Skip to main content

August 9, 1995


August 9, 1995

I'm not exactly sure what I was doing, but I know I wasn't happy.
My first long term relationship was winding down and I was restless,
unsure of the promise that it once held,
and ignoring plaintive appeals from my muse to write more,
get involved in something larger than myself
and lonely.

There were moments that held a clarity for me,
that shifted me off whatever path I'd been on,
and hearing the chorus to "Fire on the Mountain" from outside the amphitheater in Kansas
sparked some weird cognizance in my LSD addled brain and I had to get back in.
The security guard did not agree.
After getting pummeled we came to some measure of understanding
and I passed the rest of that concert --July 4th, 1991--on my own.

This was a turning point for me Jerry,
and however clichè it may sound I became a "Deadhead," a hippy,
jumping into some other way of being that I still struggle to define.
What I was melted away as my consciousness slowly returned in Bonner Springs.
Being in Boulder didn't matter and we relocated to Albuquerque a year later,
made one last trip to see the Dead in Colorado
and just got on with our life.

And then you died.
I remember hearing the news in the morning from some friend calling me from Colorado
as we roasted in a small duplex in the War Zone.
The prime spot for listening was somewhere between the floor and the rocking chair
in the middle of the room and I hung out with the dogs on the floor
sorting through my small collection of bootlegs,
and a few studio CDs that just didn't quite capture what I'd experienced.
As day rolled into night, I moved up into the wooden wicker rocker
and just let the music wash over me,
and cried.
We'd already decided we were going to make another show,
no matter how far away,
and I was so terribly sad.

I like to think you'd approve of how my life has unfolded.
I write, perform, think about my impact and how I treat the ones I care about.
I'm just some fan, Jerry, some random guy from Colorado,
who just wanted to understand what all the fuss was about
and just couldn't possibly understand why so many people that I respected
were drawn to your admittedly bad voice, unpolished compositions,
and a catalog that seemed to meander across genres,
never quite fitting in any of them easily.

I still don't get it, but I miss you.
Miss what you said to me, though I'm not exactly sure what that is.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peregrinating the Albuquerque Bosque

  The Map. Overview: Starting in the San Juans in Colorado, the Rio Grande "is the twenty-second longest river in the world and the fourth or fifth longest in North America" ( Texas State Historical Society ).  While the river is characterized by the area it flows through, the river from Elephant Butte Dam to the south to Cochiti Dam in the north is called the Middle Rio Grande.  And in the middle of the middle Rio Grande is the roughly 20 plus miles that flows through Albuquerque.  From an airplane, the Rio Grande is a brown ribbon bordered a green ribbon.  That green ribbon is the Bosque .  I've always been fascinated really exploring an area, getting a sort of overview of an area then drilling down to really get it.  It's led to me hiking the Sandias from end to end and then hiking outlying trails multiple times, biking all the trails in the Cedro Peak area because someone put them on a map, trying different routes to get to ...
3 comments
Read more

"That's Scaughtland for ya!"

The United Kingdom Up at the top of that map, basically the top half, is a tiny nation with a big footprint.  With roughly the same population as Minnesota, Scotland has a land mass the size of South Carolina, yet there are more people in the United States that have Scottish and/or Scotch-Irish ancestry than live in Scotland. My family is one of those. In the course of growing up, I was indoctrinated to celebrate my Scottish ancestry (primarily by my grandmother but we'll talk about that later).      So a year ago, my wife took a trip with her mother to Japan.  I looked at the pictures that she posted, and when I'd talk to her on the phone, I noticed something.  She was happy.  This is not to say she's always unhappy, but this was different.  She was having a good time, engaged in the world, curious, and happy-like no matter what the challenge.  And traveling to Japan with her mother posed some interesting challenge...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Year of Thursdays in the Bosque.

 Ran into a friend in the Bosque, and we both remarked about how low the rio was, and I jokingly said, "I almost feel like I should take a picture of the river every week to sort of document it." She said, "Yeah.  That'd be interesting." As she continued with her dog walk, I thought, "I should do that."   With rare exceptions, I walk my dog in the bosque every Thursday morning.  And with rare exceptions, I walk the bosque behind the National Hispanic Cultural Center (sometimes parking at the NHCC and sometimes parking at the small pullout lot south off of 2nd Street). My idea is to the take a picture in the same spot every Thursday for a year to get a photographic record of how much the river changes over time.   I understand a lot about this caged and managed river.  Indeed, Reining in the Rio Grande is probably the first sort of scientific, historical, political book on the river I've ever read.  That's not a genre I usually read. ...
1 comment
Read more