Stranger in a strange land; Recalling Leon Russell

Yes, children, this is where that phrase originated.

Curiosity once again drew me to a title on the Fuse network. Elton John and Leon Russell. Leon Russell may be the most accomplished rock and roll musician no one ever heard of, at least in the context of Gen X, Gen Y and the new millennium. But in the day he played with everyone, everyone. From Frank Sinatra, to the Beatles, to Willie Nelson. A unique voice among so many clones he was a rock and roller I was fortunate to have discovered early. I have been aware he has a new album out, a duet with Elton John and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how those two ever connected. So, it turns out Russell played in a studio band supporting John when no one had ever heard of him.

Leon Russell and I were born in the same year; he is six months older than I am almost to the day. It was startling to see him when he walked out on stage in this Fuse concert with Elton John. Obviously older now, he shuffled hesitantly with a cane. He had gained quite a bit of weight. I wondered if something had happened to him and did a little research. Turns out in January this year he reportedly had brain surgery though some reports had it as heart failure. Nevertheless he was back on stage by the end of that month.

I saw him in concert once in Anchorage at West High School. A woman thought she was taking me to see Leon Redbone. So it goes, I was much happier to see Leon Russell. His long, flowing white hair and beard, an icon, he played the entire concert even through an intermission he gave his band members. He has a higher range, kind of nasal voice that worked well with the songs he wrote or chose to sing, one that lends itself to the fusion of blues, rock and country he is so good at. In the new concert you can see and hear a bit of the effects of age, not as physically active, movements slow and measured, like that long. slow walk across the stage to the piano assisted by a cane. He has always had a calm visage, at least what I could see, but now seems even less animated. It all serves to take the edge off his classics. I enjoyed this televised concert but, I think I will keep my old recordings and forgo purchase of this album with Elton John. Many of those songs have been part of the background music complementing this unremarkable life.

Some songs that I have enjoyed over the years: “Delta Lady,” “Stranger in a Strange land,” “Back to the Island,” “Lady Blue,” “Out in the Woods,” “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” and a couple of covers: Bob Dylan’s “Hard Rain,” and the version of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” he did at the concert for Bangladesh. And one more: There is a version of the country classic “Big Boss Man” he did on a public television show in the early 70s but I have never found a recording of it. Funny, a guy like this has only 10,000 fans on the Myspace “I like” page and fewer than 9,000 on Facebook. He has many more fans out there, it’s just that many of them don’t know it because we aren’t always aware of where the music we love originated. Leon Russell was there playing and singing when a lot of it began.

Lost in the woods
And speaking of Delta

Creative solutions

Would you like to venture a guess what those things in the picture are? Take your time and look them over carefully.

Enough time? The ocean voyage aboard the KAIsei in August was to get a handle on the amount of trash plastic in the North Pacific Gyre. One objective of the organization is to look for solutions. The articles in the picture represent one solution, not the total one, but part of it. This particular solution has a two-pronged approach. But it sucks. Figured it out yet?

They are vacuum cleaners and they are made out of recycled plastic collected from beaches around the world. One of them is made from plastic found on Hawaiian beaches. Just think if one could be made big enough to collect other garbage from the water.

Here is the original story.

Biorhythms

Years ago when I ran boats for a living, a woman I met asked me how I could drive a boat all day, do all the maintenance, like 12 to 16 hours a day, then party late into the night, get up and do it all again the next day. My answer was always, “Plenty of time to sleep in the winter.” Later we got married. One day in December she asked me why I slept late into the morning and then was tired and ready for bed at 8 or 9 at night. All I could say was “remember when I said there’s plenty of time to sleep in winter? Well, it’s winter.”

Feeling that way now as we get deep into the dark days. It will get down to five hours of daylight in another month and a half. So, yesterday driving to work in relatively warm weather and looking at bare, snowless ground the thought of bears came up for some reason, as in, are they still up and around, or have they gone into hibernation. Bears don’t truly hibernate, they just sleep through the winter rather than go completely dormant. Some even get up once in a while and wander around.

