I Wish I Knew Joe

September 26, 2010, a bit before midnight, day before the 6th anniversary of CS’s death and two days after leaving the job.

I am sitting on the porch with the few crickets left singing outside in the cool night, peaceful, after listening to all the cut conversations from Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten. I am so glad to be here…this little ramshackle house in Albany, NY, United States of America, Earth. I’m a person among many persons in an overcrowded world of persons and not nearly enough wilderness ~ but a lot of wilderness if you count our minds.

(God, that man’s hands. Have you ever really looked at hands? They are stars. They are magnificent and improbable and so fine. Like faces they have beauty that transcends any conventional beauty if you really LOOK.)

Look. There is beauty all around. What can you do? Smile at strangers. Bring some comfort. I am indebted to Joe Strummer and The Clash for giving me back my anger and my joy, my self-respect, my strength. I don’t know where I am going. I don’t know what will happen, but I am free. And I always could have been, if I had looked. Jumping into the next thing isn’t always the right path. Beware. Hold yourself steady and really look.

“Anger can be power—don’t you know that you can use it?”

Something I saw  when I was very young and resisted the gray life ahead, but when I got older it tore me apart because I finally bought into the notion that being free was something that could be attained by playing the game, by fitting in where I had no real connection.

Of course, you make connections….You make them wherever you are, to try to make a place feel like home even when you are screaming “Let me out!!” You can tell yourself all kinds of stories about duty and love and giving the benefit of the doubt—doubting your SELF all the time while you sicken and die trying to fit a mold.

And there are approximate fits. Where you think you could bear spending most of your waking hours, giving your soul for a fistful of dollars and dreaming of retirement when you will really be able to do what you want—but of course we’ve seen that story played out a hundred different ways, or maybe just one or two. People who no longer have any lodestar because they gave it up to work for IBM or some other sure bet, security and lifelessness in exchange for life, juice, adventure, reality. Enough money for a house, car, kids, and maybe a diamond or two at Christmas. (Filthy diamonds ripped out of the earth by people who have been enslaved by the diamond industry.)

It’s all connected. It’s all connected. The sparkle and the filth. And if you are on one side then you are most assuredly on the other. So what’s the middle ground? Where am I going? Where do I want to be? I wish I knew Joe.

Thing is, it’s all connected. The net of gems is cast out upon the universe and one strummer on six strings can reach millions of people and change the lives of many more than that. Ripple effect. Your smile today can make a great difference in a moment that will be remembered by one and maybe felt by many others who will never see you or know of your existence. Because you make one person feel better for one moment.

So in a way I do know Joe, because he has given of himself and that ripples out to me ~ those ripples found me as I was drowning and lifted me up, not just enough to get air but enough to see. To look around and know I was not where I wanted to be. And then gave me the courage to think that I could have the audacity to leave.

No one, none of us, is a saint. And who ever said our heroes must be? I’d rather learn face to face from a bum than at the feet of a holy roller.

I am grateful to be here on this porch in the cool night air, looking at the layers of peeling paint on a window that went out of production 80 years ago. I am grateful for The Clash, and Joe Strummer, and all those people who spoke about him in that movie. I am grateful for September, the month of endings and beginnings. I am grateful for the freedom to write into the night.

Incident at 5th and Main

Actually, it was at Thacher Park Road and Indian Ledge Road, but 5th and Main sounded more newsy. And this is Human Nation News–something I’ve been neglecting because I sort of lost my vision, and I sort of felt it was too big and unfocused.

Right now, I just want to tell a story about my drive up to Thacher Park this morning. I do this every Saturday and Sunday, usually in the morning but sometimes late afternoon, and I do it to escape from the pressures of day-to-day life. These  pressures include at least 80 minutes of commute every weekday on the Adirondack Northway–Interstate 87 for those who like numbers. It isn’t for the faint of heart, or if you are you’d better be in the right-hand lane and hope someone who can’t pass on the left to their liking doesn’t barrel down on your ass.

Accident N87 Exit 4-5

Image from the Times Union. Photo: Skip Dickstein

After commuting thus every day for over a year, and three days a week for 2.5 years before that, I have “had it” with being herded by aggressive drivers, being passed on the right (sometimes being passed on the right and left simultaneously–a tactic I call flanking), and watching cars weave over lane boundaries while their drivers text or eat complicated meals involving spoons or forks. I have had it with fatal crashes that send the rest of us lucky blokes who weren’t killed off the Northway and into congestion that delays arrival time by hours. I have had it with spending 80 minutes of my life every day just to get to work and home again, but I’m grateful I have a job. That’s what I’m supposed to say, and it is true, but….

Anyway, I back up to the end of my driveway this morning and nothing is going by on our usually very busy street–that is, until I actually get to the end of the driveway and all of a sudden there are three cars perfectly spaced so I have to wait what seems a long time just to back out and get going. And once I do get going, immediately it seems a big black truck is on my tail. I’m driving my usual 5 mph over the speed limit in a 30 mph zone, but it isn’t fast enough for this one and he’s right on my ass. I do my best to relax and simply drive, listen to music, enjoy the ride to the woods, but that big truck in my rearview mirror takes its toll. Precious life energy spent realigning myself away from a habitual feeling of being herded wherever I go.

These are winding roads, and I will pull over and invite people to pass when it is viable, but sometimes it is not. Today it was not. Finally the truck turns and I am free of the hulking presence behind me. I get through Voorheesville and on to 85A nicely. Just as I like it–dog with her head out the window, me singing to Badfinger or Mike Doughty, or Courtney Barnett or Ana Egge or oh, lots of things. Life is good, and then I see a motorcycle coming up fast from behind. He slows when he gets near and doesn’t ride up my ass, but I know I’m going slower than he wants to go. My 5 mph rule is too conservative for this busy world I know but I like driving slow, especially in the country and especially in the morning–the animals still are out on the pavement and it is hazardous to their welfare to drive fast in the country in the morning.

I pass a man jogging with his jogging stroller, making a sweeping arc into the other lane to avoid crowding them, and the motorcycle does the same. I slow and swerve to avoid hitting an already dead skunk. Turn onto 85 and lose the motorcycle for a while on the steep ascent, but then he’s back and my Fit just ain’t cutting it up to 55 on that hill. I turn on to Thacher Park Road and he does the same. I sigh and tell myself I’ll lose him when I turn on Indian Ledge, my secret winding long-cut to Thacher, but when I put my turn signal on I look in the mirror and see his go on, too. At this point, this instant, I lose my patience and pull over to the side of the road. He is still behind me because there are two cars coming the opposite direction and we have to wait before we can turn. When they pass he still waits behind me. I look at him in my sideview mirror: he’s an old-school motorcyclist–the way I imagined Robert Pirsig while reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He’s got a no-frills helmet, a brown leather jacket, and jeans. His motorcycle is just a motorcycle–not a crotch rocket or other overblown thing. He’s a guy out to enjoy the morning and I am angry and motion angrily for him to go-on-ahead-what-are-you-waiting-for? He looks at me, calmly nods, and does just that, and suddenly I am crying, knowing he meant no offense or even to make me drive faster than I wanted to drive. Just a man out enjoying the morning, as I had wanted to do before I let all the baggage I carry drag me down.

Hear ye, fellow traveler: Thank you for your gentle response to my anger today, for popping the boil of my day-to-day pressure and giving me a glimpse into my own insanity in this insane world. I’ll try to do better next time.