john walker's Open Salon Blog

to Tiffany, Earthbound

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:01:07 -0500

bouyed, no doubt, by my adoration of you

the geese drift by on their quest for further on

wings wave hello, goodbye

without pause, just, perhaps a pining glance

i long to be their destination

reaching up i seek their touch

their call becomes more distant, less distinct

was it my name they whooped

earthbound i cannot follow

by spring they will return to you

by spring...

by spring i vow to learn to fly

A Gathering of Souls Connected

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 11:09:30 -0400

Prior to my fourteenth birthday, I begged my parents to buy me a guitar. Finally, after several days of pleading and whining and gnashing of teeth my father said to me, “I will get you a guitar for your birthday, but I suspect that if I do it will end up being another dust collector in your room and you’ll never learn to play it. So, if I get you a guitar I’m going to insist that you take lessons, at least for a few months, so I know that my money at least won’t be totally wasted.”

He could have said, “I’ll buy you a guitar if you cut off your right leg,” and I would have eagerly agreed, so enamored was I at the prospect of being a musician. I am often thankful for my father’s wisdom in this regard because due to the lessons he insisted upon, my new guitar did not become a dust collector in some dark corner of my bedroom. Rather, the guitar and music became a safe harbor in a stormy sea of adolescence and later an anchor upon which I came to rely for safety, solace and sanity. Music has soothed me, entertained me, served as a letter of introduction, allowed me to share my soul, opened doors, provided income and gotten me laid. It is now an old friend that I can rely upon in good times or bad, in sickness or in health, until death do us part. Music doesn’t judge, is always happy to fall into the same old routine or willing to attempt something new and never grows too weary or bored to try it, “one more time.”

I’m so in love with my music

The way you keep me movin’

Ain’t nobody doin’ what you’re doin’, doin”

Joss Stone, “Music”

But, perhaps most importantly, music connected me to my friends. Craig Mann, Gary Thill and Dave Gardner were three of the most influential people in my life as a teenager and young man. They, like me, were musicians too. They were my best friends. And of all the things we shared as friends, none was more powerful than the music.

My friend Craig never met an instrument he didn’t like. More than that, he never met an instrument that didn’t like him. The rest of us often joked that he could play an oboe if he had one. (In case you weren’t aware, oboe is considered one of the most difficult instruments to master). His head is filled with music. He hears everything that’s there and everything which isn’t but should be. Even though I have traveled down many musical pathways and many years and many miles from him, Craig is still one of the best musicians I’ve ever met. And I’ve met some good ones. He always amazed me and does so even still.

Gary began his musical journey around the same time as I did and we learned much together and from one another. Simon and Garfunkel, The Moody Blues, The Beatles, The Stones, or Van Morrison have never been covered more poorly nor with more enthusiasm. We were each other’s cheerleader. Gary is fearless is his music and has no ego. While never afraid to try and fail, he usually gets it right.

Dave Gardner one day simply picked up a guitar and began to play. It was absolutely amazing. I witnessed the whole thing. Never a lesson or an instruction, in only a very few weeks he suddenly became. Or, more accurately, he began doing what he was born to do. Quiet, unassuming, shy, Dave just is guitar.

If there’s a load you have to bear

That you can’t carry

I’m right up the road

I’ll share your load

If you just call me

Bill Withers, “Lean on Me”

Last month, someone noticed that it had been forty years since we had graduated from high school and they planned, wisely or not, a reunion. I debated with myself about making the trip from Texas to San Diego until an e-mail from Gary informed me that Craig’s lovely sister, Candace had offered her home as a gathering place for the four of us and some other friends on the night before the reunion.. I’m so there! I e-mailed Gary and inquired whether we were to bring our instruments. “Well, hell yeah,” he replied. Oh, yeah, I am so there!

Candace, or Candy as we called her before she grew up and became respectable, is beautiful and always was. A couple years older than my friends and me, I burdened under a backbreaking crush on her for most of my pre-adulthood. She always seemed so grown-up and experienced and exotic. Laughable, of course, because I think she may have been all of sixteen years old when I met her. And, even more “Teenage Dream”- like, all of her friends seemed to be beautiful as well.

The consummate hostess, she prepared a delicious dinner for the fifteen or twenty of us, made us all feel welcome and important to the gathering and then graciously and inconspicuously stepped out of the way, as the rest of us reminisced.

If I had ever been here before I would probably know just what to do

Don’t you?

If I had ever been here before I would probably know just how to deal

With all of you.

Crosby, Stills and Nash, “Déjà Vu”

A couple hours later someone said, “Are you gonna play or what?” Without further cajoling, musical instruments virtually flew out of weathered, black cases.

