Many times have I turned to music to guide me through turbulent periods in my life. When my parents divorced nearly twenty years ago, I lit a solitary candle in my bedroom and listened to the Beatles’ Abbey Road. When nearing graduation from James Madison University and bound for adulthood in 1999, the penultimate year of the millennium, I played (over and over again) Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, repeating in my car stereo “Like a Rolling Stone” more than any other track. When my brother-in-law was dying of cancer several years back, I sought solace in Wilco and Billy Bragg’s Mermaid Avenue, particularly their rendition of Woody Guthrie’s “Mountain Bed.” Now, I reminisce here to pay homage to the tunes that have guided me throughout life and to mention that Townes Van Zandt has healed my latest wounds like all those elixicating songwriters whom I have sought before.
Filed under: Poetry
There’s a man
Who lives upstairs
Yet I know
Not where
He’s from
This side
Of no
Where
Still I care
Still I stare
Up from the chair
In which I write
In which I dare
Think of the heir
To the man
Upstairs
You meet all sorts of people at a dog park, from garrulous old men to quirky young women, but even better, you meet all sorts of dogs.
Izzy and Hershey
Izzy met, and dare I say fell in love with, Hershey, a three-month-old pup, at Azalea Park earlier this evening. While I tend to think my pooch is as cute as can be, she has nothing on Hershey.
As Murphy’s Law would have it, I walked into Moody Hall earlier this afternoon prepared to administer the midterm for my American Lit course at JMU, only to find all my students outside in the hallway locked out of our classroom. I’m not sure, but I think many doors to classrooms in college buildings these days are locked to those on the outside as a precautionary measure in response to the increase in school shootings over the past decade or so. Whatever the reason, I was in a jam as the administrator in the office across the hall was out to lunch. So, my students took the midterm out on the quad:
On the Quad Looking South to Main Street
Many of my students in the past, be it this semester or in previous years, have asked to have class outside: none of them, I presume, intended that class to be on test day. Despite a gusty wind, I couldn’t have asked for a better day. As one student teased, we felt like Walt Whitman taking an exam while sitting on, yep, leaves of grass!
Furthermore, sitting on the quad after the last student submitted her exam, I became caught up in nostalgia. While the south-end of has been reconstructed, for the better mind you, the quad looks the same as it did fifteen years ago. I felt as though I could have been sitting with you. Oh, and I felt the panic of being late for class when I saw my old philosophy professor, Dr. O’Meara, walked across the quad headed, I imagined, to teach another class.
While watching rookie phenom Buster Posey–having already driven in two RBI and having just made an amazing play at the plate to rob the Philadelphia Phillies of a game-tying run–come up to the plate with more ducks on the pond in the bottom of the fifth inning of Game 4 of the NLCS tonight, I thought of the (admittedly, rather catchy if not altogether original) title to this post; but after watching Javier enter the game in the top of the seventh, with a scanty one run lead to protect yet again, only to retire the side on two knee-buckling, nay bat-busting pitches to the heart of Philly’s lineup in what amounts no less to his third clutch appearance in this year’s MLB playoffs, the descriptive phrase, while not necessarily playing off of Lopez’s name the way it functions as a pun in relation to Posey’s, seemed to describe aptly the Giants’ left-handed ace-up-the-sleeve-out-of-the-bullpen as well as it may fit any player on San Francisco’s roster.
Then came the eighth, in which the Giants stuck with Javi to face Ryan Howard, the Phillies’ imposing left-handed slugger, whom Lopez had already fanned earlier in the series. But Howard connected this time with a line-drive to left-center, and Lopez, who lest we forget has picked-up his teammates countless times since arriving in San Francisco this season, found himself depending on a fellow reliever to pick him up. Unfortunately, Sergio Romo allowed Jason Werth to drive-in Howard, which tied up the game and tarnished–ever so slightly, mind you–Javier’s otherwise unblemished ERA in this year’s playoffs.
So you may ask, as I found myself wondering, why I would continue to write about Javier’s appearance tonight? when the afterglow of the glorious seventh inning faded so quickly in the eighth. Well: that’s sports! I was just as proud of our former Robinson Ram after the hit he gave up to Howard as I was when he fanned the Atlanta Braves’ phenomenal rookie, Jason Heyward, back in the NLDS. Plus, you guessed it, Philly-Buster Posey picked up everyone with his fourth hit in the bottom of the ninth inning, which setup Juan Uribe’s game-winning sacrifice fly.
If all’s fair in love and war, then, in sports as in life, all’s well that ends well.
With the day-off for Fall Break and my car back in service, I went for a nice hike through Walnut Creek Park with Isabel this afternoon.
The Dallas Cowboys suck. There, I said it.
Much to the chagrin of all the friends I’ve made in the D.C. area over the past two decades, I’ve been a die-hard fan of “the ‘boys” since the early eighties, when my dad took me and my brother to the open-practices conducted on Saturdays prior to home games during Tom Landry’s magnificent regime.
