Vagabond

vag·a·bond  (vg-bnd)

n.

1. A person without a permanent home who moves from place to place.

2. A vagrant; a tramp.

3. A wanderer; a rover.

 

I took that name a long time ago. I guess I just liked the sound of it. I added "King" on the end because it just seemed fitting. We all are, as it were, Monarchs of our own destiny. As it turned out I was far better at the former than I was the latter. I had no subjects. We all want subjects... right?

I wish I could give you all the answers. I wish I could scribble out all of the dodges and ducks that you'll need to learn to make your way on this journey. The ugly truth is that I don't honestly think anyone knows them. I don't think there's any way to prepare for them. I think life itself is a wanderer, a vagrant & and a tramp and I think the only way to greet it is with two fists and a thick skin.

We're a beautiful species, we really are. We have the mental capacity to know injustice, to comprehend it, and yet we're also so very adept at ignoring it. Higher learning. We want to progress and yet we only want to do so at another's expense. We bought into the ideas of freedom and hope, faith and trust, but when it comes down to fighting for it... we would sell our own souls down the river to not have to live up to those words.

 

We will never be an advanced civilization until we no longer require money to define our place in life.

That's why I'm a vagabond king. Not because I know something you don't, but because I know something you do.

 

Oh, and my Kingdom is unending.

 

 

Ripples

I like mirrors. Not because of what they show me but because of what they are.

There was a pond down in the valley behind the house I grew up in. You had to walk through a bunch of locust trees and then you had to wind your way through a pine thicket that was far older than I ever imagined I'd be. Eventually you found yourself at a fence. Mr. Walker owned that fence and the field beyond it. He had quite a few dogs. He had Popper, to be precise. The other dogs were irrelevant to be quite honest.

Popper was a Dalmatian that hated everyone and everything that wasn't him. I'm convinced of this.

If you happened to find yourself lucky, Popper was somewhere on the other south forty. He was few and far between and hopefully well beyond the time it would take you to skirt that fence and run like hell across the alfalfa field. I ran that gauntlet like a Champion more times than I care to count.

Once in the clear, you had to sneak past the turkey coup. No, I have no idea why Mr. Walker had turkeys. They're loud and they alarm themselves so easily. (Yes... intentional)

Regardless, if you were sufficient enough to have overcome such obstacles, you would find yourself at the little stagnant pond that piqued the mere imagination of one little boy who happened to grow up to be your Father.

Now let me tell you about that pond.

It held no beauty other than what it demanded you see in it. It was no bigger than the first trailer I lived in when I first arrived in Georgia... and it was just as ugly, might I add.

But its water was as placid as any I'd ever seen.

Once you'd skirted away the wee bit of pond scum that might float by and once you'd settled yourself over top of that mirror... it gave you exactly what you had come to get. I'm 36 years old and nothing to this day has reflected me better than that little pool of stagnant water on Mr. Walker's property.

I used to drop stones into it, you know. I liked how the ripples would distort my reflection for a bit.

I never really gave a shit where they were washing ashore. The ripples, I mean. I never really cared if they carried a bit of my image or not.

It's funny to think about now. You know, realizing that your own reflection never defined you at all. It was always the ripples. They were what mattered. They ferried you across the pond, as it were. They impacted what you couldn't see. They had no choice.

Yea.

Maybe Patience

This is why I love the Fall and what it means. When I was 8 years old my Father took me fishing for the first time. We went a ways up North Creek. I'd seen it before. It wasn't too far away from the hunting cabin that I'd haunted on occasion. Triple Oak Lodge. It was a little log cabin that had to have been close to 100 years old. In truth, it was 123. I digress.

Jennings creek was far more accessible but North Creek had the Big Fish, or so I was told. As such, that is where we went.

I remember my Father rigging my line with some odd contraption that involved a hook and some small egg things from a glass jar. They were bright orange. That much I recall.

He told me to cast upstream and wait for it to drift by. He said I would hook a lunker. I wasn't exactly sure what a "lunker" was but it sounded cool as shit.

I didn't hook said "lunker". But I did see that little orange ball swim by, often.

Still, I kept casting upstream because my Daddy (your Poppy) said that's what I should do. And if anyone knew what in the hell I was doing, it was my Father. Because I surely didn't.

At some point, and I can't recall the exact moment, I grew weary of the instruction. I began tossing the line out here and there. Willy Nilly (as I was later told). On one particular cast my little orange ball stopped floating by. It decided to hover around a rather obtuse rock. It kind of dangled, to be honest. Dangling in the current. It was a bit perplexing to an 8 year old.

But then I saw that maple leaf.

While I was worming around with my pole and furrowing my eyebrows, I caught a glimpse of a leaf that had finally let go. It was to my right, that much I recall. It wallowed in the breeze for a bit and then found it's new home on top of the water.

The stream, brook, or river, description completely dependent upon your interactions with running water... gladly accepted this leaf. Personally, I don't think it really cared. Secretly, I think it mattered above all things. I fight with myself about that memory often. Who was smarter? The leaf or the water? Immortal questions.

