but that's only half of what they're for.
Happy summer's night. Love y'all,
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| I just watched two squirrels bark out a conversation on a branch above my deck. Two distinct and different tones, one's tail still, it's whole body frozen in listening, while the other gutturals, tail flitting in and out of question marks, exclamation points, even a parentheses. The back and forth. I almost felt like I could follow it.
So many languages I don't know, will never know. I like this world.
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| Every town has it's own quiet vice. I've been about everywhere in America, and I can say that with confidence, especially of the few in which I've lived. From the unabashed whoredom of Oxford to sleepy, dying Jackson. There's a quickness to both of them, definitely a heart beating, and I think I found it in Oxford, among the people I love there. About burned me up and drove me into the hills, but I possessed it, for a moment. But the beat is still lost to me in Jackson. The Enclave's front yard and Sneaky Beans are like Church, and there's definitely a sacred life there, and I feel like I'm experiencing it every day, and maybe it's working on me, I don't know. But I can't find the city's heartbeat, it's aim and direction.
Really, I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to ask of it. What I expect Jackson to give me. There's so much love here, quiet and seething, but I don't know when it's going to explode, or how to prepare for it, or if it ever will at all. It feels like some essential part of me left a long time ago, is out climbing mountains and watching the lightning bind mystery and earth in a blink and then gone, and I'm here, doing what exactly? It's okay, I'm trying to love the stillness. I do love the dogs, the music, my friends, the family, and I'm grateful to Jesus for them, and they're more than I could deserve or even ask for. My whole life is, really. And I feel like Captain Douchelick for not being satisfied. But where's the move? Where is the happening?
I'm sleepy, is all. My head, my heart, my arms. Even my stomach, if you can believe it. Like whatever pumps through me kicked it down a notch, maybe folded in half and took a nap. I can grant it that, a nap, so long as it doesn't last all day.
On the way home I watched a dog in the back of a pickup truck, flying down the highway in the hot and humid. A lab, I think, pink tongue flapping. He climbed on top of the truck's tool box and put his paws on the hood and just balanced there, like an eagle on a precipice. A stupid, graceless eagle, could topple off at any moment. But the dog didn't care. He could've been singing for all I know, wind whipping his jowls and that slobber flinging.
So everything's asleep, yeah, and i don't know how to wake it up.
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| Song Unsung
The song that I came to sing remains unsung to this day.
I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument.
The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; only there is the agony of wishing in my heart.
The blossom has not opened; only the wind is sighing by.
I have not seen his face, nor have I listened to his voice; only I have heard his gentle footsteps from the road before my house.
The longest day has passed in spreading his seat on the floor; but the lamp has not been lit and I cannot ask him into my house.
I live in the hope of meeting with him; but our meetings is not yet.
---Rabindranath Tagore
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| Not sure right now. My favorite thing I do is sit barefoot in Hunter's yard, sip a beer, play guitar, and sweat. Elise and Dawn laughing, Joel ripping it up, briefly Mason and Katie and then poof!, baby K. and LoLo, Chaz and all the other apparitions. All the best souls. It's a hard life to believe, when it's so good.
The funniest thing: how unfulfilling the fulfillment of my favorite dreams has been. The glass is busted out of all the windows, and they carried off my couch and half my records, but there's a fire in the hearth and a bear rug on the floor, you know, and Chaz is cooking. It'll get lost in all the summer heat and boredom, I might have to learn to ride a bike again, but for now it is sweet.
So thanks.
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