We played. Mostly old songs that we hoped someone still remembered most of the words to. Some of the songs we used to play when we were fifteen and sixteen years old. It was just the same. Nothing is just the same you say; you can’t go home again. Apparently, Thomas Wolfe was not a musician because for those few hours in that beautiful home in Southern California, while the music played, we all went home again.

Craig was masterful. We knew he would be. Gary remains fearless and generous. Dave still is guitar. And, I was there too, playing and singing and laughing and living as if I were sixteen, as if we all were.

Some of us are not as healthy as we once were. None of us is as young. None of us is as full of youthful, naive hope. But, the music bound us back then and it binds us still. The production of music is something we can’t share with our spouses or friends or children but that is, in fact, the essence of why we still play. It’s because we want so badly to share it. We want to share this magic thing that happens to us when we play. And, that’s why we play.

Out there in the spotlight, you’re a million miles away

And every ounce of energy, ya’ try and give away

As the sweat pours out your body like the music that ya’ play...

Well, here I am.

Bob Seeger, “Turn the Page”

For me, and probably for all of us, the entire evening was bittersweet. I know that we all realized, that this night in Southern California might well be, probably will be, the last time in our lives that we share our music together. But, for this night I am grateful...oh, so very grateful. To all of those who shared their home and their food and their drink and their time and their ears and their laughter; for all of those who were there to share the magic one last time, thank you so very much

Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken and many times confused

And, I’ve often felt forsaken and certainly misused

But, it’s alright, it’s all right. I’m just weary to my bones.

Paul Simon, “American Tune”

As the World Turns, err..I mean... Ends

Fri, 20 May 2011 12:05:47 -0400

First, let’s get clear, the world is not ending tomorrow. Tomorrow, the “good” Christians will be raptured up to heaven leaving all us sinners (which I think includes damned near everyone here on OS) behind to ponder our fate. The world, however, is not actually scheduled to end until October of this year.

Many of you may now be quaking with fear over the coming apocalypse, but I’ve been thinking about it and there is an upside. The following, is a list of thirteen (the same number as people that attended the last supper..eerie) of the advantages that should occur after all the “chosen” have amscrayed on to the Promised Land.

1 Mike Huckabee will not change his mind about seeking the Presidency.

2 Here in Texas, I’ll be able to purchase liquor both on Sundays and after midnight. If I need a bottle of Glen Livet at 1:30 a.m. I will damned well be able to get it.

3 Gay couples will be able to marry, although they’ll never be anything but newlyweds.

4 In many states, consenting adults will be able to participate in any kind of sexual acts they choose without breaking the law. Which, for me, will actually take a little of the fun out of it.

5 We’ll never have to go Christmas shopping again. Although, I will miss all the women dressed as slutty nurses, vampires, cats and police officers on Halloween.

6 Christian bookstores will all be replaced by topless bars.

7 Madonna and Lady Gaga will no longer have anyone to shock or offend. Hence, all of their music will be relegated to the dustbin of irrelevance.

8 The Ten Commandments will be replaced by three or four handy tips. So much easier to remember.

9 We’ll all laugh as we watch Christine O’Donnell plead, “No, I said I’m not a witch!”

10 All those guys with signs proclaiming, “The End Is Near,” will be met with replies of, “Really?”

11 No one ever need worry about the interest rate on their Visa card.

12 Many of us will always be remembered as young looking. Okay, many of you will be remembered that way.

13 We won’t have Kirk Cameron to kick around anymore.

So, all and all, things might not be so bad.

My Mother's Ghost

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:03:17 -0400

My mother died last June after a long and bitter illness. It was not a surprise nor was it unwelcomed by most of the family as she suffered greatly and was without much of a mind during the last few months of her life. My father, however, took her death very hard.

She was, without question, the love of his life. From my earliest recollection of him, he always treated her as a princess. She wanted for nothing. He waited on her unswervingly. He never raised his voice to her and no argument between the two every reached my ears because he always granted her every wish.

I learned a great deal from my father about love and how to treat people, both those you know and those you don’t. I learned the rewards of service to another; the enormous power in giving of oneself. But, nothing I ever learned from him was more powerful than his example of devotion.

As my mother lay in her hospital bed, unaware of anything that might have happened only minutes before or anything that could conceivably happen in the future, my father was there. For months on end, he would come to the hospital twice a day to feed her because she resisted the nurse’s efforts to do so. By the look in her eyes one could tell that, most of the time, she was unsure of exactly who he was. But, one could also tell, that in some way, she was comforted by his presence. Her feedings were lengthy and excruciating. To feed her a small glass of nutritional drink-mix took over half an hour. Not only did she have issues with swallowing but also often simple stubbornness kicked in and she would refuse to try. My father, however, ever patient, coaxed and cajoled, joked and smiled until the entire mixture had been consumed.

