The first snow of winter came with the scream of a banshee in heat. It arrived with all the diplomacy of an Amway salesman trained by the black-ops division of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I hate uninvited guests, even if their appearance is as inevitable as yesterday’s dawn. Such barbarians darken my mood, raise my blood pressure and lead to the unbidden rise of impure thoughts of the most unpleasant kind.
However, I cannot truly harbor animosity at meteorological inevitability. It’s not like the weather is trying to sell me plastic containers with vacuum-tight lids or attempting to load me down with the last 27 issues of the Watchtower. I can sic my dogs on salesmen, tell the invading cretins I’m a Buddhist, heathen, Hun or a devout worshipper of easily peeled fruits. Hell . . . my present dogs–Jackie and Hugo– are not canines with a fondness for either cold or precipitation. These are not the pups of my past, those four-legged Montana fur wagons that achieved doggie ecstasy at 20 below. These guys are more civilized; they appreciate the brilliance inherent to soft beds, electric blankets and streaming Netflix.
That means the pups are far more intelligent than me. Crikey . . . 20 below in my mountain days was a thing of beauty and awe; I’ve been out fishing at Yellowstone in much colder weather than that. Somehow, when living in the way-up outback, four or five feet of snow in 24 hours is a source of laughter and joy. The humidity is almost non-existent, the wind just a whisper, the silence of the most deadly storm almost deafening. On the prairie, winter just sucks; it’s got all the tact and grace of the last drunk to leave the party.
But here I am, once again on the plowed-earth plains from which I originally sprouted. There are good reasons–all of which involve aging parents and the physical ravages of time–but a flatlander I am not. I can see for a couple of miles, whereas my eyes are attuned to seeing but 10 or 20 yards before being halted by an impenetrable fortress of forest. I sometimes look for distant peaks, only to realize that such things exist only far away and in the lands of my memory.
Funny . . . though it may sound that way I’m not really bitching about my locale or lot in life. Good God . . . compared to most people I’ve got it easy. Moreover, as I said before, the reasons for “coming home” are important and valid; I would have made the return from any locale. The fact of the matter is that my disaffected mood du jour is not so much with topography as it is with myself.
Something’s missing. I’m just not sure what.
It’s not love . . . for I’ve got people that love me. It’s not companionship, for I’ve always been much more comfortable with a modified hermit existence, surrounding myself with critters, than breaking bed with the bipeds. It’s not money . . . even though my bank account is skinnier than Karen Carpenter’s waistline and I’m just about too poor to pay attention. I worry about money, but I don’t care about having more than just enough to cover the necessities. I’m a simple sort of idiot.
I think, maybe, the squeal in my mental cogs is rooted in the absence of creativity. There’s a certain sense of ennui that sets in when I’m not doing something weird or inventive or inventively weird. Such a state makes me surly and lazy . . . or perhaps I should say more surly and lazy than usual. I need to feel like I’m thinking thoughts of substance, thoughts that allow me to laugh at myself, thoughts that have no relation to the mundane, banal, prosaic or quotidian (pick an adjective . . . any adjective).
So here I am again . . . scribbling words for no reason other than for the sheer pleasure of putting words to paper (or screen . . . as the case may be) and kick-starting my mind into a state that doesn’t involve bitching about a lack of decent writing jobs or an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Netflix really is my friend).
Some of you have been reading me for frickin’ years . . . hell . . . for a couple decades. To others my gastric upchuck of garbled expression and tortured idiom is a whole new gig. Such being the case . . . let me tell you what this blog is going to be about.
A: I’ll be yammering about damn near anything that pops into my head. We may talk philosophy. We may talk guitars. We may talk deep-frying. We may talk dogs.
B: We won’t be talking politics. Yeah . . . I know. Some of you read me back in the days when I was a fancy-pants political analyst. Sorry . . . those are lands in which I no longer travel. Bores the hell out of me . . . and I view active participation in politics as just an unimaginative form of mental masturbation for megalomaniacs, ninnies with a messiah complex, and criminals who are afraid of getting shot/stabbed/sent to the type of Big House where they’ll end up spooning with a roomie who refers to them as Shirley or Susie.
C: I’ll probably be more stupid than wise, and if history is any indication, the more I write the more stupid I become. That’s a good thing, because I’m funny when I’m stupid. When I start making myself laugh then I’ll know I’m on the right track to achieving the sort of stupid enlightenment that is my definition of nirvana (not the version with Cobain). After all . . . one of the few indisputable laws of nature is that “If you want to be amused, you best learn to amuse yourself.”
D: I’ll probably only plug crap I’m selling . . . like guitars and dulcimers . . . every chance I get. I’ll probably only hit you up for donations every four or five minutes.
I imagine I’ll update this page at least once a week. Could be more . . . doubt it will be less. So . . . I’m asking ya’ll to do me a favor or two.
If you would be so kind, please repost a link to my posts whenever the mood strikes. It’s a lot more fun to write/make fun of stuff if you’ve got an audience. Send it to your friends, put it on Facebook or Twitter or wherever the hell people put such things these days.
I’d be pleased as punch if you become a subscriber or follower (there’s a button for such things somewhere on this page). Oh . . . and I do have this doohickey set up to accept comments. Feel free to write away. Hit the little friend (I recall that line from Scarface) button for Facebook if you're of a mind.
Welcome . . . set a spell . . . kick your shoes off . . . yada, yada, yada.
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