Hanging out by the exit

 Notes while at the funeral of a friend: 

This is how it all ends, as a piece of paper in hands at your funeral. a few lines about the things that mattered. 

Family+faith+providing+career+hobbies. 

10:30 am Not many here, but I;m early. I suppose attendance at a funeral is driven by when we die. Churches are packed when the dead is under 30. Die at 85 and the only people left are your pastor, your family and a few others. 

10:45 am Big clap of feedback from the AV system of this little church (aging janitor type guy in pony tail finally figures it out).

Guitar instrumental very nice... In the Garden. Old Rugged Cross. A very plain Baptist church, like those I grew up in.  Painted pallets nailed to wall behind pastor. (an homage to warehouses?) One wooden cross. 

As is the custom with all Christian faiths, the Pastor proclaims that the deceased is in heaven (though he does not really know this, and does not know that he doesn't know). Nice sermon and obviously one who cared about this man. 

This is a real funeral, though program calls it a celebration of life. There is a body and a casket and tears and a wife and a preacher. Not a jar of ashes to be found anywhere. Good move. 

11:32 am Cue the mourner who does not know to turn off a phone when inside a church attending a religious ceremony. 

11:33 am In the silence of the sanctuary, you can hear the same phone vibrating as voicemail arrives.  

I chat with the guitarist on the way out. He is talented and knew the proper decorum for a funeral. There is hope for his generation, as mine hangs around the exit, waiting for people like him, and the pastor, to show us the way home. 

The Five String Banjo at the cracking of the day

 Today I watched the musical Camelot, the Richard Burton version. In it Merlin helps young Arthur in his education by getting him to "think like" other creatures. The owl, the perch, the hawk. 

I don't know what this has to do with the banjo, but my brain is chewing on it. Perhaps I need to think like a banjo. What would that be? "It's dark in here", "Hang on shoulder, hang on wall, hang on shoulder, hang on wall," "My strings itch".  

The more I practice and the better I become, the more private my playing. Another counterintuitive aspect of my life. Having spent my business career on stage, my retirement career is much more in the shadows.The gooder I get, the smaller the audience.  

It is indeed the most intense aspect of my life. 

At times even more so than hospice care, or "waking the dead" as one of my patients likes to call it.

It burns me good. 

My Imaginary Pretty Brain Pictures

 Sometimes the words I read will slap me and yell for my attention. It will get into my head. Some startling thought or image. 

I am reading M Train, a sort of diary by the punk rock singer, Patti Smith.She writes quite well and M Train seems to me a poetic balance between between her days of hope and her days of melancholia. 

She wrote the line below and it is in me. In my imagination it was written three hundred years ago as my ancestors boarded ships and sailed west. 

"I was thinking of French time traveling children with Scottish accents breaking the hearts of the future."

Two days after writing this I dreamed that Patti Smith and I were at a party with people from my past. It was a retirement party of sorts. 

Too much introspection leaves one staring out one's arse.

 I read this synopsis of a movie, on a plane. It makes no sense, but jumped at me as I tried to grasp what it might be like to be such a being. I do not know any human being that could be the subject of this situation. Nor do you. I know no Alice. 

"While on vacation with two girlfriends, Alice rediscovers the essence of herself and gains some much-needed perspective. Slowly, she starts to fray the cords of codependency that bind her."

My essence is missing? Dang it I discovered it once before and now I must discover it again. Repeating this quest for my essence will give me some perspective. On what? While I'm at it, might as well fray some bad stuff, but certainly dont' get rid of it, just fray it. Dependency, Co-dependency, Tri- and even quad-dependency can't be all bad. Fray it but don't ditch it. If I knew what it was I might argue with that. 

I think this senence reminds me of the poems that came from my 8th grade english class, though essence and perspective had not yet been invented. We were more into vacations and girlfriends.  

The Master - In Augusta and in the Whole World

At the Catholic Churches in Augusta and Pebble Beach and Pinehurt and St. Andrews and around the world., an event like no other is now underway. The Church knows it as the Easter Triduum. 

Cornbread and Buttermilk and the unrolling of stuff

 When I was in my early teens or so my grandfather tried to feed me cornbread and buttermilk. Crumbled it in a tall glass and poured cold buttermilk over it.  Handed it to me, "try it, nothin better than cornbread and buttermilk." In my teens through present day, this seems a disgusting combination. I could take either separately, but not the combination. Like mustard and ice cream, Japan and Korea, Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, lobstermen and opera - cornbread and buttermilk were two of God's gifts best left separate.

Yet, it is taxing to resist the touching of a family tradition. Doing things my grandparents did, and their grandparents did, has always had appeal. Not something of power or magic or mystical source of strength. Yet a thing with purpose that I often feel I should do. The past matters, my past, my ancestors past, my grandchildren's past. When I can touch it in some way that is not make-believe I do. 

It is Holy Week. My wife is in Arkansas, chasing tornadoes and siblings and the offspring of siblings. 

I made a pot of soup beans a few days ago. They are only available to me at times such as this. Solitary times. 

I also made cornbread, of course, to go with the beans. Used corn meal and Martha White flour and all the usual components. Baked it in my great grandmother's iron skillet. I had one hot slice after another, big wedges covered with butter, or mashed into a bowl of beans. While cleaning up I stared at the cornbread leftovers and a half quart of buttermilk, sitting side by side on the kitchen counter. I heard the voice of my ancestor, Houston Blevins, my mother's father, speaking a simple truth with his mouth full, drippings on his chin, "You ever had cornbread and buttermilk? Honey, it's good! "

After 50 or so years of resistance, I caved. Like the chicago cubs in August my strength of will faded before the still clear memory of his voice. 

If there is a Cornbread Church, this was the day I saw the light. The scales fell off my eyes. The sea parted, the rain stopped, the dove flew away, the fire fell and the lady turned to salt. This is day I walked the aisle and said "sign me up, and give me some more of that mountain stuff". 

That good mountain stuff. That good mountain stuff.