Never did I hear him complain or in any way show that, what now had become a daily routine of twice daily trips to the hospital with lengthy stays and the trials of caring for, what essentially was, an eighty-eight year-old infant, was in any way a burden on him. Still, he was eight-four years old with a pacemaker and diabetes, pained by the loss of his lifelong partner, and aware of the inevitable outcome of her battle with Alzheimer's. He grieved for her long before she closed her eyes for the final time.

This last February, eight months after my mother’s death, my father suffered a stroke. He fell in his bedroom and lay there for somewhere between two to three days before he was discovered and taken to the hospital.

I flew out to California the day after I was notified and feel very fortunate that I had a chance to see him before his death the following morning.

When I arrived, he was unable to speak and paralyzed on the left side of his body but the look in his eyes as I walked in the door let me know that he recognized me and was pleased that I was there. I held his hand and told him I loved him and that was the last time I saw him.

But, later that evening my ex-wife and one of my daughters went to the hospital to visit. It was then that my mother’s ghost became manifest.

My ex found my father much more responsive than I had. He was able to communicate with her by squeezing her hand. As result, he was able to tell her that he was in pain and the nurses gave him something to make him more comfortable.

During their visit, my father kept looking past them. At first, the two women thought that he just wasn’t able to focus his eyes. But, then with his left hand he kept trying to point at something above and behind them. They would look and there was only a blank wall.

Still, he was insistent. There are convinced that he was seeing something behind them.

My ex-wife and my cousin, both equally religious as they are diverse in personality, believe he was seeing an angel or angels. As for me, I can’t say; I wasn’t there and no one who was saw anything. But, knowing my father, my daughter and my ex-wife as I do, I’m convinced he was seeing something. For my part, I like to think that it was my mother come to comfort him as he had so long done for her.

That my parents are somehow together, freed from the bonds of failing bodies, and able to express their love for one another without the restraint of earthly concerns is a huge comfort to me.

Believe what you will.

Past Your Prime

Mon, 7 Feb 2011 11:02:02 -0500

I love you, Pop.

I know they kept you and Mom upright past your primes

It’s all about the money, of course.

Money for medicines and machines to keep our weak hearts pumping, our rusty limbs moving, tired synapses connecting ever more slowly..., slowly..., and slowly.

Past our prime, they’ll put us in a home to keep our mournful wails of protest far from earshot.

No facebook or reality shows or you tube videos depicting where all our paths likely lead.

No one wants to look at you now. No one wants to look because you are our future.

Shhhh! don’t speak of the pain. Don’t speak of how you worried over the cost of keeping yourself alive. No one dies in their sleep anymore. No one dies softly, quietly, peacefully anymore.

I suspected Mom’s death would kill you and now just months later you lay on the floor, alone, for two days your spine snapped from the fall from the stroke.

What do we do with you now, Pop? What do I do with the man who taught me a love for music and for football? What do I do with the man who taught me that when you love, you do so without regard for yourself? What do I do with the man who never yelled, or embarrassed me? What do I do with the man who came to every pop warner football game for four years; who bought me my first guitar and insisted I take lessons; who picked me up at the bus station when the Army said “thanks but, no thanks; who never blinked when my friends got your name wrong because yours and mine were different.

I know that I sometimes disappointed you even though you never did me. I know I did even though you never brought it up, never scolded.

What do I do with the man who always waited, hand and foot, on my mother as if she were a princess? Even up until the day she died, you were there, helping her, feeding her, entertaining her, loving her. What do I do with you now that you’re past your prime?

I remember the day I first met you; the day you came courting my mother. I couldn’t have known how you would affect my life so profoundly.

You were such a Conservative and still you never argued when I went to anti-war protests. You never mentioned my “hippie hair”. You would even occasionally drive my little VW with the “Vietnam, Love It or Leave It” bumper sticker.

How do I thank you? Do I thank you by paying the Doctors for more drugs and ventilators and heart pumping machines to keep you alive? Do I thank you by letting you pass with as much peace as possible? Is life of any type worth fighting for; life past your prime? If I decide, which decision is for me and which is for you or are they both the same? Why, when I need your wisdom, can’t you answer me now?

I love you, Pop. I loved you in your prime and I love you past your prime.

It’s been a long journey and you have traveled it well. Rest now, rest now.