Still to be determined is what triggers the hibernation instinct. Is it cold, light, lack of food? Lack of light could be the answer. Maybe they just go to sleep one night, wake up somewhat the way we do, only they look around and think, oh hell it will be dark in another couple of hours, so why bother getting up at all,. Then they just roll over and go back to sleep.

Maybe I need books on tape for the drive to work.

Why are we writers, again?

The following is an instant messaging conversation with my friend Patricia who died in 2012 long before her time.

I am having the @##$est time trying to get back to work on the novel. Everything looks just stupid. I've been trying unsuccessfully for two days.. ISH, as they say in Minnesota...xx PM

There are X's and O's to type. I kind of hate to tell you this, but I learned over the years not to read back until I had a complete draft. When you said you fixed a word here and there I was a little worried you had done that and might be talking yourself out of the worth of the project. To get back to it, all I ever found I could do was try to stifle the past (of the project) and start off in a new direction. Maybe just for a flight of fancy take off on a bit of a sub plot. and, there is always the shower

I actually have a full draft done. I'm into the revisions. I have about half revised. I put a personal deadline of Jan 1 to get it done, and I think it's doable, if I can ever make myself believe I should spend my time this way. I know a lot has to do with momentum, and I lost that by taking a month off. I tried to work while traveling but that did NOT work. I have to be home to concentrate. Writing sucks, you know? What a stupid way to spend your time...ugh..PM

Just think of the joy of one well-turned phrase. You can do this. Maybe a sip of wine, maybe not. One thing I have done in the past, too is look carefully at one character and see how I could flesh that person out.

Ah, that is an idea. I would take some wine to help jump start except I've got yoga in two hours. I did make a few tiny changes that smooth the text. I know from past experience if I can just keep butt applied to chair for long enough, I can get momentum going again. Right now inertia is going in the other direction!! xx PM

One of my favorite phrases: this inertia is getting me nowhere.

Now imagine my dilemma: do I keep responding because I enjoy our talks, which would be selfish as it also encourages you to procrastinate, or

do I say um well this: I have a New Yorker cartoon where I write at the cabin. In it a writer is slumped over his typewriter holding his forehead. He is on a porch probably in the Hamptons and his wife is standing over him. She says Picture this, the rush of publication, store windows filled with your work, a nationwide publicity tour which puts you on Leno sandwiched between Sandra Bullock and an ocelot from the LA zoo, all this while the paperback bidding and movie rights soar to insane unimaginable amounts.

NOW HIT THOSE KEYS

OMG You have that cartoon? I had it on my office door for years. HITTING THOSE KEYS

There is another one.

Same scene, but this time the wife is holding a sandwich

She says. Try this: A woman spends her summer waiting on her artist husband, sublimating her own life while she supports his creative drive until one day she cracks, turns into a sado-maso killer whore. Now eat your sandwich.

Okay, I never cut that one out, but I saw it. I once performed in a line dance singing "nympho lesbo killer whore! nympho lesbo killer WHORE!" at a women's conference. Okay, now even I know I am procrastinating....

haha what do you mean NOW? Am I going to have to haul out the Updike poem?

Yes you are!!

All right! heavy artillery

I always have a copy of this wherever I write

MARCHING THROUGH A NOVEL

By John Updike

Each morning my characters

greet me with misty faces

willing, though chilled, to muster

for another day's progress

through the albumen quicksand,

the marsh of blank paper.

With instant obedience

they change clothes and mannerisms,

drop a speech impediment,

develop a motive backwards

to suit the deed that's done.

They extend skeletal arms

for the handcuffs of contrivance,

slog through docilely

maneuvers of coincidence,

look toward me hopefully,

their general and quartermaster,

for a clearer face, a bigger heart.

I do what I can for them

but it is not enough.

Forward is my order,

though their bandages unravel

and some have no backbones

and some turn traitor

like a head with two faces

and some fall forgotten

in the trenchwork of loose threads,

poor puffs of cartoon flack.

Forward. Believe me, I love them

though I march them to finish them off. 

It is now in my arsenal. PM

THE VERY NEXT DAY

I got a teeeeeeny little bit of writing done today. One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done. xx PM

First snow

The weather service threatened real snow on the ground today, but it came down as all rain, that is until I turned off the secondary highway onto the road to the house and noticed the shoulder was white and I could hear what sounded like slush squirting out from under the tires. Sure enough, snow when I got home. Not much and won't be there in the morning, but there is some and the first I have seen this year. Makes a repair to the chainsaw all the more mandatory.