What I do know, though, is that the leaf in question nestled into the current and found its ride. I know that because I saw it do so. I was 8. But I saw it do so.

It followed the current until an obstacle arose (it's called a rock). It hit that obstacle. It stayed there. Far too long for an 8 year old's attention span, in my humble opinion, but it stayed.

Eventually, it let go. Eventually, it moved on. Eventually.

Now, common sense and logic would tell you that friction, pressure & resistance are what held that leaf there. That is probably true.

But to an 8 year old... maybe it was just Patience. That mystical entity I lacked. Maybe.

My little orange ball of bait didn't have that patience. To my knowledge it's probably still stuck. Shimmying in the current.

At least I hope it is.

Maybe I should go check. I've probably been patient enough. :)

(By the way... that isn't a stock photo. That's actually North Creek. Want to see it for yourselves? I'm game.)

This is not about Music

Life is a lot like a set list. You hammer it out with your friends, coming to grips with what you think will or won't sound good to those listening, and then you go out and do it.

Most of the time the first song is OK. There might be a few hiccups in the road but you muscle on through. You know you're not quite up to hitting those high notes or slamming that down beat hammer, but it's all good. You can fake your way through the hard parts. Sure enough, by the fifth tune, you're in your groove. You know exactly where this show is going to go.

Eventually you hit the intermission. Nobody ever wants to hit an intermission but we all expect it. People need a bit of a break, as it were.

When you start the second half of the set it all seems so foreign. Alien, even. The oscillation isn't quite oscillating as you intended. The waves are crashing more than they are flowing. It's a bitch.

You chalk it up to the fact that you're playing someone else's shit. If you were playing your own, well, you'd probably be just fine. That's how you rationalize it. It's uncomfortable. It's a bit annoying. It's embarrassing to say the least.

Then it hits you. You might be playing someone else's shit... but you're the one playing it. That makes it your shit for that brief moment in time. See, people don't really care who they see singing what they want to hear. They only care that what they hear sounds like who they want to see singing.

It's in that moment that you give every ounce of yourself to make it worthy of a smile. Ears fade. Thoughts fade. Smiles linger.

You just make sure you realize that when the stage goes dark and when all the pretty women & men have gone home, the only sibling left to the ringing in your ears is the gentle acceptance that for once, and possibly, the only time in your life... you played.

It's your show in the end. Make it a good one.

This is not about Music.

A Breath & A Memory

For the first 34 years of my life I was obsessed with Things. I wanted to acquire them. I wanted to own them. I wanted to present them to anyone who might want to question whether I had any Thing.

I worked so hard to make money so that I could spend that money and populate my life with the possessions that money bought me. I upgraded from a trailer to a small house and then to a bigger house. I put as many things as I could into each. I stuffed those homes full with all I could. I choked them.

When you two came along, I doubled my efforts. I acquired as much as I could. I put every toy available into your rooms. I put every color I could imagine on your walls. I put every article of clothing that was fashionable on your bodies.

"Fashionable". I'm so very ashamed of that now.

When the world turned to shit and I knew that my life had not only hit a speed bump, but that the speed bump I'd hit had indeed dislodged my ride from the road, I gave it all away.

All of the furniture, all of the clothing, all of the toys left behind. Even that big house. I gave it all Away.

Looking back, I could have made so much money by selling those things. I could have secured myself with a better foundation for the "beginning again" that I was to endure. Yes, I could have done that.

I'm so glad I did not.

I've never owned anything I wasn't willing to part with and not lose sleep over having done so, since then. The true irony though is that we never really own anything. It's all just fodder. It's all just placement. It's all just distraction. It's all a mirage.

The only things you truly own are a breath and memory. The last two possessions you'll ever hold in this Thing we call life.

The last two possessions worth having at all.

Flower Pot

I don't have a picture to post. I think she frowns upon that.

Whenever I feel like the world is getting too big, too small, or too much somewhere in between, I always step out on the front stoop.

I do so because I know that She'll always climb out of her flower pot and serpentine between my legs until I feel like the world is just about the right size again.

I can't say I really like cats.

But I Love Cali.

You can learn a lot from a cat in a flower pot.

Lost

 
When I first moved to your hometown, I was an alien.

I didn't know where I was, where I was going, or where I might end up. But I did know who I was and what I could do.

It used to piss your Mom off so much, but long before you two were born I would talk her into taking rides with me every Saturday morning. Long rides into wherever we ended up. Journeys.

She always told me I was insane. She was probably right.

We would get in the truck and follow asphalt. It really didn't matter where it led nor where it intended to lead us. We would find roads, lanes, valleys, highways, anything really. We would just drive.

I especially loved it in the Fall. With the windows down and the early morning sun snaking its way across the road, it always felt like goodness. Seeing people living their lives in their front yards. Getting stuck behind an old farmer on his tractor who waved at you when you sped up to pass him on a straight stretch. These were, are still, and will forever be... good things.

I've always done that. I still do. I always will.

I'll tell you a secret that most folks would never admit... sometimes you have to get lost to figure out where in the hell you actually are.

Always go and find where you're going. Never wait for where you're going to come and find where you are.

It helps to be lost, actually. So get there.