A story is told. A song is sung.
Darrell Scott on Mountain Stage.
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova from the movie “Once.” Nice, soothing music.
Sometimes we need that.
This is going to be a little embarrassing.
The image above is a schedule I made for myself when I was very young. I’m thinking junior-high age but I’m not sure. I obviously had a lot on my plate back then. And a lot of ambition. Since then I’ve at least learned to draw a straight line.
After I got home from school, I gave myself some time to rest. A half hour. Then some hoops. I guess I was health-conscious even back then. Home in time for supper, then help with the dishes. An hour and a half for homework. I tried to be a good student.
Practice Instruments. I was in the band. A trumpet player. I was probably working on “Flight of the Bumblebee” for band auditions. Seriously. But no, I never learned it and was never better than third chair. I was probably practicing the guitar, too, working on the same three chords I still play today. Hey there Little Red Riding Hood… Only some of you will get that reference.
And then at 9:00, the magic happened.
I’ve always been an unrealistic dreamer and I had so much I wanted to do, I carved out time every night to work on what my mother called hairbrained ideas, as is in What hairbrained idea are working on now? It wasn’t how it sounds. She really was encouraging. But heck, at one point I wanted to make my own laser. This was decades before you could go to a dollar store and buy a laser pointer. And I wasn’t the Sheldon Cooper type. There was no way I’d ever make a laser. I made snow skis once, complete with old belts screwed to boards to serve as bindings. Then there was the space trip I took in our basement. Another story for another day. If nothing else, I was good for a laugh around the dinner table.
These days my hairbrained ideas are only slightly more sophisticated. I thought if I really tried, I could learn “Classical Gas” on the guitar. I thought I could teach myself Chinese, but after 90 lessons, I can barely order a cup of tea. Then there’s this whole writing thing.
Four finished novels; none published.
The schedule is still on the door of my childhood home where my father lives. I mentioned it to him today and he didn’t realize it was still there. (I wonder if he remembers the time I covered the ceiling of my room with aluminum foil?)
I still work by schedules and have pretty good self-discipline. And I’ll always be that unrealistic dreamer. I’ll always have hairbrained ideas.
I’ve got a concept for my fifth novel. Dreams die hard.
P.S. If you look closely, you’ll see different handwriting in the time slots. Call Susie. A girlfriend added that years after I posted the original schedule. It speaks to the challenge of living in the real world, where schedules and plans are sometimes pure folly.
Listen.
The leaves that rustle in the breeze.
It’s just the stirring of the trees.
To bend and sway at nature’s pleas.
And sing the song of time alone.
The sound of paper as I turn.
The book I’ve read, of life to learn.
My eyes are heavy, this rest I’ve earned.
And comfort in my time alone.
I speak, my friend, but you’re not there.
So many things we used to share.
I sit beside that empty chair.
And curse my hated time alone.
The soul is restless, thoughts fill my head.
Of troubling times, so full of dread.
But there is peace; a prayer is said.
So strong becomes the time alone.
I hear a voice, it’s someone new.
Talk with me and stay a few.
I’ll be your friend, you’ll be mine, too.
And share our precious time alone.
The leaves will fall, no sound to make.
As winter brings the heart to ache.
But know that spring will soon awake.
The gift of no more time alone.
Copyright joseph e bird, 2016
If it’s the beaches.
If it’s the beaches’ sands you want
Then you will have them.
If it’s the mountains’ bending rivers
Then you will have them.
If it’s the wish to run away
Then I will grant it.
Take whatever you think of
While I go gas up the truck
Pack the old love letters up
We will read them when we forget why we left here.
From The Beaches, by Scott and Seth Avett
If you stop by from time to time you know about Larry Ellis, prolific poet and award-winning novelist. Today (Thursday, February 25) at 1:00 ET, he’s going to be a guest on Frankie Picasso’s internet radio show on the TogiNet Radio Network. He’ll be talking about his latest novel, Overtime, A Basketball Parable. You can listen live here. If you happen to miss it, it will be up later as a podcast.