Lost and found my Saving Grace

Stairway to heaven is still there and I am wondering how it squares with a belief like “swear there ain’t no heaven and pray there ain’t no hell.” Let it ride for another one time around the block, two times around the clock, three times to cross the road, hey hey. Winter still threatens but bright blue skies seen through the skeletal limbs of birch and cottonwood preclude the onset of snow, though it looks deeper higher in the mountains. The eagle has returned to the huge dead cottonwood on the river bank, watching, ever watching. In the yard leaves need raking, that tree is only half bucked up waiting for a chainsaw repair, but there is no rush, plenty of firewood remains from the last delivery, and is now dry enough to make good heat. The road to work is still visible in daylight though the sun is low enough in the sky at that time of day it necessitates the use of sunglasses as the drive is mostly straight at it. Overall, it is a world of waiting for something, anticipating with no clue as to what is over that horizon and not all that sure about wanting to find out. Aimless wandering back and forth with the edge of the flat world out there somewhere and not at all interested in going over, when the stairway seems a much more enticing option. And, Danny in Tortilla Flat out there in back with his chair leg screaming, “Bring it, Lord.”

Role models

I was in the Wasilla Walmart yesterday. This couldn't have happened anywhere else. As I was tooling around, a familiar silouhette(my spelling downfall) caught my eye. It was the combed back bouffant hairdo and the general outline of the face that turned my head. For just a moment she looked like Bristol Palin. On closer look with the hairdoo and face shape she could easily be a sister. But the best was yet to come. As I was leaving I saw her again walking into the little McDonalds' near the door. This time i could see her whole body. She was wearing a tight black t-shirt. Then she turned sideways. She was PREGNANT! Maybe seven or eight months. OMG Bristol really is a role model. And, as one friend of mine quipped, "The Palin family owes us a lot."

Adventures in shipping

Final tally. UPS price to ship a guitar (including building a box)$331. Fed-Ex price to ship a guitar $26.95 using a guitar store box. (Holding final judgment, though, until it is delivered) Do we have to wonder why UPS asked for a special congressional bail-out. For these prices they deserve to go out of business. Wow.

Nature continues to amaze

Some new natural wonders, or at least things I have not seen before. The other night I hit what I am pretty sure was a muskrat on the road. The next day driving to work I saw several others in the same area dead in the road. It was like a whole migration wiped out overnight. Then I got to wondering what caused so many on the road at one time. Two causes come to mind. One is that the river was very high from all the rain this summer and thinking perhaps their bank dens were flooded and forced them out. The only other thing I could think of was maybe it was this summer's litter chased out to fend for themselves. At any rate it was a strange occurrence. Perhaps if my imagination were working better these days, there was a grand adventure in progress with the muskrat army on its way to Redwall to help the defenders defeat the weasels and foxes.

Then last night I noticed an organization of stars I have never seen before. It was four stars in almost a vertical line rising from close to the eastern horizon. At first I thought it was lights on some kind of tower, but they seemed to rise higher than any tower around here. They were there all the way home, but at home I couldn't see them with all the trees around. No easy answer in my iPad star finder either. And a bigger question, things don't change that much in the sky, how come I never noticed this before? And, again, with some imagination applied, could this vertical line be illuminating the stairway to heaven? Can you hear Led Zeppelin in the background?

There are differences

UPS wanted $91 to build a box to ship my son's guitar to him. Fed-Ex suggested I go to a guitar store and ask for one of the boxes they receive guitars in. UPS box = $91 Guitar store box = $0 Fed-Ex customer service =priceless.

About a week ago

One day, two swans, gone. Maybe some hope for next year.

Conversations with Patricia: Part Deux

Settling back down to write. Trip was good until the weather turned dreadful and I caught a cold. Expensive way to watch TV: pay for a hotel in another country. But drugs are good...xx PM

That's good to know there are good drugs in Ireland, I will keep that in mind.--tj

The drugs came with us. Codeine. Stops the coughing, and most thought. Also makes everything glitter prettily.

