I had a dream the other night where Skinny Boy Lee met me at a bar.

I stood outside the bar with a soda water watching Skinny Boy Lee drive around the block four times trying to figure out a good place to park his black LTD.

I remember thinking, “Man that is typical SKL.”

When he finally got parked and ambled up to the bar he got a miller lite and we sat down at a table. 

The next part of the dream was Skinny Boy Lee buying a John Deere B off of a drunk in the bar.  It was an older un-styled tractor and he had driven it to the bar.  Skinny Boy Lee promised the old drunk he would drive him home now that he didn’t’ have his John Deere to drive.

     The rest of the dream was me driving the John Deere B home in a snowstorm.  The brakes wouldn’t stop the tractor completely and I had to use the hand brake each time I wanted to stop and the lights kept coming on and off and it was pitch dark and snowing.

     In the dream I never got the tractor to a destination and I never saw Skinny Boy Lee again.

     I remember waking up and sitting up in bed and thinking, “Now what the Sam hell is the message behind this dream?”

     Aardvark Diggs just said, as we were aimlessly driving around with the dog and boys again, “It’s just unresolved issues from your past, issues with dad and with your brothers.”

     What exactly would my life be like if I would have just smiled at dad’s insecurities and fears, his guilt and shame and understood that they were his and not mine and loved him for being the person he was and just went on with my life?   

Well I’ll never know.  I, instead fought him on every aspect of intelligence, creativity, freedom and sensitivity I could and all it did was fill him, no, it didn’t fill him with rage, he was already full of rage, I just became the release of that rage and subsequently it altered my life. 

Subsequently it changed the kind of father I was also.  I was a good dad but it still changed me as the person that I was.  I was always worried and still am that Sunflower would get hurt, either physically or be disappointed.  I did a relatively good job of controlling it but it was always there.  The act of letting her fly free and be the person she wanted to be was a constant struggle to me and in turn did change how I made decisions.

I was told most of my life by my dad that writing was a hobby but that you still had to go out and get a job and make a living, that music and art were the same.  They were distractions but they were not careers.  Being creative was the only things that make me feel alive.  My job, jobs were nothing but things to do to pay the bills.

I will be haunted for the rest of my life though wondering about not taking that ultimate risk because of the words that came from that poor man’s mouth, his fear and rage bleeding out onto his children and altering the way they followed their lives and how they led their own children through life.

By not taking the real risk, the one that would satisfy my very soul and the fiber of my universe I instead took little risks, dumb risks, stupid risks and even suicidal risks.  I couldn’t see what I was doing until it was almost too late.

And what’s the reason for all of this thinking?  Well it’s wondering just how much power we do have over each other’s lives, or how much power we give others over our lives.  Individuality and freedom is not just an easy step.  They really have to be worked toward.

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose…”  It’s possibly the greatest song line ever.  That’s usually how we find freedom and how we find ourselves, when we just have nowhere else to turn to.

Of course my favorite is “Then in the end, the love you save is equal to the love you made.”

cool peace

hippy mike

love