It was another snowy night.
Larry Ellis lives in the same neighborhood I do. The scene last night was much like the photo above. In the middle of the snow storm, he looked out his window and saw a young woman walking down the street, all alone in her world of white. He wrote this:
She walks through the snow as if walking through time
The storm had covered all, erasing the present
Yesterday’s litter, this year’s rust, the cracks in the pavement
All gone under white
The streetlights, the porchlights, the moonlight and starlight
All combine tonight
Every line is straight and even, every wall upright
.
And she comes walking through as if from the past
As if from another world: maybe this perfect, soundless world
She walks alone and seems unworried
Unaffected by this that has kept every car in its garage
And has closed the schools and churches
.
Is her coat, so perfectly fitting
From another day?
Does she walk to some grand house
Now long vanished
That has reappeared in the throes of this storm?
That house where yellow light from tall windows
Makes bright rectangles on the snow in the lawn?
Will there be someone at that door to meet her
Someone to take her coat?
Candles and wine on the table
And a fire in the hearth?
Copyright 2016, Larry Ellis
That morning, I drove in the bright sunlight on ribbons of pavement that lay gently on the snow-covered hills against the deep blue sky.
Ray Lamontagne sang about trouble.
I sipped good, strong, black coffee.
I was by myself.
I like being with others, but I also like the times alone.
To sort it all out.
On the edge of Appalachia, the hills disappeared.
Across the Ohio River, the stacks pierced the sky and bellowed white cotton.
One hundred years from now, they won’t be there.
They weren’t there one hundred years ago.
That’s what those kinds of day will do for you.
AT FIFTEEN MINUTES PAST TEN the next morning, the news site flashed a red banner across the top of the screen announcing a plane crash in Texas. He clicked the link and saw that it was a commuter flight from Houston to Dallas. He would not have been shocked if it had been their flight. That’s how life worked, it seemed.
Witnesses reported a giant fireball. He looked at his disfigured left hand and touched the side of his face and felt the scars. He knew the agony they would have to endure if there were survivors, but that was unlikely.
If you want to know a man, know his pain.
It was one of dozens of quotes he had heard in his freshman literature class at the University of Tennessee, but the only one that stuck with him. For obvious reasons.
At the time, the physical pain he had endured was still fresh and still issuing reminders that his body had been greatly traumatized. During the months of recovery he had put on the brave face and carried a resolute disposition. And then the real pain began. The isolation. The guilt that never quite seemed to leave him.
If you want to know a man, know his pain.
He closed the internet browser.
He was supposed to be compiling demographic data to be used in establishing the housing ratios for the Renaissance project, but his thoughts were elsewhere. Loss. Grief. Dani. His own desolation.
He opened a new document and closed his eyes as he let his emotions speak to him.
He felt the rhythm first. A slow, three-four time. His body swayed slightly, his eyes still closed. Then music. The chords. On the down beat.
He opened his eyes, his fingers on the computer keyboard.
At first, random words: Pain. Loneliness. Her smile. Her eyes.
Then they began to find order.
Bring me back
from the dark of night,
Let me feel
love in your light.
He wished he had his guitar. He wrote a chord progression, not sure if it was really what he wanted. A melody started to form in his head and he wrote to it.
More random thoughts filled the page. He wrote quickly, trying to capture the mood without losing the music. A chorus. More words altered the mood and he heard the change in the tune that would comprise the bridge. There were typos all over the page but he didn’t dare interrupt the flow. More words. The last verse. And the chorus again.
He read from beginning to end. He closed his eyes and let it sink in.
Then again from the beginning, this time singing softly.
Then he scrolled back to the top of the page and wrote: Bring Me Back, by Trevor Larson.
It had taken him twenty-two minutes.
Joseph E Bird 