I could use a glitter view of life... the view was tempered some when the lady of my dreams started wearing meat.

Yes, the meat dress was...interesting. It looked better than I expected it to, though, I must confess. I'm struggling to get back into writing after weeks away. You know, writing is hard....

Hard, really? I heard you artists lived on inspiration and literature just flows from your fingers when the mood strikes

Hahahahahahahaha It takes me days to get into writing when I've been away. I feel all squirrelly. Have been reading PalinGates for inspiration. Have changed a few words here and there but feel like I don't remember how to write. Y'know??

OH btw speaking of struggling with writing, I have been invited into a writing project and I am having a crisis of confidence wondering if I can actually do it. Some Iditarod people want to do a coffee table book of the first 10 years. One nice thing about it is that two of the musher from that era demanded that I be included and several others agreed. Honestly I just don't know if I have it any more to write for publication. (AND, honest, that was not a cheap hint for you to tell me how great I am) I really am very insecure about it.

I won't take up your cheap hint....I'll answer seriously. Writing really is hard, and self-exposing even when we don't seem to be writing about ourselves. That's what people don't really realize, the level of skinlessness it takes to write about anything at all. Once upon a time, I thought it got easier. Now I think it gets harder. I have taken to saying that I don't like writing, I like having written. And I do like having written. But man, the writing part is so darned painful...The only thing worse than writing is not writing, though. You'll feel bad either way, so I'd say, write the book and feel bad that way, rather than feeling bad about NOT writing it., Pretty morbid, huh.

For comments about not remembering how to write, see previous message. Over years of writing, I recall maybe an hour of pure inspiration. I also remember a morning where I took seven showers rather than let my mind get cluttered with life stuff and interfere with what I was unable to write

Seven showers. Now that is some record. I, for one, prefer cleaning house as a way of avoiding writing. I have even painted walls rather than writing. My house is always very clean when I am avoiding writing. Is there something about cleanliness and writing-avoidance here?????

Ha ha I don't think it is cleanliness as much as mindlessness. Remember Mary Tyler Moore always rearranged her cupboards when she was upset? So in the area of avoidance your have a clean house, I have a clean white raisin of a body.

You know what, Patricia, that is some of the best advice about writing I think I have ever seen anyone give. Although I am not totally enamored with what I have written. I have always felt I never cracked through my own mental barrier to that lucid insightful masterpiece I feel is lurking in there somewhere. It is like that blog comment some time ago about when did I start to "used to be a writer." And, I do recall moments of inspiration that were absolutely wonderful. I can think of only one other experience when I felt more alive and fulfilled. The self exposing got to me recently and I turned off my blog. When it got to 1,000 hits (I am sure you have more than that on your web page), I suddenly felt overexposed. I had just started that blog as an outlet for what little writing I have been doing lately, never intending for it to be widely read. I never even told many people about it. Mostly it was just for me. But, my view of the world isn't everybody's and when people started making judgments about me based on some spouting off on the blog I kind of panicked. The final thing was about the meat dress when my sister posted on facebook "I thought he just bought a new suit." Oh dear. I don't want some people reading what I think., On your words I will give the Iditarod book a try.

I'm glad I can help a bit. Only another writer friend can understand. I have SO MUCH trouble with the blog stuff and the FB stuff and all. Having the secret FB page helped; I feel I can be a bit honest there, not thinking about the writer-persona. (Personna? Perssona? How the @#$#$ do you spell that?) 

I don't have a counter on my web page at all...I don't want to know. I have occasionally googled myself, looking for something I know is out there--and found weird reviews of my work and gotten freaked out beyond words. (Did I ever tell you there was a brief right-wing campaign against me for working at a Catholic school but writing about goddesses?) 

I am sure one reason I hate Sarah Palin so much is that she WANTS exposure, and I hate it.

Some days I think I need a serious psychiatrist. But I have never gone because I think the psychoses are what I draw from to write.

Who was it who said he didn't want to see a therapist because, if his demons went away, his angels might go to? Was that Rilke? For me, I someday hope to be OUT of therapy....xx PM