littledavid's Xanga

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:42:26 GMT

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 05:41:29 GMT

First cool night. My evening cigarette required a jacket, the long corduroy thing, almost a cloak, my momma gave me years ago. I used to sleep in it, sometimes, especially on tour. It always felt like home, that jacket, more than even my house, my bed. Cities and cities worth of me.

Thank god someone finally washed it.

I don't know, maybe it's the air, how the slightest chill makes the whole sky sharper, in better definition, but I feel it stirring, some great adventure coming on. A scary feeling, a little bit, but maybe the most wonderful one I know of.

I never talk about this, and definitely not in such a public place (if anyone even still reads these things, I don't know), but Colour Revolt left on their first real tour without me the other day. I think about waking up in the van, my coat wrapped around me, Sean sleepy driving, watching the sun come up over mountains in Washington, flat grey Kansas seems holy, a million corn fields in Indiana, the swamp waters out of Baton Rouge. I miss that, a new city, a different hope every evening.

But I can see, too, how the last four years broke me. Not just the band, but a whole tearing down of ideals, of so many ways I saw my life happening, and everyone else's life too. I realized tonight how bitter I've gotten, how spiteful, loner, and paranoid I am.

Or maybe it's just how I'm acting. I can't be this person, not really. Just a middling stage, junior high all over again. Except I spent junior high in my grandfather's easy chair, watching My So-Called Life with the sound turned mostly down, so my grandparents wouldn't hear it. Claire Danes was so beautiful in that show, with her sweaters and voice-overs. My first love, maybe. Now I'm watching them old, not able to walk anymore, my grandfather mostly blind, my grandmother terrified at just how old she finally is.

So many great and horrible things have happened. To me and everyone else. There's no making sense of it, not yet at least. And if the life I'm living isn't the one I wanted since I was twelve, well. There's not much I can do about that except make the most of it. Not in that lame "life hands you lemons" kind of way. But there's just no point in bitching about it.

I feel so blessed, really honest to God almost enchanted, sometimes, just in all the areas I never expected. Sometimes maybe the miracle is when the miracle doesn't happen. You're handed a thousand broken scraps and told, "Make something."

But how, God? What is it that you want from me, what do all your mean weird followers want from me? I guess that's not the right response. I guess I should just set to work now, trying to build something, without expecting anything except that it will be right, or as right as it can be.

And that's enough. It'll have to be.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 02:21:38 GMT

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,

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:42:33 GMT

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.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:52:41 GMT

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.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Mon, 25 May 2009 06:32:45 GMT

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

Monday, May 04, 2009

Mon, 04 May 2009 17:51:15 GMT

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.

Friday, April 03, 2009

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:33:18 GMT

You would have
scratched out your own eyes
that you might not be distracted.
-forrest gander

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:59:23 GMT

After a long conversation with a friend: is it bad that I don't really care what the philosopher said? The Great Thinker? That when I'm bored I just read Treasure Island? That just the name "Billy Bones" makes me giddy and terrified? Even if I am just acting in accordance with whatever school of thought I was raised in and I can't even help it? What did Barry used to say? "Hot wind through the skull." Yep.

The tale, damnit. That's as good as it ever got.

lovesies,
jimmy

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:12:59 GMT

Okay, so here come the roadblocks. Not even the kindly uniformed officers with flashlights sort of roadblocks. More like if a two thousand pound ass-demon squatted on the road, breathing fire. Could turn back. Could build a nice little house in the woods off to the side of said demon-haunted road, get old and scare the youngens off with tales until they turn scientist and develop superior ass-demon destroying technologies. Could just try to figure out how that righteous flow got deterred, pinpoint the clogged artery that was supposed to go from my heart to my fingers, put a stent in it? Isn't that what they do? Do I eat too many literary cheeseburgers? Can my stent be made of that one Emily Dickinson poem? Whose advice am I taking anyways? Mostly tough guys, and I was never much of a tough guy. Tried, though, you got to give me that.

Is it time to revamp my sense of wonder? Quit co-opting better voices and dig mine out of the dirt? Lord this is cheesy.

I love too many things and I get confused. If anything, by now I've figured out that everything is always a top priority, so nothing gets finished. I am quality at maundery hang out time. My cat doesn't seem to understand that. She always wants to DO something. I would love to drink a beer with her, a nice Guiness, maybe watch Yojimbo, or any of the forthcoming Uwe Boll disasters that are so dear to my heart.

God, what am I talking about? I'm supposed to be doing this Judicial Inquiry Commission thing.