I stood by my childhood team-of-choice through the mire of their despicable 1-15 season back in 1989, after which my unconditional devotion was rewarded by the sweet Super Bowl run in the nineties; but I’m at my wits end.
If Dallas is “America’s team,” the moniker merely represents our great country’s seemingly global demise in the early throws of this twenty-first century.
What bothers me more than anything else concerning this years cowardly Cowboys is the proliferation of penalties; for which I blame the coaching staff more than anyone else, particularly our head coach Wade Phillips.
Now, I have tried to refrain from writing about my opinion as it concerns my favorite NFL franchise–certainly, I have more important subjects about which to write–but enough is enough. Jerry Jones needs to fire the son of a Bum. We need to rebuild, not as it concerns the lineup but as it relates to the guidance of this team. I’m not the type to peruse the blogs, so I have no idea if my call is echoing throughout the cyber-chamber or not, but I’ve had enough of Bum Phillips’ son. At this point in the season, why not relinquish the reins to Jason Garret, if indeed he is the offensive genius that he is hailed to be? Otherwise, replace coach Phillips witht the traditional heads-of-state looking for work, most notably sir Tony Dungy, Bill Cower or whomever…but for the love of god, something’s gotta give!
Filed under: Music
On November 10th, Bob Dylan and his band will make an appearance in Charlottesville, Virginia for another leg on his Never-Ending Tour. It will be the tenth or eleventh time I’ve seen him live but the first time in over five years (thank you Adam for taking me to that show back in Tucson!).
My buddy has a ticket too for the show at John Paul Jones Arena, and while he’s a fan–we went to a screening of Don’t Look Back at the Paramount last month not to mention a Dylan concert at George Mason University nearly ten years ago now–Andy is not all that familiar with Dylan’s recent albums. In the past, I have noticed that concert-goers familiar only with the best known Dylan recordings (from The Times They Are A-Changin’ through Desire) are met with a rude awakening when listening to the Dylan of the twenty-first century. Even the seemingly hard-to-miss classics on today’s setlist–from “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol” and “Like a Rolling Stone” to “All Along the Watchtower” and “Tangled Up in Blue”–are nearly unrecognizable unless the audience is familiar with the latest sounds and style Dylan and his band have conjured of late. So, in order to help Andy better recognize the new tracks and innovative sounds we are more than likely to encounter at the show, I have offered to burn him a cd of Dylan’s latest greatests, all recorded in the past decade or so.
I mention it here only to point out, again, that someone has to release another Greatest Hits in order to do justice to this latest renaissance of Dylan’s career. Let me know if I’m overlooking anything with this playlist:
Things Have Changed
High Water (For Charley Patton)
Huck’s Tune
Tell Ol’ Bill
Red River Shore
Mississippi
Dixie
Po’ Boy
The Levee’s Gonna Break
I Fell a Change Comin’ On
Shake Shake Mama
Nettie Moore
Not Dark Yet
Diamond Joe
Working Man’s Blues #2
Jolene
Trying to Get to Heaven
Someday Baby
Lonesome Day Blues
If You Ever Go to Houston
Summer Days
Standing in the Doorway
Rollin’ and Tumblin’
My Wife’s Hometown
Spirit on the Water
Dirt Road Blues
The Girl on the Greenbriar Shore
Cocaine Blues
Ring Them Bells
Can’t Escape from You
32-20 Blues
Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum
Thunder on the Mountain
Must Be Santa
As those of you for whom I have made Dylan mixes in the past know, I get quite a thrill out of piecing together the best of Dylan. Needless to say, I hope those who listen to my collections experience nothing less than half the joy I get from listening to these tracks. Indeed, I have found Dylan’s songs to be the perfect panacea for whatever ails me. As he was considered a protest singer for civil rights back in the day, so shall Dylan in this latest part of his career be defined as nothing short of a protest singer for the soul.
Should there be
As many souls
In the world
As be colors
On skyline drive
This time of year–
As many yellows,
Honeys,
Ambers, ivory-lemons, tawnies;
As many oranges,
Cantaloupes,
Apricots, carrots, ochreouses;
As many reds,
Burgandies,
Titians, cardinals, coppers, cherries;
As many browns,
Bloodshot mahoganies,
Auburns, beiges, bronzes, indeed, tawnies–
I’ll be,
Well,
As you and I
See:
That is as happy
As a soul or leaf
Should be.
I wonder, more and more, why I neglect to take better care of myself.
For the most part, I’ve taken my relative well-being for granted because, quite frankly, I could. In other words, I’ve encountered, during the first three decades of my life, few if any maladies, which otherwise would have forced me to tend to matters of health and general constitution.
As I age, though, I’m constantly reminded–by others as well as that little voice in my head–of the fragility of our human condition. Still, I ignore the red flags; I shut my eyes to the signs; I plug my ears from good consul and sound advice.
Am I irresponsible or frankly scared to death to face the facts of life? Am I arrested in puerile ignorance, insisting on my own indestructibility? I know it can’t last, but I wonder when my attitude will change. Will it be too late? Is it already too late? Are these questions simply more reasons for remaining unreasonable? Or is this post a turning point in my life?
