Things I am Unable to Capture
digital / slightly rendered / 2022
An Amish boy walking down the lane after a day's work;
Horses on the next farm neighing in the evening light;
The scrubbing of fall leaves. The smell of fresh manure on a fallow cornfield.
I can't describe the breeze that arose at sundown.
So I am left with a smudge of moonlight through the quickening clouds.
~
On Not Finding Your Guru
Journey of Awakening, Ram Dass
You needn’t know your guru. It is only necessary that your guru know you. Only your need to maintain control compels you to try to know your guru. Your journey is one of purification, and you can proceed whether you know your guru or not. Don’t worry about it. Your guru will become known to you, if and when necessary. If the guru were to manifest too soon, you might get lost in an interpersonal devotion that would just be another trap for you. You must trust that the process is benevolent. When needed, the guru appears. It’s a benign conspiracy.
I once asked my guru, “How do you know if a person is your guru?” He answered that it is simply whether this person can take you all the way. Taking you all the way does not mean that the guru does it for you. Rather the guru is the way. The guru’s very being creates a space that is the doorway to your freedom.
Along the way you may meet your guru and feel overwhelming love for him or her. This makes you cling to the guru. In the end you must go beyond the separateness of forms you have loved. To go all the way is to go beyond the concept of guru. Ramana Maharshi said it: God, Guru, Self - all the same thing.
~
before the possum
I know this sounds like horse-shit, but I knew Tammy back when she lived in Clyde, NY. Her name was Tammy Sulkowski then. She changed it later, but that’s another story. Not saying I dated her - I was mostly friends with her younger sister Cathy and we did go out a few times. Nothing more than making out in the backseat of my buddy’s car but it was exciting. One night Cathy said to me, “ya know, your brother is a better kisser than you.” So that kind of hurt and soured me so I didn’t see her again for a while. Tammy had the big hair even then and did sing a little but not much that I recall.
Their old man was part owner of a pool hall in Clyde. The pool hall sat right next to a dry cleaners and a couple of other crappy businesses there on main street in Clyde. He owned it with a man by the name of Muscolino. Clyde was mostly Polish and Italians back then and everyone seemed to get along fine except when there was too much drinking.
Anyway, Tammy worked for a while at the pool hall and we’d hitchhike there from Newark in the summer. There would be about seven or eight of us hanging around Celso’s Newsroom with not much to do. Someone would say something about hitchhiking to Lyons or Clyde and so we’d pair up and start walking backward with our thumbs out up East Union Street toward Lyons. We had an agreement for guys to leave about every ten minutes so we’d space ourselves out and drivers wouldn’t see all of us at once. That mostly worked. Now I’ve had some good times in my life and seen some funny-ass things. And all I can say is there isn’t much that can top getting a ride when you’re hitchhiking and sitting in the backseat, you and your buddy looking at each other with shit-eating grins trying to keep the laughter inside, knowing what’s coming. It’s just perfect when your ride pulls away from a stop light and you look out the window and see a couple of your buddies still hitchhiking in the hot sun - waiting for a ride. They left before us and we snagged a car that most likely would have picked them up. So we look out the window at their twisted faces and silently laugh and point and of course give them the finger. It was just an exquisite moment, I gotta tell you.
We liked the pool hall since they would let us come in and watch the men play and smoke cigarettes and hang around. You had to be eighteen to play pool so we just watched. I loved the smell and the sounds of the balls clicking and dropping and the cigarette haze and the men talking low and the overall well-worn-ness of the place. Some old guys always read the Racing Form so it was all great for a young kid wanting to know the ways of the world. Tammy was older than us and pretty well stacked. She’d talk with guys who looked right out of the 1950’s hot rod scene and some even wore white t-shirts with cigarette packs rolled up in their sleeves - Camels, Pall Malls, Lucky Strikes* - all filterless. Crazy.
You couldn’t hear what they were saying, but every now and then you’d pick up Tammy laughing and saying, “why not?” And then one of the guys would leave and then a few minutes later Tammy would leave. They’d come back after about an hour but they didn’t talk to each other. This would happen every now and then with different guys and I’m thinking that’s where Tammy picked up her stage name, “Wynette”. Can’t be sure, though.
Clyde was good for having a fireman’s carnival toward the end of the summer. It went on for a full weekend starting on Friday night. All sorts of people came and the volunteer fire companies would all come and bring their trucks and the firemen would talk and drink and sometimes fall down. Man, the firemen could out-drink anyone when it came down to it. Well, a few years went by and I went to the Clyde carnival with my girlfriend and there was Tammy up on a bandstand singing, “We’ll sing in the sunshine..we’ll laugh every day…we’ll sing in the sunshine…and I’ll be on my way.” It was a beautiful night. Magic. It was not a song she’d be remembered for, neither was the pool room. Neither was Clyde. But I remember it all.
* On the back of the Luckies pack was printed, L.S.M.F.T. Part of the advertising was “Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco”. But we were sure in our adolescent minds that it was code for, “Loose Straps Mean Floppy Tits”. Life was good back then.
~
Yeah, that's pretty much what it was like. My being slipped behind a cloud for about eight days. I had surgery for small bowel blockage. The doctor said this just happens sometimes. and it happened to me - suddenly and severely.
Overshadowed, yet some good energy kept shining through. In the hospital I listened to peaceful, healing music and watched some videos to pacify my mind. I reflected on my life a lot, and vowed to make some changes about how I spend my time and energy. Hopefully more worthwhile and creative things. Simple things. Love more, eat well and take care of myself as best I can. Then I can be present for others.
I had a dialogue with my body and promised good things. In a way, it was an awakening but I had to be stripped of my day to day energy in order to hear the lesson. I was in pain but not fearful. I'm pretty sure I was visited in the hospital room by my Dad and other guides (but it could have been the pain meds..ha!)
I came home and started to recover but less than a week later I was back in the hospital for two days for hernia repair. It was a pre-existing condition which was made acute after the first surgery. Hard to believe but yes, that happened. I am recovering well with a voracious appetite. Resting, gulping fresh air when I can and just healing and trying to go easy.
I'm grateful and happy and feeling better every day. I want to revive my interest in photography and writing and practice more sumi-e painting. Simplicity, peace and more love.
A deep bow to whatever comes our way...namaste, Gary
There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go no one may follow
That path is for your steps alone
- Robert Hunter / Grateful Dead
Learning of David Crosby’s death the other day, I was blown away at how much it affected me inside. It was surprising.
As much as I loved the Beatles and Mick and the Stones when I was a teenager…I also loved the Byrds and - a few years later - Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
This was the soundtrack of my life in high school and college and for most of us I would imagine. Woodstock (no Beatles, no Stones) defined the era and stands at the apex of things in many ways.
Crosby along with Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan seemed to write the most intelligent lyrics of the time and helped keep us moving toward something better.
A more loving and accepting world ….a bit of hippie altruism but I loved it.
Love songs, trippy songs, protest songs, prescient and transcendent songs voiced with sincerity and heart. They rocked us as well as quieted us and helped us see ourselves in new and beautiful ways.
I simply loved the music and I have many happy memories of time and place and friends and beauty and fun and laughter and love whenever I listen again.
I’m still an altruist. Still a dreamer. Still a lover. And many an experience has carved its image upon my spirit over the years.
I’m still in love with the world. Even through heartache, loss, disappointment and pain which comes to all of us. I’m still a lover of life.
I still believe in peace, love and a better world thanks in many ways to David Crosby, his gift of lyrics and his influence on music. His sense of destiny and his gift of harmony he so freely shared with all of us.
I bow deeply to this troubadour of our times. And I will carry on.
